What game are you wasting time on?

[iqzulk]

Betrayal at Krondor. 1st act, OCDing the map (~1/2 done, not including locations the game doesn't let me in yet). Sorry, guys, but the exploratory part in this game is just Fucking Boring.

Enough for today.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Betrayal at Krondor. 1st act, OCDing the map (~1/2 done, not including locations the game doesn't let me in yet). Sorry, guys, but the exploratory part in this game is just Fucking Boring.

Enough for today.

In what way?
Though I do remember very little of import in the places in the first chapter. The Moredhel chests were interesting though.

 

[Blonsky]

Galaxy on fire 2
Its like Freelancer but it dosent take itself to seriously. Finished the story without getting the "Mantis" ship, only thing left now is to find the locations to undiscovered systems. Fun game but short.

Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale
Its DnD Diablo if diablo had only 3 maps. Took me 6 hours to finish it, terrible combat, third chapter is to easy, final battle is a qte event.

 

[Baron Dupek]

EDIT:

second is Combat Extended for JA: Bitch in Action.

Got interested so i googled it, did you mean Combat Evolved?

Yeah, that one. There is also Realistic Rebalancing Mod, also improve the game to "playable" stage.
But I will play these mods with JA: Crossfire.

 

[iqzulk]

In what way?

Let's see.
It's ugly: I don't have anything against yer olde graphics, quite the opposite, but it's simply an unintelligible mess very much comparable to the voxel (Amiga/DOS) version of Robinson's Requiem (which, by the way, totally had more visual variety than this game has so far; even the forest here looks exactly like every other location ever).
It's visually repetitive: GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-BROWN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREY-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-BROWN-GREY-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-BROWN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN-GREEN.
It's janky and frustrating: the auto-turning-on-collision thing is constantly driving me absolutely bonkers; the FOV is horrendous and the ingame world gets cropped at something like 1.5/2 meters from the party, so it's like I'm looking at the ingame world through the spyglass. In some instances I can't even see where I'm going due to combination of all these factors. Like, where does this hill (vague low-poly green shape in front of another low-poly green shape) end? Can I traverse here without the collision? I think I do. Nope, I got auto-turned. Sonuava... The whole aspect is so bad that I spend at least half of the time in the minimap mode (which could totally allow me to zoom out a bit more, than it does now) - and I would spend much more if not for the fact that it doesn't show some crucial information and it doesn't allow direct access to some of the crucial ingame options (such as spells) from this mode. Also, the secrets which actually do require you to be in map mode in order to see them (traverseable hills), do not help with convicing me to use the actual ingame graphics for navigation at all.
It's way too lax: Too much absolutely useless space. And don't start with the "realism" thing: not with the villages consisting of 2.5 houses and not with me happily roaming the location with everybody dead.
It's predictable: The whole thing splits into several self-containted patterns that don't have anything to do one with each other. Oh, wow, another chest (two types). Oh wow, another trap. Oh wow, another 2/3/5 assassins/trolls/goblins. Oh wow, another cemetery (maybe with - oh, wow - a ghost "SUDDENLY" appearing from the grave). Oh wow, another house with an NPC who will either give you a rant (not currently connected to anything else in the game), a simplistic quest (not currently connected to anything else in the game) or just something nice - and will then shut up for good. The whole "unique instances" aspect is, first, spread WAY TOO THINLY across the map - and, second, those instances are way too self-contained. Maybe some of them (like that poisoned well near Northwarden or that Orno the Pale and the plague thing) will be reused and developed in the later chapters and somehow woven into the main narrative, but as of right now, I'm simply not seeing it.
It's methodical and boring: The main meat of the exploration is chests (of both types) and mounds. And the method for finding them is just by spamming Sense Vessel (ideally covering the whole ingame world that way with the repeated uses). You'll miss the graveyards and some other things like animals and bushes that way, but they don't generally have anything all that useful or expensive - and they are much easier to spot from the main mode. It's like that X-Ray stuff from SuperMetroid all over again.
It's not exciting: The treasure/loot aspect is uniteresting due to very little treasure/loot variety and due to extremely casual nature of the game, both in terms of tactical requirements imposed by combat (thus far), and overabundance of resources and money. Simply speaking, it's Yet Another Chest which you find in Yet Another Green Something To The Side Of The Road, and which contains Yet Another Ruby. Or maybe a worthless Mord-whatstheirname note (I only got a single really useful one - something about a big stakeout in such and such town close to Krondor - out of seven I've found thus far). Or maybe some worthless (because I already have two dragon swords) sword with some measly buff, which I will take regardless just to sell. Or maybe a magic scroll - scratch that, scrolls are good, gimme-gimme.

