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What game are you wasting time on?

RK47

collides like two planets pulled by gravity
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Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
Eh, dropped Divine Divinity.

72FA168B35925E656A48A1D13CD7376339184A0B


Ah, we meet again, the man in weird pajamas.

Can't take the repetitive combat.
Now Divinity 2 - suffers from the same issue.
Once you leave town, the content is mostly trash combat.

xkKI2i2.png


Love the locales though.
 

octavius

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So next on my play list Outcast.
RTFM and scrolling down I wondered if the protagonist is supposed to be black. Then I scrolled further down and the way he holds his gun leaves no doubt that he's the coolest dood in the 'hood.

OP_023.jpg
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
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Sep 25, 2012
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28,242
Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
So next on my play list Outcast.
RTFM and scrolling down I wondered if the protagonist is supposed to be black. Then I scrolled further down and the way he holds his gun leaves no doubt that he's the coolest dood in the 'hood.

OP_023.jpg
Oh man, you're in for a treat. Also, no, he ain't black.
 

octavius

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Oh well, it's not important. But that sideways holding of the gun is so "gangsta" and stupid.

First impression of Outcast was not too good. Lots of cinematics, and the story and dialogue is so cliche, down to the woman scientist turning out be our square jawed hero's ex-wife. :roll: EDIT: Ooops! Seems I assumed too much there. :oops:
And the default control scheme for the PC version of the game is to use an X-Box gamepad?!?
 
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octavius

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Decided to skip Outcast. The older I get the more tolerance I have for obscure old turn based games, and less tolerance for real time games that are outside my comfort zone.

Next game on my list is Kingpin - Life of Crime, another real time game, but being a traditional FPS using the Quake 2 engine a kind of game I'm familiar with.
But to my horror I see I have not bought it from GOG. Is it worth waiting for until it is on sale?
 

wyes gull

Savant
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Apr 20, 2017
Messages
424
Started playing nu-Doom and just finished breaking a bunch of filters which essentially ruined humanity's solution to the energy crisis despite being repeatedly asked not to. Isn't that fun?
Uh.... no?

1st off, is this shit DOOM or not? If it is, then why does the MC act like Duke? Why do I even know what the fuck this installation is for? And for all the hubbub about the game's start where the badass nu-doomguy just breaks some control panel from where someone's trying to contact him and just immediately allows the player to start shooting shit, why does it then punctually interrupt your progress with readable journals (thankfully ignore-able), nagging audio clips and going so far as to take control away from you so you can indulge in cinematic retardation the sort where very bad guy (well, girl) does very bad thing as good guy stands and watches while doing nothing despite being separated by only a pane of glass and having half a regiment's worth of weapons in his backpack. You're not supposed to expect this sort of retardo from Doom.

Secondly, is this shit retro or not? Having set out to play it mostly because of its reputation as old-school, I'm surprised at what I found and suspicious as to exactly how many "old-school" games the people that made these claims have actually played. It does smell of retro, what with its glowing ammo/health pickups, its level design (sorta) and its fast movement speed but then... What's with the upgrades? To weapons, to the armor (!?), even some runes (fucking wot?). What's with the floaty jump? Why not use a double jump so you can make small hops as well as be able to climb shit? What's with lack of sideways speed? Don't know if it's the momentum or the slow acceleration or the lack of a double-tap dodge but essentially I find myself running and turning and rarely ever strafing. Most of the enemies I've found seem not to aim straight at me so even that reduces the need. What's with the mantling? You're just wasting my time, here. Just let me jump directly on top of shit. And again, what's with all the interruptions? I can understand the glory kill's purpose (maybe even endorse it) but why is it "hands off" as opposed to a regular melee attack and why does it take so long? Why does the same apply to the chainsaw??

