What game are you wasting time on?

[baturinsky]

Brutal Doom Starter Pack campaigns.

In a nutshell, it's Doom II trying to be Duke3d (i.e. have realistic looking levels), and nearly, but not quite succeeding. They should have just steal all of Duke assets, instead of trash cans here and there.

Gameplay-wise, biggest problem here is a lack of consistency. You can walk through/on some vents, broken windows, ladders, knee-high fences etc, but not others.

Said that, it's still easier to figure how to get through maps by oneself. I only had to watch someone else's walkthrough in two places, though one of them was in the very first room.

 

[DeepOcean]

Playing Max Payne 1.

For the shooting:

For the story:

For level design:

Damn, this game likes to frustrate me, I'm on a warehouse having fun mowing down russian mob mooks on a minute and on a dreadful dream sequence on the next. Not a fan of this "We are doing cliche camp but it isn't bad because we know it is cliche camp, wink, wink... You are playing a videogame , wink, wink..." Sure, genius but I still have to waste time playing through this camp shit and the story is an emptyness of anything interesting or original. The dream sequences in particular...were on Mass Effect 3 child level of bad.

Most of the levels, especially the starting ones are like this, you enter on a place, most of the doors are closed with exception of the one the developers want you to go then magically the other doors get open when the developers want to spawn new mooks and its time for you to go there. You enter on a five stores hotel but conveniently, inside it looks like a tight scripted Disney ride. I'm not even demanding the level design to be non linear but there is linear that try to offer some room for you to play around and there is linear where the only thing you can do is press W to move foward and Max Payne 1 is very corridor like on most of its levels. It is a pity, the shooting was fun.

 

[Adon]

Finished Siren: Blood Curse. I like the game, but I have some notable gripes about the linearity and how weird the hand-holding is. That said some sections were fun to figure out, others not so much. The combat is so-and-so in that, it's great for most sections when you have a few enemies that you can knock out or sneak by, but terrible for the later sections when there is a greater number of enemies and some boss fights. The game definitely feels like it's made by the same guy as Silent Hill so that should give you an idea of how it is story-wise. Made me curious about the original Siren so I'm definitely starting that game up one of these days.

At the moment I've been playing Resonance of Fate. I had played this before when it came out 6 years ago and I remember loving it, but I also remember it could get pretty hard. I've wanted to replay this for a while so that's what I'm doing. So far I mostly feel the same as I did before except that outside of a few areas, it is easier than I remembered.

The combat is a bit complex at times when you have to really think about positioning, the way and direction you'll have your character move while keeping an eye on the Hero Gauge which if you run out of will put in a critical state that can get you killed; among other factors. Normally any damage you take becomes Scratch Damage (an exception being if you get poisoned) which heals up by moving around, but if you enter the critical state, it becomes Direct Damage which can't be healed unless by resting in your base or in abandoned power stations or a very rare healing item you can use in battle. And it really is rare, I've only run across 15 or so during my 60+ hours. Similarly, the only way to kill enemies or destroy their armor is by dealing scratch damage with one character while dealing direct damage with another. Some enemies seem to have armor that takes quite a bit of damage and you can either destroy it little by little, or if they have an opening in their armor (which is displayed in a "circle" underneath the enemies) then you can try to shoot directly into that one opening to hit the enemy directly and bypass the armor. Not always easy when they can move around or turn as they please when you're moving your character, although this depends on the enemy type.

There is also a crazy customization weapon system that can affect how fast your weapon charges and what the speed is based on distance. Normally the farther away you are from an enemy, the slower it is, but you can mitigate that with the customization. Speaking of the weapons, the one aspect that I don't like is how you level up your characters. It's fine for the handguns (direct damage) and the machine guns (scratch damage) but grenades (different properties per type) are kind of a pain to use. The way the targeting system works is if you use a hero gauge and have your character run on the floor, you'll hit directly into the direction you're facing your enemy (hence the circular display of their shield). If you have your character do a running jump, the bullets seem to hit all over the place which is normally the preferred method of moving around as it tends to bypass weak/small enemy armor. Grenades, at least the ones I've used, regardless of either movement, tend to hit like the former. Admittedly I haven't used many different grenades since they're all crafted, and I tend to stick with regular hand grenades.

