What game are you wasting time on?

[Chef_Hathaway]

Yeah, if you pre-order it you get immediate access. Well worth it, imho.

And if you already have ALB, it's 25% off.

 

[MicoSelva]

I tried playing Paradise (by Benoit Sokal, the guy who made Syberia games), but I encountered a game-breaking bug around 45 minutes in. Oh well, at least I did not waste much time.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Yeah, if you pre-order it you get immediate access. Well worth it, imho.

And if you already have ALB, it's 25% off.

Dammit, there goes my plans for tonight.

 

[Cazzeris]

Recently finished: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl.

Now playing: Hard Reset Extended Edition.

 

[circ]

Now playing Fallen Enchantress. Actually having fun. Hello AoW 3. Critique? Well, the art isn't going to win any awards, although environs and interface art looks fine. Also fucking infinite monster spawns fuck off already.

EDIT: oh yeah. Well, it's kinda buggy and ctd's for apparently no reason now and then too.

EDIT2: injuries are bullshit. who came up with this shit.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

On a whim, and being slightly bored, I installed Titan Quest. I remember briefly trying it many years ago, and thought I'd have another go.

I'm still mucking about in Act I and have reached Level 9. It's alright so far, but the biggest gripe I have with this game is the UI. Your health is displayed by a tiny bar in the top-left corner, meaning you have to take your eyes off the action to keep an eye on your health. Uncool. My mastery is Warfare, and I've yet to pick a second Mastery. I was thinking Nature, except I have no allies to heal, and Defense relies too much on the shield. Storm, maybe?

 

[RK47]

Trying to finish Agarest - too much filler combat. Writing gets worse.
CK2 - Kaiser Steve, just fooling around now with 28k retinue and 60k vassal levy.
Skyrim - fancying a Requiem dunmer rerun. Two hander probably.

 

[Aeschylus]

On a whim, and being slightly bored, I installed Titan Quest. I remember briefly trying it many years ago, and thought I'd have another go.

I'm still mucking about in Act I and have reached Level 9. It's alright so far, but the biggest gripe I have with this game is the UI. Your health is displayed by a tiny bar in the top-left corner, meaning you have to take your eyes off the action to keep an eye on your health. Uncool. My mastery is Warfare, and I've yet to pick a second Mastery. I was thinking Nature, except I have no allies to heal, and Defense relies too much on the shield. Storm, maybe?

Try installing the Soulvizier mod. Makes things a lot tougher, makes the masteries more interesting, and cleans up the ui a bit. Though I guess it's pretty rough if you don't have a previous character to send items from, so maybe just install the Diablo UI mod if that is your only complaint.

If you're playing vanilla, Rogue is a good combination with melee stuff as mandrake poison is really good.

 

[MicoSelva]

I am really enjoying Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death. Much more than I should, probably.

This game is so stupid and over the top in every way (for example, you get an achievement for getting an achievement; first boss fight is 5 minutes in; etc.), that it crosses the so bad it's good border on multiple levels. The villain is great, the snarky spirit guide is great, and the gameplay is basically Golden Axe in 3D (plus some Prince of Persia style platforming), which is something I was subconsciously missing for a while.

You fight on a helipad plunging through the air

 

[groke]

Through the power of magic and friendship, I have prevailed!

Suck a dick, Athe-fags!

Now on to Spaceship Janitor Lifestyle Simulator 1990 - Caffeinated Edition:

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Through the power of magic and friendship, I have prevailed!

Suck a dick, Athe-fags!

Companions of Yellow (Xanth means "Yellow" in Latin)

Now on to Spaceship Janitor Lifestyle Simulator 1990 - Caffeinated Edition:

*twitch*

I don't know how many times I tried to complete this game. Never succeeded. Eventually I gave up sometime last year and dug up an LP of it - that boss fight looked like half the game. Weird. The manual is good reading, though.

 

[WhiteGuts]

Finished Primordia. Neat setting, although not very original. The cyberpunk post-apo world with huge -and very advanced- cities in the middle of the waste has already been done quite a bunch of times. Reminded me of Ergo Proxy.

Good writing. Logical puzzles most of the time. I liked the idea of multiple endings.The whole game is a smart metaphore of humanity, with robots feeling what humans may feel and yet always talking about how inferior they are to Man. It's a very Dickian story.

 

[Abu Antar]

Yakuza 4 and Baldur's Gate II. Doing side quests in both games, at the moment.

Also playing Tactics Ogre: let us Cling Together on PS Vita. Wish matsuno could do another game focusing on political struggles and war.

 

[Blonsky]

Trapped Dead
I dont like zombie games much but this one is not that bad. Hiding from bigger groups of zombies, taking out or running through smaller groups, organizing inventory/storage, selecting characters for missions. What sucks: grenade throwing, occasional crash, save system and placing a starting position right next to place you need to get to but you have to go all the way around the map because there is a fallen tree or a wire fence in the way.

 

[circ]

Trying out Endless Space Shit.

