What games are you currently playing?

[Guest]

On the topic of "should have been in the main game", go watch video or read a synopsis of the Leviathan DLC and proceed to scream.

[Venneh]

We're picking up Leviathan for the inevitable next run.

Watched the Omega DLC though - kinda underwhelming (especially Carrie Anne Moss' VAing). Wish we could've picked up Nyreen for the main game.

Edited September 5, 2016 by Venneh

[teenalphabro]

. . . I still don't hate the ME3 ending . . . 

[dc20willsave]

I have major problems with the ending of Mass Effect 3, essentially that a series about choice boils down to you talking to a space child who demands you take one of his three choices or everyone dies. Seriously, his entire, "Synthetic and biological life can't coexist" should have been countered by a Paragon interrupt of Shepherd gesturing at the combined Geth/Quarian fleet.

Really, anyone just needs to google all the crap that went on with the Mass Effect 3 production to see the crap that went down with this game. It's a great end to the series up until Priority: Earth. Then two of the writers kicked everyone else out of the room so they could have their crap ending. But I digress. I'm hoping that Andromeda gets back to what Mass Effect was. If not, ehh, at least we still have Mass Effect 2.

[Guest]

Yeah, the whole debacle really just boiled down to executive meddling and from my end, I felt like there was just a lack of respect for what the series built up to that point.  The world building was so on point and everything was consistent and then all of the sudden, none of it mattered and someone leaned on the big red idiot button.  The Extended Cut was better, for sure, but even parts of that came off like petty reactions to the criticism.

The Leviathan stuff though... learning about that just completely broke my faith in their ability to tell a good story again.  Hopefully Andromeda scales back and makes it all work again, but that thing's out in March and we've heard nothing about it.

[Venneh]

We'll be saying more about this in the podcast, but I might've taken a series of reaction shots as that ending happened. Going to watch that indoctrination theory documentary, because I might subscribe to that idea.

Will, is there a good article on what you're talking about? I am intrigued.

[teenalphabro]

Yeah, I'll say up front, not the greatest ending that has ever or will ever happen. And yeah, I do wish they had stuck From Ashes and Leviathan into the main game. That said, I don't think it's a bad ending. In some spots, I think that it's pretty great. That said, I'm not gonna go and say, "Oh, everyone who hates the ending is stupid and doesn't know good storytelling," because that would be grossly unfair. But I'm also not gonna write them all off as dumpster fires. Yeah, they don't work for everyone, as has clearly been stated before. But they (mostly) work for me. 

Except Refusal. Fuck Refusal. 

[Guest]

Going to watch that indoctrination theory documentary, because I might subscribe to that idea.

It's interesting but there are a ton of holes in it.  It was also officially debunked, I want to say.

[dc20willsave]

Except Refusal. Fuck Refusal. 

Refusal is the ending that a lot of people wanted after seeing the trio of colors endings. The implementation was the writers saying, "Oh, you don't like our color-coded visions? Well, fuck you. Have death and misery! You can't win because we say so."

I guess the problem ultimately boils down to the writers expecting less from the player. Most people play full paragon or renegade with few faults made. By time the end mission of Mass Effect 3 starts, you've done the impossible 20 or 30 times. Why should this final thing be different? Because the writers said so. Sure, you completely proved The Star Child's entire argument wrong by showing that The Geth can cooperate with The Quarians by why should that matter?

The three non-rejection endings only work if you have been fighting an uphill battle since the start. If you play Mass Effect 2 or 3 without playing the prior games, it assumes you made some sub-standard decisions, namely letting Major Kirahe die. It's to the point where if you play the Wii U version of the game, it's nearly impossible to get the best versions of the endings because it assumes you went into the suicide mission without everyone being loyal so you're already screwed with Rannoch.

Basically, my problem boils down to the writers not taking into account that most people playing Shepherd have been in this for the longhaul and are Big Damn Heroes in addition to a game about your choices having ramifications coming down to choosing a color.

[Venneh]

Abzu: This game is short, and gorgeous, especially in how it lets you pretty freely explore things while also nudging you if you go too far off course. You get to ride manatees and whale sharks and the goddamn Loch Ness monster.

The controls to actually direct the diver can suck my nonexistent hairy balls. Especially when Jim and I spend ten minutes trying to figure out how to make the goddamn diver walk during the land segments. I also spent several aborted starts trying to figure out how to make the diver move properly at the beginning.

Edited September 8, 2016 by Venneh

[S-T]

Dragon Quest VII on 3DS. Just got to Alltrades Abbey.

[teenalphabro]

So I've been going through MGS5. And goddamn, man. Hideo Kojima can make a dang video game, I reckon. 

[Venneh]

Just finished Pokemon Moon. Am incredibly impressed with how they were able to riff on existing game mechanics, add in new ones, and still keep this series fresh after twenty fucking years. Story was probably one of my favorites so far, way more sci fi than they've gone in recent games. (Although if we bothered to communicate about the Mohn in Poke Pelago, I'm pretty sure we could've avoided 90% of the bad things that happened, lol.)  I've finished the main game, still in post game. Final team was Decidueye (got a Rowlett in Wonder Trade), Palossand, Lunala, Primarina (my starter), Raichu, and Exeggutor. Ninetails, Arcanine, and Tsareena were also in heavy rotation. Also, nothing like being able to scritch your haunted sand castle and your ridiculously tol palm tree dragon and feed them. 