Story reminds me a bit of Cowboy Bebop. Sometimes it's serious, and sometimes it's silly in that anime way (esp. early on).

I've also been doing the arena which is probably where I've found most of the challenges in the game so far.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Playing Max Payne 1.

For the shooting:

For the story:

For level design:

Damn, this game likes to frustrate me, I'm on a warehouse having fun mowing down russian mob mooks on a minute and on a dreadful dream sequence on the next. Not a fan of this "We are doing cliche camp but it isn't bad because we know it is cliche camp, wink, wink... You are playing a videogame , wink, wink..." Sure, genius but I still have to waste time playing through this camp shit and the story is an emptyness of anything interesting or original. The dream sequences in particular...were on Mass Effect 3 child level of bad.

Most of the levels, especially the starting ones are like this, you enter on a place, most of the doors are closed with exception of the one the developers want you to go then magically the other doors get open when the developers want to spawn new mooks and its time for you to go there. You enter on a five stores hotel but conveniently, inside it looks like a tight scripted Disney ride. I'm not even demanding the level design to be non linear but there is linear that try to offer some room for you to play around and there is linear where the only thing you can do is press W to move foward and Max Payne 1 is very corridor like on most of its levels. It is a pity, the shooting was fun.

I've always hated linear games and loved open ones, but even at the extremely linear end of things, there are different ways to do things. Half-Life was very linear, but it was well masked by the large rooms and spaces, so you felt like you were in a real place. Max Payne, on the other hand, was so terrible with its literal corridor gameplay.

 

[Abu Antar]

Binary Domain. Trying to get all achievements for max trust and some other crap. I won't 100% it as I won't dabble with the online component of the game.

 

[Fowyr]

So after Total Eclipse I finished Driller aka Space Station Oblivion.

Some rig positions are ridiculously hard. Opal, for example, even with hint sign, at least in PC version.
Found invisible maze in the end.

EDIT:
Rare thing. Driller/Total Eclipse/Castle Master manual.
http://mocagh.org/miscgame/virtualworlds-manual.pdf

 

[DragoFireheart]

Dark Souls 3 atm.

 

[Wayward Son]

Just got Baldur's Gate 1 off of GOG's summer sale a few days ago. It's my first time playing it and so here are my thoughts on it.

• Combat's fun. Best I've ever seen in a Bioware game.
• Nice level design. Played a little into Durlag's Tower and found the great placement of traps. Also, some unexpected difficulty spikes, like random Ogre in the first area.
• Some key bindings are weird, like inability to map the options menu as escape and the way camera movement is done by number pad arrow keys (at least in my rig)
• Some boss fights are bullshit, like the spider queen summoning four sword spiders to rape your frontline guys.

All in all, having a lot of fun. I've maxed out difficulty and am actually having a difficult time, as opposed to steamrolling ME on Insane.

 

[iqzulk]

Wrath of Earth (hard difficulty) - done. WHAT a PIECE of SHIT. This is one of the worst games I have ever completed by myself and not on youtube. Oh, he-he, final playing time without all the reloads? 44 hours, 47 minutes. For an FPS consisting of 12 maps (only 4 of which were any good). How much of that time was spent idly regenerating, I wonder?

Anyway, In Extremis, I think, isn't gonna happen any time soon, because I can almost see "Wrath of Earth" written all over it (and yes, it's on timer, that much I do know, both because of the oxygen meter, and because of mosnter respawners). Two shitty games in a row would just be way too much for me for the time being.

Final rank: D | 37/100.

 

[Adon]

85 hours into Resonance of Fate.