Also, the riddle chests kinda do not work for me. I am not a native English speaker - and while I don't have any problems with the actual ingame text, it shows tremendously in these riddles specifically. Like, at least 1/3 of them I would never, ever be able to guess, because it just so happens that I am not aware of the corresponding cultural context or simply do not know the needed word. So, while I always try to guess the answer first fair and square, in case I don't succeed, I just google it. In some cases it turns out that I could totally solve it by myself, and in some cases, the only reaction from me is "What. The. Fuck." The major reason for me googling it in the end is that I simply don't want to bother with backtracking to those chests ever, both due to all the aforementioned exploratory issues with the game, and due to the map systems in this game being completely unfit for that kind of backtracking, along with the lack of distinctive visual reference points that would allow me to make a comprehensible descriptive pen-and-paper note about it. It's would simply be too much of a bother - and in 90% of cases, there isn't anything particularly interesting or unique in the chest anyway. Aaaaand this whole riddle chest stuff is just gimmicky.

Also2, the skill/"leveling" system in this game is exploitable to no end. And that's not a compliment.

Oh, and about the things I really liked - well, the dungeons (have seen two thus far) are flat and very simplistic, but they do kinda work due to lots of combat and lots of loot and lots of passages. And I really liked the ingame implementation of stealth mechanics.

 

[Jasede]

Furcadia

 

[octavius]

Betrayal at Krondor. 1st act, OCDing the map (~1/2 done, not including locations the game doesn't let me in yet). Sorry, guys, but the exploratory part in this game is just Fucking Boring.

Enough for today.

Why not try to role play it instead of OCDing it? If you explore everything in Act 1, the later acts will only be more boring and too easy.

 

[His Majesty]

The Secret World

 

[DraQ]

I haven't got cataclysm. I know it's supposed to have the superior campaign, but I never got around to purchasing it and I couldn't find a place to not remove it from an inventory.

The campaign is arguably more diverse, but that's about that, overall it's an inferior game to HW1.

-energy cannons (an upgrade to standard railguns) fire homing plasma balls which demolishes delicate RPS balance between capships, anti-strike craft platforms and strike craft
-support units mechanics enforces pretty restricted fleet size which combined with the above makes you build only a small handful of biggest, baddest shit by the endgame
-game lacks strong workhorse unit classes, most units are curios built for very specific purposes that don't quite cover most of what you'd like your fleet to do, including typical tasks - instead you feel like trying to wage a war using exclusively Hobart's Funnies
-campaign is effectively a stale Borg rip-off
-there is a strong feeling of Mary Sueness in the campaign
-you're jumping around pretty haphazardly during campaign, there is no feeling of journey or spatial progression, unlike HW1
-some retard thought it would be better if space backgrounds were animated, FFFFFUUUUUUUUU-
-art direction is inferior to HW1
-I never managed to get it to run on modern system for a replay

+upgrade mechanics (smaller ships need to dock for researched upgrades to be applied)
+mothership and carriers can be expanded with external modules
+you can put humongous siege cannon on your mothership
+missions are diverse and stuff happens in them
+some upgrades are visible, including tiny repair bots crawling around capships' hulls and welding shit

Anyway, finally finished Deus Ex (for the first time). Felt good to finish an old school classic (I can hardly find time for those). I'm not saying the game is among my favourites, because the gunplay and inventory management was quite shitty IMO, but the level desing, the story, and the many ways the game can be played made up for that few problems. I chose the Helios ending, because that was the only one which was acceptable to me. I didn't want to swap Majestic 12 to the Illuminati, neither send back the warld into the dark ages. How could I visit the Codex in that world?

 

[Jasede]

The Helios ending is the only ending monocled gentlemen pick.

 

[nil]

The Helios ending is the only ending monocled gentlemen pick.

Nah.

 

[Serious_Business]

The Helios ending is the only ending monocled gentlemen pick.

