Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

[Blossom]

I can see how you can want players to be able to play both sides from one game copy, but the solution to that is to let you play both fucking stories straight out. It's already on the cartridge.

They've been pretty open about which side is which. I mean....you thought the game called "Conquest" with all the fantasy European people on the cover was about defending a wronged not-Japan?

I would never expect a game I paid good money for to have half of its content locked behind a paywall, no.

[Brantly B.]

What the hell is it with the 3DS and shady sales tactics? I never saw any of this pusher-rabbit/Rusty/picrite/hostage-savegame bullshit on the Wii U. The worst thing they've got on the console is amiibo, and that's a shared disease.

[MarsDragon]

I can see how you can want players to be able to play both sides from one game copy, but the solution to that is to let you play both fucking stories straight out. It's already on the cartridge.

They've been pretty open about which side is which. I mean....you thought the game called "Conquest" with all the fantasy European people on the cover was about defending a wronged not-Japan?

I would never expect a game I paid good money for to have half of its content locked behind a paywall, no.

....they said, from the beginning, that it was two separate games that were linked. Did you get mad your copy of Pokemon Red didn't include Pokemon Green? I mean, you paid good money for it!

I guess I can sort of understand being annoyed about the choice and clearly they should've just railroaded you, but Nintendo has been really open about how this latest FE was two linked games and you could buy one or both (and there's a third campaign) and there was this big choice and everything so I'm just wondering how Mothra managed to miss literally all of that when it's been front-and-centre since the first announcement.

EDIT: Also, both stories probably aren't on the same cart. And Mothra downloaded the digital version, so that argument makes even LESS sense.

[Mothra]

I got the digital version of Conquest, since I heard that was the most enjoyable of the two. Conquest and Birthright have the exact same story for the first hour of the game, up until that choice you have to make, the more appealing of which gets you stuck in front of a paywall (they make you save after you've made your choice).

Re-did the story today, and sided with the guys whose leader is, I shit you not, this guy:



And MAN they are guilt-tripping me hard on this. Like, my character cannot come up with a reason that would explain why he didn't side with not-Japan.

Anyways, the whole thing was annoying. Game itself is fun though, iffy story aside. I really like how battles control, and how quickly things resolve.

[Blossom]

....they said, from the beginning, that it was two separate games that were linked. Did you get mad your copy of Pokemon Red didn't include Pokemon Green? I mean, you paid good money for it!

Because Red and Green are 99% the same game with just some differences in which pokemon are where. Conquest and Birthright apparently share all of 1 hour of content.

I guess I can sort of understand being annoyed about the choice and clearly they should've just railroaded you, but Nintendo has been really open about how this latest FE was two linked games and you could buy one or both (and there's a third campaign) and there was this big choice and everything so I'm just wondering how Mothra managed to miss literally all of that when it's been front-and-centre since the first announcement.

Not everybody pays rapt attention to all of the marketing for a game, and there being a big marketing push about selling you half the game so you need to buy it twice doesn't suddenly excuse it. A publicized ratfuck isn't somehow not a ratfuck.

[beatbandito]

....they said, from the beginning, that it was two separate games that were linked. Did you get mad your copy of Pokemon Red didn't include Pokemon Green? I mean, you paid good money for it!

Yeah it was pretty annoying when I got Pokemon Red, picked Squirtle, then when I got to Brock he was like "oh no you found my weakness, pick up your copy of Pokemon Blue today to fight me with him!" Then booted me to the menu.

[Thad]

I'm willing to grant some Hanlon's Razor benefit of the doubt here, given that I had to replay the first 45 minutes of the last Fire Emblem because the game did not adequately explain the difference between the difficulty settings or allow me to change them once I'd started.

(No, I had never played a Fire Emblem game before. If you expect the only people buying your game to be existing customers and/or people who have been paying attention to gaming news sites to find out how the game works, you're doing it wrong.)

I don't think the Pokemon Red/Blue analogy is quite apt here; I might even be willing to accept it as something more akin to Oracles/Seasons. But Seasons didn't get you an hour into the game and then ask you to make a choice, without explaining that if you chose wrong you'd have to go buy Ages, and then not let you revert the choice.

Course, whether it's like Oracles/Seasons at all largely depends on just how much content is shared between the two games. Maybe Tactics Ogre is the better point of comparison, and Tactics Ogre didn't make you pay extra to make a different choice at the end of the first chapter, and then ransom you back to the title screen if you decided you didn't really want to murder all those civilians.

Another way of putting it: I'm skeptical of this way of distributing the game, but under the right circumstances I could be convinced that there's enough content to justify the double-dip.

