What game are you wasting time on?

[ERYFKRAD]

Much to my own surprise, I gave The Deadly Tower of Monsters (2016) another go, my earlier impressions can be found here.

I say "to my own surprise" because the game is short and kind of a one-trick-pony, but even though I played it just over two years ago it still manages to be somewhat fresh and entertaining.

TDToM is best described as a 3D platformer with Metroidvania elements. What literally sets it above all the other similar games is its vertical element - the player must scale a tower that just goes on and on and on and on, with the best part being that the player is free to jump off and skydive to the bottom as he wishes - there are no loading sessions, it's one gigantic integrated level! In fact the skydiving gimmick becomes essential to progress, as some sections can only be reached via insane altitude jumps, with one notable instance needing to be done from the very top! What figuratively sets the game above most other similar games is its setting (cheap 1960s-era sci-fi flicks) and the narrator. This is one of the best narrators I've heard in quite a while, he makes the game work.

Gameplay-wise however, the game suffers a little. The player controls one of three characters, but even though each character has a unique special ability they play and feel all so alike that the game really shouldn't have bothered... but the way the narrator sells it to the player just makes most people shrug and carry on regardless.

The graphics and animation are top-notch, and they need to be to get the setting right. Cheap plastic costumes look cheap, the larger monsters move with a Ray Harryhausen-esque stop motion-gait and even trivial graphical stuff like lens flares get their day in the sun. But sadly there are few opportunities to enjoy the view, as camera angles are fixed and there's no free-look beside a downward-look command over edges. This will get annoying when planning certain jumps or looking for the various secrets.

But as mentioned at the start, the game is very short, almost painfully so. Short of the elements I've mentioned there's nothing new or groundbreaking to be found in TDToM, but the combined package of it all is still worth a play, IMO. If you have $10 or so lying around while this game is on a sale and want something fun to play, you can't go wrong with this one. Unless you have vertigo. Then you're fucked.

Fun things to try out:

# Keep an eye on the title screen, as it changes each time you start the game. Naturally the narrator has something to say about that.

# Try running against a conveyor belt using the male protagonist for a while.

# Return to the starting area (where the ship crashed) once you climb back up to that altitude.

Yeah, it's crazy how a bad 'game' ends up being entertaining.

 

[Big Wrangle]

Playing through Descent, made it past level 3 so far. Holy shit the six degrees movement system is so good! I mean, it kinda makes me confused and I still need to get used it, but it allows for a lot of control.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Decided to replay my first FPS and sat down to play Heretic for an hour or so... a few hours later I'm halfway through Episode 3.

I can see why I liked it a lot when I was a kid. Fun combat, levels sometimes require checking every nook and cranny, nice music, ammo scarcity kicks in once in a while, usable items add some variety to the Doom formula -- in short, I'm having a good time.

The only downside so far lies in an occasional boring area or two w/ too much brown/gray, but these are usually not very long.

 

[v1rus]

Beat Shadow Tactics yesterday. Def scratched that Robin Hood/Desperados itch. Looks awsum, sounds awsum and plays awsum. Also feels awsum. Sadly, plot is as trite as it can possible be, and dialogues are physically painful. Switching the spoken language to japanese helped with dialogues but I almost quit the game after

Spoiler

Mugens death. Dont get me wrong, thats the sole well executed element of the entire fucking plot, but also the worst decision they could make design wise. Not only do they simplify the game by literally removing 1/5 of the games options, but Mugen and Takamo are the only two unique characters the game offers, with the three ninjas playing relatively the same, with a couple different tricks.

Still, managed to make it to the end, and glad I did. Now, am I the only one who can only play this type of games by save scumming like a mother-fucker?

I also have a terrible Evil Genius itch now, but I cant find an excuse to play it for the nth time. Any recommendations? Also played Dungeon Keeper 2 when I was younger, loved it, but it aged perhaps a tad badly graphics wise, I'd luv something shiner (by comparison, Evil Genius aged incredibly well imho.) Also, appreciated the persistent base building of Evil Genius way more than mission system in DK

 

[RK47]

I'm playing The Age of Decadence of Eroge

A must have for those who love mind-breaking genre. The Heiress features a decent length narrative with plenty of choice and consequences. The good ending skips a lot of the H-scenes, while the bad ending contains most of the tasteful segments. I applaud the writers for doing a good job with the scenarios. I ticked off a lot of the 'sex tags' for the review. There's a LOT of genre being covered, but the most prominent acts are of corruption and slavery.

The storyline is pretty basic: Alice, an heiress of a noble family must complete missions to slowly pay back her debts. Succeed, and you survive to make enough gold for next week payout. Fail, well... you're gonna pay with something else.

Voice overs are not for the entire game. Only choice lines are spoken.
Average length of a route: 5-6 hours for first time completion, subsequent runs can be done with new game+ where the heroine keeps all her levels and gears.
Combat difficulty is low to moderate. You have to be very deliberate to lose some fights.

