What game are you wasting time on?

I settled on finally doing my pro-elves Witcher 2 playthrough. Why does the EE run much worse than the original game?

 

Aren't Enhanced Editions supposed to be worse?

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Sorry

 

Fuck. Drox Operative is annoying me.

Okay, so one thing that really bugs me is the "difficulty" of the game. Even though enemies are typically below your level, they can often easily kill you due to superior numbers, and usually when I die it's because I just happen across some really strong enemy who can two-shot me. The game is so fast-paced and your turning radius is fairly wide (spaceship and all) so running away is often impossible once you realize you can't win a fight.

The economic loss mechanic means that dying too many times actually loses the game for you, but since deaths are often frequent or happen beyond your control, you have little recourse. You can pay off the losses by trading technology etc., but the problem is that economic losses often happen fairly late in the game, and at that point, everyone already knows anything you could sell, and questing doesn't gain nearly enough money for the Drox Guild to pay off even a single death. Basically it's just annoying and borderline broken, because a single death can ruin hours of work no matter how close to another victory condition you are. The dumbest thing? I have 30,000 credits I'm not using for anything, and the Drox Guild doesn't want them. I can't just pay them off to avoid loss even though they want money.

There's also that issue where there's just so much shit going on all the time that it's impossible to follow it. Early on it's nice because you can pick and choose what you're doing, but the game just loves to report every single thing to you, and when you have a whole sector full of a dozen races all doing stuff, you get constantly spammed with updates that you can never read, much less act upon. Again, it's a cool and unique gameplay idea, but there is way too much shit happening in the context of a real-time fast-paced action RPG.

The other thing that really bugs me is that you are very highly limited by your total energy. Any weapon that has a high energy cost is borderline useless because you will only get 10 shots with it and then you are a sitting duck. Beam-type weapons in particular are completely fucking worthless because they do fairly low damage, and they take tons of energy compared to other options like missiles. Sure, they don't miss and hit targets instantly, but they have no real advantages compared to other weapons and the downsides suck.

Oh, and I constantly get quests to do shit in galaxies that the race giving me the quest hasn't even fucking visited yet and can't possibly know exists.

And even though trading information and technology using the diplomacy interface is a huge part of the game, for some stupid reason they decided to make it super-clunky to actually do this in quantity. The game helpfully tells you who you can trade new info to... but then it makes you click 30 times and add every single thing manually, then click past multiple confirmation screens, and a pointless little flavor text thing. Why can't there just be a "trade all technology" or "trade all information" button?

Over a year ago there were threads on the Soldak forums giving suggestions on how to improve the UI. Here's an easy example:

• Ugly font that kind of all jumbles together thanks to poor choice in spacing and excessive verbosity
  
• Hard to compare at a glance due to inconsistent placement of item description text (why do some special stats display in one place, and others in another place?)
  
• Lack of color coding in places where it would be useful to have
  
• Ambiguous language (is "energy needed" a stat requirement or how much it consumes?)

Sure, in a screenshot it's "easy" to compare this but in a fast-paced real-time game you don't really have time to sit around spending 10 minutes comparing items because you always feel like you're on the clock (and you are). And again, this was all suggested while the game was in beta. The developers even admitted this was a problem. What happened? Absolutely nothing.

The worst thing is that although Soldak are very active in patching the game, I don't think these concerns are new. There were huge balance problems, victory condition problems, AI exploits, UI readability issues etc. that all existed when I was playing the beta for preview purposes over a year ago. None of these have really been fixed at all.

 

I'm pretty sure you can pause the game.

 

Yeah you're right, I forgot you could (or never realized in the first place). But that still doesn't change the fact that the UI is kind of awkward at times.

 

Put some more hours into Might and Magic 6. Clearing out the Temple of Baa. Or more like Temple of Baaaaah. So many skeletons, so many Baa followers. Luckily I can cheese my way through with my 4 bow wielding party. They are like a gatling gun.

