What game are you wasting time on?

[Unkillable Cat]

Those games are grid-based, unlike this one.

 

[baturinsky]

Darkest Dungeon. I'm getting to stage of understanding where it's turning from survival horror into a regular dungeon romp game.
Game changers for me were:

Abusing stuns
Abusing enemy shuffling
Focusing stress-dealers
Having scouting bonuses as high as possible
Referring to wiki article about which Curio does what
Using camps

So, from having to abandon most quests and returning with four 50+% stressed guys, now I'm finishing most runs with victory and near zero stress

 

[Abu Antar]

I think this was my last Dota 2 game ever. Got a nice K/D/A ratio but we still lost. (Playing with randoms.) I might crawl back but as of right now, the game is uninstalled. I had all that money because I couldn't leave the base and our courier was killed. I was basically defending or using guerrilla tactics to pick enemies off.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

So I take it Leechmonger and Unkillable Cat that I shouldn't even bother with Quake 1 and its expansions.
Back in the 90s I bought Quake 2 and thought it was okay, and after I bought the Special Edition of Quake 4 that came with Quake 2 for modern windows I went through Quake 2, its two official expansions, and the unofficial one: Zaero.
I guess around the time this might have been incredible to behold if you previously only played Doom like games, but probably even then it was already no longer technologically innovative any more, and I think gameplay wise it was already old when titles like Unreal and Half Life came along.
Perhaps special for its time but not something worth bothering with these days unless you want to explore FPS history.

I have finished the Hell on Earth Starters pack for Brutal Doom which I thought was pretty decent in general because of the Half Life approach to level design, though I do think a lot of the hell levels are rather boring compared to the Earth levels.
I really like how much Duke Nukem 3D/Build engine games have inspired map/wad makers to try to come up with more real looking places.

Right now I am busy with Blade of Agony which is sort of like a similar approach to Campaign design but then with the Nazis from Wolfenstein 3D/Doom 2.
Like with Hell on Earth starter pack the maps are designed to look more like realistic places such as villages, city, the Atlantic wall defense line the Germans had build during World War 2 and the work done on these is very well done and looks professional.
It makes me wonder how FPS development had gone if Doom back on the day had come out with the Brutal Doom Hell on Earth pack and if Blade of Agony had been Wolfenstein's official follow up around the time.

However gameplay wise Blade of Agony is a bit of a mixed pack. I like how effort is done to put actual real missions in the game even if it is just collecting documents and blowing up enemy anti air guns so far, but actually getting through the levels can be very frustrating. I don't mind old style gameplay but there are barely any health packs in some of the levels.
And the loot the enemies sometimes drop is also complete random. Sometimes enemies yielding more powerful weapons only drop ammo instead of their guns when killed, or nothing at all.
At some point I had shitloads of ammo for a gun I did not even have in my inventory and which is probably hidden at some of the secret places. As for the guns I did have, I could barely find any ammo for those or way to little, forcing me to rely on my knife.

Oh and there is one level with an underwater segment in which you will take lack of air damage as there is no spot between the two entrance to take a breath of fresh air.

Great mod project but those elements should really be a bit more balanced.

 

[pippin]

Darkest Dungeon. I'm getting to stage of understanding where it's turning from survival horror into a regular dungeon romp game.
Game changers for me were:

Abusing stuns
Abusing enemy shuffling
Focusing stress-dealers
Having scouting bonuses as high as possible
Referring to wiki article about which Curio does what
Using camps

So, from having to abandon most quests and returning with four 50+% stressed guys, now I'm finishing most runs with victory and near zero stress

You're misunderstanding the game if you think of it as a survivalist game. As you say, the focus is in the abilities. I even sell most items and keep the really good ones for certain classes so I can have more money for upgrades and stress removal.
Stun - Blight - Bleed do most of the work. Blight is better than bleed imo, so Plague Doctor works way better than Vestal. My favorite team is Plague Doctor - Grave Robber - Bounty Hunter - Leper.