+ Tasteful, thicc artwork.
+ Morality choices that made sense.
+ Multiple endings.
+ Sex tracker, Virginity matters.
- Limited costumes, only nude / clothed.
- Easy combat, too easy at times.
- Bad translations, e.g 'I've been infringed!'

Here are some tags if you really want to know more. I don't wanna spoil the story.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

Fucking fuck off and die you fucking fuck

 

[DakaSha V]

calm down, man

 

[No Great Name]

Finished Mega Man 2 for the NES. Wrote up the usual informative review here, and a lot of of it is mostly repeating what was said for the first Mega Man since there weren't any real big mechanical changes.

Overall I was a bit disappointed at first by how much more forgiving Mega Man 2 is compared to the first one. Even though this game has more levels, I was able to complete it quicker than the first one just because the enemy and boss patterns seem to be simpler and less erratic. Having said that though, I can definitely say that Mega Man 2 is a more polished and defined game than its predecessor. The backgrounds are more distinct, the bosses are more unique (some were a bit on the easy side unfortunately), and the special weapons are certainly more varied in 2 compared to 1. Boss weaknesses are a lot more important in 2 although it goes overboard in some cases such as the final boss being invulnerable to everything except one specific weapon. Run out of ammo in that fight? Well, you're screwed and have to take a game over as there's no other way to replenish your ammo. Mega Man 2 still has its tough moments for sure. I still died plenty of times and it still felt good to finally beat it. Some of the additions to the game are really good ideas like Items 1, 2, and 3 (the Magnet Beam from the first game was just too good of an option), while other additions trivialized the challenge a bit like the health reserve tanks that can be used at any time.

All in all, it's a good game, just don't expect it to be as difficult as the first one.

Next I plan on playing Dark Souls on the PC. I've played the first couple hours of it before some years ago, but for whatever reason never got further than that. I still have my copy of the Prepare to Die Edition, but apparently it's not sold anymore as the developers seem to have taken it down so people can buy the Remastered version instead. That doesn't seem like the best of ideas to me.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

There's one huge reason why Mega Man 2 is considered both more enjoyable, and easier to play, than Mega Man 1: No Clay Man.

This is something Capcom should have noticed and acted upon. Instead they brought him back for pretty much every sequel IIRC.

 

[someone else]

Brag: I completed Rockman 2 without dying when I was a kid, however didn't beat Quickman with only buster without getting hit like this:

 

[No Great Name]

There's one huge reason why Mega Man 2 is considered both more enjoyable, and easier to play, than Mega Man 1: No Clay Man.

This is something Capcom should have noticed and acted upon. Instead they brought him back for pretty much every sequel IIRC.

By Clay Man do you mean the Yellow Devil? If not, I have no idea what you mean.

Brag: I completed Rockman 2 without dying when I was a kid, however didn't beat Quickman with only buster without getting hit like this:

Of all of the Robot Masters, Quickman was the one that gave me the most trouble since I only had the buster shot as well when I tried to complete his stage. His general patterns were closer to how Mega Man 1 bosses were rather than the simple rinse and repeat patterns from Woodman, Heatman, Airman, Bubbleman, and Metalman.

EDIT: Just watched the no damage video. It's impressive how you can exploit Quickman's pattern like that, but I can't get the image of the dude's hair out of my head.

 

[PeachPlumage]

Binding of Issac: Rebirth with Afterbirth and Afterbirth+ expansions which I picked up in the steam summer sale.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

By Clay Man do you mean the Yellow Devil? If not, I have no idea what you mean.

Yes, the one-eyed humanoid/Pac-Man blob thingie.

Thinking back, I realize that was the nickname me and the other boys from my school class gave him back when we tried to beat Mega Man 1 and 3 back in the day. Interesting how that stuck in my head and not the 'official' name.

Of all of the Robot Masters, Quickman was the one that gave me the most trouble since I only had the buster shot as well when I tried to complete his stage. His general patterns were closer to how Mega Man 1 bosses were rather than the simple rinse and repeat patterns from Woodman, Heatman, Airman, Bubbleman, and Metalman.

EDIT: Just watched the no damage video. It's impressive how you can exploit Quickman's pattern like that, but I can't get the image of the dude's hair out of my head.

Small brag here: The first time I beat Quickman was after quite a tirade of failed runs, but how I beat him was the funniest thing: I tried various weapons and tactics and at one point had him on the ropes, but I was at death's door. One more hit and I was dead. I decided to switch to another weapon, but picked Flash Man's weapon by mistake. I activated it, and after realizing my mistake I noticed that Quick Man's health was slowly draining during the time stop. Hoping for the best, I waited out the timer... and that was how I beat Quick Man the first time round.

