Gamers unite -HQ

[The Doctor]

I'll distract myself from these ruinous spoilers by saying: damn, Metal Gear Solid V is good. Shame about Quiet, who's nothing more than embrassing. It's so clever in every other area, astronomically so, that it's hard to believe it could be so dumb.

While I'm not going to defend a lot of things about V and Quiet, I actually rather liked her superpower, thought it was a really cool idea and tied in nicely with the series lore. I also enjoyed her character and arc. Of course, things like the rain dance and other bits were pretty bad. It'd be a lot less eye-rolling if V was anywhere near as sexy as the other games in the series. But hey, at least Kojima managed to finally achieve his dream of full on naked male ass. Needed more of it, really.

My main issue with V is that its episodic style really didn't lend itself well to the story it was telling outside of one very specific theme which was brilliantly handled. I really don't want to go into full detail (I have a lot of thoughts and most of them are astoundingly spoilery) but I will say that it was my second-place GOTY of 2015, tying with Super Mario Maker and just behind Undertale.

 

[Rayne]

Anyone considering picking up UFC 2 ?? I want it to be good, because I want to get it, but the lack of details and preview articles is deeply concerning.


If you are trotting out all these new great systems, why not let reveiwers have some stick time with them just to see how they work?

While anyone who currently has a copy is either in in-house beta or a reviewer who's under release date embargo, word round the campfire is that EA's retuning a lot of those systems in response to the semi-public beta they just had.

 

[Ty Burna]

Hearthstone and Diablo 3 are my daily grinders in between work and classes. Picked up the Firaxis Humble Bundle a bit ago and haven't got around to doing more than installing XCOM, but I'll get to it soon.

D3 huh? May need to pick up Reaper of Souls and get back into it. I assume you're on PC for that?

 

[Uncle Sam]

I hear the curation on Super Mario Maker has improved vastly, so I'll have to drop back in at some point.

When I hear people talk about UFC 2, all I can think of is this video (which I think was stolen from its original creator):

[youtube]AOOT_3U4rZM[/youtube]

 

[DirtyJosé]

D3 huh? May need to pick up Reaper of Souls and get back into it. I assume you're on PC for that?

Yeah, I only just picked up RoS myself to keep up with my brother and some friends.

 

[Rayne]

An eerily precise reenactment, complete with dialogue, of my first twenty-five or so fights against Sans in Undertale. I either need a fourteen year-old with his twitch reflexes still intact, or a time machine to go back to when I could beat Mike Tyson. Because fuck this guy.

[youtube]ByJNEcL-5Qw[/youtube]

Perhaps the worst part is looking up the actual fight on the Youtube, then realizing my best attempt might have gotten me a quarter of the way through. I might try something easier, like a blindfolded Dark Souls run.

 

[M]

I couldn't bring myself to go through the genocide route after the pacifist route, that's too evil for me to handle.

 

[Rayne]

I couldn't bring myself to go through the genocide route after the pacifist route, that's too evil for me to handle.

Yeah, don't. You're gonna have a bad time.

Now I see why there's so much Undertale memery on the interwebz. People get stuck here and create memes to deal with it.

 

[The Doctor]

Aw man guys, throwing around spoilers like that...why.

UNDERTALE SPOILERS

Spoiler

Well, if it's out in the open, that fight is fucking brilliant. Took me forever but easily in my all-time favorite boss fights now. You feel so smart, too. I mean you also feel completely horrible especially if the character is your favorite, like he was to me. The whole path is fucking genius because you feel so bad and it does so many little things that just make you want to stop playing but you have to out of morbid curiosity and then it just brutally destroys you for doing so. Hell, even if you watch it it destroys you for not having the guts to do it yourself. It's amazing.

 

[Rayne]

Eh, I didn't think it was TOO much of a spoiler; being told you can kill anything and everything was a marketing point for the game.

