(Yes, that's an Avatar quote again, though if I say it aloud one more time Ian might hit me)
Geeze. I think how large a quadruple image post and I disover that abq's postings for the 12th (plus the zero-hour 13th post for the contest) fills his entire front page. So perhaps the anime half of the viewables will be again somewhat image intensive, just for the hell of it. Plus they're pretty. So over the weekend there was much gaming all around (okay, not alot of the PS2, cause that's on the Football TV, so we just Guitar Hero at night sometimes). Last Friday, Capcom put out Lost Planet, so David went out and got that as well as Viva Pinata since he was there.
I chunked a solid amount of time into Lost Planet, enough to be on the last 3 missions (probably the next-to-last but I'm not checking) and spent the rest of it with Neverwinter.
Neverwinter Nights 2
So, I've learned that if you run out of Disc Space playing NWN2, then you're up the creek without a paddle. The game won't let you save, but if you try it'll delete the old file in preparation and then fail. As you can imagine, this isn't very good, though it's pretty rare (I just forgot I'd deleted some stuff and didn't clear it out) so I ended up having to Export and Import to preserve my Monk (yeah, I went back to a Monk after all that, but at least the game seems stable after the last driver updates I made). As a result of this, I'm carrying around 2 of the +10 hp Silver Shards (which was much more of a benefit at Level 3 than it is at Level 13), and had a bit more of a cashflow to begin with, though given that I'm barely equipping my allies outside of three and there's rarely good stuff in stores relative to what you grab in battle, that's not an issue.
13th Level Monk, Human. Diplomacy, Tumble, and Lore with partial Use Magic Device and Spellcraft (Saves and spell understanding ftw). I'll probably replay as either a Cleric or Mage and take the crafting route, it seems markedly easy to do based on all the tomes I've collected. I'm just past Lorne in storyline (I should've just ran away after I killed him and waited for the Frenzy to end, but Knockdown works just as well). Here's to hoping I get to break Torio's neck sometime soon.
Lost Planet
You can definately feel that this is a Capcom game. After doing the Halo -> GoW comparison, going back to the Grenades + 2 Weapons system feels limited. That said, there isn't a pistol at all, so it could effectively be the same as the GoW system as well. Excellent story, though I'm hoping that the Luka thing will get a kiss sometime soon, I don't need that level of relationship tension in my Action games. I get enough of that from anime. I'm a little shaky on the merits/benefit of the additional icons hidden in each stage, but for now I'm mostly playing through and finding those on the rare occasion. Looks like it's going to be standard length for it's genre, maybe a bit on the shortside. I think I've got perhaps 8-10 hours spread across the weekend and not a lot more to go.
Actually, a quick check of the achievements for the game reveals that I'm on the last stage after all, so we'll see how well the game plays now that I've gone from 3-rd person shooter to Zone of the Enders ripoff. Game plays fine and fun, though the stunlocking inherent in non-fatal blows during large firefights is annoying, very annoying. The melee combat interface doesn't mesh well with the controls, but you'll rarely if ever want to be meleeing things. Readability on the game is horrendously low, and I spend alot of battles firing blindly through smoke screens and explosion clouds. They're terrifically pretty, but terribly difficult to see through (read: impossible). The mechs feel like they reskinned some MegaMan X units without a whole lot of extra creative thought, though that doesn't make them any less fun. The basic mech's inability to Dash for extended periods is annoying, but less so that the Bike, High-Jump, and Spider-Drill-Tank mechs that don't even have Dash at all. Oh, and the Power Saw drains way too much energy for an attack that can rarely even hit an Akrid's weak spot (they are rare if ever ground level, at least initially). You'll note I didn't write too much on the story, and fact is, there's not a whole lot to it, but for a shooter I'd rather not spoil the plot as it'd take you have a day to see it all, and it is kinda cool how it unravels, if more than slighty wtf-unrealistic.
Viva Pinata
http://pinataisland.info/index.php?title=Category:Species (Really I could mask this to a cleaner link, but it's actually more work than not to do so, the way that the WYSIWYG editor works for Blogger Beta)
Viva Pinata, in addition to being sickeningly adorable at times, plays out like a mix of Black and White, Animal Crossing, and Harvest Moon. You play a disembodied omnipresent gardening slash caretaking force as you develop and manage your garden to attract, keep, and breed pinatas. In true to the genre style, these pinata species come boasts a mixture of gutwrenching puns and adorable pinata-likenesses of their real-world animal companions. Pinatas have requirements to appear, to join your garden, and to fall in love, and you gain exp for mating Pinatas (which is a maze minigame, every time) and growing plants. Higher levels in turns expands your garden, upgrades you tools, adds to the selection of the shops, and gives you access to new pinata varities. The first time through the game, you guide (with a slight hint of British accent) shows you all the nuances, and every single time a new Pinata makes an appearance, becomes a resident (which gives them colors other than the monochrome of wild pinatas), mate, or a thousand other things, you get a cute 15-30 second cut-scene. Sometimes you'll unlock several of these at once, and get to watch a few minutes of cut-scenes unveil, but it's still fun and cute. What it isn't, is simple. Pinatas, like real animals, don't always get along. Pinatas can fight each other, the larger ones can trample smaller ones, and they can get sick. Plus, most Pinatas have to have eaten certain others in order to become residents, or to be ready for romance.
Webcomics
Shooting to not devolve into a ramble like usual with this one, instead aiming to touch on a few recent developments and further plot which to include in the links section (I've got a few shoe-ins, but I'm still debating on how many and what format of inclusion).
Rob Baldur's other project (being run inside Order of the Stick's pages) is warming up nicely, still got awhile to go before I can start reccomending it (still mostly exposition, but good nonetheless) as those who may have seen the GTalk message, this Battle for Gobwin Knob was particularly amusing. Like, I want to see where this is going, amusing.
Now, for my two female readers (I made that number up, but I'm more than willing to concede it's accuracy), you'll have to bear with me for a little bit here.
The latest Applegeeks returns to the amusing trend. They'd been a bit meh of late, but AGLite has been straight successes for awhile now.
As for the latest MegaTokyo (which has sorta downturned, but only because I don't like Piro all that much), what exactly is Erika's expression at the end there supposed to convey?
Despite how much the author might downplay it, I've always liked the sounds-like-inneundo routine as per this Pointless comic. It's topical, plays to the motives of the characters involved, and amuses me every time -- it's a solid example of how the concept it should be done. Contrast with OOTS's take which takes a suspension of disbelief (and the orbs never came into play again...) or RPGWorld's which tries two things at once with the Evil Eikre routine (which was great by itself, just they didn't mix too well, dampened the effect of both).
And, since we started with quotables, here's some more from Hellbound (I tried to cite the line, but in some cases I just went with the concept instead)
I don't want to know how that works
Acid Piranas
Popularity contest with a rock
Lead-based paint
Caramel pockets
Nothing to see here
