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What game are you wasting time on?

Viata

Arcane
Joined
Nov 11, 2014
Messages
9,886
Location
Water Play Catarinense
I've finished Disco Elysium. It is a really good game and I can understand why it is GOTY for some people(then again, this is the only 2019 game I have played, that I can remember), but I have a hard time seeing it as a rpg and more like a 3D visual novel. Then again, on codex, the game is rpg if you like it and not if you don't, so who cares what is the genre?
The game is quite easy, perhaps the easiest rpg/visual novel/adventure game I have ever played. The skill checks are nice and you have a guarantee of passing ALL of them, as you have 1 in 36 chances of getting two 6 or ~3%. The opposite also happens, as you have ~3% of failing any skill check(and I'll tell you, there is nothing that hurts more in this game than rolling two 1 when you have more than 90% of passing it). There are two kinds of skill checks: white and red ones.
The red ones are available only once and if you fail it, that is it.
The white ones, however, can be done as many times as you want(in theory) because if you fail it, you just need to level up the skill to try it again. I say in theory because this game does something I really like: Suppose you have a skill check in pain threshold. You fail it and thinks "ok, I'll just level up that skill and try again", so you get enough exp to level it up and when you try to do that, you can't. Why? Because your skill level is limited by your status level. You can't have logic 5(which depends on int) if your int is not at least 5 too. So, if you have 2 of int, that is how much you can level up your logic. This is my favorite thing in the game, btw.
The only other way to level up logic is during dialogues, as they can level up specific skills. You can wear clothes or use items that increase a skill, but it is not considered as a level up and so that skill check is going to stay blocked. So, in a way, you can get fucked by a white skill check and "never" be able to do it.
Why "never"? Because of the thought cabinet. The though cabinet is like a second set of skills/items you can equip(think). They are limited by skill points and to stop thinking about something or unlock new available spaces to think about it(our protagonist has a hard time thinking of many things at the same time, I guess) also requires the use of skill points. So yeah, you either increase a skill or unlock new spaces to think/stop thinking about something. The though cabinet has some good uses, it can increase skills(and also decrease them), help you get past some part of the game(tbh, it only happened once for me so) and even clear all white skill checks so you can try them again. There are even, of course. The though cabinet system is kinda broken, for example, by just saying something like "yeah, sometimes rich people do wrong" and you already have voices in your head asking if you want to build communism, which, if accepted, prompts you to think about it. It doesn't really chances anything in the game, not for me at least, and I think the dev can better explore this in the second game. The voices on your head is a cool idea, most of them is just your knowledge in some skill talking to you and helping you (or not: "Why are you listening to me? Don't listen to me!" said Empathy when I selected exactly what it said and the person I was talking to didn't like it) pass dialogues. It really helped, but made the game even easier.
On politics, the game has more communism dialogues than any other political view, however, some of them are not the kind of today's left would really associate with. A great example is the old man at the end of the game, his view is quite different from the kind of commies I see both in university and on the internet and in fact he would even be hated by them. There are some critics to the left, too, like protagonist telling how they like to ditch someone as soon as that person does something they dislike and so on(just like we see on twitter). The right(and center) dialogues are not only extremist but also made for someone that has no idea what it is and just asked people's opinion on twitter. The same also happens to the left, but imo, in a not so exagerated way[then again perhaps because I'm more used to see retarded shit left does in my country and so I don't think the game exaggerated it as much it does to right]. One thing I disliked in the game was the racist guy who is there just so the played can make some choice and have the thought system asking you if you wanna build communism/be a fascist/or whatever the shit. I disliked it because it was really bad, stupid and even unnecessary in the game when it has so many nice dialogues. The politics shit didn't stop me from enjoying the game, I'm used to hearing dumb commies left and right(I'm an university student, after all) and I can enjoy something without having it stopping me from having fun.
Overall, it was a really great game and I do recommend it to anyone that wants to play it. It's not, for me, neither GOTY nor RPG, but that is not really important, what is important is if the game is good or not. And it is really good.
 
