Lurker > Garioshi

bump

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Kerred posted...

Unfortunately they were only 2 minute segments with big buddah and only had a day's notice so it was all mostly improv talk about games. Fortunately it was live so no one has to cringe seeing me :)

Do any of you like long form essays about games? Like Noah Caldwell Gervais, KingK, Joseph Anderson, etc.? Do you prefer long form essays about games you already know or played?

Long-form essays are one of my favorite ways to digest games.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

saspa posted...

It... it was Akane V__V

That is Junpei, the hologram all but confirmed it.

I... just can't right now

It gets better

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

My man. Too many games go on for 5 or 10 more hours than they need to.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Solid Sonic posted...

The message should be that "policing is color blind"

Solid Sonic posted...

Well I stand behind police, I just wish they wouldn't enforce laws with ethnic metrics so much.

?????????????????

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Solid Sonic posted...

The message should be that "policing is color blind"

it isn't

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Tyranthraxus posted...

Lmao what a weird build I just did



My final max HP was 36 lmao

lmao how the fuck did you get 4 pressure points

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Southernfatman posted...

I live here. It's not shocking. The state is full of awful people. I just want to say we aren't all that way though.

Well, obviously.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Godnorgosh posted...

I'm sorry but David Wise is the Orson Welles of video game composers, please display the proper respect for his magnum opus

Please tell me how other composers fit into this analogy

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

It's not Stickerbrush Symphony. I don't know why DKC2 has so many wrong spellings associated with it.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

DB_Insider posted...

Rip Etika

what does etika have to do with anything

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

saspa posted...

No... no no no no no it can't be. It can't be. The old woman's ID card said kurashiki! That can't be akane no no. It's not possible. Could it be? And the old man with the eye patch Zero Sr is Santa? Could Tenmyouji actually be Junpei, and all 3 are old somehow? Tenmyouji was carrying a picture of child Akane after all.

I just can't right now, too many theories swirling in my head.

What about Clover, then?

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

this is really creepy

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

no

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

bump, i would be playing today but i'm fucked up atm

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmnZ0R8quWM

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

that's a strange way to spell aria of sorrow

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Friction is basically homeless spikes for video games

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

interesting how you critique society but still participate in it

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

bunny

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

pinky0926 posted...

I hate that I'm caught up with One Piece. The only shonen I know that actually knows how to manage power levels at all

Psyren baybee


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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

ThyCorndog posted...

I wonder what the % is now

Probably higher tbh

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

that's the title of the article

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

AsucaHayashi posted...

i didn't realize they were called "frictionless" games... i just called them games with good pacing.

It's a term I made up. That being said, I don't think "frictionless" is synonymous with good pacing. Resident Evil 4 has arguably the best pacing in any game period, but it's by no means frictionless.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Perascamin posted...

So you're one of the people that enjoys "Afk" "games"??

No, I enjoy games that don't fight me every step of the way.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Balrog0 posted...

Yeah, you're getting older

I am 20

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Politics is Hollywood for ugly people

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/04/mississippi-republicans/349433/

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

bump

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Bad_Mojo posted...

Awesome, thanks. Maybe I'll record myself as well so you can see how f'n horrible I am at the game, lol

Edit -

So far I've noticed you don't go for the Shard things on the first floor, and I always do, thinking it will be harder on the next floors. Maybe I should change that up?

And what's up with that Curse in your hand? Arcane Bane? Is it because you're playing the harder levels?

I don't go for the shards until A20, there's no real point otherwise. And yes, that is Ascender's Bane. I believe you get it starting at A10.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Esrac posted...

Yeah, I've got a bunch of Tales games. Xillia 1, Vesperia, Symphonia, Zestiria, and Berseria. Only ever played Abyss and Graces f.

It goes Abyss > Berseria > Xillia 1/2 imo, definitely play Berseria afterwards.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

RedJackson posted...

What a thrill...

I was like yeah lol

I forget what interview it was with harry gregson where he was like saying that Kojima basically didn't have his next setting completely set and he offered a jungle setting because writing music for MGS2 took him forever lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjrXDTnrYgA
^ that's pretty cool in regards to MGS2 though

As I understand it, Williams said he didn't want to do a third Metal Gear in the style of the first two, so he asked Kojima for a jungle setting. Kojima had already settled on it, but he wanted to seem like he was trying to go out of his way for him, so he told Williams that he changed the setting just for him.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

The new Hangman's Gambit also has some pretty fucking stupid answers, so there's no shame in looking them up. V3 has what is by far the worst "how was i supposed to know you wanted me to say that specifically" offender, though.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

where the fuck is her mask

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

ProfessorKukui posted...

can i get a frictionless tl;dr

just read the first line

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Games where menus are readable and quick to navigate, you aren't bogged down by dozens of ultimately insignificant decisions, little downtime, no unnecessary inventory management, no bloated and terrible crafting systems, skippable cutscenes, lots of QoL features, little repetition and a good sense of "momentum", where the game never really grinds to a halt.

Xenogears is a pretty good example of maximum friction; opening the menu, screen transitions, and random battles all have around 2 seconds of loading attached to them. When the game starts loading a random encounter, you're prohibited from jumping, which can very easily fuck you over with the game's already stiff platforming. They clearly needed the time to load and knew just stopping you on the overworld for 2 seconds would be actual hell, but this solution is only marginally better. The battle system, being ATB, will necessarily have some downtime, but party members and enemies both have to move to their target, spend seconds acting out the attacks you spent half a second inputting, and move back, and this takes even longer if you use a Deathblow. The Deathblow experience system is never visible to you at any point, so unless you're using a guide, you won't even know what button combinations to use.

