What game are you wasting time on?

[Dux]

Hearts of Iron

Played as Sweden and aided the Allies efforts with haphazard and often inept naval support until my resources ran out and the Soviets ruined everything.

Hearts of Iron II

Played as Canada and trundled alongside the Yanks on the road to Berlin with much fanfare. When we conquered said city the game saw fit to hand much of Germany over to a shambolic and bankrupt Soviet Union cowering in Moscow. Because Paradox logic, that's why. Then the save game crashed to hell.

Hearts of Iron II: Doomsday

I continued with Canada in the 1947 Doomsday campaign versus a rampant Soviet Union with their innumerable infantry divisions. A stalemate was ultimately created over at Bremen where a lot of US divisions had landed, creating a beachhead. I utilised my sparse mechanised infantry and armoured divisions - with interceptors, tactical bombers and close-air support - to liberate Italy, France, Spain and half of Germany from dirty Communist hands, while the Soviets retardely were stacking divisions on the borders of Bremen. Then the Soviet Union wigged out and everything that I had accomplished went to shit fast, because the US and the British were too busy jacking off to help me out. My heroic divisons were finally cornered and annihilated in Marseilles. R.I.P.

Hearts of Iron III

Played as Venezuela and created the most elite infantry divisions in the world. These were put to good use in the liberation of Europe from Hitler. After Italy and France had been liberated by a concerted effort by the Allies, the intrepid Venezuelan infantrymen - with lard-ass HQs in tow - raced towards Berlin, only to be beaten on the goal line by a brigade of Mexican cavalry.

All in all, it's been a pretty fun ride.

 

[samuraigaiden]

The Witcher Enhanced Edition is my main game right now and I'm also playing Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord mostly as a 'podcast/listening to stuff in general' game.

Having fun with TWEE, came in with pretty low expectations and so far it's better than I imagined. Gothic-like quests are a plus for me. Also, tits. Combat mechanics are not very good, but I guess they knew it because even hard mode is pretty easy. Still early in the game, so I might end up hating it, who knows.

Wizardry is both addictive and incredibly frustrating. I lost a nice well rounded party to those fuckers at the Monster Allocation Center and deleted the game in anger, but couldn't resist going back to it. However, now I'm taking a more relaxed approach. The so called bug which makes the characters lose stats is something I've been thinking about a lot. It create another layer over the game. You can grind all you want and still end up with a weak party, so ideally you'll have to start several characters and hope some make the cut and don't get randomly decapitated by a ninja.

 

[FreshCorpse]

Having fun with TWEE, came in with pretty low expectations and so far it's better than I imagined. Gothic-like quests are a plus for me. Also, tits. Combat mechanics are not very good, but I guess they knew it because even hard mode is pretty easy. Still early in the game, so I might end up hating it, who knows.

I don't know, there are some ferocious difficulty spikes in TW1. The boss of Chapter 1 is pretty hard depending on how you've leveled your character (don't remember the details). Doesn't help that there's no convenient save point before you fight him. If I remember correctly I restarted because I was leveled so badly.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

The boss of Chapter 1 is pretty hard depending on how you've leveled your character (don't remember the details)

What, the Barghest? Just aard stun the fucker, ain't so hard.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

At the moment Let's go pikachu. It's much more fun and wholesome than I expected. I quite like doting on pikachu, as well as the bond we share.

 

[grom]

Icewind Dale. Up to Dragon's Eye at the moment, right before the battle with the Serpent Queen, whatever her name is. Probably gonna take a break for a couple of days before facing her as I'm a bit burned out on Infinity Engine combat and I'm expecting the battle to be grueling.

As I anticipated the game is significantly more enjoyable than Baldur's Gate. Knew I could count on Black Isle. Game is much better looking not only technically (a given considering it's younger than BG by a couple years) but also artistically. The music is better in my opinion, and it helps that it doesn't constantly loop. I wouldn't call the writing great by any means, but it's not downright irritating this time, which is nice.

Goes without saying that creating six characters beats creating one and then recruiting NPCs. I like that outdoors areas are smaller and less open, leading to less pointless walking, and that dungeons are larger and more open, leading to no longer having to deal with the party piling up on itself in a bottleneck.

Combat is much more interesting. I like having to deal with summons, or being silenced, or having to have flame spells prepared to deal with trolls. Beats hacking and slashing away at two dozen gibberlings or xvarts or hobgoblins. Which leads me to a thought I had. I've seen IWD referred to here as a hack n' slash or dungeon crawler spinoff of BG. But that's all I found BG to be anyway: a hack n' slash game. The difference is IWD knows what it is and focuses on that, rather than masquerading as an epic roleplaying odyssey and adding pointless downtime (walking around) and exposition.

