What game are you wasting time on?

[Blonsky]

Crookz the Big Heist
I got baited by the trailer to play it, damn you Ron Jeremy.
So real time stealth game with alot of pausing, where you have to sometimes synchronize your characters actions to finish the heists.
Your characters look like 70s goofy team but everyone in the game are to serious and very little humor besides talking funny.
Guards are basically cameras on legs (knock them out or chloroform them and 30sec later they shrug it off and return to their positions like nothing happened).

 

[Ashery]

Get into UFO Afterlight, hardest difficulty. The game kick my ass in each mission. Thankfully, game design is based around reloads, both for finding best way (not necessary good, just good enough) and to counter savescum. For example, if you mine the first choke point, but for some reason reload, the second time's enemies may not use that chokepoint, but move to high ground to snipe and bombard my troops with grenades. Fucking alchemists are bad enough with their indirect fire of grenades, but Chief are a nightmare with their rifle while my limited personels doesnt have both skill AND equipment to countersnipe them. And let's not mention Expedition's mind controller or mind rocket fired with wild abandon, either.

This is because the AI's threat awareness, or even their current behavior, isn't saved when the game's saved. This can be to the AI's benefit in the case of dynamite traps, but it's in the player's when you're trying to flee from an overwhelming encounter. And that last situation, though not necessarily your exploitation of it, will happen a *lot* on Impossible, especially on the "Kill one unit" missions. I'm currently doing a playthrough myself on I/I, and while I wanted to do it ironman, or at least semi-ironman, my current "Kill all" missions for Beastmen involve only a couple captains, alchemists, shamans, and baseline beastmen, while my latest "Kill one" mission had two chiefs, with one of them being my target, several captains, shamans, and who knows what else. I ended up retreating to my starting corner of the map and getting TPK #3 from the resulting shootout.

Really, though, the key to I/I is knowing the tech tree and beelining for certain techs, primarily the better firearms. I'm also leaning towards just flat out not bothering with the "Kill one" missions and just retaking the territory when it's lost. At least two of my three TPKs have been during those missions.

 

[laclongquan]

That is because you aim to follow mission directives. Treat them all as Kill-everyone-mission, and it simplify things. Of course, that means capture missions are the beast, but they are few.

The key thing in a battlefield is to choose your ground, so that you can engage the Impossible hostiles at maximum firepower and their lowest number. Usually each map has one or two places like that, changed depend on enemies location.

The other key is to use TNT with care and abundance. We can detonate them earlier than the 15sec timeout by grenades at their exact placement. Placed at the route of advance and we can cut down on their HP, which is important in dealing with Beastman Captains as they got Major Toughness. As of this moment I have used up 400+ TNT, possible only because of a 1000unit production line staffed with weaponsmiths. To illustrate

TNT-------Mine-------TNT

is a standard deployment with three method of detonation: 15sec timer, contact on the mine, or a few grenade concentrate on any of the 3. If it can caught two hostile, or just one Captain, it's a good catch. Survivors get finished off by at least three shooters nearby. If there's more behind, we place more TNT at the place of the shooters, and retreat further.

With the two methods, we dont need to go too deep into weapon research since that really took time.
Strategic side, have access to online database is really handy and allow us to avoid certain techs that allow production of too high spec items which require too high level resource or facilities. Probabbly the 1st thing come to mind, but really, that can be solved the good old fashioned method of reload to the farthest strategic save and choose different research. The time doesnt waste, just delay. Complex researchs are about the last priority unless it's something we really need.
A really strategy would be to only capture what you need, not what you want. Regions with no resource? We only got it because we must, not because we can. Even now I still got two, three robot/neutral sites pretty near base that I ignore since it has no resource and the aliens dont have them.
...
..
.
UFO Afterlight, like other best games, always bring out the wordy in me.

