What game are you wasting time on?

[Perkel]

Started playing Dungeon Siege II...

It is like saying "so i started to cut my wrists..."

Diablo II, Median XL mod version 1.F9. Greatest mod I've ever seen for any game ever, by a mile. I first played this 10 years ago, and I'm back to it again.

It would be cool if it would keep the crap to end game instead of spazing like 9 year old watching DBZ from very fist act.
There are some good changes but overall it looks like someone took The Godfather and added rave party clips between opening procession shots.

I don't have time for this kind of games anymore.

I don't see a reason why games should cater to someone like you who don't play games because "i don't have time".
Pro-tip: Get time or stop whining.

 

[pakoito]

They shouldn't. But I can whine :D

I played 32h of A Hat in Time, just finished the new DLC that came out Friday and have all time pieces but one

 

[Catacombs]

Out of town this weekend with a laptop, so I'm just playing Nethack and Cataclysm.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Mucking about in mgs v. Way more fun than I thought it would be.

 

[iZerw]

I tried Deus Ex: Invisible War... What the fuck people? How could anyone produced such shit? Human Revolution is a masterpiece in comparison. HUD is abysmal, graphics is vomit inducing, npc's are voiced by junior programmers or something. Don't know about the script, uninstalled in about 10 minutes.

 

[CyberWhale]

Mucking about in mgs v. Way more fun than I thought it would be.

Metal Gear Solid is the Citizen Kane of videogames.
Orson Welles would have been a great overweight Big Boss, especially in MGS4.

 

[baud]

Just finished Prince of Persia Two Thrones;

Combat was meh (so meh that at the end you get a sword that 1-shot all enemies), QTEs in combat were a shit design and a pain in the ass.

The port was bad with fucked up gamepad support, with the prince moving on its own, very annoying where I needed some precise movement; in the end I had to use KB+mouse for the boss fights and for some platforming sequences.

There's one underground sequence which reminded me of the beginning of original Prince of Persia, which might have been intentional.

What kept me playing was the platforming, which I found very enjoyable, not as automated as AssCreed, but not too difficult either, mostly pressing the jump button at the right time. It's quite obvious how they went from PoP to AC though. One good feature is when you arrive at the start of the level with a panning camera shot showing all the progression you're going to do.

Playing with the Dark Prince was mostly fun, since he's more powerful, so combat is quicker and having a kind of grappling hook made platforming more fun, except for sequences with traps that hurt you, considering that his life bar is constantly going down , which made for a few annoying restarts; I mostly cheesed those sequence with slowing down the time.

Edit: I also finished the end boss only because there were two platforming sequences, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered with it.

Overall I'd say, among the Ubisoft Prince of Persia games, above Warrior Within, but not as good as Sand of Time or the 2008 one.

 

[Prime Junta]

I tried Deus Ex: Invisible War... What the fuck people? How could anyone produced such shit? Human Revolution is a masterpiece in comparison. HUD is abysmal, graphics is vomit inducing, npc's are voiced by junior programmers or something. Don't know about the script, uninstalled in about 10 minutes.

Sadly the script is the only redeeming quality it has. Unlike HR it was still true to the DX spirit.

Still wouldn't replay just because the rest of it is such irredeemable garbage.

 

[Lord Romulus]

Replaying AoE2, wanted to try out the new civilizations they added a few years back. I'm still terrible at it, can barely beat the AI on moderate, I keep forgetting to queue more villagers and to build houses when I'm nearing the population limit, I'm terrible at mixing unit types in my army, and I have a bad habit of building only one of each military building.

Just started Gothic 3 again recently, I played the demo way back when it first came out, shit kept crashing, was laggy as hell, and was all around unplayable. Game even glitched out with my character being unable to attack even with his weapon drawn, and like 3 orcs in the tutorial kept knocking me down and I couldn't even pick up my weapon after I failed to swing it while I still had it. Thought I finally try it again with all the patches since I loved the first 2 so much. Game is more playable but the combat seems complete dogshit unless there's something I'm not understanding. Lot of things I don't understand in the game, like large weapons with strength requirements that are way lower than the strength requirements to learn the perk that allows you to even wield large weapons. Don't like how you don't start as a wimp slowly building up your strength like the first 2 games, since you start right off the bat being able to kill orcs who are somehow just as strong as regular people now for some reason?

Spoiler

Still playing Starlight Stage after 3 and half years. Saved up for over a year and have 62k/75k needed for a 300 platinum audition guaranteeing a free SSR of my choice!

 

[Darth Roxor]

Mysteries of the Sith:

Mystery 1.

If scout troopers' blasters fire green bolts, why do they start shooting in red when picked up by Kyle?

Mystery 2.

Why did they change the stormtroopers' voices for some new wimpy ones? Did they misplace the original .wav files somewhere?

