What game are you wasting time on?

[NecroLord]

Playing Jedi Academy.
Game is so much fun. A lot more variety in missions compared to Jedi Outcast, which was mostly Imperial bases (not that that's a bad thing, but it tends to get old). You even get to visit places like Tatooine and Hoth and there is even an entire mission which takes place on a high speed tram. More linear in terms of level design. Lightsaber combat is phenomenal, a lot more fluid and polished than in Dark Forces 2 and Jedi Outcast.
Yeah, great game.

By far the best of the series. The level variety, gameplay improvements and the ability to customize your character far outshine any alleged drawbacks when compared to Jedi Outcast.

Although to be fair it's also the only game in the series where the improvements were comparatively minor. All the others made a big jump compared to the previous entry.

Yes, it further improved on the greatness left by Jedi Outcast.
Man, what a series. All games (including the opener shooter Dark Forces) are awesome. LucasArts was killing it back in the day. Now they are begging for viewership on their shitty Disney+ channel and have alienated their fanbase to a great extent.

 

[Caim]

What are the best Force powers in Jedi Academy? Heal is good no matter your build, Absorb is all but mandatory against the Force-heavy enemies you fight later in the game, Lightning can clear a room really quickly, Grip is useful against non-Force users but gets less useful the more Force users you fight, but it's been a while since I last played so I don't really remember what the fifth useful power was.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Grip is useful against non-Force users but gets less useful the more Force users you fight

Nonsense, Grip is the kill-all button that works against everything except jetpack/hazmat troopers. You just have to swipe the mouse over an enemy and then quickly tap F6 to grip and release, sending the poor sod into his death at MACH3. It's downright mandatory against all those late-game dark jedi that spam force IDDQD, and not only against those.

Also this thread has gone into some bizarro timeline where Jedi Academy is an improvement over Outcast because apparently it doesn't feature the terribly hp bloated goons that aren't regular stormtroopers, terribly hp bloated dark jedi with force IDDQD and terribly hp bloated jetpack troopers, and probably a whole lot other shit that I can't remember at this time. It's still a good game but at times it's just completely stupid.

 

[Eirinjas]

I've been playing the Quake II re-release. It is so good! They improved the visuals, sound, AI, multiplayer, expanded some maps and added small details, includes the pc expansions, a version of Quake II for the N64, and a brand new expansion. It is a fucking blast!

 

[goregasm]

Days Gone, Battle Brothers, Xenonaughts 2, UnderRail, Vagrus, giving Darklands a proper playthrough and some autistic modpack for Skyrim called Wildlander are what's in the rotation right now. Battle Brothers hasn't left the rotation since it launched though.

 

[NecroLord]

What are the best Force powers in Jedi Academy? Heal is good no matter your build, Absorb is all but mandatory against the Force-heavy enemies you fight later in the game, Lightning can clear a room really quickly, Grip is useful against non-Force users but gets less useful the more Force users you fight, but it's been a while since I last played so I don't really remember what the fifth useful power was.

Alright, so...
Heal is pretty much mandatory if you play on Jedi Knight or Jedi Master difficulty. You will take damage and can't always rely on finding medpacks.
Force Protect is really good, you will also want this. 75 percent damage reduction? Sign me up.
Absorb can be useful to replenish your own force meter and can protect you from enemy force powers, mostly Grip and Lightning. Take this if you want to, I rather like it, but you can survive without it.
Mind Trick is a mixed bag. You will face many enemies who are immune to it later in the game. Not really recommended.
Dark Rage is phenomenal. 90 damage reduction, you do more damage and cannot die from damage while this force power is in effect? Oh, yeah... Also pretty cool effect on your player model while it is active.
Lightning is another great force power. Will obliterate all normal enemies in your path who carry weapons. Those carrying lightsabers take reduced damage from it, but can be stunned from it. Not technically stunned, but they can't act effectively while they get zapped. Combine Lightning with Force Push (press it immediately after ending Lightning) to send them flying. I like Force Lightning a lot.
Grip is good against normal enemies, not so much against Force users. You can send them falling to their deaths, but I find it's rather cheap and doesn't always work.
Drain is only useful if you have many enemies in front of you and can be used if you are close to an enemy by holding him and draining him. You will want this if you don't plan on taking Force Heal.

