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What game are you wasting time on?

spekkio

Arcane
Joined
Sep 16, 2009
Messages
8,278
Finished Castlevania - Dawn Of Sorrow

Good: :)
- Good old Metroidvania.
- Interesting and varied map design.
- Game is huge.
- Exploration feels just right: castle isn't totally open, yet some boss sequence breaking is possible.
- Simple crafting works fine, best equipment can't be found, you have to make it.

Ugly: :?
- Initially, the game is underwhelming (too much story, lame areas). Fortunately, it improves fast.
- Puzzles? In a 'Vania? :roll:
- A bit on the easy side.
- Huge monsters with HP so low, that they die after 2 hits. Lame.
- Fixed monster sets in rooms.

Bad: :(
- Glyphs drawing is 101% retardo bullshit. Use a hack to fix this.
- Soul drop is way too low IMO, which leads to boring souls farming. Can be circumvented with cheats.
- Spergish amount of pointless banter (Hammer's love life, etc). If I want to buy a potion, I don't want to scroll through 5 lines of lame bullshit first, thank you.

Still, solid :4/5:, since I've tested four 3D 'Vanias (both PS2 games and both LoS games) and had to give up on all of them very fast, due to uninteresting gameplay / level design / everything.
So far, AFAIK the only working 3D Metroidvanias were Soul Reaver games and newshit Zeldas. But Konami simply cannot into modifying their own 'Vania formula into the 3rd dimension...

:decline:
 
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Starwars

Arcane
Joined
Jan 31, 2007
Messages
2,829
Location
Sweden
Replaying Planescape: Torment. It's a mostly very pleasant experience though I'm about to wrap up the Clerk's Ward and the shittyness of Curst and Baator awaits... that always saps my will to continue playing.

Also playing Crusader Kings 2 which is always a good time. Silly it may be at times but all in all it's a game that would rank very high up on my fav games list. It is extremely entertaining.

And lastly, playing LA Noire for the first time. It's actually pretty cool. Well... the adventure game parts and the interrogation bits are at least. Though the interrogations feel pretty wonky at times, it's still a lot of fun I think.
The driving and action is pretty terrible unfortunately.

Still, definitely worth playing, it's a pretty cool and unique game.
 

iZerw

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Apr 18, 2012
Messages
895
Location
Russia
SOMA. After Penumbra series and the first Amnesia it's such a letdown. No inventory, no health or sanity system, just a little bit more and it would be another walking simulator. No sense of fear or isolation, or loneliness. Constant conversations with Catherine make it fell like a parody on Portal. :decline:
Ok. someone disagreed. I want to know your opinion. Please share.
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
Patron
Joined
May 13, 2009
Messages
27,089
Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
Recently played through D/Generation (1991), one of the oddest mixtures of game elements I've seen in quite a while.

The core game is a isometric-perspective one-room-per-screen puzzler (in the vein of Head over Heels, Alien 8 and similar titles) inside a large skyscraper where you, a lowly courier, must navigate the nine top-most floors to deliver your package to a Dr. Derrida, who seems to be the man in charge. But something has gone wrong as the security system is active and strange enemies resembling basic geometric shapes roam about.

Judging from screenshots alone the game appears to honor its predecessors with abstract visuals, bizarre adversaries and not much of a plot or story going on...don't let that deceive you. In truth, D/Generation is a game steeped in cyberpunk. The corporation you work for, Genoq, has been conducting dubious research into artificial lifeforms (called Neogens) with military applications, and now they've escaped. Those bouncing spheres are actually the A/Generation of this research, a lifeform designed to absorb and clean up battlefields, while the hopping cylinders (the B/Generation) are basic attack lifeforms that can reach speeds up to 70 kph. There are still people trapped in the building which you can rescue, and be rewarded with info, equipment and an extra life for every hostage saved. You can end up with dozens of lives, but don't think this will make the game easy.

While the basic gameplay consists of dodging gun turrets, electrified floor tiles, land mines and Neogens while looking for keys and buttons to operate doors, the game soon decides that you have it too good. About half-way through the game the difficulty jumps up as you are thrown into cheesy death traps and the appearance of the C/Generation, a Neogen that [DATA EXPUNGED] you must learn instant reactions. And if that isn't enough, the game throws you a curveball by introducting a timer at a certain point - from that point on you only have 20 minutes to beat the game. And once you reach the final floor another timer is added to the mix, not to mention the game getting quite trippy.

Some have described this game as a survival horror game, but I do not quite agree with that. It's a puzzle game with grim elements and meager amounts of equipment that must be used carefully, but there's no true horror involved. Blood is only spilt once during the entire game, any horror beyond that is merely the player's own imagination running wild - which actually helps the game.

