System Wars Lounge V.65: Star Wars: The Force Awakens Edition

I'm loving Xenoblade Chronicles X. Sure it still feels like a single player MMORPG. But it certainly outdoes the MMORPGs in the MMORPG aspects.

Just look at hte combat,

• You can target appendages and completely decapacitate foes which has plenty of tactical advantages.
• While only a few skills use any resource outside of a cooldown. Those that do, are the ones who make the combat a lot more interesting. Even then, the cooldown system is infinitely more interesting than the one seen in good games like The Secret World and terrible ones like Guild Wars 2, since skills will go on a charge up time after they hit cooldown provided you are using the associated weapon (at which point they will get increasingly powerful) the choice of using a skill in now for an emergency or wait for the more powerful effect is something I am always considering. Clever usage of TP, cooldowns and appendages allows you to kill enemies that vastly outlevel you, possibly twice your level, despite the fact that those guys can probably one shot you. It is just brilliant. Especially considering the fact that there is no healer who can keep everyone in top shape.
• Elevation factors into combat. I loved how Guild Wars 1 did this, and nice to see another game factor into this again.
• Aggro is an issue for everyone. Not just the tank. Be careful with that Laser Barrage+Full Specs Combo.
• There is a proper support role. And not only is it viable, it is extremely good too. MMORPGs have tried, but only old ones like EverQuest and Final Fantasy 11 succeeded. Modern mmorpgs just made support a "DPS with a few buffs". Thankfuly, Xenoblade X did a good job with it as well. While some of the psycorruptors skills do minor damage, the damage is miniscule, and often negligable. I'm there to shut down the enemy team, and buff my comrades, not to do damage.

Can't wait for SW TFA :)

One punch man ep 9 is freaking great. Saitama refusing to take credit for that win just shows how humble he is. Of course now he is known as the cheat and people don't take him seriously because of his looks lol. Still that was an amazing ep. And that rider speech gave me goosebumps man. This show is perfection.

@a-new-guardian: Okay I really need to start watching One-Punch Man but as of now, I'm so into Tokyo Ghoul, so this one is gonna have to be in my Anime watch backlog. Will watch One-Punch Man when I'm done with Tokyo Ghoul.

@davillain-: Oh my God, I completely forgot to finish Tokyo Ghoul... So dope. Needs a season 3.

@lundy86_4: I'm almost finish with season one and should be into season two by Tuesday. I too kinda lost track of it with so much shit to do in life lol.

@davillain-: Damn life getting in the way all the time! I got about halfway through S2 and it's pretty neat... Probably one of the better animes i've watched in a while.

I stopped with Tokyo Ghoul after the second season, it was atrocious by every means.

As for more recent anime, OPM and Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans are still going strong.

So I'm six hours into Persona 3 Portable.

I'm liking it ^_^

It's not nearly as good as P4G, but I didn't expect it to be, so yeah, that's okay :P

So I finally started playing Shovel Knight the other day, gang. Good fucking shit.

Glad to hear! It's one of my favorites, it also nails the 8 bit style very well.

@DarkLink77: Damn. I literally picked this up again an like an hour ago and I'm having a blast as well.

Very true. It also manages to be very respectful about its references, while still feeling like a game from that era, which is pretty amazing.

Okay all that voting made me hungry. It was hard for me trying to get those usernames right lol.

@davillain-: 2 episodes left in one punch man, so you'll marathon that and enjoy the ride without having to wait like me. Great anime really.

@CountBleck12: I only kept watching season 2 because of the characters lol. The soundtrack was great too. And of course tsukiyama lol. Currently reading the manga on vol 3.

@lundy86_4: season 3 already announced a month ago. The story is messed up. The anime really needs a reboot by madhouse and a proper adaptation of the manga.

I don't know if anyone else is watching Capcom Cup, but it is amazing.

I miss PUSH ;__;

After some strong thinking, I'm officially of the opinion that Konami is worse than EA after what they did at VGA's.

Konami's been pretty shit for a while now, man.

@DarkLink77: Have fun, man. Game is the bomb. Still making my way through the Plauge Knight expansion on occasion.

Bastion is a fucking great game

EA isnt even bad.

Get the **** out, EA is plenty shit, at least with Ubisoft you can chalk that up to being idiots, incompetent, and Canadian. Activision? Good ol fashioned we all about the money, game respect game there at least. Warn a Brother? Basically Activision tier, except Rocksteady makes good games, and Nether realms is aight.

EA is next level in their ability to snatch wank from the jaws of this should actually be good.

You take Criterion who had an arcady racing franchise that actually drew money, put them on Need For Speed, Need for Speed the ever loving shit out of them that you break them into two studios and now we have this relic whose only real novelty is what once was in Need for Speed, and yeah I know you think Criterion makes racing games for people who don't like racing games, this just in they don't make that game anymore either.

Dice, rush your one bread winner to meet launch hype to keep pace with Call of Duty, rush your Star Wars game, which get real would sell itself after the movie if given the proper time, have gotten to a point where their mp games simply don't launch with enough content, and they produce season passes that are as expensive as the game, without the actual map count to justify that shit.

