OT: General Video Game Discussion VII

[Swervin81]

Earthbound is personally my favorite RPG of all time.

 

[Billy Mays Here*]

Good news! Or bad news, depending on your perspective. Pokemon games haven't changed, basically at all, since Red/Blue.

It's kind of sad, for me. I want to enjoy them, because I love JRPGs, but they are essentially exactly the same.

I've never gone past Emerald and Fire Red, which were Generation III I think. All the Pokemon and stuff they added in to the games after Gen III just didn't appeal to me. Might give Heart Gold/Soul Silver a try some day though as I definitely enjoyed the regular Gold/Silver/Crystal.

 

[Dee Oh Cee]

It's pretty fun to play them on a laptop using an emulator. You can basically get all of the games (I played Fire Red I think) and they run at like 250% speed so you can speed through everything really quickly.

 

[Billy Mays Here*]

It's pretty fun to play them on a laptop using an emulator. You can basically get all of the games (I played Fire Red I think) and they run at like 250% speed so you can speed through everything really quickly.

Yeah that's what I do when I play them. Hilarious to go to a cave or grass area and just one hit Wild Pokemon and boost the hell out of your own really fast.

 

[this providence]

I FINALLY was able to get back onto PSN yesterday.

That network has been nothing but a disappointment since I got my PS4. I can't believe you have pay for a service this shoddy.

 

[Minnewildsota]

Earthbound is personally my favorite RPG of all time.

This. So much this.

I FINALLY was able to get back onto PSN yesterday.

That network has been nothing but a disappointment since I got my PS4. I can't believe you have pay for a service this shoddy.

When did they start requiring you to pay for PSN? I thought it had always been free?

 

[Avder]

[spoil]Do not trade Samara for Morinth. The payoff/benefit isn't worth it. Samara is great for the Collector Base and is way more involved in Mass Effect 3. If you want to see how much presence Morinth has, look it up on YouTube. JMO.[/spoil]

[spoil]I saw everything Samara could do in my first play through as a Paragon/Infiltrator/Femshep. So simply for the fact that I had seen Samara already, and I'm playing Renegade, I went with Morinth. I like her. Too bad if you romance her you die. Dominate is awesome, going to be getting extensive use out of Morinth in the collector base for that. Too bad the only time I'll get to see her in ME3 is going to be when I kill her banshee form on Earth. : (

Going to be taking Morinth and Jacob with me into the derelict reaper because we all have Pull Field, and that's an instant-kill skill against husks. Morinth can add dominate to the mix to make use of higher grade reaper enemies, and Jacob can provide incendiary ammo. Also the fact that they both use weapons above the SMG grade really makes the three of us a powerful trio. Seriously. Were a biotics freight train barreling over everyone and everything biological. CHOO CHOO MOTHER****ERS!

Right now I've got maxed out Heavy Warp, Throw Field, and Wide Singularity, with a single point in Throw. Tried shockwave a few times, could not get the hang of it so I reassigned those points elsewhere. Also the bonus power I am currently using is maxed out Squad Warp Ammo. Very nice ammo. Useful against everything except shields. Lets me tear through Eclipse Vanguards like nobody's business with my sniper rifle. So glad I took that gun. It gives me a good kill cannon to use against big **** that's not big enough to justify wasting heavy weapon ammo. With Zaeed in the party giving me Disruptor Ammo, I just tear apart Geth Primes with it.

I hit level 30 a while ago and am now just mopping up before I go get the Reaper IFF, do Legion's loyalty mission, and then assault the Collector Base. I'm finishing up Overlord now, will do Lair of the Shadow Broker next, and then finish up with Arrival.

I've got full blown terminator face at this point. Undecided if I'm going to use the medbay upgrade and fix my face or not. Terminator Femshep taking the Quarian Admirals to task for their political ******** with intimidate options was basically a crowning moment of awesome.

About the only paragon option I've used at all for a while is the paragon interrupt when Tali finds her father dead, because even a ruthless killer gets hit with those feels and needs to show some comfort to a team mate.

Everyone is loyal and I had enough renegade to be able to intimidate Miranda and Jack from screwing around. I imagine I'll have enough renegade to do the same for Tali and Legion after Legion's loyalty mission.

I may be changing out my bonus power before I take on the collector ship because Jacob's incendiary ammo will be doing the job there, so I need to figure out which one I should make use of. Might try out Neural Shock, or possibly use Dominate myself for Double Domination against the Collectors. Then again since Warp ammo is strong against barriers, armor, AND health I might keep it for use against those flying jerks who spontaneously generate barriers.