 

[Sprintle]

Started up Dragon Quest XI. Ended up restarting an hour in because I realized that it was possible to turn on harder enemies, but only at the beginning. So far it's fun, love the Toriyama art style as always. Always appreciated how traditional DQ games are, just the classic JRPG experience polished to a sheen.

 

[Daemongar]

Amen brother. Folks have been attacking IWD since the 90's. Its a beautiful game with a great tone - it doesn't apologize for what it is and doesn't need to. It really was a Black Isle masterpiece, but everyone seems to want to make it out to be something it never claimed to be: Baldur's Gate.

 

[Krivol]

Thief with a HD mod. Nostalgia is a term developed by EA and bethesda to avoid accusations of doing shit games.

Thief 1 is still one of the best games ever. Even if AI is a bit lacking...

 

[Average Manatee]

At times, the pacing felt off. Particularly during the Engineering deck. Certain resources were stupidly abundant, while others were non-existent. I was particularly butthurt about the lack of maintenance tools in that area, which meant my shotgun and pistol were basically around 2 or 3 quality throughout that entire area. Hybrids had a tendency to spawn in rooms that I had just exited in Engineering, too. On that note:

If you prioritize getting maintenance to 2 and later 3, you should have plenty of nanites to buy maintenance tools.

Randomly respawning enemies suck! And SS2 is not an exception despite how much you cunts love this game. In a game that is so heavily based around resource management, having randomly respawning enemies scale your resource drain (3 resources at once, meds, ammo and maintenance tools) up or down by pure RNG is pretty bullshit. They are also an immersion breaker quite often, as an example I had a Rumbler spawn in a room that I just left the exact same second. Having this massive pink flesh beast spawn in a room where all the entrances are smaller than itself isn't particularly immersive.

Only Engineering really gets egregious IMO. It's important to keep the station dangerous. It's also a reward/incentive to figure out what you are supposed to do rather than run around pressing buttons until things happen, and its a (minor) penalty towards exploring off the critical path (you'll still generally get more resources than you lose doing so, but it helps things self-balance). You might appreciate it more on replays, because turning off respawns makes the game really dull.

Some of the balancing around skills is weird. Just as an example, Hack skill 1 is entirely useless. I never found a single thing that could be hacked with Hack 1. Maybe you could hack security terminals? I'm not sure since I never tried, I just shot turrets and cameras.
It's also similar with weapons, where you have Pistol at Standard level 1, Shotgun at level 3, and nothing at all at 4 and 5, only getting the assault rifle at level 6.

Yeah, Hack 1 lets you disable security. Fairly useful if you don't know what you are doing and aren't reloading when you get spotted, it disables security for a long time at very low nanite cost.

Weapons give a +15% damage bonus per level that you exceed their requirements, so a level 5 standard weapons pistol does +60% damage per shot. Wrench is considered a level 0 standard weapon I believe.

The bigger problems are repair (literally just don't let your stuff break and you can ignore it, there are auto-repair kits to repair a few broken weapons you find) and modify (there's enough auto-modification kits to be found to do most of the work, at max you need modify 1 or 2).

 

[unfairlight]

If you prioritize getting maintenance to 2 and later 3, you should have plenty of nanites to buy maintenance tools.

I had it at 3, read my second post. I managed to get it at 5 and 6 quality and get a lot out of them, but if I went for a Marine path that focused more on just weapon skills it would have been hell. Actually; it WAS hell, I remember that in my first playthrough where I quit at warehouse in Engineering where I went for weapons skills with little in technical skills.

and its a (minor) penalty towards exploring off the critical path (you'll still generally get more resources than you lose doing so, but it helps things self-balance).

But it's a gameplay annoyance more than anything. Spawning a shit ton of shotgun hybrids right behind you who will flick you with -4hp in a second or those spiders with a retarded huge health pool that run at the speed of sound but are incapable of actually doing damage if you just backpedal adds nothing to the game. It just makes it less fun for me to backtrack whenever I have to backtrack and forces me to waste some ammo. It's not a penalty for me for exploring (what the fuck? this is a LGS game, I am SUPPOSED to explore) since I always fully search every room anyway, it's just an annoyance.

You might appreciate it more on replays, because turning off respawns makes the game really dull.

No fucking shit.
Of course if you take out something that was bad but designed around from the start of development the game is going to be broken and not feel right, the game would need a complete redesign to fix it. It's like Oblivion, if you remove level scaling the game won't really feel right since the game was designed around it, which is why all the mods out there overhaul a lot of the progression in general, not just level scaling to compensate.

