Chose to save Triss over Saskia, and I'm not really sure that was wise. She spilled all the beans about what the Sorceressess are up to. She may or may not be lying about her part in it. HmmmI get tired of constantly going overweight on all the things I'm carrying. I hate having to drop something I would rather store in an Inn or sell. Money is tight in this game. Big time.

Made it to chapter 7 in hyperdimension mk2, locking in my route to the true end in one play-through!!! soooooooo stoked!

My adventures in hyrule are proving a bit lackluster.... I now remember why I haven't played a zelda game in so long.... the gameplay rocks and all, but damn... talk about lather rinse repeat.... I'm going to continue with it as I feel compelled to see twilight princess through to the end, but it certainly doesn't feel terribly pressing.....

I'm thinking I may turn TP into a "weekend only" title and get to another backlog throughout the week, either agarest 2 or wild arms alter code f..... or maybe I'll just say screw it for now, polish off Lego LOTR for the hell of it and wait for Ni No Kuni in 2 weeks... although I have been toying around with the idea of finally going back to xenosaga and getting through episode 2 (insanity, I know....)

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In this world is the destiny of mankind controlled by some transcedental entity or law? is it like the hand of god hovering above? Perhaps Man has no control even over his own will…

KOTOR 2 - The writing in this game is impressive. I probably spent 10+ minutes discussing with a character at the end of the Telos mission. In that time it managed to blew everything out of the first Kotor. Wow.

I think I am most of the way through Code of Princess now. Been playing it for about ten hours. I like it quite a bit, but I wish the combat had a few more options. Like more special moves or upgradable attacks or something. If I compare it to Golden Axe II it is awesome, if I compare it to Mark of the Ninja... well, you know. I love the characters though.

Draak, the most immediately surprising thing about New Vegas to me is that you can play as a gay male character. Considering that Fallout 2 let you be a lesbian but not a gay male, and all. Which is fairly common in games and something that really bugs me.

But uh, yeah. I reeeeally like New Vegas. Also, if you're playing KOTOR2 on the PC, I think I heard that there were some patches to restore cut content.

Opinion of La Mulana has improved considerably having read the manual (which actually tells you how to do the puzzle I was having trouble with). That being said I still have some issues with how its puzzles are designed, and I'm not going to talk about that because A) I'm still not sure if my assumptions are correct and B) They remind me of issues I have with Zelda games' puzzles and I'd rather talk about that.

1) I think there's this big tendency in... basically every Zelda game to reduce the 'Law of Miyamoto' into a very lock-and-key puzzle approach. Something that really bugged me with Twilight Princess is that you run into areas you can only get to with the double hookshot, and you KNOW you need a double hookshot for them. It's not that interesting, it's just a way of saying "look at this thing you can't get yet." The hookshot panels are the lock, and the double hookshot is the key. Very simple. Not too interesting. Nothing to SOLVE, you just need to come back when you get the key item

Oracle games on the GBC do the same thing -- you see a heart piece behind a pit you can't cross, and you know you either need the magnet rod or the roc boots/feather/whatever.

2) On the OTHER hand, and this is ultimately why I like the 3D Zelda games a lot more, the dungeons in the 3D Zelda games are less lock-and-key oriented (besides the literal lock and keys you encounter), but more about environmental manipulation with what you do have. I like this -- like engineering puzzles. I don't think the 2D Zeldas were nearly as interesting in what you encountered in the dungeons.

3) Finally, with regards to that one Game Grumps episode about LttP -- yes, you CAN see the big chest as soon as you enter the first real dungeon in LttP. No, I don't think this is that interesting. You don't have to figure out how to get to it -- just progress through the dungeon in its normal course. The Water Temple in OoT is actually my favorite temple in that game because you basically see the entirety of the dungeons meta puzzle from the get-go, and you have to figure out how to alter the central room to get where you want to go.

When you enter the Sun Temple level, you get a message from the village elder that you need to cut down a trolley that's attached to he ceiling. You do this by going to the left and hitting a switch. There's no indication that hitting this switch will release the trolley, rather, you just hit every switch because hitting switches does SOMETHING. Anyway, this released the trolley.

