What Are You Currently Playing? 5.05: You Are (Not) A Gamer

[Daxdiv]

I somehow managed to get a Cyndaquil in Wonder Trade on Wednesday, then I ended up deciding to breed these guys to spread the love around. I ended up using my Japanese Ditto, and after a box, I got a shiny Cyndaquil.  I mean, Holy Hell, I tried this method before and gave up, but after this... I might try even harder now. THANK YOU BASED MASUDA!!!!

This is my 4th one from Generation 6, following the Poliwag, Vivllion and Mankey  I caught.

[Nel_Annette]

I'm in the very definitely final dungeon of Tales Of Graces F a few months after starting the game. I'd say overall, good game. A nice plot, fun cast (I actually liked all the party members this time). I also liked how the title/skill system works in this too. I think that, barring Lineage And Legacies, this may be the second shortest Tales game I've ever played, behind Symphonia's sequel. I think by the time I reached the Ghardia Shaft, I was about 30 hours in. As for what I didn't like, well, the game felt extremely linear most of the time, barring you from certain areas and kind of forcing you along to the next plot point. And the actual battle system. That CC meter is kryptonite. A single attack? Costs CC. Sidestepping and dodging? Costs CC. Running freely? That thing you could do since Abyss? Costs CC. And then you run out and all you can do is guard or walk feebly until it refills enough to do anything substantial. Blargh. Give me back my MP meter any day.

And you know what really, really irks me? I decided that for my NG+ run, I'd do it in different costumes. But all the good costumes are DLC and they're... $3.99 each? What are you smoking, Namco? I'd pay $3.99 for all the costumes together, at the very least, but for each one? Screw yourselves. (And yes, I know I'm late to the party complaining about this. :p)

Welp, time to finish up the final stuff, and finally move on to Xillia.

[Grave]

Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike
Been trying to find videos of top players using Dudley, but I only found a couple of videos Kokujin and Kuroda. Anyway, decided to make him my main, and while I haven't really thought of a secondary character, I am considering Yun and/or Yang. I'm definitely coming to the conclusion that this is the better (probably the best) fighting game out. I won't know that for sure until I get my hands on GGXXAC+R and CvSNK2. From what I've been seeing is that there are only 2 top tier characters (Yun and Chun Li) with possibly 5-7 high tier and after that everyone else is viable. And then there's only 20 characters in the game (I know devs must have a hard time trying to balance a game with 30+ characters). Between this and GG, I'd say no more than 27 characters would make for that perfect number because anymore would be too much to learn, although, learning different matchups is what makes fighting games fun so, yeah, but 20 is a great number, and it makes it even easier for me to decide on that 1 character that I want to use. I have to give credit to SSF4 for getting me more acquainted with the 3rd Strike characters because had it not been for SSF4 I would not have been playing this game.

Speaking of SSF4 though, considering the direction Ultra SF4 is going, and the more I play 3rd Strike (and considering that I said that I am anticipating USF4) I'm actually on the fence and almost off the bandwagon altogether. I'm not feeling the idea of porting Poison, Hugo, Rolento and Elena from SFxT. Lost interest in waiting for this 5th character to be revealed. Not really caring about these nerfs or buffs. I'm still playing the wait and see card, I'm just not feeling any of this stuff. I'd rather get a new game instead.

Warriors Orochi 3
Just got it, or rather, am downloading it at the moment. I had no idea this game would take this long to download. Had I known this I probably would've kept my X360. I won't say these games are great (hell, I won't say they are good), but I do have fun with them (although I was very disappointed in Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3). I am debating on if I should get One Piece Pirate Warriors 2 though. I'm curious about it mainly because I wouldn't mind sluggin through this type of game as Ace, Zoro and Mihawk (and probably a few others)

After WO3 is done downloading I may go after Final Fantasy 7 and 8. It's been so long since I've played FF8. First FF game I've played (1st RPG I played) and first FF I actually had some attachment to. And then I just like the junction system over all the other mechanics in the other FF games.

[Daxdiv]

Finally completed the 3 Kalos dexes, Central/Coastal/Mountain in my copy of Pokemon X, minus Articuno/Zapdos/Moltres. But eh... the game gave me an Oval Charm, so now the egg output will be even greater. Now I just need to wait for Pokemon Bank to come to finish up the National Dex yet again.