 

I found out that my ISP changed it so anything I download between 2am-8am does not count toward my bandwidth limit. Over the last few days I downloaded Alan Wake and DX:HR. Not sure when I will try them out though.

 

Finished Dishonored.

Well, what can I say? Best game since... Bloodlines? Spoilers below.

Pros:
- Probably the only game that I can think of, that is EXTREMELY derivative yet so GOOD at borrowing things. Influences are quite obvious: Thief (stealth and gameworld), Deus Ex & System Shock (toys, tools, hacking), Bloodlines, Witcher (C&Cs, quests) Bioshock (retro atmosphere / alternative history / ugly faces), Half-Life (quarantine, audio transmissions, evil overlord), Hitman (assassinations)... But almost every element borrowed from other game has been implemented in wise way: it works and doesn't brake the experience.
- Pulls out proper stealth gameplay for the first time since Thief (2? 3?). Motherfucking period. And no - Hitman / Sam Fischer don't count.
- Popamoles the stealth a bit (teleport, slow time, possession spell), but making it more fun at the same time. Gameplay is no longer constant quicksave-quickload spam (sorry, Garret ) - you can use multiple solutions when somebody is close to detecting you (run away, slow time, possess him, fight).
- Rock-solid technically (1.3 Patch): constant 60 FPS, no crashes, (well, it crashed a couple of times, but because of my overheating graphics card), almost no bugs (in such complex game it's a godamned miracle / job well done).
- Graphics are gorgeous, except human faces (see below).
- Audio works fine as a gameplay element (detecting threats).
- Voice-acting is good, but till the end credits I wasn't aware that so many high-budget VAs were hired (Susan Sarandon, Brad Dourif, Carrie Fisher, Lena Headey, Chloe Moretz). I think less expensive dudes would make the same job...
- The gameworld lore is fantastic: alternative world, alternative energy sources, weird magic threatened by the technology (Thief says hello). Writing in books, notes, audio logs is very good... Too bad that the main campaign is not so well written (see below).
- The Outsider works well as a story device, adding to the "morality" system. Best "player overseer" since the Wheelchair-guy from SMT3 - Nocturne.
- References to classic games are nice (young stealth apprentice in Daud's lair, etc.).
- Terri Brosius was one of the writers. All hail the Machine Mother! (Y no voice-acting, thou?).
- Choices and Consequences (Bloodlines) in stealth game (Thief) with combat, gadgets, hacking, etc. (Deus Ex). What more can we ask for? (well, se below).
- Level design in some missions is teh sex. But in others (The Bridge, The Lighthouse) - not so much.
- Main characters are well-written: almost all of them have distinctive personalities (Callista-Piero "romance", Lydia's remarks (constant sexual tension) and Wallace's "perfect butler" attitude).
- Some characters are not who they appear to be at the beginning (Granny Rags FTW!) - hard to pull off in a computer game.
- And a lot fucking more - just play the game.

Cons:

