What game are you wasting time on?

[Tripicus]

Started playing Shadowrun, and so far it's interesting, although the main campaign gives me a heavy handiness of an old GM. Jump from important scene to important scene sort of deal. Will be interesting to see what other modules people come up with later. I'll probably not finish the campaign, and instead wait for something nifty to creep out of the community.

Tried out Dust as well. The graphics are nice, but I got bored of pretty much the rest of the game. It's basically a game where you're going to do a lot of huge combos fighting tons of bad guys. However, I never felt the combat really changed. While there were variations to what I did I never felt like I was doing anything different. The levels are pretty linear, so returning to areas to explore spots you were unable to earlier never felt interesting. And then there's crafting, which as far as I can tell isn't really needed. It's pretty easy to abuse some items to absolutely demolish enemies even further.

On top of that I got Dark Souls for PC, tossed my way from the bro, as I hadn't played the expansion content. Guess I'm doing another run through the game.

Edit: Oh and I just finished Ni No Kuni. They could've ended that game at an earlier story point than they did. It just felt forced after a certain point and pretty much unnecessary.

 

[Grunker]

Tomb Raider. The game is... alright, but that whole ludonarrative dissonance thing is really bugging me even though I knew about it going in. There's so much arbitrary "gamey" crap in there that it's impossible to ignore or justify.

• Walk down a path and spot a cave highlighted with obvious bright white paintings that are practically pointing an arrow at the entrance, and "ANCIENT SECRET TOMB FOUND" flashes on the HUD. Yeah, real goddamn secret.
• Lara finds hidden "relics" all over the place which are mundane objects and serve as collectibles... but the environments are full of ancient gold statues and other valuable-looking things which don't qualify as relics for... nope, no reason at all.
• Similarly, the entire world seems to be full of pointless collectibles. It's almost like the devs realized that they only had a 5 hour game so decided to fill the world with a bunch of hidden objects to hunt down... no matter how urgent the situation and how high the stakes, there's always time to go hunting for GPS caches! Protip: if you are going to make a game with a super-urgent time-critical story, maybe don't make a Metroidvania kind of game around it.
  
• At one point Lara's wound sustained at the beginning of the game comes back to haunt her. She limps around and is clearly in pain, and can't even climb a ledge, which is cool... except the whole sequence lasts about 5 minutes, and is mostly comprised of her brutally murdering a bunch of cultists while sustaining incoming fire. The objective is to "find medical supplies" to fix her wound, but she gets shot in the face like 20 times along the way.
• The story is a complete mess and is constantly infringed upon by arbitrary videogame crap of the worst order. The writer, Rhianna Pratchett, apparently loves the plot device "your princess is in another castle" because every single goddamn time in the game when Lara has an objective, she reaches it and the objective is invalidated or failed in some way. Yet, this also inexplicably causes the plot to advance every single time.
• The characterization, meanwhile, is heavy-handed and basic. One does empathize with Lara to a degree, except that she has no character other than being a particularly beat up Mary Sue who learns to kick ass and take names, and everyone else in the game is such a stock stereotype they might as well be called The Geek, The Black Chick, The Asian Girl, The Wise Mentor, etc. The game takes itself super-seriously yet it falls prey to the most basic amateurish videogame storytelling tropes.
• Spoiler

  I was just barely able to take the game seriously for the first third or so... and then they introduce what I assume are ancient Japanese zombie demons, in this grim, gritty coming-of-age kind of story. Urrghghh. Like I said, dumb videogame crap. Yeah I know the older Tomb Raiders had supernatural elements, but this isn't sold well at all and is completely at odds with the more serious story.
• Spoiler

  Did I mention that this plot is bland, dumb and predictable as hell? Ancient evil cult devoted to the Sun Goddess on this ancient undiscovered island (which somehow has thousands of people and tons of supplies on it, but never mind that), ritual to see the Sun Goddess reborn by sacrificing a new woman in flames, and... oh, what's this, Lara's best female friend is kidnapped? I wonder what's gonna happen next.

The good news is that, complaints with the story/theme/tone/whatever aside, it plays pretty well for a popamole shooter/platformer (I especially like the dynamic cover system with no actual cover snapping), though it's extremely easy even on "hard" difficulty, there are tons of aborted game mechanics like the hunting stuff (which even has specially-devoted skills, but does absolutely nothing), and it has probably some of the most unnecessary and infuriating QTEs I have ever seen in a game since Resident Evil 4. One of the few games I've played in a while that seems to do everything wrong yet since it has good core mechanics and controls, it still remains fun.

At one point I just switched my mind off and played it like I would play the older games. My enjoyment levels increased significantly. But yeah, it's an enjoyable game, but certainly nothing special. Also, inb4 Metro.

 

[spekkio]

Finished Tomb Raider - Legend

What's good:
- Combat model (second weapon, melee attacks, grenades, only 3 medkits); a bit random, but mostly satisfactory.
- Engine: zero crashes, constant framerate.
- Grapple hook. Too bad that you can only attach to objects strictly chosen by authors. And you can get yourself killed easily if you touch ANY ground while using the hook to traverse long distances (jump+grapple). Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time did it much better. In 1998.