OMG. If you're an indie (?) studio looking to make a space 4x game do the following first: Play MoO 1.
Where to begin. Oh boy. UI? Shit. Seems to have been designed for touch screens. Good idea releasing it on PC then. Unified HUD for resources and other info? FUCK THAT GAYBOY.
Some kind of info about planetary defenses like in MoO? FUCK THAT GAYBOY.
Research something other than weapons tech because the combat is total shit? FUCK THAT GAYBOY.
Watch as your colonies get roflstomped by 20 fleets of enemy ships because you didn't research the right defense tech. AMERICA FUCK YEARRRHH.
There's cheating AI and then there's the AI in ES. How do you create death stacks in X time period with fewer colonies than your opponent? Stacks that consequently the player is unable to create because I dunno? What the fuck.
Hire an artist from somewhere else than deviantarts maybe? Or not your buddy? Whichever. There are TONS of cheapo and good artist out there working for shit just to get their work out there probably.
Don't do the sound editing yourself if you don't even understand the basics of mixing? Ok, it's just one instance when there's voice over some music, but still. Perdy jarring.
Maybe don't fill almost 4 gigabytes of a game with pointless CGI battles no one wants to see anyway. Try I dunno - gameplay?
Also maybe hire a musician who understands music maybe? It's not bad, but it seems to just have been randomly thrown in with no consideration for context and most of it isn't the least bit atmospheric nor does it mix with the background to create something coherent.

Please indies. Don't use Unity anymore either. Please please.

 

[Tytus]

Trying out Endless Space Shit.

OMG. If you're an indie (?) studio looking to make a space 4x game do the following first: Play MoO 1.
Where to begin. Oh boy. UI? Shit. Seems to have been designed for touch screens. Good idea releasing it on PC then. Unified HUD for resources and other info? FUCK THAT GAYBOY.
Some kind of info about planetary defenses like in MoO? FUCK THAT GAYBOY.
Research something other than weapons tech because the combat is total shit? FUCK THAT GAYBOY.
Watch as your colonies get roflstomped by 20 fleets of enemy ships because you didn't research the right defense tech. AMERICA FUCK YEARRRHH.
There's cheating AI and then there's the AI in ES. How do you create death stacks in X time period with fewer colonies than your opponent? Stacks that consequently the player is unable to create because I dunno? What the fuck.
Hire an artist from somewhere else than deviantarts maybe? Or not your buddy? Whichever. There are TONS of cheapo and good artist out there working for shit just to get their work out there probably.
Don't do the sound editing yourself if you don't even understand the basics of mixing? Ok, it's just one instance when there's voice over some music, but still. Perdy jarring.
Maybe don't fill almost 4 gigabytes of a game with pointless CGI battles no one wants to see anyway. Try I dunno - gameplay?
Also maybe hire a musician who understands music maybe? It's not bad, but it seems to just have been randomly thrown in with no consideration for context and most of it isn't the least bit atmospheric nor does it mix with the background to create something coherent.

Please indies. Don't use Unity anymore either. Please please.

Fuck you, the music in that game was great. While I agree with you on the rest points you made. I still listen to the music from that game today.

 

[circ]

And now playing StarDrive. Into the morning hours.

Negatives:
Not much to research and it's always the same no matter what race. Then again it's a really slow game so it takes a while to max things out.
Can't colonize asteroids. Because they don't exist. Booring.
Can't make mines on asteroids. See above.
Can't mine gas giants. Whyyy?
No moons either.
Your opponents are some kind of anomaly hunters and always end up with double your artifacts at a minimum. They can't research or finance for shit but artifact stealing? No probs.
WASD controls are the worst controls I have ever tried. No really. WORST EVAR. Thankfully you can just clickety click shit. Didn't you ever play the Nova something series?
UI is schitzophrenic. One shortcut doesn't work for a similar screen when it works for another.
UI is pretty clunky.
Graphics are a hodj podj of assets. Ships and racial portrait art are top notch. UI looks like an old Atari game.
Music doesn't get disabled when game loses focus. This is basic game programming 101 man. Endless Shit was guilty of this too and a few other recent indies - Shadowrun comes to mind. Guys. Seriously. A little effort.
Shit pirates. Wow, I don't pay your tribute so you park your piece of shit ships in my system and do nothing basically? Yeah ok.
Not. Enough. Races. Also horrible race selection UI.
There's a single universe encompassing event - hyperspace travel gets nerfed every X amount of minutes. Yawn.

Positives:
Bunch of stuff.
But seeing as how I complained about the context of the music and style of music in Endless Space, this game does it right. Understands how to loop songs, understands atmosphere.
Space combat looks awesome. It's like a 2D Homeworld with 4x stuff thrown in.

 

[Lemming42]

I'm playing Mafia and holy shit what's up with the driving. I used to rock at this game, now I'm just crashing into lampposts and pedestrians all over the place.

This playthrough marks the first time I've ever won at the race mission though. Previously I've just used the secret path cheat, but this time I managed to flip the racecar right at the start and somehow cause a pileup which took out all the other racers, so it was a smooth solo 5-lap drive to victory.

