General Video Game Thread

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  • Tachyon said:

    i always kinda assumed that if the imperials were actually able to drive the thalmor out, they would - hadn't there been a protracted war beforehand?

    I haven't read the lore in a long time, but my recollection is that they surrendered when the elves took Cyrodiil even though the rest of the empire was still holding out. Then Hammerfell immediately rebelled and successfully threw off both the empire and the Thalmor. It's implied that this is at least partially because the Thalmor didn't care that much about Hammerfell in the first place, but it also stands to reason that invading the desert would have been more difficult. The same probably more or less applies to Skyrim.

    It's certainly the case that nobody on the imperial side seems to LIKE the Thalmor very much, but I still find the "fighting the oppressors is hopeless so we're going to actively collaborate with them" argument pretty unconvincing in general.
  • edited 2018-05-31 14:32:08
    @tachyon

    Well yeah not really, and I'm loathe to debate the merits of made up fantasyland political parties (even relatively well thought out ones)

    That being said, I think it's troubling how many people accepted at face value the Stormcloaks as the good guys because rebellion and cool name and how many people were willing to completely ignore the parallels to reactionary movements, and, you know, the racism.

    ...but more worrying than that is the ambiguous framing of the game itself, which waffles between "Ulfric is a villain and the Stormcloaks are his Confederate Nazis" and "Both Sides Are Bad." I'm deeply curious what the authorial intent was, how much was studio mandates, that kind of thing. It's worth noting that Wulf, an apparition the player character of Morrowind encounters that is implied to be an avatar of Talos, offhandedly mentions that he thinks it might be nice to see someone different in power. This, in addition to the fact that these games are planned well in advance, indicates to me that the Stormcloaks were at least intended to be the unambiguously good rebels initially.
  • Tachyon said:

    i always kinda assumed that if the imperials were actually able to drive the thalmor out, they would - hadn't there been a protracted war beforehand?

    I haven't read the lore in a long time, but my recollection is that they surrendered when the elves took Cyrodiil even though the rest of the empire was still holding out. Then Hammerfell immediately rebelled and successfully threw off both the empire and the Thalmor. It's implied that this is at least partially because the Thalmor didn't care that much about Hammerfell in the first place, but it also stands to reason that invading the desert would have been more difficult. The same probably more or less applies to Skyrim.

    It's certainly the case that nobody on the imperial side seems to LIKE the Thalmor very much, but I still find the "fighting the oppressors is hopeless so we're going to actively collaborate with them" argument pretty unconvincing in general.
    Crucially, though, the rest of the Empire was much smaller because of how much had fallen to the Thalmor.
  • Took this time to stroll through UESP for the first time in ages and once again I'm floored by how much of the world was set up in side materials in Morrowind and how much a game that came out nine years later drew from those materials faithfully.
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    well fwiw, i came into this thread not having played the game in a long time and feeling like with retrospect i gave the stormcloaks too much slack and that i should have just joined the legion from the beginning, but Tatterhood has reminded me why i didn't do that
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    also as i remember it my actual experience playing the game was: initially i was sympathetic to the stormcloaks because the imperial border patrol were going to execute me, but then i talked to some stormcloaks and they were all what do you want you damn imperial and i was like oh ok, clearly i'm not welcome here
  • Wow my last post got ninja'd a whole bunch there.
    Hexartes said:

    @tachyon

    Well yeah not really, and I'm loathe to debate the merits of made up fantasyland political parties (even relatively well thought out ones)

    That being said, I think it's troubling how many people accepted at face value the Stormcloaks as the good guys because rebellion and cool name and how many people were willing to completely ignore the parallels to reactionary movements, and, you know, the racism.

    ...but more worrying than that is the ambiguous framing of the game itself, which waffles between "Ulfric is a villain and the Stormcloaks are his Confederate Nazis" and "Both Sides Are Bad." I'm deeply curious what the authorial intent was, how much was studio mandates, that kind of thing. It's worth noting that Wulf, an apparition the player character of Morrowind encounters that is implied to be an avatar of Talos, offhandedly mentions that he thinks it might be nice to see someone different in power. This, in addition to the fact that these games are planned well in advance, indicates to me that the Stormcloaks were at least intended to be the unambiguously good rebels initially.