What's bad:
- Game- and level- design. Levels are very small and extremely linear - the backtracking that the previous games were known for was removed, at the cost of... almost everything else. It's no longer about free exploration, finding many blocked paths (doors, puzzles) in a huge area and dealing with them. Instead, we got a strictly linear experience known from new Prince of Persia games: "follow a linear route through a level, while doing acrobatic shit and killing enemies".
- Savepoint system. In Tomb Raider game. What the flying fuck?! Enjoy climbing a high wall from the bottom, after falling down in 9/10 of its height. Or repeating some stupid puzzle from the beginning, because you got insta-killed by one of its elements.
- QTEs. In Tomb Raider game. Get the fuck out with this shit, morons. "But BRO! It makes the FMVs more dynamic!"



- Camera-oriented controls. What the fuck? Didn't they learn anything from the faggots who made Soul Reaver - Defiance? Oh, wait - these are the same guys...
Camera is the single most frequent cause of death in the game. Nothing beats getting killed just because you forgot to reposition the camera during a long sequence of jumps...
- Controls are unresponsive at times (changing targets in combat).
- Sometimes you can't reach a clearly reachable areas, just because authors made them so. Enjoy replaying a segment after a missed jump.
- Minigames (bike!) are stupid and way too random. Just click directional buttons and pray for the best.
- Animals are much harder than armed humans: more HP and can knock Lara down with ease. Gothic 3 says hello.
- Boss-fights are uninteresting: find a single pattern (don't worry, there's only one) and keep repeating it over and over.
- No "quick-run" ability, which makes traversing some areas (Mansion) a chore,
- No "interact" icon for "use" and "grapple" (except when the target is out of screen). Can be considered incline (no hand-holding) but actually is decline / shitty game design - enjoy getting stuck, because you missed some grapable ledge / object you can interact with.
- There's too much chatter between Lara and her sidekicks. Just STFO and let me concentrate on the game, not you stupid plot-related babble,
- Some puzzles are quite illogical / hard to figure out / badly done - enjoy trying everything on everything in 3d environment,
- Mission progression lacks any depth - the entire game consists of some random sceneries badly put together. In previous games there were at least some FMVs showing Lara moving from place to place...
- Lara's boobs are too big. I mean, seriously. There's a difference between looking sexy and looking retarded.
- Horrible final level (plenty of hard jumps with scarce save points), followed by one of the most retarded, random and infuriating final boss battles in the history (the boss can use a stun attack 3 times in a row, often throwing you off the cliff, while you can do nothing).

Initially I was planning to give the game a 3/5 score, but after completing the horribad final segment, I've decided to lower the score.
The authors should receive a special kick in the balls ovaries for including 30 different outfits for Lara, yet doing nothing about the most glaring gameplay flaws. It's like the game wasn't playtested at all...
Whoever called this game a "successful re-imagination of dated Tomb Raider formula" was fucking moron.

tl;dr

 

[G.O.D]

Recently got King of Dragon Pass, a.k.a random event simulator. Love it though, and am completely hooked.

 

[kingcomrade]

Finished Dishonored with low chaos. Going to play it through again for high chaos, because the game is fun.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Carmageddon 2. This game is making me sick, but it's pulling me in.

 

[Gurkog]

Started playing Borderlands 2 and can tell they are trying too hard. Way too much retarded Handsome Jack commentary, and the plot... the first one didn't have a plot, but they felt damn sure the second needed a shitty one. A lot of the starting area feels like excess environmental filler to make areas feel more "epic" than fyrestone. It is a loot whore game... just let me get my shootbang on, and leave stories for real rpgs!

 

[Minttunator]

Spent a bunch of time over the holidays on Temple of Elemental Evil. I hadn't played it before but I have played a bunch of pen-and-paper D&D so it's really nice to see a fairly faithful turn-based adaptation of the rules instead of the more usual RTwP fare. I even got to remake some cheesy builds that me and my friends played back in the day (the fighter with a reach weapon and Improved Trip, etc). Good times!

 

[sea]

Finished Tomb Raider - Legend

Nice review. To be fair, Legend was Crystal Dynamics' first Tomb Raider I believe. Their remake of the original, Anniversary, is very good and faithful to the original, and definitely worth playing. The one they did after that, Underworld, also is a lot better than Legend from what I played of both. I need to get back and finish all those some day...

 

[spekkio]

^
Thanks, I liked it enough to give the sequels a chance.

 

[sea]

lol no

Eh, as far as remakes go it seems pretty solid. Not too much seems to have been dumbed down as far as level design goes. Biggest change is in the combat and controls. But then it's been forever since I played the original Tomb Raider. Sure, the controls make it a bit easier, but then, Tomb Raider also had really shit controls for years and years.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Anniversary is very faithful to the original. Underworld continues in the same exploration/puzzle-based vein, with only minimal combat. Legend basically does half and half, the puzzles and the exploration are simple at best, and they go all-out Uncharted in the 2013 reboot.

