If I understand correctly, unless they build their server infrastructure to cope with load far exceeding requirements, there's no other way to pre-empt these kinds of attacks?

Which coincides with your 'throw money' solution.

 

Aye. It's essentially a castle siege situation. You can't really do anything to stop the attack at its source. You just sit there and manage it while it's happening. Don't get me wrong, you can do plenty to prepare for it. Good firewalls, servers and routers that autodrop junk packets, a good dynamic resource conversion and management system, and enhanced load-balancing DNS protection all help limit what can get through.

That said, in the end it all really comes down to bandwidth and the ability of your security team in swiftly identifying who and what is attacking you.

 

A few days late, but a host of new JRPGs announced for PS4 (probably due to poor performance in japan).

Ys, Disgea 5 and, most importantly, Persona 5 is also getting a simultaneous PS4 release. Time to retire my PS3, finally.

Bloodbourne got a jpn release date too (Feb 5).

 

Yeah, can't wait for all of those. Though it's yet another reminder that I really need to finish Disgaea D2 and actually play the Ys games I own...

 

Yeah, I've never played disgea or Ys games, but the latter looks promising from what little I saw.

I've only just platinumed P4 recently as my first Persona game. Needles to say, I want more. And I honestly don't want to go back and play the old ones.

 

I spent the weekend playing Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. Of the two I much preferred the latter, but I think both really had problems tying the story together as they went on. Without going into too much detail, Heavy Rain had parts that left me scratching my head both during the game and afterwards, along with some outright plot holes. Plus the voice acting was middling at best and that kind of ruined it.

Beyond: Two Souls was better with those things, but its sin was that its handling of things like the paranormal and the afterlife felt kind of bland. I thought that they were too cautious with it to be honest. Also I felt there was a lot less opportunity to affect the narrative than Heavy Rain. I think I'm going to go through it again though, whereas with Heavy Rain I don't think I'll touch it again for a while.

 

Those types of games are very much not my thing, but head scratching narrative seems to be the common consensus, lol.

 

So, Disgaea. Disgaea is a weird fucking franchise, because it's basically two completely different games in one. I'm not joking or exaggerating, the same systems were basically used to form two games. An argument could be made that there's a third in there (again using the same mechanics.)

First, there's the story. This will generally play out like a pretty cool SRPG with fun writing that's simultaneously very well developed and cracky as fuck. This will take you from level 1 to level 100 with the final boss.

After you finish the story you enter the "second" game, the first half of the postgame. This is where Disgaea starts to show the true depth of its systems, as you will be required to jump into the item world a bit, and to get into the extreme grind that the series is known for. There are less than ten initial postgame maps, and they run the spectrum from level 150ish to level 8000. You dive into item worlds, turn the X of Ordeals grinding map into a single turn affair, and get to the point where you can grind up to level 9999 from level 1 in about ten minutes; even though modern games let you promote generics to the next tier, you're going to reincarnate them anyway so you can jump into the Chara World at level 1 to improve their aptitudes without it taking half a year. Disgaea is designed to be broken in half, and at this stage the game slowly asks you to dive into those mechanics. It asks you to do this because you want to beat this guy:
[imgur]UMQ9BEh[/imgur] (Not my picture, sorry about the quality)

After you beat the final regular postgame boss, things go even crazier as you hit the second half of the postgame, which I never bother with because I don't have that kind of free time. This is where you do item dives, reverse pirate, cruise through the chara world extensively, and abuse mechanics to duplicate items, all with the intent to unlock the Land of Carnage. The Land of Carnage is completely optional and hard as fuck to unlock, but at the end of which I guess there's one last boss for you to tackle...

 

Lol, that doesn't really sound like my cup of tea, but if they diverge from the norm in the genre and have infinitely more likable and personable characters, I'll probably give it a shot.

The same with most JRPGs for me these days, actually. Things like that didn't bother me nearly as much as a kid (when I used to think ff7 was the greatest game of all time). I need that now though to keep me hooked and attached to the game long enough to bother - especially with one as deep and meaty as Disgea sounds.

 

I tend to stop right around the end of the regular optional bosses because the stuff that's required for the Land of Carnage is usually too much (in Disgaea 4, you have to buy a bunch of X-Dimension tickets to unlock stages and beat a ton of them so you can build a ship or something and travel there? Either way it sounds like a nightmare and I have my limits.)

Grinding out the early postgame is pretty fun, though. There's some story content there and it's not too insane. Plus you unlock new characters which can have some pretty cool abilities.

