What game are you wasting time on?

[Jaesun]

 

[Animal]

 

[e-mailio estevez]

I'm trying Binding of Isaac on the 3DS. It's kind of buggy and runs like shit at times, but still addictive.

I've only ever co-oped it with my bro on occasion and the game is much different when you're making judgement calls instead of just playing a satellite. Had a really good run going, with triple, piercing, zig-zagging feces shots, a lot of hearts and a buddy who did random damage types. Was kicking ass when I went into a red room and that randomized all of my items. Suddenly I have a fetus on my head, a bunch of other random shit and my shots are flying in random directions. Then I died.

 

[dunno lah]

Cannot get past The Pit on UV-pistol start. And I was saying Doom wasn't that hard in another thread...

 

[murloc_gypsy]

First time playing VTMB and I think it's kind of grindy. I mean, sure, the story, lore and dialogue are top notch, but I don't see much player agency. You don't really get that many options in dialogues. And everything is a friggin fetch quest. It's something I see in a lot of games. Designers artificially extend the length of a game by adding these huge levels with grindy combat. I've just finished the quest with finding Gary and the Nosferatu hideout in the sewers and I've just about had it with this inane design decision. They could've at least made the combat itself more bearable. This is probably the worst I've seen in a long time. One moment that really rustled my jimmies was the quest with killing the Vampire Hunter-stripper Chastity in Hollywood. After several attempts, I resigned to looking up a walkthrough only to find out that you can't really complete this quest without lockpicking into the manager's office and into the ATM. So, basically, if you don't have lockpicking, which I didn't at the time, you can go fuck yourself. Good luck I had a couple of unspent points.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Another week without Stalker mods. I'm trying to avoid this drug.

This time I went into Diablo1 mods, and found that there's no good list of the mods, either you get list with bunch of them (and half of them placed on offline sites, they're forever in alpha state or just abandoned).
But I found p. recent one, still WIP (last update somewhere in this year) but so far - I'm impressed.
This mod is Diablo - Belzebub (what a name).
What do we have here? 60FPS, bigger resolution (1440x900 for me), autoclick (no need to torture mouse buttons and fingers like a drum pedal), more quests, tweaked interface, stashes and of course new items, monsters and locations (there's teleport like the one from D2). Plus crafting but I still can't use that one yet.

Only shitty thing here is Diabolo2esque saving system, which respawn monsters (and generate new map of the dungeons) everytime you launch the game again. Plus - yellow items, far more of them (their stats are meh and repair cost is ridicilous). And magic properities on blue items are meh, in original Diablo blue items were nice.
Traps are highly inaccurate, only once I was hit by radius of fireball, which blowed on the nearby wall.
Latest levels are packed with more action and lightings (which is also better) but nowhere near the epileptic cancer called MedianXL.

Feels more like Diablo2 but not as much as Back to Hell mod tbh.

 

[TripJack]

First time playing VTMB and I think it's kind of grindy. I mean, sure, the story, lore and dialogue are top notch, but I don't see much player agency. You don't really get that many options in dialogues. And everything is a friggin fetch quest. It's something I see in a lot of games. Designers artificially extend the length of a game by adding these huge levels with grindy combat. I've just finished the quest with finding Gary and the Nosferatu hideout in the sewers and I've just about had it with this inane design decision. They could've at least made the combat itself more bearable. This is probably the worst I've seen in a long time.

just did the sewers for the first time a few days ago, but don't worry bro the sewers are only the tip of the bloodlines shit iceberg

only reasons i haven't quit are noclip cheat and the sick amusement of rpgcodex saying this dogshit game is the 6th best rpg of all time

One moment that really rustled my jimmies was the quest with killing the Vampire Hunter-stripper Chastity in Hollywood. After several attempts, I resigned to looking up a walkthrough only to find out that you can't really complete this quest without lockpicking into the manager's office and into the ATM. So, basically, if you don't have lockpicking, which I didn't at the time, you can go fuck yourself. Good luck I had a couple of unspent points.

now you lost me

 

[Humppaleka]

Played through Clive Barker's Undying. That game was fun. Shame about enemies that started repeating themselves though.

 

[murloc_gypsy]

just did the sewers for the first time a few days ago, but don't worry bro the sewers are only the tip of the bloodlines shit iceberg

only reasons i haven't quit are noclip cheat and the sick amusement of rpgcodex saying this dogshit game is the 6th best rpg of all time


now you lost me

lost you how? you don't remember the quest or did you maybe find a different solution? I was just pissed that the only way to solve this quest was by using lockpicking.