Next, I end up pushing the trolley down the level, and it lands in some pit. I jump down after it. The pit usually has spikes in it. After jumping down there, the spikes go away and some metal statue thing spawns. I can't scan it, so I have no idea what it is or what it's supposed to do.In the process of doing that, I solved like two or three puzzles. I solved the first part of it unintentionally, I don't know WHY I was doing any of that, and I don't know what it ultimately accomplished.

There's a level of fun in there in that I'm making progress, but it could've been a lot more fun if I had any idea what I was doing. Solving puzzles is really fun. I didn't so much SOLVE anything in this case though, so much as I did stuff and other stuff happened. And now I can do other stuff, presumably involving the statue thing I spawned. Whatever it is.

Other big issue with La Mulana's puzzles is that a lot of them just involve deciphering the hints you find on tablets. The hints also aren't that close to where they're relevant, so it's mostly a case of finding every hint, writing them down externally (The game only lets you log ten (later twenty) for some reason. This is kind of dumb. It doesn't add challenge -- just inconvenience), and then revisiting everywhere to figure out where the hint was relevant, and figuring out how to apply it. So most of the puzzles break down into being... kind of brute force word puzzles.

« Last Edit: January 09, 2013, 10:45:17 PM by MeshGearFox »

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o/` I do not feel joy o/`o/` I do not dream o/`o/` I only stare at the door and smoke o/`

So, I progressed much further in Growlanser III...and love every second of it. I'm very thankful for the numerous methods you can go about tackling every mission. Brute force? Sure. Magic bombardment? Sure. Venom every pathetic creature and watch them slowly die? Sure. Enter a room with only magic users while wearing a Dispel gem that negates magic so they stand there doing nothing? They got it!

Also, another great set of dialogue options came up with Annette Burn's (Female Lead) relationship section:

Situation: Annette feels a bit irritated that you're only seeing her to kill time. Slayn's response to Annette'sfrustration?

- But what if I have a good reason?- What would you consider a good reason? - Fine, I'm outta here beeyatch!

Monika is I believe 12 years old, and Hugh reminds Slayn that she's way too young for him and that he should feel dirty for thinking that. In other words, you sound like a creeper when you choose this option. I chose another character (Yayoi) which produced a enthusiastic reply from Hugh. I deffently want the ending for this character...that character is golden.

I love this game. Be ashamed you haven't experienced it. Ashamed!

Also, I do intend on doing a play through of this game (sorry, no commentary on my part!) in the future.Some of the dialogue is plain awkward and even a few of the jokes are time sensitive (Raimy the black fairythat follows you everywhere whips out a Star Wars joke from nowhere [see attached pic]). I think you guys and gals might like it...

I feel ya, bro. I pretty much felt that way through the 3 episodes I played. I really need to finish those last two episodes.

Been trying to finish KotOR 1. Draak's praise of 2's writing is good news, because while the writing in KotOR 1 is very good, the dark side options are pretty much just being a dick. It's pretty much a choice between being a super nice, understanding person, or a total d-bag. Of course, sometimes the dark side choices are HILARIOUS.

I have a save just before the last stage of Growlanser 3... I really should just man-up and finish the darn game.

Growlanser syndrome...... I sufferred the same affliction friend..Growlanser 5/HoW- Saved right before the final dungeon in 2008 and didn't get back to completing it until 2012-LoL.... only game I can say I ever really did that with... most of the time I put em down midway for a stretch, but never at the end like that... odd

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In this world is the destiny of mankind controlled by some transcedental entity or law? is it like the hand of god hovering above? Perhaps Man has no control even over his own will…

Read an almost-interesting article on Zelda at Kotaku last night. It had some good points but devolved too much into the writer being an Old-Guard gamer who wanted Zelda to remain a hardcore series and damn the unwashed masses causing it to be dumbed down.

ANYWAY.