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ebPD8PePfC

Savant
Joined
May 13, 2018
Messages
225
Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble! - The game is about a gang of girls in a school in the 1920, who go on an adventure to acquit their janitor from a nefarious plot. You start by recruiting a the gang leader from a list of 10+ girls, each with her own stats. You then recruit up to three more girls and start to talk to people around the school, which advances the story.
The game plays a like a mix between an adventure game and an RPG. There are no puzzles though. Instead the game has all conflict resolution done through one of five mini-games, which are based on the stats of your characters, so there is an incentive to build a varied party. The minigames themselves are mostly uninteresting, but they are short enough to be unintrusive. Sadly they are used far far too often and turn into a boring chore.
Talking to characters also isn’t too interesting. The writing isn’t good enough, and sometimes feel disjointed, as if sentences don’t relate to one another. The overall plot isn’t interesting, at least not enough to carry the game by itself. There’s also an issue with the decision to have you pick from 10+ girls, as they all spout the same generic text and lack character of their own, so you companion for the adventure aren't interesting in any way. The game is designed to be played once, so it would have been better to have a fixed party of four girls with fixed personalities, rather than go for a systematic route that makes the girls feel identical, bar their different stats.
In practice I don’t think you can really lose the game. Just talk to everyone until you find the next character that moves the plot and don’t make really dumb choices in mini-games. This sort of game loop is fine as the base for a casual game, but the production values are probably a bit too low for that crowd.

A mini-game that does work well and I would like to see in other RPGs is Hangman, where you try to get some information from the character you’re talking to. There's a hidden sentence you need to reveal, and you can spend tokens whose number depends on your stats to reveal certain words. When you run out of tokens you have to guess the right words.

phMVgJR.jpg


When a complicated sentence is hidden, the players' success to reveal it will depend on their understanding of the character they’re talking to and the conversation as a whole, as well the character’s stats. On the other hand when the hidden sentence is simple, it doesn’t work because it’s easy to guess the next word through basic English.
It’s not fun enough to last a hundred times like this game uses it, but it could fit into a CRPG as an addition to the conversation system.

For all it’s faults, the game has an interesting design and a great theme so it’s worth playing it a bit just to toy with its systems. I wouldn’t really recommended it though, because everything good about it gets drowned out through the supposedly 7+ hours it lasts. I didn’t get nearly that far.
 

octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,220
Location
Bjørgvin
Tried playing Daikatana. Half an hour of cutscenes (and this was designed by John "Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie" Romero?), then fighting little frogs and mosquitos, and then some hidden machine gun or something killed me. And you can't save until finding a crystal or something.
 

Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
Messages
4,326
Location
Massachusettes
Currently playing Star Control Origins. Not really digging it and may give up. It's like a really purdy version of The Ur Quan Masters but so dumbed down and streamlined apparently that it's ultimately a very hollow experience with little or no challenge. I thought maybe I'd find the gameplay addicting nonetheless but I'm discovering thats not the case. Maybe I should just play the Ur Quan Masters HD remaster with the megamod and remixes. Lots of dialogue choices but no C&C of course. I sacrificed the least popular member of my crew to the alien cannibals just to watch him die though I was sternly warned not to by Star Control command. I don't expect to get any more of a repremand than, "That's not nice. Now go the the Beta Epsilon system and get da bad guys! The universe is in your hands!"
 
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Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
Messages
4,326
Location
Massachusettes
Tried playing Daikatana. Half an hour of cutscenes (and this was designed by John "Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie" Romero?), then fighting little frogs and mosquitos, and then some hidden machine gun or something killed me. And you can't save until finding a crystal or something.

I remember playing Quake 1 deathmatch on some random server many years ago that allowed custom skins/mods for your player. There was some guy dressed in razzle dazzled, neon yellow with red polka dots running around. When I played the first few minutes of Daikatana a few years ago, it was kind of like that.

q3IATTf.jpg
 

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
Patron
Joined
Oct 3, 2015
Messages
11,882
Tried playing Daikatana. Half an hour of cutscenes (and this was designed by John "Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie" Romero?), then fighting little frogs and mosquitos, and then some hidden machine gun or something killed me. And you can't save until finding a crystal or something.
214697049_8rue7-L-2.jpg


Penny Arcade, 1999
 

Baron Dupek

Arcane
Joined
Jul 23, 2013
Messages
1,870,829
Fiddling with ol' Shadow Warrior after :prosper: experience with reboots and aiming is dogshit in both Classic and Redux, had to dig some source port to make it managable.
Don't mind hectic gameplay (in fact - really like it) or getting my ass whooped but when bad controls comes in FPS game - that cross the line.
 

JDR13

Arcane
Joined
Nov 2, 2006
Messages
3,933
Location
The Swamp
Fiddling with ol' Shadow Warrior after :prosper: experience with reboots and aiming is dogshit in both Classic and Redux, had to dig some source port to make it managable.
Don't mind hectic gameplay (in fact - really like it) or getting my ass whooped but when bad controls comes in FPS game - that cross the line.