That ending definitively was the "best one" - it ringed true to the title as a Deus Ex machina, something that made a reconciliation of the different contradictions that the plot tried to show... this is interesting because deus ex machinas are usually the sign of poor storytelling where nuance and the problems of a conflict are subsumed into a "feel good" kind of conclusion, but in DX it somehow worked. And not because the Helios ending was ambiguous - it really wasn't, it was in no way supposed to ring a "this might be a bad idea" bell, it was totally a "this is the best possible solution for humanity" kind of ending which made the other two options utterly superfluous and nonsensical. At least this is what I see in the writing ; the point of the Helios ending was that instead of getting a mechanised, cold, inhumane world ruled by a machine, we would get a man-machine-God who could be empathic enough to rule the world with eternal efficiency and humanistic virtue. It just pulled every science fiction and religious strings it could and made it possible ; there was no big ambiguities about transhumanism or different factions competing for power, it was just the best solution for everybody except Bob Page.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

I haven't got cataclysm. I know it's supposed to have the superior campaign, but I never got around to purchasing it and I couldn't find a place to not remove it from an inventory.

The campaign is arguably more diverse, but that's about that, overall it's an inferior game to HW1.

-energy cannons (an upgrade to standard railguns) fire homing plasma balls which demolishes delicate RPS balance between capships, anti-strike craft platforms and strike craft
-support units mechanics enforces pretty restricted fleet size which combined with the above makes you build only a small handful of biggest, baddest shit by the endgame
-game lacks strong workhorse unit classes, most units are curios built for very specific purposes that don't quite cover most of what you'd like your fleet to do, including typical tasks - instead you feel like trying to wage a war using exclusively Hobart's Funnies
-campaign is effectively a stale Borg rip-off
-there is a strong feeling of Mary Sueness in the campaign
-you're jumping around pretty haphazardly during campaign, there is no feeling of journey or spatial progression, unlike HW1
-some retard thought it would be better if space backgrounds were animated, FFFFFUUUUUUUUU-
-art direction is inferior to HW1
-I never managed to get it to run on modern system for a replay

+upgrade mechanics (smaller ships need to dock for researched upgrades to be applied)
+mothership and carriers can be expanded with external modules
+you can put humongous siege cannon on your mothership
+missions are diverse and stuff happens in them
+some upgrades are visible, including tiny repair bots crawling around capships' hulls and welding shit

"it's coming through the hull! it's coming through the hull!"

you can't deny cataclysm's sound effects were a huge, disturbing, plus.

 

[Dayyālu]

The campaign is arguably more diverse, but that's about that, overall it's an inferior game to HW1.

-energy cannons (an upgrade to standard railguns) fire homing plasma balls which demolishes delicate RPS balance between capships, anti-strike craft platforms and strike craft
-support units mechanics enforces pretty restricted fleet size which combined with the above makes you build only a small handful of biggest, baddest shit by the endgame
-some retard thought it would be better if space backgrounds were animated, FFFFFUUUUUUUUU-
-I never managed to get it to run on modern system for a replay

Agreed. Cata tried to address some perceived problems of HW unit balance, failing somewhat.

-game lacks strong workhorse unit classes, most units are curios built for very specific purposes that don't quite cover most of what you'd like your fleet to do, including typical tasks

Workhorse unit classes were there, and the problem was that they were too effective. Acolytes and "big stuff" were everything you really needed. Acolytes were amazingly flexible - fighters, corvettes, one-shot bombers, disabling units. Ram frigates? Drone frigates? Infiltrator drones? Awesome concepts, but to do what?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobart's_Funnies

-campaign is effectively a stale Borg rip-off
-there is a strong feeling of Mary Sueness in the campaign
-you're jumping around pretty haphazardly during campaign, there is no feeling of journey or spatial progression, unlike HW1
-art direction is inferior to HW1

To this I somewhat disagree. Cata campaign is quite weaker than HW original (gifted with "correct" ratio of "showing stuff without getting too retarded"). The Beast is the Blob in space, but overall Cata feels like an expansion in a different time: if the Exiles journey was a time of unity, Cataclysm is in an age of political confusion, uncertain alliances. It nailed the feel "we won, and now what?".
About the Mary Sueness, compared to HW2 and most other space opera the poor clan of miners and engineers is quite well written. For a time, not the elite clan of ruthless warriors, not the secret elite agents, not the Chosen Saviours of the Galaxy. Just a bunch of random people, miners and engineers, that get shit done. A change, at least. Plus the fluff writing was kind of good, and coherent with HW 1 (compare with HW 2 again: NOW YOU HAVE THE HOLY HYPERSPESS DRIVAH YOU CAN UNLOCK THE HOLY SUPAH GODSHIP).
Art and cutscenes direction is fairly inferior. The first in-game cinematic is cringeworthy, in particular.