 

[pakoito]

I think this was my last Dota 2 game ever. Got a nice K/D/A ratio but we still lost. (Playing with randoms.) I might crawl back but as of right now, the game is uninstalled. I had all that money because I couldn't leave the base and our courier was killed. I was basically defending or using guerrilla tactics to pick enemies off.

I quit 2 years ago after a 5 year spree between dota 1, HoN and dota 2. I kid you not, I became a more productive member of society when all that spare time wasted yelling at Russians went into my daily job skills, which leveled up greatly within a year.

 

[SerratedBiz]

I think this was my last Dota 2 game ever.

Maybe you would've won if you weren't still using Sange and Yasha and MoM at min 56.

Not that your team was good, but w/e.

 

[pippin]

Radiant victories? It just works.

 

[Ovplain]

'Mad Max' and 'Total War: Shogun 2'

 

[Modron]

Steamworld Heist and Prophesy of Pendor for Warband (the ride never ends) .

 

[Mr. Pink]

i ate up an entire rival civ and expanded too quickly. now im stuck with slow growth, squalor, unhappiness and a shitton of outdated units that i cant upgrade.

also, while i was busy pumping out hoplites and archers, everyone else took all the good wonders.

 

[Mr. Pink]

I think this was my last Dota 2 game ever. Got a nice K/D/A ratio but we still lost. (Playing with randoms.) I might crawl back but as of right now, the game is uninstalled. I had all that money because I couldn't leave the base and our courier was killed. I was basically defending or using guerrilla tactics to pick enemies off.

>echo saber on lina (doesn't work with ranged heroes)
>everybody has s&y
>sven built a vangard
>bounty hunter with vlads
>lycan with a second vlads
the only one with a decent build that makes sense is alchemist.

bad news: you're in the deep depths of the matchmaking trench
good news: if you know how to play a hero that bads can't counter, you can get out relatively easily.

there are a lot of things could have been done to win the game. also please dont buy s&y on riki. manta is roughly the same price and better in every way. it also purges dust, so you dont have to waste diffusal charges.

 

[Naraya]

Seeing a lot of Quake hate here recently, which I don't understand nor agree with at all. I'm pretty bad with arguing so I just put this piece instead, which quite nicely sums up my thoughts about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0XOKSat57Q

 

[Damned Registrations]

I think this was my last Dota 2 game ever. Got a nice K/D/A ratio but we still lost. (Playing with randoms.) I might crawl back but as of right now, the game is uninstalled. I had all that money because I couldn't leave the base and our courier was killed. I was basically defending or using guerrilla tactics to pick enemies off.

>echo saber on lina (doesn't work with ranged heroes)
>everybody has s&y
>sven built a vangard
>bounty hunter with vlads
>lycan with a second vlads
the only one with a decent build that makes sense is alchemist.

bad news: you're in the deep depths of the matchmaking trench
good news: if you know how to play a hero that bads can't counter, you can get out relatively easily.

there are a lot of things could have been done to win the game. also please dont buy s&y on riki. manta is roughly the same price and better in every way. it also purges dust, so you dont have to waste diffusal charges.

You forgot my favourite part: In a game where Riki and BH are the two most important heroes on the map, nobody has a gem. Or a Necrobook. Or even sentries.

 

[Dux]

I'm about to finish off my weekend fling with the old classic Fallout. I decided to play as Max Stone - which means I've been going around the wasteland punching the shit out of pretty much everyone. It just happens.

My favourite moment was when I faced off against the Lieutenant. After a couple of tries I managed to knock the fucker unconscious and I proceeded to steal his gatling laser. Then it was just him and me in a good old-fashioned boxing match. Needless to say I won by KO after firmly embedding my spiked knuckles in his frontal bone. That was nice.

RNG can fuck right off, though.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

I have been messing some more with gzdoom, in particular with Laz Rojas's Doom mods http://lazrojas.com/wolfendoom/index2.html
He recreated Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, and the expansion packs in the Doom engine as well as a number of original map packs for both Wolfenstein and Doom.