But I'm not simply skeptical of the execution; the execution is bullshit. "Didn't you read the news sites?" is not a defense of giving a customer a choice between spending $20 and restarting the game from the beginning. That's fucking indefensible. It would be indefensible even if there were a bright red screen that said "WARNING: IF YOU PICK THIS OPTION YOU WILL HAVE TO SPEND $20 AND YOU CAN'T GO BACK." It's just plain bad design. There should not be a save point after a decision that locks you inescapably into spending actual dollars to continue playing the game. It is, at the absolute best, a really poor design choice, and at worst, an intentional bit of trickery expressly intended to cheat customers into spending more money than they intended to.

[Brantly B.]

If it were me I'd have picked the obviously incompatible choice just to see what happens.

I had a tentative interest in this series before. Now I don't.

[Mothra]

I'm further along in the game now, and as far as turn-based strategy goes, it's really damn good. The first few missions I've been on since that split have been brutal, in a really fun way. Nothing seems overpowered, units have to work together, I'm constantly pushed to the brink of failure, and the battle animations are real satisfying. As a game, it's fun, and I'm mighty happy Intelligent Systems hasn't lost their touch.

The story is really not great so far, which is mostly what's bugging me. It sticks in my brain how everyone in the game is vocally surprised and baffled that my guy did something so out-of-character as to side with the empire that very recently tried to kill him. The ethereal realize-your-dragon-destiny priestess lady from the beginning of the game met me briefly on a bridge to say she couldn't bring herself to follow me, then once I'd gone back to the emperor himself, I shit you not, he was noticeably at a loss for words that I returned. It feels like I broke the game. Anyways he sends me on a suicide mission next, then once I (but not my allies) leave to the room, he laughs to himself about how sure he is that I'll be dead and how perfect a plan this is, which my ally stands and watches, noting to himself that perhaps his emperor really IS kind of evil.

Anyways beyond that, a pretty jarring mascot character appeared who obliterates all seriousness in any situation she's aparty to, which is odd. I haven't played a Fire Emblem game in a while, so maybe this is normal! I was expecting something more in the vein of Tactics Ogre. The characters themselves are really hit or miss, but I like this hot-blooded combat maid you have on your team, and a knight that is straight-up medieval The Tick. That guy is a constant delight.

[Brantly B.]

Miitomo in a nutshell.

[Mongrel]

Been Skyrim-ing so I can waste vast tracts of time. Came across this.



It's old of course, but holy shit, Starr and I were just crying. This is a scream. XD

[Sharkey]

Stellaris



Nah. I got as far as naming my leader Space Hitler and decided I'm not really feeling that. I'll probably add them to a custom game as a pain in the ass, though. Probably going to go with one of those Iain M. Banks style interstellar anarchist utopia things. Or maybe a materialistic oligarchy run by scientists.

[Sharkey]

I went with all of the above.

The United Sanctimonious Interstellar Commonality of Space Otters has been pretty steadily conquering the universe through science, passive aggression, and general cuddliness. It was a bit touch and go during the cold war with the religious fanatic molluscan empire, probably not least because they were a pack of irritating, collectivist god-botherers that looked like food. Luckily the Space Otter Science Police managed to stumble upon a number of abandoned and previously un-ottered Precursor battle cruisers before the inevitable conflict. The Molluscan's desperate invasion of the Otter homeworld of Cracking Rock in the Clambake system met a predictable and delicious end.

[Sharkey]

Science Director Sharkey of the United Sanctimonious Interstellar Commonality of Space Otters died today, halfway through his second fifty-year term of office. In less than a century he expanded the horizons of otterkind beyond a single world to encompass fully a third of the galaxy. His legacy is a people born to crack shells amongst the stars. Still, the future before us is uncertain. Under-funded and under-ottered colonies span all of known space, but remain precarious and vulnerable to crunchy new alien threats. The peoples of the once great and suicidally beligerant molluscan empire are scattered throughout our worlds and it will take generations for them to shrug off the shackles of their authoritarian religion and peacefully integrate themselves, if they aren't accidentally eaten first.

New challenges present new opportunities, and we have already made new friends across the sea of stars. We've met fellow individualist utopians who also happen to be fungoid spiders which taste terrible. Fellow xenophilic explorers who aren't afraid of anything because they're weird turtle people with crazy thick shells and it's barely worth the trouble to get at their meat. Together we will prise open the shell of the galaxy, devour its bounty, and playfully toss about its inedible pearls of ignorance. Oh, the scampering we shall do.

Scientia Mustilidae Vinces

[Mongrel]

Wouldn't that be Lutrinae and not Mustelidae?