I'm having a lot of fun.[/spoil]

 

[Vashanesh]

This. So much this.

When did they start requiring you to pay for PSN? I thought it had always been free?

It started with the PS4. They had a paid option before-hand (PS+) that got you free games and some discounts, now that's rolled in to what is essentially XBL.

I really, really want to defend Sony, because I've bought in to so much of their hardware... But this is inexcusable. They need to figure out a better way to defend their system than "wait for the attack to be over, and in 3 more days, we might have it fixed".

I know they're not the internet giant the MS is, but MS supposedly got a similar degree of DDoS and recovered 4+ times faster.

 

[Avder]

You'd think MS and Sony would collaborate on DDoS mitigation or something, as often as both networks get attacked.

 

[Vashanesh]

You'd think MS and Sony would collaborate on DDoS mitigation or something, as often as both networks get attacked.

The way this attack was done, it's almost impossible to fight. To me, the issue is recovery time.

These guys apparently hit the login servers, which, in theory, aren't designed to take heavy load, because they "should" only be in use for <5 seconds at a time. Short of having a way to redirect traffic from confirmed PS4/PS3 IP addresses (which I'm not even sure is possible), there's almost nothing that could be done.

The prevailing theory (some of the numbers came from Lizard Squad, so, grain of salt, etc) is that they rented a botnet, and with some very basic software and scripting, were hitting their login servers with more than a terabyte of traffic every SECOND. When you think that an average attempt to login is barely measured in KB, and these a-holes were pushing more than a TB per second... There's so little that anyone can even do about that, it's just a mind-bogglingly large number.


In my eyes, the only legitimate response is redundancy in their systems. Once they've confirmed the attack is over, temporarily kill the servers that were hammered, slip in servers that haven't been harmed that have been waiting in the wings. I have to assume that's what MS did and Sony failed to do.

 

[Avder]

A TERABYTE??? Holy ****.

Yeah, pretty hard to stop that anywhere. You'd need DDOS mitigation filters several hops out where the traffic would be manageable, but at that point you're working with internet backbone companies, not whoever connects Sony/MS's networks to the internet.

 

[Vashanesh]

A TERABYTE??? Holy ****.

Yeah, pretty hard to stop that anywhere. You'd need DDOS mitigation filters several hops out where the traffic would be manageable, but at that point you're working with internet backbone companies, not whoever connects Sony/MS's networks to the internet.

Yeah, the rough math of how long the attack lasted, and the numbers Lizard Squad purports, it was upwards of 60 petabytes of garbage hitting login servers. It's a comically large number.

Ignoring entirely whether or not MS and Sony were even prepared for a lesser attack, the logistics of it even being POSSIBLE to be prepared for something of this scale is likely impossible.

That's why I'm much more upset that it has taken Sony 4+ days to get back to 100%. We know when the attack stopped (roughly) because of Kim Dotcom's tweets (hilarious story, too). And we know roughly when MS was back online. Sony's problem, though... Drug on for days, and that's what I find unacceptable.

 

[Avder]

Yeah, the rough math of how long the attack lasted, and the numbers Lizard Squad purports, it was upwards of 60 petabytes of garbage hitting login servers. It's a comically large number.

Ignoring entirely whether or not MS and Sony were even prepared for a lesser attack, the logistics of it even being POSSIBLE to be prepared for something of this scale is likely impossible.

That's why I'm much more upset that it has taken Sony 4+ days to get back to 100%. We know when the attack stopped (roughly) because of Kim Dotcom's tweets (hilarious story, too). And we know roughly when MS was back online. Sony's problem, though... Drug on for days, and that's what I find unacceptable.

60 Petabytes total? Good god.

 

[Avder]

Mass Effect 3: Citadel has some utterly hilarious moments in it. Still....

[spoil]My femshep got drunk and apparently slept with Javik o________o

Thankfully this....debacle...seems to have escaped Liara's notice. We still got engaged shortly after.

It also seems to have made Javik a little more accepting of this cycle's "primatives".

Still.

o________________o

Also Liara seems like she wants to break Javik in two. Boy I bet she regrets studying the Protheans for 50 years. Thankfully for her that's the same amount of time blown in a lifetime for any one of us who spends 4 years in college studying the wrong major. Then again something tells me when I finally come through Mass Effect 3 without romancing Liara she and Javik will have a much better relationship...somewhat like Garrus and Tali. Those two are hilarious when they get caught in the gunnery room together.[/spoil]

 

[elnewby]

I really tried to enjoy NHL 15, but I just can't. They really dropped the ball this year dropping tons of game modes. While the skating engine is pretty good, some of the animations(jerseys) are just terrible. I would be at least somewhat satisfied if they brought back the EASHL. That was so much fun.