 

[Daemongar]

Last night at 1:30 am, I finally got around to finishing Mask of the Betrayer. Was everything I hoped it would be, but a little shine is taken off the apple if you finished Neverwinter Nights 2 about 7 or so years before finishing MOTB. To be honest, I didn't remember more than 20% of the references to NWN2, although I did like Bishop a lot in that game. Shame about his... condition... that was really horrible, but he wasn't voiced by the same actor, so it lessened the blow.

I heard about a certain conversation contained in the game, and was shocked when it happened. I'd assumed it would be the end of the game, not when it happened. Fortunately, I got to play through it twice, as I was immediately stunned then murdered after the conversation and didn't save.

Spoiler

My last save. I just can't help but make red dragon disciples - those stat increases a just too hard to pass up. Being a D&D meta-gamer, I selected Falchion for it's critical threat range and was stuck with a +3 Keen Falchion for 95% of the game. It's only at the end that I started messing around with enchants, and found a +7 Falchion in the Mage Academy. After that, with my crit range, it was ridiculous. The stats below are with a monkeygripped Falchion, and the shield Witchblessed. The shield was enchanted for +7 regen, the sword was made Keen.

Glad I finally finished this, but I'll admit I probably missed a lot of quests and options. I don't usually do evil playthroughs but this game has me intrigued.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Got a hold of Teudogar and the Alliance with Rome like a month back, playing it on and off, liking it a lot.


Scratching my silent storm itch with my nth restart of Sentinels. I mean, the last proper play-through I made the game crash at one point in the end missions.
Restarted this time to see it through, and for fun and cash I'm taking on the random Poland encounter with no gear whatsoever. Just my scout and his bare hands. It's surprisingly effective, didn't realise that bare hands count as a knock-out weapon.
More seriously I'm wondering whom to hire for the missions proper. Probably gonna pick the Wyrmlord medic because his accent is hilarious, but no clue for the rest. laclongquan any suggestions?

Then some Rogue Trooper, Warband etc.

 

[laclongquan]

Your choice, really~

I like to use as much females as possible, so I get females of each class, and use my PC as complement where lack. As such, my team is not "optimized" in the sense of it.

I will note this: AP is most valuable. So if you choose hirelings, prioritize people with high Dex. Even for Grenadier class with Str go toward range, it's still better to have more AP than range, because moving can compensate for the lack, but nothing can compensate for lack of AP.

If you like scout, you can get a mission in Switzerland to rescue a very stealth scout, for free. He level up slowlier than other character, but his stat and speciliazed stealth more than make up for it. You cant fire him other than getting his ass killed.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Yeah, I'm aware of Shade. The crew I used last time was the exact same crew as my S2 crew, so I'm more keen on recruiting blokes with hilarious accents and crazy dialogues than good stats. Not exactly looking for an optimal crew either~

Might as well go with a Harem crew then.

 

[Durandal]

started up Koudelka
entered a room that said 'something doesn't feel right', after which I encountered three enemies, two of which were able to hit my entire party with spells that easily shaved off 40% of their HP while the third just sat there tanking attacks and preventing my melee characters (e.g. everyone) from reaching the spellcasters, promptly died and lost one hour of progress filled with AFAIK unskippable cutscenes, a dozen random encounters, and a bunch of walking
the sparse save points in this game really bug me, I don't know if that was a fixed encounter, but usually you want to place a save point nearby an obstacle that might guarantee death for the uninitiated and save frustration. the long distance between save points (although I only encountered one so far) combined with the high encounter rate and no shops that sell items make walking back to save rather risky, forcing you to press on. perhaps the 'something doesn't feel right' message was supposed to hint that you should get the fuck out and move on elsewhere, and that you could find save point later on that isn't protected by giant monsters (the first save point is only accessible after a boss fight, though), although now I'm on the verge of removing this game
I was surprised to hear actually good voice acting for a PS1 game, but the combat is really barebones

 

[laclongquan]

PS1? Why not do emulator? And if doing emulator, why not use save state?

And ERYFKRAD There's a mod call S3's All Uniform by BlunterII. Pretty interesting stuffs. I dont want to try his extra content so I just use his basics, and it seems good. Basically he allow to buy all uniforms, and a few extra from his works. The advanced version also can change internal parameters.