 

[octavius]

Just completed the Roland campaign of Heroes of Might&Magic 2.
Back in the days I completed both campaigns the regular way, but this time I switched sides in both campaign to make things more challenging when you don't get the Dwarf or Ogre Alliance.
I found the Roland campaign to be the easiest one to complete, using 272 days and getting a Black Dragon score. In comparison I used 433 days to complete the Archibald campaign for a measly Cyclops rating.
The Archibald campaing also had the most difficult maps - the Peasant Revolt map and the Dragon King map. Also, if you gather an army before the final fight in the Roland campaing instead of finding the Ultimate Crown, you can head straight for Archibald (by casting Summon Boat and then follow the river) without using meta knowledge, while in the Archibald campaign you need to find that Teleporter first.
So even with the Dragon Alliance and a starting with a huge army in final map of the Archibald campaign it took much longer to complete. You spend 8 weeks gathering troops on the Gauntlet map, though.

The final battle in the Roland campaign was a huge anticlimax. Archibald had a stack of Lots of Red Dragons, but they never showed up in the final battle due to him starting with 5 Black Dragons and then never bothering to upgrade his Red Tower to a Black Tower.
Very disappointing as I had been looking forward to a good fight and had not spend time accumulating as big an army as possible, but just having Roland visit as many stat increasing places as possible while his generals conquered the land. When all but Archibald had been defeated, I gave Roland my best artifacts and stacks of the top tier units (except Bone Dragons).
So in the final battle I had 16 Black Dragons, 23 Crusaders, 41 Cyclops, 19 Phoenixes and 21 Titans vs Archibald's 5 (should have been much more) Black Dragons, 57 Minotaur Kings, 73 Gargoyles, 67 Griffins and 38 Hydras. The battle lasted two rounds and I only lost 1 Crusader.

The most memorable battles were midway in the map. At one point almost my entire Castle army was obliterated by a a Warlock with Black Dragons and the Armageddon spells. So I retreated the hero and gave him my stack of Titan. With the Anti-Magic spell he got his revenge on the warlock.

I'm already looking forward to replaying the Price of Loyalty expansion. I seem recall that the Wizard's Isle campaign was brutal, and the final map of the PoL campaign was really good.

 

[Sceptic]

Through the power of magic and friendship, I have prevailed!

Only True Believer? You should be ashamed. Real men end the game as Hintbook Readers.
(which is very misleading because getting a perfect score is VERY easy in Xanth)

The final battle in the Roland campaign was a huge anticlimax. Archibald had a stack of Lots of Red Dragons, but they never showed up in the final battle due to him starting with 5 Black Dragons and then never bothering to upgrade his Red Tower to a Black Tower.

Maybe the AI bugged out on you? I remember having a much harder time against black dragons in that map, but I haven't played it in ages.

I seem recall that the Wizard's Isle campaign was brutal

It is, and IMO the final map is the most brutal in all of HOMM2.

 

[sser]

BioShock 2.

Never cared for the first game, but I decided to try the second. Uninstalled after about 30 minutes. I just do not get the hype behind those games at all.

 

[groke]

Through the power of magic and friendship, I have prevailed!

Only True Believer? You should be ashamed. Real men end the game as Hintbook Readers.
(which is very misleading because getting a perfect score is VERY easy in Xanth

Yeah, well, fuck that troll and his fucking puzzles.

I think I missed some stuff after The Gap, too, where the naga leaves you. My companion bugged out so Nada never left (I could get into the attic at the end just by climbing the ladder because the dialogue with Nada never triggered, talking to her just regurgitated the pre-Gap dialogue.)

EDIT:
Just for you, though:

can I have my pride back now?

 

[Hellraiser]

And really wish hotkey selecting a unit would center view on that unit.

Doesn't double-tapping do that?

I think Westwood only introduced that in RA2. I remember playing TS last year and it was missing a couple of usability features.

Before RA2 the shortcut for centering view on a unit group defined with ctrl+number was alt+number. It was like that since the first command conquer game.

 

[DarthBehemoth]

Nehrim, you know that total conversion for Oblivion.
I made a LP for it a few years ago, abandoned after the first chapter. Did mostly the main quest, but after playing it again, I realised the side quests are a ton of fun too, plus with my new PC I don't get the amount of lag that required me to turn off distant land in the past, and the game now looks on par with Skyrim sometimes...

 

[Abelian]

And really wish hotkey selecting a unit would center view on that unit.

Doesn't double-tapping do that?

I think Westwood only introduced that in RA2. I remember playing TS last year and it was missing a couple of usability features.

Before RA2 the shortcut for centering view on a unit group defined with ctrl+number was alt+number. It was like that since the first command conquer game.

I hate it when I find out about a gameplay feature a decade later. It's only happened a few times, the most notable of which was finding how to split a creature stack in HoMM2 (similarly, there was no UI button for that, just a key combo).