 

[Zed]

I enjoyed the latest Tomb Raider, and I agree with sea's review. I went full popamoler and played it with a 360 controller. I found plenty of faults but I had fun and it kept me playing. Not that it's very important, but the graphics (fidelity in combination with art) is the best I've seen.

I'm still playing Bravely Default and Zelda: A Link Between Worlds on the 3DS, and Hearthstone on PC. It's all I've been playing over the holidays. Next up is Heroine's Quest.

I was hoping 2013 would be super awesome in PC gaming but everything got post-poned and now I'm sitting here writing about playing games on consoles (or with controls).

 

[Frozen]

Started Kingdoms of Amalur...its nice and shiny and with far more rpg-ish elements then I expected...but my expectations were really low.
Started Castlevania Lords of Shadow...got killed in tutorial on normal...I don't own a controller...uninstall coming up.
A little bit of Skyrim vanilla.Nice to have a rig that can max it out but it gets boring quickly like all TES games.
Mostly playing Risk Online on Pogo.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

got killed in tutorial

 

[Ninjerk]

 

[LundB]

got killed in tutorial on normal...uninstall coming up.

Behold the modern gamer.

Though to be fair, as is the case with most hack and slash action games, you probably shouldn't have clicked install to begin with without a controller. Trying to use a mouse and keyboard for them is like using a controller for an FPS.

 

[RK47]

It's not Dark Souls ffs.
It's playable.
And finishable with kb/m
Fuck man, we both beat Binary Domain with KB&M
This is chicken shit.

 

[J_C]

Fuck man, we both beat Binary Domain with KB&M

No shit, BD is a shooter. :D

 

[LundB]

Binary Domain is a shooter, that's fine to play with kb+m.

Sure games like Castlevania:LOS, DMC3/4, Nigga Gaiden, and whatnot might be finishable with kb+m (just like an FPS is finishable with a controller), but you won't be playing half as well, and the game won't be half as good.

Edit: Also, the original (non special edition) version of DMC3 was harder than Dark Souls ever will be.

 

[RK47]

who am i to deny the console masters gamers' claims.

 

[praetor]

recently finished Metro: Last Light. liked it less than 2033 because it's much more obviously linear. even the open, outside areas have linear paths because of the swamps. and imho it just doesn't have some of the awesomely atmospheric set pieces (like D6 in 2033 or entering that huge last Metro station before D6), the new attachment system means early-weapons (kalash) become end-game gear by mid-game, it had waaaay too many levels with little to no combat and the end-fight was so disappointingly small in scope i lol'd. the only thing it managed to do better than 2033 is how "alive" and "real" feel the metro stations where humans actually live. overall, a pretty big disappointment 2/5

 

[Frozen]

got killed in tutorial on normal...uninstall coming up.

Behold the modern gamer.

Though to be fair, as is the case with most hack and slash action games, you probably shouldn't have clicked install to begin with without a controller. Trying to use a mouse and keyboard for them is like using a controller for an FPS.

Modern gamer has a controller because he has a console not a PC.
Slicing through enormous regenerative health bar in repetitive rounds is not my idea of fun.
The time giant wolf-boss-whatever jump up on a platform and all of his health magically got restored for another round of boring the same is the time I realized I was playing the wrong game.
At least the game was kind enough to inform me of this really early on.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Already finished Thief: The Dark Project (or should say - Gold) with that fancy patch, game work marvelous on Win7 64bit and Vista (sending save files between machines with dropbox in case of voyage).
Like every freshman you need to meet with paranormal stuff, which you can hate or live with it.
Loot overall: 26580, finished game in 17h 32min. Last three missions went fast.
Favourite missions? Thieves Guild (friggin maze) and Lost City (atmosphere of lonesome is strong despite the critters and dragon fire balls).

Now it's time for Thief: Metal Age that was abandoned about two years ago, in the mission with capturing some VIP mechanist on island (or actually return to Lost City).
Well, there is two thing - I lost myself. And I lost the unconcious body of mentioned mechanist doh.

Meanwhile - World of Xeen 2 demo from M&M thread (thx Luzur) and it's really cool despite language barrier.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

... I don't believe this. I just... can't fathom the level of stupidity needed for this kind of shit.

2 games I've played in recent months have been outright hostile to me. Reason? They won't let me re-define the controls to my tastes. When it comes to using a keyboard+mouse, I'm left-handed. I use the numeric pad, not WASD. But when it comes to re-defining the keys for these two games, I'm not allowed to use the Enter key, for example. No biggie, you would think, except... both games RESET my keybindings as I started the game. Forward was assigned to Keypad 8, suddenly it was back to "W" when I started the game... and now the game wouldn't let me change it back. As far as these two titles are concerned, it's WASD or die in a fire.

Fortunately for me, I didn't put down money on either title, but they've been gifted to me through the Begstravaganza thread. Unfortunately for the ones who gave them to me, they're as good as wasted as I can't get ANYWHERE in the games like this.

Oh, and the games? Dead Space and Mirror's Edge. What do they have in common? They're both EA games. The last EA game I played before these two was American McGee's Alice. Now EA has assured that I will NEVER attempt to play any of their games again, let alone buy them.

Fuck you, EA. Fuck you.