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What game are you wasting time on?

Abu Antar

Turn-based Poster
Patron
Joined
Jan 19, 2014
Messages
13,514
Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Bravely Second. Writing, both story and characters are as stupid as they can get. Combat system is very cool. I just really enjoy turn-based games with job systems. Biggest letdown is the worse soundtrack.

I'm playing the DLC The Way of Nether for Tale of Wuxia: The Pre-Sequel. It's quite different. While combat is the same, the DLC is more akin to TRPGs than a regular RPG and I do like it.

The third game that I am playing is The Journey Down: Part One that I was gifted on the Codex. Not overly complicated, but a chill adventure game with nice music.

And last but not least, Persona 5. I'm at 96 hours played. Got all the party members. Judging by the calendar, I might have around 40 hours left. I've done a lot of requests, but there have to be some left, because I have not gotten the related trophy. I'm aiming to max all confidants, which means that I will be ignoring trophies like reading all books and such. Not a big loss, in my opinion. In general, I am really enjoying the game, but the characters aren't as good as others in the series. I don't like many of the party members, and not many of the confidants are very interesting. I'm also starting to get sick of the adults are pricks thing the series is going for. I mean, they are not wrong, but the way it is handled is awkward. I'd love to so see an adult cast in their next game, but I very much doubt that it will happen.
 

Mark Richard

Arcane
Joined
Mar 14, 2016
Messages
1,192
Picked up Surviving Mars for cheap in the Back to School GOG sale. I'm not much of a SimCity guy, but I definitely have the bug here. There's always some new project to get excited about. I've constructed three connected domes so far. The spaceport at the top contains all the seedy gambling dens and bars, the dome at the bottom right is a living area, and the one on the bottom left is for education and farming. Next I'm planning to expand south with an isolated mining dome.

RSAI9vK.png
 

the_shadow

Arcane
Joined
Dec 30, 2011
Messages
1,179
Just played through the Story mode for Total Annihilation Kingdoms: Iron Plague. TA: K was one on my favorite games during high school (I had never played the original Total Annihilation), and I always wanted to get my hands on the expansion pack, but the internet was still in its infancy. Overall the missions in Iron Plague are much more difficult than the original, and everything is still horribly unbalanced (but fun), as you can't enable the 'Crusades Balance' option in Adventure mode. I know that most people see TA:K is seen as a step down from the original TA, but it just resonates with me. I think the fantasy setting, the unit variety, and colorful graphics compensate for the lack of balance and rather dense AI.
 

Phaserlight

Novice
Joined
Dec 11, 2012
Messages
27
Location
Boca Raton, FL

markec

Twitterbot
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2010
Messages
45,672
Location
Croatia
Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Dead State Project: Eternity Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Just finished Valkyria Chronicles 4, it was the first game in this series that I played and I enjoyed it very much. The story is a mixed bag with its anime cliches, the game is overall quite easy with exception of very few maps, especially when playing the hard version of the last mission in order to get true ending. Still the gameplay is fun and if you like tactical turn based games I can easily recommended this.
 

BlackGoat

Arbiter
Joined
Sep 15, 2014
Messages
505
My deep dive into all the adventure games I never played continues. Maniac Mansion was cool tho I found out afterward there's a better looking version I could've been playing. Will play again in the future perhaps to get some of the different endings.

Followed it up with Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders which is painfully unfunny and annoying to play, even after I gave in and just used a walkthrough.

Not sure what's next. Either continue on to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or continue my Tex Murphy run with Under a Killing Moon. Or King's Quest II. Or Sins of the Fathers. The Blackwell games seem pretty quick, so maybe I'll do Blackwell Unbound to decompress after McKracken's bullshit.
 

eXalted

Arcane
Joined
Dec 16, 2014
Messages
1,213
Heroes 3

Started playing some fan-made scenarios (with some recommendations by octavius ). Rediscovering the game as a whole with these. Got so used collect resources and kill enemies type of Heroes, these are like a new game.

The Imp
This was a very good S map. Provided some fair challenge. Really liked the "1 unicorn vs 1 titan and 1 dread knight" battle. Surrender at the last battle and thus teleported myself to the castle and won. Then I saw that this is actually not the way and it's beatable so I tried it a couple of times and won.

Bug Hunt
A very weird map. Sci-fi theme poured all over the Heroes 3 fantasy world. Didn't like it that much. I can fight only so much flies before I get bored.

Fairy Tale
Another very good S map. Nice fairy atmosphere and Snow White lore. Was pretty surprised by how much content there was in such a small map. Fights provided a good challenge until I got the Fire Wall spell. Didn't know what to do with that released from prison Sharpshooter - he died two battles later. The final fight was pretty hard too.
 

octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,182
Location
Bjørgvin
Heroes 3

...

Fairy Tale
Another very good S map. Nice fairy atmosphere and Snow White lore. Was pretty surprised by how much content there was in such a small map. Fights provided a good challenge until I got the Fire Wall spell. Didn't know what to do with that released from prison Sharpshooter - he died two battles later. The final fight was pretty hard too.

I used him as a squire (pick up resources and hold all the but the fastest stack when you hit End of Turn to make the main hero as mobile as possible) and for converting the elf troops to Sharpshooters.
 

