What game are you wasting time on?

[Robespierre]

Just finished Amid Evil, and it was good ... for the most part. The level design is mostly good, until the last episode which is interesting in concept and beautiful to look at but doesn't play as good as the other episodes, I think the abstract design of the episode is the main culprit here: for it to be playable the designers kinda had to make the levels more linear, which is a shame.

The enemy design was meh though, either bland either repetitive, mostly generic (those fucking golems in the episode 3), but they play well which is the more important as far as I'm concerned. The weaponry is as classic as it goes : you basically have your chainsaw (the axe and don't underestimate it, for it remains useful from start to finish), your BBgun (but it comes with homing missiles, those are good against aerial opponents), your shotgun (the star of torment which nails enemies to walls, and yeah it's fun), your missile launcher (oh god, I blew off the Earth yet again while rocket jumping), your rifle (the voltride) and your BFG. All of them work as intended, and you do have to use them all in order to kill efficiently everything the game throws at you. The weapons also have special modes, which you can trigger by collecting the souls enemies drop when killed.


Amid Evil is a bit easy however, but I won't hold this against it for I played on hard difficulty (I didn't find the Evil difficulty at first) and I hardly ever died (and most of my deaths occured during the platforming bits, which are a-plenty in the fifth episode).

It currently costs 11€ on GOG, and I would recommend it. It doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, nor does it try to break new grounds, but almost everything it does it does right. It's fun, it's very atmospheric, it's long, secrets are hard to find, and it runs godly even on a potato. And the soundtrack is great and fits the game just fine.
Good shooters are hard to find these days, and this one stands among the good ones.

Spoiler

 

[CuckMasher]

I am still playing a ton of Out of the Park Baseball 20. It's great as a strategy game because the lack of full information, just enough randomness, and good enough AI. I really want a start a meaty RPG but I feel like I can have only one meaty game going at once.

Ran out of steam on Nu-God of War. I think I'm maybe half way or more through? I just got sick of it.

Started Ori sequel and decided to wait for them to iron out the framerate issues. I do not like the new save system, I do not like having an inventory or what looks like a bigger emphasis on story. If I want an RPG, I'll just play an RPG. Not every game needs to have RPG elements.

Tried Play Unknown's Battleground which is "free" on x-box game pass. I'm actually having a lot of fun with that.

Planning to start the next game in my metal gear solid playthrough, which will be MGS Peace Walker. Really enjoyed the series so far although MGS 4 really went way way overboard with the cutscenes. MGS 1 and 3 probably my favorites so far.

Tried and have been playing a little bit of Stardew Valley as well.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

Messed around a little in Black Mesa, but mainly the Wait for Bannerlord game

 

[DeepOcean]

I was playing Beautiful Desolation, mini review, no spoilers:

Spoiler

I finished the game today, I have to say that overall I enjoyed it. It is a really well polished game, Pike and his brother punched over their weight here and this doesnt look like a typical indie game.

Exploration:

Pros:
+ Really liked the world, exploring the world is the main reason to play the game. The factions are creative and dont follow post apocalyptic cliches that much, you have self aware robots, african tribesmen, self replicating nanites and all of that. It is a mixture of african primitivism and high tech that creates an unique identity and no, it isnt yet another copy of Mad Max and is more like a south african Numenera setting.
+ This unique identity is the main reason why people should play this game. Stasis was a nice game but creatively, this is a much better game,

Cons:

-Each location doesnt have much to do in it, the game is quite economical with interaction, it is common to get to large areas that only have one NPC to talk to.
- Because of the lack in content, the game moves fast and while the faction concepts are great and some characters are really interesting, you get so little of it for each faction that you truly dont get to know each faction much.

Choice and consequence:

Pros:
+ It isnt usual for an adventure game to have those and those choices turn the factions on something more than background noise (because of the lack in NPC interactions). Without those choices, the quality of the game would greatly suffer.

Cons:

- This isnt Fallout with its extensive ending slides about what happened afterwards with each faction. No proper ending slides here for the factions because of story reasons.
- The consequences in game arent that great either, yes, you can destroy or not some factions but that doesnt seem to have a bigger impact on the world.
- Outside some factions choices, the game is quite static, wont complaint much because this isnt a RPG but it is a pity because I totally would love to do tons of quests on this setting.

