What game are you wasting time on?

[Jvegi]

Still going strong with ToEE. Just exited Moathouse and apparently Co8 adds a lot of new content in their "no new content" version.
The game gets better and better, I'm slowly getting used to the UI ( the "h" button brings actual descriptions of spells, even from the wheel during combat, that's nice to now). Someone should do a write-up, or an hour long video essey on that UI, it's amazing how it's both messed up and perfectly fine, at the same time. My main gripe at the moment is the lack of space on the keybord to add hotkeys. Most of the keys are either occupied or cannot be used.

And it looks so nice. Those animations really bring everything to life.

 

[octavius]

Completed the user made map Empire of the World for HoMM 3.

This a huge map with lots to explore and many big battles; it took me a week to finish. You will eventually face heroes with 99 in all stats, so you need to be thorough.

At first I thought the map was too linear, but it opened up after a while and there are lots of different places to go. It still is a static map with all enemies safely behind border guards, though.
I really liked that you could have more than just one hero following a set path, and instead develop several heroes, since you get enough money for two armies (Castle and Rampart). I also like that there's only a minimum of storyfaggotry, which is good, especially when in this case the map maker is not very good at grammar.
Another nice touch is that it takes a long while to get spells like Blind, View Earth and some others, and Dimension Door and Fly are unavailable unless you can defeat 25K or so Black Dragons.

My secondary in command barely defeated The Emperor's apprentice. He was hiding inside his castle, so I didn't realize he had 99 in all stats, while my best heroes had about 80. Berserk, Blind and Disrupting Ray were the key spells. I could have reduced losses by spamming Resurrection.

Maximus faces The Emperor (this map was made right after the movie Gladiator):

Highly recommended, this is easily one of the Top 5 user made maps for HoMM 3 I've played.

 

[Azalin]

Finished Yakuza Kiwami 2,the next remake in the Yakuza saga.This one has a new engine so graphics are improved and some QOL changes are introduced like being able to walk into most shops and buildings without a loading screen,story and characters are better than Kiwami 1.The main beat em up gameplay though tales a hit since there are no longer various fighting styles but just one,they try to make up for it by adding some move from the three styles and adding some coop heat actions but in the end it doesn't feel as good as before.I didn't enjoy the two main sidequests/minigames since one is the cabaret minigame from Yo without any real changes and the Majima Construction rts felt clunky.The Majima mini campaign was too short and felt like a wasted opportunity,the only thing it accomplished it to give some closure to the Makoto?Majima storyline from Y0(why didn't you choose the girl when you had the chance Majima?Why?Why?Why?


All in all a good game,better than Kiwami 1 but not as good as Y0. Recommended

 

[someone else]

Civ 5 for the first time, tutorial is more than an hour, mostly the same as previous Civs, but no more SOD.

So Civ 5 is harsh with happiness on having many cities = tougher expansion & conquering.
Most of the fun of Civ is gobbling up resources and territory.
Thinking of going back to Civ4.
Civ4 also has Baba Yetu.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

While writing about Spelunky, I made a rookie mistake: I failed to re-visit Spelunky Classic and give it a proper comparison to Spelunky HD - I only based my comparisons on 10-year old memories.

So I corrected my mistake, re-installed Classic and gave it a go. Things changed considerably, to the point that I feel I owe an apology to all of you.

Spelunky HD adds more than just fancy graphics and added difficulty: It also streamlines the controls. To open a container in Spelunky Classic you need to stand over it and press Up + Action, in Spelunky HD you only need to whip it, or cause it to break via other means. Classic has separate buttons for other uses (like a 'Purchase'-key) but HD does away with all of that. This is an improvement on HD's behalf. Also, HD allows you to whip items like rocks and such, but Classic does not. This matters if you're trying to push an item over the ledge to trigger a dart trap or have a heavy item clank someone below on the head.

The UI in Spelunky Classic is large, yet not intrusive. In HD it's all confined to the top left corner, but simultaneously blocks the view behind it, effectively creating a blind spot on the screen. This is not cool, some transparency would have gone a long way here.

Finally there's the minor issues I have with the Damsel. In Classic she stands there, makes a noise and a 'Help!'-speech bubble appears on-screen. So she has two visual indicators (red dress + speech bubble) and an aural indicator (which is only a generic sound) to help her get noticed. She also seems quite comfortable sitting in Indie's arms while being carried around, but when she runs around on her own she's visibly crying. All of these elements help establish sympathy in the player towards her, encouraging them to make the effort to rescue her.