Mystery 3.

If Ka'apa the hutt says 'ho ho ho!' why does he need subtitles for that?

Mystery 3a.

Why do the subtitles say 'ha ha ha!'?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

If scout troopers' blasters fire green bolts, why do they start shooting in red when picked up by Kyle

Dark side of the force?

 

[Sukhāvatī]

Shadowrun: Hong Kong (courtesy of mck

)

Played Returns and Dragonfall back in the day and liked them well enough. Started this up as a smooth talking elf shotgunner and it just didn't click right for some reason; the whole team was just getting shredded to bits and barely doing any damage in return. Rerolled as a cybered-up Troll handrazor melee'r (meleeer?) and it's a nice fit, enemies are getting torn up and the team is barely getting touched.

The whole 2AP, one for movement, one for attack style was always an odd system imo. Made it too back-and-forthy.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Mysteries of the Sith:

Mystery 1.

If scout troopers' blasters fire green bolts, why do they start shooting in red when picked up by Kyle?

Stored personal preferences in the Force Cloud are enabled.

 

[HansDampf]

I've taken a look at that Duke Forces mod. It sounds fun on paper, Duke Nukem 3D x Jedi Knight. But the first levels of the new episodes are so boring and off-putting, they've made me delete the mod and try Dark Forces instead. Ugly caves, so dark you often can't even see what's shooting at you. The weapons don't feel that great. And you get to fight like 20 new different enemy types in the first level. No pacing.

Anyway, I'm 5 missions into Dark Forces now. Never played it before, only Jedi Knight and Outcast. So far, it's a solid shooter, not just a simple Doom clone, with mission objectives, and no quicksaves allowed. Controls are weird, though. I'd prefer proper mouselook to extra keys for looking up and down.

 

[Dux]

DOS Descent II is grinding my balls into a paste. I get to the boss on level 20 and proceed to empty my sweet Omega Cannon all over its hull while dodging annoying gnat bots... Well, I WOULD if not for a certain thief who came out of nowhere and snatched said cannon away at the worst possible moment. Now I've aged at least three years prematurely because of the frantic bullshit that ensued. Do I have a bit of an anger issue? Fuck you! Uh, I mean maybe. Yes.

I did a playthrough of the original and very classic Gabriel Knight to calm myself and I had forgotten just how relaxing this game really is - Africanised zombies notwithstanding. It's the perfect blend of sincerity and cheese. It's a shame that the series never could stick to an established art style, though, with its subsequent releases. It went through the whole gambit of 90's graphical (de)evolution: cosy pixel graphics, awkward FMV and clunky 3D.

 

[Tito Anic]

Playing Dark Eye: Demonicon, such a cosy rpg experience-like in the old days(Gothic,DeusEx)

p.s. It cures my rpg depresion after trying all new junk (Wasteland, POE, ToN, PK)

 

[Nifft Batuff]

My back catalog is so huge that I had to program an AI to help me to find an optimal gaming schedule (a random generator). These are the suggestions for the next days:

title system
Blood - Fresh Supply Win
Orogenesis Win
Lone Survivor Linux
The Lion King Win
Baldur's Gate 2 Enhanced Edition Win
Blank Dream Win
Batman Arkham Knight Win
Jazzpunk SC Win
The Banner Saga 2 Deluxe Edition Win
Remothered Tormented Fathers HD Win

 

[Catacombs]

My back catalog is so huge that I had to program an AI to help me to find an optimal gaming schedule (a random generator). These are the suggestions for the next days:

title system
Blood - Fresh Supply Win
Orogenesis Win
Lone Survivor Linux
The Lion King Win
Baldur's Gate 2 Enhanced Edition Win
Blank Dream Win
Batman Arkham Knight Win
Jazzpunk SC Win
The Banner Saga 2 Deluxe Edition Win
Remothered Tormented Fathers HD Win

How did you build it?

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Well obviously I was joking. However since I have collected a lot of games in the years I really had to write some codes to help me manage them. I used "R", a programming language suited for data analysis. I wrote scripts to generate automatically the database of the games that I own, crawling through the HDs where they are stored/installed plus some other scripts to webscrape sites like mobygames or similar to collect further useful metadata for the games (genres, themes, release years, etc.). It is easy then to select games from the database using arbitrary filters/rules (a random choice is also a viable rule...)

This is an example of a graphical output of the database (storage occupancy):

Spoiler

An example of a selection: RPGs & turn based games published in 2013 (according to moby) that I own:

Spoiler

 

[Unkillable Cat]

To test out a few old-gaming related things, I decided to try out a game that I last played (and completed) about 25 years ago.

