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http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/out-of-nowhere-valkyria-chronicles-is-coming-to-pc/1100-5059/ So this is weird. Considering this is one of the few games that it really stung to miss out on by never owning a PS3, this is also not unwelcome.

So i finished the third DLC and i guess i'm done with the add-ons, more or less, because there are a few things where i would have to be much further in the main game progression to take on. That said and done, reflecting back on the add-ons, the second add-on was probably actually the best one overall. Just a very strong, consistently designed area with some interesting challenges and relatively few failings. The third DLC is probably actually the least enjoyable of the three, i'd say. It does some really fun stuff with the Dark Souls story and there are definitely some really entertaining battles, but the spaces have a very bland appearance to them, they're very lacking in detail. This third DLC also has the least creative approach to getting more mileage out of its environments, where rather than winding back through those locations through newly created paths, you sort of flip of a switch and suddenly a bunch of previously inaccessible chests are accessible and you just have to play through the exact same route again. It feels like From was kind of running out of steam by the time they got to this one. While a lot of the mechanics used in the first two DLC's are unique to those DLC's, a lot of the stuff being done in this third one feels like a reprise of ideas from elsewhere in the game. Still, loved playing these DLC's enough that i've gone and started a new playthrough. That thing about needing to get much further into the main progression to do everything in the DLC? Definitely going to do that. Not PVP, exactly, but each of the DLC's has an area that is specifically balanced to only be completable with co-op assistance, sort of a series of Dark Souls raid zones. The first two are honestly kind of lame, but the one in the third DLC is really wild, it's set in a massively wide open area inside of a blinding snow storm. It's a very interesting challenge. I gave it a few tries, but i definitely didn't finish it. Edit: Oh wow, was doing some reading about the DLC and this is a very interesting detail - If you haven't bought the DLC, you can still participate in those co-op zones. You have to track down the areas with the quest starts, and just outside of the locked doors there will be a special spot where you can leave a summon sign and have it appear inside of the DLC area, just outside of the co-op zone, for other players who have bought the DLC. If anybody without the DLC wants to try this, the DLC starts are past the Rotten and Old Iron King primal bonfires, in addition to the Shrine of Winter acting as the start for the third DLC. Give the Shrine of Winter co-op zone a look, it's by far the most interesting of the three. Edit: Correction - the second DLC pack actually has two separate co-op zones.

I don't think it's fair to say that it's a game where you have to grind, I certainly got through most of it without ever just consciously sitting back and leveling my characters. I mean, but it is entirely about those dungeons, that is a very laser focused dungeon crawler. If that's not what somebody wants out of an RPG, EO is not the RPG for them. EO4 was my first EO game, so i'd say that's probably a good starting place. It's definitely not very hand-holdy though, expect to have to pay attention and figure out systems. The subsequent series of remakes the developer is now running through sound like they introduce a lot of character-based story-focused stuff that might be to the taste of somebody looking for a more typical JRPG though.