Bioware? Actually I'm of the opinion that Bioware is their own biggest enemy, so EA can get the freebie there....except the part where everyone and their mother can put two and two together that Mass Effect 3 is a bit of a rush job. I don't know many devs who rush themselves, so kind of hard giving Bioware the flack there. The dumbed down game, the shit writing, and the horrible ending? Yeah that's Bioware, the part where it's a rush and thus sloppy in spots? That's on EA.

Dead Space starts as a horror thing, technically the only one of their new ips from their in house devs that drew a dime last gen, and their route was to focus test that bitch into an action game to hell and back, with microtranscations to boot by the 3rd game. So took an okay horror game, and then proceed to make it even more mind numbing as it went a long. Some of that falls on the dev, but I'm missing the part where we pretend EA didn't have a hand to play there.

Fuse started as this thing that at least look it would have some personality, if be held back by Insomniac's dull game design, but they focus tested that shit out.

And this is all without ever complaining about how the sports games work, because that's just the nature of the beast. EA is nowhere near the worst country in America, but EA is still pretty shit. Like impressively shit.

@jg4xchamp: French Canadian*

It's worse than you know.

@jg4xchamp: I wouldn't say they're shit. Definitely mediocre and underachievers but there are plenty of companies worse than they are.

Also, I'd say the BF3 and 4 season passes more than justified the high price. They added tons of new maps and guns. Battlefront is a fucking disaster though. They dumbed that shit down too much. They would have been better off making star wars battlefield instead of the half assed turd they dropped.

Idk what the **** happened to bioware. They give us KOTOR followed by Mass Effect 1 and 2 and Dragon Age Origins then they went full EA and shit out a really awful and unfinished Dragon Age 2 and they have been downhill ever since.

I thought Fuse was solid. Yea, they changed the art style and internet dummies cried because that's what they do but those characters still had plenty of personality and those guns were cool. It was never going to be anything more than an average shooter and that's what it was.

Been debating getting a ps4. It's only $300 but none of the bundles have anything I would actually play.

That's like saying you can do worse than Jay Cutler, yes you can do significantly worse than Jay Cutler. He's mobile, he's got a rocket arm, there are times when he can make some top level throws. That however doesn't change the reality which is that in pure production, he's been shit. Battlefield's design makes the overall nature of how many guns at adds superfluous. The hell do you need 20 assault rifles for in a game where there is barely any ballistic difference between the bunch. Modes? They launch with less than Halo and Call of Duty for comparison? Maps they release the lowest you can get away with these days, and hell with Battlefront they went with 8, and still end up with a similar map count to what those other games end up at after their dlc, except you don't spend a games worth of price on their dlc.

Plus Battlefield 4 was broken. Not kind of glitchy, not kind of unpolished, fucking broken. Dice's inability to get the job done by a deadline might be one thing, but this isn't school, this is product development, that's on EA. To this day it's got that same stench MCC has now that it's "fixed". It never quite rids itself of reminders that yeah, this game was busted as ****.

They took a shooter that at least had the potential for some color variation, and turned it into a sepia suckass simulator. So no thanks.

If it weren't for Titanfall last year, which required Microsoft to come in and actually fund the game through its development hell, their lone good game since 2011 is Dragon Age: Inquisition. It's 2015, but they aint shit. Right.

Square gets my vote for worst pub.

@jg4xchamp: um what? There is a shit ton of difference between all the guns in battlefield. Different rate of fire, different damages depending on the distance to the target, how they handle, there is a ton of difference and variety which is important. Who cares about the number of modes? Conquest is the only mode. In the hundreds of hours I put into bf3 and 4 I can probably count on two hands how many times I played something other than conquest.

Bf4 was broken, no excuse for how that launched and how long it took to fix. Since then though they've shown major improvements in their online and hardline and battlefront ran great at launch despite being awful games so at least they've shown improvement there

Also, garden warfare was surprisingly fun and we'll made so they've been alright the last few years. They're not as bad as Activision, Ubisoft or Square.

Fair enough I read that as modes and weapons, since the maps were a given, my bad. Yeah I'm not questioning Dice's ability to make a video game, that studio can do its thing, when given proper time. Battlefront would be fine too, if there was more of a game to go along with it, but that one is on EA...and man that's how low the bar is for them. A vanilla ass multiplayer game where the bonus is it has this tower defense characters in it so its cutesy is a sign that company isn't dookie. Oh that and publishing a puzzle platformer with 'unique" art, aka the FPS of indie games.

@jg4xchamp: mirrors edge 2 could be decent like the first, battlefield 5 coming out next year, criterion is making an ambitious looking game, a new mass effect is coming that doesn't appear to have been rushed. Out of the big 3 or 4 major publishers left they aren't that bad and are probably the least offensive now that they hired a vampire to be their CEO

All of those are could be good and done right, I'm talking right now. Right now, what have you done for me lately. Lately if we're talking

-Being chill in terms of how they handle their products? They suck at it
-Producing good video games? They suck at it
-Producing new IP? They suck at it

Why we calling a spade a club, when it's clearly a spade.