Now I applaud his ideas and ambition on the original packs as he did a lot of effort to make his locations look like real places (hotels, space stations, futuristic cities, German bases in Norway), and some of his maps are quite big.
But gameplay wise they are not really that fun to play to be honest, especially on his original packs he is quite restrained (not the right word for it but I can't think of the appropriate word in English right now) with the health and the armor pick ups while his maps are chock-full of enemies.

And despite the fancy dress up the gameplay is pretty traditional: kill enemies, find keys, move on to next level. In fact sometimes the keys are rather ridiculously well hidden as any secret on a map as the closets in which they are sometimes kept don't look any different from a regular wall.

I like the thoughts behind his map packs such as the pulp sci fi Astrostein in which the player/Blazkowicz awakens in a future in which the Nazis won World War 2 by getting technology from the future through a time portal and are now busy colonizing space. (this was way before Wolfenstein The New Order)
But the execution falls a bit short and I think a lot of players will probably get somewhat frustrated and bored eventually when playing these.

The Wolfenstein recreations also really show that the original Wolf 3D and Spear of Destiny really have not aged that well. You really need to be into old school FPS to be able to spend hours behind this.
I guess games like Half Life, Elite Force, and the Jedi Knight games have spoiled it for me.

 

[spekkio]

Finished Castlevania - Circle of the Moon

Good:
- Pleasantly difficult. Huge incline after SOTN.
- Enemies are varied, interesting and require different approaches.
- New enemies appearing in old areas after some time is good idea.
- Same with card combinations turning into special skills.
- DAT infinite vertical jump.

Bad:
- Story and writing are close to non-existent. Not heavily required in such game, but still...
- Second form of Dracula is too hard / requires specific setup.

Ugly:
- Areas where you can't replenish hearts, followed by boss battle. Why?
- Card drops are IMO too rare (got like 1/2 of them with 90% completion).
- Item system is bare-boned (only a couple of items).
- Some special attacks are clearly inferior to others / work in linear progression (switch to stronger when it becomes available).

tl;dr

First metroidvania I really liked (didn't like SotN). Combines oldschool difficulty with metroid-like non-linear exploration. What more can you want?

 

[DwarvenFood]

Started Blood for the very first time! Like the background story and voice acting, but damn I am not used to the doom-style shooters anymore.. severe lack of ammo and dying way too many times.. Has the popamole got to me ? Is it curable ? We will find out in time.

 

[Leechmonger]

Started playing System Shock for the first time (Enhanced Edition). I can't remember the last time I was this impressed by a game this early on. You're telling me that a game that came out in '94 had 3D environments with vertical aiming, crouch/low crouch (= prone), leaning (by an adjustable amount!), and weapons with two ammo types that you have to reload? Holy shit. And those are just the features I wasn't expecting. The game is also dripping in atmosphere, has fun gunplay (so far), provides massive levels to explore, etc. The game is just really fun to play.

I'd beaten SS2 years ago but always assumed the first one was too archaic to play. To be fair, the addition of mouselook probably makes moving around 10 times easier. I also don't think the original's controls were remappable via a config file, which also helps. That said, the default controls for Doom, Quake, and Descent were horrendous so SS is certainly not unique in this regard.

So far I've cleared the medical area (got security to 0%) playing on difficulty level 2 for everything. I wandered around quite a bit so thanks to some lucky double medipatch drops I ended up with close to 30 medipatches. And since I was using the phaser SPARQ I have tons of dart and pistol ammo.

On the complete opposite side of the spectrum I tried playing a couple of games from my childhood: Star Wars Rebel Assault I and II. These games are bad. Real bad.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

Started Blood for the very first time! Like the background story and voice acting, but damn I am not used to the doom-style shooters anymore.. severe lack of ammo and dying way too many times.. Has the popamole got to me ? Is it curable ? We will find out in time.

Have you leveled your character properly ?

 

[Ivan]

spekkio

Check out Aria of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin.



from the classics I'd suggest 3 and Super (4)

 

[pakoito]

I'm itching for Shovel Knight and I've decided to start running all Megaman (non-X yet) back and forth. Yes? No? Any order? I already have "minus infinity" as one of the best hacks, but I could use some suggestions.

