What game are you playing at the moment?

Slogging through Dishonored. Rather disappointed with it really, it might be fun as a murder everyone and speed run the level, game, but it's a seriously by-the-numbers story, the stealth is deadly dull and the challenge non-existent.

This is what we mean when we talk about Just One More Turn. :) I love that Civ's grabbed two new BF converts recently, that's excellent. Hope you continue to enjoy, and don't ever turn your back on Montezuma.

That's both hilarious and really creepy. PRESS X TO ATTEMPT RAPE

Post-winter-sales gaming queue (in no particular order):
Dark Souls
The Walking Dead (I'm so close to being done on this one)
XCom
League of Legends (play this with my brother now and then)

Stuff near the top of the queue but that I haven't really touched since beginning my Dark Souls Let's Play:
Anno 2070
Rayman Origins
Far Cry 2
Planetside 2
Guild Wars 2

FTFY.

More backlog clearance - just finished Alice: Madness Returns.

Nice enough, with the art direction standing out as good, faithful and actually funny at times.

The story's a bit of a mess, and it's longer than it needs to be, but not a bad 50%-off-sale game.

It's not really rape, the girl is awake and playfully hitting you back but it is basically sexual assault since if you hit her with enough glitter fist her clothes disappear. But don't let that stop you since the game is self-aware at how goddamned ridiculous everything in it is.

Oh, in that case.

But yeah it's pretty clearly tongue-in-cheek even if a little horrifying, and well, yeah. Japan.

Yeah, the entire minigame is done with your partner's complete consent (which, incidentally, actually makes the minigame a lot less creepy than the custom it's based on... WTF, Japan), and it's not as if you're actually attacking your date... hell IIRC, the "throw" is more of a 'look longingly into your lover's eyes and then toss them lightly to the ground' (Though, one of the "attacks" your partner can use is a rather painful-looking groin strike...) It's all played for silly, honestly.

Hell, the main issue I have when it comes to WoTS 4 and women is the fact that there seems to be a lack of strong female characters this time around.. I mean, there's the female Commander of the British Knights (WotS cares not for your silly concept of history) Melinda (who has the rather unfortunate last name of "Megamelons" in the English release, though that's a post in itself...), but other than that, there's not too much in the vein of strong female leads this time around.

After the Steam sale I'm kind of overwhelmed by my options and haven't really settled into any one game. In the last week I've spent time on ARMAII, Spec Ops The Line, Anno 2070, and Skyrim.

Once I unlock female body I WILL BE THE STRONG FEMALE LEAD. Also the fighting style you learn from the masked woman in the tournament (I did it again and got a non-fatal ending, guess me being somewhat evil meant I got to live?) is awesome.

Is that the "As a Demonscale" Ending? If so, then all you have left to do are the faction-based endings (of which there are two per faction) and two others which I'm specifically not going to spoil... though if there are any ending paths that require a walkthrough, those last two paths would be it... I'm actually about to try going for those myself tonight.

Oh! Also, Adree... Do you have your game set up to allow the online Invading Samurai? If so, there's a chance you may have run into one of my characters... I don't have any custom swords, so all you'd get from me would be heavily upgraded swords from the main game, but it's still nice... I've actually got a pair of Tiger Claws - one of only two Unarmed 'Weapons" in the game - I snagged off an invader (though, unlike Dark Souls' invaders, they're AI controlled) that I'm using until I get my own set.

Though, I had a thought... my most recent character finished the game with a DLC sword from the Shinsengumi Pack... on that note, I highly recommend the Ryoma Sakamoto costume pack DLC, the Shinsengumi DLC, and the 'Where Are They Now?' DLC (Which adds two characters from the older games to fight and/or romance; Acquire loves putting in references to the other Way of the Samurai games). All others can be safely skipped as they add no new content, and are just ways to cut out some of the grinding.

I hope that doesn't cause issues for others that don't have the DLC...

