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

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I started up DMC3 again and beat mission 13 today. The 2nd boss fight with Vergil was a tad harder than the first, mostly because it took me a couple of tries to realize that it was best not to try fighting him at all when he was in his Devil Trigger state, but also because I had to adjust to his new attack pattern since he was utilizing Beowulf. It became really easy on my 3rd try, though, since I got his pattern down perfectly and just kept my distance from him whenever he entered into his Devil Trigger state. The cutscene that followed teased a really awesome moment that could have happened with Dante and Vergil (and that other girl who nobody really cares about....) teaming up to fight Arkham, but then he just kicked everyone's ass and that moment was forever lost.

I also played more of Halo 4 today on Heroic difficulty. I beat the first 3 levels again, and while everything felt right in terms of the Covenant and them having great AI, when I got to the Promethean Knights, I was having a much harder time....except for the wrong reasons. I'll elaborate on what I'm about to say later, but I'm starting to think that while the concept of the abilities of this new enemy class sounds great on paper, it makes for fucking cheap bastards in execution. Seriously, being able to teleport from all of the way across a room to right behind you and then take you out with one melee attack or a scatter-shot is fucking ridiculous. I also hate how they can teleport JUST before you finish them off right when you have your gun lined up perfectly for the kill-shot. That is one of the most frustrating experiences I've had with this enemy type so far. These guys are clearly way too overpowered.

On the other hand, the Covenant are great, though, and these may be the smartest Elites that I've ever seen in a Halo game. I had one really memorable moment in which I took out a bunch of enemies in one room and all that was left was a single Elite....except he had a fuel-rod cannon which could potentially kill me in one-hit, or at least take out all of my shields just with splash damage. It then turned into an intense game of "try to flank the other guy" as the Elitie and myself basically moved all over the room trying to get the drop on one another. Seriously, this guy fucking knew what I was up to since he was always weary of not stepping too far out of a potential cover spot and always tried to aim at my feet for splash damage rather than aiming directly at me for easy to dodge attacks. He also almost completely caught me off-guard on a few occasions. Finally I managed to outsmart him by throwing a grenade in one direction to catch is attention. Then I activated my active camo, and slowly crouch-walked around and got myself positioned behind him, at which point I executed him with an assassination. GOD did that moment feel so damn satisfying and rewarding. Now just try and tell me ONE other modern FPS game (besides other Halo games), where an encounter like that is possible?

[gunswordfist]

The last 3 games I beat last year are Gunstar Heroes, Rayman Origins and Doom II (Doom II just slipped into). Quite impressive if you ask me.

[Nel_Annette]

Well, if Red Dead Redemption is teaching me anything it's 1) I am terrible at rescuing hostages and 2) I just need to stop helping people on the side of the road in general.

[Rosalinas Spare Wand]

Valkyria Chronicles III. Didn't finish the 2nd one either and I have no clue what I'm reading but fuck if its not fun as fuck.

Also Nintendoland is hilarious with a group of people. Just not my sister, she gets way too loud while playing these games.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I played through missions 14 and 15 of DMC3 today. To be honest, they kind of felt like padding to me, what with the fact that there were no boss fights in them and they both consisted almost entirely of backtracking through previous areas. Its still fun to fight enemies and stuff, of course, but honestly missions like this are so obviously there just to extend the length of the game. While I'm not really a fan of that kind of design, I do have to admit that these 2 missions did come in handy for me to farm a decent amount of red orbs to upgrade my health and devil trigger gauge which I haven't increased either of in quite a while.

I also played some more of Halo 4 today. I got about half-way through the level Infinity, which is itself probably the longest level in the entire game. The Prometheans become a lot more manageable when you actually have your marines to keep them distracted. In this way, I also finally found a use for the auto sentry which is useless for providing you additional firepower but terrific for providing you with a temporary distraction to use against the enemy, as they'll seem to prioritize the sentry over you so it allows you a chance to sneak around cover and flank the enemy. Of course the AI is still pretty sharp so its not always this simple, but its a great way to give yourself some breathing room, at least on Heroic difficulty as I haven't tried this tactic on Legendary yet (though I hear that it works just as well on that difficulty as well).

[Daxdiv]

I played Little Inferno recently, and let's just say there is nothing I can say that game that doesn't make me sound like a craze pyro maniac, so instead you get a GIF of what Little Inferno is like:



Pretty much this. You get money for burning things, which you spend to burn more things. I'm on the 5th catalogue after 90 minutes of play.

[Grave]

Also, today I played a bit more SSF4, and even on my by standard XBOX360 controller which is not adept for fighting games at all, I'm still having a ton of fun with this game's silky smooth combat and overall addicting gameplay.

