The Video Game Thread

[Aoret]

Okay, I'll bite, since we're indulging in this amazing troll tangent.

I have no idea what a Kanto Classic is, and I haven't touched the franchise since Red/Blue/Yellow, so this likely doesn't actually apply. That said, I'm pretty sure the most effective strategy for original 151 battles is a team of 3-4 Starmie's with maxed out PP up items applied to them spamming minimize and recover and either killing the opponent once they can't be hit, or, if your opponent wasn't diligent about applying PP up to everything, switching to whatever else you want to use for your remaining 2-3 slots once they've run completely out of actions.

...but at that point is it really even fun any more?


tl;dr magic is a better game than pokemon

 

[Kirblinx]

Okay, I'll bite, since we're indulging in this amazing troll tangent.

I have no idea what a Kanto Classic is, and I haven't touched the franchise since Red/Blue/Yellow, so this likely doesn't actually apply. That said, I'm pretty sure the most effective strategy for original 151 battles is a team of 3-4 Starmie's with maxed out PP up items applied to them spamming minimize and recover and either killing the opponent once they can't be hit, or, if your opponent wasn't diligent about applying PP up to everything, switching to whatever else you want to use for your remaining 2-3 slots once they've run completely out of actions.

...but at that point is it really even fun any more?

tl;dr magic is a better game than pokemon

Evasion stalling is a real thing. It is banned in the unofficial pokemon battle organisation 'Smogon rules', but can still be used in 'official competitions' and is cheap but effective.

I came prepared, as Toxic will slowly kill them even with Recover spam. Also, Roar force switches them out, without taking into count any evasion changes, so no minimize spam will work on me.

It is a pretty interesting meta these days. I am actually keen for the new games coming out at the end of year.

 

[Aoret]

Deep metagame is deeper than anticipated! XD

 

[gasp]

Sorry for the late reply~

Busy weekend. I did bad at the prerelease. Q.Q

But yeah! I'd love to battle anyone that has a 3ds! Let me know if you want my friend code. ^^

And also since this is the VG thread, To The Moon is probably my favourite indie game.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

To The Moon is awesome! Ori and the Blind Forest, Braid and Fez (including the replays) are also up there for me!

 

[safra]

Life is Strange is one of the best games I've played. The others are Artemis Bridge Simulator (which has an exponential relationship between number of players and how fun it is) and probably Dwarf Fortress too.

 

[Aoret]

Braid was really good. Haven't played any of the others mentioned. I suppose I probably should.

 

[Kirblinx]

I played Fez and Braid and rather enjoyed it. I was a very keen Achievement Hunter back in the day. Tried to 100% as many games as I could. Couldn't manage to do Braid's speed run, tried a couple of times to no avail.

I 100%'ed Super Meat Boy, which was very chuffed about. Game is great and still probably the best platformer of all time.

I've been doing some runs on The Binding of Isaac, which I am having varying degrees of success with. Great game but the variance of what powerups you get on a run can really make or break it. I suppose it never takes too long to try again.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I've been doing some runs on The Binding of Isaac, which I am having varying degrees of success with. Great game but the variance of what powerups you get on a run can really make or break it. I suppose it never takes too long to try again.

I know it's part of the "appeal", but I didn't like how little in-game information there was on the various Binding of Isaac items. I was always cross-referencing some external wiki, and that kind of took the fun out of it for me. Maybe I would like Enter the Gungeon more. Mostly I just prefer Geometry Wars, I think.

 

[Coke No Ice]

I purchased the previously mentioned Hyper Light Drifter and have enjoyed it immensely. It plays like a some kind of weird blacklight Zelda 2, and there are lots of little hidden things that reward thoughtful exploration. Also the game is difficult without being punishing, and, once more, rewards thoughtfulness with its encounters and bosses. There's a mostly meaningless upgrade system and hidden cloaks/swords/peter dinklages that give you subtle changes in gameplay. The movement and combat are fast and responsive, the music and environments are equal parts bright and forlorn. It's not an especially long game if you just power through it but if you're in the mood to go looking for things you can easily sink 15+ hours into it.

It's an indie game so there are bugs, most notable a few times the game has crashed trying to draw a nonexistent sprite, and in other places there are just bottomless pits in weird places (behind trees and things) that you will fall into if you're brute-force hunting for secrets. Neither of those were particularly devastating as the game has an autosave function that also factors into its encounter design (it's really pretty slick).