[teenalphabro]

I've started playing Tales of Xillia, and it's pretty enjoyable. It helps that most of the male members of Critical Role are in it. 

[Venneh]

Played two demos last night while the internet was down at my place. 

-Nier: Automata: Never played the original (yeah, I know Dubs, if you can find me a physical edition for under $40 that would be great). Liked the camera angle changes (normal was shiftable, but there were points where it shifts to platformer and bullet hell angles), combat was fairly easy to wrap my head around, and the two characters we were introduced to were fun.

Not sure how this plays out in the context of the game as our mains seemingly die at the end of the demo, but hey, let's see where this goes.

-World of Final Fantasy: It's basically one of those tower stacking games plus RPG plus chibi FF characters plus Pokemon. When this is inevitably deeply discounted, I'll probably buy it. Not at current prices though. 

[Aaron Robinson]

Nier is a fantastic game, but it's got a ton of flaws. It's really drawn out and repetitive, and not everything it attempts ends up working. If you can't get the game for a reasonable price, I wouldn't stress. I think Nier: Automata will ultimately be a much better game to actually play (since it's being made by Platinum), but I hope they've made a game with a similar level of wacky gameplay ideas.

[Venneh]

Jim and I have started Fallout New Vegas at his place. Ultimate edition on the PS3. We've got Veronica as a companion, and we've made it to Mr House. There have been some great bits.

However. This game can be counted on to crash or freeze up reliably about once every three hours. We are currently up to six times in the last 24 hours. There's no way that's getting better, is there?

Edited January 23, 2017 by Venneh

[teenalphabro]

As someone who's played that game a lot, I can tell you this: hell no, it doesn't.

[jim]

I recorded a video of my review of Fallout: New Vegas. Here it is.

If you don't want to click through, I adore the game, but it's unforgivably broken on the PS3, and this is a GOTY edition. Hannah should have a video of a fun F:NV bug lying around.

Edited February 10, 2017 by jim
embed didn't work.

[Venneh]

It's on either Instagram or Twitter, Instagram if you want to see first person view of the bug, Twitter if you wanna see what our courier looks like.  

We're inevitably gonna do a podcast on this, but I've been lukewarm on the main game (with the exception of some small funny bits and watching the stupid ass bugs that this game runs with). I really liked the Old World Blues DLC though. Probably because it only crashed once in about five days of playing it among other things.

[teenalphabro]

I cannot wait for that episode, because New Vegas is in my top five games of all time. 

[Davedevil]

Bloodborne has been kicking my ass and bringing out my nightmares for my waking self to see. And I'm having a great time.

[dc20willsave]

Debating right now if I want to replay the original Mass Effect games since I'm planning to wait a month or two before I get Andromeda.

Also, funds allowing, I might pick up Overwatch this weekend.

[Venneh]

WE HAVE FINALLY FINISHED FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS. HALLEFUCKINGLUJAH. 

(We chose to end it after finishing up the Lonesome Road DLC because we finished all the quests that we could that weren't bugging out, and Jim didn't like any of our options for the ending - if there had been something where we sided with the Followers of the Apocalypse, though, we probably would've gone for the ending proper.)  We had the Ultimate edition with all DLC, on the PS3. 

This game was super frustrating for me, even though I was basically riding shotgun for this. When you can count on a game bugging out/hard crashing enough to make you pause for dinner, and then stop for the night, and an average afternoon/evening session results in three bug outs and minimum two hard crashes, it's real hard to get invested. (By the end we were seeing how much we could get through of Barryman's The Dream Songs between loading screens and reboots.) And there's moments where the story comes so fucking close to hitting home (most recently: the Sierra Madre DLC), but pulls up short (unless you interact in one specific way with one character in the first interaction, he dies no matter what you do, and the could bother to build in a post DLC achievement for talking to Veronica about Elijah, but couldn't bother to program a single option about "yo your girlfriend is alive and it's safe to go see her" for Christine??).

Falling off Overwatch now that there isn't events to grind for (ie, I'm leveling up once every night and going on when friends are on for group sessions, but not going for 3 levels a night anymore). It's still fun to do, but it's not, say, the all consuming leveling up that you go for during an event or while being unemployed. I'm also at level 430something, so at this point the loot boxes are mostly duplicates except for the occasional spray or voice line.

Persona 5 comes in a month, and I'm probably getting Nier Automata on Friday. 

Edited March 13, 2017 by Venneh

[jim]

Fallout: New Vegas is so good and so staggeringly broken. I avoid Freeside because two of five times I go there, it crashes. The bigger my save file gets, it crashes. I ignored the Great Khans area entirely because, well, it crashes.

In terms of main plot, it's okay, the choice isn't much of one (baby liberal democracy protected by kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out generals versus literal sexist slavery versus crazy brain in a jar guy who rules Vegas with an iron fist versus you, maybe, but you've never run anything before in your life and at best you make deals) I'm planning on baby liberal democracy protected by generals who commit war crimes. The characters and setting draw me in and what keep me invested in the game, even when it crashes regularly enough for me to make dinner, take out the trash, or start reading 77 Dream Songs. The lore's a strong point. If the team tied up the Christine/Veronica storyline at the final moment, F:NV could reasonably stand next to Mass Effect 2 in terms of committing and succeeding on character arcs.

If.

What's there for the PC at this point (I'm assuming modders fixed most of the problems) is probably an amazing game. No idea about the 360 version. What's there for PS3 is broken but glorious, just like a piece of Old World technology you might find in the Waste.