- The game encourages stealth (summary after every mission), which makes combat a little bit... Unnecessary? I was able to complete the game killing less than 20 enemies (most of them fell down some cliff after being blackjacked nonlethal-ed. Of course it's a part of the "morality" system (the more you kill, the more "dark" the gameworld becomes), so it's excusable... But still - combat looks interesting and fun (stealth assassinations), yet if you choose a stealthy approach, you should avoid it at all costs.
- When "ghosting", zombies are much more difficult to deal with than regular humans. I think it should be the other way around?
- These little poison-shooting shellfish are IMO the most demanding enemies in the entire game. Compared to them, Tallboys are p. easy to avoid / defeat. WTF happened here?
- Human faces look like shit, what the fucking fuck? Bloodlines did it much better 10 years ago. I can understand civilians and soldiers looking ugly (plague / job). But all women in the game (the Queen and whores included) are ugly as hell too.
- Emily is irritating. No more hugs and stalking me in the sleep, you little bitch!
- Main campaign is weak as hell, story-wise: uninspired (betrayal-revenge-errand boy-unavoidable plot twist-gather gear-ultimate battle!) and unconvincing. How to deal with the most dangerous man in the country? Well, let's ask one of our servants to poison him and dump him in the river. How about cutting his fucking head off first, morons? Daud capturing Corvo instead of killing him was stupid as well. How about braking his leg or something (worked for the Hammerite whattheirnamewas).
- Final battle is a letdown (Flooded District was much more fun than the Lighthouse). Enemies changing routes / reinforcements appearing after some time were nice (Y no in earlier missions, though?!), but lack of final boss & proper boss-fight wasn't. Sloppy fucking handjob here.
- Battle against Daud was a joke. Such a bad mofo and you can blackjack non-lethal him like a little girl? Weak! Some teabagging (at least) should be applied here...
- Ending being an outcome of the entire campaign ("morality" system) was nice, but... You don't have ANY choice in the final mission, which is bad - it can add to the game (Desu Ex 1, NOT DX-HR who sucks cocks in this department).
- Going popamole-free (disabling quest compass, markers, contextual icons, etc.) works well most of the time... Except in rare occasions when you have to enable quest compass to reach an objective. "Take unconscious Curnow to safe location" was probably the worst - how the fuck should I know that I have to dump him into SPECIFIC trash can?! AFAIR DX-HR did it better - persons would tell you WHERE you should go and WHAT you should do. You don't need quest compass to find somebody / reach an objective.
- The only thing this game lacks is IMO maturity. And I don't mean Witcher's maturity (some nice rack would be neat of course) but actual mature problems / issues / psychological thingies and such. You know, like in the books, movies and stuff. Maybe that's too much for a computer game, I dunno...

Still, the best game since Thief 1 Deus Ex 1 Bloodlines Deus Ex - Human Revolution.



tl;dr

play nao.

 

Good write-up, largely agree, but disagree here. Faces never bothered me, loved the style. More important this game and games like it do NOT need "bosses" or whatever the fuck. Just harder rooms.

Otherwise

 

characters in dishonored are built on british traits: they MUST be ugly.

 

Played my first online match in Blood Bowl today and came to a 0-0 draw with one of my players knocked out of the next game. I was Khorme against Chaos... just like single player it is a slow grind between those 2. The best part was the last turn. The enemy had the ball within a couple spaces of scoring and I only had one guy placed to his side, but when he tried to move in to score he was tripped up by my guy. What sucked was the first half ended with my ball carrier 1 space from scoring with no players in blitz range.

Good times.

 

I'm sure has-beens are cheap these days.

 

Finished Black Mesa. Good stuff all around. I wonder why Valve didn't hire the devs to commercialize the game. Oh well, Valve wants to bury hl legacy anyway. I just don't understand how the modders feel the need to replace the sounds of the original with more derivative ones. Explosion sounds, grunts chatter, vortigaunts, zombies, etc... The original hl is way better in matters of sound.

 

Funny, I just started to play Deus Ex 2 since I never played it and the wanted to try Invisible War. So why not play the second one first.

It's every bit as bad as everyone told me it was. It takes all the bad parts of the first one and literally strips out all the good stuff besides the story. I'm headed to Egypt now and I hate the fucking game. I'm debating on whether or not to just watch the remaining plot points on Youtube rather than playing all the way through. Combat sucks, enemy AI is retarded in a firefight. Stealth is broken, either you use the biomods where you can never be detected or the enemy detect you no matter what you do without them activated. The RPG elements are no more. It's an ugly game. Not in a dated way, it's just ugly compared to any other shooter of its age.

Apparently a sniper rifle with a silencer > all bio engineered super soldiering stuff combined too.

 

To be fair a silenced sniper rifle is pretty much a god weapon in every game that has one. Still, you're not wrong at all. It's a piece of shit game. Yet I still enjoy it on some level, just because there are so few games in that sort of style.