    I completely agree with the last paragraph here, yeah. It basically just feels incoherent as it's actually presented. And you basically end up having both sides be Nazi analogues in different ways, which is a weird way to add moral ambiguity.

    Second paragraph is pretty fair too. I definitely fell into that initially and then got pretty uncomfortable with it after. Which is part of why I never did the civil war again on future playthroughs. (That and it just being really boring to play.)

    I think the question of whether Skyrim could successfully fight off the Thalmor is not really one worth arguing about and I suspect it's quite deliberate that the evidence in the lore doesn't give a clear answer.
  • Tachyon said:

    also as i remember it my actual experience playing the game was: initially i was sympathetic to the stormcloaks because the imperial border patrol were going to execute me, but then i talked to some stormcloaks and they were all what do you want you damn imperial and i was like oh ok, clearly i'm not welcome here

    Yeah, I played as a Nord on my first play through and probably that contributed to that initial positive reaction lasting longer.
  • image Wee yea erra chs hymmnos mea.
    Hi, I'm Alice, and this is Jackass!
  • Munch munch, chomp chomp...
    Cute dork.
  • Sup bitches, witches, Haters, and trolls.
    Crystal said:

    Cute dork.

    cork.

  • BeeBee
    edited 2018-06-01 00:51:21
    Record Keeper just released the Record Dungeons.  They're a nice sideshow, and since they lock your party to fixed setups and low levels, they're a really cool way of leveraging the obsolete low-level abilities and Unique SBs and stuff nobody's actually used for years (a completely new player will blow past that scale in less than a week).  They maybe introduce Bladeblitz way the fuck too early though -- most of the battles are single-wave trash that already dies in one hit, and in half of them the forced party setup puts Bladeblitz on your fastest character.

    It's maybe kind of silly though?  Because the whole gimmick is that the 10 year old protagonists are actually going through the plot of these games, but the first four are 7, 13, 6, and 4.  As in, the ones that all start with terrorism and slaughtering villagers.  Jesus Tyro, maybe go have a Saturday morning cartoon adventure with Bartz before getting into the war crimes.

    Something kind of funny happens at the end of the first set of dungeons.  It takes FFIV out to the Antlion fight, and you fight it at like level 13 or something.  Then it opens a side mission where you fight it again, but you're allowed to use your normal teams and arsenal, and it lists the difficulty as ???.  Now, normally when this happens it means 300+.  The Record Dungeons are explicitly designed for new players, so people didn't really think it would go THAT high, but we assumed it would be like 80 or something like the first tier of raids (which again, is not at all difficult for a new player to hit within a week).  So we started busting out our Fenrir and Tiamat teams to slam some ice down its throat, get it over with quickly, and pocket a free mythril...

    image

    He literally dies to the first setup attack from anyone at the main game's level.  In a lot of teams, he'll get killed by the trivial splash damage from your opening party buff or stat break.
  • image Wee yea erra chs hymmnos mea.
    Forbidden (#RegForbidden)

    Players wilÄŸÆŸÈŸÊ¡Ì Î˜Ð–ÒŒÓŒÔŒØ¬Ù¬à¤Œà¥Œá‚¬áŒášŒá›Œá´ŒáµŒá¸¬á¹¬áº¬á»¬á¼¬á½¬á¾¬á¿¬â€¬â¬â‚¬âƒ¬â„¬
  • Players will mow [the grass at the] G Bar K [ranch].
  • BeeBee
    edited 2018-06-02 01:25:26
    I'm at the last really hard boss of Trails SC Nightmare.  Every time I revisit this series I'm always struck by how well they captured Western politics and values.  Like, there are distinctly Japanese shades to individual characters, but the general outlook is VERY genuinely Western in a way very few JRPGs set in Totally Not Europe are.
  • edited 2018-06-02 01:29:52
    Bee said:

    Every time I revisit this series I'm always struck by how well they captured Western politics and values.  Like, there are distinctly Japanese shades to individual characters, but the general outlook is VERY genuinely Western in a way very few JRPGs set in Totally Not Europe are.

