aprettycooldude

So now that Beta 3 is done, the roster and DLC is revealed, and we are approaching the finale of Street Fighter IV's life, what are our thoughts on the Definitive Street Fighter 4 moments? I'd point certainly to Daigo's back-to-back wins at Evo 2009 and 2010, and his whole SFIV career in general; the man never went a year with first place at a major, and despite being knocked out incredibly early at Evo 2014, came back to win just about everything in 2015 save Evo (9th) and Capcom Cup (2nd, and arguably the story of the tournament). What're the odds he takes 1st at Evo this year in SFV? I'd say the Early Days of SFIV - the Sagat era - are worth noting, especially since as the years went on we saw more and more character diversity. There was the brief moment when everyone played Yun when AE came out, but by the end of the game's life, and at the final major tournament (Capcom Cup 2015), we had the top 8 all playing different characters, something I don't think I've ever seen in a fighting game before. POONGKO's existence fills me with joy; the dude has been crazy fun to watch when it comes to aggressive play, and the fact that no one else played Seth seriously before him made it better. I've rooted for him to win Evo every year and I hope he does in SFV. Someday they'll let him rip the shirt off onstage mid-set. Someday. Infiltration maining random is great, and I honestly believe his set against Gamerbee at Evo 2015 is the best Street Fighter match ever to be played. Beats out Evo Moment 37 for me. I don't think I've ever yelled as much. Related, Gamerbee losing in the finals broke my heart Here's to a new game, a new metagame, and a new set of things to complain about (more like Jab Fighter V amirite, needs more combos). Cheers!

The Witness comes out early in the year, setting everyone's GOTY in stone out the gate, so that's cool! 2016 will be great on that note alone

No complete order yet because I haven't really thought this through completely, but my top 3 are set in stone Bloodborne Mortal Kombat X Destiny: The Taken King Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Super Mario Maker Xenoblade Chronicles X Rocket League 3. Splatoon 2. Rock Band 4 1. Undertale

They're adding new stuff actually pretty frequently, and I think I'm ready to jump back in after a month-long break. I still gotta beat King's Fall.

Watched it again last night and came to the conclusion that the third act of this film is essentially Star Wars: The Hubris Awakens - Han thinks he can sway his corrupt super-murderer son back to the Light - Ren thinks he can play games with Finn before getting tagged - Ren assumes he can still go easy on Rey after she beat him earlier - The First Order thinks that blowing up the Republic makes them A-OK to blow up the Resistance, learning nothing from the Empire - Phasma lowers the shields (admittedly at gunpoint) while assuming (and vocalizing) that this is a waste of their time and the Resistance will be crushed - The Resistance thinks they can go after a massive base and not lose half their already tiny fleet Lotta assumptions!

Given that Kylo Ren is prone to acting like a big baby (see: console destroying temper tantrum, getting whiny over Rey being able to resist his mind-reading nonsense and then getting Told by Nazi General), it's not a huge shocker that a driven Rey would be able to win a fight over a distracted Ren. Ren's lightsaber is also inferior to Luke/Anakin's, as evidenced by the rough edges, so you'd imagine that would give Rey (and Finn) some extra help in some of the prolonged clashes. If Rey's saber is even slightly stronger than Ren's, requiring less physical force to push back, she's got a huge headstart, even if Ren's been trained in some capacity. We also don't know how long ago Ren switched to the Dark Side, and it could very much be the case that pulling a hard switch like he did could have resulted in a "downgrade" on the power scale, especially since we know he's still got enough light in him that it bothers him on a day-to-day. Also Rey just flat-out owns, which I am 100% okay with (see also: Ep IV Luke Skywalker, Death Star-destroyer despite having never flown an X-Wing until what, a week ago), so there's that.

