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

[gunswordfist]

Found a secret level entrance in Hell Mountain in Episode 2 of Doom II today. It took me a few tries but then I beat it. Afterwards, after finally getting the red keycard, I believe, I ran from one large ground of demons and into another. I back into a rectangular opening with both sides coming into and I was trapped fighting them. For 3 minutes I ran side to side trying to dodge and shoot them and then they finally killed me. That was so badass. Thinking about it makes me want to go back and try again.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've been kind of taking a break from my XBOX since I was playing it so much over the past week, so now I'm back to playing in shorter intervals at a time. Today I got through mission 6 of DMC3, and the game is still as fun as ever. It figures that even the easy-ass puzzles in this game are at least not as obnoxious as the ones from DMC4 (I'm looking at you, annoying dice board that makes you fight recycled bosses and enemies). I ended up getting the ranged weapon Artemis since I got all 3 stones to insert into the statue, and it turns out that its a laser-type weapon which is basically DMC3's version of Nightmare-Beta from the first game. That weapon seemed to suck hard in DMC1, so I'm hoping that it has more of a use in DMC3, but I guess I'll have to wait to find out. Now that I'm on mission 7, it looks as though I'm close to my first encounter with Vergil.

So far I have my Sword Master style up to level 2, but it looks like I need a ridiculous amount of experience with it to get it up to level 3, so for now I switched over to Trickster as I plan to get that up to at least level 2 next. To be honest, though, I think I'd be fine with Sword Master throughout the entire game. A lot of people say that trickster should be your first choice of leveling up because it makes dodging enemy attacks easier, but for whatever reason I find that dodging enemy attacks the default way by just side-rolling or jumping right before they attack you works just fine for me, so I really prefer Sword Master just for how much more fun it makes the combat (and in some cases it makes certain boss fights a lot quicker and easier, IMO).

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, today I beat missions 7 and 8 of DMC3, though they both took me a while. With mission 7 I actually stupidly got stuck on that one puzzle in which you have to break that pendulum ball. I didn't bother reading the text at that wheel and assumed that you just had to swing the pendulum to break the steel gates in that room. I was whacking at that thing like an idiot for almost 10 minutes before I realized that you were just supposed to break it open.

The first fight with Vergil was surprisingly easy, and may in fact be tied as the easiest boss fight that I've encountered in the game along with the centipede boss, so far. I did die on my first try, but I was just at a sliver of health at that point. When I fought him again, I realized how easy his pattern was. For most of the fight you just have to dodge out of his melee attack and then combo him while he's in a vulnerable state right after his attack. You can just spam a regular combo on him up to a few times before he finally blocks you and then tries to counter you immediately with his own attack again, at which point you just dodge it and repeat the same process. When he gets to his last quarter of health he'll try to start using a certain ranged attack on you, which is extremely slow and easy to dodge, and then all you have to do is move in close to him and slash him, though this time he'll teleport as soon as he gets hit so you usually can't combo him. At that point, though, all you have to do is keep dodging his attacks and moving in close enough to hit him until he's dead. This fight was just an easier version of the Nelo Angelo fight from DMC1, which I guess makes sense (and it seems like they were going for it), since Nelo Angelo IS Vergil, who Mundus brought back in that form. That said, I'm sure that the next fight with Vergil will be much harder.

As for mission 8, it turns out it was another one of those video game levels in which you're stuck inside some sort of giant creature's body and have to destroy its heart or some other vital organ to escape. These kinds of levels can always be hit or miss. Fortunately it was a short level in this game and it was mostly the same type of combo-heavy and puzzle-solving gameplay that I had come to expect from this game by now. I also actually really liked the boss fights. It was creative in that you had to attack the left or right organ a certain amount in order to open up the central organ and attack it for some permanent damage and then repeat the process after it closed up. Who said that DMC3's boss fights weren't as good as the original? In all honesty, I've liked the boss fights in this game at least as much as DMC1 so far, putting the easy Vergil fight and that giant centipede boss fight aside (the centipede was more weird that anything else, though it was an extremely easy boss fight as well).

Overall, this is definitely shaping up to be the best DMC game now that I'm playing it properly from start to finish, as expected. it has the deepest and most nuanced combat system by far, its level design is honestly fine with a perfect balance of great combat and simple puzzle-solving that gives you a break from the action, and plenty of good boss fights to cap off most missions in the game.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Alright, so I got past missions 9 and 10 of DMC3 this time. Nevan was a pretty tough boss for me, actually, and I died quite a few times on her before I finally got her pattern down. The main thing that screwed me up, though, is that I couldn't figure out how to fight her at the end when you can't break her barrier of bats and have to wait until she herself tries to grab you and suck the life out of you, in which case she has no armor and you can shoot her. I kept trying to hit her but then I kept getting grabbed, and I didn't realize that you're basically just meant to finish her off with your ranged weapons by that point. At any rate, it was another good boss fight, and so far one of the only 2 really challenging ones (surprisingly), with the other challenging one being the boss fight with Cerberus.