I haven't used cheats thus far and I'm at the Society of Leopold monastery. There were some really difficult battles and missions, where, because I spent a lot of points in dialogue-type skills, I was overwhelmed. Luckily, the shit AI doesn't handle cheese tactics that well

 

[murloc_gypsy]

Just finished this poor excuse of a grind fest. Halfway through clearing out the hotel of Sabbat goons I realized this game is utter shit and I'm only playing it to see if there's any redeeming qualities in the writing / dialogue / story. So I turned on godmode and made my way through the horde of inanities. And sweet lord (Cthulhu), I would've probably developed depression from all the retardo combat in this game. Ok, ok, it has some good parts. You do get a good story and some choices can be made at some points. Quite decent. By the end of it I was just curious to see what was inside the sarcophagus and perhaps get some cool shit going on. So I got THAT ending. Afterwards, knowing I won't replay this game, I quickly jumped on jewtube to see all of them. Looking good, must admit.

verdict: potato out of cabbage - diamond in the rough (glazed with shit)

 

[flyingjohn]

As much as people love bloodlines i find it extremely overrated except in the atmosphere/story department.The entire problem is that the game biggest highlight is the first chapter and everything after that gets worse and worse.The first chapter has enough variety in both combat and other situations to make you feel your skill choices actually matter ,but the chapter is too short to actually capitalize on it.
And when you reach the second chapter problems start appearing immediately:
1)Bigger area yet less content and blatant recycling of some content(hotel/reporter jump scares)
2)Choices are removed for either forced combat section which make no sense considering the previous chapter game play.
3)The factions system is very underwhelming and has no actual impact.
And after you finish this chapter you get the the same thing with chapter 3 with the added bonus of the sewers.
And it gets even worse after that.

 

[DeepOcean]

About Bloodlines, depends what you wanted people, if you wanted ultrawesome shooting to compete with Doom, deep faction choices, open world or something... you will be disappointed. Bloodlines development was an utter mess and the game ended up limited on all sorts of ways.

Those are the things Bloodlines do incredibly well:
Atmosphere.
The setting.
Charismatic characters.
PnP inspired character system.
Some Deus Ex like moments.
Some simple but very amusing reactivity related with, sex, skills and race, like you can't walk on the streets with a Nosferatu and Malkavians have all sort of different responses from NPCs.

If you aren't willing to forgive the weak FPS and the shitty shooting galleries like the sewers in favor of what I mentioned above, you won't enjoy it very much. If you look to the RPG Codex top 70 RPG list, you will see a curious trend, quite a few of the top 10 are games with pretty shitty combat, many were exceptional on a few things but they were far from perfect and action combat isn't exactly a top priority for most RPG nerds.

Spoiler

Anyone saying Bloodlines is utter shit is being an edgelord living on the edge.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

europa universalis 4 - achievement hunting, now with timurids.
deus ex hr dc - have the controls always been this shitty? even alpha protocol's feel better. i'm planning another stealth run but this time i really wish i could save malik. suggestions?
fallout new vegas - just finished it for the third time. not as big as i remembered it, a lot buggier and crashier than i remembered. wave radio mod rocks.

 

[TripJack]

Charismatic characters.

hm? charismatic is the opposite of what the characters in bloodlines are

not that this is a bad thing, those unlikeable manipulative cunts are the best thing about the game

 

[Carrion]

I always liked Bloodlines despite of its setting, not because of it. If there's one place you should never, ever put an actual vampire in, it would be a gothic night club in Los Angeles, but maybe I'm just a draculafag. Bloodlines does have a great cast of characters, though, and the writing somehow manages to make it all work, but the setting itself never, uh, sucked me in.

Gameplay-wise Bloodlines was always disappointing because it started as a Deus Ex Lite, giving you a bunch of small but pretty fun environments with different ways to do stuff ranging from direct combat to some basic stealth and diplomatic solutions, as well as combinations of the three, so that you were eagerly waiting for things to really get going with bigger, more complex and more challenging areas. Of course, that never happened.

 

[murloc_gypsy]

Anyone saying Bloodlines is utter shit is being an edgelord living on the edge.

Living on a razor's edge.
Balancing on a ledge.

Spoiler

it started as a Deus Ex Lite [...] that never happened

^ This, basically. From all the fanfare and acclaim the codex and other sources give this game, I was expecting it to be at least as good as Deus Ex. Yes, it's got some nice things going for it, but ultimately it's not nearly enough to warrant that much worship.

Bloodlines development was an utter mess and the game ended up limited on all sorts of ways.