The worst criticism I can level at this game is the presence of secret invisible buttons - when I say there's absolutely nothing that even hints at their presence, I mean it. You just frob the walls while strafing them (Wolfenstein 3D, anyone?) and you may hear a click to open a door or disable a turret. I didn't even know about them until I was completely stuck at one point and consulted a walkthrough. Not even the manual mentions them - this is Bad Game Design.

Beyond this single negative point, I'd recommend this game to anyone who's up for an interesting retro gaming experience. It looks and feels at first like a light-hearted attempt at a futuristic isometric puzzler in the early 1990s, but halfway through development it seems that they decided to opt for a more mature game, with very interesting results. This is an old game that has aged well.

EDIT: If that isn't enough, there's also an unoffical sequel called R/Generation, I'm gonna give that a look.

EDIT 2: Had a short playthrough of R/Generation. No thanks. The animation is pathetic, but the level design is horrendous - a screen at a point I'd call early in the game ate up all of my extra lives in the span of 10 seconds by having an electric shock plate and an enemy spawner right in front of the screen entrance point. Also the game just feels sluggish for some reason. I recommend sticking to the original.
 
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Freddie

Savant
Joined
Sep 14, 2016
Messages
717
Location
Mansion
Finished The Moment of Silence (GOG) few weeks ago. It's an adventure game from 2004. It's set in near future and have nice but not over the top cyberpunk influences.

This was sort of difficult playthrough. I originally started this on last summer but just abandoned it for a while, even it's a game I really wanted to like.

Setting and graphics are very good, I also liked how user interface was really simple. Puzzles as mostly good, characters fit in the game world and are quite well written, story is very good and isn't outdated at all even today so where did this go wrong?

The developers definitely had knowledge what they had in their hands with the story and effort to put it in the game sure doesn't feel like they lacked passion and dedication. However, the technology just wasn't there to properly put their vision into a game. Beautiful settings, occasional humour flavoured social commentary, lots of this games potential is sadly wasted to engine.

There are no seamless transition here from one are to next. There is always loading screen, which isn't that bad itself, loading next scene doesn't take pretty much any time in modern PC, but what kills the game is constant running through same places again, and again and... so you spent most of your time clicking your character through from one scene to next and there are really lot of it. I really wanted to like this for so many reasons, but over time game loses it's momentum, not because story is bad and loses it's grip but game comes tedious after a while, spending more time running from one scene to next, before you finally arrive in your destination where there's puzzle or you get pieces of puzzle and get forward in story. And then you take the same route back, trough same scenes which doesn't have anything new to offer.

Anyone interested from game design might want to check this for analysis if there's something that just would needed tighter packaging for reasons of how human memory works. So why this game loses it appeal even it does so many things so very well, might be combination of things.

I wish I could recommend this, but I really can't unless you are very hard core for adventure games and / or interested in game design or writing.

For technical trivia, GOG version has wide screen support included, no need to install mods and it also looks very good. It's not expensive at GOG at least, € 14.19 at the moment writing this review, but if you decide to risk this just for the sake of it, get this when it's on sale for € 10 or less.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
After getting disappointed with NumaNuma, decided to clean my steam backlog, then I saw Just Cause 3 in there... eh... man I shouldn't waste so much money on discounted games on steam. Just cause III is that kind of game that you look at it and a part of your soul scream on agony of the potential waste of time it will be that you won't get back.

But, hey, why not? Maybe it was just an impression I had, maybe my edgy codexian glasses were unfair, after all, I played Mas Max and it was a fun popamole distraction and why not Just Cause 3?

Well, there is a fad on late open world shooter games, I heard some hipster kids talking about this on youtube, "emergent play", play on your own way, do some crazy stunts... this to me is just overrated virtual LARP for fools. Sorry, my job is to play the game, it is the developers job to create content for it. If I need to create the content I will enjoy, then it is fair I getting paid the salary of the fraudsters that didn't make content for their shitty empty open world games.

I'm not an youtube celebrity, I don't make money on youtube pretending to be retard (on some cases it is not pretending at all and just an state of being that only chemical castration can solve.). Why would I place explosives on the back of a vehicle and make it go flying around if I could just steal a tank and blow it up with a single shot? Why to play larping like a retard?

I don't understand how people can be this dumb to be fooled by this. "Emergent" gameplay without challenge is like that fat dude on the internet talking how he is the expert on katanas for having cut some watermelons on his basement. It is LARPING. It is so fun being a true warrior cutting watermelons with katanas.:roll:

I sorta of get how some open world games can be made better with friends on co-op (what Just Cause 3 lacks) but it is your friends that are making it fun not the lazy bastards that sold you virtual sand, maybe it is better to play a better game, your friends deserve it better.

To me, emergent gameplay is you having a challenge and the game giving you alot of choices on how to tackle that challenge, even some devious creative ones... but if the standard ways of doing things (AKA being a health regenerating highlander having infinite bullets) are more than fine on dispatching all the challenges, why should I have all this trouble of doing harder to pull of things to achieve exactly the same result? It is when you fail that you have to use your creativity, if the game is so easy that you can't fail, why bother?

