We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

I told you to stop worrying about that.

It doesn't make sense they're doing a kickstarter for that, if all they want is a smaller project to practice on they should've saved the kickstarter for the real deal.

Look at what Innovative and New Experience the PSP Vita provides.

At first I thought it was a rhythm game.

Noooooooope.

The Magical Realms of Tír na nÓg: Escape from Necron 7 – Revenge of Cuchulainn: The Official Game of the Movie – Chapter 2 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa has officially been announced!

There are some pretty excellent videos in this year's Saxxy award winners. Worth watching!

good things about 3ds: i got to download mole mania for $3

So I finally got round to playing Bastion and holy christ on a christ it is a good game.

I love Bastion so much

Yesssss.
Everyone should play that game.

I hope it gets a super mad price discount this holiday season.

IT DID AND I GOT IT $3.75 WHAT A DEAL

Let's see what the hubbub is all about.

So whaddya think?
Hopefully we haven't overhyped it...

oh god what am i doing here i want to go home to the doodle thread

Well, after owning the game for 2 days short of a year, I finally got around to beating Skyward Sword today. I'm a pretty big fan of it honestly! There are a few obvious flaws of course, and off the top of my head they include:

- Fi, making Navi look like a the world's best adventure guide in comparison. If I need to know where to go, I'll ask you, and there's already a tried and true system in place to tell me when my hearts are *BEEPBEEP. BEEPBEEP.* low. Please stop jumping out in front of me on every possible occasion. The battery thing was nice though, I play for pretty long sessions at a time and it's not uncommon to go through a remote's worth of power (we have these chargers for the Wii remotes to save on batteries but they don't last as long as they used to).

- The Motion Plus swordplay element worked just fine (great, even!), but using the bow and other projectile launching items kind of became a pain. Unless there's an option I don't know about, you've always gotta shoot these things in first person, regardless of whether or not you're targeting an enemy, which sort of defeats the purpose. Not to mention how easily the cursor kind of drifts off - I find myself having to recenter it a lot.

- Fucking Guardian Potion +. For 200 Rupees and a handful of bugs, you can make a potion that makes you invincible for a good 3 minutes - even longer than that if you happen to have a potion medal in your pouch. I used this thing on the last boss and I really wish I hadn't. I feel kind of cheated now honestly, and I don't plan to use it again in Hero Mode. Or ever.

The rest of the game was great though! There were more than enough side quests to quench my Majora's Mask sized thirst, and I know I didn't do them all. Treasure/bug hunting was a nice distraction in return for upgrades you could mix and match (I really want to just amass big quivers at some point and become Arrowman, face-shooter of justice). Not to mention the end game was good challenging fun, barring the aforementioned goddamn potion. I can't wait to play it again in Hero Mode, especially for the Boss Rush and final big bads.

Also Timeshift Stones are awesome, the end.

- The Motion Plus swordplay element worked just fine (great, even!)

I think that's like the only thing they did well, but people criticize it a lot for some reason.

So whaddya think?
Hopefully we haven't overhyped it...

I'm afraid you did overhype it, at least so far i haven't seen what's so great about it? I love the art design, it looks and sounds beautiful but i don't find the gameplay that good. It's not challenging, it's not interesting, you just kind of click a bunch to kill dudes and that's it? I hate having to keep track of all the upgrades and shit i HATE rpg elements in games that aren't rpgs, they're an awful excuse to make the game "challenging". Also, the narrator dude doesn't shut up ever about things i already know like "FALLING ISN'T GOOD DON'T FALL DOWN STUPID" and while there's the option to mute him i don't trust the game to clue me into what to do without the narrator.

It pisses me off that i can't use my generic usb joypad and i don't think i can map the right stick with joy to key so i'm fucking stuck using the mouse and keyboard.

E: By the way SantaPhish the flying Crimble, the most generous man on earth, gifted me Castle Crashers! Thank you so much! I've been wanting to play that for a while :>

Bastion is a very well-crafted thing of what it is. Not just the art, sound and story, but the gameplay as well. If you think that you might enjoy an example of the thing that it is, I recommend you stick with it a bit longer. You might find the gameplay grows on you, once you get a bit more into the meat of it. It definitely gets more challenging - in fact, it eventually lets you directly impact the difficulty level in different ways as a deliberate gameplay mechanic. And I know what you mean about RPG elements in non-RPG games, but I remember this one doing a pretty good job of not letting things be that way. I mean, I'm not sure that leveling does anything more than unlock potion slots? I don't remember for sure. But the main thing is always skill and smart situational weapon choice, not level.
The narrator is going to keep saying what you're doing. That's his job, he's a narrator - and not, ultimately, a tutorial. He's there for story and background much more than for telling you not to fall off things. If you're even considering muting him, if you really find him that irritating, maybe the game's not for you? He's a pretty key part of it.

If you're even considering muting him, if you really find him that irritating, maybe the game's not for you? He's a pretty key part of it.

That's why i decided to keep him, when i turned him off the game felt kinda... empty? Killing dudes felt even more pointless.

About the rpg, you're right, level just gives you extra slots for potions, but the potions act pretty much the same as an stat boost in a regular rpg. That's not so bad though, what really feels like a chore is keeping track of the "somethings" to upgrade weapons and unlock special abilities, i get that you're supposed to strategize and pick the best weapon depending on the situation but so far i've been using whatever the game has given to me and i've just breezed through it with no problem.

That doesn't mean i'm not gonna keep playing it or that i'm not getting any sort of enjoyment out of it, it's just disappointing that i didn't find it hard to put down at all. Personally, i think things shouldn't "get better", they should be good from beginning to end.