Made it to the last chapter of the game, defeated the two sub-bosses of the final dungeon to grab the unique hexes that they both drop which unlock Neverland, an optional, technically post-endgame, dungeon. In here enemies are much stronger than the rest of the game, excluding the final boss who is level 200+ iirc, of course this isn't taking into account the secret boss of Neverland. I haven't explored much because I was underleveled when I first went in, fighting lvl 150+ enemies while I was only 110-ish.

Should mention, the maximum level for your characters is 300, 100 for each weapon. I also want to say that the enemies here are stronger than the Arena, but I'm only in rank 47 out of the 50. I know the regular soldiers are up to level 101, but I didn't check the turrets from rank 45.

Speaking of the Arena, it starts to get a bit absurd with enemies 40 ranks in, and I don't say this purely in a "they do way more damage now" kind of way (which they do). Doing the Arena fights as you go through the story over-levels you enough as it is, but the last 10 really fucking over-level you. Those turrets I mentioned, each one of those seems to have a huge ass amount of HP that you can deplete easily with a handgun or grenades. Each kill of those gave me 3 levels on the weapon I was using. At the moment I'm sitting on a level 210+ characters. That said, it's not that simple to kill the turrets as after they attack, they hide behind a shield that's impenetrable; although it is still easy. Once they lower their shields, go in with the scratch damage, if they hide again then scratch damage one of the regular soldiers with your other character until they lower their shields again.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

So after Total Eclipse I finished Driller aka Space Station Oblivion.

Nice one. That's one game I never bothered to finish.

Found invisible maze in the end.

Ohforfuckssake...

EDIT:
Rare thing. Driller/Total Eclipse/Castle Master manual.
http://mocagh.org/miscgame/virtualworlds-manual.pdf

Nice. I never complain about getting a digital copy of a manual I already own.

EDIT: It's a manual for 4 games - you're forgetting Castle Master 2: The Crypt. It's an Expansion Pack/DLC/Bonus Scenario that's supposed to be played if you die in Castle Master, like that mini-game in Prey.

 

[Fowyr]

EDIT: It's a manual for 4 games - you're forgetting Castle Master 2: The Crypt. It's an Expansion Pack/DLC/Bonus Scenario that's supposed to be played if you die in Castle Master

Damn, at least it's imaginative. By the way, stories of both Driller and Total Eclipse are awesomely inane. It's like cheapest pulpest SF.

Imprisoned in this horror crypt
Your dignity and freedom stripped
By Magister the Castle Master
Try snatching victory from disaster.
2
While once your twin was captive made
Now you yourself with nerve-ends frayed
For if you lose this struggle you
Become an enslaved spirit tool
Now poltergeists make dead things dance
With flying rock and chairs that prance
Will you escape to freedom or
Fester here for evermore ...

 

[Fowyr]

Done.

Kerberos made from prisms is adorable.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I take it you're skipping Dark Side? (I did that too.)

Much of this game is about climbing up on, and looking under things, to find all the stuff you need.

 

[Fowyr]

I take it you're skipping Dark Side? (I did that too.)

Dunno, I just on Freescape binge, and playing games at random. Even does not knew about Driller 2, but it has PC version so I will play it.
I'm on Castle Master now.

 

[Slimu]

I've just finished Dex and started playing Gorky 17. Looks like a turn-based Resident Evil which sounds pretty good to me

 

[Fowyr]

Shitlordian regressive Castle Master does not let you visit other gender's toilet.

 

[Durandal]

started playing NecroVision
this game is crazy, REALLY fucking crazy
chaining combos in WW1 trenches with your shredder claw and vampire shotgun while fire and lightning erupts from your body for no reason has never been as fun

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Shitlordian regressive Castle Master does not let you visit other gender's toilet.

At least it lets you choose a gender at the start.

Are you using a walkthrough, or just going by trial-and-error?

 

[Fowyr]

At least it lets you choose a gender at the start.

Are you using a walkthrough, or just going by trial-and-error?

Mostly trial and error. Stuck in upper levels where are four buttons on the wall and now collect pentacles in the caverns. Key under the horse was really evil, I have tried for several minutes to crawl in like it was Troyan horse until just clicked on black rectangle.