@DarkLink77: Shovel Knight is boss. I love how well it nailed down the retro style and feel.

What version you playing?

Tomorrow is the day when Destiny racing begins! oh boy the entire clan is excited going to be a blast

@finalstar2007: lol that's hilarious

It IS hilarious and thats the point!

no other FPS have ever done something like this a racing event in an FPS wtf? should be lots of fun though i give it a week till it gets boring again

While they may not be banks running our countries to the ground. Apothecaries that conduct medical experiments on african children killing thousands. Oil companies destroying the environment all while spreading misinformation about global warming (global warming denialism). New Age bullshitters, promoting quackery over functional medicine. Think tanks polluting the minds of children, trying to replace science with mythology, intellujent dezign as they call it. Broadcasting company promoting bigotry, child abuse and other piss poor moral values. They are definately not bad compared to those guys.

If looking at the whole picture, then you are correct. They are not bad.

But as far as gaming is concerned, they are pretty bad. Not all bad mind you, they occasionally hand out freebies on Origin, and they do invest in new quality IPs from time to time. But they have done a lot of crap, and have appearantly been behind the butchering of plenty of studios. And like Nintendoboy said, there are worse gaming companies out there. But still bad.

@finalstar2007: I know! Halo has definitely never had a racing mode.....

EA have just been mediocre. Nothing terrible this year in the likes of Sim City. A few lukewarm releases in 2015, I dont think they did anything too dramatic in the likes of Tony Hawk or PC Batman. I personally never bought any EA games this year, but I know plenty people that have and were generally happy and got/are enjoying the product that was advertised to them.

In general, I dont know how far we are going to look back, because EA has had a rocky road. Say what you will about Dead Space, Titanfall, Mass Effect, Mirror's Edge, Bulletstorm, Dragon Age, Brutal Legend, Alice, Shadows of the Damnd, Skate, SSX, Syndicate, Rock Band, Kingdoms of Amaleur, Crysis or SSX etc. But they take chances with IP, which is more than I could say for other big publishers. While there are some duds/disappointments, some of those even turned out to be good or at least interesting enough for me to try out.

Their flaghip titles are still enjoyable like Sims and FIFA regardless of them being their biggest cash cows. Their Origin service is pretty solid and surprisingly consumer friendly at times. While the Dungeon Keeper smartphone game was an embarrasment, they are angels in the world of Mobile gaming compared to the rest. I couldnt care less about their DLC, microtransaction or online pass practices, but thats a whole other topic.

I like that EA are very pro-active and do some pretty good shit every now and then. While they have their obvious low points and ongoing nonsense like sports/car licensing issues, or frequent studio closures. I cant recall EA having long stretches of blunder after blunder or just them being completely dormant in the business with nothing to show.

Someone please ban texasgoldderp

As much as I disagree with that guy. I am honestly far more bothered with the people he debate with than him himself.

Say what you will. But he is not quick to poison the well, commit ad hominem or similar logical fallacies. He also often goes beyond petty arguments like "its fun" unlike the Fallout 4 apologist brigade.

If Black Isle made Fallout 4

*drool*

Why? what's he done? :P

He's just being himself

I'm not sure if the Day 1 patch -- or worse, Day 100 critical patch -- is an invention of 'evil' publishers or of the very developers we love or of both. Neither want to be associated with defective products, but neither like not making cash (It's possible for publishers to -lose- money, y'know) and, at the end of the day, they're both businesses and both are in a relationship. If a delay means not hitting an ideal launch window, having to extend marketing campaigns that have already gone full-throttle, having to lay off people because you just can't keep them on payroll, etc., both have to come to an agreement about business decisions like the Day 1 patch.

But I'm assuming every publisher is on the verge of becoming the next THQ and that they can't afford to be a little nicer. I'm also assuming every developer is willing to sink to Bethesda-tier quality control, piggy-backing on the goodwill of their audience.

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In other news, Splatoon. <3

Damn is the start of the game rough though when all you can do is Turf Wars against Lv. 50 players until you hit Lv. 10 where you can play with a range of weapons and can play against players around your skill level and can play in a mode that isn't Turf Wars. Was questioning how people could call it a good game, let alone multi-player game of the year.

no he doesnt. his main argument is "well, this shit won some awards on some sites no one's heard of so im right"

hate to burst your bubble final,but the halo series started it with worthog races.

Still way better than any argument you put up against him.

Im not exactly a fan of @texasgoldrush. But honestly, his arguments are far superior to the likes that try to attack him. The fact of the matter is, he has actually something to justify his point of view and refrains from commiting logical fallacies (outside of perhaps an overreliance on anecdotes), also why is the publicity of the site he mentions important anyways? The thing is, when one side has some degree of intellectual honesty, and the other one shits on the term. Onlookers like me will be greatly swayed by the side actually backs his arguments up with SOMETHING. Anecdotal to some extent perhaps. But even an anecdote is still more convincing of an argument than Argumentum ad Lapidems, ipse dixits and poisoning the well and gods know how many logical fallacies you commited.

@Maroxad: whatever floats your boat man

Maroxad honest question how old are you?