What game are you wasting time on?

[Volrath]

Finished FEAR 1 for the first time, played on "Extreme Difficulty".

I did not enjoy this game...

For all of its attempts, its not the least bit scary.

The level design is extremely constrained, and visually uninspiring.

IMHO AI and Slow-Mo come into conflict with each other.
What point is good AI when you're killing everyone with no resistance?
The moment you're attacked all you have to do is push the slow-mo button, and all the difficult vanishes.

It comes down to the fact that I was bored while playing it, and was happy to see it end.
(Although the fact that it's only 8 hours is should also probably count against it.)

This is now the second game from Monolith that I've played, and the first (Blood) was far superior...

Play Shogo, Nolf and Nolf 2, the holy trinity when it comes to Monolith. Everything else that they've made since then isn't worth your time.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Play Shogo, Nolf and Nolf 2, the holy trinity when it comes to Monolith. Everything else that they've made since then isn't worth your time.

Bullshit. What about Tron 2.0 and AvP2?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

But it's the second point that makes me stop and wonder. Under no circumstances should a player have to be FORCED to write down a piece of info. I can understand the option being included as is for the old-school nostalgia factor, and I'm not supporting that the game holds the player by the hand all the way through to the end, but when a game presents you with a randomly generated code and offers no way for a player to make a note of it other than to say "you should write this down", then someone is being lazy indeed. Is it really that hard to include an in-game journal? Really? In this particular case it's the Wizardlands realms and the codes needed to access them. Sooo... why can't the game keep track of them for you? What's wrong with the game just allowing you to select it from a drop-down list that only lists discovered codes?

Note that I'm not discouraging people from making hand-written notes in the first place, it's just redundant to force people to do so nowdays.

Uh, it's just a few passwords that appear now and then. If you have a pen and a piece of paper nearby, it takes five seconds to write them down. You can also alt + tab and write it on notepad. Nitpicking pretty hard there.

Don't think they're random either, I used a password I've found in a previous life and it still opened the portal.

I agree about the arcane stat descriptions. It's especially bad because the game uses funny names such as Caddishness and Savvy instead of the usual Agility, Wisdom, etc. Do you think Savvy controls your mana and spell damage? Nope, that's Sagacity. Savvy controls your spell failure chance. I have to be mousing over the tiny icons all the time because I never remember what they do.

 

[Volrath]

Play Shogo, Nolf and Nolf 2, the holy trinity when it comes to Monolith. Everything else that they've made since then isn't worth your time.

Bullshit. What about Tron 2.0 and AvP2?

Eh... They're ok. But pretty forgettable imo.

 

[dunno lah]

Wasted half a day against Artorias. The DLC bosses are so fucking difficult to fight without using the best equipment possible.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Uh, it's just a few passwords that appear now and then. If you have a pen and a piece of paper nearby, it takes five seconds to write them down. You can also alt + tab and write it on notepad. Nitpicking pretty hard there.

It's not a question of how much effort is required, but the mere fact that the effort that is required is both obsolete and unnecessary. Why spend 10-20 seconds (5 seconds? Yeah right.) doing something when it can be done in 0.2 seconds by the game itself? The time units seem trivial to us, but to others they may make more of a difference.

 

[spekkio]

Finally finished Legend of Zelda - Wind Waker.

Pros:

- simple yet gorgeous graphics, should not age in the future,
- solid 3d Zelda gameplay, satisfactory despite some streamlining (see below),
- plenty of additional / optional content (some of it of low quality, though),

Cons:

- unskippable cutscenes, esp. combined with emulation bugs (emu hangs after long cutscenes when using HLE Sound plugin),
- your ride is also your main PROTIP-giver. Enjoy reading the same info about what you should do next when boarding the King. Fucking inexcusable from gameplay POV - I can't believe nobody pointed this out during testing... Boarding the King in naval combat is probably the single most difficult gameplay element in the game...
- item descriptions show up EVERY FUCKING time when picking up items; I surely need 3-4 panels of text describing what the item does when picking it up for the 100th time...
- loot which appears after naval combat is very hard to pick up (boomerang),
- using another characters in dungeons is nice idea, but you have to play a specific song every fucking time to do this - pressing a button would've been much more convenient,
- way too many boring parts: mapping the ocean, gathering Triforce parts, etc.
- only 4 useful songs + using the baton is less convenient than the ocarina,
- a lot of equipment and only 3 equipment slots - too much inventory juggling; sail blocks one slot almost permanently,
- boss-fights are way too easy and you have to repeat 4 of them in the final dungeon (WTF?)
- final dungeon is a big letdown: arenas with recycled bosses, stupid maze, long corridor, final arena. Lame.

Verdict: not as good as previous 2 games (OoT & MM), but still enjoyable.



