Tale

Finished my replay of Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty over the holiday weekend. I forgot how good the dialogue was. And went through a good deal of Heart of the Swarm on my sick day yesterday. This is my second time playing it and I recall thinking the love story was forced last time. I don't remember them being quite that close in Starcraft.

Started getting a cold on Monday. So had a couple of nights of fever dreams. These are kind of fun, for certain values of fun. First night I couldn't even form coherent thoughts as I tried to sleep. No words, just pictures that could be best described as what a fly would see if half its eyes wandered. Last night was a bit better. I had a fantastic dream were I was some sort of world renowned AI researcher that people wanted to get back into the business, but I completely refused, trying to tell them to do it themselves. Somehow this lead to a Starcraft teams tournament, where I had the absolutely brilliant idea of rushing the enemy with a swarm of weak enemies. I felt this was very clever. Though apparently in my dream, matches start with all your units already built, so the opposing team blew themselves up killing my units. At this point I started to panic because I was sure this was against the rules. However, all the audience does is complain about that's why Blizzard doesn't allow large maps and some debate over Bryce Dallas Howard's acting ability.

I'm getting tired of Fruit of Grisaia. It's like a sitcom at this point. It's mostly lost track of any plot and is just whatever antics they get up to for a scene. Zzzzz I got Legacy of the Void yesterday, so I'm starting up a replay of all of Starcraft II.

If only I could find someone to play with.

G-senjou no Maou, Pony Island, and Phantasy Star IV Too much of a backlog to get anything else, but was sorely tempted. G-senjou is constantly and repeatedly recommended to me, so I decided to get it. The other two were less than a buck and also highly recommended. I might get Comix Zone just to have the only other Sega Genesis game I'm interested in. I already finished Pony Island and deleted it because the game encouraged me to. But there was so much left to do! I might have been tricked.

The only reason the force moments were the only interesting ones in the first half is because Chirrut and Baze (and K-2S0) were the only characters with personality, IMO. Not because the Force is so great and iconic to Star Wars or anything like that.

Old thread is acting wonky, so here's a new one. Let's get back to yelling at how each others' opinions are wrong. GO! Old thread: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/87304-movies-youve-seen-recently-thread/page-37

Vaders only as effective as the plot says so, too. It's not like he slaughtered his way through the OT. He kills what, four people? Two of those are on his side. Because Star Wars needs to be about more. Especially these anthology films. A failure to understand that, a reliance on lightsaber spectacle, was part of the flaws of the prequels. They repeatedly used lightsabers and Jedi as a crutch in otherwise terrible films. And given how excited people are by so short a moment of it you can probably see how tempting it could be for Disney to fall into that same routine. Edit: Thread's acting funny with lots of posts, creating a new one. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/90693-movies-youve-seen-recently/

It's the first instance of a Clone Wars character appearing in films. Kind of cool on that front. And he's going to appear in Rebels now.

I thought the game more looked like they were obligated to release a Deus Ex this year, but had to rush a script together that didn't interfere with later games. If stuff was cut, it was far more than 1/3rd. It has only a single boss fight and the plot ends in pretty much the exact place it started. There's no further revelations about the conspiracy, Jensen makes no new friends, and no new enemies.

I hear good things about G-senjou no Maou, good even with the censoring since that's the only one available in English. But I've already got a backlog of my recent VN addiction. Umineko, World End Economica, Root Double, Planetarian, and then Muv-Luv Alternative is supposed to come out this winter. Fruit of Grisai and Umineko are listed as 50+ hours! I don't even have room to check out G-Senjou.

Fruit of Grisaia still. The humor is losing its punch, but it's starting to invest me more in the characters instead. Really enjoying it. I also bought Saya no Uta today. VNDB's #3. It's short too so I'll probably start that before I finish Grisaia. And the Bo-Rifle is out in Battlefront. Kill someone with it equipped, get one of your own. Edit: And Saya is definitely something. It's a story about a guy who sees everything as this horrifying mess of flesh following an accident. All except this one mysterious girl named Saya, the only normal person in his world. And so far splits perspectives between Fuminori, our mentally damaged main character, and other more normal people. In less than an hour of reading, I already come to sympathize with our protagonist for being a bit of a jerk. While feeling sad for his friends. So what they're trying to do is working. Edit2: Reading further, Jesus christ.