    I'm going to have to ask you more about this when I get to the end of this game.

    i'll be right back, gimme like two years or so
  • I have cut a caper with the dancing mad god
    I would like to highly recommend Into The Breach! It's great. Definitely has a lot of what I loved about FTL without being an FTL 2. Weapons are fun, the different mech team are interesting and have neat play strategies, and in general I am very much enjoying this game. 
  • is this related to Breach & Clear?
  • Munch munch, chomp chomp...
    No.
  • BeeBee
    edited 2018-06-06 03:51:28
    I downloaded Pokemon Quest (the cube one) to try it out.  The art style is charming, but as a game you're expected to play, it's...about exactly as bad as I expected.

    It forces touch controls with no particularly sane controller alternative except to slowly scroll around and click onscreen buttons.  And like, there's not a hell of a lot going on here.  It wouldn't have been hard to hotkey things to the FOURTEEN available buttons on the Switch controller.

    The AI is stupid as shit.  Like, Daikatana stupid.  It targets pretty much randomly without regard to enemy type, so Pikachu will happily poke away at the Geodude in front of him while getting pelted by Zubats he could kill in one hit, and your entire party will spread fire instead of focusing anything down.  Nearly all the attacks are directional or range-based, and have the capacity to hit most enemies on the field but never will.  For instance, Pikachu starts with a close-range Thunderbolt that circles around him, but whenever you use it he fucking runs backward, away from what he needs to hit, until the bolts expire.  Pidgey starts with a Gust that shoots in a straight line, but when it hits something it starts circling the point of impact; he'll shoot it off in whatever the fuck direction and usually miss altogether.  Weedle gets a Lunge that jumps up and slams down on an enemy for an AOE around the impact, but he'll jump off in random fucking directions.  The enemies throw some area-targeted attacks that warn you with a crosshair, but the only way to avoid it is a generic scatter button that's on too long a delay to get away, and your team flees for so long that they take more damage than if they just ate the attack.  People will get hung up on trees and shit.  And it just goes on and on.  This is a game that desperately needed player agency, would've been decently fun with it, and is disastrously bad without it.

    Party expansion works by cooking food, and dudes will just show up randomly.  It's enough to spread XP thin (and XP already comes in too slowly to keep even one team up to speed with the zone right after the tutorial), and rarely gives you much functional to work with.  Out of combat training for both XP and move learning involves permanently sacrificing party members (it says they "leave" but I'm pretty sure they literally murder the shit out of each other in an elaborate cube-based blood sacrifice), and the gain is nowhere near what you lose.  Also move learning is random too because more randomness attached to limited resources is what this game needed.

    And because it's a mobile game, you have extremely limited stamina on a slow recharge so it can beg you for money to play the stopwatch.

    It's bad.  It's really, really bad and Nintendo should feel bad.
  • I haven't caught up with Pokemon. I didn't beat Sun and haven't got Ultra Sun yet. I don't really care about Pokemon anymore, honestly. And this is coming from the person who is most notorious on TV Tropes for something Pokemon-related.
  • image Wee yea erra chs hymmnos mea.
    image
  • Touch the cow. Do it now.
    as long as I have enough super missiles he will never be a threat
  • image Wee yea erra chs hymmnos mea.
    Tell that to Mega Man and Mario.

    imageimage

  • Touch the cow. Do it now.
    sucks for them
  • image Wee yea erra chs hymmnos mea.

    #REGFORBIDDEN

    SO. EVERYONE HAS BEEN WONDERING WHAT #REGFORBIDDEN IS.

    HERE’S THE BASIC IDEA. I DON’T WANT TO GIVE TOO MUCH AWAY BECAUSE HOW MUCH FUN IS THAT?