 

[spekkio]

Ivan

I plan to play all GBA and NDS 'Vanias.
Played SC4 already, planning to do Chronicles (PS1) and Bloodlines (GEN) as well.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

On the complete opposite side of the spectrum I tried playing a couple of games from my childhood: Star Wars Rebel Assault I and II. These games are bad. Real bad.

Ah those FMV experiments. I have a few of those laying around such as Daedalus Encounter that I got mailed to me when I bought Mission Critical on Ebay. Oh boy, that was a painful period of PC gaming with only handful of titles that pulled it off well.

Then there were other attempts at making games more cinematic such as Cyberia 1 and 2. Sure it looked great but those games were tests of patience and frustration limits.

The Mega Man, I honestly tried to love those but I really suck at them outside the Legends adventure ones. I guess that I am not the platform gamer I have made myself out to be.

 

[iqzulk]

Still Wrath of Earth. Still hard difficulty. Finished level 9. Three levels more to go, the last one, AFAIK, being extremely short.

This game has so overstayed its welcome, it's not even fucking funny. The second third being a complete piece of shit, doesn't help either. Levels 6 and 8 were repetitive "collect/plant N gimmick gizmos" which were as boring and uneventful, as one could imagine. Levels 5 and 7 made me resort to God mode cheat. I do not feel bad about it in the slightest. I wouldn't have completed them otherwise, as simple as that. And I didn't want to put myself through the torture of trying to complete them, because I abhor the corresponding type of gameplay passionately. But, basically, when under the spell of said God mode cheat, I was laughing my ass off on how fucking ridiculous the whole sequences were, and how fucking deluded whoever created them was if he thought anyone in their right mind could complete them (of course, the actual explanation is that the hard difficulty probably hasn't been playtested at all). You see, this game's idea of a "challenge" or rather of a "memorable moment" is, for the most part, that of an implicitly timed sequence (in this particular case - through the use of the environments, draining your energy and health and degrading your suit systems non-stop and at quite a brisk pace). Those two particular sequences, on the hard difficulty, require you to, basically, SpeedDemosArchive the whole thing absolutely perfectly, without taking a single hit (with horrible imprecise non-accelerated turning and godawful hit-detection, no less), using the shortest route possible, and having a perfect memory of an every single item's placement. Without taking a single hit. Then, maybe, maybe, it would be possible to complete both maps on hard fair and square. Although, frankly, it could be, that even TASers wouldn't be able to do that.

When I played Daikatana on Shogun, I only resorted to God mode once, for a 30second sequence I probably could beat fair and square anyway. This shit concerns the entirety of 5th level (properly exploring which takes 2 to 3 hours at the very least) and at least one third of the 7th level (ditto). Also, the 7th level has this puzzle so shitty, nobody on the Internet knows, what exactly constitutes the feedback, that would allow you to zero in on the solution. I'm shitting you not, the "canon" way to solve it - is via going through all the 512 possible states of the valve combination - and, after each change, backtracking ~50 meters to one of two spots (which are not THAT evident, BTW), where it can be seen, whether or not you have indeed solved the puzzle, because from the points, where the valves themselves reside, such information can neither be seen, nor can it be heard. Yes, I have looked up the correct combination on teh Internetz. Fucking sue me.