It was a mistake, looks like. Bioware's 5 day giveaway is twitter raffles. Today is a Krogan plushie.

Not anymore.

Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle.

I find class systems to be the ones that change the most over the course of a game, granting new abilities and ways to play as you level. Skill based too often just tend to ramp up damage, accuracy, or the like. I'm not taking that as a rule, but it's the impression I've gotten. But at the end of the day, it depends on the nature of the game. Lots of abilities from classes works mainly for games that are either turn based or at least have tactical pausing. Less so in a real time affair.

The Last Guardian is soo good. Controls are very floaty, I don't know if I'm using that wrong. Which is a bad thing, but it makes it feel like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Edit: And now I've beaten it after spending an entire Sunday. It was great. It's what you expect if you're familiar with the series. And, if you're not, i don't know what to tell you. It practically plays like a PS2 game, It's a boy and his Griffin.

If we can cheat like that, Undertale is mine, too.

Uncharted 4 is my current GOTY. But I have high hopes for The Last Guardian. I'm actually kind of disappointed with my own choice, frankly. No doubt it's deserving, but I wish there was at least some competition. The only other two contenders I had in mind turned out to be released in 2015. I guess I can give Blood and Wine second place for now, at least. A DLC. Tyranny get third.

KOTOR isn't canon. Hammerhead ships are actually much newer in canon. The rebellion acquired a bunch in Star Wars: Rebels, actually.

Finished Final Fantasy XV. I give it a PFFFFFFBT. The combat was good, I liked it. The open world was... open. Virtually every single side quest in the entire thing is dull. The main plot looks like someone took an acceptable but not great plot, tacked on an even more generic plot on top of it, then failed to finish either. What we're left with is a plot that only remains coherent due to the simplicity at its core. A few characters are built up to then go missing, the main plot sends you to do stuff that never matters, lots of skipping around, and more than a few things that are simply dropped in your lap. I'm kind of cheating by saying it "looks like," because I'm sure that's what happened. There are leaks about development of the old version and lots of verified cut content. I kind of regret giving this franchise another chance. It's not a terrible game, it's just a terribly written game that was subsequently chopped up to sell DLC and tie-ins. It makes Metal Gear Solid V look well planned and coherent.

Depending on the execution of it, they might have made it a more "credible" story by emphasizing your Mandalorian heritage rather than your bounty hunter heritage. There does seem to be some loose association between Mandalorian clans and the Empire. At least enough for them to have their own enclave in Dromund Kaas. I really resented Gault when playing my first character. Eventually he grew on me, but it did take 2-3 years of real time Edit: as for why I picked the bounty hunter for my first class, 2 reasons: Mako was cute and I loved the armour displayer on their website for the powertech class (which of course was no longer available ingame when I started playing) They should have just scrapped the whole Mandalorian and hunt element of it. The iconic Star Wars Bounty Hunters weren't part of some glorified contest. They were the dudes a Sith Lord called in to get the job done when the rest of the Empire wasn't up to the job. The BH should have been employed directly by the Sith. Training and commanding troopers on commando raids, assassination missions, hunting down defectors.

Rogue One will be the first Star Wars movie I get on Blu-Ray. I thought it was pretty okay for most of the film. But the third act is simply perfect. It turned an acceptable side story in the Star Wars universe into a worthy addition to the original epic. It made me feel feelings. Feelings that leave me unsatisfied with other entertainment, at least for a little while. The kind that put me in a position to write and express myself. To improve my own creative energy and try to pass those feelings on that way. The appropriate adjective is "inspiring." Try not to give that too much weight, however. I'm not saying it'll change lives. While it is a grand thing, I'm also inspired by Bushes of Love (we've all got a Chicken Duck Woman Thing waiting for us). That song is beautiful and ridiculous.

Yes, but now you'll always know you're a fraud of a Bounty Hunter.