Easter! Bunnies! Rainbows!
Lusipurr is distraught when he reads on the internet that there is no such thing as the Easter Bunny, but SiliconNooB is on hand to reassure him to the contrary, doling out both intoxicating libations and saccharine fairy-tales with generous abandon.
LusipurrReminder for those commenting– these are the options that I am considering for play during Summer 2014:
MegaMan Legends (PS1)
MegaMan Legends 2 (PS1)
The Misadventures of Tron Bonne (PS1)
Parasite Eve (PS1)
Parasite Eve 2 (PS1)
The Third Birthday (PSP)
Wild Arms (PS1)
Wild Arms 2 (PS1)
Wild Arms 3 (PS2)
Wild Arms 4 (PS2)
Wild Arms 5 (PS2)
Wild Arms XF(?) (PSP)
Xenogears (PS1)
Xenosaga I (PS2)
Xenosaga II (PS2)
Xenosaga III (PS2)
Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii)
At present, I am leaning towards Wild Arms.
Pierson 'Blitzmage' StoneWe already did Wild Arms 1
Lusipurr@Blitzmage: You clearly haven’t listened to the podcast and do not know what is the purpose of the above list.
LusipurrOh, this reminds me to answer DiceAdmiral’s question from a few weeks ago re. out-takes.
The out-takes are there when we begin recording in advance of the podcast, and when I feel that there is stuff in the pre-recording material which is suitable for clipping and sticking on the end. Usually, there has to be several things, otherwise I don’t feel that it is justified slapping a single out-take onto the end.
What determines how far in advance we begin recording, and hence, the likelihood of out-takes? Several factors:
– How many panelists are on the show: the more panelists, the more likely we will begin recording well in advance, because I start the recording when the first person arrives, but we do not begin ‘work’ until after the last person arrives.
– How busy I am: the more work I have to do, the less time I can afford to spend on the podcast, and the more tightly I constrain the panel to claim their news stories quickly and then get recording.
– The presence of Bup: for reasons which should be apparent to any long-time listener.
Lately, I’ve been extremely busy, and the panel has been just SN and myself, and so there are relatively few out-takes. However, after next weekend, my workload outpout will zero out. I’ll still have huge quantities of reading to do, but I won’t have to write massive articles or grade stacks of papers. In addition, as Summer arrives, expect to see larger panels now that our staff will have more free time. So, out-takes should make a return.
***
One more note, this time regarding the switch in music!
There’s probably some surprise at this. I made a decision a while back that we’ll go to a ‘two themes’ model depending on what ‘half’ of the year we’re in, as determined by two days that always fall on a Sunday. Starting on Easter Sunday, I hold that we are in the ‘Spring, Summer, Autumn’ section of the year, which demands a lighter touch: hence, “March of the Dreadnoughts”. But, from Advent until Easter, we’re in the Winter, for which purpose we use “Steel Reason”. I think this allows us to use both, excellent themes, without either of them being used for *so long* that they become annoying in their oldness.
So now you know why that changed, too!
WolfeI’d like to put in my suggestion for the MMLegends playthrough. Those games were Capcom at their finest, and a reminder of a better time in gaming, where creativity wasn’t confused with political correctness.
Jahan 'The Legendary Zoltan' HonmaAnother GOLDEN podcast. Thanks, guys! I vote for Xeno series because I really want to hear Lusipurr talk about the good and the bad of the story of Xenogears. I’d like to hear that about Xenosaga as well but he’ll probably skip all the story. You can’t skip anything in Xenogears. You can’t even change the text speed!
Andrew 'Mel' MelconI second that vote for the Xeno series!
DiceAdmiralLook! Up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s INFO BLAST!
This week’s panel:
Current 2014 Donators:
Matt Dance
DiceAdmiral
KoboldDeKobold
Drachonous
[Note: Iliya Moroumetz also made a donation, but he’s staff now, and as a consequence is no longer eligible for the reader drawing. -Lusipurr]
FFXIV
This sounds like a pretty decent game, I’m just not much for MMOs in general.
Mario
This is a good Mario game, but I still prefer Mario World.
Oculus
Lmao. What a ridiculous idea.
Maybe it’s time for a LusiCom PunchBeginner?
Having gaming moments sponsored by donators is just that, a sponsorship and not an advertisement.
How much exactly does one need to donate to top Bretsuo? $105? $110?