Writing:
Pros:

+The writing is competent and because the game is economic with interaction, each faction must show identity with its respective NPCs quick, so the NPCs talk and behave on ways appropriated for their faction. Because of this design choice, you wont see all characters from different professions and cultures and even from alien races talking and behaving like quirky 20 something californian millenials like it is the norm on most RPGs.
+ This aspect made me remember of Torment on a good way.
+ There are no lore dumpster NPCs, thank God, most dialog is to the point with no bullshit.

Cons:

- The economy in content really hurt the NPCs, it isnt that there arent interesting NPCs, there are alot of them but they have so little show time that you end up having no memorable interaction with them.
- Don, Mark and Pooch are kinda run of the mill normie characters that end up being terribly uninteresting on a place with talking moss and conscious robots, to make matters worse, they talk mostly of their background story that isnt that important on the context of the game as you dont play that. I didnt get super interested on Don's history of PTSD after visiting an ancient destroyed city and talked with self-aware nanites.
- The story is quite open ended with an open ended ending and is comprised mostly of alot of fetch quests. You do a series of fetch quests then the game ends without much happening between the begining and end.

Gameplay:

Pros:

+ It is somewhat non linear with different choices to make on 5 different hubs with alot of different locations while you do the main quest fetch quests.

Cons:
- This is a run of the mill modern adventure game, so it is an easy game, most puzzles are inventory puzzles that are quite obvious for people that pay some attention to what is going on. If you dont have dementia or ADHD, you probably wont be stuck on this game.
- It doesnt ramp up the difficulty and complexity of the puzzles until the later zones.
- Because the more complex and difficult puzzles only start showing up by the second half of the game, the begining is a series of ultra easy fetch quests that gets boring, I have to say that by the time I left Vesta and started exploring the other areas, the gameplay was barely there.
- There is a lull right after you get the Buffalo, on Vesta until you get more advanced on the Hanasi/Cheziyama situation where I felt really unenthusiastic to play the game, you have a very interesting beginning with the Penrose stuff that reminded me alot of District 9 then the game decides to stop hard, throw a series of fetch quests at you with barely any context for what is happening.
- You go around and around without much of an incentive to keep going doing fetch quests where you are not sure of how those fetch quests would advance the main fetch quests. Fortunately, things improve alot after the first faction decision.

Overall, despite the negatives, I enjoyed the game alot and would easily keep playing for more 6 zones if the game had them. Just expect a polished, well made modern adventure game with some light choice and consequence and light on the difficulty and gameplay. If exploring post apocaliptic primitive/high tech South Africa that seems like a really well made adventure on a Numenera/District 9 like setting is enough to compensate the gameplay issues for you, this is a nice game.

 

[HansDampf]

Continuing Rain World, I was willing to finish this until I reached a point where things change for the worse. I've looked at a spoiler-free guide, which says I'm in the second of three chapters. The first chapter was nice. There are multiple paths through different regions to reach your goal, you can explore the world at your own pace, learn new tricks to deal with predators, etc. The second chapter (and also part of the third chapter) is one long linear slog where you are basically just trying to reach the next hibernation chamber before you are killed by the rain. Platforming and enemies become more difficult. And luck has to be on your side. For example, there is one long stretch where you are harassed by bird-like creatures. You have to hide and wait until they are gone. As far as I can tell, it's random how many encounters you will get. When you happen to be on a short cycle and encounter too many birds, they slow you down so much there won't even be enough time to reach the next hibernation chamber. In other areas, sometimes when you move to the next screen you may walk right into a predator's mouth and die. Sure, this game wants to simulate nature, and life is unfair. Fair enough. Problem is, it's boring.

 

[Jvegi]

Knights of the Chalice. Almost done. IWD was great. This is great. Not perfect, losts of downsides. But still a great adventure. I'll finally play TOEE later, but I doubt there are many more games like that. The drawbacks I've mentioned are of a serious variaty, and I don't think Gold Box games, or even Wizardry VIII can give me that worthwile feel of progression. I hope I'm wrong, but even KotC sometimes feels like a simplistic dopamine fuel, similiar to ero-games.

 

[Grauken]

Trying to play something different, so I went for the Witness. It's fun so far

 

[Onionguy]

No One Lives Forever- I didn't like it.

I really tried to love it, but I just couldn't figure out how to play it effectively. In Nolf everything, from the enemy placement to the equipment selection seems like it's build around stealth approach. The main problem is that it never feels particularly fun. For most part, sneaking is either too easy (shooting everyone in the head with silencer) or just stupidly hard (when there are too many cameras around), overall it just feels like a chore. The game allows for pure offensive run as well, but here is also little fun to be found. Mowing everyone down grows old pretty soon. There is just not enough enemy variety and the combat AI is too dumb to make it feel like a competent shooter. Gunplay is great though, you can immediately feel that it was designed by the same people who gave us FEAR. I also really enjoyed the game's premise and dialogues. Overall it is yet another classic fps (next to jedi outcast and rtcw) that I remembered being better than it deserves. Shame since the game has tons of personality.