Disgaea is very, very different from normal SRPGs even before you break it in half. I'd suggest buying D4V, but if you don't own a Vita you can't go wrong with the PS3 version of Disgaea 4. Disgaea D2 has a freezing bug that they might have fixed, it's the main reason I didn't finish it. It's also the only one in the series that's a direct sequel (in this case, a sequel to the original.)

 

Every sane playstation gamer has a vita

 

So, Hello Games is keeping pretty mum about No Man's Sky. Understandably, as it's an exploration game where the wonder is in exploring and discovering. I doubt we'll see any more in depth videos and vlogs than we have already before release.

This builds excitement - cautious optimism, if I'm honest. The game DOES sound too good to be true.

Given that, I found an article that was linked by the lead dev himself. It's basically some guy in Reddit that's compiled an entire list of what's been confirmed in every bit of coverage since it's reveal to the public.

http://www.gamepur.com/news/16074-ps4-timed-exclusive-no-mans-sky-massive-confirmed-feature-list-details.html

It's a lot more extensive than I thought it'd be and had a fairly decent amount of information that I - as someone who's been following it very closely - hadn't even known yet.

Jesus, I will reiterate, it sounds too good to be true. I think I fell in love the moment 'arcadey' and 'fun' became priorities.

Growing up in a generation where I've needed narrative and quests to usher me along in my games, there was a tiny part of me that was a skeptic.

Now? I just want to get my explorer ship, upgrade the shit out of it and find those really rare, lush garden worlds.

 

Since I don't think anyone has mentioned it yet, Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky FC was just released on Steam a few months ago and is fantastic. It's a plot heavy JRPG with grid based tactical battles. There's 50-100 hours of gameplay, a ton of hidden quests and collectibles, and you'll be rewarded for being a completionist when the second chapter is out in Winter 2014 or Spring 2015.

Carpe Fulgur will be handling the localization for Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC. If you haven't heard of CF, they did the localization for Recettear, Chantelise, and Fortune Summoners.

In case you're curious about how big the series is(these books do not include NPC dialogue, items, or system text.):



http://store.steampowered.com/app/251150/

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nth9hrrORUs

 

Sell it to me in a way that differentiates it from every other JRPG, lol.

How are the characters?

 

Interesting, though some of it is kinda cliche at the beginning but it improves dramatically later on. The main selling point is the plot, the characters, and the npcs. Their dialogue changes as the plot moves along and you'll meet past NPCs that you've encountered in other regions as well, what they say dependent on if you've fulfilled their quests in time and what not.

The following carries over from FC to SC:

Estelle Bright is the main character. She's the daughter of a famous hero and she's on a mission to become a "bracer", which is a guild that does investigative work as well as protection within each region (escorts, monster extermination, etc). As she moves on across the different regions to try and become a full fledged bracer, herself and Joshua get embroiled in an interesting sequence of events as her father goes missing. She's somewhat naive though hotheaded, a tomboy that prefers action over talking. Her main weapon of choice is a staff.

Accompanying her is her adopted brother, Joshua Bright. Not much is given about his background intentionally, since it's a plot point that will be revealed as the plot moves along. His main weapon of choice is dual wielding two swords.

Edit: Forgot to mention, Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky FC is also available on the PSP. SC will also be released on the Vita.

 

WOOHOO PLAYING DESTINY

 

I've temporarily given up on modern/recently-made video games. Just tired of them, I suppose. Been entertaining myself with mostly what many would consider abandonware.

I got Omikron, Total Annihilation, Master of Orion 1&2, Master of Magic, Gabriel Knight 1&2, Quest for glory 1-5, Space Quest 4-6, Bloodnet and Reunion installed. Some of them are, thank fuck, acquired through GOG, but others were just from those freesharing abandonware sites.

Oh and got Zeus, along with its expansion Poseidon, installed as well. Really sad these are the only two of its kind, incorporating city-building and mythology.

 

Oh boy, I've got a lot of problems with Destiny.

Basically though? With the amount of adoration Bungie get from xbots, I expected more....

If you've played the beta, you've essentially played the game already. You'll get 3 more maps (Moon, Venus, Mars), but essentially be doing the same thing on them.

For a game that cost a quarter of a billion, it's fucking tiny. I was hoping they were holding a lot back in the beta...

They were not.

 

Wasn't most of it spent on marketing?

 

Oh man, Zeus and Poseidon are favorites that I haven't played in forever. I spent ages on those.

Definitely gonna reinstall.