Hope this helps.

 

[Paladino]

Yes, it further improved on the greatness left by Jedi Outcast.
Man, what a series. All games (including the opener shooter Dark Forces) are awesome. LucasArts was killing it back in the day. Now they are begging for viewership on their shitty Disney+ channel and have alienated their fanbase to a great extent.

Outcast and Academy were made by Raven Software, not LucasArts. But you're right, they were killing it, even during their licensing period in the early 2000s.

The first thing Disney did when they bought Lucasfilm was shut down LucasArts. The first of their on-going huge list of stupid decisions.

 

[Kabas]

Realised that i screwed up my stat distribution so i decided to restart W&W again
On the plus side, i can now reliably speedrun the crypt so i am already back to searching for toad village and getting robbed by nymphs.
Didnt take long to promote my Wizard to Warlock, giant spiders are rather common around the Nymph lake and all of them drop eggs.

If i understood the manual right and what the game shows me the class change reverts me back to level one. My character keeps everything he got from the previous class but until he reaches the same level as previous class his level-up gains are minimal.
Also can't learn spells that are of higher level than the current character level. In other words by promoting my wizard early i somewhat delayed his progress with the Sun Magic. Hope it's not a critical setback.

I also learned the horror of exploring the big wilderness areas while having a very low FOV. Everything looks the same no matter which way you look. During the night the simple act of exploring becomes an absolute torture as even with the illuminate spell you can't see shit outside of 2 metre radius around you. Would have been fine if the overworld was the same menu as the town.
The other thing that irked me really hard is the backtracking. The very first NPC i encountered around the nymph lake told me to go back to the crypt again.
After a somewhat painful search for toad village relying on a vague hint that it's "east of nymph lake" and doing a paladin promotion quest guess what kind of quest the brotherhood of promise gave me after i did a few favours for them? I will give a hint

Does this fucking game wants me to spend the rest of my life in that damned crypt?!
Replaying the same dungeon a hundred times because i wasn't satsified with my party choice didn't make want to drop the game, that's one is on me anyway.
This shit hovewer is different and i have a suspicion that this will not be the last time this game pulled this shit.

 

[Strange Fellow]

This shit hovewer is different and i have a suspicion that this will not be the last time this game pulled this shit.

It is in fact not. Have fun.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Unreal is as cool as it was 25 years ago. It's one of those games that feel truly otherworldly.

Though there are some funny moments where gameplay clearly wins over 'worldbuilding', like when you get the rocket launcher it's supposed to be a super big deal (only the chosen one can wield the boomstick of 6 fires!!!!!), but then you find it in a random barrel in a random Nali village

Reminds me of Undying where you'd find shotgun shells in a medieval monastery in the past.

 

[Erebus]

Just started Throne of Bhaal again.

I remembered that Illasera was pathetic in vanilla mode, but I didn't remember just how pathetic. She literally died before she could do anything.

I'll have to try the Ascension mod again one of these days. If I'm not mistaken, it gives her magic-dispelling arrows and makes her considerably more dangerous.

 

[Kabas]

Need a break, back to playing ashes. Finally finished the first hub.

"Play the upcoming episode if you want to learn more", huh?

 

[Yeoman]

Nearly done with Zortch, limiting myself to one episode per day since I started it, trying to take my time to make it last. I can already say that it is now my favorite singleplayer FPS after Quake 1. The levels, like Quake, have some non-linearity and looping, and a lot of verticality. Actually this has even more verticality than Quake. But I think Quake still wins out because it simply has more levels (30 vs this game's 20... 15 if you exclude boss maps) and is more consistent in the quality of its levels. Most of Zortch's levels are great, some levels are so good they are instant classics in my view, but a couple are too short and shallow, like one level being a weaker version of Dead Simple.

Aside from its levels, what makes this game a winner is the agility and ferociousness of enemies during combat. Enemies leap across obstacles and launch projectiles at you by the dozens. Zortch combines the fast combat and agile enemies of Quake with the density and variety of enemies in Doom II's encounters. Quake lacks variety in its use of enemy archetypes during its encounters and relies more on each enemy type being compelling to fight on their own (you rarely fight more than 2 enemy types at once in Quake). This game has no shortage of enemy types and doesn't shy away from using several at once in its encounters.