 

[flyingjohn]

Finished lara croft and the temple of Osiris with a friend.Without bugs it would have been a meh game.

Good:
-Length is perfect.Around 3.5 hours to beat the game.It never outstays it welcome.
-It feels more like a tomb raider game them the modern reboots do.
It is old tomb raider lite with a isometric view.
-Plenty of loot if you are into that.
-Plenty of collectibles and challenges per tomb.
-Challenge tombs are not really hard but are still fun and pose the only challenge the game actually has.
-Co op is somewhat fun

Bad:
-Bugs galore in coop.
From clipping to desync's you will have issues. Fortunately most of them can be fixed once you respawn.
-Camera is atrocious.
It never feels right.It is always going up/down or not showing you what you need to see.Made worse by the fact that the screen is shared by players.
-Physics are terrible
The ball segments are terrible because of this. Getting the stupid ball over something is a pain in the ass unless there is absolutely nothing int he way.The one boss that uses balls is just terrible.
-Loot is not needed
The combat is such a small part of the game and yet the loot is over represented hard.You can collect amulets/rings/weapons but the combat is piss easy regardless and none of the stuff are useful for anything else.There are over 20 weapons and much more rings and yet most of them are just bad.The grenade launcher looses any meaning once you get the rocket launcher.It really feels tacked on.
-Bosses are meh
Either too easy or easy and annoying because of some other factor(like the game physics).

If the game focused more on the tombs and removed the loot it would have been a solid game.

 

[Strange Fellow]

I've had enough of Hammer & Sickle.

Game may have been bad, but it made me itch for some Silent Storm engine action, so I went back to... Silent Storm. I haven't played it in years for the same reason I haven't played the original Jagged Alliance or Deadly Games -- whenever the need for some tacticool with guns presents itself, the inexhaustible Jagged Alliance 2 is always right there.

But it was time to blow up some buildings and watch some ragdolls fly. I was a bit apprehensive since I remembered that as good as Silent Storm is, there were a bunch of issues with it that made me rank it lower than JA2, and I wondered if some of the stuff that made me dislike H&S was the engine's fault, and that time had dulled its shine.
Not so. I'm having a blast, and I was not wrong at all to give this a perfect score in the not-RPG poll. It's beautiful and I love it, and you should all play it if you haven't and stock up on grenades and use them indiscriminately.

 

[samuraigaiden]

I finished Wizardry II: The Knight of Diamonds today. It's just more Wizardry 1, with arguably better dungeon design. Where the first game feels a bit unfinished, as if they planned more game but just ran out of disk space, this one seems more deliberate in it's level design. It's also oddly unsatisfying because it lacks an antagonist like Werdna.

 

[Abu Antar]

I'm playing 3 JRPGs on the PS3. I have 13 games left to beat before I can retire it.

The first game is Arc the Lad II. Not counting monsters that one of your characters can catch, I have access to the full roster of characters. I've been completing as many side quests and hunts as I can, now that the world map can be used freely. I also did some grinding for about an hour to level up weapon and armor levels. In the story, general Yogun needs to be beaten.

Drakengard 3 is fun, but the performance of the game is unforgivable. I love Yoko Taro games, but I don't know what happened here. Combat is functional, but I'm mostly playing for the story and characters. I'm not very far in. Prologue and one mission completed. I read about the game's D ending. YouTube will have to be used. I'm not repeatedly playing a rythm game that lasts 8 minutes.
Despite performance issues, I will keep playing, the only question is if I will restart on the PS3 emulator, which helps performance.

Tales of Symphonia is the third game. It has its pros and cons. I like the old structure of the series, with a world map and more focused 2D battle system. Characters are very cringey, but I always enjoy the skits. On the other hand, combat feels very slow and first dungeons haven't been anything special.

I'm waiting for a few more skills to unlock for a bit more varied moveset.

 

[TreeInAForestFire]

Been playing a bit of the good ol' CLASSIC GAME that I found by accidentally entering reddit. Might be cursed. Fun tho. Very game, very classic. You play a hermit in a world of curses if I got the story right. I softlocked myself into instadeath and have no idea if I can fix it. Thoroughly recommended. Link below if someone wants to try it out since it doesn't show up on google.

https://iamqqqqqqq.itch.io/classicgame?download

 

[DalekFlay]

Taking a break from Kingmaker for some shootin'.

