Now Playing

Like Kay, when I have problems like that typically it is my internet and not my router. Except for the time I had a Belkin router. Never get one of those shitty routers.

I finally sent back Thief to Gamefly. I had not played it in a week and just was not enjoying it.

Finished my survivor replay of TLOU. It ended up being much easier than I expected seeing as how silly the AI can be there was pretty much no reason to fear them.

I started playing Mario Kart 7. On one playthrough of the new courses, not a lot of them wowed me. But I am hoping after a few plays some will stand out more. I did like that some races were more like one big course with three segments instead of circuit races. The controls are really good. Despite the great courses, I could never really get into MK DS as much because I don't like using the dpad for it plus the boosting method made it worse. The circle pad really helps here.

I have a feeling some people will disagree with me on this but I think good stealth games need AI that can be partially exploited. I mean, if they were smart enough just to look left and see you behind that box then you couldn't memorize their routes and stuff.

I have no doubt that a stealth game with truly realistic AI would be almost universally hated. It'd be interesting to try, though

That's a better way of putting it, actually.

I don't know though, when I play a game at the highest difficulty I'm ALL about the exploits because I'm no longer playing for immersion or story, I'm playing it as a game to beat efficiently.

Dr. Van Nostrand, full of wisdom.

Oh yes, my boy. Full to the brim.

I agree with you to some extent. I'm not sure how to put it, but games like Human Revolution or Mark of the Ninja where sneaking past enemies isn't exactly the hardest thing in the world can still be satisfying, they're chill. I struggle with it when you can start doing things like just putting a box over your face (Amnesia) or just stand infront of them down a corridor but still be just out of their field of vision and they don't see you, which happened so many times in TLOU.

Part of it is probably because that game looks so good. It's easier to excuse the flaws in AI when the game looks a bit dated or cartoony or whatever. The more realistic it gets, the harder it is for our mind to divorce itself from that mindset I think.

I finally got to play a decent chunk of Mass Effect today (I'd basically just made my character and started it before). Seems alright so far. I'm probably just not far enough for it to have really gotten good. Mostly just learning a lot of info through conversations. The combat is janky as hell, but I was warned about that going in I guess.

Started up Dark Souls 2 tonight. Couldn't play much because I have work early in the morning. Ill be off Thursday so I hope to get some decent time in with it then.

Mass Effect is definitely a game that gets better the longer you play it. Leveling just gives you more options as far as powers go and the higher your level, the better your stuff. You should be glad you didn't pick one of these one weapon parties, doing an Adept without access to an assault rifle for the first time in years and keep overloading all the time.
Speaking of leveling, if you plan on using any party members with any kind of tech expertise, I'd recommend unlocking and leveling up Electronics to the last perk pretty quickly. It gets you access to more containers and Overload is hands down the best Tech move (gets rid of shields). Feel free to ask any questions to me on leveling too if you're unsure, I know this game pretty well.

I loved the combat in ME 1. I remember going from barely surviving the first few hours to utter domination the rest of the game. I need to play it again and see if that still holds true. Same applies to Old Republic and Dragon Age so I should play those again too.

I've only been in two combat situations. The first level on Eden Prime and one little one in the Citadel, so I don't have much to base it off. I certainly need to get better at directing traffic with the party members. As for leveling, I figure it is best to just learn on my own and fall on my face a bit in the process. I appreciate the advice though.

My only problem with Mass Effect is that Shephard is supposedly such a great soldier, yet he/she can barely handle a gun. I know games always do the weapon-sway thing with sniper rifles now but you're practically having a seizure every time you pull that thing out in Mass Effect

TWD S2 EP2 was a little underwhelming. The voice acting seemed really weak and the directing was more off than ever. I still enjoyed it however S2 has nothing on S1 at the moment.

Kayshire Cat wrote:Tales of Symphonia 2 still has a garbage story and an abysmal main character, but combat is still decent it does a few neat things moving away from Tales conventions, and Marta is fun to play as. Looks great in HD too, but hoo boy I don't know if i can slog through the story again.

I'm still working on the original and really enjoying it. I didn't play DotNW on Wii. I heard Emil was obnoxious

@Trip: We should have a chat thread sticky for gaming as to stay out of the general discussions thread and Now Playing. Just an opinion. I don't like bloating certain topics like I'm about to below.

I like that Universities and institutions like NASA are using games and the like to crowd-source information for study. There's been more and more examples these past few SXSW.

You could have general game chat and then a general general chat.

I always figured the general chat thread was good enough for general game chat. But then you guys seem to have more random non-gaming stuff worth talking about than I do, so I don't know.

ajapam wrote:I always figured the general chat thread was good enough for general game chat. But then you guys seem to have more random non-gaming stuff worth talking about than I do, so I don't know.

I'd like to separate it at this point since we all seem comfortable enough to talk about shit outside of gaming. I think there's enough discussion here for it to be split. It certainly doesn't seem there would be a lack of activity for either if that's the way we decide to go.

Damn, Kay, you make me want to delve into it what-with the description. I'm just not sure I want to give up on Xillia or Thief yet.

I'm up for trying a general gaming chat thread. Anything to get this from being the thread for everything is probably a good thing.

I'd love to play Bravely Default and it looks great, just no 3DS. Maybe someday I'll own one, but not in the foreseeable future. It would be in the top 5 games I'd want. Hell, I'll make a top 5 games I'd want from the 3DS just for fun, in no order.

Dragon Quest VII
Bravely Default
New Super Mario Bros. 2
Whatever the Mario 3D game is called
Zelda

I was thinking I'd get Bravely Default at one point but then I heard that the second half of the game is literally just the first half repeated. I'm hoping there's more differences than I was led to believe.

I'm still working my way through Dark Souls, and I'm pretty sure I'm almost at the end. This game is top 5 of last gen. If it wasn't for a few annoying bits it could make a run for #1, though.