So far I've come across two "riddle missions," which I think are the cause of some freak outs. My other Big Frustration is that some board quests will get markers, and others with essentially the same goal will not. Hunt 5 Merciful Dilus in Noctilum, for example, will give you an arrow pointing towards where they tend to spawn. They're easy to find (in the water right at the entrance from Primordia), so this isn't a huge issue, but it's nice, especially for some more random enemies (Spear Insidias, which sit up on a ledge close to a story mission area I barely go to). However if I run "collect 5 cloudy eyeballs from Merciful Dilus in Noctilum," I get zip shit even though I'm going to the exact same place. This is *garbage*, and made worse by the fact that some tyrants only spawn under certain bizarre conditions, so you spend fifteen goddamn minutes in a yellow zone trying to get Edgardo, the Carefree to spawn before you give up.

ooooh which ones? And yeah, they're not. A good chunk of mine are imported. Off the top of my head: Rosalina & Luma, Palutena, DeDeDe - Europe (from n1njasquirrel) Robin (Reflet), Lucina, Ness, Ike, Pit, Wario, Charizard (LIZARDON), Wii Fit Trainer, Meta Knight - Japan All of my Animal Crossing, Splatoon, Yarn Yoshi, and the Toad from the Super Mario line are US. The rest are also US. A lot of the ones I imported were retailer exclusive and/or never reprinted. Rosalina was Target-only, Palutena was Amazon-only, Ness was Gamestop-only. To my knowledge, DeDeDe and Ness still haven't been reprinted in the US.

You'd think! It's not heinously awful, as I tend to just hop in the ol' Giant Robot, throw a level 15 helm with EXP Boost IV that I keep around expressly for this purpose and go wreck shop on level 35s (my MC is 38 right now). Bonus points if I have some quests to grind out for "Kill X Enemy" at the time. That said, it's still back asswards and I wish I could just get on with it. Affinity not carrying over makes 100% sense and should be that way. EXP not carrying over is The Past.

Well, your tag is "Fake Gamer Guy," so it all checks out. I'm curious how they're going to fit two extra characters in there; current space dictates they really only have room for one more in that bottom row, and that extra character will throw everything off. They're going to end up with 59 total slots including random, so there's no way one row doesn't end up weird. 15,15,15,14? My display is going to be a disaster :S

I've gotten the perfects (big ol' PERFECT on the screen with audio cue and all) and had no luck! Maybe the game just hates me And yeah, the party system is *hot-ass garbage* and would be easily improved by something as simple as an additional kiosk option (Party Management?) in the Barracks. If everyone was in one area I'd be less mad, but so far I've got Alexa in the Industrial District, Phog in Commercial, Boze and H.B. in Residential, L, Lao, Gwin, and Irina in Admin, and then Elma and Lin in the Barracks. That's a lot of goddamn running around if I'm trying to level up affinities, and it's made even more frustrating by the fact that experience doesn't carry to non-party members. Nothing like having to put someone in your party for a mission and they're level 18 and can't equip any of the gear you have!

Divisions are a horseshit idea because it's so biased towards Pathfinders and Curators (fun fact: Curators get 5 points per collectible! Get your skell, become a car, and go to town!). I rolled Reclaimer because that seems like the Canon Thing To Do and I'm a sucker for stuff like that, and my BLADE level has ground to a halt since I can't level up my Field Skills enough to do my actual task. I'm sitting a 4 mech/2 bio/3 arch and 80% of what I come across now is tier 3 Bio or tier 4 Arch. Combine that with the fact that I pull in almost no tickets, and some of the "collect x rare drops from y enemy" can get really tedious. I haven't swapped to Curator yet, but I'm thinking about it. Also, I think the Skell Insurance is borked. The game claims that if you nail a perfect on the Soul Challenge after your Skell explodes, it doesn't eat an insurance ticket, and you'll keep your insurance level intact. After two perfects, I can confirm it *sure as hell does* and 400k later I'm now infinitely more cautious. Falling off the cliff in Oblivia also counts as losing your skell so uh, don't try to jump to that island just yet. Also, I can confirm that the city reshuffles and changes after every story chapter. It also adds a whole bunch of affinity quests and other random quests around the city, which are Choice for raising affinity levels for party members you would otherwise never touch (HEY BOZE). You only need to have them in the party for the last section of the quest to get the largest chunk upon completion. I tend to add a bunch of randoms (H.B., Boze, Gwin) to my party before hitting up the board, checking all the quests, accepting any that I already have the collectibles for, writing down the others, not taking them, getting Good Party Members, and then repeating the process. On a related affinity note, has anyone figured out how to trigger Heart To Hearts? I have both Elma and Lin's starters sitting in their respective places, with the game telling me the times and everything, and I cannot for the life of me get them to trigger.

