Keyrock

Got through the Fiery Idol battle on my first try on the return trip. Having a more durable union was the key, though having a better weapon didn't hurt. I've since had my Combat Tabar-Zin strengthened to +1 then upgraded it to Warrior's Tabar-Zin +1.

I remember this when the campaign first started. It's a cool looking game. I hope it gets funded.

Ugh. The dreaded conversation wheel. Thanks a ****ing lot, BioWare. Not a fan of the whole social stuff, but I could just ignore it easily enough, the same way I ignore all social networking now. Looks pretty decent otherwise.

So Kobe is out again. Same leg, too. I hate to say it (I don't like Kobe personally, but I respect him as an athlete), but this is almost certainly the end of Kobe as an elite player.

It's true, South Park is very much about pushing the boundaries of good taste, or any kind of taste for that matter.

Just Melee Stance and Arrow of Athlum. I'm going to go with Arrow of Athlum with Rush as the leader, Baulson in the #2 slot as the "arrowhead", and Oakes in the #3 slot on one flank. I think the #2 slot gets the most attack bonus, and Baluson is my heaviest hitter.

Okay, so grinding to raise my battle rank at this point would be pointless. In fact, it would probably be counterproductive and it would hinder units I acquire in the future catching up to my current units and acquiring abilities. My hope is that with the union of Rush, Oakes, and Baulson, I'll be able to finish off most enemy unions in a single round. Many times before I would come really close and leave the enemy unions with a sliver of health, then another enemy union would heal them (while I shook my fist at them ). Oakes can heal, he's just not as good at it as McGrady, but he's a better offensive unit (physical attacks, anyway). If I swap McGrady in, then I'll probably use mystic arts more often. So far I'm not frustrated despite having my ass handed to me 4 times in a row. It's a fun challenge and I haven't explored all my tactical options yet.

It's Saints Row 4 anal probing all over again. Oh Australia, keep being Australia so the rest of the world can point their finger and laugh at you. (Though outside of wacky censorship laws, I hear Australia is pretty freakin' cool)

Yeah, I have McGrady in my reserves. If things don't go well with my Rush/Oakes/Baulson union I may swap out Oakes and swap in McGrady and see how it goes with him. When do you get the ability to employ more units at a time? Is it a function of battle rank? (I'm battle rank 6 right now)

I just ran into a roadblock in The Last Remnant. My first battle where I was hopelessly overmatched. Got slaughtered 4 times in a row last night and never even came close to winning. Not only am I outnumbered, but the boss (Fiery Idol) does an area attack that hits all my unions and can insta-kill everyone that's not close to 100%. The problem is that I can't just concentrate on the boss in hopes of taking him out quick like (which I'm assuming would end the fight right then and there) because I don't have enough firepower to take him out in 1 round and the enemy unions would flank and rear attack the bejesus out of me and tear me up, so I'm forced to deal with the other unions first, and while I'm doing that the boss just ****s my **** up. So I went back and did a bit of farming for components (turns out Rush having a cheesy starter tabar-zin for that fight might not have been a good idea) and I plan to return and try again today. I'm still early in the game and can only do a max of 3 people in my party. Before that I had my party separated into 2 unions: Rush and Oakes in one union and Baulson by himself in another union. I didn't think I would need to grind or farm yet because all the fights up to that point were pretty easy as long as I initiated combat and didn't do something stupid, but that boss fight changed all that. I'm going to try putting Rush Baulson and Oakes into a single union. I'll lose flexibility and with one less union it means I'll get flanked more, but having the characters separated into 2 unions made them way too fragile for that battle. I fully expect to get my ass handed to me, even with the stronger single union and Rush having a combat tabar-zin, but I should hopefully have a better shot at it.

The racing is awesome. It's like power drifting the entire time. Really great on my pig mount. Monsters on ice is awesome. It is indeed more difficult for melee, but I don't care, it's hilarious. The only thing I really want out of this festival is the mimic companion, and I'll get that easily with minimal effort.

Wait, how is it that they're having a Winter Festival? I thought it was Never Winter.

Sweet! How does it work? Is it like a Mario Kart deal? Are there power ups? Is there a blue shell?

No, pre-apocalyptic. Where you don't know if there's gonna be a post-apocalypse. To be specific, I was thinking of Mass Effect, that type of thing. Mass Effect had a cool universe but it was screwed from the very beginning, and after the last game they either have to go back in time or create a whole new setting for the next one. One that's way less cool than the one they started with because the mass effect relays are ancient history now, so no more space adventures, I guess. Okay. In that case put me in the please no "all is lost" setting camp.

What's an "all is lost" setting? Post-apocalyptic?

Well, "This game would really have benefited from less fighting" applies to at least 80% of RPGs, in my opinion. I'm sure it will wear on me eventually, but for now I'm loving the heck out of the combat. A lot of it isn't particularly well explained in the game, though I've found some rather lengthy and excellent guides and wikis that go into how the combat systems work and why things happen and also the upgrading system. I'm not trying to exploit the system to its fullest and min-max all my characters, but it helps to understand how things work.

And the sale has begun. A bunch of the usual suspects, plus Metal Gear Rising Rerererevengeanceretributionwrathreprisal at 33% off. I'm holing out for Cognition and Drakensang 1 at 75% off. I'll try not to let GabeN Claus rope me into buying anything else.

The setting, dialogue, and orcs and ogres with beefy sideburns wearing stylish as **** suits? The godawful combat, (lack of) balance, and insane difficulty spikes? Works for me.

Agreed. The story left a lot to be desired and the boss fights were an abomination (thankfully they were few and rather far between). My other complaint is that the way the game was structured, it encouraged redundancy to maximize exp gain. For example, sneaking into a place through a vent, then going back and hacking a computer to "gain entrance" to the same place which you've already entered, then going back and beating up the guards to the same place. Still, that can be easily enough avoided by simply choosing not to exploit the system. Outside of those gripes, I found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable game.

Yes it does. Who knows if it will actually deliver. I just realized that when I copy & pasted the article from Kotaku, it copied "SEXPAND" where the images were in the article.

I gotta say, I'm really enjoying The Last Remnant so far. One thing that I really like about jRPGs and Japanese games in general is not constantly conforming to Tolkien-esque races and tropes. Sure, jRPGs have their own set of tropes, but at least I don't have to play yet another ****ing game with elves and dwarves and goblins (I'll never get tired of orcs, though, because orcs are awesome). In particular, I really like the Qsiti: D'aww! Fighting is something I rarely really enjoy in RPGs. It's something I generally just put up with so I can get back to exploring and story. So when a game comes along where I actually look forward to battles, you know they did something right. The combat system in The Last Remnant is ****ing boss! There is some pretty deep and gratifying strategic goodness in there. I haven't figured out everything yet since not everything is fully explained in the game itself (I'm sure there's a wiki somewhere I ought to read, and will), but now that I'm starting to get the hang of it, it's really fun, especially when you have large scale battles with large numbers of units and unions.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance coming to PC & nex-gen consoles in 2015 So, Mount & Blade with purrrrdy graphics and an actual story? Yes, please.

What a terrible terrible blunder by these folks. Have they learned nothing? You don't announce Chris Avellone from the get go, you put him in as a stretch goal.

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is pretty doggone good. I didn't list it because I didn't back it, I bought it when it released. Really fun platformer. I love how the world changes when you switch from cute to punk Giana, and vice versa, and the nice touch of how the music changes along with it. Little things like that make a big impact on the enjoyment of a game.

How much for just the lens flare?