Lastly, is this STALKER, UT or Serious Sam or what? So you're walking along a (often surprisingly large) level, doing nothing but exploring and suddenly you spot a pick-up. Then you stop, survey the area and immediately realize it's a battleground, what with its just-high-enough-to-climb platforms, its pickups, often a eye thing that you have to rip out because it spawns enemies or is some sort of eyesore or a building code violation or some other reason I don't care to know, the characteristic red barrels and some other telltale signs. Then you jump in, the music ramps up, monsters start crawling out of the woodwork and you start shooting them all to shit. And suddenly everything sorta makes sense; everything is fine.* In spite of all of its faults, the game manages to get some juices flowing. Too soon, though, it ends. And it doesn't matter what encounter it is, they -all- end "too soon". The music dies down and you're back to exploring, with scarcely any enemies, often none at all. And whereas the movements speed is good, the levels are long and labyrinthine enough (by today's standards), that it takes you too long, way too long to get back in the action. This lull resembles Furi more than it does the average shooter, what with its action broken up by walking simulator bits. It's a boner killer. And the obvious and repetitive nature of these seems to blur them all together.

I can't shake the feeling there's the potential for a great shooter buried underneath all the modern guff and despite the issues I have with it, I'm compelled to play on. But I wonder if it'll last. And I also wonder if it's because of the game's strengths or the lack of shooters with these elements that I've played in recent times. Regardless, I'm not an old Doom fan (UT is me lady) and I have serious doubts this could convince any of those. It's a shooter with an identity crisis that I hope gets sorted if there's to be a sequel. Because, on occasion, it's actually fun.


* Everything is most definitely not fine. The sound is bad. Bad enough I had to go watch clips on yt to make sure it wasn't anything on my end. The music has problems related to the "shooting segment>exploration segment" nature of the game- I find the combat tunes enjoyable enough (for as little as they last) but even those and especially the rest feel out of place. Again with the identity problem. It's a Doom game with a Quake soundtrack. I have a vague notion that it's someone else's but if you told me it was made by Trent Reznor I'd believe it. Or rather, wouldn't, because I wouldn't expect the same person to do the exact same thing twice. That's how similar I find them. But then that's a minute complaint. The worst are the actual sound effects. The guns I've found so far sound pitiful, plasma aside. Especially the shotgun (by far the worst shotgun in a Doom game, btw; I guess its sole purpose now is to set up glory kills) which sounds like a half-muted fart. The worst of the worst has to be the enemy sounds, tho. Everything about them. How you can't tell what groan belongs to what enemy; how the positional sounds are bad enough that you get blind-sided by imps and even grunts (zombies?) on occasion; how despite them moving beautifully throughout the level, you can't actually hear their steps, or them climbing, or them landing or hell, often enough you can't even hear them fucking shooting; how the volumes of different things are all over the place and not measured by any realistic standards or even by usefulness. What a fucking mess. When a battle starts you can hear your guns farting, some of the music but the rest is just a meaningless wall of nondescript... noise.
If you muted the game and opened 3 youtube windows in the background and played white noise, the Quake ost and a collection of sfx out of any random shooter and then switched back to the game, there'd be no difference.

Ed- Somehow double-jump is tied to a piece of equipment 2 minutes away from where I was when I wrote this. I'm both impressed and annoyed.
 
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wyes gull

Savant
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Apr 20, 2017
Messages
424
Next game on my list is Kingpin - Life of Crime, another real time game, but being a traditional FSP using the Quake 2 engine a kind of game I'm familiar with.
But to my horror I see I have not bought it from GOG. Is it worth waiting for until it is on sale?
It was made by Xatrix (bought by Treyarch who hasn't made anything other than CoD for the last 10 years) and published by Interplay. Pirate that shit.

As for the game, I remember it being pretty damn dark and violent, with a really nice Tommy gun. And dat dope Cypress Hill ost.
Also, CROWBAH FO A DOLLA!
 

Dayyālu

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Shaper Crypt
1st off, is this shit DOOM or not?

NuDoom is essentially Brutal Doom , AAA edition, with focus on arena fights. After you get in that line of thinking everything makes sense. It's not a Doom\Doom2 remake, it's the AAA version of a mod focused on gore and cinematic, quick violence.

It's still good in a weird, perverted way. NuWolf is boring as fuck (enemies are retarded and the gunplay is horrendous) while NuDoom has those weird moments of... "fun". The sound design is atrocious , tho, you are completely right. It's a messy union of a piss-poor soundtrack, poor weapon sounds(weakening the effect) and abysmal enemy sound design (where in old shooters enemy sound design gave you immediately data on what you were fighting and where, in nuDoom you are almost always surrounded by random white noise so you have to identify visually everything).
 

octavius

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Tried Darkstone a bit.