 

I am trying to play through The Longest Journey. I have never managed to finish it. I always get bored at some point through it and jump ship. This time does not look as it is going to be any different. I am at the alchemist's floating castle and I just can't give enough fucks to continue the game. The puzzles are crap, everyone talks a bloody lot, the writing is not that good, and the main 'stark' characters are a bunch of hipsters. And April is a bloody idiot. Good lord. People has been dealing with insecurity since the beginning of time, no wise mole spirits needed. And for quite a while she seems to have this dark and cruel past that has really traumatized her and shit, only then you discover her big 'trauma' and shit was that her family kept her in a short leash. HOW FUCKING TERRIBLE, GURL! THAT'S SOME REALLY DARK SHIT IN YOUR PAST! Go fuck yourself and die.

And she has no bloody fashion sense. None, at all. Zero.

Anyway, so far the only hard puzzle that hasn't been completely retarded (rubber ducky puzzle, ugh... Do the monkey puzzle, emh... Monkey eye puzzle, blergh... Coke can puzzle, are you stupid?) was the screwdriver one, and that's just because I rarely examine objects because the less April I have to listen to the better so I did not knew the screwdriver was magnetic. Stark is suposed to be the world of reason and logic, yet none of the puzzles makes the least sense outside of 'adventure game logic' and none of the situations makes the least sense outside of 'it's a game!' If you want to present a world of logic and a world of chaos how about, you know, making the puzzles and situations match? Oh, and 'Bad guy is obviously evil! He gives off those really strong Hitler vibes!' Argumentum Ad Hitlerium = Good writing. Fuck off.

Oh, and the only way to advance the story past a certain point? FALL IN THE MOST OBVIOUS TRAP EVER! Gee, this creepy old lady who talks like a monsters and talks about being alone in the goods picking bones, oops, berries wants me to take her home? WHAT COULD GO WRONG! OOPS, NOW I AM TRAPPED AND GOING TO BE EATEN BUT I WILL KILL THE EVIL MONSTER WITH HOTSPOT MAGICK AND BE A HEROINE! No, you are a fucking moron gurl. Go kill yourself.

And by the way, if you are going to make up a famous poet to quote in your books hire someone who CAN WRITE POETRY to write his shit. Because, really, I have seen better shit read by hipster bohemian poets in hipster bohemian coffee houses. Also, whomever did write those books in the magic world library can't write for shit.

Whiny and pathetic main character, hipters morons everywhere, terrible characterization (OH LOL MY SPECIES EXIST OUTSIDE TIME SO I WILL TELL YOU HOW DIFFERENT MY PERCEPTION OF TIME IS IN EVERY SINGLE LINE I SPEAK! AIN'T I FUCKING ALIEN NAO?), stupid puzzles, who-wrote-this-shit dialogues... I hope this will do a one hundred percent turn somewhere down the line and become TOTALLY AWESOME because otherwise the adventure game community who goes OHMYGOD THE LONGEST JOURNEY IS THE BEST ADVENTURE GAME EVER is so full of shit it's not even funny.

 

black cat is truly codexian!

 

Is the game any good?

 

You know I wub u and everythingie but, c'mon, at least so far the game is shitty as fuck and makes absolutely no sense.

Right down at the beginning of the game, in the world of logic: There is a live wire that has been cut. You use a golden ring to serve as a bridge between both ends of the cut live wire. To do that you tie the golden ring to both naked wire thingies with your naked hands. The machine automatically receives power (indicating the wire was, indeed, live). As far as I am concerned the rest of the irrational crap is just because April died right here and the rest of the game are the feverish dreams her mind concots while being fried by a whole lot of volts. Did I mention the enviroment in which this does happen is humid as fuck and full of water?