Played Doom Eternal. I actually liked 2016 a good bit, but Eternal takes its ideas and ramps them up and over-saturates them to the point of annoyance. What was once an every so often chainsaw for ammo is now a mandatory chainsaw for ammo every time you turn around, which isn't fun. Also it's surprisingly story focused for a sequel to a game that mostly said fuck story. Big time disappointment, similar to the last Wolf game which was much worse than the earlier Machine Games entries. Though reviewers loved it and it sold better, so what the fuck do I know.

Now playing Control's first DLC, which... is basically more Control. New environments are cool, and the new enemies make you change up your tactics which is nice. Game is still visually stunning, though I have to play it at 60fps because it's a hog. Anyway, if you liked Control you'll like the DLC, and it's pretty long.

Thinking about installing Doom 3 after finishing Control. Haven't played it since it came out.

 

[Dedup]

I just finished another Pool of Radiance run, this time with the audio version of Gold Box Companion. Battles and areas having their own playlist of songs instead of just running a generic playlist in the background made it much more enjoyable for me. I think my biggest problem was deciding which songs to put for each area. Joonas really did a great job with this program.

I've also started Pathfinder: Kingmaker again. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it this time before something else pulls my attention away.

 

[The Decline]

Enter the Gungeon. Been a while since I had a game make me stay up to keep playing just one more round.

 

[DalekFlay]

Man, Doom 3 still looks pretty good. Using dhem3 mod but I don't think it enhances graphics at all. Kind of amazing honestly. 60fps lock sucks ass, but BFG edition's 120fps mode isn't worth all that version's failures.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, I haven't played this game in about 15 years.

I remember being wowed by the visuals at the time. I got it free with a new graphics card and it really was a benchmark when the game was released. The normal & parallax mapping was really noticeable at the time, as was HDR, but now it barely stands out.

What does still stand out is the gameplay. I completely forgot about the noise meter. I'm playing on hard and keep forgetting to slow down when approaching guards from behind, and they hear me. The way you speed up/slow down is kinda weird in this game, it is tied to the mouse wheel rather than a keyboard button, which means you can fine tune how fast/slow you move to keep the noise meter down.

 

[baud]

Finished playing FEAR 1's expansions, I had a good time, just like the base game.

First expansion: the enemy seem to have more HP, but the firefights are over more quickly, perhaps because the arenas are smaller and with more visibility. The laser is fun to use, much better than the plasma rifle from the original game, even if it's less efficient. I had a teammate for a few levels and apparently to compensate for all the time spent alone, the devs made him a chatterbox, even if he doesn't say anything interesting. I miss a little the voicemail messages of the base game, it made going through the levels between firefights more interesting and they were telling a story (well mostly those in the office segment, but still)

Second expansion: I'm glad the voicemail are back. AI teammates are dumb, but perhaps it was intentional so that they don't overshadow the player and die quickly enough. There's much more equipment to pick up, it makes the game easier: I arrived in nearly all firefights with full armor, for example, which lessen the tension a lot. But because of this, equipment placement feels more random than in the base game, with explosives dropped in offices and labs. Still can't stand the spooky shit, I'm forcing myself to go through it to reach the fun parts (aka the shooting) but there's less of it in this one. Still this sequence was fun.

I also appreciate the bonus for health and reflex to pick up, it adds some rewards for exploring a little and some character improvement.

Favorite weapon is the rifle that uses explosive ammo, pinpoint accuracy and a lovely kickback each time it's fired. It nearly feels like a Bolter from 40k. Too bad there's never enough ammo to use it for more than one or two firefights.

I'm playing now Drakan, I enjoy the exploration and flying around on a dragon feels great.

 

[Grauken]

Still playing the witness. It's all line puzzles, but how the game manages to make each new variation of them exciting is marvelous. So far I've activated four of the eleven big laser pointers and only found a few things I can't solve yet. Really great game, if you ignore the super-pretentious audio logs that don't help with the puzzle-solving and really are just annoying

I did manage to solve 3 of the 4 puzzles in the southern part of the Castle just by trial and error, I have no idea how they work (I have an inkling of an idea, but no way to test it), but otherwise, you can figure out the rules of most puzzles pretty easily

 

[Ivan]

COVID19 Backlog:

Death's Gambit

A solid action/adventure game with metroidvania elements. Much like Salt and Sanctuary, the game presents you with a handful of weapon types, even a magic route, as you explore a more compact web of levels that all feed back to a central hub. The game only lasts a handful of hours, and its combat reminded me a bit of Salt's as well in that it's a bit loose. Visually, it's more akin to Blasphemous but the music isn't nearly as memorable. The game features dodging, parrying, and blocking. Enemies hit pretty hard so I didn't bother much with parrying. I felt that the game moved at a good pace and that was enough to keep me going. Weapon progression and upgrading didn't feel especially rewarding. Too many incremental, small, upgrades. Overall, an innocuous title.