Poor graphics for a Diablo clone from 1999. You'd think it was ported from PS 1.
But probably fun to play with a friend, since there's two characters. Too bad there's no Barbarian character, then you could have played Fafhrd and Grey Mouser.
 

CthuluIsSpy

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Dec 26, 2014
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On the internet, writing shit posts.
Finished Darksiders 2. Holy shit this game tested my patience.
If you are a completionist I would not advise this game, as it has the worse case of collectibles I have seen. There are something like 143 things to collect. They are small, hard to find, and in order to get some you have to finish other collectible quests. The game doesn't tell you how many are left in each area, so you have to remember which ones you've collected yourself, and there is no item finder. Its horseshit.

The final boss is bullshit too. He has an unavoidable attack that you have to mash out of, and if he does it at point blank you immediately lose something like 80% of your health. The mashing takes a fucking long time and isn't clear. And I mean unavoidable; the game stops you from moving and instead of allowing you to dodge out of the way Death just stands there like a retard and lets himself get tentacle raped.
Pretty game, shit mechanics and gameplay.
 
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Humppaleka

Cipher
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May 21, 2011
Messages
863
I remember Darksiders 1 being an absolute chore to finish. Nowadays I don't bother to finish games that I don't enjoy playing, glad I got over that completionism.
 

Walden

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Joined
Mar 23, 2016
Messages
289
Gray Dawn, completed. No fancy dreamlike edgy aesthetics or lines, and the game is quite pleasant to look at, considering the very low budget. I'm not exactly steeped in walking simulators, this has some puzzles, very tiny ones, but it was a decent experience.

WcO5sjJ.jpg
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Finished the Tyranny playthrough. I didn't think much about my decisions, just did whatever came naturally more or less. It played out quite differently than the other times I played it -- I did at least two complete playthroughs for the review, maybe even three. Never even visited the Burning Library, but got a really good look at the kind of genocidal assholes the Disfavoured are. There really is a ton of story forking there. It really is a cryin' shame about the gameplay; if this was actually fun to play I'd very much like to give it another spin around the block, or two, to see how else it could pan out.
 

Kabas

Arcane
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Finished Darksiders 2. Holy shit this game tested my patience.
I burnout on this one shortly after beating the arena boss in the undead realm, couldn't continue after.
I did get some enjoyment before reaching this point though.
 

CthuluIsSpy

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On the internet, writing shit posts.
Finished Darksiders 2. Holy shit this game tested my patience.
I burnout on this one shortly after beating the arena boss in the undead realm, couldn't continue after.
I did get some enjoyment before reaching this point though.

The undead bosses were pretty good after that, imo.
Basileas and his pet spider were fun, and the Wailling Host is an impressive spectacle without too much bullshit. After that though it gets gradually more irritating, although the areas do get more and more visually impressive, and there's a level where you go to Earth and it becomes a third person shooter, mowing down demons and undead with an angelic machine gun and a demonic sticky nade laucher, which I thought was neat.

Samael was fine. There is a QTE mid boss fight, but if you fail it (and you will because the game commits the sin of "little to no mid cutscene QTEs except for when you aren't expecting it on a first playthrough because FUCK YOU!) it doesn't seem to punish you. I think you just lose the chance to deal extra damage to him or something.
Archon was ok up until his final phase where he just starts throwing all sorts of crap at you,
Jeremiah was a boring gimmick boss and fuck the final boss with the biggest scythe you could find.
Black stone looks cool, but its really short and the enemies are bullshit. Lostlight is also pretty and short with annoying enemies, but not as bullshit as the demon enemies.

After a while the flaws of the game really begin to wear it down. Why such a limited inventory space? Why no storage? Why are the platforming prompts so faulty and will send you to your death? Why is Death on the inventory screen so low res? Why are the collectible quests so goddamn long winded and tedious? Its not as if the campaign is short; normally when a dev throws in a collectible quest like that its to pad out a short campaign, but Darksiders 2 has a campaign of decent length as well as NG+, so such a "feature" is unnecessary.

