Atelier Meruru: a pink haired, blue eyed girl.
It is mid-week question time once again:
- What games have you been playing lately?
- Are there any you would recommend to other Border House readers?
- Are there games that have you ranting or raving?
- Are there any games that you played and want to see covered on the site?
Since I was away at WisCon this past weekend I have not played many games. I went back to Dragon’s Dogma for a handful of hours. But I am primarily waiting for Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland to arrive sometime this week. I am excited to get to the last game in that trilogy.
So, what have you been playing?
Revisiting Arkham City with Harley Quinn’s Revenge is amazing. Playing Boy Wonder in Story mode is pretty neat.
I’ve been mostly playing adventure games lately. I had a few of the Wadjet Eye ones on my Steam from various bundles and finally got around to them.
(Speaking of, Bundle-in-a-box currently has Gemini Rue in it if anyone wants and doesn’t have that game yet.)
When not doing that I have Towns running. A nifty little Dwarf Fortress style game that’s still in alpha.
I finally actually picked up FFXIII-2 and Devil Survivor again, and of course I’m still playing Glitch like it’s going out of style. Mostly I’ve gotten sidetracked into tabletop gaming (making me wish, again, that there was a video game version of Exalted except that I know everything would be done wrong.)
I’ve been watching my paladin play Deus Ex: Human Revolution and I’m struck by how much I’d rather that Malik (is that how you spell her name? the pilot) be the main character. I’ve figured out or been told enough about the world that I’m pretty sure I know how Jensen connects to the later games, but it still would’ve been awesome if Malik was the lead.
I usually don’t like browser-based MMOs or online games (It’s often short-hand for “something we threw together in five minutes to satisfy the people who don’t want to have to download things”), but Glitch, assuming I found the same thing you were talking about, sounds awesome and definitely worthy of my time.
I am talking about the browser-based MMO by TinySpeck, so I think we are talking about the same thing.
I also am usually not a fan of MMOs or browser-based games with the notable exception of Echo Bazaar, but Glitch is just ridiculous amounts of fun.
Well, I play MMOs and online games to varying degrees (rarely stick with them long, for some reason), but the browser-based ones… yeah. There are a few good ones, but so many are the sort of thing that’s the reason people think casual games are all terrible.
I’ve been playing Golden Sun: Dark Dawn a lot recently. I’m really enjoying it; I have a lot of nostalgia for the original Golden Sun, so it’s nice to get back into it with this game. I’m finding the “respond to questions with emotions” thing a little odd, though. (For those who haven’t played the game, the main character is silent, but sometimes you get the choice to respond with one of: happy face, very happy face, sad/worried face, or angry face.) Sometimes, none of the options really seem to fit. Also, a lot of the time I feel like I’m not sure exactly what I’m responding to – e.g. if Karis is mad at Tyrell, and I respond with an angry face, does that mean that I’m agreeing with Karis about being angry at Tyrell, or that I’m angry at Karis for criticizing Tyrell? I keep finding that my responses turn out not to mean what I thought they’d mean at all.
I also dug out my old Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles disc – I was reminded of it recently, and decided I felt like playing it again (and maybe actually beating it this time). It’s not bad. I’m alternating between two characters – one is a Yuke, and the other is a Lilty. The in-game diary entries that are supposed to be from the point of view of your character are always the same no matter what type of character you’re playing – leading to an odd moment when my Yuke character was going on and on about how strange and mysterious Yukes are. It’s clear that Yukes aren’t the “default” tribe in this game.
I just played Crystal Chronicles over the weekend with my spouse. Unfortunately we’ve gotten to a point where the combat is more tiresome and frustrating than fun… I’m not sure if we’ll ever finish it.
I’m a huge fan of the first two Golden Sun games, but while it wasn’t terrible, I was kind of disappointed with Dark Dawn. I should replay it again soon, though – I might like it better the second time around.
Pity that nearly all the Atelier games are for big consoles and not handhelds. I’d love to play them.
I’ve been playing Hotel Dusk: Room 215 on my DS. The art reminds me of that old A-Ha music video. The main character isn’t the most likeable sort, but he’s growing on me. The mystery is getting quite intriguing by now (I’m at Chapter 8).
There are more portable games or portable ports in Japan, but of course those never came over. Some people claim it’s because game companies considered them weird and unlikely to be popular… but I honestly believe it’s because most of them have female lead characters who (although sometimes sexily dressed) aren’t just sex objects for the amusement of the player. There’s been a long-standing belief that boys won’t read/watch/play things about girls (unless they’re there for being sexy), and it’s still pervasive.