Cataclysm is a worthy expansion. Still better than HW2 in any way..

 

[DraQ]

The Helios ending is the only ending monocled gentlemen pick.

Well, it is the only one not retracing the steps that put the world where it was in the first place.

That ending definitively was the "best one" - it ringed true to the title as a Deus Ex machina, something that made a reconciliation of the different contradictions that the plot tried to show... this is interesting because deus ex machinas are usually the sign of poor storytelling where nuance and the problems of a conflict are subsumed into a "feel good" kind of conclusion, but in DX it somehow worked.

Largely because it was *you* who effectively was the deus ex machina.
Also because it was a deus ex machina in delightfully literal sense, which felt subversive.

it was in no way supposed to ring a "this might be a bad idea" bell

TBH none of the endings feels like a genuinely bad idea. All are improvements over status quo.

I also didn't feel like any of them was superfluous or nonsensical. All have upsides and all require sacrifices, although some more physical than the other. Ultimately the choice depends on your value system and how idealistic or cynical you are and that's part of what makes DX such a great game - it poses an actual dilemma (trilemma, actually) that you're forced to adress.

• Blow shit up? There will be *MASSIVE* loss of life and turmoil, but it and only it gives mankind another shot at freedom. Will it work out? Can it work out? Well, your outlook depends on how jaded and cynical are you. The history of mankind has mostly been about power coalescing out of anarchy and into the hands of rising tyrants/figures of power, with increasingly developed control and repression apparatus - are you idealistic enough to still be an anarchist? We've been there, can it turn out any different? After all, it's not exactly how it's been - most of the tech is still there already so is the knowledge of past mistakes, but can it make any difference? Also, it has good chance of being protagonist's suicide.
  
• Turn the power over back to Illuminati? It's the most conservative ending. It preserves all the good parts of the status quo, causes least possible turmoil, unfortunately it also pretty much preserves the corrupt decision making apparatus and leaves decision in hands of few with their own agendas. This is exactly where we've been before, not counting knowledge of past mistakes part. The main questions are: how much is status quo worth exactly, what are the chances of it going back down the shitter, and how disgusted are you with shadow governments at this point?
  
• Merge? Well, you effectively throw ALL privacy and most of freedom EVER out of the window. The question is whether having your freedom and privacy nullified by a physical god who might be smart and precise enough to never actually let you experience that, rather than other human beings makes it any different? Another question is how much can you trust yourself (and Helios)? You are effectively pooling all the power and intelligence/computational power to use it to maximum effect in one tyrant's hands. Posthuman tyrant, at that, something that has never been tried before and you have no way of knowing how it will work out (well, at least you aren't retracing the steps towards the catastrophe). Note that there will still be considerable turmoil because you effectively turn the world upside down. This choice may or may not be effectively a suicide for you.

The Helios ending is the only ending monocled gentlemen pick.

Nah.

No, that's System Shock 2's ending.

you can't deny cataclysm's sound effects were a huge, disturbing, plus.

Not over HW1, with it's minimalistic, near-emotionless VOs.

Agreed. Cata tried to address some perceived problems of HW unit balance, failing somewhat.

On all possible fronts, actually.

Workhorse unit classes were there, and the problem was that they were too effective. Acolytes and "big stuff" were everything you really needed.

That's the problem here. You had fighters, supercaps and nothing in between.
ACVs weren't exactly true corvettes, and there were no proper, non-gimmicky frigates in game.
Before late game addition of supercaps you were stuck between single type of fighters and gimmickry.

Acolytes were amazingly flexible - fighters, corvettes, one-shot bombers, disabling units.

And that's another problem. Those few classes that did count as workhorse craft, did everything.
And then destroyers and dreadnaughts effectively supplanted everything, because with energy cannons AND missile bays they were strong enough to operate alone or just behind sentinel screens. Dreadnaughts also had repulsor upgrade allowing them to trololo everything they couldn't rape outright.

Ram frigates? Drone frigates? Infiltrator drones? Awesome concepts, but to do what?