In HD the speech bubble is removed, but her aural indicator is a proper 'Help!'-sound, and you can guess her location in-game by listening to where it's coming from. When picked up she literally acts like a concussed piece of meat, and when she runs around on her own there are no tears visible. This does not endear her so much to the player. I'm unsure why this was changed, but I honestly doubt it has anything to do with the game's options for what Damsel you want present: Female, Male, Pug or Sloth.

So looking back I change my numerical scores for both games: They both sit somewhere between 7.5 and 8, and which one is the better game just comes down to personal tastes. Spelunky HD deviates enough from Classic so that its additions and improvements fail to make up for it. IMO Classic still has the upper hand, but that's mainly because I can stomach the pixelated graphics and slightly bloated controls, I can perfectly understand others preferring the HD version.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Just finished my replay of Memoria. It's every bit as good as the first time when I played it at release, and it makes up the trio of the best adventure games of the last 10 years - possibly even beyond - together with Primordia and Heroine's Quest.

And the final plot twist is, I dare say, sublime.

Too bad Daedalic had to turn stupid after that.

 

[cosmicray]

Half-Life: Opposing Force - It appears it was half as long as the main game. Great expansion. Although, the boss was still lame. I miss straight bosses where you just kill it by emptying every gun available.
Nier:Automata - I wanted to wait, but started Route C almost right away:

Spoiler

HOLY SHIT!

 

[Modron]

Nier:Automata - I wanted to wait, but started Route C almost right away:

Spoiler

HOLY SHIT!

Yeah after route B you start thinking maybe they are just slight variations on A but then C comes.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

I've just finished The Painscreak Killings. Very decent gothic murder mystery aventure. I really liked the story and presentation, but the gameplay is mostly walking around, looking for journals/keys/keycodes. Most of the looking involves reading the journals and trying to guess what they mean, or trying to figure out where to use key/keycode based on the context of there they were found. In order to do that you will need to keep in memory details about characters, their relationships, and events which happened in the past. The story gives you a number of suspects and murders to solve, and the events/characters are very fleshed out which is hard to miss since learning about them is part of the gameplay, but unfortunately investigation tunnels almost everything into one suspect near the end. Would've been great if the end was more open ended (it kinda is, in the end you will have to chose a murderer and an murder weapon from the list of various characters, but it only makes sense if you've skipped a major part of the clues, which leaves no doubts about who did the killings).

 

[Rahdulan]

With Metro 2033 Redux out of the way I'm now trying to balance Dragon Quest Heroes and Shadow Hearts with only couple of hours into each. I'm not really keen on DQH take on "Musou meets tower defense" and I don't have extensive Dragon Quest familiarity so I'm just accepting what I see along the way. Leaving Shanghai in SH and it's been good so far, although with somewhat simplistic approach to encounter design that encourages reliance on basic attacks a bit too much for my taste. Xiaofang's Trials where group is split and you can't use special attacks in combat can go fuck themselves alongside whoever approved such maze-like area to go with it.

 

[Abu Antar]

I just made a pact with Shadow in Tales of Symphonia. Temple of Darkness can go screw itself, that place was really annoying. I restored the town of Luin by abusing a cheap trick (not really cheating), by stealing rune bottles, buying talismans, and then turning said talismans into blue talismans. Made me a huge profit and took about an hour doing it a few times. Bought all the weapons at the Luin store. After that, I've gathered every Devil Arm that I can get at this point, and last but not least, I beat the second encounter with the Sword Dancer. That fight with him was a genuine

moment.

In Underrail, I've mostly stuck to the expansion areas, but I have also come back to some older ones, using the jet ski. Did some crafting, which means that I don't get two shotted every time I get surprised. There are now a lot of oddities registered in my log. I must say that I am doing fairly well. Currently, I am at the Rig. Let's see what awaits our ridiculously overpowered Psi dude.

 

[Citizen]

Drakan 2: The Ancient Gates

The game has a weird twist in its combat system: running around without a shield lets you do perfect parry with your weapon, which deflects all the damage of a single attack and staggers an opponent, but if you have a shield, you can only block, which just lowers the incoming damage instead of completely preventing it

So fighting with a sword without a shield is much better, even if a bit harder to pull off. Literally unplayable

 

[Machocruz]

Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition
Never got around to playing this seriously until recently. I'd say this is an objectively good FPS, excellent in many ways. Level design is tremendous and strikes me as sort of a halfway point between the dreamlike abstraction of Doom's and the logic of Half Life's, and the game has personality to spare. And I dig the item system, a great addition to the genre (at the time it came out). But the theme and rogues gallery don't blow my skirt up, and those things are pretty important to the level of engagement I have with a game. I was planning to have this be the first game I clear out of my backlog, but I don't feel like prioritizing it anymore. I'll probably be working on it sporadically over the next few months while I give more primary attention to another game.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition

Just play through the proper chapters of the game then (four in total) and spare yourself the expansion packs. They're not worth it.