 

[flyingjohn]

Finishing my ace combat retrospective with ace combat 7.
A solid bu disappointing game.

-Graphics
Game look really nice and runs well on my ancient hardware.Plenty of little details in cockpit view(icing on the glass,buttons and electronic actually working).
So pretty much best graphics of the series,which is a given considering how new it is.

-STORY
It is a worse 5 in terms of story.
Well complete and utter failure.Now,this game had troubled development and that would explain most of the problems,but the final plot is still amazingly bad.The game tries to tackle multiple themes like drones,war,reliance eon technology in a modern society,yet doesn't deliver anything of value in any of those discussions.
The plot feels like somebody had a original draft,chopped it in small pieces,glued it together,but forgot most of the pieces.

The beginning is your typical ace combat plot of another nation invading with a sudden ending. This is probably where the biggest cuts were considering everything moves way too quick without any major plot progress.

The second part of the game is you flying with a new squad.This one feels the most fleshed out,but it doesn't move the plot quick enough and the over reliance on specific character gimmicks gets old fast.

The third part is you getting a new squadron that i a combination of the first and second. This is where the game mostly moves the plot and starts discussing its majors themes,but it too late.Most of the stuff mentioned would make amazing missions and interesting plot points,but there just isn't an time left and it is over pretty quickly.
5 did it better and i mean much better.Even 3 has some sort of coherency compared to this.

Writing for your wing men are nothing special,in fact it is made worse because you switch wing men so much.You only have 1-2 characters that are with you for most of the game,everybody else just appears later.
Again,done better in 5,much better.

Oh and special mention for one of the most obnoxious AWACS operators ever.One is obsessed with food and the other one with solitary,that is their entire personality.
-Quality of the mission briefing screen
Pretty damn nice.It has a futuristic feel that fits with it being the most modern ace combat game.

-Mission variety and gameplay

4,5,x,hell even zero did it beater.

Now this doesn't mean that this is a bad campaign in terms of variety.It is just that there are multiple annoyances that all build up to annoy you instead of letting you have fun. These annoyances are:
-Obnoxious timer that doesn't let you go wild
-Drones appearing in most missions ,and they are boring to fight.
-Weather effects just annoying you instead of being anything more.

Most missions have variety(you have score based,stealth,laser bombing,boss,identifying foe missions,protect,etc) and they even build upon some older ace combat design(low altitude valley mission where you have to dodge search lights fees like mission impossible and is awesome)
Bu it mostly feels like most of these missions are here because it is the ace combat norm,and not because the designer actually wanted it.
Could have been the troubled development ,but who knows?

The game also gives you a couple of vr missions for anybody interested.
The other major focus is multiplayer.It is badly balanced but it is the quickest way to earn money,which is somewhat annoying.

Aces are back but,they made the appear only after doing a specif things in a mission.This is annoying and you probably won't even see half of them without using a guide.I have no idea why they did this? Ace combat 4 did it better b hiding them on the map without doing any major things.
Medals have received no change and there is plenty of them.

-Planes
Oh boy,so much sukhoi planes. Plane variety has taken a big hit.There is too much variations on planes that don't need it.I mean how many su-34 and f-15 variation do you even need?Ace combat 5 did it better with the family tree.

Customization wise,the game has the most customization so far.You get to choose multiple parts,skins,emblems,second weapon.
Also the game introduces the aircraft and parts tree and it used to unlock new stuff.It gives a somewhat rpg like progression tree.
But i don't like it. Everything is way too expensive and you can't sell stuff.Coupled with you being forced to spend money on stuff you don't want to unlock the stuff you actually want,it just becomes a huge grind.

I think that most if not all previous ace combat games did it better.

--Difficulty
Mostly the same stuff from 5.Enemy ai is nowhere close to belkan ai. This is for both normal and ace planes.Thy dodge(pretty successfully if you aren't aiming properly),try to hit you with their guns(and fail most of the times) and generally annoy you with missiles.In fact you will probably hear the missiles alert for 2/3 of any mission.
The drone ai is a little better then average enemy ai,but once you figure it out the never actually improve and you have to fight them a lot.
Bosses are no real threat and rely on the insane amount of drones shooting missiles at you to actually kill you.
So,not bad,but nothing special.

-Unique stuff and extra content
Typical ace combat stuff.But having the music player as dlc is a insult.

-Overall verdict
Ace combat fans should play this game,after all we waited for this for 10 years.But it still is disappointing,it could have been great if they just played it less safe and improved the core formula more.