So i got the DLC and loaded up my NG++ character aaaaand of coouurse the quest starts are deep into the game, well alright... Anyways, kept playing and got to and played through the first DLC area and really, really loved it. The area design of the Sunken King area is some of the strongest in the whole game, i think. (Aside from a few oddities, like an admittedly cool and elaborate bridge-forming puzzle that exists only to reach a kind of not totally necessary bonfire.) I particularly enjoyed the sequence where you are introduced to invulnerable phantoms watching over their sleeping corporeal selves, the game trying to illustrate that by destroying their sleeping forms, you can then harm the invulnerable phantom forms. You are then are subsequently put into a room with more of the aformentioned invulnerable phantoms, but no corporeal forms in sight to attack. First order of business was sniping a witch up on an upper level and then running in and kiting the phantoms away from a ladder to make room for climbing it before they could knock me down. Safe on that second floor, there's another phantom to avoid pulling, another witch to kill, and a switch to shoot with an arrow. Then i just bolted past the phantom and through an opened door not exactly knowing where it was going to take me, and i found myself in a room with narrow walkways, bottomless pits, and three more invulnerable phantoms. The sleeping bodies i was looking for were also all lined up along the walls. Running around frantically with four of these giant phantoms chasing me as i smashed the sleeping forms one by one was kind of amazing. By the time i was done, two of the phantoms had fallen off the walkways into the pits and the other two were fairly easy to dispatch, as were the other phantoms still out in the main area. The whole sequence seemed to just play out beautifully though, trying to keep up with this barely controlled chaos. I mean, and that DLC keeps changing things up, you cycle through like a half-dozen distinctly different kinds of scenario before that thing is over. Those bosses though... The dragon is a good fight, it has some peculiar resistances and an absolutely miserable corrosive affect against melee weapons, but it's an entirely new fight and it's largely well executed. The other two fights just seemed kind of lazy, with one literally just being a trio of generic NPC's with tons of health, and the other having a fairly banal set of attacks while also repurposing enemies from elsewhere in the game as summons. (Including Velstadt for whatever reason.) Anyways, I'm going through the second DLC right now, nothing's clicked quite the same way so far, but it's still a very good piece of content and i understand its boss fights are quite excellent. It struck me that these areas are also just absolutely enormous, several times as large as any other individual area in the game, and actually evoking some of what i loved about the first Dark Souls and felt was missing in this sequel, the way you're presented with views that tease and hint at where you're going while also showing you where you've come from. They feel like absolutely monumental, cohesive environments. On another point however, if you're of the opinion that Dark Souls 2 has too much focus on humanoid enemies, these DLCs definitely don't seem to shift away from that. I understand people are really thrilled with the third DLC, so i'm definitely looking forward to getting to that, but from what i've played so far, it feels like From has again done right by the DLC model. The add-on for DS1 was fantastic, and these seem to be too. I've also had a few genuine player invasions occur since i started playing again, but i haven't died yet, so i feel pretty good about that. One invasion occured just as i had spawned into an area, so with a world state full of freshly spawned enemies, of course i immediately used a Seed of the Tree of Giants. It took only about 20 seconds for the invader to die, and i never even saw the dude. Dark Souls (2) is GREAT. Edit: I'm into the 3rd DLC and i'm still finding it really great, From really went above and beyond with these add-ons. These areas are enormous and challenging, though i still think the area design is cleverest in the first DLC. I'm really loving the cheekily elaborate AI scripting they give to the NPC invasions that occur within the DLC areas. For example, one attempts to camoflauge itself amongst some barrels and backstab you as you walk past, while another attempts to ambush you, and when it fails and its health falls low, it flees into a very hostile area and waits next to some powerful enemies. From's created scripted challenges built around the same kind of dirty tricks that are common in the online metagame, i was quite amused with that. The bosses have just been absolutely brutal though, they've improved since the first DLC, but i'm still just getting wrecked. I think i have to chalk that up to these being bosses balanced for the endgame while i'm playing on an NG++ character and have no prior experience with them. Still, these are great add-ons. I really liked Dark Souls 2 to start, i wasn't as disappointed with it as some people were, but i'm thrilled to come back to it and have such fleshed out add-ons.

Nintendo more or less just confirmed DLC characters for Smash 4 in their latest NIntendo Direct. MewTwo will be the first one, assuming they do more, and will be free to owners of both versions.

Having played a handful of monochromatic Myst-precursors oh so many years ago, seeing that aesthetic being done in real-time is just destroying my brain, i absolutely love the look of it.

So generally it doesn't seem like it's broken down in a ton of hacking or anything? No flagrantly impossible behaviors? That's good to hear, i guess. I really enjoyed the PVP while i was playing and managed to handle myself pretty well most of the time, so that in itself wasn't really an issue. (I probably won more fights than i lost, at the very least.) What about more subtle things like people being way too powerful and well equipped for the the soul memory range you're matching into? That was a thing people seemed really worried about happening last i played.