    PLAY LIKE NORMAL. USE YOUR WIND JOB. UNLOCK YOUR WATER AND FIRE JOBS. USE THEM. UNLOCK YOUR EARTH JOB. THINGS MAY COME IN A SLIGHTLY WEIRD ORDER. THINGS MAY APPEAR NORMAL.

    IN THIS RUN, BEFORE YOU ENTER THE VOID TO FINISH THE GAME YOU MUST TWEET #PUNISHME AT @FF5FORFUTURES. SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN.

    ENJOY.
  • I've heard of this happening before but no idea why.
  • image Wee yea erra chs hymmnos mea.
    My team RN is Time Mage/Berserker/Bard, and I think I'm single-handedly keeping the Karnak weapons shop in business.
  • Who's your fourth?  Second Berserker?
  • image Wee yea erra chs hymmnos mea.
    Haven't hit the Earth Crystal yet, stopped playing just after hitting Sandworm in the face.
  • image Wee yea erra chs hymmnos mea.
    Final job is Gladiator.
  • BeeBee
    edited 2018-06-18 23:26:51
    Oh ouch, you have to wait all the way until the bonus dungeon opens.  At least Gladiator is good.
  • I'm near the end of Fire Emblem Fates, and I'm like 99% sure Azura doesn't actually know more than the one song.
  • image Wee yea erra chs hymmnos mea.
    imageimage
    imageTriple crowned my Forbidden run, because why not.
  • Touch the cow. Do it now.
    an underrated thrash band
  • edited 2018-06-20 02:35:44
    image Wee yea erra chs hymmnos mea.

    what is Forbidden?

    Wind Crystal jobs are as normal + Time Mage, Water Crystal jobs are Water + Geomancer, Ninja, and Beastmaster, Fire Crystal jobs are Bard, Ranger, and the Earth Crystal jobs, and the Earth Crystal jobs are Cannoneer, Gladiator, and Oracle.

    When you reach the Rift, you permanently lose one of your jobs.
  • The Shinryu zombie strat never ceases to amuse me.
  • edited 2018-06-20 03:06:33
    Bee said:

    The Shinryu zombie strat never ceases to amuse me.

    "I can kill anything that lives!"
    "So you can't kill what's already dead! ZING"
    "NOOOO MY BEAUTIFUL BOAST"
  • edited 2018-06-20 03:27:17
    We can do anything if we do it together.
    pokes head in here

    Are Mothers 1 and 3 worth my time?

    I know I want to play Mother 2/Earthbound soon, but I'm not as sure about those two.
  • Mother 1 is, far as I remember from playing the unofficial release, sort of a standard JRPG but with Earthbound's sensibilities with regards to surrealism and storytelling.  it's nowhere near as long as Earthbound though.

    It also lacks the rolling HP meters.  (There are a few late-game enemies with instant kill heavy damage attacks, so if you liked Earthbound for being able to survive this, you might be disappointed.  If you haven't, though, then it'll probably be like any other JRPG.)
  • BeeBee
    edited 2018-06-20 06:28:34
    I'm revisiting my minimalist hypermode run of Metroid Prime II.  I fell off at Quadraxis, and I've completely lost track of how many times I've died to him just the last two days.  More than Boost Guardian, and probably approaching the rest of the playthrough combined.

    How the fuck do his orange missiles work?  I can't dodge something that doesn't seem to have predictable aiming patterns, and the rest of the fight has enough unavoidable problems and random death bullshit.
  • well i figured out how to stream on Twitch using OBS
  • BeeBee
    edited 2018-06-21 07:09:17
    UGH.  I got Quadraxis to phase 2 once, then choked >:(  That's supposed to be the easy part too...