Curratum

Guest
Did 13 hours of Spyro Reignited over the last three days. I haven't had this much pure fun with a game in a while.
 

octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,182
Location
Bjørgvin
hold all the but the fastest stack when you hit End of Turn to make the main hero as mobile as possible
I don't think I want to be this hardcore. This doesn't sound fun at all.
and for converting the elf troops to Sharpshooters.
That's weird. I couldn't find any elf archers.

I like to use as little time as possible for a better score. Helps me "stay sharp".

It's possible I confuse Elves with Archers. There was at least one stack you could convert.
 

Dux

Arcane
Joined
May 26, 2016
Messages
635
Location
Sweden
Thief 2: The Metal Age

An almost impossible game to rate. 3/4 of it is an undisputed masterpiece. The final part, however, is pretty horrible and the very definition of anticlimactic. You have two missions (Casing the Joint and Masks) which really should have been morphed into one. I had already gotten tired of the level by the time I was done "casing" it, so when I actually got to the proper mission afterwards I was just frustrated and bored. Then there's the final mission (Sabotage) which is such an ungodly clusterfuck of robots, cameras and Karras' endless garbled speech, most of which I never really could understand. Honestly, I got really tired of hearing that shit all the time.

Come to think of it Thief 2 is quite similar to System Shock 2 - not just in terms of their overall design. Both of these games are masterpieces when it comes to atmosphere, sound and gameplay, but they are also blighted by really weak endgames as well as an abrupt and unsatisfactory plot resolution. It's a shame because the ending is supposed to validate the journey in a way. Thankfully Thief 2 has enough going for it that it scarcely matters.

It's just not as good as The Dark Project, in my opinion. I'll take zombies and ghosts over loud robots any day of the week.

I remember the first time I did the Constantine's mansion in TDP and my mind was just completely blown. It was fucking fantastic. Thief 2, sadly, doesn't really have that equivalent. The mission in the police station was probably my favourite because it really is vintage Thief: go in, sneak around, take stuff, leave stuff, get out - all unnoticed.
 

Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
Messages
4,274
Location
Massachusettes
Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain. Stealth/tactical/run & gun amusement park open world with lots of goofy as well as serious shit to do, but I need to mod it. Just little things like hearing a loud fucking musical TA-DUM! every time you get into a vehicle can fray a player's nerves. Feels like it has incredible depth, or maybe because it has a fairly high & complex learning curve with resource management/crafting at your base, it just seems that way. Appears there are a large number of ways to subdue a foe (you can hold a gun on him to prevent him from sounding alarms, knock him out, kidnap him for your own army, interrogate or cut his throat). The extensive Infinite Heaven mod doesn't want to work nicely with my particular build.
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
Patron
Developer
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
Messages
16,947
Location
Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Thief 2: The Metal Age

An almost impossible game to rate. 3/4 of it is an undisputed masterpiece. The final part, however, is pretty horrible and the very definition of anticlimactic. You have two missions (Casing the Joint and Masks) which really should have been morphed into one. I had already gotten tired of the level by the time I was done "casing" it, so when I actually got to the proper mission afterwards I was just frustrated and bored. Then there's the final mission (Sabotage) which is such an ungodly clusterfuck of robots, cameras and Karras' endless garbled speech, most of which I never really could understand. Honestly, I got really tired of hearing that shit all the time.

Come to think of it Thief 2 is quite similar to System Shock 2 - not just in terms of their overall design. Both of these games are masterpieces when it comes to atmosphere, sound and gameplay, but they are also blighted by really weak endgames as well as an abrupt and unsatisfactory plot resolution. It's a shame because the ending is supposed to validate the journey in a way. Thankfully Thief 2 has enough going for it that it scarcely matters.

It's just not as good as The Dark Project, in my opinion. I'll take zombies and ghosts over loud robots any day of the week.

I remember the first time I did the Constantine's mansion in TDP and my mind was just completely blown. It was fucking fantastic. Thief 2, sadly, doesn't really have that equivalent. The mission in the police station was probably my favourite because it really is vintage Thief: go in, sneak around, take stuff, leave stuff, get out - all unnoticed.
I can second this. For a long time I was on the opinion that T2 is better than T1. But then I realized that T2's endgame is pretty terrible. Although I only had a problem with the final mission, not with the ones before it. It is just boring and unimaginative. Still a fantastic game, but I like TDP better now.
 

Curratum

Guest
Thief 2 is only better than Thief 1 because of the colored lighting and the FMs.
 

eXalted

Arcane
Joined
Dec 16, 2014
Messages
1,213
Gremlins & Titans

I'm really starting to waste time with this one. It's the first map of that guy but he sure can play a thousand times better than me because I'm stuck 10 minutes in.
 