Well, at least, layout/direction-wise, the 9th map was comparable to the first four maps of the game, so that's good. Hope, 10th and 11th ones would follow the track. Still, it does have its own problem (other than fucking timed sequences - although of a different kind - on that level's factory environments), that being that the another particular idea of a challenge the creators of this game seemed to be entertaining, is that of a gazillion of bulletsponge enemies, each of which can 2-3-shot you (the first shot invariable either kills your shields completely, or kills your HUD completely) and doesn't pay any heed to your puny attempts to scratch it (did I mention, that guided missiles aren't usable on these enemies at all, because reasons, and plasma can only be used in the unguided mode? by the way, the restriction on the usage of the guided missiles basically makes it so that it only makes sense to use them on the non-masked flying drones - and nobody else). Come to think of it, this does very much remind me of the latter two thirds of this little piece of shit game, called "ReVOLUTION", which I also had the ecstatic pleasure to play on hard. Basically, from 1/3 mark onwards, the only way to proceed through the game, was to pound each enemy (from 2/3 mark onwards, all the enemies became regenerating) with headshots from the energy-sniper-rifle (it being the only non-shit weapon with regenerating ammo - considering that all the other ammo is gone on the first two enemies), where enemies can and will take 5 consecutive head-shots from that thing before dying, and can and will, at the same time, 1-2-shot you from any weapon (all of them are hitscan too) in their possession without having any second thoughts. Now, THAT game was a mighty piece of shit. There was another piece of shit game, "fantasy 3D tactical game" called ExcaliBug. The combat mechanics was so ridiculously broken, that the only reliable way to complete it was to pound every single enemy with the stones, which were meant to be used to distract them as part of stealth mechanic. Also, each enemy took 20 to 50 stones to the face, and missing a single one meant, that said enemy would probably managed to get to your stone-throwing self and thoroughly smack you in the face, causing yet another load-game.

Anyway, back to Wrath of Earth. Why the fuck does it need to be, so that first the ENTIRETY of the energy regenerates, and only THEN the actual systems of the suit start regenerating? Mechanically speaking, the only things said energy is ever used for, are 2 weapons and the infra-red visor, which has VERY situational uses. So, if your HUD gets fried (so that you get NO information about anything status-related, no map, no radar, no info on ammo, energy, health, systems' wear), you need, to, first, blindly wait 1-2-3 minutes until the entirety of your energy gets regenerated, THEN, maybe, the game will be kind enough to turn the HUD back on. No, I mean, again, why the fuck does the fucking BATTERY get an absolute priority? For what fucking in-game reason? Oh, and said battery and said HUD, and said anything can be randomly fried with the single pot-shot even on full shields (as I've already written in my previous message). Didn't luck out? Wait another 2 minutes under the lightbulb until the ENTIRETY of the battery regenerates once again. Oh, and since, if you have access to any regenerating (meaning bright) surface whatsoever, the mistakes that you make, are those, that make you lose health. And since losing health to enemies is HEAVILY based on luck and since losing health to environment is mandatory and unavoidable (and losing health to "scripted memorable moments" - extremely likely regardless of whatever you do), well, let's just say, that the game doesn't make it all that apparent, as to what is a mistake, what isn't a mistake, and how the fuck the entire thing is meant to be played. Maybe you luck out, maybe you don't luck out, maybe the level-designer did decide to be asshole, maybe the level-designer didn't decide to be an asshole - and that's about it. Not that with those shitty imprecise controls and hit-detection there are all that many options anyway. Also, the lighting system is extremely arbitrary, and it's downright impossible to deduce from a glance, just how intense the regeneration there would be (although it kind of SHOULD be immediately apparent). Come to think of it, the same thing concerns both hot and cold areas as well. Also, the guidance lock-on and an extreme piece of shit, not only impossible to control in any way - but also locking onto enemies who are behind fucking WALLS instead of the ones who are in your direct visibility and very genki-ly firing upon you. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to waste several precious guided missiles do to that piece of faggotry suddenly switching from the eney that's right at the centre of the screen, in my direct visibility, and firing upon me, to the enemy, that is near the side of the screen, further away distance-wise, AND also currently completely behind the corner.

And to think that some time ago I was harping on Eradicator, and considering its level-design "repetitive". Eradicator is a fucking masterpiece and a Godsend from Heaven, compared to this. At least, mechanics-wise, anyway.

I think, after I'm done with this piece of crap, I'll need to play a genuinely good game (as opposed to "yet another experimental 90s noname made by 3 persons and a dog piece of dung"). I have my doubts, but, at least, I hope that PC version of Exhumed/Powerslave will do nicely.