What game are you wasting time on?

[DalekFlay]

Finished Deus Ex Invisible War... I think it's literally the worst, most poorly made video game I have ever enjoyed. Blah.

I literally have no idea what to play next... been doing a couple Thief missions and random quests in TES games, just treading water and waiting for motivation.

 

[VioletShadow]

I've played for about 2 hours and it's good so far. It's scary but definitively not as much as I expected. :D

Remember that you said that when you get to X-18

Now afraid to continue playing...

 

[Gurkog]

I've played for about 2 hours and it's good so far. It's scary but definitively not as much as I expected. :D

Remember that you said that when you get to X-18

Now afraid to continue playing...

Isn't the game awesome!

Finally starting to win Blood Bowl single player campaign matches. Sometimes I think the RNG is a cheating bastard.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness.

It's okay so far besides the fact I feel I'm playing Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner: Hector Dudebro vs the Endless Fucking Corridors. While I didn't think too highly of Lament of Innocence's level design, it looks positively stellar compared to this game.

 

[sea]

Playing Drox Operative again, because I got a copy of the upcoming expansion to preview. Not sure if I'm under NDA for this, but whatever. So far I've had to start a new character because I don't have my old one, but the game is as addictive and fun as ever, even if mechanically it is kinda broken and there are a lot of silly exploits with diplomacy (not to mention I still don't quite like the victory conditions). No thoughts on the new content yet except for the new race selection I got when making my ship, I have yet to bump into them.

Still from what I have seen, the biggest changes are the result of successive patches since I last played, not so much the expansion content itself - maybe it only appears at higher levels or something. But that said, reading the list of changes in the expansion, they are very much enhancements and additions that fit naturally into the game, and not hey look this is new!!11

 

[DalekFlay]

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

 

[Xeon]

Aren't Enhanced Editions supposed to be worse?

Spoiler

Spoiler

Sorry

 

[sea]

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.

 

[nil]

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).

I'm pretty sure you can pause the game.

 

[sea]

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).

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.

 

[J_C]

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. :D

 

[Gurkog]

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.

 

[spekkio]

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.

 

[DalekFlay]

- 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.
- 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.

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

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

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

 

[Gurkog]

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.

 

[Gragt]

- 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...

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

 

[dnf]

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.

 

[FrancoTAU]

Finished Deus Ex Invisible War... I think it's literally the worst, most poorly made video game I have ever enjoyed. Blah.

I literally have no idea what to play next... been doing a couple Thief missions and random quests in TES games, just treading water and waiting for motivation.

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.

 

[DalekFlay]

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.

 

[Cool name]

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.

 

[Gregz]

black cat is truly codexian!

 

[ERYFKRAD]

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.

Is the game any good?

 

[Minttunator]

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.

 

[DeepOcean]

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!

So european.