As far as series play-through, I vote for Xeno series. I need to play through Xenoblade still and keeping up with a LusiPlaythrough would be good incentive. It would also be nice to hear about the history of the series on the site. Do you think that you might write about your experiences with each game rather than just the gaming moment on the podcast?
I would like to point out a feature of the comments that I especially like: Saving unsubmitted comments. I had to force-close my browser mid-Blast and when I returned, my progress was undeterred. Fantastic!
Candide
I’m really enjoying the reading.
DiceAdmiral’s gaming moment:
My Monday night gaming cohort and I started playing Divinity last night.
Neither of us have played the single player campaign or any tutorials, but we both have strong backgrounds in strategy games, so it was fairly easy to pick up. It’s a nice blend of grand strategy, RTS and Dragon-flying-sim(is that a genre?). I’ll talk more about that as the game continues.
I also played three new board games recently: Elder, Concept, and Volt.
The first is a dice-rolling, C’thulu-fighting game, which I found a little dull, so I’ll discuss the other two.
Concept is like pictionary in that there is a player who gets a word on it which they must then attempt to get the other players to guess. The main difference is that instead of drawing, the players will place markers onto a board of general ‘ideas’. These ideas are things like Person, thing, colors, shape, size etc. The number of markers and the manner in which they are placed can make a huge difference in getting your idea across. For example, I got the word Harpoon.
I put markers on Tool, Fight, animal, under, and water. When that didn’t get the point across I put three markers on Line and one on Triangle to attempt to get the point across. It was quite a bit of fun and trying to convey ideas in a non-standard manner is very interesting and engaging.
The board:
http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1895542_md.jpg
Recommended for abstract thinkers and communicators.
The second game I’ll comment on is Volt, which is a programmed movement game. Players each control a robot in a BattleBots style arena. Each robot is equipped with a laser (with options for other kinds of upgrades like buzz saws, grenade launchers, mine layers, tractor beams, magnets etc) and is capable of both moving and firing on a player’s turn. Each robot will make three actions (moving or firing) per round and the players controlling said robots will decide upon those action all at once secretly. Then, all players 3 actions will then be resolved in order. It’s hard to visualize, but basically, you could try to move ahead to push an opposing robot into a pit and score a point. Instead, another robot shoots you, scrambling your controls and sending you walking straight into a pit instead. It’s planned chaos and it is also lots of fun, but again, hard to get a feeling for until actually played.
General setup:
http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1695490_md.png
Recommended for logicians, bluffers and estimators.
Game on LusiPlayers!
DiceAdmiralHm… whoops, it looks like I mangled the links in my gaming moment. Hopefully Lusi can help me out with a fix.
DiceAdmiralCrap, I actually mangled the whole thing…
DiceAdmiralSo, instead of using the same HTML I used last week, I used the recommended HTML tag from below the comments section, which is totally broken… Crap. well, Maybe I’ll fix it later tonight.
Lusipurr@DA: You used it incorrectly.
The title field is mouseover text, not display text. Personally, I’d omit it entirely. And you still have to close the anchor tag, which you neglected to do. You MAY use the href (with title) html as indicated in the comment box, but you still have to use it appropriately. There’s nothing WordPress-specific about that; it’s standard formatting for embedded links, thus:
[a href=”LINK URL GOES HERE” title=”MOUSEOVER TEXT GOES HERE”]THIS IS THE TEXT ON THE SCREEN THAT PEOPLE WILL CLICK TO BE REDIRECTED TO THE LINK.[/a]
If you omit the title field (I would; virtually no one hovers over links for mouseover text), it will look like this:
[a href=”LINK URL GOES HERE”]THIS IS THE TEXT ON THE SCREEN THAT PEOPLE WILL CLICK TO BE REDIRECTED TO THE LINK.[/a]
Replace square brackets with <> obviously.
In addition, please keep staff links to the site bios, and not to off-site profiles which, if staff want publicised to readers, they will have in their biographies.
DiceAdmiral@Lusi: That’s good to know, from now on I’ll just use the copied ones I used last week. Thanks for repairing my busted links.
As far as off-site profiles go, those links were both intentionally inaccurate, but I suppose that may have not been obvious. The link under your name was to some random linkedIn profile and the one for SN was a link to designer dresses on Amazon. I should probably have made a note somewhere that those both were jokes as some may be confused. Either way, it was a lame joke which isn’t really worth repeating.