The real challenge comes along when you decide to play the other Build Engine-games. Duke Nukem 3D was easily the most accessible one of them... but was it the best of them? -opinions differ on that.

 

[Machocruz]

Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition

Just play through the proper chapters of the game then (four in total) and spare yourself the expansion packs. They're not worth it.

The real challenge comes along when you decide to play the other Build Engine-games. Duke Nukem 3D was easily the most accessible one of them... but was it the best of them? -opinions differ on that.

From what I've seen, the Blood theme is most up my alley. I get the feeling none of the games will be my jam like Doom and Hexen are, but that's neither here nor there.

 

[JDR13]

Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition

Just play through the proper chapters of the game then (four in total) and spare yourself the expansion packs. They're not worth it.

The real challenge comes along when you decide to play the other Build Engine-games. Duke Nukem 3D was easily the most accessible one of them... but was it the best of them? -opinions differ on that.

From what I've seen, the Blood theme is most up my alley. I get the feeling none of the games will be my jam like Doom and Hexen are, but that's neither here nor there.

Blood is pure fucking incline.

 

[Wunderbar]

Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition

Just play through the proper chapters of the game then (four in total) and spare yourself the expansion packs. They're not worth it.

The real challenge comes along when you decide to play the other Build Engine-games. Duke Nukem 3D was easily the most accessible one of them... but was it the best of them? -opinions differ on that.

From what I've seen, the Blood theme is most up my alley. I get the feeling none of the games will be my jam like Doom and Hexen are, but that's neither here nor there.

Blood is one of the best FPS ever made.

 

[someone else]

I'm enjoying the religion and tourism aspects of Civ 5.

 

[CootKeeper]

Just finished playing through Quest for Glory 1-5. Actually no, I played a few seconds of QFG5 and then gave up right there and ragequit. they gave up glorious handpainted 2d beauty for shite 3d design? what were they thinking.

Anyway my thoughts of the series: Lots of backtracking, shite dead ends, boring story that made no sense, shitty timed events. Dialogue was pretty good though, made me smile a couple times, but that was it.

 

[JDR13]

Anyway my thoughts of the series: Lots of backtracking, shite dead ends, boring story that made no sense, shitty timed events. Dialogue was pretty good though, made me smile a couple times, but that was it.

And yet you continued to play to the point that you finished four games...

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Half-Life: Opposing Force - It appears it was half as long as the main game. Great expansion. Although, the boss was still lame. I miss straight bosses where you just kill it by emptying every gun available.
Nier:Automata - I wanted to wait, but started Route C almost right away:

Spoiler

HOLY SHIT!

Yeah, that was my reaction too.
"Well that escalated quickly."

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Anyway my thoughts of the series: Lots of backtracking, shite dead ends, boring story that made no sense, shitty timed events. Dialogue was pretty good though, made me smile a couple times, but that was it.

And yet you continued to play to the point that you finished four games...

Like a true Codexer.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Just finished playing through Quest for Glory 1-5. Actually no, I played a few seconds of QFG5 and then gave up right there and ragequit. they gave up glorious handpainted 2d beauty for shite 3d design? what were they thinking.

QfG5 was released during two eras of note: The forced progression from 2D to 3D, and Sierra On-Line's last days as the company had been bought out by a swindler and was being hollowed out from within. We can count ourselves lucky that QfG5 was released at all, as the story at least got an ending.

I suggest you revisit it and play it through, at least. Many characters from the other games make a return so maybe the overall story will make more sense.

It's still pretty poor compared to the other four, though.

Finally, if you want more of the same you can always check out Heroine's Quest: The Herald of Ragnarök, which comes at the amazing price of $0!

 

[ERYFKRAD]

amazing price of $0!

What, that's in foreign currency, can't afford it.

 

[CootKeeper]

Anyway my thoughts of the series: Lots of backtracking, shite dead ends, boring story that made no sense, shitty timed events. Dialogue was pretty good though, made me smile a couple times, but that was it.

And yet you continued to play to the point that you finished four games...

well to be fair the first three games were quick to finish, maybe 4-5 hours max per game? and I also put animation speed to the max.

QFG4 was unbearably long though. and it kept crashing all the time