The game doesn't even tell you what its own stats do. It doesn't tell you what Strength, Arcane, Penetration, any of the elemental effects or any of the special abilities do in detail. If I have to go to the forums to find see what effect they are supposed to have, you did a shit job. Even Dark Souls does a better job it. They at least have a help function that gives you an idea of what stat does. Sure, its unclear in some cases and it doesn't tell you how scaling works, but at least From made a bloody effort, and at least you have more than nothing.

I don't know if I'm just doing it wrong, but I found the combat to get repetitive after a while. The only combo that seems to work reliably is 3 scyth attacks followed by 2 heavies followed followed by a scythe. If I try to do air combos or any of the combos with a delay the game just refuses to do it.
In training I could get it to work, but in combat the game just shits itself and my character does what he wants. If you were looking for not-DMC, you came to the wrong place. Speaking of doing what the character wants, I've noticed that sometimes the game gets stuck using strong heavy attacks or gear attacks. This nearly got me killed against Absolom (whatever the fuck his name is. Big boring goo-man final boss), as I had claws which charged me forward constantly into his attacks. Fortunately, I managed to summon some ghouls to finish him off while Death was having his seizure.

There is a similar issue with dodging. You know how in Dark Souls if you dodge to the side you dodge to the side? Well in Darksiders 2 the dodge direction seems to change relative to your position, which means a dodge that's meant to go to the side ends up going towards an enemy, who will always happen to be winding up a attack. Why? Why not do what Dark Souls do and have it relative to the target's position? If I dodge to the side, it should be to the enemy's side, not whatever direction the game thinks side is.

Target switch sucks. Doesn't bloody work, or does whatever the hell it wants. "Doing whatever it wants" seems to be a common theme with Darksiders 2, really.
Oh, and if you take screenshots too quickly the game's video freezes. If you do wait long enough between screenshots though, sometimes the game will cut the signal to the video card, resulting in a black screen until you alt-tab out of it. Either this is a new steam bug, but its a problem with the game. Considering how many screenshots I took of Shadowrun Hong Kong, which I played just before Darksiders 2, I'm going with the latter.

Its as if the game doesn't want you to play it. If a game were a person, it would be the asshole clerk who does a half-arsed job or short changes you because you didn't say his convoluted name right or some petty crap like that.
There was no...love, I guess, in this game. You could tell that the devs teams behind Shadowrun Hong Kong and Sudeki (last two games I completed) enjoyed making them, or at least respected their work and medium. Sure, there were problems, and I bitched about those problems, but at least they tried to make something decent with what they had and made an good product.
With the PC port Darksiders 2 Deathifinitive edition as if they just didn't give a fuck, and it shows.
I mean, the PC port of Sudeki is better designed, and that game was from 2005.
 
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Valky

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Fuck, this is a challenge. I can easily pass the first phase of the robo statue, but when his mask comes off I can't do shit because the flames block me from getting close enough to whip his face, so now I'm just going to stock up on shurikans and use only those in the second phase.
 

Humppaleka

Cipher
Joined
May 21, 2011
Messages
863
Return to Castle Wolfenstein. First time encountering those shock enemies and they just absolutely wreck me, jesus. Guess I'll find some way to deal with them safely.
 

Dayyālu

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Shaper Crypt
Return to Castle Wolfenstein. First time encountering those shock enemies and they just absolutely wreck me, jesus. Guess I'll find some way to deal with them safely.

Fausts (yes, I know it sounds weird) and Venom Gun at close range, FG-42 in the few situations where you get some range.

They are legit more annoying than the ProtoSoldaten in some situations. At least Faust ProtoSoldaten are easy to dodge.
 

Valky

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That was.. surprisingly easy once I just got enough shurikans for the second phase of Sakit.
Question for anyone who has played La Mulana, without spoilering, is there supposed to be an order that I go through the different areas? So far I went from the gate of guidance to the tomb of giants. I went into the water area above gate of guidance once but noped out after I drowned, I figure I'm not supposed to be there until I get better equipment. But there's like 3 more areas I can go to now.
 

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