Consider that the series starting to come to the US coincided exactly with the the first release of a game in the series with a male main character.
I started playing rock of the ages. It’s a lot of fun especially story mode and VS mode.
It’s a lot like odama mixed with Katamari set to a history book.
It’s free right now to PS+ members.
Mostly Diablo III with Ike and Monster Hunter Tri with my brother. Some quality co-op gaming with family is always awesome c:
Didn’t get much gaming done again this week – slowly working through Trine is about all I got done. Though the boyfriend and I got the itch to break out our meager collections of Magic cards again and fiddle around with them, so it’s kept me occupied. It actually inspired me to find and play a little bit of my old Pokémon TCG Game Boy cartridge last night, which was a nice bit of nostalgia.
As soon as my next paycheck comes through, though, I’ll probably snap up a few Because We May sale games. Rochard is at the top of that list, and I might grab World of Goo and/or The Binding of Isaac as well. Cave Story is tempting too, but I can’t decide if I want to get the Steam version or the 3DS version – any thoughts?
It’s been (& will be continue to be) a crazy busy week for me, but I did spend over an hour on the Arishok battle in Dragon Age II. Had to save my sweet Isabela from him!! I’m a rogue with no bow abilities – yes, I made it hard on myself. I find action RPGs harder than turn-based. I like the strategy in the turn-based systems. I always find I rush head-long into battle in action systems. Well, this time I ran like my rear was on fire – picking & choosing my spots – backstabbing, using twin fangs & miasmic flasks. I FINALLY beat him!!!
I read that SMT IV is coming out for the 3DS. I’m sad about that. A number a years ago I picked up a PSP. It was my first handheld. It taught me that I’m not a handheld gamer. I have little opportunity to play games if I’m not home, & my close-up vision continues to get worse (I can see fine when things are 3 feet or more away). Oh, well, I’ll always have Nocturne!!!!
I play handhelds at home all the time…
I did get the cord to connect my PSP to my TV. Since I own the system, might as well get as much use out of it as I can! I can see it much better even if it only takes up a part of the TV screen – wish they had fixed that so it would fill the screen.
Still, I won’t waste money on another handheld. I’ll stick to console gaming!
I’ve been playing a lot of Waveform recently. It’s an action game where you control a particle riding a wave, adjusting the wave’s frequency and amplitude to collect light motes and avoid obstacles. I’m enjoying the difficulty curve. Even if you barely clear a level you can still advance. And once you finish a stage, going back to a previous stage you realize how much better you’ve gotten. No characters that I’ve seen so far, and it doesn’t need them.
That sounds pretty cool! I like games with a smooth learning curve, instead of suddenly slamming into a wall and doing one level twenty times.
I just picked up Darwinia, and am really enjoying it so far. It vaguely reminds me of the town-building parts of ActRaiser. You control Soldier and Engineer programs to kill computer viruses and herd little AI dudes to safety so you can repopulate a little digital world. It’s very simple, and everything has a sort of funky 90s CG look to it.
It’s also harder than it lets on, or I’m just really bad at puzzles. I’ve already had to reset the first level, but I don’t really mind. It could be that you have to feel your way through a level once, reset, and then clear it once you’ve figured out what you need to do. So far it’s keeping a good balance between frustrating and satisfying.
Darwinia takes some getting used to–especially before you get the Rockets–but is worth the trouble IMO. I briefly considered writing a FAQ, so feel free to ask anything you’d like.
There’s rockets? Excellent! I’m appreciating the grenades, but I have a hard time with the delay before they go off. Half the time I kill nothing but grass.
My fatal mistake this time was not realizing that the souls float away if you don’t collect them fast enough, so I ended up a good 50 Darwinians short. I generally play games very defensively, so it’s a challenge to put my little dudes at risk. Methodically killing everything on an island before I brought in engineers clearly wasn’t the way to go.
I haven’t had time to play the last couple days, but when I retry Containment I’m going to aim to nab an incubator as soon as I can clear a path to it, and just have engineers collect as best they can while I’m mowing down viruses. It’ll be a mess, and it will hurt to watch programs die, but it should leave me with a lot more Darwinians than I had last time. Also, I won’t be accidentally running groups of them into the zapping walls of death this time, either. That was a disaster. :<
I don't want to spoil the game for myself by looking for help too early, but if I get stumped I'll definitely ask some questions!
Ah, Darwinia, a charming game. I still remember when I saw first time when Darwinians get together and made kites for souls of their fallen and then kites slowly floating into Darwinian sky, with sweet music, so touching and beautiful moment.