Feeling kinda Unreal here.


Ramirez, defend Burger Town!


Blowing stuff up with dynamites is one of the most cathartic experiences in the game. It's like using pipe bombs from Duke Nukem 3D but with 10x the giblets and particle effects.


I didn't think the game would let me cheese the first boss fight by dumping half of my dynamites at his feet before the fight started. Being greeted with the level complete screen after hitting the detonator had me giggling like a schoolgirl.

 

[BruceVC]

Last weekend I finished King Artur Wargame after 100 hours, it was my first real RTS experience and I enjoyed it thoroughly

I had a steep learning curve that took me about 15 hours to understand the mechanics but once I got passed that combat became loads of fun. The secret to this game is using knights effectively and also managing your economy properly because units cost money. I also love the whole King Arthur lore and the narrative captures that nicely

I enjoyed it so much I decided to play KA2 which Im busy with now, its different to KA1 around several aspects like the way the economy works and also there is a magic shield that you need to consider in every battle but overall KA2 is good fun

KA1 gets a solid 70/100 on the globally followed " BruceVC game rating system " and is recommended for those who like an engaging and challenging RTS that includes some RPG elements

 

[Falksi]

Just finished Wonderboy in Monsterland on the SEGA Megadrive. Not usually into cutesy stuff, but it's just such a well constructed game. Last boss is a right bastard!

 

[Darth Roxor]

Playing Unreal has made me realise that it's actually strangely absent in most shooters to go up against enemies that use the same weapons you do, including with alt-fire. I feel like in most cases the enemies use guns that are kinda-like-yours-but-not-really, with the only notable exceptions that immediately come to mind being the Dark Forces series.

Meanwhile in Unreal the skaarj infantry can use half the player's arsenal, and they in fact also use alt-fire, not to mention that they jump and dodge which makes it feel like actual freaking deathmatch. It might also be one of the only two shooters in existence, also together with Jedi Knight funnily enough, that has jumping standard enemies.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I'm not a fan of Unreal generally, but that first fight with the Skaarj was a watershed moment in games for me.

 

[Kabas]

Certain popular Quake mods like to introduce this kind of enemies. They even drop the weapons they wield which is nice.
Fuck this super nailgun dude from Alkaline tho.

 

[Yeoman]

Finished Zortch. One thing that's striking to me is how I had so much fun with all the large and open encounters in the game when I normally dislike those kind of encounters. I feel exhausted just looking at open spaces with 20+ imps and 10+ cacodemons/mancubi/arachnotrons in Doom II, and even with all the efforts of Arcane Dimensions to add more varied monsters in Quake, every time there's a big fight in an AD map, I just want to get it over with.

Part of the reason why I really enjoyed the encounters in Zortch is because of how verticality and obstacles always play a huge role in combat. In different games like Doom II or AD, you need to scatter the arena with overwhelming amounts of monsters that are tedious to clear out because they can't move around quickly enough to persistently threaten the player in open space, and you probably need to make the arena as flat as possible so you don't get enemies stuck on obstacles. Zortch making enemies able to navigate and jump across obstacles allows it to have much more dynamic encounters with amounts of enemies never being too exhausting and with areas that are interesting to move around in.

Whenever there's a new FPS and it adds all sorts of gimmicks like wall-running, air-dashing, combo meters, grappling hooks or whatever, it just doesn't appeal to me. What I want is just the basics of running, jumping, using cover, and picking up ammo and health. Honestly even the dodge jump in UT2003/4 is too silly and contrived for me. A shooter that's back to basics is difficult to make compelling because they often devolve into lame circle strafing in flat arenas. So it's something very special when a game like Zortch pulls off these gorgeous encounters.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS FINALLY GETTING INTO NIER AUTOMATTER

IVE HAD LIKE THREE OR FOUR RESTARTS

NOW I PLAY ON NORMAL CAUSE HIGHER DIFFICULTIES BL IS AVOIDING ONE SHOT SHIT ALTHOUGH I THINK I AM GETTING BETTER AT THE GAME

FINISHED 2B NOW ON 9S AND THE GAME GIVES ME A SMALL AMOUNT OF CHALLENGE AND KINDA FUN MECHANICS THE MULTIPLE PLAY THROUGH STUF IS DONE WILL