Also the weapon she turns into when you defeat her being a guitar is fucking awesome. Why the hell didn't this weapon make the cut for Dante in DMC4? Fuck Lucifer. Cerberus, Agni & Rudra, and Nevan so far are way better weapons than that piece of shit. I also love the touch of the weapons you attain usually coming from bosses that you defeat. That element has a very Mega Man-esque vibe to it, even if unlike Mega Man you can only equip 2 weapons on you at any given time, and the weapons you have aren't really necessary to make it through to new areas (in that regard, the game mostly boils down to traditional locked doors and key hunts in its own form).

At any rate, admittedly I'm sticking with Agni & Rudra as my secondary weapon for now. Its the one I'm the most comfortable with and at times I've found it to be more useful than Rebellion, which is usually my primary weapon of choice (obviously), as A&R is usually good for crowd control and stun-locking certain enemies since its really easy to chain/link combos together with it. That said, I'll likely experiment quite a bit with the other weapons in this game on subsequent play-throughs.

As for mission 10, it was basically just another make it from point A to point B scenario without a boss fight. Nothing special as its just a transitional stage to get to the next area, but I still had fun fighting enemies along the way.

[Foggle]

I thought all of the bosses were hard, and found Nevan to be perhaps the game's easiest other than Joker and the level 2 "boss".

Then again, Turbo Mode.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I thought all of the bosses were hard, and found Nevan to be perhaps the game's easiest other than Joker and the level 2 "boss".

I almost don't count the level 2 boss as a boss since aside from having a health meter, it just felt like a normal enemy with extra health.

Nevan was tough, you just got lucky, punk.

Vergil was cake. Even on Turbo mode the strategy wouldn't change at all. You just suck at the game.

Also I should mention that I didn't use any healing items on these bosses since I knew that I'd have to retry them anyways if I wasn't good enough to beat them with just a regular bar of health.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

OK, So I only just came to realize that Devil May Cry 4 has a Turbo mode. I never knew that before. I'll have to try that out one of these days. Perhaps I'll pick up my Dante Must Die run where I left off and finish up the rest of it via Turbo mode. It'd certainly help spice up Nero's slow-ass combat, if nothing else.

[Foggle]

Yeah, I only ever used healing items on the final boss.

OK, So I only just came to realize that Devil May Cry 4 has a Turbo mode. I never knew that before. I'll have to try that out one of these days.

Well, first you'll have to buy a new computer and the PC version of DMC 4...

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, that's lame....

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I just beat missions 11 and 12 today. Beowulf was another pretty tough boss. I died to him quite a bit before I figured out how best to evade his attacks. When he initially does his ground pound attack a simple evade will suffice to get out of the way, but when he starts doing his more powerful one that has a larger AOE, I found that double-jumping out of the way is a much more effective way to avoid in than either rolling or using the trickster dash (even though the latter gives you invincibility frames, you can still take full damage since the effect of his attack lasts a bit longer than the frames for your dash). Overall, though, he wasn't too bad once I got his pattern down.

Mission 12 was awesome, though. Being stuck in devil trigger and slowly losing your health and doing a rush through the level was really fun. It was actually pretty easy since devil trigger made you way more powerful than usual, and you also run faster when you are in devil trigger making it easy to cover lots of ground relatively quickly. The boss fight of this mission was also a pretty easy one in comparison to the last 2 (Nevan and Beowulf), with the horse having really easy to avoid attacks and just overall predictable attack patterns. I beat him on my first try.

[Kiddington]

Got my 3DS yesterday... so far, I've cracked into Super Mario 3D Land, OoT 3D, and NSMB2. I've been enjoying all of them immensely (Nel, I have no idea why you hate NSMB2; sure, it's easy even by Mario standards, but this is not a bad game), but so far I think 3D Land is my favorite. It's pretty sweet.

Sticker Star and Kid Icarus are on tap for today. After, of course, I finish my Sonic 1 article. 

[talonmalon333]

Got my 3DS yesterday... so far, I've cracked into Super Mario 3D Land, OoT 3D, and NSMB2. I've been enjoying all of them immensely (Nel, I have no idea why you hate NSMB2; sure, it's easy even by Mario standards, but this is not a bad game), but so far I think 3D Land is my favorite. It's pretty sweet.

Sticker Star and Kid Icarus are on tap for today. After, of course, I finish my Sonic 1 article. 

Super Mario 3D Land is indeed great. It's really no Galaxy, but I quite enjoyed it. Should get around to getting the rest of the collectables in it someday. I haven't played New Super Mario Bros. 2 yet, but I'm not in much of a hurry. I'm sure it'll be good, but I know exactly what to expect

[Nel_Annette]

I don't hate hate the game, but it looked just so copy/pasted from the Wii game in so many ways that it felt like it would be a waste of money.

I only played a demo level though, everything else I've seen about the game I've only watched in videos. Ignoooore meeee!

[Spark Of Spirit]

The coin rush mode is where I got most of my replay value out of the game since it's basically a score attack mode. Especially since there's like 30 DLC levels made for it of different shapes and sizes.

The core game is fine, but it's basic 2D Mario, but coin rush is far more interesting and fun to play around with.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm currently playing Halo 4, though I'll reserve my thoughts on it until I finish the game.