Holy shit, that is absolutely wild. I bet there's a hell of a story behind this game. What a narrowly-avoided clusterfuck that is, except... Well, i've definitely known people who play games, but just never hook up their consoles to the internet.

Well, For Glory 1v1 has been rather humbling, i'm sitting at around a 30-35% win rate after over a hundred fights. Also, i am terrible at Smash. Edit: Also, after dozens of hours with the game, i've realized that if you customize a character from the custom character option in the smash run menu, you are given extra customization options that pertain exclusively to smash run, options that - even on presets that have been set up with those extra options - will appear invisible in the normal character customization menu. So that's some dumb UI, but having goofy screen-clearing supers makes smash run way more entertaining.

My mastadon halbred tended to degrade at an alarming rate when faced with larger swarms of enemies, but i always had a back-up weapon in another equipment slot, so it never really ended up being an issue. Also, i guess all the DLC is out, is it? Worth playing? Should i dive back in? Can i look forward to being ganked horribly by hackers? Did the multiplayer ever devolve into that?

Prime 3 goes on for a fairly long while, but you could probably finish S&P2 pretty quickly. It's honestly quite a long game for an arcade shooter, but it's still only a handful of sessions to get through. S&P2 is goddamned great though, it broke my heart that so few people played it.

With regards to Alan Wake: It's not 100% always the case, but If the trees start looking all swimmy and weird and it doesn't seem like you're inside of a scripted boss/survival encounter, you should definitely just start running. Enemies will usually spawn infinitely under those circumstances, so if you're trying to stand your ground in those situations, that's why you're low on ammo all the time. In terms of survival horror, ammo isn't really that scarce in Alan Wake, aside from restrictive carry limits. If you keep your eyes open for supplies, you really shouldn't have any trouble. It seems like Alan Wake has been fairly hit or miss with a lot of people, but for me it ended up being one of my favorite games of its year, so i'd personally encourage giving it another shot. (Also, if you have a 360 pad handy, I think the game plays better on a gamepad. You can do things like half-press the left trigger to aim without wasting flashlight power, only fully pressing the trigger down when your flashlight is directly on top of an enemy. You can similarly half-press the right trigger to raise and aim your gun without firing and without going into the zoom and slow walk that the left trigger causes. Dodging attacks also seems to be easier on the gamepad for no particularly evident reason.)

Except the way i've heard it is that if you have a super widescreen monitor of the aspect ratio it is theoretically trying to display in, you apparently not only end up with the bars at the top and bottom, but bars on the sides too. I think i remember hearing about some similar issues with the earliest PC port for RE4, because that game also did a similar kind of faux-letterboxing thing.

Of the Mario RPG's i've played, Superstar Saga definitely stands out as my personal favorite, it's a fantastic game.

We're of a similar mind on this, then. Anybody want to do some matches over the weekend then? What time would be good? I'm on pacific time, which probably makes things rather limiting for european folk. Intercontinental connections might also make the possibiliy of a low-latency fight pretty tenuous for anything other than a 1v1.

I don't know, but they've been really shitty at scheduling these interruptions. Their multiplayer matchmaking was already down for four hours last sunday, and it started at 6pm pacific.

So who all has it right now? Should we organize a time to do some games? If we end up with more than four people, or people that want to do itemless FD 1v1's, we could probably also organize into different lobbies with relative ease as long as we're all set up on eachother's friends lists. (Also worth pointing out that Nintendo has confirmed that there will be scheduled service interruptions all along next week.) Edit: It's also worth clarifying whether or not people would want to allow customized characters, which are usable in online friends matches, the toggle for it is there. (Or, for that matter, whether Mii characters should be considered to be allowed. If you disable custom characters, Miis can still come in with their custom movesets, just not their stat-boosting items. Whereas normal characters can't use either if the custom characters toggle is off.) Personally, i'm against custom characters, but i'm fine with the Miis. (The brawler Mii is ridiculous though.)