That being said:

Spoiler

I've spent the whole fucking day on that fight, and yes, Sans is definitely the best character in the whole game. I initially thought that the fight was just a giant troll; you get to the end of the Genocide route and encounter an actually unbeatable boss. Which would be about par for the course with this game.

That being said, from watching the fight I now know I'm only three fight actions away. I've avoided looking at the ending, but there's no way this ends happily.

 

[Hyorinmaru]

My wife bought me both Skyrim and Diablo III today as a Valentines day gift. Skyrim is a rebuy because I lost my original copy but Diablo III I have never played so I'm excited to see where it picks up after Diablo II

 

[M]

Papyrus > Sans
That's not just because I can play the Bonetrousle on guitar much better than Megalovania, but I'll be damned if it isn't an influence.

 

[Hyorinmaru]

I've only been playing a little bit but I'm loving this game.

I'm definitely buying RoS when I can afford it

 

[JGlass]

I just beat XCom 2... anybody want to talk to me about it?

No? Still talking about Undertale? That's cool, I heard it's a good game.

I'll just go back to sitting in the corner. Alone.

 

[Ty Burna]

I just beat XCom 2... anybody want to talk to me about it?

No? Still talking about Undertale? That's cool, I heard it's a good game.

I'll just go back to sitting in the corner. Alone.

I don't get the big deal for Undertale and I'm an RPG fan.

Speaking of XCOM, J if you like that series you should check out Shadowrun: Hong Kong. Similar tactical combat, not quite as pretty as XCOM 2, but still a ton of fun in a cyberpunk atmosphere.

 

[M]

I don't get the big deal for Undertale and I'm an RPG fan.

Maybe that's because it's not an RPG?

 

[Ty Burna]

Maybe that's because it's not an RPG?

Fuck if I know I'm just going off the Steam page where it says it's an RPG where you don't have to kill anything sooooooo.

I just have no interest in it I guess. It seems more of a parody of the very RPG nomenclature I grew up on so perhaps I'm just not all that excited about that idea.

Maybe one day I'll check it out and maybe I'll change my mind on it, but my backlog is massive enough as it is so it'd be a waste to add a game I have no interest in to it.

 

[justinsayne]

Maybe that's because it's not an RPG?

Uhh... according to Undertale's official website (http://undertale.com/about.htm), it's an RPG.

 

[M]

Fuck if I know I'm just going off the Steam page where it says it's an RPG where you don't have to kill anything sooooooo.

I just have no interest in it I guess. It seems more of a parody of the very RPG nomenclature I grew up on so perhaps I'm just not all that excited about that idea.

Maybe one day I'll check it out and maybe I'll change my mind on it, but my backlog is massive enough as it is so it'd be a waste to add a game I have no interest in to it.

I was just going off you saying you like RPGs so i assumed you'd heard how it's not really an RPG and that was what was turning you off it.

 

[Rayne]

I thought Undertale was stupid for the first hour I played it, wondered why people were raving about this game, and briefly considered getting the Steam refund for it.

Then something happened, and I was very much "OOOhhhhhhhhhh....." It presents a very simple facade, but there a LOT more going on here than is at first apparent, and the rabbit hole only keeps getting deeper.

 

[The Doctor]

I connected with the humor pretty much instantly and as Mother 3 is one of my favorite games I very much appreciated the influence that game has very obviously had on Toby Fox. It's easy to look at it and think it doesn't seem that interesting at first - I first started playing, set it down for a few weeks, and came back - but the more you uncover, the better it gets, and I really love all the little things it plays with and how incredibly well-programmed it is. The real shine of the game isn't in its humor.

In other games-I-have-been-playing news, Xenoblade Chronicles X is gorgeous and I wish I had more time to sit and play it through. Same with Yoshi's Wooly World. Of course, with WWE 2K16 out much of my time has been spent making more CAWs than is strictly healthy.

 

[JGlass]

I don't get the big deal for Undertale and I'm an RPG fan.