I could never get into Shadow Warrior despite being a big fan of Duke 3D and Blood. Not sure why. Maybe I was just burned out on Build Engine shooters by then. Never tried the reboot.
 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
Patron
Joined
Mar 22, 2013
Messages
12,802
Finished Super Metroid and moved on to Metroid Fusion. Super Metroid felt massive after Metroid Zero Mission and Metroid 2. I clocked in something around the 9-hour mark with 85% of all things found. I hadn't played Super Metroid in almost 20 years, but it was such a strong game I remembered a lot. Still, what I had blocked out were some of the mechanics, wall jumping is one of the worst implementations I've ever seen in a game (thankfully it's needed in only one location really) and the grappling hook isn't great either, I have seen better implementations of that kind of mechanic. But what the game really nails is mood and exploration. For it remains the best Metroid game so far.

Haven't gone far in Metroid Fusion yet, but the one thing I disliked from the start is the interior narration of Samus we get throughout the game, something we didn't have before, and it's pretty awful. I preferred her as a silent protagonist. Also the AI navigator is highly annoying, I rather prefer to get thrown into a world and explore on my own, instead of having an AI telling me where to go
 

the_shadow

Arcane
Joined
Dec 30, 2011
Messages
1,179
Finished Blackguards on Normal difficulty. My final impression is... it's a really good game. A lot of the battles in it seem real difficult, but once you have a bit of knowledge about how they play out and think things through a bit they are relatively easy. Battles in the first half of the game seem to be more about attrition, whereas the second half of the game they are more about overwhelming first strikes to remove heavy hitters.

The hardest battle has to be the caiman fight in the arena, since they usually make a beeline for the meat and kill Aurelia before you can wipe them out. Second-hardest is saving the Baroness. While enemies are stronger later in the game, you usually have a diverse bag of tricks to play against them, whether it's paralysis poison or traps, triple shot, or arrow storm for large enemies. Probably the only fight which gave me any trouble late game was the final fight with the Sheriff, and only because of the archers who could power shot my weaker mages. If I were to replay I'd max out Mirror Image on my mages, I only realize near the end what a great spell it is.

I'll definitely be buying Blackguards 2 when it's on sale, even though some Codexers say it's decline. Even if it's only half as good as BG1, I will still enjoy it.
 

Fr0gic

Literate
Joined
Nov 26, 2019
Messages
7
Location
UK
The whole Legend of Zelda series. Specifically Majora's Mask because that shit was meticulously made.
 

Viata

Arcane
Joined
Nov 11, 2014
Messages
9,886
Location
Water Play Catarinense
The whole Legend of Zelda series. Specifically Majora's Mask because that shit was meticulously made.

Chronological order or publishing order?
Should be the "play whatever I want first" order. The chronological order is stupid and the publishing order may make you play shit zelda games first and that will make you tired of playing any more zelda.
 

JDR13

Arcane
Joined
Nov 2, 2006
Messages
3,933
Location
The Swamp
I don't think there's an official chronological order for Zelda tbh. Various sites list timelines, but I'm pretty sure those are more fan speculation than anything.

The games are only very loosely connected anyways. The only titles where you actually play the same Link are OOT and MM.
 

Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
Messages
4,326
Location
Massachusettes
Finally finished Star Control Origins (or at least until the end credits rolled for the main campaign... with DLC and missed side missions, the game can continue). It's a very slick, nicely updated take on the Star Control formula but lacks difficulty and the absolute most important thing a game like this needs -- that sense of real adventure and discovery. Positive points is that some of it is funny in that Douglas Adams kind of way and it's fairly well-written at times (ie sentient deadly viruses). After all is said and done, I don't recommend this game though it's not terrible, just vapid and dull compared to the two games that directly inspired it -- Starflight and Star Control 2. At leaset I was able to finish it.
 

Mark.L.Joy

Prophet
Joined
Sep 11, 2016
Messages
1,282
Who published that? I find it interesting that they even included the non-Nintendo developed handheld titles.

I think it's the official one Hyrule Historia, some partnership between nintendo and a publisher.
 

JDR13

Arcane
Joined
Nov 2, 2006
Messages
3,933
Location
The Swamp
Speaking of Zelda, what's the general opinion of Skyward Sword? I didn't play it back in the day because I never had the Wiimote "Plus" attachment. I recently purchased one and got my Wiimote working on PC with the Dolphin emulator.

Is it worth a playthrough? I've had some people tell me no while others claim it's one of their favorite Zeldas.
 

BLOBERT

FUCKING SLAYINGN IT BROS
Patron
Joined
Jun 12, 2007
Messages
4,245
Location
BRO
Codex 2012
The whole Legend of Zelda series. Specifically Majora's Mask because that shit was meticulously made.

Chronological order or publishing order?
Should be the "play whatever I want first" order. The chronological order is stupid and the publishing order may make you play shit zelda games first and that will make you tired of playing any more zelda.

BRO LOLOLLOL AT PCTARD

FIRST ZELDA IS AWESOME
 

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