OH YEAH
Okay so I know a few of you guys haven't played this thing yet
and some of you are thinking about it?
but I'm pretty sure most of you haven't really heard of it yet, and that's where I come in to say,
You guys should really play OFF.

It was made in RPGmaker so if you don't like RPGs maybe you won't like this game? Which would be sad, because this game is great in pretty much every aspect
The characters, the story, especially the music holy dang it's amazing
I can only imagine anyone having a gripe with the game due to the gameplay/battle system, and all that just boils down to RPGmaker limits.

So I purchased Sticker Star with birthday money and... it's kind of weirding me out, because normally I'm very much a "it cannot be a good game unless the core gameplay is good," And I think the core gameplay is good, but not anywhere near as good as everything else.

I've always loved the style of the Paper Mario games and the stickers blend with it pretty well, Kersti is far more interesting than Tippi (or, in my opinion, any of the Pixls; this was one of my many problems with Super Paper Mario) was, the boss fights are fun, there's enough different moves that it doesn't feel too repetitive, the platforming's challenging but not unrealistic, the music is fucking amazing, the dialog is well-written... but I don't think it works as an RPG, and it's still framed as that.

The problem, I guess, is this: As opposed to the first two games in the series, with all their level ups and badges and such, this one has the absolute bare minimum of what can be considered customization. That's not a bad thing, necessarily; customization isn't required for a good game. But it doesn't gel with the fact that there are enemy encounters which you can run from. Part of this is, ironically enough, because of a very good decision they made: since stickers can only be used once apiece, you have to pace yourself and ration out your supplies. In theory this is great, but in practice it means that I just end up running from most battles, as the only rewards are coins and stickers. I can use coins to purchase stickers, and every fight I get into requires that I expend stickers.

In other words, rather than combat being something that I deliberately get into in order to shore up my stats (the first two games) or just, y'know, an obstacle that I pass as intended (all three of the previous installments), 80% of the time it becomes "ugh I don't want to waste perfectly good stickers on this, mash run."

Maybe that's a problem more with me, but the fact that it's even an option undercuts the value of having to manage your resources, which in turn means that you might as well not have the sticker gimmick at all. It's a shame because I really do find it clever, and it works great in boss battles and other mandatory fights; I just don't think they put a lot of thought into how it works in general.

None of this changes the fact that it's a fucking amazing game for all of the other reasons mentioned, of course.

A lot of people were pretty underwhelmed with Sticker Star, especially once they figure out that as there is no EXP there is virtually no reason to fight anything, ever.
And you beat boss fights just by owning one certain sticker that they are weak to.

Days of my life vanished thanks to FTL.

Since space opera games are my type of game to begin with, FTL was an obvious choice to play. What I hadn't expected was how ridiculously fun it was. The gameplay is excellent and filled with crowning moments of awesome (Survive despite shields being down, everything being on fire and missiles being fired at you!), especially the way the combat system is set up. I'm a horrible reviewer.

I do however have my fair share of complaints: the roguelike system makes it difficult to try new things, since 'what if I try this' usually ends in deadness. If it had a separate 'zen mode', or hell, an escape pod system that gives you a chance of surviving death with /something/ to carry over to the next game that would be just /shiny/. But it would defeat the point of a roguelike. Sigh.

Another problem is the writing: it's too darn dry. It breaks immersion to have an invisible GM calmly inform me that 'a rebel warship approaches. what do?' I can think of several different lines that could have been programmed into the game, not least on the part of the crew manning the ship: 'We've got rebel ships inbound! Engage evasive maneuvers!'

Related to that is the random pace of story development. I understand that being a roguelike, FTL can't devote much of its time to story when the goal is survival, but not even knowing what the Rebellion even was for until six playthroughs just doesn't make sense. 'What are you fighting for' seems to be a fairly important part of motivation in a game, that's all I'm saying.

---

Not a complaint, but just an observation - when your luck goes bad, it goes pretty damn bad. Take for example this beauty:

SLIGHTLY BIG IMAGE no not really

This happened after I'd spent three sectors with my sensors completely dark and the middle of my ship a complete no-go zone because I'd parked next to a sun in my first sector, opened the doors to vent the flames, and had my door control destroyed by the same fire. It's only now that I've managed to get my sensors online, and I kind of wish I hadn't. And this is /after/ I extinguished the fires in the door control, medbay, and everything between it and the sensors. Literally EVERYTHING WAS ON FIRE.

Stupid Zoltan ship and your sensors all at the end of where no one uses it corner.

So to sum up FTL: EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE. AAAAAAAAAAAGHHH but fun.

A hole in your medbay and everyone on your crew has just enough health to die of oxygen starvation before they can repair it.
This has happened to me. It pretty much sucks.
I love that game, though. Second best thing I ever backed on Kickstarter, topped only by Double Fine Adventure.

100%'d TTYD YEAHHHHH EAT THAT 2013!!!
what a game.

Now time for Sticker Star

Sticker Star's pretty good. Your money, your items, and the battle system are all closely linked, and they share a pretty neat relationship. Also, the game has a lot of fun with the fact that everything is made of paper.

The downsides are that action commands are now boring and same-y and the game's only partner is somehow less interesting than Navi.

I love how Godbot and I had almost completely mirrored reactions

(the playing around with the paper-ness of the setting was pretty rad though)

So, has anyone played Trine? Are they any good? They look pretty okay.

My friends and i just bought the first two pretty cheap on steam.