Lusipurr@DA: No worries; I saw the off-site links and corrected them without looking at them, so I wasn’t aware they were jokes.
The main problem with your links was that you forgot to close the tags. If you look at how they open with [a href=”. . . you’ll see that letter ‘a’ there. That’s the beginning of the tag. Everything inside the <> marks is part of it. Once you open a tag, you have to close it, so you need ANOTHER set of <> marks, with a stroke followed by the tag you are closing: a. Hence the [/a] at the end of the above links. What falls between the HREF tag and the closure of that tag is simply the text in which you are embedding the link.
If you think about it, it works the same way as bold or italics. If you want to bold a word, you do so like [b]this[/b], which applies a bold format to the word between the open and closure of the [b] formatting tag. In the same way with links, you are applying formatting to text, except in this case the ‘formatting’ is not bold, or italics, but making the words a link to a URL. Easy!
LusipurrIncidentally, you Xeno-fans, I am a huge fan of the Xeno series (Xenosaga is one of my favourite games), but wouldn’t you like to hear me talk about the amazingly deep story of the Mega Man Legends games?
Huh? Huh!? Come on!
LusipurrT-T-T-TRIPLE POST!
I wanted to add that I did, in fact, beat FFX, and that I absolutely broke the game wide open. Once I had three Legendary Weapons (Yuna, Rikku, and Kimahri), I was able to easily max out their sphere grids, at which point they were doing 99,999 damage per hit, regardless of what attack or spell they cast.
I walked through the final dungeon in less than 30 minutes, and killed Braska’s Final Aeon in three hits.
As for the final event ‘bosses’, and Yu Yevon, it isn’t possible to lose there, but I still continued my trend of killing everything in a single hit. Yu Yevon took two hits, I think. In that entire final sequence, Ultima is the weapon of choice. It hits everything, including stuff at range, and knocks out the Yu’s Pagodas and the bosses simultaneously.
In short, FFX is super-easy if you get even one Legendary Weapon. With three, there is *no* challenge left at all, because you can have an entire party which gets five turns before the enemy gets one, and everyone does enough damage to one shot nearly every monster in the game.
Matt DanceMy vote is for Mega Man Legends. I unfortunately never got the chance to play them, and would like the chance to hear and read about it.
I have cumulatively donated $115 [since 2012], and if it pleases the panel, would like the Reading section named after me :)
Lusipurr@M.D.: I think Brettsuo is still ahead on cumulative grounds, as his donation during the drive was not his only donation, but I believe that single instance came to around $115, itself. (I’d have to look it up, I suppose, to say for certain.)
Andrew 'Mel' MelconXenosaga 1 had an encyclopedia and so did 3. 2 did not because, like many other things, it was cut from that game. It’s pretty necessary to read, and I do remember it because I spent a good deal of time doing so. Want to know exactly what the DSS is? Or an FEA? Or maybe you want to know AGWS stands for? Probably not, but it’s ALL in the encyclopedia.
LusipurrAGWS is Advanced Gear Weapon System or something like that. A lot of those things are in the game, as I never read the encyclopaedia and do not even remember its presence.
Andrew 'Mel' MelconClose! Anti-Gnosis Weapon System.
But there are indeed some things revealed in there that aren’t elsewhere.
koboldekoboldXenosaga 2 is so bad (The thing I hated the most was the progression system made all of the characters feel the same)that I would be inclined to vote for Wild Arms, though I would grant you that I haven’t played through that series, so perhaps there is a dud in there as well.
WolfeThe Legends games -do- have an amazingly dark undertone that’s all but glossed over by the Saturday morning cartoon look and feel of the show. I was shocked when Juno revealed his purpose back then. It just seemed so out of place.
Incidentally, Dash/Legends is the far, far future of the Mega/Rock universe, taking place even beyond the Zero series. Pity we never will get that third. I’d like to see what other ties to the past were buried in that little tale.
Scott 'Imitanis' MundyI would like to hear Lusi play the Mega Man Legends series, especially since he is a fan of the traditional platforming games.
@Matt: I have you beat on cumulative donations. Since 2011 I have donated $165, though I’ve yet to donate anything this year.
Matt DanceTo each his own named section of the podcast!
DiceAdmiral@Lusi: In retrospect that seems incredibly obvious. I work with XML on a daily basis, so I really should have recognized the tag formatting.