If your idea of fun is to string four cows on a helicopter and go flying with them then uploading your video on youtube, okay, expending 60 bucks for some practical joke that gets tiresome after 10 mins is a good deal?

It is a pity, Just Cause 3 is one of the games I wanted to play as a kid, you being some B action movie character flying around with a flying suit with a massive flexibility on movement, hijacking helicopters in middle air by throwing the pilot out, using a grappling hook to karate kick some guy at 500 ms of distance, surfing over full speed F - 16 and ballistic missiles, jumping down an airplane at 4 miles above the ground and flying down with a flying suit... all of this sounds great and it is actually fun to do some times. I just imagine this game being made on the 90's when challenge wasn't a taboo on the gaming industry, all of this is killed by zero challenge and repetition.

Another thing too, developers are such cucks now, you play with a B movie action type of character similar with a Duke Nukem, why to make him a boring goody two shoes blank cardboard cut with the personality of a potato if you could go wild on the jokes? Where are the hot ladies? The story is such awful boring crap anyway, why to play it straight instead of going bonkers? But no, you gonna play like a boy scout one man army helping an entire legion of useless boring cunts that makes for the resistance.

They are so fucking cheap with this game, that the side activities consist of flying and driving through rings and exploding the bases you already exploded again but this time with a timer and all the upgrades are tied with those fucking shit side activities, when you try to play those garbage activities it is like the game designer just gave you the middle finger and made you eat shit.

Why not having bases with harder versions challenges and more powerful guards, more reinforcements and bonus objectives for the creative use of guns, vehicles and explosives? Why not having an score for creative kills like Bullet Storm? Why can't you blow up an entire base, including the main buildings? Why can't you hijack a battlecruiser, make it launch cruise missiles then grapple the missiles and shoot down flying jet fighters with machine guns? But no... Just Cause 3 is more like Half Assed 3.
 
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Ezeekiel

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 19, 2016
Messages
1,783
Emergent gameplay today mostly means "There is nothing to our game and so the player must entertain themselves somehow".
 

deuxhero

Arcane
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,325
Location
Flowery Land
Playing Arma 3 single player. Wanted to try it for a few months and then it got humble bundled (made sure none of my money went to the people running HB).

First chapter is OK. Really obvious mission scripting and you are pretty much railroaded and it's a glorifed tutorial vastly inferior to the actual tutorials (I understand those were added in a patch). There is no real incentive to do the optional stuff because any equipment worth carrying is given to you or looted during the story missions.

The second chapter is a lot more fun than the first one. You actually have incentive to loot (you start with almost nothing, and you're barely given stuff) and the rewards for the optional missions are super nifty (second hot spot netted me a thermal scope, which is super nifty for spotting faraway enemies). Missions are fun (or should be fun but the AI breaks it. Not that I've seen a real time game that could ever execute something like "RPG the rear vehicle once I blow up the first", but I'd hope they at least use cover I assign them to without going through 3 sub-menus)

Only major problem is the AI is firmly in the camp of "tactically inept, but runs an aimbot". I notice there are a lot of mods to fix the AI, but which one is the best?
 

Vorark

Erudite
Joined
Mar 2, 2017
Messages
1,394
Bad: :(
- Glyphs drawing is 101% retardo bullshit. Use a hack to fix this.

Fuck, the drawing was the worst. Been ages since I played but still remember I had to retry the final boss 4 times because the DS touchscreen wouldn't register the lines correctly. :argh:

For a decent 3d metroidvania you could try Okami.
 

anus_pounder

Arcane
Joined
Mar 20, 2010
Messages
5,972
Location
Yiffing in Hell
Fallout Shelter atm. It's a neat little number and a worthy addition to the FO universe. I'm also reinistalling Fallout 4 atm. I finished the game a long time back, but that was before all the DLC that my season pass pre-order could've given me. Definitely gonna give the give another shot, I'm learning to appreciate it more and more now that I've gone back and replayed some FO3 and NV.
 

Rahdulan

Omnibus
Patron
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
5,104
Fallout Shelter atm. It's a neat little number and a worthy addition to the FO universe.

Yeah, I've also been messing around with Fallout Shelter, but it requires too much babying and really would be much better on your phone the way it was originally intended to be played considering I'm not at my PC 24/7 and can't start the game whenever to keep checking how resource production and timers are doing. Going on quests and actually doing "dungeons" was the highlight for me. Shame I don't do mobile games.
 

Bigg Boss

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2012
Messages
7,528
It's a neat little number and a worthy addition to the FO universe.