While the 360 controller is not adept for fighting games, it's still completely doable. C.Viper is an execution heavy character (it's been said that she's the highest execution in the game) because of her Super Jump Cancels and the ability to cancel her specials into another special (or Ultra). If you look up a guy named Wolfkrone (high level tourney player) uses the 360 controller to use her.

While I haven't gone online with it at all yet, the fighting system feels completely balanced and the enemy AI is just challenging enough at medium difficulty to put up a fair fight when I'm using my standard controller, which only offers me up about 70% precision in terms of doing what the fuck I'm trying to input with my commands, while it screws me up the other 30% of the time and does a move that lands me in a bad spot against the opponent.

I should probably lower the difficulty as well since fighting anybody with an dragon punch is terrible to fight on the harder difficulties. Personally, I only use CPU to try to land combos on a moving target though, or to practice setups.

Its really easy on newcomers and from what I can tell its perfectly balanced for hardcore gamers as its still played very competitively in the tournament scene.

Depends on what you mean by easy to newcomers, but that also begs the question have you attempted any of the trials for your character or did you jump right into playing arcade?  Not only is it still played, it's still the main event at most, if not all tournaments (To all SSF4 haters out there, that says a lot).

I also love how special moves work in this game. They are reasonable to pull off without any of them feeling overpowered (at least not the ones that I've tried or had used against me)

I don't know if you'd feel the same way if you were to see the damage output of some combos utilizing some of those specials.

All this talk about Street Fighter 4, I need to start playing again.

Anyway, at the moment my attention's been on Warrior's Orochi 3. I only got the game because I found out Ryu Hayabusa (he's a beast in this game) was in the game, and even when I unlocked him (before I unlocked him) I was already hooked onto this type of game again simply because I'm always looking for games that relieve's stress/anger. I know the Warriors franchise has a cult fanbase, and all. Hell, I'd probably be the first to say they need to stop making these games, but it is fun just to hack away at thousands of soldiers all day. If one thing people should know about me is that I'm a fan of anything samurai, and the 3 kingdoms, while not as interesting as samurai, but I do find it appealing. I am surprised that I haven't gotten my hands on this game earlier. One thing about the Dynasty Warrior games is that I was always afraid to fight Lu Bu. In this game, the Lu Bu for me is a character called Susano. Fast, don't feel pain, and hits heavy. I'm scared to fight that guy.

However, having talked about Super Street Fighter 4 quite a bit, I start playing again since it's been a while. Originally I call myself taking a break from the game so I can start/finish some of these games, but whatever. I'll probably end up buying it for the Xbox as well.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I played Little Inferno recently, and let's just say there is nothing I can say that game that doesn't make me sound like a craze pyro maniac, so instead you get a GIF of what Little Inferno is like:



Pretty much this. You get money for burning things, which you spend to burn more things. I'm on the 5th catalogue after 90 minutes of play.

You know, I wasn't much of a fan of World Of Goo (and I got it for free), but this seems to cement it for me that the games these guys make just isn't for me.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I played through missions 16 and 17 of DMC3 as well, last night. That boss fight with Lady was a joke. Oh well, at least I got a rocket launcher out of it, though I hardly use it that much.

Depends on what you mean by easy to newcomers, but that also begs the question have you attempted any of the trials for your character or did you jump right into playing arcade?  Not only is it still played, it's still the main event at most, if not all tournaments (To all SSF4 haters out there, that says a lot).

I have tried the trials for several characters. Specifically the regular types of characters (I just flat out can't do charge-based characters). For those types of characters, I can easily clear about the first 15 or so of their trials (which is about 3/4'ths for each), but the last few combos that I have to land can get really hard for me to pull off.

I don't know if you'd feel the same way if you were to see the damage output of some combos utilizing some of those specials.

I have seen some ridiculous damage output with specials and ultras in the various tournament gameplay videos that I have watched, but I've also seen that its not that easy to pull off those kinds of attacks on experienced players. In a battle between pros, you'll never see anyone just blindly trying to use up their special or ultra. Hell, a lot of pros I've seen tend to prefer using EX attacks than saving up all of their bars for supers. One example is Daigo Umehara, with a lot of his strategies involving heavy use of EX attacks. He also uses his ultra pretty effectively to finish off opponents as Ryu, but I realized that I rarely ever see him use a super attack.

Anyway, at the moment my attention's been on Warrior's Orochi 3. I only got the game because I found out Ryu Hayabusa (he's a beast in this game) was in the game, and even when I unlocked him (before I unlocked him) I was already hooked onto this type of game again simply because I'm always looking for games that relieve's stress/anger. I know the Warriors franchise has a cult fanbase, and all. Hell, I'd probably be the first to say they need to stop making these games, but it is fun just to hack away at thousands of soldiers all day. If one thing people should know about me is that I'm a fan of anything samurai, and the 3 kingdoms, while not as interesting as samurai, but I do find it appealing. I am surprised that I haven't gotten my hands on this game earlier. One thing about the Dynasty Warrior games is that I was always afraid to fight Lu Bu. In this game, the Lu Bu for me is a character called Susano. Fast, don't feel pain, and hits heavy. I'm scared to fight that guy.