[Kiddington]

Finally completed the 3 Kalos dexes, Central/Coastal/Mountain in my copy of Pokemon X, minus Articuno/Zapdos/Moltres. But eh... the game gave me an Oval Charm, so now the egg output will be even greater. Now I just need to wait for Pokemon Bank to come to finish up the National Dex yet again.

how do you do this shit so fast

Like I'm still in Cianwood in SoulSilver, and I think my Pokedex is like at 50 or something right now. Still haven't even played X yet, despite having owned it for about a month now. *shrugs*

[Commode]

I have most of my dexes finished as well.  Also the Bank was open wasn't it?  I've gotten several 'mons in the last couple weeks that were previously unavailable(some of the starters like Totodile and Cyndiquil, as well as Meowth and Rattata) through trades on the GTS. 

[Daxdiv]

Finally completed the 3 Kalos dexes, Central/Coastal/Mountain in my copy of Pokemon X, minus Articuno/Zapdos/Moltres. But eh... the game gave me an Oval Charm, so now the egg output will be even greater. Now I just need to wait for Pokemon Bank to come to finish up the National Dex yet again.

how do you do this shit so fast

Like I'm still in Cianwood in SoulSilver, and I think my Pokedex is like at 50 or something right now. Still haven't even played X yet, despite having owned it for about a month now. *shrugs*

I catch everything I see in sight. I resort to Serebii and Bulbagarden to help me locate things, write down what I need to breed and or evolve. That and the whole experience share in Gen VI makes the game a cakewalk, so when it came to evolving, I just took one of my party members, fought on Victory Road and took 5 Pokemon that needed to evolve and was able to use the EXP Share like that. What's weird is that, I did get both X & Y around launch, but thought a little bit hard if I wanted to store my Pokemon on my Physical X or Digital Y. I went with Physical. After I decided that and beat the Elite Four, then I decided to complete the dexes.

I have most of my dexes finished as well.  Also the Bank was open wasn't it?  I've gotten several 'mons in the last couple weeks that were previously unavailable(some of the starters like Totodile and Cyndiquil, as well as Meowth and Rattata) through trades on the GTS. 

Yep. it was opened up in Japan on Christmas day, then closed down due to the heavy traffic Nintendo was experiencing over the holiday due to the influx of new users. Right now if you visit the page on the official Nintendo website, it just gives a TBD as a date. I love Nintendo, but in hindsight.... releasing an app for your biggest game during the holidays probably wasn't the smartest idea. I still blame the fact that Japan's Christmas isn't like America's. I mean, I don' think they see Christmas as the biggest gift giving day of the year over there. Last I checked, they see it as a holiday for lovers and don't treat it like a national holiday like we do in the states where they close a majority of stores and schools. It's kind of like "Have fun, see ya after work!"

As for bank mons... I did end up getting a Cyndaquil, Totodile, Treecko and Feebas from Wonder Trade. Last week I did breed Cyndaquils and did end up getting a shiny out of it. I was so surprised to see a Shiny hatch from an egg. Since I got an Oval charm, I might look into getting Extrasensory on Cyndaquil and passing those around later.

[Commode]

I used the Wonder Trade to help fill out the dex(I still have a whole box in my PC filled up with starters that I got from Wonder Trade).  Even got most of the version exclusives that way.  Some of the better ones I would get off Wonder Trade I'd put up on GTS and barter for Pokemon I wanted; Friend Safari helped as well(especially when you get Pokemon like Magmar, Quilladin, Ivysaur, and Rhydon in your Friend Safaris).  My Kanto bird was Moltres, but I traded him on GTS for Zapdos, then traded Zapdos for Articuno.  I can't remember what I managed to trade for Yveltal though, I know it took a good amount of patience.

The down side is that I did spend a ton of time in Wonder Trade, because more often than not you get traded something useless, like those damn monkeys, can't tell you how many times I got traded those things.

[Foggle]

I've almost finished the first half of Nier in an attempt to get 100% quest completion. It is far too tedious, but I'm in it for the long run now. In that hindsight, the plotline for the game is as good as I remember it was back when I played it in mid-2012.