And then there's Cortez. I mean, like, really. 'Come to the place where children visualize their dreams!' Okay, hipster fag, I am going. I get there. 'WHAT DO YOU SEE, APRIL?' I see a fucking picture. A pretty bad one at that. 'NO, U SEE ART! BECAUSE TRU ART HAS SPIRIT AND SOUL AND MAGIC!' O-kay, can we move on with the plot. 'NOT NAO! TOMORROW!' Where? 'I AM NOT TELLING U LOL!' O-kay. So you track him to some old movies cinema. Is he waiting for you? No. He's inside. Did he tell the dude at the door to let you in? LOLNO, BECAUSE BEING A NORMAL PERSON WOULD DESTROY OUR GENIUS BRIGHT PUZZLES! So you go through moar stupid puzzles (There is a police guy. One meter away from him there is some sludge thingie. I take a candy, put it in the sludge thingie. He is one meter away and looking in my direction. Then I give him the candy. OH THANK YOU, I WILL EAT CANDY NAO!) and meet with him. 'OLD MOVIES ARE SO AWESOME! NU MOVIES ARE ALL BLOCKBUSTERS OR PRETENTIOUS HIPSTER SHIT!' Uhm, you are a pretentious hipster shit too so that's a match made in heaven. Plot, plis? Then, later, 'I WILL SEND TEEN PRETTY GIRL WHO IS SO NAIVE AS TO QUALIFY AS RETARDED ALONE TO THE WORST PART OF THE CITY TO MEET WITH MY GANGBANGER FRIENDS!' Uh, dood, are you trying to ruin her life or something? 'TRU GENTLEMAN WOULD NEVER HURT LADY! I'M SURE U WILL BE SAFE!' Not to mention 'I will wait for young naive lady in THE RED LIGHT DISTRICT OF A FUTURISTIC DECADENT DYSTOPIA RIDDLED WITH DRUGS AND SHIT AND POLICE DOODS THAT HOLD YOU AT GUN POINT BECAUSE YOU ARE A SKATER without even telling her WHERE TO LOOK FOR ME!' I am expected to believe this guy is a immortal wizard or dragon dating back to the begining of time or some shit? HE'S A BLOODY IDIOT.

And all the characters are like that. The game premise is kind of Mage or Changeling with a world of cold and hopeless logic where nothing BUT THIS can happen and a dangerously wild world of chaotic fantasy where absolutely EVERYTHING can happen yet everyone in the world of cold and hopeless logic is either A TOTAL MORON WHO MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE (hey, pretty teen girl who almost died of fear when I told her four big nigger gangbangers were going to ambush her, if you BREAK INTO THE POLICE STATION OF FUTURE OPPRESSIVE CYBERPUNKISH DYSTOPIA, HACK THEIR SERVERS, EDIT THEIR RECORDS, and STEAL THEIR TOP SECRET INFORMATION I will tell you what you want to know) or an artsy-fartsy hipster shit and the world of WILD FANTASY is, uhm, generic and mild as fuck. There is no contrast. The game is pretentious and hipster as fuck, but there is no deep to any of it. Look! WE ARE REALLY HIGH CONCEPT! Fuck you.

And the 'stark' main characters are all so fake and try-hard. Oh, lookie look! LESBIAN BRITISH GIRL WITH A PASSION WITH LITTLE COUNTRYSIDE INNS, HALF HER DIALOGUE BEING ABOUT HER VERY ACTIVE SEX LIFE WITH HER THIRTY YEARS OLDER LOVER! BLACK POOR GUY WITH A PASSION FOR DANCING! SLUTTY DITZY TEEN GIRL WHO IS REALLY DEEP AND PROFOUND AND ARTISTIC! MAGICAL LATIN OLD DUDE WHO IS SO REAL-WORLD WISE AND BOHEMIAN! OLD INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT TURNED INTO BOHEMIAN PROMISED LAND WHERE EVERYONE IS BOHEMIAN AND HIPSTER AND SHIT, AND WHERE EVERYTHINGIE HAS NAMES LIKE THE BORDERHOUSE AND THE FRINGE CAFE BECAUSE BOHEMIAN HIPSTER SHITS ARE THE ONES WHO WALK BETWEEN THE WORLDS! Welcome to undomesticated snowmen utopia. AND I AM SO STRESSED BECAUSE I WANT TO PAINT BUT NO INSPIRATION IS COMING! WHERE IS MAH MUSE?! I HAVE IDENTITY CRISIS!