At the very least this has to be a far better hack n' slash game than that piece of trash NG3 turned out to be, among the more mindless hack n' slash games in the genre.

[Grave]

I have tried the trials for several characters. Specifically the regular types of characters (I just flat out can't do charge-based characters). For those types of characters, I can easily clear about the first 15 or so of their trials (which is about 3/4'ths for each), but the last few combos that I have to land can get really hard for me to pull off.

I feel your pain. The highest I've gotten was anywhere between trials 20-22 with Ibuki and Guy (I think I got Cammy somewhere up there as well) and that's mainly because my execution is terrible when it comes to doing things like Shoryuken FADC Ultra, or fireball FADC Ultra. Basically I'm terrible when it comes to FADCing out of a special, but I am getting it though.

I have seen some ridiculous damage output with specials and ultras in the various tournament gameplay videos that I have watched, but I've also seen that its not that easy to pull off those kinds of attacks on experienced players. In a battle between pros, you'll never see anyone just blindly trying to use up their special or ultra. Hell, a lot of pros I've seen tend to prefer using EX attacks than saving up all of their bars for supers. One example is Daigo Umehara, with a lot of his strategies involving heavy use of EX attacks. He also uses his ultra pretty effectively to finish off opponents as Ryu, but I realized that I rarely ever see him use a super attack.

Glad to see I'm not the only one that enjoy watching footage between high level players. Not only do they use EX attacks, but they use those wisely as well. My problem is, while I don't try to save up for Super (although, if I were to pick Rose, you definitely want Super to finish in style) I don't use EX moves enough. I guess you can say this is another reason why I'm making the transition to stick. I have a hard to pushing 2 buttons together on pad (especially on default buttons). Sometimes I switch up my buttons, eliminating HP and HK for 3P and 3K, but then I run into other issues. I think it is rare to see Daigo use super, but I've seen it used mostly as a punish or part of a punish.

I should probably spend the same amount of time with UMvC3 since a lot of that stuff is too hype, and I'd like to be able to pull off some of these combos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA4x3M4Kcug(Dr. Doom is almost the definition of style)

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

That's funny. I've been using the 3P and 3K buttons to pull off my EX attacks and it has worked just fine for me so far. If anything, its only screwed me up a bit when I try to execute ultras and end up doing an EX attack instead, rather than the other way around. But on my XBOX360 controller, I have to use the 3P or 3K buttons to pull off my ultras since its way too imprecise to try and hit 2 of the face-buttons along with 1 of the shoulder-buttons at the same time in order to perform an ultra manually.

[Grave]

When I say other problems.. Hmm. I'll use Rose as an example. Cr. MK + MK Soul Spiral. Not hard to do but I can't do it consistently. So characters that has HP/HK + special (requiring the heavy version) give me even more problems since I can't push the L and R buttons consistently. I either push too fast or too slow.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I can see where that would be a problem. But, for me, I haven't encountered such a problem yet on any of the characters that I regularly use. I also haven't tried at least half of the characters in this game, yet, being that its such a huge roster.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

While the 360 controller is not adept for fighting games, it's still completely doable. C.Viper is an execution heavy character (it's been said that she's the highest execution in the game) because of her Super Jump Cancels and the ability to cancel her specials into another special (or Ultra). If you look up a guy named Wolfkrone (high level tourney player) uses the 360 controller to use her.

I just noticed this bit.

I was under the impression that you could only cancel into supers. I thought you couldn't cancel into ultras, and you had to link into those instead. Is C. Viper just an exception to this rule, or have I been operating on completely false information about how to play the game this whole time?

[Grave]

While the 360 controller is not adept for fighting games, it's still completely doable. C.Viper is an execution heavy character (it's been said that she's the highest execution in the game) because of her Super Jump Cancels and the ability to cancel her specials into another special (or Ultra). If you look up a guy named Wolfkrone (high level tourney player) uses the 360 controller to use her.

I just noticed this bit.

I was under the impression that you could only cancel into supers. I thought you couldn't cancel into ultras, and you had to link into those instead. Is C. Viper just an exception to this rule, or have I been operating on completely false information about how to play the game this whole time?

Nope, you are absolutely correct. Viper and Ibuki are exceptions to that rule because they can super jump

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWA7lqf_7w4&list=PL744144A71C67D816&index=23

Edit:

I'm an idiot. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF_F71U5sDA&list=PL744144A71C67D816