I just beat Nier for the first time! Didn't get anywhere close to 100% though. The story, characters, voice acting, and music were amazing, and the gameplay was pretty good too. I highly recommend it to anyone! (Make sure to do the second and third playthroughs as well.)

[Daxdiv]

The down side is that I did spend a ton of time in Wonder Trade, because more often than not you get traded something useless, like those damn monkeys, can't tell you how many times I got traded those things.

Yeah for me I notice I always get dupes of the following

Elemental Monkeys
Charmander
Froakie (Sometimes with Protean, which I kind of find as a blessing, since I don have access to someone with a Frogadier in their FS.)
Flabebe
Bunnelby
Marill

Pretty much some trash, but I do like the prospect of getting someone's breeding left overs, especially the ones with good IV spread. Luckily I do have someone on my friend list that has Ditto in their Safari, which kind of makes breeding/IV looking more easy.

In other news, some one gave me a Chimchar with Iron Fist on Wonder Trade and I'm now working on making some with Fire and Thunder Punch on them.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I finally got some time to get back to my games. I played a bit more of Vanquish. That section where you fight 2 copies of the first boss at once was terrible, IMO. Any fight in which you can get hit by instant-kill attacks from off-screen is not well balanced. Come on, Platinum, you guys should know better than that. Other than that, though, the rest of the game has still been awesome. Honestly, I like it even more than MGRR, even though I typically prefer Hack n' Slash games to TPS games.

Speaking of MGRR, I finally got around to the Jetstream Sam DLC. I like the feel of his combat more than Raiden's, and I like how they fine-tuned the parry mechanic so that you can't spam it as much anymore. That said, I swear that it feels like enemies purposely keep moving out of the sight of my camera to make it hell for me to fight them. I can still (amazingly) parry a good chunk of their attacks from off-screen, being that I can usually gauge the general direction that they are coming from, but having them able to attack from off-screen in the first place is yet another thing that I'd expect Platinum to know better about. I wish more games (including NG) would take a cue from DMC3 and 4 by not allowing enemies to initiate attacks from off-screen. It doesn't make the game easy as long as the enemies are still aggressive yet can also attack with some level of intelligence, rather than just attacking randomly and sporadically.

Anyways, despite my complaints, much like the main game I do like the DLC. I just feel that the flaws hold it back from being one of the greats of the genre. That said, I have also been playing through more of the main story-line on Hard mode, and I have gotten considerably better with Raiden to the point where the problems that I do have with the game don't bother me as much anymore since my skill can get me through most fights without sustaining too much damage.

[Foggle]

I just finished replaying Black Mesa. This really is one of the best video game remakes of all time, if not the best. I highly recommend it to everyone, especially those who have yet to experience the original Half-Life. Seriously, play it. It's free! http://www.moddb.com/mods/black-mesa

I also highly recommend installing the Surface Tension Uncut and On A Rail Uncut meta-mods. They add about 2 hours of extra gameplay total altogether and greatly improve the experience IMO. (ST was unfinished and OAR was shortened too much in the official release.)

[gunswordfist]

Didn't even know it was out.

[Foggle]

Didn't even know it was out.

It's been out since 2012, actually. I'm surprised I never directly talked about playing it here.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I got up to Mission 10 of DmC on SoS mode. It's a little better this time around, but still not challenging enough, and the combat really starts to show its weaknesses compared to the other games on this difficulty.

Meanwhile I'm about half-way through Mission R-04 of MGRR. I really have to stress how much this reminds me of NG2, not just in terms of certain gameplay similarities, but also in terms of how both games are really awesome but also essentially feel incomplete. Just like with NG2, I really get the feeling that Platinum wanted to do more stuff with this game and spend more time balancing it, but if what I've heard is correct, they only had little more than a year to develop this game when Kojima brought it to them, in which case I'm more amazed that the game turned out as good as it did rather than be a broken mess. I feel like if Platinum ever makes a sequel to this, it'll possibly be one of the best games in the genre if it fully capitalizes on the potential of this game. As it stands, I think this is a really good game that is just short of being amazing because of those various flaws that kind of hold it back for me (once again, just like with NG2).