 

[No Great Name]

Small brag here: The first time I beat Quickman was after quite a tirade of failed runs, but how I beat him was the funniest thing: I tried various weapons and tactics and at one point had him on the ropes, but I was at death's door. One more hit and I was dead. I decided to switch to another weapon, but picked Flash Man's weapon by mistake. I activated it, and after realizing my mistake I noticed that Quick Man's health was slowly draining during the time stop. Hoping for the best, I waited out the timer... and that was how I beat Quick Man the first time round.

The only weapon I had was the one from Airman before I took on Quickman which doesn't work against him. My first win on him ended up being one of those moments where both the boss and I were one hit away from death. We ended up firing at each other at the exact same time, died at the same time, and we both had the death animation play out. For a second I thought I was going to have to start over because that exact same scenario happened to me before when I played Mega Man 1, and in that game it was counted as a death. To my surprise however, the victory music started playing and the game continued like nothing out of ordinary happened. I didn't even lose a life. It was then that I realized how truly forgiving Mega Man 2 was compared to the first one.

I didn't realize that the Time Stopper worked on Quickman until I faced him again during the boss rush section towards the end of the game when I was screwing around trying to find which weapon worked the best against him.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Update to my previous post.

Kicked D'Sparil's ass, played through The Ossuary, started the 5th episode... and dropped. I've heard that additional 2 episodes are p challenging and I was looking forward to beating them, but they look like they were thrown in to add more fat to the product. While The Ossuary features a bunch of interesting levels (e.g. E4M1 w/ the crusher gimmick), the rest are a tedious slog with 100+ bullet sponges thrown at you in narrow corridors @ every level and most of the challenge lies in not falling asleep while holding the LMB. The levels themselves aren't that bad, but I get the impression that someone @ GT Interactive told them to double the amount of enemies (and enemy lockers), otherwise they won't see a retail release.

That said, I enjoyed the original 3 episodes a lot and it's a great FPS with good level design and music. Looking forward to play some Hexen in a couple of weeks.

 

[Darth Roxor]

the heresiarch is one ugly mutha

 

[Okagron]

Been playing Half Life 1. Enjoying the level design a great deal and the gunplay is pretty satisfying.

 

[Robespierre]

I have been playing thief gold, one can never play and praise this masterpiece enough (still I do think that most of the stuff added in the gold edition hurt the pace of the game). Currently delving into the Bonehoard, just retrieved the mystic's heart and on my way to steal the mystic's soul. After that I think I will just walk around, immersing myself into this masterfully crafted level, thinking of how bad gaming has declined since 1998 and how much worse it will get in the future.

 

[Ovplain]

Been playing Battletech for over 2 weeks now. Getting close to the end. Despite that I don't think I could name ONE character apart from the main lady. It's amazing really! Been enjoying the game, but just could not care less about its plot.

 

[Villagkouras]

I'm playing Nu Doom about 60% of the campaign. I'm not a fan of FPS games at all, but I've tried most of the new ones. I think it's the best of modern FPS, much better than Wolfensteins, Far Crys etc. It's so fluid and fun, fuck "realism" in this type of games. I'll certainly play the sequel.

 

[Okagron]

Finished Half Life 1. Overall, pretty great game with great level design and solid gunplay. I even liked how the story is told by scientists and guards telling what's happening and what you should do next. And the end credits song is awesome.

 

[newtmonkey]

Dark Souls 3
This game sure is long. I checked a walkthrough to see how much I have left, and it looks like just another area or so before I'm done with this (I still have one DLC boss to beat).

It's hard to form an opinion on this one, as it's my first time through so everything is new and exciting (sort of a lie, I restarted an aborted pyromancer run halfway through to restart as a melee character). There are two really great areas (Cathedral of the Deep and the Painted World), and a lot of been-there-done-that two or more times already areas, but nothing absolutely horrible. A lot of the areas are so wide that you can rush from bonfire to bonfire if you want, which gave it a slightly different feel from previous games in the series—I guess it's something you appreciate when you are low on life with no healing, but then realize it just lets you play REALLY sloppy.

Thimbleweed Park
I've put 2 hours into this over the last week, basically popping in and exploring/making a bit of progress 10-15 mins at a time. I really like this one. The writing is funny, the characters and location are interesting, and even if the game is linear, at least it allows you to explore a bit and collect items/information.

Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders
I finished this years ago on difficulty level 2 or 3, but this time am playing on level four. I'm 2-3 levels away from the end of episode three, and while I do like the music/graphics (especially enemies) and some of the more open levels, but the bullet sponge enemies are a letdown. By the third episode it seems like even the weakest enemies take 3-4 crossbow shots (even with all projectiles hitting), and thus half of the weapons become basically useless (the Claw does so little damage, you end up blowing half your ammo taking down a room of enemies, for example).

