What game are you wasting time on?

Been replaying my Baldurs Gate complete playthrough. Finally I managed to actually reach the city of Baldurs Gate without losing interest in the game, and it starts to get better. Will also do the Ulgots Beard quests now. Really liking it so far. Will probably replay IWD I & II after that.

 

I remember being bored to death by Myst back in the day and wondering why people thought it was any good, but I also wonder why people think 'point-and-click' adventure games are good as well. Perhaps it is their quirky nature that inspires curiosity and their strangely beautiful settings. Perhaps I just don't have the patience to decode a game's arbitrary logic in order to bypass shit puzzles.

 

The Myst series basically defined my childhood. I think to that series alone I attribute my love of mystery, world building, intricate machinery and verbose first person monologues. One of those series so magical that I can't succinctly pitch it to anybody without breaking down and just spouting off random things - "journals! muh atmosphere! ridiculously elaborate lore and the explaining away of artistic licensing via fan email correspondence with the developers!"

I have to agree with Spellcaster. I never found the games boring, and being constrained to a first person clicky perspective effectively means that that virtually all data for solving puzzles can only really be derived from what is observable on the (finite number of) screens. Uru, by contrast, I found to be a lot less intuitive - I may have just been really impatient with that game, but I felt that the third person 3D format also made it a lot less certain as to what was important to communicate to the player.

But in the earlier games, you just have to take notes on an inordinate amount of stuff and it will all be used sooner or later. Then Myst IV came along and added horrible timing sequences and, near the end,

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

that bullshit memory color-matching puzzle.

 

Just played through Durlags Tower in BG1 for the first time and man was it a ride. Cool puzzles, varied encounter design, pretty challenging fights and even some nice backstory. It's a damn shame BioWare turned into such a shit after such cool games.

 

There were puzzles in Durlag's Tower?

 

Best puzzle was figuring out I had to cheat because I got stuck in Level 2 when all the doors spontaneously locked.

 

OH FUCK KILL IT KILL IT

 

o_O Myst was the most critically acclaimed AND best selling CD game back in 1993-1994. Hell it pretty much single-handedly got people to buy CD drives on their PCs when it got ported there. Every game mag worth mentioning gave it full scores, everyone who played it loved it. The hate only came later with the deluge of really shitty Myst clones, then everyone forgot about those when Riven came out and was even more beloved than Myst. The hatred came much later, from people who blamed Myst's pretty graphics for the decline of the puzzle/adventure genre that was seen in the shitty clones, and who wrongfully blamed Myst for the failings of its clones. It's a completely different situtation from say Phantasmagoria, which was both the FMV game that popularized the entire genre and also a very very shitty game in its own right.

 

I'm still waiting for the Book of Marrim...

I only own paperback copies. I was so disappointed as a kid, because the hardcover ones seemed to practically have the dimensions of a linking book.

 

Fuck that game in the ass. After growing up with Quest series from Sierra, Myst is everything I hated in the adventure genre.
Good fucking riddance.

 

Yeah, look at your genre now.

 

I just dislike actual puzzles in adventure games. As in a machine to figure out or whatever. I just like clicking use monkey on everything until it actually works, I guess.

Anyway I finished Risen 2 and it was alright. I tried to play Jade Empire but mehhhh. I ended up playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein through to Death's Head, will finish at some point. Love that game fuck the haters.

I hate MMOs but I decided to give TOR another shot since it's so story focused and free now. It is what it is, I get some enjoyment from it. As much as it is boring and rather unimportant shit I do hope there is a way to get that story stuff once the game shuts down.

Shadowrun Returns should be out not long after I bore of stupid MMO quests.

 

How is SH5 these days? I remember that it was fubar at release date. Have they fixed it yet?

 

I've been having a blast with it for a long time now. It was broken on release, but it has been fixed since then.

However, most people are put off by the fact that there are no megamods yet, so assembling your own mod list is a necessity, though some users have done really good guides so it's not that difficult (Best place to start: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=192374 ). I actually prefer it this way because this way I can control which mods I want to use, and it's really not that hard to get a hang of installing mods. Be warned that using lots of mods can apparently use a lot of memory. I currently run the game on a PC with 8 gigs of RAM and it's been smooth sailing, no CTD.

New improvements are being made almost daily. It already has a really brutal AI, a good campaign mod, an excellent and incredibly user-friendly (and user-moddable) UI mod. What's best is the .exe patcher that the user called TheDarkWraith has been developing for a long time now. He keeps adding new patches to the game, some of which have enabled wolfpacks, independent engine controls, stationary ships in bases radioing for aircover in case they detect a submarine, carriers that can actually launch airplanes who then search for you and other really cool features previously non-existent in the SH games. You can read about it here (just scroll down): http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=1621039&postcount=1

 

Finished Defiance.

Jesus Christ jumping on a pogo stick, was that game friggin bad. And to think there are people out there who say that Blood Omen 2 is the worst in the series.

But at least now I have the whole series beaten, for better or for worse.


Apart from that, started Gray Matter, currently on day2 and it seems cool so far. Cost only 5 bucks and came with soundtrack so I figured I might as well check it.

 

Can you go further in to detail with this? Myst was a pretty cool psychedelic game, and was one of the core games in my childhood.

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-11-20-retrospective-myst-article

 

You know bro, you are kinda asking for those long-ass spam q fights if you don't have the gatling musket ability and don't use the crit/damage buffs

 

Don't worry, I fixed the game with the uninstall mod already.

 

Been playing more Anachronox. This game is awesome despite being full of minigames and piss-easy combat. I've played it for about 15 hours according to my save file, and I haven't been even close to dying since the first or the second fight of the game. Press a button and the enemies eventually die. The minigames have definitely been the most challenging part about the game so far.

Anyway, I love the characters, the humour and the setting. The game hits just the right spots for me, and it reminds me of Outcast and Giants: Citizen Kabuto despite having a quite different tone to them. That type of quirky humour just seems to have gone extinct in games.

 

One of the best games ever made. If Tom Hall and Anachronox 2 finds it way to Kickstarter I might actually open my wallet for that one.

 

Strike Suit Zero. Is an enjoyable arcade shooter, battles are fairly hectic and bright (perhaps a bit too bright for my taste) and is fun to tear through things in the mecha-mode. Worth the $10 I paid for it at any rate. Decent soundtrack on it as well, done by Paul Ruskay and you can hear the similarities to some of the tracks from Homeworld.

 

So GTA4 makes you sign up for Rockstar Social Club when you try to play it. The worrying part about trying the nickname "EroticDad" was not that it was already taken - it was the suggested alternatives.