Speaking of XCOM, J if you like that series you should check out Shadowrun: Hong Kong. Similar tactical combat, not quite as pretty as XCOM 2, but still a ton of fun in a cyberpunk atmosphere.

The appeal of XCOM for me was never the graphics or the story: it's the tactics and soldier customization. Maybe I'll give it a look, though after plowing through the entirety of XCOM 2 in 5 days, I might need to step away from the laptop for a while... and go back to my PS4 where my staples are waiting for me: NBA 2K16 and Rainbow Six: Siege.

 

[M]

I'm still currently playing the hell out of rocket league. I'm always a little shocked at how much the strategy can change if you step away for a month, suddenly you go from being invincible to almost rookie caliber before working yourself back up and I love it. They added three trippy as fuck maps too which is pretty sweet.

I desperately want to get firewatch, but my backlog goes back to something like a years worth of gaming to just get my ps3 games all done so I guess it'll take a while. Especially since I went out and grabbed the witness off the whim that I didn't want it spoiled, which is how I ended up with Undertale too (thank you Lets Drown Out with Yahtzee and Gabe).

There's not enough hours in the day to do stuff anymore. I can't go for runs, gym, girlfriend, honours, work, actual work, be social, play sport and play video games all at once it's ridiculous! And trust this year to have so many games on the horizon that I would gobble the fuck up if I had the time...

 

[Rayne]

There's not enough hours in the day to do stuff anymore. I can't go for runs, gym, girlfriend, honours, work, actual work, be social, play sport and play video games all at once it's ridiculous! And trust this year to have so many games on the horizon that I would gobble the fuck up if I had the time...

I'm going to be a very sad panda once winter ends, seasonal business picks up with spring again, and my gaming time completely vanishes. I don't think that's what Biggie meant with Mo' Money Mo' Problems, but, yeah.

 

[Rayne]

Papyrus > Sans
That's not just because I can play the Bonetrousle on guitar much better than Megalovania, but I'll be damned if it isn't an influence.

You play guitar and have an interest in geeky RPG's and puzzle games? You may have just found a spot on my cool kid list. It's a very exclusive club.

But as far as the composition goes, uh, wow:

I connected with the humor pretty much instantly and as Mother 3 is one of my favorite games I very much appreciated the influence that game has very obviously had on Toby Fox. It's easy to look at it and think it doesn't seem that interesting at first - I first started playing, set it down for a few weeks, and came back - but the more you uncover, the better it gets, and I really love all the little things it plays with and how incredibly well-programmed it is. The real shine of the game isn't in its humor.

DO NOT OPEN THIS SPOILER IF YOU AREN'T AT LEAST TWO HOURS INTO PLAYING THE GAME. IF YOU DO, DON'T BOTHER BUYING IT BECAUSE IT'S NOW RUINED FOR YOU.

Spoiler

This entire game is a masterclass in conveying emotion. Take the Toriel fight and the immediate aftermath. Prior to fighting Toriel, all monsters could be Spared relatively easily; perform an action, dodge an attack, spare the monster. With Toriel, Acts appear to do nothing, and Spare also appears to have no effect; the player is guided towards trying to Fight a few times to see if they can change the options.

And then one of your hits does way more damage than the others, killing Toriel. She gives you a heartfelt speech about how she was only trying to help you, and crumples to dust. You feel like shit.

And then............... you walk. The next room is a very long corridor with no encounters or anything in it; the floor is shaded in different colors just to remind the player that they're still moving forwards. You've just been screwed over emotionally, and Toby Fox gives you a long time to think about it.

That long walk is perhaps the best example of Undertale's ability to convey emotion in surprisingly subtle ways. After a long hike, you finally reach the end; Flowey mocks you to sum up the 'chapter', and then the title screen hits. Suddenly, NOW you know what this game is about. It's the "oooooooooooohhhhhhhhh" moment I mentioned previously.

This spoiler isn't as bad:

Spoiler

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get my dick stomped on by Sans for another hour or so. He must have killed me at least fifty times by now.