Yeah it was the Demonscale ending. I did turn on the online thing the first night but got immediately cut down by someones invading ai so I turned it back off, I will put it back on when I find a fighting style that I like (or make my own.) I just picked up the thief-taker style and it's super amusing. Also this run I've noticed all kinds of insane stuff happening because I've been so murderous, shopkeepers with only one thing for sale etc, it's neat.

Also

...I suddenly find myself wishing you'd LP Way of the Samurai 4, Adree. I'm curious how the wider forum would react to the inherent bizarreness of the game.

I would if I had a capture card. Taking shots with my phone looks like shit. If it helps I'm evangelizing the hell out of it so maybe some more people will play it.
Does strength not matter that much for swords in most cases? Because I'm beating the everloving shit out of people with this 4 strength fish.

Well, if you're playing on Easy, it tends not to matter too much... but on harder difficulties tempering Strength and Durability's pretty important.

...On that note, how exactly does one temper a frozen Tuna?

Pfft I'm playing on normal!
I'd tell you but I uh ran Dojima off. He got cowardly and didn't let me kill him.

Yeah, same. My willpower to finish Driver went out the window when I realized I have to disconnect my network for it, and reconnect it back for Dark Souls/XCom/Sleeping Dogs - which are the others in my queue. And I can't help going back to Dark Souls - there's still so much to learn. Oh, and trying to see if I can figure out the combat in Witcher 2. SO MUCH GAME.

How is that significantly more creepy than teenage boys sneaking into girls' bedrooms for sex anywhere else in the world?

Japan, based on my in-depth knowledge of Japan from /b/ and the other trustworthy sources on the Interwebs (Hongfire, Illusion game torrents, etc.) institutionalizes and fetishizes all of this creepy/horny shit. I imagine that there's a Japanese term for, say, sniffing someone's taint when the target knows nothing about it. Or, goddamn it, there should be.

Someone's taint? What are you, like some kind of special forces priest?

There are certainly subcultures that do, but I'd be surprised if the average person there was even familiar with the term yobai.

And no, I'm not going to ask my wife if she is. She does find it a bit offputting how much sex is on American television, fwiw.

Oh man, i dare you to google for taint with safe search off.

How about Kancho? That seemed pretty widespread and mainstream from what little of japanese culture I know of.

Yeah, but that's a game for kids who are just starting to become aware of sexuality.

I dunno, if you go just by popular culture and media reports, Americans are really into kinky sexual stuff as well. And Germans are really into pooping on each other. Japanese certainly have their share of kinky sexual stuff, but I think the average person is going to be just as boring there as anywhere else.

I was disappointed.

Hah, going by their TV shows, asians spend huge amounts of time pining over each other, but never reveal their feelings, and their is no sex, and maybe a chaste kiss at best =)

I'd assumed that there was some kind of connection between the two before the sneaking in happened, if not an explicit one, because Japan doesn't do explicit. Without that, yeah, it would be pretty creepy.

HI THERE I'M JUST GOING TO START TALKING ABOUT GAMES NOW DON'T MIND ME

I got 999 and Okamiden for Christmas. I've mainly been focussing on 999, partially because the controls in Okamiden are pretty frustrating compared to the ps2 game, but mainly because I can't be bothered with the boss battle in the Demon Marketplace.

999 has an interesting plot with slightly annoying writing and I'm determined to not get chopped up with an axe anymore. I've finished all the endings except the true ending in which I've reached the completely unexpected revelation that

Lately I've been diving into old RTS titles, like Rise of Nations and (thanks to the Steam Winter Sale) Company of Heroes. And let me tell you, those games are fucking awesome. I don't even care that RoN is like 8 years old, it's still awesome. I even found a CD key on the intertronz that let me install my old Thrones & Patriots expansion, since I only had the disc but not the case. That said, RIP, Big Huge Games. :( It really sucks that they got absorbed into 38 Studios just in time for 38 to flame out spectacularly. Can you imagine how amazing a Rise of Nations 2 could have been? The world may never know.