Worthy? I guess it's better than PoS but at least that was somewhat a game. It worked better as a mobile game where you are sitting in the doctor's office for two fucking hours because the VA sucks dick and all you have is CASTLE on the TV in the waiting room. At home on Steam? It's like staring at a fucking antfarm. Maybe with nude mods and a bunch of shit to derp it up more, but I can't see playing it long enough to get to the quests. I tried doing a LP of it, took a bunch of pics, and played for a little bit..it was so fucking tedious I literally got depressed with my life.

I did play FOnline Reloaded with a few NMA guys though. We've gotten together a little group to putz around the wasteland with - have our own base and shit and all that jazz. It's better than I thought. I like how you get to play on the full map from Fallout 1 and 2. I know Tactics wasn't the best, but it would be cool to just go all out and throw it in with it. Different engine though so that wouldn't work I guess.

I also started up Planescape to finally beat. Once I check that one off the list I can move to Arcanum. I did beat Breath of the Wild, but I've been clearing the rest of the Shrines and stuff because there is so much to do.
 

Deleted member 7219

Guest
My Trails of Cold Steel 2 playthrough has been put on hold as I don't have PS3 access.

I finished Torment: Tides of Numenera. Really was a 'meh' from me. 21 hours. Maybe future patches will improve it but I was hoping the game would be content complete at release.

I also played chapter 3 of The Walking Dead: A New Frontier. Very strong characters.

Occasionally I decide to jump into Metal Gear Rising and play it for an hour or so until I get tired from all the button mashing and ridiculous dialogue.

I realised that I still have Broken Sword 2 installed on my PC and I haven't finished it yet, so that's the next game I'm going to focus on.
 
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BlackGoat

Arbiter
Joined
Sep 15, 2014
Messages
505
Slowly making my way thru Ibag Tower in Elminage:Gothic, on my way to beating Super Metroid for the first time after spending the last 20 or so years of my life picking it up and putting it down and never taking it all the way, and jumping into Metal Gear Rising Revengeance occasionally which is

 

Ezeekiel

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 19, 2016
Messages
1,783
Fallout Shelter atm. It's a neat little number and a worthy addition to the FO universe.

Yeah, I've also been messing around with Fallout Shelter, but it requires too much babying and really would be much better on your phone the way it was originally intended to be played considering I'm not at my PC 24/7 and can't start the game whenever to keep checking how resource production and timers are doing. Going on quests and actually doing "dungeons" was the highlight for me. Shame I don't do mobile games.

Played it for a bit, such a waste of potential imo. Wish they hadn't ported the mobile game but instead built a full pc game from the ground up around vault management or settlement management. But then, bethesda cannot handle complex/deep systems to save their fucking lives.
 

AlpineMarv

Literate
Joined
Jan 24, 2017
Messages
14
Played through the original ICO on ps2 today.

Still holds up in terms of atmosphere and exploration, definitely better than it's most recent sequel The Last Guardian. Low point of the game is Yorda's ai which constantly induces rage.
SOTC up next. :bounce:
 

AlpineMarv

Literate
Joined
Jan 24, 2017
Messages
14
?? What does ICO stand for?

Uncultured plebian.
HGDhQeH.jpg
 

Baron Dupek

Arcane
Joined
Jul 23, 2013
Messages
1,870,765
Finished Fallout 1.5 "Deja Vu - The Game"
Liked for being hard, did not liked for grind (if you wanted to buff up Repair and Science, which you should do).
Final location with boss that can be done the same way like FO1 (your option sux because this and that, get depressed and set autodestruction by himself), base with advanced tech and armor to pick up (and big hole in the middle with radiation around) on the south from first village, where you set dynamite to blow boulders and drop the rope.
Combat Shotgun with removed automatic fire have hidden critical chance increased for sure, can't explain it otherwise why he kicked so many assess (to be precise - he ripped them out of the bodies).
Every city except the first village have opposite factions and you can kick their assess so others can dominate and you get different picture at the ending. Get old after Rat Hole (aka EdgyTown).

edit
next day - tested more mods, this time for Fallout Tactics.
There is this thing called Mod Manager that let you install&play most mods without reinstalling the game. Problem is, it use their own mod installers and they're all older versions (Redux mod in 1.2 while last one is 1.3, Awaken in 1.4 when recent is 1.4a etc.) and the way to install Enclave mod does not work for some reason and old link to non-mod managered versions are gone.

Allright, let's try this Redux mod. It does play better, with some changes in AI and maps and gears (guns and else) so it should be best to start 2nd playthrough right?
Except the fact that he replaced most portraits in the game. I got some plastic models, wrestlers and other try-hard-2-be-tough persons. And there is lesser amount to choose from. All you do is to convert PNG avatar in FTeditor, put in right folder and then add line in right config file with file name. That's it. Why remove them in the first place?

What the fuck man. Now I need to mod the game again to restore them, everytime I pay a visit to quartermaster for new recruits? Thanks asshole...
 
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