Battles are also incredibly long, taking 3-4 minutes on average, and even more frequent. Like, Xenogears has to have the single highest encounter rate I've ever seen in any game. When you're just trying to get through a dungeon, it's the gaming equivalent of stop-and-go traffic. If you make me feel like I'm in traffic, you've severely fucked up. It doesn't help that the dungeons themselves are mostly mazes that all look the same, and with the isometric system and constantly going into battles, you can easily get turned around and lose progress. Even worse than this is the fact that the developers thought it would be funny to put fake doors everywhere, just to make your experience even worse. Let's not forget about the text speed; even a sloth on ambien would think it's too slow, and for a game with such a massive script (300k words!), it's almost offensive that there aren't any text speed options. Faster text speeds with no option to press a button to skip the text scrolling have pissed me off, but Gears is slower while having about 10 times the word count of one particular offender (and most of that is optional!). In short, Xenogears is friction incarnate. Other friction-heavy games include Tales of Zestiria and the Pokemon Coliseum games.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. Link moves fast enough that I don't feel the need for a run button, and animations are extremely quick across the board, so battles (and everything else you do) are over much faster while being more engaging. The stamina meter means it's impossible to run out of your ability to solve puzzles, and it recharges quickly enough that it doesn't become a burden on its own. The menus are polished to a mirror sheen, with pins, fast travel, and Maimai tracking divided up into specific sections of the map, among others. Text boxes (dialogue and system messages) are extremely quick to mash through if you so desire. The overworld is a manageable size for Link's movement speed (you can get from one side of the map to the other in 5-10 minutes), so it never feels like a slog to get to any point on the map. Even when you die, you get to continue without losing your progress, which is much more appealing than having to load a save and having to play the last 20 minutes over again. The most downtime ALBW has is when you switch between worlds, but it happens so infrequently that it's almost completely negligible. I can't think of a more frictionless game than A Link Between Worlds. The 3DS Fire Emblems and Indivisible (at least, the overworld and bosses) also qualify for this honor.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

@Bad_Mojo Here you go, an A15 Watcher run. I scummed pretty badly on some fights, but this was a pretty great run overall.
https://youtu.be/4AIxn8BAbTM

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

DeadBankerDream posted...

Seems much less obvious than the first case of the first game, which I made a lot harder for myself by assuming the game wouldn't literally write the culprit's name in blood.

A gigantic improvement from the first game. In 1, I knew the killers for the first 3 cases (and figured out what happened in Case 5) before the trials even started.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

RedJackson posted...

Yeah, they had that topic of Kojima is the Stanley Kubric of vidya but I think he really drew influence from the way something like a Bond movie is presented. He's still GOAT to me despite the whole new wave movement of him being overrated

The fanboy lives

MGS3 (and MGS1 to a lesser extent) is inarguably a huge James Bond homage, but quite a few of the major tropes are amazingly subverted.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Doe posted...

I played on the first edition of the 3DS I was nearly an ambassador and I never had any serious issue with the framerate. It's probably uncomfortable if you're used to the PS2 framerate but it really is manageable. I've beat The Fear doing foxhound run on extreme on 3ds soooo

I salute you for doing something I cannot.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

HypnospaceInlaw posted...

Imagine thinking the Wiimote and Joycons are better than the SNES controller

I don't like how the SNES controller feels in my hands; I can never figure out what to do with my fingers. The Wiimote is barebones, but it fits the hand perfectly well.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Tales of Xillia is one of my favorite games in the series. Easily the best combat behind Xillia 2, which doesn't really count against Xillia because X2's a direct sequel. It's not particularly great story-wise, but it's got fantastic pacing. If you like the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X, Tales of Xillia has a similar system. The entire experience is absolutely frictionless, and I can't recommend it enough.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

harley2280 posted...

TC is literally talking about how he played it. So it's not literally unplayable. I own all 3 versions of the game, and the original release is by far the worst.

Have you fought The Fear on 3DS? Single-digit framerate nearly the entire way through. This is hampered even further by the absolutely terrible control scheme. I'm on N3DS, and the nub absolutely doesn't cut it. I can't even imagine what base 3DS players have to deal with. I had to do the quick kill on him because there's just no other consistent way to win.

Again, though, I did say it was debatably the worst version. What you value in playability is yours, and I can't make you value the things I do.

Regardless, MGS3 is the GOAT. Best Metal Gear game, best Kojima game, best stealth game, best survival game, best James Bond game.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Doe posted...

i mean the original version didn't even let you use over the shoulder camera

Yes, but it doesn't run at 10 fps. The camera is absolutely terrible, but I would rather replay MGS3 with the locked camera than have some areas be literally unplayable.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

You might need to fill in a little bit of info if you're only citing a specific part of the paper or article, but I don't see why, in the information age, citations largely need to be manually done myriad times by the myriad people who use them, instead of the author doing it once.

If this actually is a thing and I'm just massively ignorant, that's good.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

A shame you played arguably the worst version.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Lorenzo_2003 posted...

@Garioshi

I know carrying a streamlined (i.e. small) deck is optimal for performance, but dont you guys ever get bored with it?

Most times I run with 25+ cards and the randomness at times makes for interesting combos. But I also dont rage much when it doesnt work out, so theres that.

Nah, deleting enemies is a ton of fun.

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018

Switch Procon > Gamecube > Wii U Gamepad > Wii U Pro > Wiimote > Joycons > SNES > Wii Classic > NES > N64

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"I play with myself" - Darklit_Minuet, 2018