Fury of the Furries (1993) is a platformer where you control a small furry creature through a series of levels to reach the exit, with the ultimate goal of reaching a castle and saving the realm from an evil tyrant. The gimmick of the game is that you can switch your color to gain different abilities. Yellow fur shoots fireballs of varying power and is flameproof, Red fur eats edible terrain, Green fur can launch a rope upwards to swing from blocks and Blue fur allows for swimming and firing bubbles underwater. Only by combining the uses of each color can each of the many many levels be completed. To add on top of that there are hidden bonus screens scattered about that give extra coins, and 100 coins net you an extra life.

Right from the start people will realize where the game's challenge lies: Its physics. Jumping once gives a small jump, but jumping immediately again gives a much higher jump (note, not the same as double-jumping) and inertia plays a big role in movement overall as you need to tap the opposite direction in order to stop moving. This allows for some ludicrous speed boosts, but on the other hand it's an absolute bitch to control the furry, especially if pinpoint platforming is required. Getting used to this takes some time. Switching between roles can only be done on level ground while stationary, so that needs to be factored in as well.

The levels mostly consist of obstacles that need to be overcome (deadly terrain and hidden traps) but there are some enemies to deal with as well like spiders, scorpions, piranhas and other critters.

The game is full of charm and humor and plenty of pop culture references everywhere, from objects in the background to large chunks of the manual, and even the available languages sport an odd option.

What is most notable about this game today is the drastic difference between the European version and the American version. In the American release the furries were completely thrown out and replaced by Pac-Man. That version, known as Pac-In-Time, switches out stuff like the intro, some of the music and the antagonist is now a Ghost Witch who sent Pac-Man back to 1975 for some reason (!) but otherwise the game is the same... at first glance. After trying out the two, I quickly realized that the European version is superior, because Pac-In-Time has removed all the options. Not just the language options, but also sound and music options, and at least some of the pop culture references are also gone.

There's also something about this game being part of a game series called Skweek. While the characters in the two games appear similar (and both games are made by French people) I couldn't find any real connection between the two.

Do I recommend this game to people today? I dunno. The controls will take some getting used to, but otherwise there's nothing really wrong with the game, save for trying to get one's hands on it.

 

[newtmonkey]

Batman: Arkham City

Arkham Asylum was a perfect example of a game where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. While the combat and stealth were both merely okay, the level design, exploration, and atmosphere (helped greatly by some of the best voice acting ever in a game) elevated the game to greatness. Doubly so if you like Batman, and who doesn't like Batman? The only problem I had with the game (besides the mediocre combat and stealth) was that the game forces both combat and stealth encounters on you, rather than letting you choose how to tackle each problem.

Arkham City adds pretty much more of everything—a much larger map, more optional content, more upgrades, more gadgets—but strangely makes hardly any improvements the core combat and stealth mechanics. There are some new enemy types and other new wrinkles, but you will be doing pretty much the same thing in every combat or stealth encounter from the beginning to the end; this is a problem since you already did this for 20+ hours in Arkham Asylum.

Unfortunately, the game falls behind Asylum in two key areas.

The first is level design. The tightly designed environments of Asylum are here replaced with a sprawling city in which 99% of the buildings are just things for you to sit on. On top of that, the few structures that you can enter are pretty boring and very linear.

The second area in which City falls behind Asylum is the length of the game. Asylum was a pretty meaty game with a story that would take you anywhere from 15-20 hours to complete; in contrast, City has a story that can be completed in 10 hours. It does have TONS of optional stuff to do, so if you love seeking out side missions and slowly filling out lists of optional content, character models, etc., City might be your game.

However, if you (like me) are not interested in optional stuff and want to play City as the sequel to Asylum, you might be quite disappointed when you reach the end (including a final fight against a boss that comes out of nowhere).

Having said that, it's got the Arkham formula down to a science, and if you enjoyed Asylum you're sure to enjoy this one.

 

[Catacombs]

I used "R", a programming language suited for data analysis.

I use it too, mostly for work and because it's easier to visualize data than anything out there. I cringe when people suggest using Excel's chart tools.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Mysteries of the Sith:

Mystery 2.

Why did they change the stormtroopers' voices for some new wimpy ones? Did they misplace the original .wav files somewhere?

Answer: because they had to replace "blast 'em" and "after 'em" with "blast her" and "after her" when you play Mara Jade.

Mystery solved.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I used "R", a programming language suited for data analysis.

I use it too, mostly for work and because it's easier to visualize data than anything out there. I cringe when people suggest using Excel's chart tools.

Oh a fellow R user!

 

[Catacombs]

I used "R", a programming language suited for data analysis.

I use it too, mostly for work and because it's easier to visualize data than anything out there. I cringe when people suggest using Excel's chart tools.

Oh a fellow R user!

Yeah, man. I live for tidyverse.