What Are You Playing: Thread of Destruction Expansion Pack
 

I'm bouncing from FFIV and FFT, switching whenever that particular handheld runs out of battery. Neither is very forgiving, FFT especially so. Wanting to play Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the Whatever, but the place never has it in, and I don't think they even have Drum King yet. After beating whatever FF I beat next I'll probably get back to Rhythm Heaven.

Play Tales of Vesperia instead. It's a much better game.

Actually started back up with FFX-2 last night. Punishing game is punishing. It's been quite some time since I was last wiped out by a normal battle so quickly and efficiently, considering how much I tend to grind. Anyone have any tips on good places to simultaneously level up and not die in Chapter 2 or a new game while I get a better hang of the system again? Or do I actually have to break down and shrink my huevos by putting it on Wait?

Also, Gunner's Gauntlet can fuck itself. I was playing on my comfortable 15" screen and kept dying because of a combination of the camera can die in a fire and the fact that what wasn't busy being too tiny to see was hiding behind my ammo windows until immediately before it was sitting on me. Also because the enemies can attack faster than Yuna can finish flailing from taking a hit like a Bobo doll and getting back to being able to shoot. "No worries," I thought. "I'll just pirate a bigger TV!" So I got the 20" that was collecting dust, dragged it into my room, and managed to muscle it on top of my chest of drawers in place of my own, comfortable unit. Everything was still tiny, the windows still blocked too damn much off, and I still kept dying because there's no effing way to see.

Also also, holy mixed reactions coming back to this thing. Gameplay is still solid, but whoever designed the character movement should be shot, because there's no way it was motion captured. It is physically impossible for a human to move as mechanically and jerkily as everyone does outside of battle. Also, the voice acting has some major ups and downs, and if the character models use some sort of LOD, the formula for rendering enough polygons at certain ranges is totally borked. If not, they used some unreasonably low-poly models in conversations where it would have been reasonable to expect that people would start to notice at those distances. And the camera is not a team player, but it wasn't in X, either. On the other hand, the music is actually better than I remembered, which was a pleasant surprise.


... Maybe I should just save it for a review. Noncon might appreciate having someone look at a game most guys avoid mentioning for fear of looking like a perv. XD

I avoid this game not out of fear, but because, as Kurosen once said, It's a game about playing dress up with three girls.

Ignoring that each outfit gives you special abilities to work with and essentially replaces the system in the last game that let you switch party members for their abilities (many of which are the same in X-2 as said larger party's in X), there's 100% no nudity, meaning that a guy who's in it because he IS a perv is better-served by going to Target and picking up a Barbie doll.

Really, if you're in it for just the cheesecake, you're probably not of the demographic who'd likely be successful in playing the damn thing, since the difficulty curve is unforgiving on Active, where the game is most playable, and Wait Mode presents its own set of issues. The game is really best-suited to people who are good players and want a light-hearted game that caters to their gameplay needs, despite ultimately incorporating elements that makes that demographic uncomfortable, especially if there are other people around.

Shame is for the weak, Mac. Well, the weak and those who aren't socially maladjusted.

Oh, and still haven't tried Rhythm Tengoku Gold, fishy edition. I'll try booting that up now.

I finally worked up the courage to try Etrian Odyssey II again. The first time I got to floor 12 and just... stopped. I didn't come up against any insurmountable obstacle or anything, I had just been so worn down by the game at that point that I couldn't go on anymore. It's a marvelously well-designed game; it's just that the game never gives you a break so it's exhausting to play.

http://www.xgenstudios.com/game.php?keyword=incredibots

This one is worth taking a few hours to play around on.

I just got back into LittleBigPlanet, because I am determined to make a decent looking, in-scale looking train.

Making the locomotive itself isn't too much of a hassle. That's just tweaking the material, and I know what I want it to like like (more or less).
I'm mostly trying to figure out how to get something of a gearbox in it.
... and I think I just got it.

EDIT: Oh, and still playing around with OpenTTD, of course. Starting a new game already. ¬___¬

Oh man, I should grab FFX-2 and play through it again. Say what we will about its plot choices, the gameplay within is the best (and sometimes the most difficult, thus rewarding) of the active timer battle systems for the FF series, to me anyway. I have my hopes up for FFXIII though! Really looking forward to it considering the demo footage I have seen.