What game are you wasting time on?

[SerratedBiz]

I don't find the combat particularly good.

It doesn't -really- change anything combat-wise, but have you tried the Tactics mods for Baldur's Gate I and II? They aim to improve combat encounters by tweaking the enemy groups and their instructions. So, for example, enemy thieves tend to chug their invis potions and go for a backstab on your wizard, instead of just wailing at your front-line fighter and get butchered.

Like I said, the combat is the same but it increases the difficulty and the need to really prepare for the tougher fights. It made the game more enjoyable for me when I tried it.

 

[laclongquan]

Currently playing Baldur's Gate Reloaded, a total conversion mod allow playing BG1 in NWN2 engine.

Pro:
- Quality graphic compared to old game. Great voices, because it uses existing assets.
- Hardest difficulty drive a spike up your ass in early level. Especially level 1 and 2. The quirk of NWN2 engine with BG content is such that you can stay at low level a bit longer than you expect. Also, limit level with max lvl10 with grinding. Grinding is hard because enemies are not XP farms like old game.
- A much newer look at BG1. Forget most of what you remember about BG1. Example: Viconia is horribly dangerous to use in this game due to ECL2. Generally casters can not afford ECL at all. And probably Imoen stayed Rogue is better than multi into Wiz.

Con:
- You remember vanilla 1.0 BG1? Yeah, about the same level of bug. They patch it to patch 4 (v1.31) but there're still bugs.
- The small amateur team meaning they can not do the workload of old BG1 team. They cut off quite a bit of quests, therefore less QuestXP, one reason why the limit of level 10. It's prolly better to get as much killXP as possible before getting questXP because it stay constant. Provided that you can, of course, what with dangerous critters wandering about.
- NO potion of thievery mastery meaning you have to have a pure Rogue for disable trap duty.

 

[Perkel]

Sorry but how the hell any NWN2 game could look better than anything ?

I mean sure BG is old but its 2D prerendered backgrounds have more detail than all NWN games combined and look better. You also don't need to fuck around with camera which is problem in all nwn games.
Also controller responsivness in Bg1 obliterates that of NWN. UI is better and it doesn't have that 3rd edition shitty D&D rules that look clunky as fuck in real time game.

 

[Starwars]

It doesn't -really- change anything combat-wise, but have you tried the Tactics mods for Baldur's Gate I and II? They aim to improve combat encounters by tweaking the enemy groups and their instructions. So, for example, enemy thieves tend to chug their invis potions and go for a backstab on your wizard, instead of just wailing at your front-line fighter and get butchered.

Like I said, the combat is the same but it increases the difficulty and the need to really prepare for the tougher fights. It made the game more enjoyable for me when I tried it.

Haven't actually tried that mod, thanks for the tip. Might be good to change things up a bit!

 

[octavius]

It doesn't -really- change anything combat-wise, but have you tried the Tactics mods for Baldur's Gate I and II? They aim to improve combat encounters by tweaking the enemy groups and their instructions. So, for example, enemy thieves tend to chug their invis potions and go for a backstab on your wizard, instead of just wailing at your front-line fighter and get butchered.

Like I said, the combat is the same but it increases the difficulty and the need to really prepare for the tougher fights. It made the game more enjoyable for me when I tried it.

Haven't actually tried that mod, thanks for the tip. Might be good to change things up a bit!

Tactics is a cheesefest. You're better off with the far more polished but maybe not as "exciting" Sword Coast Stratagems.

 

[SerratedBiz]

It doesn't -really- change anything combat-wise, but have you tried the Tactics mods for Baldur's Gate I and II? They aim to improve combat encounters by tweaking the enemy groups and their instructions. So, for example, enemy thieves tend to chug their invis potions and go for a backstab on your wizard, instead of just wailing at your front-line fighter and get butchered.

Like I said, the combat is the same but it increases the difficulty and the need to really prepare for the tougher fights. It made the game more enjoyable for me when I tried it.

Haven't actually tried that mod, thanks for the tip. Might be good to change things up a bit!

Tactics is a cheesefest. You're better off with the far more polished but maybe not as "exciting" Sword Coast Stratagems.

Oops, that's what I meant. Got the names wrong. That's why I mentioned BGI too, I must've played SCS on BGTutu.

 

[laclongquan]

Did I say anything about "better". It's quality, mang~

2D is 2D and 3D is 3D. If you are tired of playing that 2D game, then change to that 3D game, is all.