 

[flyingjohn]

Playing psychonauts and decided to quit at the giant fish boss.
People praise the world,story,humor,and level design.And all of those things are absolutely true,but what about the game play.
Well it sucks hard.Controls and camera are not fine.More then half of the game is gonna be platforming and shafer does not know how to make a plat former.
Jumping feel off entirely,the locations you can jump to and from feel more like they were carved out of the original design instead of made to be platform parts.

States in the game(like grinding and walking on planks) have a small delay before they are activated.You can reach plenty of locations where you shouldn't be by jumping in stuff until you delay the sliding animation for a second and then jump again to reach hat you were going for.
Camera does not work very well with the lock on system.
Bosses are gimmicky and the gimmick runs out quickly.Especially at the fish boss.

Yes,there is plenty of variations and the milkman stuff seems great,but this is still primary a plat former which doesn't play very well.If the game was more of a adventure game it would have been better.

The pc port is so so.Rebindable controls are great,not so much graphical options and i had plenty of crashes during the game.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

It's not just the milkman stuff you're missing out on, it's also the theater stuff and the neon velvet stuff.

On the upside you're also missing the meat circus, so you got that going for you.

 

[Average Manatee]

Relatives were in town for a while and a cousin really loves Civ 5, so I ended up playing Civ 5 all week.

God damn. Sure, Civ 5 was broken on release. I heard "the expansions fixed things". Like hell they did!

So, a primer: Civ and 4x games in general always have to find a way to stop the game from being a race to settle as many cities everywhere as fast as possible. In Civ 1-3, it never really worked. In Civ 4, it worked and settling too fast screwed you economically (you settled almost everywhere eventually but it took a few ages). In Civ 5 on release, they made a global happiness penalty for cities to discourage a lot of small cities. It didn't work and through specific policies and building one or two +happiness buildings you got to the point where spamming an endless carpet of cities everywhere was ideal.

The final patched/expansioned Civ 5 nerfed all happiness sources hardcore. Effectively everyone is now capped at 4 cities for most of the game. Sure, sometime you can squeeze in 5 if you get enough +happiness from a really good start with lots of luxuries, but never more. Since every pop causes -1 happiness and every city -3, placing a new city means you could have had 4 pops in a well-built city rather than 1 pop in a new unbuilt shithole. Only spots with luxuries avoid this since luxuries produce +4 happiness from each unique one, thereby canceling the per-city unhappiness.

The map is always generated to give everyone about 4 decent city locations with some luxuries. You take them and then you do nothing for basically the rest of the game. I'm not joking. From Ancient Era to roughly Modern/Industrial era there is nothing to do. You'll get fed a handful of +happiness over time from tech/wonders/etc but that's always sucked away by your cities growing larger, only the lategame ideologies give enough happiness (typically 5-10 per city, potentially much more) to permit taking significant numbers of cities. The only reason for conflict early on is if you are boxed in and can only take 3 cities, at which point you basically HAVE to enter into a deathbrawl with the nearest civ because you'll be screwed. Of course investing so much in military leaves you screwed anyway. Other than that, why make armies? No one else is going to attack you in MP. Hell, if someone in MP offers to GIVE AWAY their capital city (typically the strongest since starting positions are almost always above average) you should refuse, because obtaining it means around -15-20 happiness from all the pops in it. Ain't no luxury going to cancel out that, you basically need the strongest happiness wonder in the game (Notre Dame) + a half dozen buildings + good policies to take a 5th city, and even with that perfect storm of conditions you'd never dare take a 6th.

The AI even seems to understand this, even AIs that seem like they should be fairly aggressive don't really take anything. How can they? Short of ultra-high difficulty where the AI just cheats happiness, what would it gain? The AI builds a military anyway and acts threatening in dialog interactions but the map is always 100% static. "Aggressive" AIs just randomly threaten and declare war once in a while, pillage some tiles, throw away dozens of units with whoever they are fighting, then sign peace, wasting thousands of production for no use.

Then, in the lategame when you get your ideology that allows some blobbing and the gloves are off, what happens? Well, turns out there's now a "warmonger" penalty whenever you take cities. It's really, really fucking big! Taking just 1 city is enough to lose most of your alliances and trade deals, taking 2 essentially means permanent ostracism for the rest of the game. Wut? This sort of existed in Civ 4 but there were also large enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend effects, so roughly 1/2 to 1/3rd of the map would always be quite happy with you killing their rivals. Not so in Civ 5. I was literally in an alliance with Catherine when Bismark and Dido attacked her. After destroying essentially the entire armies of both and taking two cities off Dido, Catherine hated me! So good luck ever doing anything other than a conquest victory with more than 4-5 cities because it's just not happening, you'll have the whole world marching in to destroy you if you get any bigger.

At least the kid isn't playing some dumb shit like Fortnight or w/e, but good riddance to Civ 5.