I am very angry abou TLJ. I'll go have some tea and chill out nao.

No, it is bleeping awful. I just keep trying to like it because everyone in the adventure community seems to think IT IS THE BEST GAME EVER!!!!111!!11!one!!11. So far I am not really seeing it.

 

That's an interesting point of view, Agassi! I vaguely recall somewhat liking TLJ when I played it back in the day - I don't think I liked it enough to finish it, though. I've been meaning to give it another shot, maybe I'll get around to it one of these days.

 

So european.

 

Look at it this way: if you DO complete the game this time, you won't need to go back to it ever, EVER again. It will be over and done with. For realz and for all eternity. If you drop it this time as well, you'll just go back to it in a year or two. Again. Do you really want that? Guessed so.

Also, Andrew Plotkin has a pretty good review of this game (he has a lot of good reviews - it's a pity I could never get into any of his famed interactive fiction adventures).

Overall, TLJ is just a kind of game that
1) was created by total amateurs in the genre and written by a writer who got significantly better at his job (although still meh) somewhat later
2) requires you to literally be ~14yo when you play it the first time in order to really get into it (and all the stupidity) - and yes, I'm bloody serious, this game really has a thing about scoring with a lot of teenagers somehow
3) frequently gets OMG10/10'ed for the sheer quantity of content (over its quality): like, there is a LOT of writing (with all the dialogues fully voiced - I wonder how many hours of spoken speech is there overall) and a LOT of plot (again, the quality of it, as well as the writing, is another issue altogether) and a LOT of screens to wander about and a LOT of meticulously modeled nooks and crannies (some of the screens are choke-full of that despite having not-so-many actual hotspots - also, abysmal ground/asphalt textures are abysmal) on those screens (needless to say that, say, Riven, absolutely destroys TLJ in the last two regards) and a LOT of custom animations (like the entirely optional hopscotch game, for example) and a LOT of hours needed to complete it (especially that everything is so. unbearably. slow!). In other words, for a person who didn't play a lot of adventure games before, all that megalomania looked really solid. And impressive. And like a potential OMG GOTY material. And if the second thing from this list (the one about the age and corresponding mental state - or if the person somehow managed to really connect to all the game's naivete otherwise) also made a score - then there you have it. An avid fan, believing the game to be a godsend from heaven and TEH BEST ADVENTURE EVER MADE.

By the way, Dreamfall totally has at least somewhat better writing. At least it really does sound like two actual believable persons talking to each other a lot of the times.

 

I tried playing TLJ last year and could barely make it 10 min into the game before remembering how stupid and boring adventure games are. The main character had no personality hook to get me, and her voice was truly grating on my ears. The only decent aspect of the game was the art direction... I do not play games just to look at pretty pictures.

 

And people shout decline at me... While tryhards like you run amok on the codex. What next, someone says that Fallout 1 and System Shock 2 is not that good? .... Oh...wait.....

Anyway, your opinion boils down to picking random parts of the game, and shouting TROLOLOL THIS IS SO SHITTY. It is like: And the characters in Planescape Torment is so shit OH LOOK I AM A FLYING SKULL, HOW RETARDED IS THIS, AND WHAT IS THAT TIEFLING GIRL, IS SHE LIKE A RAT, OR WAHT? And don't get me started about the story AMNESIA, REALLY, IT IS THE BIGGEST CLICHE IN THE WORLD, AND THE MAIN CHARACTER HAS NO PERSONALITY AT ALL. 0/10

 

Fallout Tactics is a pretty cool tactical-lite game, IMHO a perfect bridge between CRPGs and Tactical games. Play after Fallout games, but before laying X-COM/JA2.