I bought Dragon Age: Inquisition, played for 2 hours and haven't touched it since. Not that it's a bad game, I just realized I was in way over my head with this kind of game. I don't have the time or energy to go through a game like that.

I will still maintain that Age of Empires II is the best video game of all time. Glad that steam finally made it available and they are still maintaining and developing it.

 

[tyratoku]

Meanwhile, I bought Dragon Age: Inquisition and am loving it so far. I absolutely loved the first game, skipped the second, and am enjoying the hell out of the third. I've sunk a bunch of hours into it and feel like I have barely gotten into it so far. Really solid game. Not sure if renting it through Redbox for a night or two would be worth it because it is such a time sink.

Also have been playing a bunch of Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. That's pretty good as well, with some fun combat (cloned from fellow Warner Bros game, Batman: Arkham Asylum/City/Origins) that is amplified a bit by sword combat + absolutely brutal and gory combat finishers. The story is kind of iffy, the environments are boring and repetitive, but the combat is so good.

Also has a really cool ranking system, where any orc/Uruk-hai that kills you automatically becomes a higher ranking officer in the army, where they get smarter/stronger and get a few more body guards. And you get to try and find them (plus other randomly generated captains), who are stronger than normal and basically more fun to fight.

Recommend at least renting it and playing around killing orcs and Uruk-hai for a few hours. It's a blast.

 

[Dee Oh Cee]

Yeah, Dragon Age 3 is amazing. Probably about a ~90 hour game or something like that....that is if you're like me and have to complete everything (and I still probably missed some minor parts)

 

[Generic User]

Mass Effect 3: Citadel has some utterly hilarious moments in it. Still....

[spoil]My femshep got drunk and apparently slept with Javik o________o

[/spoil]

Wut. I had no idea that was even an option. How? What happened?

 

[tomgilbertfan]

Meanwhile, I bought Dragon Age: Inquisition and am loving it so far. I absolutely loved the first game, skipped the second, and am enjoying the hell out of the third. I've sunk a bunch of hours into it and feel like I have barely gotten into it so far. Really solid game. Not sure if renting it through Redbox for a night or two would be worth it because it is such a time sink.

Also have been playing a bunch of Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. That's pretty good as well, with some fun combat (cloned from fellow Warner Bros game, Batman: Arkham Asylum/City/Origins) that is amplified a bit by sword combat + absolutely brutal and gory combat finishers. The story is kind of iffy, the environments are boring and repetitive, but the combat is so good.

Also has a really cool ranking system, where any orc/Uruk-hai that kills you automatically becomes a higher ranking officer in the army, where they get smarter/stronger and get a few more body guards. And you get to try and find them (plus other randomly generated captains), who are stronger than normal and basically more fun to fight.

Recommend at least renting it and playing around killing orcs and Uruk-hai for a few hours. It's a blast.

The Nemesis system is so great.

 

[Avder]

Wut. I had no idea that was even an option. How? What happened?

[spoil]Looked it up. Apparently if a femshep has no "romantic entanglements" and the party goes the wild direction, you wake up with Javik, he says there's at least one thing the primitives of this cycle are good at, and you say "this never happened".

Apparently you have no "romantic entanglements" before you completely lock yourself in with your romance partner. Otherwise you wake up in bed with THEM instead.

I think my personal reaction closely mirrored the likely real life reaction of a woman waking up the morning after a wild party and discovering she drunkenly cheated on her Asari GF with the last surviving member of an ancient alien race: horrified.

Anyway. My renegade adept femshep chose control this time. Background was earthborn/ruthless. Roleplayed the character as "I do the hard **** no one wants to do so no one else has to do it". Made a crap ton of morally questionable decisions along the way to winning, the most significant of which was assisting Morinth in the murder of her mother because I felt that a cut-throat Asari would be more useful in the fight against the collectors than an ultra-moralist. I was right. Morinth ****ing ripped the Collectors to shreds. Really wish they'd have given her more to do in ME3 than send you an email and then show up as a named Banshee when you get to Earth. She was fun.

My reasoning for control (keep in mind that I get really really into character in this game for some ****ing reason, so it's all as my character thought):
-Destruction was out because I knew two things would happen: 1. After I blew up the Reapers, some other synthetics would be created down the road and all this **** would happen all over again and; 2. The Geth would be destroyed and they are the ****ing model of organic/synthetic co-existence and they will be needed to guide any future synthetic races that are created. I'd just be perpetuating the cycle the Reapers were supposed to prevent.