Jan. 6th, but I'm sure I'll post here again. Did I already rearrange that setup to reflect the new character screen post-Cloud YOU BETCHA

I'm loving it, but it's pretty fucking creepy! Smash Hit is great, and responsible for my only real fit of nausea so far (stage 4, I think? The first one where the world spins and you go through it super fast). I actually didn't pick up Darknet, I picked up Viral, which is pretty fun and definitely worth the $5. Soundscape is super awesome, although I wish it wasn't bound to pentatonic scales. I've definitely caught myself jamming out to short riffs I've set up. I say creepy because I had my first real dissociation episode during the "VR Introduction" video of all things (after about 45 minutes of Smash Hit). I fired it up, and when I got to the Tibetan (I think?) dinner, I instinctively reached for something and then promptly yelled (out loud, not internally) "WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY HANDS" Thankfully, this was 3pm, so everyone else who shares the house (upstairs and downstairs neighbors, my roommate) was at work, and no one came running to make sure I hadn't somehow used a hacksaw to remove limbs So it's going well!

Does it take Google Play banana bucks?

Please say "Mission Complete" in the Smash Bros announcer voice Tremendous thanks to n1njasquirrel for the final three: DeDeDe, Palutena, Rosalina

Can confirm these chocolates were delicious as hell. Thanks so much shibboleth! My favs were the bourbon, hazelnut, and lavender. CRAZY GOOD

Got my Giant Robot the other day! Holy cow, I cannot advise getting it fast enough (the quest shows up after Chapter 6). Tons of missions that were seemingly impossible at the recommended level were clearly designed for skells, namely anything with apricas, tenticulas, or other Big Enemies. Binding is a *crucial* mechanic, and also lets you actively recover fuel in combat. I wouldn't be concerned about Arts using fuel as a result; I've been slamming all the 50/100 fuel skills whenever they become available (they don't charge to secondary levels). I've got one that's a scythe blade which takes out most limbs in one hit right now. This game owns. (also did I immediately buy a better one and then paint it up like Eva-01? you betcha)

Mine is arriving today! Definitely gonna pick up Soundscape, Smash Hit, and Darknet ASAP. Is there anyway to download the Oculus app and games beforehand?

Got around to listening to the first episode on the way to work today. It's gonna be an interesting season, to say the least. I'm a little bummed about the subject (Bowe Bergdahl), since I liked that Serial S1 focused on a story that I hadn't heard anything about before. That said, it's still gonna be an interesting season, especially since I'm fascinated by military codes/protocols

I should probably look up a guide for which affinity quests are DLC, huh? I've been chewing through them and avoiding the story (I'll get to Chapter 6 eventually...) because that's how I always play games with sidequests. It's clear I have to break that compulsion because the game is more than happy to just throw more stuff at me every time I finish, and I'm starting to get a little antsy about them skells. Also, the game trying to pretend 100k is "a lot of money" at this point is laughable. I'm sitting on three mil, just waiting to start dumping money into my Gundam/Jehuty/Whatever

So close, and yet so far

As of last night the game said I've spent about 24 hours on it, and I'm too preoccupied running around getting all the party members unlocked to care about the story missions. I had to go to Sylvarum (the second northernmost region) for one, and man, all the regions in this game are so vastly different and beautiful. You have to swim across an ocean of aggro level 34s to get there (they're avoidable), but it's absolutely worth it to take in the sights. It was also the first time I had to drop the difficulty of the game because the level 16 "boss" of the mission was not doable with a party of 3 level 18s and a useless garbage fourth character.

MLG Professional Tip: when you increase your BLADE level and get the opportunity to rank up your field skills, rank up Mechanical to Level 5 ASAP (read each letter, please). You'll get the ability to place every probe right out the gate, which means you won't run into any frustrations when you reach a probe spot and find you can't do anything until Level 3. I'm currently BLADE Rank 4, and I think the most infuriating part of the game so far is when I was Rank 2, made it to some probe spot that I admittedly probably was not supposed to reach without a Skell, and was met with "Requires Rank 5 Mechanical."

How about that Refer-A-Friend garbage? The paid-for emotes were one thing (and fine!), but locking a quest, weapon, speeder, two emblems, and more emotes behind something that is unattainable without getting someone else to pay $60 for something they might not like is *ridiculous*. Having you pay money is one thing. Forcing someone else to is another matter, and I think it's one of the most disgusting things I've seen. Are there any other examples of MMOs doing this? Usually its just mutual EXP buffs and gold or something, right?