What game are you wasting time on?

[Coyote]

Picked up the new Spelunky during the Christmas sale. I don't care for the music or art design, particularly the bad case of tumblr nose most of the characters are sporting, but otherwise it's great. Just made it to the secret ending for the first time, and damn, was it satisfying. Been a while since a game gave me that sense of accomplishment; even in the new Binding of Isaac, once you git gud the rebalanced item pools make it feel like you're just coasting to victory most of the time (though it's still quite fun as well).

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

damn, i miss ouugh so much...

 

[balmorar]

Rubik's Cube

 

[Grim Monk]

Finished: GUN
(Played on the Hardest Difficulty)


That theme...


It's basically a 3D Era GTA (3, VC, SA) in the West.
(If Rockstar got praised for RDR then Neversoft should get the credit for doing it 5 years earlier...)

It is a direct equivalent to GTA 3 in that the game world is rather small, nothing close to San Andreas size.
But to their credit the devs did pack a lot of "Cool Locals" into it:
Western Plains, Missouri "Mountain Country", Canyons, a Lake, Mining Camps, 2 visually distinct Towns, etc.

I read a lot of complaints about the controls but I found them fine.

Graphical it looks slightly better then San Andreas, although the latter seems to have better draw distance.

Another complaint I hear is that its short, but it took me about 15-17 hours which is on par with GTA 3.

The story was okay/mixed...
There are some great moments, but they get undercut by stupid stuff.
Still about 70% of the time it felt like being in a spaghetti western epic.

Doing side missions is pretty much required (at least on max difficulty), you need the money for upgrades.
They are story flavored and the devs tried to vary them so it's pretty tolerable.


I did note that the game is not balanced for "hardest difficulty".
Some of the boss fights are down right impossible (one hit kill) unless you glitch the system.

Also entire last endgame level is bad.
First you go through a long level where you get repeatedly ambushed and killed by enemies in 1-2 hits.
Its a total memorization game, and you have to be incredibly quick and precise.
Took me probably 20+ tries...
Also the final fight is a invincible "Puzzle Boss", first one in the game.
I admit to breaking down and looking at a walkthrough...



Still overall I enjoyed "Gun" a lot and would recommend it.
Pity Activision folded Neversoft into Infinity Ward so we will never see Gun 2...

Oh, and again: That theme...

 

[Peter]

Did a full playthrough of System Shock 2 for the first time in a while. I usually lose interest somewhere around the Ops/Recreation decks, so I'd forgotten what a nosedive the game takes afterwards, turning from a classic Looking Glass type game into a shittier version of Half-Life. Rickenbacker is a huge missed opportunity. Right around that time is also when you start swimming in ammo, items and cyber modules. The early-to-mid game is still some of the best out there though.

I'm kind of tempted to give Bioshock another go tbh, haven't played it since release. Did any of the attempts at rebalancing that game for a more survivalist feel ever come to fruition?

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

finally monster hunter on PSP clicked with me. I had to first finish Dark Souls to click with MH combat:

it is Monster Hunter 3rd for PSP precisely played on PC with PPSSPP.

Hm, what's the point of playing MH on emulators when you have no online features? That's what the game was built around, isn't it?

 

[Perkel]

Hm, what's the point of playing MH on emulators when you have no online features? That's what the game was built around, isn't it?

You can beat all those games solo and most of them have actually single player campaign that is for solo character. Multiplayer quests though are bit harder but still you can do them. You don't need other people to take on multiplayer quest or connect to some network.

Also both MHFU and 3rd have comrade system where you hire cat/cars to help you fighting so it is not like you are going 1 on 1

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

Thanks, I'll try it out

 

[Kane]

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Finished: GUN
(Played on the Hardest Difficulty)


That theme...


It's basically a 3D Era GTA (3, VC, SA) in the West.
(If Rockstar got praised for RDR then Neversoft should get the credit for doing it 5 years earlier...)

<snip>

Added it to my wishlist. I've always wanted to play another Western game since I finished RDR, maybe GUN will go some way to scratching that itch. It'll have to wait until I clear a bit more my backlog, though.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

GUN has to be amongst the smallest open worlds I ever done seen.

 

[Grim Monk]

Added it to my wishlist. I've always wanted to play another Western game since I finished RDR, maybe GUN will go some way to scratching that itch. It'll have to wait until I clear a bit more my backlog, though.

Due to not owning a console I can't make a full direct comparison to RDR.

It has short comings, so you may want to buy it on sale.
Don't know if Activision puts it on -75% sales, but copies on ebay/amazon are $4/$5.
That's a quarter of the $20 Steam price, but I'm unsure how much shipping to UK will cost...

 

[Cyberarmy]

Finished Jedi Knight and just got Katarn's lightsaber back in Jedi Knigt 2. It's sad that we are not getting such FPSs anymore ...

 

[7h30n]

I also recently replayed Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, although barely got my original CDs working on Win7 64bit. They sure don't make 'em like they used to, which brings me to the game I'm currently playing.