To do their narrowly specific stuff.
They would be awesome additions to normal ships, but there are no normal frigs (nor 'vettes) in Cata, and by the time they could actually supplement your destroyer and dreadnaught workhorses you are too busy scrounging up SUs to waste them on weird supporting units.

BTW: I also liked MB frigate (also in terms of tech description), but I'd make it more limited (warm up period would be logical) and more special purpose unit, rather than GP anti-fighter AND armor puncher. Armor punching should be left to ordinary ion frigs.

To this I somewhat disagree. Cata campaign is quite weaker than HW original (gifted with "correct" ratio of "showing stuff without getting too retarded"). The Beast is the Blob in space, but overall Cata feels like an expansion in a different time: if the Exiles journey was a time of unity, Cataclysm is in an age of political confusion, uncertain alliances. It nailed the feel "we won, and now what?".

That's true, but it lacks cohesion making it far less memorable. I can still list all the missions in HW1 in chronological order from memory. I can't do this with Cata because there's too much disordered derping around in it and no logical spatial progression.

About the Mary Sueness, compared to HW2 and most other space opera the poor clan of miners and engineers is quite well written. For a time, not the elite clan of ruthless warriors, not the secret elite agents, not the Chosen Saviours of the Galaxy. Just a bunch of random people, miners and engineers, that get shit done. A change, at least.

It still has space miners outbadass everyone because fuck yeah and shit.

Plus the fluff writing was kind of good, and coherent with HW 1

Yes.

Art and cutscenes direction is fairly inferior. The first in-game cinematic is cringeworthy, in particular.

I didn't mind cutscenes (although they lacked subtlety and taste compared to HW1), but unit design is inferior (they are either rectangular bricks or streamlined blobs).
And then there are those animated nebulae...

Still better than HW2 in any way..

Not any.
Sure pretty much anything plot or lore related in HW2 is a plothole and retcon riddled abomination and an insult to the HW as a whole, while autoending and difficulty scaling seriously cripple SP gameplay, but other than lack of separate formation management HW2 is actually much stronger mechanically and in terms of unit selection, it also has far superior art direction (derpy space flames notwithstanding).

I would actually come if someone made proper sequel or remake of HW1 using (mostly) HW2 assets in HW2 engine.

 

[spekkio]

I never managed to get it to run on modern system for a replay.

Which OS are we talking about? AFAIK it should work fine:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...rld-running-on-a-widescreen-resolution.36682/

Tested on my goodold XP SP3 32bit and:

1) Direct3d 1024x768

2) Opengl 800x600

3) Opengl 1280x960 (registry modification)

 

[DraQ]

Which OS are we talking about? AFAIK it should work fine:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...rld-running-on-a-widescreen-resolution.36682/

It's not about running it in widescreen, but running it *AT ALL*.

It crashes the moment it attempts to go from menu to actually rendering an in-game scene IIRC.
Currently I'm running Win7 x64, but it's been this way back in XP as well.

No such problems with HW1.

 

[spekkio]

^
I assume you actually read this thread?
The game crashes on ALL 3 renderers? Software as well? Even after applying NT40 compatibility mode and .exe switches?

 

[DraQ]

^
I assume you actually read this thread?
The game crashes on ALL 3 renderers? Software as well? Even after applying NT40 compatibility mode and .exe switches?

What exe switches? And yeah, it reset to 640x480x16bpp sw on failing to use d3d renderer and still crashes this way even using NT4.0 compatibility. At best I can hear split second of menu theme after splash anims before crash.

 

[spekkio]

switches

If you have a flickering menu screen type in /triple for Homeworld or -triple for Cataclysm in the respective games shortcut. For Homeworld my one looks like this: C:\Sierra\Homeworld\homeworld.exe /heap 1073741824 /triple /disableavi

But if your game crashes even before the menu, it won't help. Maybe the (assumed) crack doesn't like the 64-bit environment?

 

[DalekFlay]

Nothing.

Seriously I haven't played a video game in 2 months or longer, other than maybe a brief try-out. Mostly been watching sci-fi films and Star Trek blu rays (the TNG remasters are amazing).

Hoping some of the incline coming this year will snap me out of it.

 

[sea]

This weekend I finished two games.