-Synthesis was out. My character was a real ******* and knew it. Embraced it even. Ran with gangs before joining the military. Made a career habit of ordering people to their deaths. Flipped everyone in power the bird at some point or another, all so no one else ever had to. What the hell would I be doing to everyone in the galaxy if I were to give everyone a bit of that? I am me so no one else has to be me. **** that. I'm not making everyone else me.

That left control: can't do synthesis, but can't destroy the reapers, so need to stop them from continuing this insane cycle of violence. Need to leave the galaxy a better place for the people I care about and all those other people who I never want to see have to make the decisions I did.

So my Adept is now the head Reaper. So no one else ever has to be. So Liara can live in a galaxy where she doesn't have to worry about war. So the Geth can find their place among their organic allies. So Javik can get to discover what it's like to live in peace time. So the Krogan can rediscover their history and culture. I will protect them all. Ruthlessly.

*cough*

So, thinking I need to play either the Vanguard or Sentinel class next. And probably a male just because I want to romance Tali at some point. I want to try out biotic charge and tech armor. The defense drone of the Engineer and the Adrenaline Rush of the soldier just don't seem that interesting to me, so they're probably going to be classes 5 and 6, and I have no idea if I have enough long term attention span to get that far.

Also, my Adept said "**** thermal clips" and played Acts 2 and 3 with the following loadout:
Viper V with Sniper Rifle Extended Barrel and Sniper Rifle Ultralight Materials
M7 Lancer V with Assault Rifle Ultralight Materials and Ammo Upgrade. 87 rounds and all I have to do to reload is hold fire for about a second so it regenerates. ME1 Guns > ME3 Guns. Seriously. **** thermal clips.

That loadout had a cooldown bonus of 170%. Coupled with the Cerberus Spirit Armor and a couple power recharge time intel upgrades, I could toss out the double-pull and double-throw all day with no wait time. Warp had a 2 and a half second cooldown, shockwave like 1 and a half, singularity about 1 second, and Stasis, the bonus power I went with, had about 2 seconds cooldown.

Did Earth with Liara and Javik. Biotics DEATH SQUAD. You will never see so many reapers flying through the air. Hit any Mauraders with Stasis->Warp to blow them the hell up. Ravagers and Brutes got the Warp->Throw treatment, and Banshees got faces full of Liara's Squad Warp Ammo before recieving a rapid fire Warp->throw->Warp courtesy of Liara setting up the first warp for my throw and then me instantly throwing out the 2nd warp. The banshee was usually dead before my cooldown would let me detonate my warp with another throw.

Seriously. Just ****ing demolished everything. It didn't hurt that I hit level 60 mid-way through Act 2. I had 4 spare points and the only skills I had that weren't maxed were Fitness and Cluster Grenade, which were both at 5. Maxed out Warp, Singularity, Pull, Throw, Shockwave, Biotic Mastery, and Stasis. That **** you see Jack doing when she breaks out of her cell in her ME2 recruitment mission? Yeah, I was basically doing that every mission.

I had a lot of fun with my adept. Completely different playstyle and approach than my infiltrator, especially after I picked up the Lancer and could just completely forget thermal clips forever. Before then I had been using my Sniper Rifle heavily. Didn't pull out my sniper rifle much at all afterwards because I didn't need to do range fighting much anymore, and if there was a sniper I needed to deal with, all I had to do was stasis it.

So yeah. Time to decide what I'm playing next.

Damn this post is long.[/spoil]

 

[Victorious Secret]

Just sent that out to my publisher, Avder. Hopefully you'll get a response on your possible upcoming novel soon.

 

[Generic User]

Just sent that out to my publisher, Avder. Hopefully you'll get a response on your possible upcoming novel soon.

lol. Care to give me a tl;dr summary?

 

[Victorious Secret]

lol. Care to give me a tl;dr summary?

tl;dr Avder loses his Mass Effect v-card

 

[Avder]

tl;dr Avder loses his Mass Effect v-card

This is my 2nd time through.

Gonna start a paragon sentinel tonight I think.

 

[llamapalooza]

Any of you EarthBound fans played Mother 3? It was kind of divisive but IMO as a huge fan of the series, it was even better than EB in pretty much every way. Great mechanics, beautiful animation, great music, well-written, and packs a serious emotional punch.

The fan translation is top-notch, too--probably better than what Nintendo of America would've put out, honestly.