Unreal Gold
I picked this up on the recent GOG weekend sale. The first thing that stunned me was ofcourse the music (although I prefer A. Brandon's work on Deus Ex just a tiny bit more) and surprisingly the graphics and atmosphere. I remember I could barely run this game when it came out and it looked amazing but the looks still hold up. This game is just full of great visual design. Next came the weapons and enemy encounters. It usually boils down to couple of enemies instead of a dozen but their agility paired with almost every weapon being projectile based (with different trajectories and speeds) including the player's creates an excellent gunplay dynamic. Unfortunately weapons don't feel like they pack a punch, there's just something missing in their firing sounds and animations aren't as explosive as I would like. Level design is interesting but levels seem a lot smaller compared to Doom and secrets (if they can be called that) usually boil down to finding the right place to jump on/from with ocassional puzzle like elements which include switches and inventory items. Other than that, encounters are well designed and force you to use appropriate weapon for the right situation since the ammo is balanced just to be scarce enough. Did I mention the atmosphere of levels? It's amazing!
Currently I'm on ISV-Kran Deck 1

 

[J_C]

Playing Dungeon Keeper 2. I've played it for short times a decade ago, but I decided that I play through the campaign this time. It is a great game, top notch atmophere and nice humor.

 

[DwarvenFood]

Playing Metro 2033, feels quite satisfying.

 

[His Majesty]

Having fun with Shadow Warrior, good game so far.

 

[Grim Monk]

Having fun with Shadow Warrior, good game so far.

Remake or Original?

 

[Darth Roxor]

just chiming in to say that GUN is a very cool game

also them musix are great

maybe i should play it again

 

[Baron Dupek]

Some codexer complained that Chasm: The Rift have one dimentional level design. And damn he was right. No jumping from cliffs or else, only enormous amount of corners and corridors.
Game feels like Quake.
But taking down enemies (especially double barrel shotgun) is really satisfying. Would play whole, surely. Chopping off the arms and heards with it is neat.

 

[Gozma]

I played some Rogue Legacy. It's OK, mostly because they completely nailed the movement (these guys never did a platformer before AFAIK and the movement/jumping/double jumping/dashing all feel perfect) and they did a lot of good work making their room layouts. Not enough variety for the conceit or to make the RPG stuff pay off though.

I'd buy a Rogue Legacy 2 with a lot more time/money invested into more enemies and more variety in PCs (like having different primary weapons).

(it's not a roguelike)

 

[Sceptic]

I also recently replayed Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, although barely got my original CDs working on Win7 64bit. They sure don't make 'em like they used to, which brings me to the game I'm currently playing.

Unreal Gold
I picked this up on the recent GOG weekend sale. The first thing that stunned me was ofcourse the music (although I prefer A. Brandon's work on Deus Ex just a tiny bit more) and surprisingly the graphics and atmosphere. I remember I could barely run this game when it came out and it looked amazing but the looks still hold up. This game is just full of great visual design. Next came the weapons and enemy encounters. It usually boils down to couple of enemies instead of a dozen but their agility paired with almost every weapon being projectile based (with different trajectories and speeds) including the player's creates an excellent gunplay dynamic. Unfortunately weapons don't feel like they pack a punch, there's just something missing in their firing sounds and animations aren't as explosive as I would like. Level design is interesting but levels seem a lot smaller compared to Doom and secrets (if they can be called that) usually boil down to finding the right place to jump on/from with ocassional puzzle like elements which include switches and inventory items. Other than that, encounters are well designed and force you to use appropriate weapon for the right situation since the ammo is balanced just to be scarce enough. Did I mention the atmosphere of levels? It's amazing!

DraQ will want to see this too I think.

The only thing I don't quite agree with is level size. We remember many Doom levels as larger than they actually are, many of them are actually quite small, but they are PACKED with items, enemies, traps and secrets, so they seem larger and longer. Unreal has some very large ones (Sunspire and the citadel are my favourites). That said it's a very different approach to level design. Doom's relies on density of content, lots of enemies, lots of secrets, fast pace. Unreal's relies on heavy atmosphere, encounters are less frequent but individually more tactical due to all the elements you mention, and there's much more a sense of the level being a real place. Not that I think one is better, I love both designs and both games dearly.

Jedi Knight is awesome too. Probably the game with THE best level design I've ever played.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Finished Resident Evil HD edition yesterday. Spent most of the weekend playing it. Excellent game. Not my favourite in the series (I really like RE 4 and 5, though I haven't played 0, 2, 3 or Code Veronica), but I can see why people like it so much. The backgrounds, sound, basically everything about the game was pretty damn good. Could have been a bit longer - I finished it in 12 hours, I'm sure my first RE4 and 5 playthroughs lasted longer.

 

[Abu Antar]

I finished Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money. Intentions and vision of the DLC were good but there were too many frustrating elements for me to like it as much as the base game. I did like the companions, though.

Injustices: Gods Among Us. I beat this like 15 minutes ago. Some of the characters you play as were boring as fuck while others were really fun to use.

Last but not least, Apotheon on PS4. I really like it so far. I've beaten three bosses or I guess mini bosses. Fun exploration, cool graphical style and good music. Combat is more amusing than good, with the focus on physics.

 

[J_C]

Not my favourite in the series (I really like RE 4 and 5, though I haven't played 0, 2, 3 or Code Veronica)