 

[Baron Dupek]

What a surprise. Patch 1.75.15 turn Gothic 3 into completely different game. Smooth framerate, fast loadings. Only problem is strange mouse behavior, like your character get some quakes from time to time. Sometimes it make me scared.
Plus - there're Quest Pack, Content Mod + Consecuence. More fetch quests...
Game is also harder due AI existence. No more button mashing.
Wolfs are not killing machines anymore (even for heavly armored 40lvl character) yest still have these unavoidable attacks sometimes. I need shield ASAP (yes, you need Shied skill to use one). And deer hunting is pretty relaxing.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

What a surprise. Patch 1.75.15 turn Gothic 3 into completely different game. Smooth framerate, fast loadings. Only problem is strange mouse behavior, like your character get some quakes from time to time. Sometimes it make me scared.
Plus - there're Quest Pack, Content Mod + Consecuence.

I tried the Quest Pack a while back, because it removed the random loot in chests. However, other additions to the mod were of such low quality that I couldn't stomach playing the game with it.

 

[dryan]

Gat out of Hell and SR4 - there was a DLC I hadn't played yet: Enter the Dominatrix

 

[Jick Magger]

Completed my playthrough of New Vegas yesterday. Don't think I can really add much to what's already been said about the game, but I do have a few things to say about Lonesome Road, which I played to completion for the first time. Turns out my statements on Honest Hearts being the weakest link in the series might've been a bit premature, because this one manages to out-do it in the disappointment scale.

Guess I should start off with the things it did right. The environment reminds me alot of the opening cinematic to Fallout 1, and manages to steal a bit of that atmosphere as well. Giant crumbling skyscrapers, old, crumbling highways, destitute bunkers housing ICBM's, the whole thing oozes atmosphere. Ulysses is also a fairly compelling character through most of the DLC (though not in all respects, I'll get back to that later), who does explain fairly well the weaknesses of each of the factions you align yourself with (With I, going for a House ending, serving a 'Ghost of the Old World' who's only real goal is to maintain the status quo). If you're one of those people who actually went for an explosives character, then this is also definitely the DLC for you, since the Red Glare Rocket Launcher exists solely to justify you hording all of those missiles.

But let's move on to the issues, the first and foremost being that this is by far the most linear DLC of the entire bunch, which seeing as this entire thing is set in the bombed-out ruins of a city, was a pretty goddamn stupid move. The lack of enemy variety is also a big glaring weakness: The Marked Men have an interesting story behind them, but quickly become a monotonous chore to fight, the deathclaws are intimidating, but they're still ultimately the same deathclaws you've been fighting in the Mojave for the past sixty hours, the tunnelers had the capacity to be interesting, but their design honestly looked better suited for Old World Blues than this, and despite being hinted by Ulysses to be a grave threat, they're forgotten about pretty quickly. The whole gimmick of shooting warheads to clear barriers also gets annoying pretty quickly. It's used precisely once in a somewhat interesting way, but for the whole rest of the game it just serves to pad out the experience a minute at a time. Also, it's a good thing that Ulysses' dialogue and VA is competently done, because he's one of the only two NPCs you will interact with for the entire DLC, the other being a robot who communicates with you in beeps and boops while he tells you his cliched as fuck backstory about his master who cared about him and made him run away before he got turned to scrap metal. If you've watched A.I., you've already experienced this entire thing.

Now, let me talk about the most disappointing part of this; Ulysses' relationship with The Courier. Now, for the whole of the other DLC's, Ulysses' been this enigmatic figure, one who's always been one step ahead of you, organizing and influencing things behind the scenes, and all for the sake of eventually confronting you for reasons that are his own. This culminates with the DLC with his revelation that the entire area that you are in,'The Divide', was one a prosperous settlement, one that Ulysses believed was one of the last great hopes for the post apocalyptic, until you accidentally destroyed it when you delivered a package there which had some kind of detonator, which set off all of the ICBMs that were stored underneath the settlement. Chris Avellone's stated in interviews that he wrote Ulysses with two things in mind: to be a mouth-piece for his views on the Fallout Universe, and to be an example of an admittedly interesting concept, that being someone who you've affected unknowingly through your actions, developing as a result of those actions, and confronting you over it. C&C and all that.

Now, before I discuss this further, I want to talk about a similar thing that was done in a completely different game: No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. To sum things up; the game is about the protagonist trying to get revenge on the villain for murdering his best friend. Since the villain is ranked first in an organization of assassins, the only way the protagonist can face him is by working his way up the ranks and confronting him when he gets to the top. So after a few hours of murdering the shit out of hundreds of people, questioning his own humanity, and growing to loathe the way being an assassin dehumanizes people, he confronts the man who killed his friend...and finds out that he's just some random guy (well ok, that might be understating it a bit, since he looks like a mix between Elmur Fudd and Mickey Mouse). You then discover through exposition that he's actually the brother and son of two random NPCs that you had to kill in on of the assassination missions you could complete to grind for money in the first game. That's the feeling that I think Chris was trying to achieve here: the idea that every minor thing you do has ripples in the world that you might not even anticipate, that every random NPC that you kill without even batting an eyelid is an actual person, with family and friends who are affected by their death.