THE PRESENTATION IS WHAT MAKES THIS GAME THOUGH IT LOOKS AND SOUNDS AMAZING AND I NOT A STORYFAG BUT IT ALL WORKS DECENT

OVERALL THOUGH I EXPECTED BETTER FROM PLATINUM CAUSE BAYONETTA AND VANQUISH AND REVENGENCE ARE FUCKING AMAZING THE GAMEPLAY IS TIGHTER THAN A HAMSTERS ASSHOLE

 

[Vyadhis]

Uhhh...is it possible at all to get Temple of Elemental Evil functioning normally in Windows 11? I don't care if I have to use a front end, I tried one but the game still bugged out on full screen.
edit - nevermind, got it mostly running well with Temple+

 

[Kabas]

In W&W you're not banned from joining two guilds at the same time apparently.
Sure, it costs money and it's annoying to be forced to do certain quests all over again but now my freshly promoted paladin can spend gold on every single skill and attribute that are directly relevant to her. Great considering that she has the most mediocre stats on the team.
Other guild rewards are quite cool too. My priest and paladin can now buy the ancient lore trait that will allow them to identify items. Almost considering buying this for my priest so that my warlock elephant can focus purely on magic skills.
Was busy lately so my current progress is very slow.

 

[markec]

Finished new System Shock. I love SS2 and I consider it one my favorite games of all time. I did try the original first game long time ago but I couldnt get into it due me finding the controls, ui and graphics dated. So when I heard positive impressions of the remake from Codex I decided to get it and experience the story. Overall I thought it was ok, it felt as a strange mix of old and new worlds that didnt fit 100%. Atleast to me there was some disjointment between visuals and gameplay. But what made the game interesting was the appreciation for old school level design. I cant compare it to the original but as a standalone game I found it to be ok and I didnt regret time i spent playing it.



Finished Yakuza Like a Dragon and I enjoyed it very much. My ranking of the series right now is 0>LaD>1>2>5>6>4>3. Pretty much every element of the game is fun, its filled with side content, the story and new characters are good, it is just well paced and keeps your interest until the end. The combat is now turn based and much more deeper, now resembling a proper RPG both due different classes, skills and items to equip. Also what combat makes more enjoyable is quite entertaining animations that makes you want to unlock new classes and poundmates just to see them in action.

Now I still consider Yakuza 0 slightly superior, I think that the main story and characters are better done. I also have some issues with the combat. While the combat is fun and more complex in my personal opinion the real time version of combat fits more to the setting. The limitation of turn based system is that there is at one time no more then handful of enemies engaged. In the previous games fighting alone versus dozen or more of enemies at once was often part of the story and built a great epic badass atmosphere where you are alone against all odds. Also I just find it very satisfying to grab random stuff lying around and smash enemies heads with random junk.

Still the combat issue can be due personal preference and I can understand why others would prefer the combat of LaD.

But this is just a minor issue, again I like the game very much and it makes me hopeful for new Yakuza games, which I heard we are soon going to get.

Now to play Judgement.

 

[Shin]

Finished Thief Gold two days ago. I've played a lot of Thief: TDP in my youth but never finished the last 3 maps. To be honest, those last few maps kinda blow so I haven't missed much. Of the three new missions in the 'Gold' version, I personally thought only 'Songs of the Caverns' was cool. Fuck that Thief Guild mission though.

Best thing about finishing Thief 1 however, is the fact that I can now continue on to Thief 2: The Metal Age, which is (imho) superior in almost every way. Just like with its predecessor, I've spend a lot of hours in Thief 2: TMA but never managed to finish it. I'm currently on mission 6 and I'm having a total blast. I adore the gameplay, the world building, the voice acting and the large sandboxy maps. Such a good game and you're a fucking taffer if you disagree.

 

[Alex]

Finished new System Shock. I love SS2 and I consider it one my favorite games of all time. I did try the original first game long time ago but I couldnt get into it due me finding the controls, ui and graphics dated. (snip...)

That was my impression as well, the controls being particularly annoying... but I stuck to it and after a few hours I got used to them. It does help that the game mostly doesn't require you to do a whole lot of action-y stuff.