General Gaming Discussion

[Gare]

Glad to hear that. It would've been slightly unfair if console owners couldn't get the extra content.

Also, the other big news is that The Witcher devs are now making a cyberpunk RPG. I expect nothing less than excellence.

[Ace Ventura]

So I have a question, is Ghost Recon: Future Soldier any good?

I've heard AMAZING things about it. And I was thinking about trading in a couple games tomorrow and getting it. If it's good.

I'm going on Vacation Sunday too so my mom's gonna get me a couple DS games, I already know what I want for that. I just wanna know what you guys thought about Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.

[Colamisu]

New Humble Bundle launched about an hour ago. It's the "games you really should have played already" bundle.

The bundle includes Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Limbo, Psychonauts, and Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, with Bastion included if you pay over the average (currently $7.40ish), and soundtracks for each of the games. Comes with one Steam key for the entire bundle, then a separate key for Bastion if you pay over the average.

For anyone who's not familiar, the Humble Bundle is a pay-what-you-want system, where you decide how much of that goes to the Humble Bundle operators, the developers, the charities, or even specifically which charities or developers. The games are DRM-free, but you also get the afore-mentioned Steam keys as long as you pay at least $1. And the operators will often throw in a bunch of extras later if the bundle is doing well (ie. during Bundle 4, buyers later got the entirety of Bundle 3 included if they paid over the average).

So yeah, take a peek. All of the games in this one are worth playing, award-winning, etc., unlike some of the earlier ones...

[Gare]

Yeah, I already have all those games but this is a pretty kickass bundle nonetheless. Gogogo get it, people. Easily worth it for Psychonauts alone.

[Stark]

Thanks very much, been playing quite a lot on steam lately.

[Mistral]

Ooh, Humble Bundle.
*checks wallet*
...well, it's not that much.

Your random news moment: $60 pineapples for sale in China.

[Gare]

Oh Chinese people, you so crazy.

And, uh, if anyone cares, Ys Origin was just released on Steam the other day.

[Elin]

And, uh, if anyone cares, Ys Origin was just released on Steam the other day.

Some people don't seem to like it as much as some of the others because it's basically one big dungeon crawl, but I think it has the best boss fights in the whole series, and it's loads of fun. Everyone should go play it now now now~

[Gare]

Pkt started playing it, he's having fun with it I think. He also beat OiF a while back when it was new on Steam. I think I might go with Seven, because... I dunno, it looked cool in the videos? And I'm totally in love with this song:



Not that I have time to play all these games, but it's good to plan ahead.

(Lovely music as always.)

[Elin]

Pkt started playing it, he's having fun with it I think. He also beat OiF a while back when it was new on Steam. I think I might go with Seven, because... I dunno, it looked cool in the videos? And I'm totally in love with this song:

Not that I have time to play all these games, but it's good to plan ahead.

(Lovely music as always.)

You can't go wrong with Seven. It's really, really good. Definitely one of the best PSP RPGs out there (I think! I haven't actually played too many... :'D), and the longest and biggest game in the series by far. My only problem with it was that the abundance of healing items makes the latter half of the game a bit too easy. I loved the crazy boss fights in Felghana and Origin where you only had one health bar for the whole battle. In Seven you have three plus the ability to restore them countless times. I guess it's kind of a double-edged sword, as while it somewhat cheapens the boss fights, it also makes them a good deal less frustrating. But I kind of liked it better the other way.

Speaking of Seven, have you seen videos of Nayuta no Kiseki? Kiseki story + pumped up Ys Seven engine-based gameplay = so much want. I just need to get around to playing Zero and Ao first so I can actually understand the story. :'D

[Gare]

I saw videos of it and thought it looked delicious. I actually thought it was gonna be on Vita so I won't get to play it, but this thing is actually for the PSP, isn't it? I'll definitely have to give it a whirl, although I'm not sure how complex its vocabulary will be.

(I've been wondering the same about the other Kiseki games as well, actually. SC, 3rd, Ao and Zero all look like games I'd want to play, but I highly doubt they'll be translated any time soon, if ever.)

[Elin]

It is indeed for the PSP!

I saw videos of it and thought it looked delicious. I actually thought it was gonna be on Vita so I won't get to play it, but this thing is actually for the PSP, isn't it? I'll definitely have to give it a whirl, although I'm not sure how complex its vocabulary will be.

(I've been wondering the same about the other Kiseki games as well, actually. SC, 3rd, Ao and Zero all look like games I'd want to play, but I highly doubt they'll be translated any time soon, if ever.)

Can't speak for Zero, Ao and Nayuta, but the Sora no Kiseki series were by far the hardest games language-wise I've ever played in Japanese. Difficult vocabulary + no voiceovers + a visual novel sized script = major headaches. The first couple of chapters of FC ease you in quite slowly, but once the political intrigue of FC's later chapters and the techno-speak of SC start to set in, things get pretty hectic. On the plus side of things, they're a really good way to ease you into reading novels in Japanese. About four months after finishing FC I read a thousand page novel in Japanese, and I don't think that was a coincidence. :'D I also have almost no problems with other games in Japanese now, as pretty much anything seems less scary than Kiseki. :'D

It's also worth noting that some of the games in the series can be linked up to the Anime Games Text Hooker. Basically a program that reads the text onscreen and dumps it to an auto-refreshing text file, which you can then open with Firefox and combine with a mouse over dictionary plugin like Rikaichan to look up words you don't know instantaneously. A little awkward to explain, but here's a photo I took of it in action back in the day:

64807_490981660976_501530976_7266739_174106_n.jpg

I played the second half of FC and the first half of SC like that, so I know for a fact that it works with both of those. I stopped using it after that, as I found the vocabulary I learned with it didn't really stick because it made everything too quick and easy. But if you just want to play the games and your main bottleneck with Japanese is vocabulary then it's a big help. If I remember rightly it's kind of a pain to get it going, but if you want I can dig out a message I had from a friend who showed me how to do it.

[Gare]

Ah, then I remembered correctly. Oh well, if the Ys games do well on Steam, Xseed might be able to finish and release SC as well, you never know.

Huh, I didn't even know such a thing existed. Neat. It might indeed come in handy one day, so I'm definitely interested in that message, if it's not too much of a bother.

[Colamisu]

Oh Chinese people, you so crazy.

And, uh, if anyone cares, Ys Origin was just released on Steam the other day.

Yar. I wanted to mention that too, but thought it'd a) distract from the limited-time nature of the Humble Bundle and b) look too much like I'm saying EVERYONE COME SPEND MONEY ON THINGS I LIKE.

[Colamisu]

It's 5 days later, I can totally double post now.

Wanting to point out that Braid, Super Meat Boy, and Lone Survivor were added to the Humble Indie Bundle V at some point recently, so if you haven't purchased yet, there's another $30 or so worth of games to sweeten the deal.

And I'm not sure if it's a bug or not, but they were added to mine even though I didn't pay over the average. So check your download pages, people.