To put it bluntly, Lonesome Road fails to capture the same feeling, mainly because I never actually did any of the things Ulysses accuses me of. The Courier might of, but your standard fallout protagonist is supposed to be a cipher; someone with virtually no life beyond what the player molds them in to. When he tells me that it's my fault this happened to the divide, it feels like the game is trying to heap guilt for something I didn't do upon me. I'm assuming that it was supposed to be the point; to highlight that I'm too 'careless' in my decision-making, but honestly, it would've been alot better if he used an example of something that I actually did. It also doesn't help that absolutely everything I'm hearing about the Divide; how peaceful it was, how prosperous it was, and how it was the only hope for the wasteland, is coming from one, possibly mildly insane man who fully blames me for wrecking it. I honestly didn't even notice where the ruins of The generic city ruins ended and the ruins of The Divide began, because there's very little differentiation between the two. Give me some terminals from residents of the place, give me some charred skeletons and notes from people talking about how great this place is, give me something. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that this event is his entire motivation for killing thousands of people because gotta start again!

So basically, after 3 DLCs of anticipation, turns out Ulysses is just a crazy asshole.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Been playing New Vegas again with Vegas Bounties added. It's actually fun, but it's pretty lulzy that Lonesome Road is about a place bombed to oblibian and back and the best build for it is an Explosives guy .

 

[Ivan]

NINJA GAIDEN SIGME (PS3)

After all the hype this is a mediocore action game with biazarre-o "city" "military" "sewer" levels. The difficulty is nice but I swear the game has 4 enemy types. All in all a solid action game, but nothing close to the shit platinum puts out.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

Warhammer 40,000: Carnage

best game ever

 

[pippin]

Lonesome Road felt like a chore for me as well. At the time when I arrived into Ulysses' place I thanked the option of talking him out on everything instead of fighting.

 

[Abu Antar]

Dustforce DX, given to me by J_C when I begged for it.

I don't know if I should thank him or slap him. The game is great and I have like 25 levels left to beat. It's just that I not even close to beating some of the ones left and it is making me swear a lot. I'm not even going to try to get SS on all levels. I think I have managed that on 10 levels in total. 5-6 levels, I can't even get to because I suck so much.

 

[Jick Magger]

Decided to try something a bit different, and play the HD re-release of the Resident Evil remake for the PC. Still have my copy of the gamecube version, but my Wii's too borked for me to play it on that, and I can't be arsed fidgeting around with Dolphin to emulate it. Overall, a pretty good port, though my only primary complaint is that it crashes if you try to alt-tab. I'm playing this with an Xbox 360 controller, and while I prefer it to the KB + M setup, it's still pretty awkward using the controller's D-pad to move around, as the Xbox 360 controller's D-Pad really wasn't designed for movement. I tried out the alternate controller setup, but that just felt like setting the game to easy mode, seeing as the increase in mobility makes avoiding enemies trivially easy.

 

[spekkio]

Finished Resident Evil - Revelations

The good:

- Decent (very good by Capcom standards) PC port: graphics are nice, no glitches, mouse controls are good. But you need the latest crack version for that (September 2014), since older have micro-stuttering (weird slowdowns when turning the camera around).
- Gameplay is acceptable / good. Shooting is fun, aiming with mouse is perfect, you can strafe while aiming. Fucking revolutionary achievement for Capcom. What RE4 should've been, IMO: popamole shooter in RE universe, done right.
- Gun variety (5 different types) and customization options (parts) are nice.
- No fucking QTEs. But there are some shit "mash buttan" mechanics - see below.
- Almost no timed events, which I fucking hate. Almost! (see below).
- Most levels / missions are well designed - sometimes you survive with almost no ammo and healing items. If you fucked up, it's 99% your fault. Sign of good design and a lot of testing.
- Raid mode is p. good. I rarely bother with such modes in RE games, but I liked it here, probably due to good mechanics.
- Plenty of unlockables (weapons, parts, skins, missions, difficulties)
- DAT ASS(es).

The bad:

- The "mash buttan" mechanic is unnecessary (too primitive) and badly done (I can understand mashing "action" button, but waving the mouse around? WTF?).
- Rachel is "Nemesis done wrong": hard to kill, highly irritating, appears way too often, but defeating her gives weak prizes (parts) and no sense of achievement (whatever, she will be back in next mission).
- There are only 2 timed sections (thank God), but both of them are shit, esp. the 1st one, when you face BOTH Rachel and the big fatty midboss, of course during the final part of the mission, so you have to repeat it over and over to memorize enemy layout / spawn points. Fuck this shit.
- "Shooting gallery" sections (Chris hurting his leg, gunning down the huge monster) are meh. Who needs this shit, TBH?
- Same with the "escort some fag to safety, while using only a gun" sections. Especially the final one (Terragrigia) is BSB / irritating - see below.
- The game suffers from HUGE quality drop in final missions (4?): shooting gallery, "escort" mission with fast enemies and scarce ammo (the only mission with this problem - why the fuck did they put such shit late in game?), underwater mission without weapons but with enemies who can one-shot you (previous missions with partially flooded sections were 100 times better), boring boss battle. Too fucking bad, since early game was good / very good.