I just noticed the kites today! I spotted a little box floating around and zoomed in closer to check it out. For little green cut-out people that just slide along the ground, Darwinians are strangely arresting.
“[...]it will hurt to watch programs die[...]“-Negative Kat
8-(E>
Yikes. Then getting the other combat programs is gonna be painful as the get-out for you and anything after that is downright masochistic.
Protip: Agents, Engineers, and Armour–anything that you can summon, or kill by selecting and hitting Del–are expendable.
Agents don’t leave souls when they die, and that’s for a good reason: they exist to kill and, if need be, be killed so the Darwinians might live. The Darwinians are sentient beings. Your programs are, so far as I know, not. Officers occupy a middle ground; I’d recommend deleting them with an engineer present to retrieve & incubate.
Spoily (but avoids time-wasting) tip:
IMO the only research worth leveling to 4 is the program manager (5 programs simultaneously), the Squad (6 Agents/squad), and probably the Airstrike (4 bombers). Maybe the Laser or the Rockets, but there aren’t many places Rocket 4 can use its full range. L3 is good for everything, though.
Now that I’ve been a heartless codegrinder, some more immediately relevant information: Those floating red things that swoop down to lay eggs are the only things your lasers can’t kill. (Your grenades could, but only when they’re laying: exercise in frustration.) Since the eggs hatch more baseline virus (at this point), you should be able to farm that for the missing Darwinians.
Part of my aversion for things dying is just perfectionism; maybe this game will help me work on that character flaw of mine. I just have to keep telling myself that there’s no penalty for losing programs. Like you said, I can delete and remake them whenever I want, so there’s no point in getting hung up over it.
Yeah, those egg-laying spider things are a pain. I hadn’t thought too much about using them to meet the quota, though. I’ll have to remember to leave one alive as a backup plan.
Those all sound like useful tools; thanks, I’ll be sure to remember that for later. Especially Program Manager. Only having three programs feels a little sparse.
Sorry, that advice was speaking to Containment, not generally. Lasers work against the 2D virii, the centipedes, one other virus you’ll meet at the factory level, and the opposition you’ll meet at the pattern buffer. Everything else needs explosives or cannon rounds. The floaty-egg layers (seen in Containment) and the spider egg-layers (you’ll find them soon, if you haven’t already) are two different viruses–standard is much nastier.
If you’re still in Containment, the floaty egg-layers are technically called “Spore Generators”, IIRC. Don’t leave standard-spiders alive if Darwinians are gonna be anywhere near that area, because–unless you have Darwinians 4–the Darwinians can’t hurt a spider by themselves.
Are the standard spiders in the Mine? Because those things seem really aggressive. And those things that launch eggs are incredibly annoying. After five minutes of panicked flailing I finally found a building I can use to get at them, but it’s too late for the Darwinians at the second incubator. Poor little guys. They get less helpless at higher levels, I take it?
Didn’t mention the Triffids (Red Egg launchers). Sorry–about two grenades should kill the eggs before they hatch, and about that many to kill the triffid. Triffids will just about always get a final egg out as they die, so stick around and kill that too.
Those are the standard spiders in the Mine. Nasty jagoffs, aren’t they? Using grenades, best tactic I’d recommend would be to bait the spider into attacking a squad (which has just dropped a few grenades at its feet–remember, squads can come back!). If you have a handy hillside nearby, spiders tend to overshoot when jumping around (especially *down*) hills, so you may be able to dodge the gits that way.
Darwinians really shouldn’t be permitted anywhere near spiders, and vice versa. Researching Darwinians to 4 (grenades) makes them a hazard to themselves more than their target, since Darwinians’ alert radius is fairly small.
Best advice I can give for any level is to start by looking around. I don’t know of any level that requires immediate action. Once you get a handle on the location, first move is to send Engineers to grab as many control points as you can. Once you get a control point yellow (any degree of yellow, the engineers don’t need to finish the reprogramming) you can spawn squads or additional engineers there. And I’ve not had the virii retake control points.
If you’re in the Mine, you can find the Airstrike beacons on the far side of the mine-island from where you start. Skillful Engineer maneuvering can get the code downloaded before you begin using Agents. Airstrikes are a fairly short-ranged flare–aim as you would a grenade–that summons Space Invader[s] to fly over and drop one bomb per invader wherever the grenade hit. Inefficient at level 1, but increasingly devastating as Sepulveda upgrades it.
I’ll have to play the Mine a little more laid-back, I guess, instead of gunning straight for the factory.
The spiders are awful. Just to get the radar dish by the portal reprogrammed took I’d say about nine or ten engineers. I like that kamikaze squad idea. Trying to run the squad around and keep it clear of the spider ended with the spider winning more often than not.