    So Quadraxis starts with the knee immediately to your right vulnerable, then his weak knee rotates clockwise.  After all four have a weak point, all four simultaneously have one, and then it starts with the first one.  Every time a knee is destroyed, the pattern resets, but does not resume.  So ideally, you want to kill his 3rd and 4th knees FIRST so there's less of a wait for you to start in on the ones at the front of the pattern.  This phase is the hairiest because he'll often drop missiles instead of health, so try to save your first pair of super missiles until he's out of feet to keep the drops tilted toward health.  Also he's a jackass and when his knees go down he'll often catapult drops up into the air past the reach of your charge beam, because FUCK YOU.

    It's important to drag out the first two knees as long as possible so you can spread as much power beam around as possible while keeping him in his less dangerous and evasive state.  After the second knee, he starts using an unavoidable spin attack (you can stop it on a regular run, but not with 10 missiles), and on the last one he moves around so quickly you basically have to hope you have a super missile or two left.  Important part is to save all your light ammo.

    Power bombs are the preferred way of taking out feet, but you only have two so they're best saved for late phase.  Boost ball will also do the job, but only if fully charged and you hit directly.  His machine gun is the best opening to do it, since it's the only attack that leaves him busy for a long time and can't hit you while you're underneath him.  If health forces you to go for a foot at a different time, you have to do something a bit riskier; ball up, then hang around a foot to bait a shockwave stomp -- then roll away and destroy a different foot to get enough distance to jump the shockwave afterward.

    Second phase, pick up your goodies, super missile the main antenna twice, then finish it with power beam.  The head's three antennae each take two charged light shots plus a little power beam change.  You can't afford to waste a whole cycle without destroying an antenna, but you want to spread out your damage a bit before destroying any of them -- because for the other two you have droids following you, all you can really do is LOS them with the dead main body, you can't fucking see them with Echo Visor, and you can't spare the ammo to kill them safely.  Second and third times, you use super missiles and one light shot on the main antenna, then quickly finish off one of the remaining antennae on the head and collect goodies.

    Final phase is the easiest but can go south quickly because he prefers annihilator shots, and you'll probably be having a minor cardiac episode from the pressure.  Super missile as possible, but you might have to buster duel depending on drops.  And of course, you have to boost launch into the head for the kill shot, and if you fuck up you'll probably die before you get another shot.  Launch when the top of his head is about horizontally even with the bottom of the Low Energy label, which will almost CERTAINLY be visible.

    Also the only way out of the boss room to a save point is through a corridor full of Ingstorm and several more rooms of air pirates, so enjoy THAT with 99 health while you desperately try to save your victory on probably the hardest fight in the run.
  • edited 2018-06-21 07:55:43
    > debut on twitch!
    > stream a super metroid randomizer
    > already know the game well, have even 100%'d it, have even beaten randomizer, lots of experience walljumping and bombjumping and even kinda know how to mockball, so what can go wrong?
    > play randomizer
    > lots of useful items early on
    > stocked up with tons of energy, ammo of all three kinds
    > no bombs though, but can just powerbomb through stuff
    > crateria
    > brinstar
    > norfair
    > no hijump yet
    > kill kraid without hijump
    > explore all of upper norfair
    > still no hijump, no bombs, no space jump, no ice beam
    > no upward mobility
    > stuck at bottom of red tower
    > try to do some shinespark tricks
    > can't get into maridia
    > can't supershortcharge up red tower
    > fail repeatedly on stream trying to do shinespark tricks
    > look up super short charge, blue suit, yellow suit tricks on web, on stream
    > fail some more

    > consult randomizer discord later
    > "we have anti-softlock features for Tournament and Full modes but they haven't been backported to Normal mode yet"
  • BeeBee
    edited 2018-06-21 21:37:14
    Ugh, FUCK OFF QUADRAXIS.  I got him to the last hit of his final phase.  He popped out of his last stun right before my bomb went off, then hit me with three annihilator shots while I was coming out of the ball.
  • Touch the cow. Do it now.
    Minimalist runs are no fun.
  • Other than this and Boost Guardian, the run's been fine.  I actually had a lot of fun with Prime 1, and Meta Ridley was so much more strategic than you'd expect on a regular run with tons of resources to faceroll.
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