 

[sullynathan]

Beat Devil May Cry V. Best game of 2019 so far.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Thief 1 is still one of the best games ever. Even if AI is a bit lacking...

What really hurt me when playing Thiaf was realizing that the AI hadn't advanced at all since the first Thief game.

Or maybe it did but they just didn't bother implementing it.

Either way, Thiaf sucks. Check my sig. *cough*

 

[sullynathan]

What really hurt me when playing Thiaf was realizing that the AI hadn't advanced at all since the first Thief game.

Or maybe it did but they just didn't bother implementing it.

Play Chaos Theory.

 

[Krivol]

Thief 1 is still one of the best games ever. Even if AI is a bit lacking...

What really hurt me when playing Thiaf was realizing that the AI hadn't advanced at all since the first Thief game.

Or maybe it did but they just didn't bother implementing it.

Either way, Thiaf sucks. Check my sig. *cough*

No idea about Thiaf but guards leaving you alone after 5 seconds of alert are quite dissapointing after, say, Dishonored

Still level design + number of guards make sneaking through this game awesome

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS I LOVE BOXING GAMES CANT GET AWAY FROM FIGHT NIGJT CHAMPION ON FAGBOX

STILL GRIMOIRE AND JUST CAUSE 3

 

[Baron Dupek]

SW Republic Commando
Buckload of squad chit-chat, fuckload of bugs and droids, Matrix larpers with dual lightsaber and some Space Hulk action.
Is it me or one of Deltas is voiced by Half Life scientists?
Outro started... evacuation, got new orders - "Delta, looks like you're going back to action!"
....
....
and then credits starts rolling
thanks for nothing, I guess, get killed by EA, serves you well kiddin'
Time for another squad action *PseudoHendrix starts playing*

 

[Swigen]

Just finished wasting my time on Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky FC. I was all ready to write a giant butthurt post about how boring and shitty the game was and how it just went on and on and on, then I got to the final 2 minutes where the big twist is revealed. I’ve never had my mind changed about how I spent the last 79 hours on a game so quickly before. Feels like I watched a god awful shitty 3 hour movie with my arms crossed making snide comments to my woman the whole time only to reach the end and be like, “damn.... well I gotta see the sequel now”. Hope the second one has more Olivier tho.

 

[Sigourn]

I can't be the only one who thinks puzzles in survival horror games are stupid, right? No matter how much you enjoy them, the fact is a lot of times developers don't even bother disguising how retarded said puzzles are as a concept. I'm playing Resident Evil 2 (PS1) at the moment, and there are a few examples of puzzles done well and puzzles done wrong.

Done wrong:

1. Move statues around to make a statue drop a gem, because of course every police station is equipped with mechanical puzzles, not to mention our character can't even reach such a gem (oh wait, they can).
2. Use said gems on a couple statues to obtain another stone to use in a different puzzle.

Done well:

1. A helicopter is on flames on the roof of the building and you find a valve in the police headquarters and use it on the water tower on the roof, pushing the pressure to the max so that the water tower bursts open and puts out the fire.
2. Said helicopter has also crashed into a doorway making it impossible to get through it. You recover C4 and a detonator from the HQ to blast the door open.

In other words: bad puzzles are gamey, good puzzles are believable because, in the context of the setting, they are simply not puzzles. You are faced with a problem you solve logically. Gamey puzzles on the other hand feel like deliberate stop gaps and are extremely uncreative.

 

[unfairlight]

I had a playthrough of Thief Gold left over from late last year where I got to Mage Towers. Booted it up again and finished up that mission, will continue on it now for the second go at the game. I had completely forgotten that to get to the Water tower all you had to do is just open the door. I was looking around for a key to it that didn't exist last time. I overthink things too much.

 

[octavius]

Funny coincidence, I'm playing the Mages Area FM for Thief.

Hardest FM I've played so far. You start with 1 regular arrows and 3 moss arrows, that's all, not even a compass.
Lots of haunts, most of them unkillable.

EDIT: But I can't finish it since it's buggy with NewDark (some trapdoor won't open).

 

[Seigneur Voland]

Replaying Dark Souls 3 for the 20th time maybe, because while flawed, this game is still absolutly awesome. Epic bosses !

 

[groke]

No idea about Thiaf but guards leaving you alone after 5 seconds of alert are quite dissapointing after, say, Dishonored

Must've been rats.

 

[someone else]

The Division 2. Vietnam War museum that you get to fight in, pretty amusing.
Game kills my old CPU and I cannot turn up the graphics.
Pls form Codex Clan.