Next step - further decline:

 

[Gurkog]

Playing through Borderlands with the Siren class, since I already finished playthrough 1 with soldier and hunter. Either I am getting better at the game or Siren is the easiest to kill shit with. Probably the latter since the Siren's weapon enhancing skills work with ALL weapons unlike the other classes'.

 

[Blaine]

I'm still playing Terraria, and having reached a godlike level of stats- and gear-granted power allowing me to mow through the most difficult of areas, bosses, and invasion events at high speed and with very little effort, there's nothing left for me to do but round up a few rare decorative items, costume items, dyes, and pets, then build something enormous and grandiose while awaiting the final update. I'm thinking of building an immense model of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon from white-painted sandstone, golden sphinxes on the sides and front terraces, with leaves, foliage, vines, and waterfalls cascading from the terraces.

Here's a screenshot of my character in his puny, barely-decorated pyramid base that will soon be replaced, wearing a repugnant pink hat and flesh-tone bikini because he's a strong and independent myn who don't need no woman:

Spoiler

There really is an immense amount of potential for LARP-flavored building in Terraria 1.2. There are dozens of differents types of construction blocks, each of which can be further painted with a wide variety of paint colors and hammered into four different configurations (normal, flat, west slope, east slope); equally as many types of background walls, which can also be painted as well as intermixed to form windows (glass walls) or similar; many hundreds of furniture items, which can be also be painted and have things placed on them; almost seventy different statues, about a hundred types of banners, over fifty wall paintings, ropes, chains, and miscellaneous decorative items, which can also all can be painted over; a trophy for each boss monster; write-able signs and stelae in about a dozen different types; mannequins to display armor and clothing; many different types and colors of light fixtures; and finally three colors of wiring, three different timers (1-, 3-, and 5-second timers), which can be used to make teleporters, functioning drawbridges or blast doors, elaborate trap setups, light shows, and so on.

 

[WhiteGuts]

Playing Hitman Codename 47. It's good but some design choices are questionable, like how the first missions of every new contract are a cake walk but the last one is always super hard. The gameplay is decent, and since you'll be doing some missions over and over you get a good grab of it.

 

[Tommers]

Playing risk of rain. It's good, standard roguelike with unlocks except it's a platform shoot em up. I am also shit at it. Reminds me a bit of rogue legacy but in the future.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Spoiler

View attachment 2389

That is a really cool-looking building, and I love the themed rooms you have there. However, the first thing I instantly notice is that isn't exactly easy to navigate. The main corridor is too narrow for my tastes, rooms only have one entrance where more might be a good idea. There's alot of redundant running back-and-forth in there.

To give you an idea of how my building looks like, the bottom room is a massive chamber with platforms instead of bricks/blocks, that way I can change levels to reach various things with ease. Above that are the rooms for the NPCs, where they're sorted by importance, the most useful ones are at the bottom, the mose useless ones (hello Wizard) up at the top. Above the NPC rooms is my gallery, another large chamber where I hang up my paintings, monster trophies and banners. Exits are at the top and bottom, I've yet to install teleporters. Of course, this design can be improved further by having the main chamber in the middle and the NPC rooms in a circular formation around it.

 

[Blaine]

That is a really cool-looking building, and I love the themed rooms you have there. However, the first thing I instantly notice is that isn't exactly easy to navigate. The main corridor is too narrow for my tastes, rooms only have one entrance where more might be a good idea. There's alot of redundant running back-and-forth in there.

Ease of use was never really a concern of mine when building the pyramid. It was however part of my storage facility plan, and I have sixty chests arranged in four groups of three rows of five chests apiece, sorted logically and categorically as best as possible. I've memorized what goes in each of them. They're above, on, and under a platform floor so that I can reach all 15 chests in a group standing in one spot (and that's the maximum), and move quickly between them. I can fill up the piggy bank, safe, and my inventory with stuff, and it all has a place in the storage facility. To really contain as much of anything as someone could possibly want, you'd probably need 100+ chests (three of each dye, extra vanity/armor pieces, each accessory with every modifier, lots of buckets, etc.), but some rational guidelines make sixty more than sufficient for any sane individual.

If I really wanted an efficient base layout, I'd trap the NPCs in two rows of nine form-fitting glass tanks (biomes set up where necessary/desired) above and a below a platform walkway, with a compact crafting station on one end and storage on the other.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

That's all well and good, but what did the nurse do to deserve being trapped in a poorly lighted mushroom cavern with a fungus man?

 

[Blaine]

That's all well and good, but what did the nurse do to deserve being trapped in a poorly lighted mushroom cavern with a fungus man?