Would recommend to anyone looking to git gud at something prior to dark souls 3 being released.

 

[blacksmithy]

Does anyone here play RPG maker or games made in it? It seems like something cube architects would have a good interest Venn diagram with.

 

[Coke No Ice]

I've played one or two and I own the version that was $7 the other week on steam. I tend to get caught up on having my own grafix though because something about the default stuff rangles my jimbobs. And then I start to think about how I'm not an artist even though I used to draw and really that the part of doing this I like is the storytelling part and why don't I just write a story and then I start to write a story. Meanwhile Rick James...

 

[blacksmithy]

Yay storytelling! As a kid I'd play the ps1 version just to pass the time and scratch a creative itch, but I've come back to the latest one and found its a fantastic vehicle for storytelling. You can squeeze so much out of a written scene when you add visuals, sounds, and player control.

 

[gasp]

When I was 12 I played Crazy Taxi for around 12 hours straight. When I finished playing, I had pretty bad motion sickness. Super trippy. I miss playing Crazy Taxi. I think the Dreamcast is still my favourite console.

 

[Aston]

Anyone else on Dark Souls 3?

 

[Suicufnoc]

http://www.slither.io

 

[Peter LaCara]

Anyone into Overwatch? It's super addictive. Blizzard did it again.

 

[Kirblinx]

Anyone into Overwatch? It's super addictive. Blizzard did it again.

I've been pretty slack when it comes to video games this year, I just haven't felt the need to play them. That said, I did just pick up the new Fire Emblem game (Fates) and have been enjoying that doing a chapter every night in bed before I go to sleep.

What makes Overwatch super addictive? I've heard many great things but not that it is 'addictive'.
Is it the 'just one more round' philosophy?

 

[Aston]

I'm into Overwatch. It definitely does have the "one more round" thing, which is helped by the fact that you get a bunch of things to look at between rounds and the next one often starts before you realise! I've never really been one for FPSes but Overwatch is really good fun.

 

[Peter LaCara]

I've been pretty slack when it comes to video games this year, I just haven't felt the need to play them. That said, I did just pick up the new Fire Emblem game (Fates) and have been enjoying that doing a chapter every night in bed before I go to sleep.

What makes Overwatch super addictive? I've heard many great things but not that it is 'addictive'.
Is it the 'just one more round' philosophy?

Mostly it's a really polished FPS that supports an extremely wide variety of gameplay styles with a heavy emphasis on team play. Rounds are fast and exciting, and the characters are all pretty balanced. It's Blizzard doing to Team Fortress 2 what WoW did to Everquest.

 

[Jason Waddell]

All the hype for Overwatch makes me really sad that Shadowrun didn't catch on. That was the most addicting, innovative team-based game I've ever played. Such brilliant design, that was panned in its era for "not having single player".

 

[marwatt]

I'm not a big fan of what blizzard is releasing the last few years. Take a popular genre and make it easier so we sell more copies. Diablo 3 had the same problem (did that ever get a decent pvp?) Compared to D2, heartstone,..
Now they make a cc of tf2 which in turn was a slower, less deep clone of team Fortress classic.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

I love MOBAs and Heroes of the Storm is a vast improvement over games like LOL and DotA. I mean, I liked LOL, but when I played it I was always consciously aware of how incredibly flawed the game experience was and how much I was putting up with those flaws so that I could enjoy the good parts of the game. After literally a single game of HOTS I never had any desire to play LOL again. It's far from perfect, but it cleaned up of a lot of the things I resented about the MOBA experience.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I love MOBAs and Heroes of the Storm is a vast improvement over games like LOL and DotA. I mean, I liked LOL, but when I played it I was always consciously aware of how incredibly flawed the game experience was and how much I was putting up with those flaws so that I could enjoy the good parts of the game. After literally a single game of HOTS I never had any desire to play LOL again. It's far from perfect, but it cleaned up of a lot of the things I resented about the MOBA experience.

The teaching experience for one
HotS is a game my friends can actually pick up, unlike dota which takes its own correspondence course on basic laning before you can even step into a game...

 

[safra]

Overwatch is a brilliant way to get casual TF2 players into a competitive game environment they'll have fun in. In of itself that's a stunning accomplishment.