LERN 2 FURRY >:3

[Sharkey]

I was being inclusive of other weasels, badgers, martins, wolverines and whateverthefuck else. Fuckin racist.

[Sharkey]

Elite is still the best game to play if you want to get a book read at the same time, but they went and added dune buggies a while ago. Now it's a back and forth between



and



I put together an exploration fit Asp and packed it with landing bays full of moon jumpers. If I'm going to go exploring I am going to redneck the fuck out of everything along the way. Swindle gave me a Gear for my birthday and if nothing else it's great for Dukes of Hazzard shit in Elite. Utterly pointless Dukes of Hazzard shit, but that's redundant. Meanwhile, everything else I try to do with any kind of VR makes me want to throw up. Backflips in a space jeep in near zero G? For some reason my reptile brain is fine with that.



That ship actually looks fucking huge in stereo. I named her "Last Chance IV" because I blew up two and the last one committed suicide. But only in headcanon because the fucking game still doesn't let you actually name ships. They're busy adding £7 ricer kits and paint jobs. Silver lining: I guess those are cheaper now?

On the way to assfuck nowhere I scanned a system with a probably G type star and a promising number of planets. You'd expect a kind of radar ping or something when you do that, but it's more of a Mass Effect Reaper/Every Movie Trailer Ever noise for no real reason other than to alarm my dog even though she's heard it literally thousands of times by now. So for me at this point playing this game is 5% going BWAAAAAAAARRRRMMMM at rocks, 93% reading a book, and 2% consoling a dog who is either freaked out at the BWAAAAAARRRRMM sounds, or upset that I occasionally put a glorified Viewmaster on my head and then spastically twist around as though I'm tracking an invisible bug. Which I'm sure, in her judgment, makes me basically just another fucking cat.



This system is like the overwhelming majority in that it's mostly shitty gas giants and shitty ice rocks. The only remotely remarkable thing about it is that one of its shitty, bug infested fart planets has a single airless moon with 0.09 surface Gs, and that moon has a single fuckoff big mountain on it that reaches nearly to orbit. Additionally, the previous guy who visited the system was named "Rebel Yell." A name like that is the hallmark of a certain sort of asshole, and at the absolute least I would have expected him to have an eye for good places to get oneself killed and a bed full of ATVs to speed the process. He somehow managed not to notice this moon, because it's pretty much made for killing yourself doing wicked ramps.

So yeah, hold my beer a minute. I'm going to land on that mountain and see if I can't make a moon buggy flip around the world.



The mountain turns out to have two peaks a couple kilometers apart that you can easily jump a space car between with max engines and careful boosting, but more often spiraling, flipping, and yelling.



Despite my way-too-drunk-to-be-best efforts, I haven't managed to propel myself completely around the whole damned rock. I think I'll have to find a smaller moon with a higher mountain and also more booze. What's weird is that your thrusters automatically disable if you get too close to your ship. Ostensibly this is to keep players from jumping on top of them. Which is kind of pointless when you have damn near weightless moons all over the place.



Took a couple tries to get the hop right. I've had a few, sue me. I'd like to think millennia from now some alien will come across these tracks and either put them on an album cover or rightly chalk them up to random redneck bullshit.

Anyway I rate this game infinity fucks out of fuck you.

[beatbandito]

Sharkey if all you play is space sims the government will eventually catch on that you're an alien trying to learn how to get home.

[Z%rø]

I've been playing Stellaris as well. Mostly using Robots-as-a-race mod.



Unfortunately it's a wee bit unbalanced and it's possible to spiral out into an unstoppable juggernaut of economic and scientific power if you play their strengths. Because of the terrible Warscore system, I've had to take apart the two big alliances 4-8 planets at a time. I got bored of doing that eventually, because after you make peace there is a 5 year period where you can't attack.

Also this is after I solved the extra-galactic threat. However first I attempted to cage them on a world and build fortresses around it, but due to the way it spawns units they overwhelmed the defenses and had to be purged from the galaxy anyway.

[Sharkey]

Yeah, holy shit does Stellaris hit a boring wall at mid game. Especially if you're playing one of those empires that gradually, mostly non-violently assimilates everyone because you've got coca cola and blue jeans. I hear they're intent on adding more stuff to do mid game but at the moment it's a grind.

Speaking of grinds, I'm almost certain Elite is some kind of Last Starfighter-esque alien test, not to find combat pilots, but misanthropes who get off spending months in fuckoff nowhere looking at space rocks and sometimes doing sweet flips off them and exploding. If I needed a secret program to find the best monkey brains to put in jars and install in probe droids, this is exactly how I'd go about doing it.