I know a bit about the history of Troika. Even so, the end product cannot be justified in terms of its historical context and development. In the end, it's still just a game that I enjoy independent of the company's history and difficulties. No amount of sympathy for their hardships could make me (or anyone, I think) overlook the game's glaring faults, faults that take away from its obviously ambitious intentions.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Just back from SGDQ. Flew in with my 13 year old who is into speedrunning rage games. Pretty great event with 1.25 million raised for Doctors Without Borders. Lots of impressive glitching and whatnot but for me the Mario runs are epitome of skilled play. Mario 64 120 star race with 3 fastest 100% runners was epic, with less than 10 seconds separating first and second with 119 stars down. Impressive. Also Big John with his lost levels run was impressive and highly entertaining.

 

[laclongquan]

Got distracted into replaying Alpha Centaury (not SMAX)

1st run: Gaians. Abandon when I can stomp everyone else into the ground.
2nd run: University. Abandon when I send a naval fleet to occupy the capital of my biggest competitor, Gaia. Meanwhile I do a full court press, make war on all her front to distract her aerial assets from coming back to rescue. Got the capital and in the process of capture several cities that hold SPs.
3rd run: Morgan. Co-occupy a continent with Peacemakers and that fucker press me right from the start with Recon rovers.

 

[Humppaleka]

Men of War. FUCK it's hard, but so satisfying too once you get past the shittiness of the engine.

 

[Abu Antar]

Omerta: City of Gangsters. This game had the potential to be my favorite game of all time, yet the way it is, it maybe deserves to be called decent.

 

[Kutulu]

Im slowly playing through Heretic 1&2 and Hexen1&2 (With Deathkings & Portal) im going for 100% on Skill 4.
Finished Heretic on Smite Meister 100%, now playing Heretic 2 idk if Heretic 2 is hated or loved but i really like it
so far, its the only one of these game i didnt play before.

 

[murloc_gypsy]

Playing Deus EX IW. I've got to say, it's quite enjoyable, despite all its glaring faults. Some of the characters are interesting (Leo, the leader of The Order), almost all challenges can be passed using different skills, tactics, each mission allows for multiple ways of solving the main goals.

 

[Dayyālu]

Playing Deus EX IW. I've got to say, it's quite enjoyable, despite all its glaring faults. Some of the characters are interesting (Leo, the leader of The Order), almost all challenges can be passed using different skills, tactics, each mission allows for multiple ways of solving the main goals.

Finds VTM: Bloodlines "grindy" and "boring"

Finds IW "enjoyable" and with "interesting characters"

Son, you are weird

IW has a ton of heavy problems in writing, combat, balance, graphic design, world building (even simple shit like loading zones are a chore due to CONSOLE LIMITATIONS). It's probably one of the worst sequels ever.

Omar ending is fun, though. Nice trolling done by the soulless cyborgs.

 

[murloc_gypsy]

Finds VTM: Bloodlines "grindy" and "boring"

Finds IW "enjoyable" and with "interesting characters"

Son, you are weird

IW has a ton of heavy problems in writing, combat, balance, graphic design, world building (even simple shit like loading zones are a chore due to CONSOLE LIMITATIONS). It's probably one of the worst sequels ever.

Omar ending is fun, though. Nice trolling done by the soulless cyborgs.

Most of the time in these games are still spent in combat / missions, right? I mean, you only talk to people / gather quests for a short amount of time relative to the total time spent on the game. And Deus Ex IW's combat is better than VtMB's. I mean, you at least have some options as to how to take down an entire room of goons, e.g. You can either go full Rambo and rush in SMG blazing, take them out from a distance with the Sniper rifle, or (what I like to do) activate thermal cloaking, go inside the room and take control of any robots, turrets with Bot Domination, and then use those to wreak havoc on the goons . Quite satisfying. On the other hand, in VtMB I only had one option: kill everything with sword.

Yes, I agree that VTMB had better writing and story overall. But in the end all of that was drowned in the bitter taste left by the shit combat / gameplay. Or maybe I'm just more of a scifi / tinfoil hat conspiracies stories guy, rather than a grimdark goth one.

 

[No Great Name]

Beat several games recently, but Psychonauts was the most memorable. Great characters and the writing was amusing. Going through all the different mind levels was also fun (though the last level was more annoying than anything else). The Milkman level is a favorite of mine.

Having said this, there were more than a few places where I was fighting with the camera and the controls weren't quite precise enough which isn't that great for a platformer. I also think the game has too many different collectibles, but I guess some people enjoy that sort of thing.

I'm playing Xenogears now. The story is alright, but there are way too many cutscenes and animations everywhere that can't be skipped and seem to last too long, both in and out of battle. For example, there is an elevator which takes your party between two areas that gets used several times and takes about 15 seconds every time you use it. There are worse examples, too. It just seems like pointless filler, and heaven forbid you go through 5-10 minutes worth of cutscenes to die in the following boss battle just to have to do it all over again. The camera angles are crap a lot of times as well. I find myself holding down the fast-forward key most of the time playing this game.