Also, back when I played COH, I basically sucked at skirmishes because I get distracted by the tactical battle-dancing and don't spend enough attention on base-building, upgrades, and resource management. But I've taken another stab at that shit and Easy difficulty is now my bitch. I might actually move up to Normal someday! WOO

Isn't that funny? My comp died two months ago, was resurrected on the third day, and those two games were early adds, right behind Age of Mythology and W40K: Dawn of War

Thanks in no small part to Adree, I'm now playing my copy of Way of the Samurai 4 again. I finished up all of the endings, so now I can kick my videogame hoarding tendencies into high gear and quest to get ALL OF THE THINGS.

*stares at massive lists full of question marks in status screen*

...I'm going to be at this a while.

I finally did the fighting tourney the right way and was on my way to murdering the two Prajna bosses when uh one of them sliced me in two. Annoying but I'll be ready for it when I try again tomorrow. I will say the battle in the caverns with a quality stance (I got it from the blind samurai in the tournament) using Spring Harvest and just cutting people down for a solid minute straight is a lot of fun. I really wish I hadn't been such a criminal in the previous run though because man having shopkeepers with either nothing on them or nothing I want was a serious pain in the ass. Having to break boxes and reset the area over and over to get grinding stones isn't fun at all.

...You got Samuraitto Iai? That's the last Iai stance I need, IIRC. It also requires you to use a certain sword to get it mastered, as one move only shows up if you use that certain sword. The sword in question for that stance is Lost Prayer, which is one of the swords Sensei can end up wielding.

Speaking of Iai stances... just wait till you kill Kogure. His Iai stance is a thing of absolute beauty when you get it maxed.

Oh, and as far as criminal acts go... Doing either of the Magistrate sidequestlines boosts public order, as does working for Gramps in Little Britain.

I had to stop playing Dark Souls, my PC couldn't handle running the game properly. I kept regularly being kicked out of online mode because my frame rates dropped to much, which was okay because I could still play in offline mode, but once I got to Blight Town the game became unplayable.
Luckily my husband will be upgrading his PC soon, and he promised me I can play Dark Souls on his new PC during the day when he's out, so I'll get my DS fix again soon!

In the mean time I've been playing Fallen Enchantress, which is fun but crashes a lot, and Skyrim. It's hard to adjust to the combat system of Skyrim after Dark Souls, it feels like a frantic, limp-wristed slap-fight with swords. I tried some combat mods but they make the combat harder, not really better for me, so I'm playing an archer instead.
In between the DLC, some realism mods, a mod that fleshes out the companion guild and an alternative start mod (so I can avoid the main storyline) it's a fun and different experience from my last play through, so I'm sure it will keep me occupied for a while.

Been playing a lot of Dark Souls. Having an invader spawn right in front of me for a free 2hZweihander bash never gets old.

I had his stance and Akagi killed me :<
I guess I was drunk with power.

Sensei keeps wasting all my challengers, is there any way to stop that without murdering her? Will she come back in the next playthrough?

Yep. You can attack her (normal or reversed-blade works), and she'll eventually walk out. I think you can also kill her at that point, but I haven't really tried.

Honestly, don't worry too much about killing her, as you'll be able to get her back next time (though you'll need to redo her questline).

I will say the smartest thing I did in WotS 4 was make a sword that had a life/death charm. Even just the one meant as long as my sword was in good shape I never needed to eat except in emergencies.

I had an amusing moment when I first did her questline because I'd sent her to all the places and then let the language instructor be killed but still was able to tell her to go apply anyway. So she just stands in front of the School door and complains that they didn't even let her in.

I think the Dojo was kinda bugged for me anyway since I never got any of the promised fighting styles even though I had all 20 students. The last time I managed to actually get in and fight a challenger and got showered with much needed whetting stones and other items from my students was pretty nice though.