The Last Express
A novel experience to be sure, The Last Express is a point and click adventure game with wherein its NPCs adhere to a real-time clock. You have a few days to solve a mystery and try to get as much info as you can. The game is on rails, so think RE tank controls in first person. It was minor inconvenience, it didn't hamper my enjoyment too much. I loved the art style, the animation, and the VO is very well done. This has a timeless aesthetic, a shame about the controls though. The NPCs are a joy to observe, and the game definitely has multiple solutions/routes that you really feel like you're carving your own path through the story. I did run into a few moments where I didn't know what I needed to do, so I had to check out a few hints online. No moon logic here, though there is some pixel hunting involved. All in all, a pleasant experience to be sure due to its novelty.

Full Throttle

What I loved most was the world, the terse dialogue, it's all very cool. I liked the opening section of the game the most, quite simple, more so than the other adventure games. I didn't care for a few puzzles (pixel hunt secret wall) and finding the right pixel to interact with. I liked the story and the characters, again kudos for the dialogue being punchy and having great VO. Once again, long walking cycles, and some eh logic got in the way of my fun here. Music was a nice touch too!

Sam & Max Hit the Road

An excellent point and click adventure game that ranks up there with Day of the Tentacle in my book. Consistently funny, fantastic and zany art, fun dialogue, it's the total package. No real moon logic, but there were some "hotspot" issues I had finding items and even locations. There were also some technical annoyances: not being able to quick exit a screen, having to cycle through all options to find the right "verb," I don't hold these against it too much. In sum, this definitely lives up to the hype. A classic adventure game through and through that will put a smile on your face time and time again.

mementos:

Spoiler

 

[Azalin]

Finished Call of Cthulhu, it' another ok-game-that-could-have-been-better by Cyanide.Graphics are not as good as some new games like RE2 but good enough and fit the style of the game,story is ok,gameplay is more like and adventure game with skills checks and some sneaking,there are multiple ways to solve some problems at first by the game becomes more linear as you progress,atmosphere was good.Recommended only for a sale

Also finished Reckonin at Gun Manor dlc for West of loathing, since those fuckers took a whole year to release it on GOG.It's good,more of what the main game offers but high level and more difficult.Short but sweet like the main game,if you liked the main game get this one too.Recommended

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Went for something low-key that runs on my work laptop: Gearhead.

Simple yet fun. Every game is randomized yet pretty much the same. Grind up to the best mech and kill Typhon.

Developer has been working on a gearhead 3 for a while now.

 

[DalekFlay]

Doom 3 is a lot better than I remember. Maybe because of all the decline, or maybe I was one of those butthurt assholes at the time who hate franchise entries which are different. In any case it's a neat combination of Doom and a System Shock-esque game, and I'm very much enjoying it. Really should have played on hard though, I chose default because it was supposed to be a quick nostalgia trip and it's so easy I haven't even died once halfway through the game. I'm not even sure my health has ever been below 50. There are health packs literally everywhere. You can't change difficulty mid-game and I'm not starting over, but I'll play Resurrection of Evil on hard.

I tried the "BFG Edition" for a bit and while the 120fps is super nice the super bright lighting is god damn terrible. I don't know what asshole decided to pump up the brightness ten-fold and make the game look like ass, but he ruined what could have been a decent upgrade. The original game, run through dhewm3, looks a billion times better not just in mood and design, but also the texture work and whatnot, because it's not seen under ramped up brightness. Even in dhewm3 the original game unfortunately has a 60fps cap, which speeds up the game when circumvented, but oh well. P.S. I found the only way to get it playing smoothly was to unlock the cap in the game, then limit my frames to 60 anyway, a process discussed on the PC Gaming Wiki under "stutter." Otherwise it played really choppy and had random framerate drops, which the wiki blames on nVidia drivers.

 

[Darth Roxor]

i said it before and i will say it again that doom3 doesnt deserve most of the hate it gets