The notion that a sequel Valve is pressured into making would be the sequel fans want to play is another part of the ongoing HL3 meme that always feels particularly bewildering to me. Make no mistake though, if Valve gets around to finally announcing Half-Life 3, i will lose my goddamned mind.

The first Fire Emblem game i ever played, i made the scrub mistake of letting my tanks soak up all the experience, so by the time i got to the last few levels my army was just woefully inadequate for dealing with the challenges being thrown at me. So i restarted the entire game, started over from scratch, replayed the whole thing and beat it. FEA gives you significantly more wiggle room than that, being able to grind out random battles and other similar things, or allowing you to play with the permadeath disabled if you so choose. (Something i'm of two minds about, let's just say i don't think FEA is perfectly suited to either option.) FEA is so goddamned good though.

Regarding it feeling like a journey, i think it's that it has so many areas that are present to serve as connective tissue between what are seemingly meant to be the major areas in the game. Like the one stretch in the game where the level in a downed spaceship is set up by first fighting your way up to it through its trail of wreckage. There's also the long stretch where you're fighting to and up through the "sunspire" to reach the Nali city on the floating island, a stretch of the game filled with strong level visuals both immediate and distant to establish this path through the game's environments. (If you're paying attention to diary logs left by other survivors, you've even had had multiple levels of people talking about the sunspire before you ever see it for yourself.) There are even completely optional side areas in many Unreal levels as well, Nali villages you can take a swerve to go explore or completely skip, it reminds me of the road sections of Half-Life 2 which were just filthy with random side areas to poke through. (Which i know a lot of people find intolerable, but for me, they were the best parts of that game.) You know, but on the other hand, you're absolutely right about there being some terrible labyrinth-like levels in Unreal that have just absolutely no immediate sense of flow. There are levels in that game that i have never not gotten lost in. Still, that kind of connective context spread out over multiple levels which are designed to flow relatively seamlessly into eachother seemed incredibly novel when Unreal came out. Half-Life didn't come out until later that same year, but it's often something people attribute as part of that game's innovations. With regards to that, I think Half-Life's true innovation lies in how, for the lack of a better word, "cinematic" and orchestrated it feels. Not just in the way it uses scripted sequences to seamlessly convey story, but also - as you described - the way it sets up so many fights with small scripted scenes which give you a chance to react to the changing situation while also making its world feel incredibly alive. (In this way, i think Half-Life might be, for better or worse, the precursor to the Modern Warfares of the world. Though, certainly, one could argue those kinds of games are emulating those things without understanding why they were so good in Half-Life.)

Brutal Legend always struck me as a game that doesn't know what it wants to be, it seems totally insane that it has this vastly elaborate strategy game component to it that is virtually unexplored, multiple fleshed out factions that each might show up only twice if even once. It's not limited to that though, because there are areas in the back half of the game that are as big and as elaborate as those in the first half, but are just burned through at an insane pace, it comes across as extremely rushed. I do really like Brutal Legend, but holy shit, what a weird game.

I apparently do have BigJKO on my friend's list, then.

What's your friend code? What name do you use on the 3DS? I added a bunch of people from here some time back, but everybody uses different names so i have no idea who's who.

Would anybody here be interested in organizing some matches? Could be an awful mess, might be tons of fun. The netcode in the game is so unpredictable, it could end up either way.

I am also just super ambivalent towards their games. I'm glad somebody enjoys their stuff and that they're able to keep doing what they do, because the DF guys seem like awesome dudes and their games are super stylish and charming, but nobody will ever convince me that Costume Quest is a good game. The closest i've come to really loving a Double Fine game was Trenched, and that game still has big frustrating problems. (Oh... Oh, sorry... "Iron Brigade".)