One of the really good points he raised was about item creep in the Zelda games, and I think this is why I don't mind a lot of TP's items not being that useful outside of their respective dungeons -- there are enough items already and as I mentioned a few posts back, Zelda games tend to do really boring lock-and-key stuff with them.

However I think a better solution would have been to have the spinner/ballnchain/etc be pickups that only existed in a particular dungeon. Leave them in the game, let them be environmental features, but don't give them full item status.

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o/` I do not feel joy o/`o/` I do not dream o/`o/` I only stare at the door and smoke o/`

Read an almost-interesting article on Zelda at Kotaku last night. It had some good points but devolved too much into the writer being an Old-Guard gamer who wanted Zelda to remain a hardcore series and damn the unwashed masses causing it to be dumbed down.

Was that one of Tim Rogers' big ramble-rants? Because that guy is kind of a turd who lives for giving a few good points amidst a sea of nonsense. He's the worst.

Anyhow, I've been sick at home for a few days, which means a LOT of Persona 4. I made it to the endboss of Void Quest, but then died hard (main was at level 39, everyone else level 36-38). Level grinding now up to at least level 42.

It wasn't Tim Rogers but it was sort of in that same style, but a lot more cynical.

Also I keep running into stuff like this:

"It's a good question and one we've often wondered as we've seen people play Dark Souls, or struggled through its hellish gauntlets ourselves. You play these games not because they're fun - although, when you're on a roll, there's nothing sweeter - but because the designer has just smacked you with a duelling glove."

I'm playing Dark Souls because it's fun! The combat system is detailed and hands on and the level design is really good! That's fun! It's not exceedingly difficult. wrt Dark Souls, though, I beat the

Bell Gargoyles though I didn't get the tail axe. Turns out they die in like five hits if you use a golden pine resin. Not really sure where to go next. Either the graveyard or darkroot gardens. New Lando Ruins is definitely out and the Valley of Drakes sounds unhealthy.

To activate an elevator in the first area, you have to whip a block that's being held in some wall statue's mouth. There's a tablet nearby that says something like, "When one swallows, the other spits out." After you solve the puzzle, this makes sense, because the statue swallows the block after you hit it, and a statue in the next room over spits out another bock that turns into the elevator.Except this is still really badly designed because:

A) Usually you push blocks, and whipping them doesn't do anything.B) It's not really logical that whipping the block would cause it to go into the wall. Whipping things usually breaks them. Also just from a physics standpoint, if you apply force to an object along the X axis, you really don't expect it to move on the Z axis. So even if you look at whipping the block as a form of pushing it, it's not moving in the direction you're trying to push it. C) You see the deactivated elevator in two places:

This is the room the clue is talking about.

However, you also see it in the room directly above it. So in the one room it's in front of the statue's mouth. In the other room, it's... just in the middle of the wall. Which is kind of confusing as fuck. It's also not clear if it's in the statue's mouth or just obscuring it. Or if the faded nature of the elevator sprite when it's deactivated is supposed to mean it's recessed or what.

Also more bizarre translation issues -- you get a hint referring to an invisible bridge you're supposed to cross. Except it calls it a hidden floor, which isn't exactly the same thing. Hidden implies that it's obscured by something. So it's more of an exercise in deciphering unspecific language than an actual puzzle which isn't really fun.

The hints also end up just acting like lock-and-key puzzles anyway. A lot of puzzles, afaik, aren't supposed to be solved by observing the puzzle itself -- you need to find the hint for it on some tablet/skeleton, and that's no always going to be near whatever room the hint's for, so it breaks down into... just being really systematic and thorough but without applying a lot of thought, in terms of acquiring the hints, and then when you figure out how to use them the puzzle's more in sorting through the way the language is used.

On the surface it looks either clever or frustrating, depending on your take of the game, but... really it's just kind of lazy. And banal.

Indie Metroidvanias, as a rule, sort of miss the point, though.

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o/` I do not feel joy o/`o/` I do not dream o/`o/` I only stare at the door and smoke o/`