I considered donating to claim “The DiceAdmiral gaming moment”, but I pretty much get named dropped weekly, so there really isn’t a need.
BrettsuoThankfully, that rather lengthy (and borderline embarrassing) discussion on my donation prowess was appropriate, as I still seem to have the top amount. My donation records show a total of $180 (that single donation was $155). Clearly, though, Imitanis and Matt Dance are within easy striking distance of that goal. It does not seem entirely unlikely that Lusi knew this all along and is attempting to make us duke it out for the title of top donator.
My vote is for the Mega Man Legends series. That series doesn’t get enough attention in general gaming discussions, so I would like to hear Lusi’s opinions of it.
Lusipurr…er …yes! Of course! I knew it all along! Wah ha! You’ve uncovered my clever plan! That was what I was thinking the whole time.
Congratulations to Brettsuo. And now, we know both the cumulative total and the single donation total records, BOTH of which he holds. So, it is definitively the Brettsuo Gaming Moment by either measure.
If at some point we have a different leader in one than the other, we’ll give the cumulative leader another part of the podcast. Largest donation will always be the gaming moment, though. It seems appropriate, since the gaming moment is meant to be about a single instant. Also, leaderboards and all.
LusipurrThe Brettsuo cumulative total just went up, it seems…
LusipurrThis weekend I will* put together a spreadsheet of all donators, so that I can say thereafter who is the donation leader without having to do an embarassing and revealing numerical tally in public. I dislike mentioning amounts, but we should have some idea of what the largest donation on record is, and who has donated the most to the site.
If nothing else, it will help me put together a little thing on the Bio Page where we can have our PATRONS listed, the way it is done in theatres, libraries, symphonies, etc.
WolfeMan, you make me feel guilty. Honestly though, I do good just to keep my broke ass fed. A paperback novel these days is a significant purchase to me. There’s a list of generic crap I’m waiting to read but have to hold out on. Gaming is something I generally manage during the holidays when family I don’t otherwise see take pity on me and toss gift cards my way. That’s how I got Bravely Default. That’s how I got XIV. The monthly fees are why I won’t be able to afford to extend my time there (I’m glad I finally got to see what an MMO was like though). I love the show. I like your political and social views. But as it stands, I’m in no position to donate, otherwise I’d do so. And when I can, I most certainly will.
Lusipurr@Wolfe: There’s no reason to feel guilty. As I have said on the podcast many times, far better than donations are new readers. Hence, TELL YOUR FRIENDS. That’s the best thing you can do for us. The site would keep running even without donations. I’d keep paying it out of my pocket, and I’d find ways to scrape together the cash for the site bills and even end-of-year game giveaways.
But, without new readers, and with readership attritition, we end up with fewer comments, a smaller community, and less engagement. This means I have trouble replacing staff who need to leave for life changes; it means the staff feel like no one is reading their posts–and so why do it? It means people don’t want to be on the podcast (since if fewer people listen, why bother), and that drives down quality overall (if no one cares, why should the authors care?). Short of MASSIVE and CONTINUOUS donations of the sort that would allow me to salary the Lusipurr.com staff, there’s nothing that money can do to solve those problems.
Money is great. It allows us to upgrade our editing and recording software, to buy games for give-aways and for an end-of-year staff drawing, to pay for our domain registration, our small legal registration fee, and our webhosting, in addition to hardware in the form of a headset or a microphone. But it doesn’t give us readers, it doesn’t expand our reader base, it doesn’t put comments on posts, and it doesn’t really do a whole lot to improve the site.
This isn’t to say that donations aren’t useful either. They do a lot of things. But given the choice between $500 and 500 new readers, I’d take the readers every day of the week. Hell, I’d take 50 new readers over $500, honestly.
So, if you don’t have they money to donate, there’s nothing to feel guilty about. Get out there and spread the word. That is really the BEST thing I could ask for. Do that, and you can hold your head high. Get your friends to tell their friends. It matters. It matters a LOT. Telling your friends is the most important thing. After all, we don’t advertise. It’s up to you! :)
LusipurrQuick note to KDK: Xenosaga 2 is the main reason why I shudder at the thought of playing through the Xeno series. Ugh. Breaking every enemy. Ugh ugh ugh.