The ugly:

- Autosave system + plenty & long messages (HEY! LISTEN! this game uses autosave feature! HEY! LISTEN! The game just saved! HEY! LISTEN! Some shit just got unlocked! etc). Jebus fucking christ, it saves to a SSD drive, not a memory card of a console, speed it up niggers!
- GUI is a bit cumbersome, esp. weapon customization.
- Your partner is useless, but at least immortal (?) and has his/her own ammo, so it's not that bad. Except the final Terragrigia mission, where you have to use the pistol most of the time, Jessica is equipped with a MG and does jack shit to prevent Hunters from ripping off your balls. I mean staring at her ass is nice, but can't she actually kill something once in a while?
- Writing is initially good (Jessica hitting on Chris, nigger + geek duo), but devolves in later parts (as the rest of the game).
- The plot is usual RE nonsense, which can scare some people off (Suddenly there are two ships! What a tweest! Wait, there are three of them actually!).
- Boss battles are kinda meh: fags have plenty of HP, mostly weak attacks, but can also one-shot you, their patterns / AI are simplistic. Fighting huge mobs of regulars is more fun.
- FOV is dogshit, thank God you can increase it with Widescreen Fixer.
- Episodic character (cliffhangers, sudden interruptions, character switching) can get on some people's nerves.

tl;dr

(and a half)

Most fun I had with RE game since RE0. Looking forward to RER2, though knowing Capcom, it will most certainly be shit.

 

[Abu Antar]

Returned to Wasteland 2. Got into a fight, missed 12 90%+ to hit attacks in said fight. (Most were 95%+) Fuck that RNG.

 

[Lilura]

Tactics is a cheesefest. You're better off with the far more polished but maybe not as "exciting" Sword Coast Stratagems.

Tactics > SCS because it caused so much butthurt.

 

[Amn Nom]

Really only some Soul Sacrifice: Delta. Usually don't dig these kinds of games, but the setting and almost no hassle to jump from boss to boss has me hooked. Rocking a Neutral Arm weapon build and treating it like a Souls game, makes for some interesting boss fights against fliers. Thank god for Assassin's Wingtip.

 

[DeepOcean]

Finished Deus Ex Human revolution, I really like the art and soundtrack of this game and while the plot lost any opportunity to go anywhere half away through... for AAA video game standards... its decent. I just think the level design is very formulaic modern AAA linear level design. It is far form being something as terrible as Call of Duty but its closer to Crisis 2 and 3 than to the original Deus Ex.

The level design feels like a string of pearls, one corridor in, a somewhat large arena and a corridor out, a few times there are alternate paths but they always lead you to the same place. I hope that on the next Deus Ex game they go more for Dishonored level design, many times the places on Human Revolution are places that lack boundaries and you don't have a sense of it being a real place instead of a succession of video gamey arenas.

 

[J_C]

Just finished Beneath a Steel Sky. There were 4-5 occasions when it was all about pixel hunting and nonsensical solutions, I hated those parts, but apart from those, it is a really solid point and click adventure. It had an interesting story, nice artstyle. However, I think the music was totally out of place at some points. The game had funny moments, but overall it had taken place in a dark world, and the story was serious. Yet the music was like it is a comedy.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

About to finish Saints Row IV. Bought it the other day when Steam was basically giving it away. I didn't expect to like it this much but man is it fun and funny! I remember trying the first one years ago and man, what a steaming pile of GTA wannabe shit. Are any of the other SR games this good? I have to admit running up buildings and jumping all over the place is half the fun here so I kind of doubt it. Speaking of GTA is V leaked for PC yet? Want to play it asap but I'm always allergic to $60 price tags.

 

[J_C]

About to finish Saints Row IV. Bought it the other day when Steam was basically giving it away. I didn't expect to like it this much but man is it fun and funny! I remember trying the first one years ago and man, what a steaming pile of GTA wannabe shit. Are any of the other SR games this good? I have to admit running up buildings and jumping all over the place is half the fun here so I kind of doubt it.

The 2 Prototype games are like this. They have a more serious story, but the gameplay is similar (running up buildings, jumpint through skyscrapers, picking up cars and smashing the city up).