 

[Grim Monk]

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.

Mouselook is available by default, just press "U" key to activate it.

To invert mouse movement:
Main Menu > Options > Controls

You can also rebind controls to WASD:

Move Forward/Back = W/S
Strife Left/Right = A/D

Other keys to whatever is convenient.


I recommend playing on "Well Done" for your first run.
Save "Extra Crispy" for later...

There is a problem with music not looping, fixed by using a custom Dosbox build:
https://af.gog.com/forum/blood_seri...o_improve_the_support_for_blood?as=1649904300

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Fowyr

As usual, I can give you a few hints.

# There are 7 (6?) keys to collect, and 10 pentacles. You'll need all the pentacles, and (IIRC) all the keys.

# Health = Strength. The more health you have, the stronger you are. A stronger person can move things that a weakling cannot. (Now you know why there's a gym in the castle.)

# The kitchen hides more than just a clue.

# What good is a library without a secret entrance?

# Drinking too much wine drains your strength. :/

# Hopefully Total Eclipse taught you to look around outside the castle before going in.

# In order to beat the game, you need to kill all of the spirits in the game. For this you need the Spirit Meter to be at the far left. The spirits grow in power as time passes, so if the Spirit Meter ever goes to the far right, it's Game Over.

# The Pentacle Room has 10 pentacles, clicking on these tells you where to look for them. (IIRC half of them are in the caverns.)

# The caverns have multiple entrances, and IIRC you can only reach some parts of the caverns from some entrances. The caverns only have one exit though, and you can only open it from the caverns.

# You can find potions that aid your efforts. The Rock Travel potion, for example, allows you to merely shoot an exit to use it, which saves on travel time.

# Some monsters need to be hit in certain locations in order to be killed. Some monsters just need to be hit A LOT. You should know which monsters these are when you see them.

# A few places of interest include the well in the courtyard (as well as the flag), the haystacks in the barn, the wizard's hut, the boulder outside the castle and the drawbridge. SAVE before messing with the drawbridge, and check it last of these things.

# IIRC regarding the four blocks, you need to stand in the right place and press them all within a short time period.

 

[Ovplain]

Kinda jumping around a bit these days.:S Played some Alien: Isolation the other day, some Witcher 1 too. Also Rise of the Tomb Raider yesterday.

 

[Adon]

Finished Resonance of Fate, clocked in 94 hours. Did both Neverland and the Arena, and even though I was clearly over-leveled against many enemies in Neverland, a few fights still managed to give me a challenge. The fairies in particular can be brutal there. This is the only time I ever felt the need to use cover prominently partially because of how much damage enemies do. The other reason would be that a few enemies use incendiary and freezing rounds which are a pain to deal with; especially so since I wasn't using the first aid kid. Instead I had 2 of my characters dual-wield machine guns to get in extra scratch damage while my handgun character had the grenade box equipped. In hindsight, didn't really use that there at all.

Boss fights get really easy once you've basically maxed out your machinegun. A full charge with a lvl 98 machinegun yields you a bonus of 100% stun, and breaking gauges with a handgun (easily doable if you charge your attack as much as possible) also stuns them so you can easily defeat them without taking much damage. Sort of explains why they put in other enemies in some of the boss fights, not that they make much of a difference. Should also mention that you can also get 100% scratch damage bonus at that same level, but that only works against regular enemies.

I'm actually curious to go through the game again without the grinding of the Arena to see how much hard the game really is. Although, NG+ lets you pick a harder difficulty iirc, might be interesting to try that instead first before starting a new file. That said, I'm not in the mood of doing that anytime soon.

 

[Cadmus]

I reinstalled Warcraft 2 and the campaign has been ok so far. It's been a long time since I played an RTS without any fucking "xp" or heroes or shit like that. I like the grim atmosphere and the music's good. The sound effects are really heavy and badass. I suspect I won't get far before I get bored though.