She was horribly and repeatedly killed while I was getting used to the Pumpkin Moon Halloween event (the evil critters follow you back to your spawn point if you die, which happens to be the bed in her room, appropriately enough [or inappropriately if one chooses to interpret it elsewise]), and when killed NPCs respawn, they'll choose any completed "house" at random. I just never reassigned her to her usual room.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS AVERNUM 5

I HAVE A NEPHILIM CAUSE MEGY DAUGHTER LOVES CATS AND SHE ASKS IF THE KITTY IS A SUPERHERO AND YEAH I NAMED THE MOTERHFUCKER KITTY

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Playing through Borderlands with the Siren class, since I already finished playthrough 1 with soldier and hunter. Either I am getting better at the game or Siren is the easiest to kill shit with. Probably the latter since the Siren's weapon enhancing skills work with ALL weapons unlike the other classes'.

Lilith is hands down the most broken character in the first game, even beating out a munchkin-build Mordercai. She has an answer for everything, overwhelming power and a 'get out of shit' free card. So many people commenting about it is part of the reason why they made her a near-unstoppable force narratively in the sequel.

 

[Gurkog]

Playing through Borderlands with the Siren class, since I already finished playthrough 1 with soldier and hunter. Either I am getting better at the game or Siren is the easiest to kill shit with. Probably the latter since the Siren's weapon enhancing skills work with ALL weapons unlike the other classes'.

Lilith is hands down the most broken character in the first game, even beating out a munchkin-build Mordercai. She has an answer for everything, overwhelming power and a 'get out of shit' free card. So many people commenting about it is part of the reason why they made her a near-unstoppable force narratively in the sequel.

just got a class mod that increases chance of elemental effects and all damage for ALL weapons. Talk about OP

 

[spekkio]

Finished Dishonored - The Knife of Dunwall

Pros:
- more of the same (world, atmosphere, writing, attention to detail),
- map design is better than in vanilla game ("blink from above, hit, blink back" shtick not always possible),
- Arc Mines are fun to use.

Cons:

- only 3 missions? I expected a mini-campaign, not a micro-campaign,
- favors: lazy job from devs, since not buying them is retarded,
- problems with tasks / task descriptions: sometimes you can clear / fail tasks without even knowing about them (you did something "not in proper order"); sometimes they describe things which did not happened yet (Example: "Repel Overseer attack" at the beginning of mission 3. My reaction: "Damn. We're being attacked by the Overseers?!" 3 seconds later Billie shows up and guess what? We're being attacked by the Overseers...
- main tasks are way too convoluted / unbelievable: "Kill dude X for me, Daud. I trust you completely. You're a well-known honest gentleman after all."
- Billy's role in the story is quite retarded,
- main problems of the vanilla game (enemies not able to look up, blink being overpowered) weren't addressed. I know that mods are available, but...

Still:

will buy on GoG in the future (if available)

Moving to "Witches" next.

 

[Erebus]

Trying to make Elodie into a queen. She learns fast, but then she has to, because she really doesn't know anything at all when the game starts.



I'm probably going to make the skill checks invisible, because failing 75% of them is kinda depressing.


EDIT : It turns out having become an expert about strategy and intrigue doesn't protect you against a group of bandits with bows.

EDIT : It also turns out creating a magical sword in a duel isn't so helpful when you know nothing about fencing.

EDIT : Third time's the charm, apparently !

 

[octavius]

For some reason I suddenly got an urge to play chess again, so I obtained a Windows version of good old Battle Chess.
I was rather disappointed that the 2D and 3D representations of the board are different. UIAM the white Queen starts on a white square and the black queen on a black square, but in Battle Chess they are on wrong colours on the 2D board.
Another problem is that when you save the game and reload it, the difficulty level reverts to the easiest one.
Weirdly enough neither Wikipedia or Mobygames mention this.

 

[Minttunator]

For some reason I suddenly got an urge to play chess again

Maybe due to the ongoing World Championship match?

I have to admit to never having played Battle Chess, though - how is it different than regular chess? Does it just show animations of the pieces fighting or can the player control the outcome of the fights (allowing the capturing piece to be captured instead, for instance)?

 

[Gregz]

Playing through Borderlands with the Siren class, since I already finished playthrough 1 with soldier and hunter. Either I am getting better at the game or Siren is the easiest to kill shit with. Probably the latter since the Siren's weapon enhancing skills work with ALL weapons unlike the other classes'.

Siren is amazing in BL1. So much fun. Make sure to play the DLC expansions, they are imo better than the core game.

 

[octavius]

For some reason I suddenly got an urge to play chess again

Maybe due to the ongoing World Championship match?

Only an hour to the next match now. Let's hope today's match will be more exciting than the two previous one.

I have to admit to never having played Battle Chess, though - how is it different than regular chess? Does it just show animations of the pieces fighting or can the player control the outcome of the fights (allowing the capturing piece to be captured instead, for instance)?

It's just like regular chess, but the movement of the pieces and the capturing of pieces are animated. The Queen wriggles her ass when she moves, and there are some fun capture animations. Most fun I saw was when a Knight check mates the King.

 

[FromWisdomToHate]

rainblood chronicles: mirage and two brothers