HansDampf

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2015
Messages
1,471
Outer Wilds, aka Groundhog Day in space.
This is one of the few adventure/exploration games where progress is tied to knowledge. You never get new tools or abilities. Everything is available from the start. The only thing that changes is your knowledge. If you knew what to do, you could finish the game during the first cycle. That's unlikely to happen, but I could imagine someone playing through this game while missing 50% of the content. Progression is non-linear. But there are some clues that lead you down certain paths. It's well designed in that way. Many of the riddles are solved by being in the right place at the right time. Some require a bit more thought.
My biggest complaint is the story and how it's presented. Take every sci-fi trope you can think of, black holes, teleportation, artificial gravity, quantum shit, time travel, supernovae, ..., warp them into a fairy tale shape, and throw everything into a miniature star system. Welcome to Outer Wilds. The planets are tiny. In a time span of just 22 minutes your home planet goes through multiple day/night cycles, and you can watch the sun turn into a "red giant" and then into a supernova. I understand why everything is scaled down. It's a necessary concession. Nobody wants to explore realistically sized planets that are 99.9% desert, or wait a million years for the cycle to repeat. But I found it difficult to actually care about any of this. When grandpa is chilling on the moon and complains about being lonely and nobody visiting him, I'm like, dude, if you jump high enough you're almost home. I don't know how you could improve this without hurting the gameplay. Maybe this story just isn't the right fit for this type of game. Astronomy and physics are shown from a rather naive perspective, like how a clueless child would imagine them. This also extends to the writing (when science = magic). I'm not asking for 100% hard sci-fi accuracy, just a little more respect, if I'm supposed to take this seriously.
The game has its trippy moments though. The main premise and mystery is interesting. Every planet has some crazy properties that offer cool set pieces. And the final stretch, when you take the required item to the end, is satisfying. One minor missed opportunity on the ending:
You need a warp core to power up a space ship. But the only warp core you can find is powering the the machine that is responsible for your time loop. Once you take that warp core out of the machine you are no longer immortal. And the path to the ship isn't that trivial. If you die now you will get a Game Over instead of a new cycle. But the devs didn't have the balls to actually delete your save file. It's really a minor thing, but I thought this would have been a nice touch. No real progress would be lost anyway. You could just start a new game and go directly to the warp core. The only thing that you would lose is your ship log (and achievement progress, I guess
rating_prosper.png
), which is irrelevant at that point. In the old days you would have had to take notes yourself anyway.
Oh, btw, I must have had 10 or so crashes overall. But I'm not sure if I can blame this entirely on the game... :M
I'd wait for a sale. Best played when high.
 

Onionguy

Educated
Joined
Dec 23, 2018
Messages
90
Thief 2: The Metal Age

An almost impossible game to rate. 3/4 of it is an undisputed masterpiece. The final part, however, is pretty horrible and the very definition of anticlimactic. You have two missions (Casing the Joint and Masks) which really should have been morphed into one. I had already gotten tired of the level by the time I was done "casing" it, so when I actually got to the proper mission afterwards I was just frustrated and bored. Then there's the final mission (Sabotage) which is such an ungodly clusterfuck of robots, cameras and Karras' endless garbled speech, most of which I never really could understand. Honestly, I got really tired of hearing that shit all the time.

Come to think of it Thief 2 is quite similar to System Shock 2 - not just in terms of their overall design. Both of these games are masterpieces when it comes to atmosphere, sound and gameplay, but they are also blighted by really weak endgames as well as an abrupt and unsatisfactory plot resolution. It's a shame because the ending is supposed to validate the journey in a way. Thankfully Thief 2 has enough going for it that it scarcely matters.

It's just not as good as The Dark Project, in my opinion. I'll take zombies and ghosts over loud robots any day of the week.

I remember the first time I did the Constantine's mansion in TDP and my mind was just completely blown. It was fucking fantastic. Thief 2, sadly, doesn't really have that equivalent. The mission in the police station was probably my favourite because it really is vintage Thief: go in, sneak around, take stuff, leave stuff, get out - all unnoticed.

Sabotage isn't nearly as bad as people make it to be, its problem is that it comes after that doubled mission, and as such it may feel a bit dull and overwhelming. All the busy work that you do in the beginning, things like find a number ingredients, insert them in a specific order into a machine- that's the bad part. But the moment you leave it behind, that's when things start to get more interesting. There is an unique feeling of descending deeper and deeper into some dehumanized maze of madness. That's at least how it felt to me.
 

Abu Antar

Turn-based Poster
Patron
Joined
Jan 19, 2014
Messages
13,514
Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I tried The Witness. I've activated 5 lasers, I think. It's a good change of pace when you just want to chill from Bravely Second, Persona 5 and Underrail.

I also completed The Journey Down Chatpers 1 and 2, which puts me at approximately 50 beaten games in 2019.
 

Vincente

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 16, 2018
Messages
615
Location
Location
Playing Splinter Cell for the first time, i need to laser-mic a glass elevator atm. Really fun game, probably gonna play the other entries in the series when i finish 1.
 

Wyatt_Derp

Arcane
Joined
May 19, 2019
Messages
3,062
Location
Okie Land
playing Max Payne

I played this game several years ago but couldn't past one tough encounter.
Completed Max Payne 1 a few months ago, then completed Max Payne 2........... and then installed Max Payne 1 and completed it again. What's wrong with me?

Nothing. Better to a good thing a thousand times than a bad thing once. After all, variety is the spice of life.
 

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