Why am I not surprised to learn Darwinians will hurt themselves with their own grenades? e.e
I guess the lesson to take away from this is that I’m rushing the levels more than I think I am. My first try at Mine was pretty much just grabbing for whatever was closest to me. I didn’t look at the whole level, so having enemies that can attack from the next island over completely threw me off.
I think I’m at the final boss on Dark Souls, finally? I suppose I’ll know if I am or not after I’ve managed to attack him more than just once or twice.
Looking forward to playing the game again with a different sort of character, as my muscly hunk’s skills are somewhat limited to just smashing things with a giant club (though this has served me well).
I’ve enjoyed the game loads, it’s reminded me of King’s Field-meets-Vagrant Story, and has been good comfort gaming, despite my character’s many deaths.
I beat Diablo III on Normal with a Wizard last night. I had a great time with it, and want to continue with either this character or a new one, but Dragon’s Dogma has been calling my name so loudly I’m going to set it aside for awhile, except for my weekly session with my brothers.
Between DIII and ClaDun, my hands were getting too sore, so I started a turn-based PS1 game on the PSP, Saiyuki: Journey West. It’s a retelling of the Monkey King story, with all of the characters except Sanzo being able to transform into giant monsters.
Saiyuki is one of my all time favorite TRPGs!!! It’s at the top of my “games to replay in retirement” list.
Hope you have a great time playing it!!
I’ve been replaying the old Sierra adventure game, Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within for nostalgia awakened by Jane Jensen’s recently successfull Kickstarter. It’s a great game, even on my 4th (or possibly 5th) playthrough. The only thing that really felt like it aged the game was the characters’ clothes. I’ve finally managed to get the 3d game in the GK series to run on my old laptop, so I’ll be playing that one next.
Other than GK, I’ve been making some progress on my 2nd playthrough of ME3. I play as a sentinel, which is a really great class to play. Though I’m still disappointed with how some of the ME2 romances were handled, the story itself makes up for most of that sour taste. I’ve been trying out very different choices from my first playthrough, with some chocking results. The variations have wet my taste for my planned 3d playthrough (as a female vanguard). I originally halted that playthrough early on in the game after I hearing about the lack of romance material in Thane’s romance, but I’ve recently been thinking of letting her romance Sam instead, since she’s such an awesome character.
I’ve also been playing ME3 multiplayer, which I’m so addicted to I can hardly believe it myself. I usually play as a batarian soldier, drell adept or female human sentinel, but I’ve recently unlocked 2 of 3 Asari classes, so I’ll be trying out them as well. I’m still hoping for female turians and drell though…
I started playing Super Monday Night Combat (free to play on Steam; still in beta) last weekend, and haven’t been able to stop. After checking out the trailers and stuff, I gave it a go because the impression I had was “TF2 with women.” Happily the gameplay isn’t so much like TF2 but is more of an ARTS—less clusterfuck, more strategy. It is fun.
As for the women in the game, there are 4 out of 15 current pros. There is one per each category, with the glaring exception of Enforcers, who are the Heavies of SMNC. They’re all big men (and a gorilla, still male-coded), so the lack of a woman enforcer feels really indicative of the greater reluctance (to put it lightly) of games to include women of any size other than thin. There’s a lot of gale maze going on too. That said, the women characters themselves are incredibly badass and effective.
Lobby chat leaves a lot to be desired. Racist and sexist things are said. In-game I don’t see much reference to sexual violence, but that’s just me so I can’t comment on how much it actually happens. Usual warnings for online multiplayer games apply, I guess.
If anyone plays or wants to try it, let me know on Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/loocas42/
I played the demo for Recettear, an RPG about running the item shop. I may buy it.
I love everyones comments! I just bought MHP3rd HD and I love it! It is a lot easier to follow then I would have expected. Can anyone suggest a nice gaming community to meet other players? I am gay, and I like to believe that I’m a pretty accepting person, and I would really like to find like-minded gamers but I am having a hard time. Can anyone recommend a site for forum?
Coming here a bit late — I lost track of this blog in the switchover from in-Firefox RSS to Google Reader — but I’ve mostly been playing handheld games and random free MMOs, with some Infinity Blade and Atelier Rorona mixed in. Quite liking Mighty Switch Force — fun and unique and silly game with a Samus-parody lead character. Also tried getting into Asda 2, and back into some other MMOs, including Tera Online. Success has been… mixed.
Also been ravenously reading RPG PDFs of late — simultaneously working on the corebooks for Faery’s Tale and Abandon All Hope, after taking a break from V20.