First one was Bit.Trip Runner 2. Very solid rhythm/platform game that expands on the ideas of the first one in some pretty cool ways. The difficulty level is a lot more balanced and I like how the developers chose to make the challenge level user-selectable both in terms of adding "difficulty levels" as well as adding optional objectives, multiple paths, etc. This is very smart design. Going back to some earlier levels, it's amazing how much I have improved over the course of the game too - very satisfying. Great visual style and music, and I love Charles Martinet as the narrator.

I'm not entirely without a few small complaints, though. For one, the game basically becomes unplayable with v-sync off due to screen tearing, yet with it on there is noticeable input lag which unfortunately can get in the way of some more difficult challenges. Two, at times the art direction is a bit lacking in that it does not provide sufficient contrast or colour differentiation between background and foreground or different enemy types. Three, the jump pads that fling you into the air in some levels simply do not always send you on the "right" trajectory, leading to some exceptionally frustrating sequences where you end up missing collectibles or smashing into enemies. You can play the same sequence ten times and only complete it once through no real fault of your own, which is really annoying.

I also finished up The Testament of Sherlock Holmes. I have more mixed thoughts on this one. As an adventure/puzzle game, its challenges are fairly enjoyable and logical, without too much pointless backtracking and counter-intuitive crap. The characters and dialogue are also well done and really feel quite authentic to the classic Sherlock Holmes stories, and the voice acting is mostly quite good, with a couple of exceptions. Likewise, the visuals are pretty good for a game by a small studio, with some great period-correct locations, nice atmosphere, and lots of tiny little details to inspect in the environments. The game's best moments are ones where you are investigating various crime scenes and deducing the order of events - sadly there are not enough of these.

However, the actual story itself descends into the realm of lunacy towards the end of the game, with some absurd twists and unexplained plot holes. The connection between events later on gets very fuzzy, and the game seems to knowingly gloss over this rather than try to fit everything together. This is a real shame because I like the first half of the game quite a bit, and it just goes off the rails and ends up doing some pretty ridiculous stuff at the end - if you're a fan of the original stories you may even consider some of it sacrilegious.

The game offers three camera/control methods: first-person, behind-the-back and point-and-click. Unfortunately, all of these suffer from terribly sluggish character movement and tank-like controls, which means no matter what perspective you pick, actually interacting with the world is not very fun. Last, the game has an over-abundance of "puzzle boxes" you need to open, which aren't just implausible in Victorian-era London, they also really do not feel like they belong in an adventure game like this; most of the game's challenges are based around these and while most are fun to tease out, several are also rather infuriating and counter-intuitive, or just pure time sinks.

Anyway, nice to finish games for a change, and at a relatively quick pace. I should see about blowing through more of my back catalog soon.

 

[Machocruz]

Finished Resident Evil 6. Not as bad as made out to be. It's a better version of Operation Raccoon City. Like 5, a lot of cheap hits because of the narrow field-of-vision. It's even worse because not only is the fov narrower, there are more aggressive and ranged enemies. Even lowly zombies can now leap at you, or crawl very fast from some shadowy corner, and the AI partner does not have your back. Plus a lot of gotcha! attacks in the form of seemingly dead people launching themselves at you when you get close or pass them. And the damn QTEs. Not an annoying amount, but completely unnecessary and a cheap way to provide "challenge."

You get your money's worth though. This is one long action game, or it felt that way. Maybe too long. Some decent set-pieces, more enemy variety than the typical modern AAA shooter, more attack and defensive options than the typical shooer. It it weren't for the pox of QTEs, the cheap shots, and a poor camera, this would be one of the better 3rd person action games this generation.

Also completed the Stasis demo. I was stuck for a while because I didn't notice a shard of glass I needed. Halting play and coming back later in the month with fresh eyes made the difference.

Nothing dramatic happened in the demo, yet the tension was thick. I was on edge, waiting for hell to break loose. Excellent work in the atmosphere, sound design, and pacing departments. Stasis could shape up to be one of the best adventure games in a long time.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Just started Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge, and holy shit is it hard. This is from a NG veteran. For those who don't know it's the remake that Team Ninja did of the game originally for Wii U, then it got ported. Seems to have gone under the radar.

 

[DraQ]

But if your game crashes even before the menu, it won't help. Maybe the (assumed) crack doesn't like the 64-bit environment?

I don't use crack for either game (preferring to just mount images so I don't have to rummage for CDs) and while I do get the flicker in HW1 main menu, it fixes itself when I flip through menus, and isn't present in the actual gameplay/in-game menus, so I CBA to force triple buffering through command line options.