Brettsuo@Wolfe: Just to offer you some thoughts from my perspective: Honestly, I agree with Lusipurr. I think taking the time to comment and spread the word is much more valuable than just throwing some money at the site. I am in a much better position to do the latter, as my job and my social, familial, and recreational obligations prevent me from being able to participate in the community and promotion of the site as much I as would like. It seems you are in a situation in which money is a precious commodity and free time is decently abundant, whereas vice versa is true for me.
So, I’m just doing what I can to help contribute since I do indeed listen to every podcast without fail and read articles and comments when I get the chance. I know Lusipurr and the staff work hard to generate content for the site and the podcast, so I feel I should contribute to their cause in the way that I can. I do not want or expect more recognition than someone like yourself (a regular commenter), and you really shouldn’t sell yourself short just because you are in a tight spot, financially. Us loyal listeners/readers just need to keep doing what we can to keep the staff motivated and the site alive.
FerchuIt could be interesting to hear Lusipurr talk about the megaman legends series, one of my favorites series from the ps1 era (of action games) so I vote for Megaman legend series and Azure Dreams .
I never understood when people talked bad about the voice acting of megaman legends(the first game). I thought it wasn’t bad .
FumunshuSupposedly, Suikoden 2 is coming to psn now. Finally! I wish that was an option for a playthrough.
Lusipurr@Fumunshu: I won’t hold my breath, but I DESPERATELY hope you are right. I would love to open up Suikoden to a playthrough option for the site!
FumunshuIt was rated by the ESRB. Looks likely. http://kotaku.com/holy-crap-looks-like-suikoden-ii-is-finally-coming-to-1565978567
DiceAdmiralI’ve never played a Suikoden game other than Tierkreis. Are they worth playing? Can someone give me the elevator pitch for the series?
Fumunshu@DiceAdmiral-Tierkreis is a horrible entry to the Suikoden series, so I don’t blame you for wondering if they aren’t worth playing. Most of the games in the main series are. The magic system revolves around runes, of which there are 27 super powerful “true runes”. Each game focuses on the protagonist acquiring a true rune, then getting involved with some type of revolutionary war. There are party battles, 1 on 1 battles, and army battles. You eventually get a home base, and start recruiting a total of 108 characters in each game, all of which contribute either in party or army battles, shops for your base, or other random services. The world has a rich and deep history, and many characters from other games appear in the sequels. The games all take place in this same world, but in a different country, and in a different time in the world’s history. The stories are of a rare quality for rpgs. Of all the games, I would rank them from greatest to worst as 2,5,1,3, and 4, with the fourth one being the only one I wouldn’t recommend playing. 3 is ok, but 1, 2, and 5 are some of the best jrpgs I have ever played.
LusipurrI would place Suikoden I above V, but otherwise agree entirely with the ranking Fumunshu gave.
And, as he did a fine job describing the Suikoden series, I’ll simply add that they are some of the best JRPGs I’ve ever played either–and we should all know how picky I am.
FerchuI am playing Suikoden I for the first time and while I haven’t played Suikoden V, I am having a blast playing the game . Sometimes I feel the compulsion of getting all the characters in the same way I used to want to catch all the pokemon in pokemon yellow xD .
I can’t say exactly how good is the plot since I just begun, but it looks good so far.
I remember playing Tierkreis, had to play the unsub version, I didn’t like the voice acting of the game, specially the main character’s voice acting. The japanese voice acting talks in normal speed in contrast with the english version, I am talking about the main charater speed voice acting.
Suikoden 2 is great, I think I played that game like 10 times in the 2 years prior to release . Suikoden 4 was meh for me.
Ethan 'Ethos' PipherI had a pretty great time with Tierkreis, but I am aware that it is not a good Suikoden game, even if it is a competent standalone RPG. I’m really excited to give the Suikoden series a proper chance, and seeing the Fumunshu/Lusipurr rankings, I’m glad that 3 ranked so poorly because I borrowed it from my brother and had a really hard time getting past the town/overworld design. I’ll give 5 a proper try, and restart the first one, which I did quite like when I played it, but I didn’t get very far: always distracted by the abundance of games.
DiceAdmiralFor one such as myself (owning only a non-backwards PS3 in regards to sony consoles) is there a way to play the other Suikoden games without buying a PS2?
Ethan 'Ethos' PipherI don’t believe so, DA, not outside of emulators. But I’m surprised you don’t have a PS2. It’s very cheap these days, relatively speaking, and it has such an incredible lineup.