Once you play enough S3, might as well use that to see something different.

 

[Jaesun]

Picked up Grim Dawn. Love the setting and atmosphere. <3

 

[octavius]

Hell Revealed for Doom 2. After the first six levels which were pretty average, it has really picked up.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Finished Neverwinter Night 2.
That was a long ride. It's bad thing when expansion packs are way better but heard they're like 10-15h each, while OC is around 60h.
Act1 was p.sluggish, longest from all three. From the Act2 is got nice boost. Act3 was about combat combat combat and final dungeon was meh.
Played Warrior->Dwarf Defender, nothing unusual.
Time for MotB then.

 

[sullynathan]

I wasted a lot of time with far cry 3

 

[mutonizer]

UnReal World just released on steam so I've been freezing my ass off on the shores of some random lake trying to get some fucking fish before my fire runs out...


...ah shit, it just started raining again!

Good times

 

[Zdzisiu]

UnReal World just released on steam so I've been freezing my ass off on the shores of some random lake trying to get some fucking fish before my fire runs out...


...ah shit, it just started raining again!

Good times

You could always try eating people!

They are delicious...

 

[laclongquan]

Make a shelter where you fish? Or cheapest method, make a tiny fire where you sit then sit on the ember of burnt out fire?

 

[JudasIscariot]

UnReal World just released on steam so I've been freezing my ass off on the shores of some random lake trying to get some fucking fish before my fire runs out...


...ah shit, it just started raining again!

Good times

You could always try eating people!

They are delicious...

Can you actually eat people in URW? I tried making meat from a random robber and the game said "NO!"

 

[Gregz]

Talisman, Underrail and Path of Exile. Good games, but a bit bored with them now, need a new drug game.

Found one.

State of Decay. Zombipocalypse game, but I'd say it plays more like an ITZ/prepper/SHTF simulation.

Pretty engrossing so far (3 days in). Most of the bugs have been ironed out enough so that you can work around them.

 

[Hyperpube]

Played Tales from the Borderlands and I liked it . That's right jerkos

 

[Ashery]

*snip*

Heh, I know all about the explosive triggered mine trick. First couple times I played the game, I'd always try to use dynamite the first time I ran into captains and alchemists for the first time, when my own troops are severely undergeared, and I'd always learn about that trick the hard way as my own character took 400+ damage from an alchemist's grenade triggering my dynamite.

Only issue in my current game is that I don't have any explosives outside dynamite, so I can't do anything fancy like what you're suggesting. Fortunately, that's not a huge issue as I'm finally getting the second tier firearms out into the field, and those shotguns make a *huge* difference when it comes to quickly and effectively neutralizing mid-level threats.

Also, it's not so much that I'm following mission directives by choice, it's simply that there's no way I can conceivably kill off that many beastmen in a short amount of time with the gear I currently have. That'll change considerably once I get a couple soldiers with major sniper training along with scoped sniper rifles, but that's still at least eight days away.

I'd disagree on the capturing comment, though. I mean, I definitely do the same thing to some extent, but it's primarily when the environment hostility is too high for my current suits. But a low-hostility, mineless region that borders beastmen territory? That's a huge benefit, as I no longer have to worry about losing mines or potentially fighting off an invasion force in high-hostility territory.

My main complaint in my current game is that all the "Capture target unit" missions so far have been in regions with environmental hostility far too high for my current equipment. I can deal with that sort of thing when fighting off an invasion force or when blowing up a beastman portal, but I'd rather not feel pressed for time when trying to capture a unit.

Can you actually eat people in URW? I tried making meat from a random robber and the game said "NO!"

Cannibalism used to be a staple of the game, but it was relatively recently changed so that you could only eat human meat when starving (Or some similar state).

 

[Tacgnol]

Cannibalism used to be a staple of the game, but it was relatively recently changed so that you could only eat human meat when starving (Or some similar state).

Probably a good balance change considering how easy cannibalism made survival in URW.

 

[Zdzisiu]

Cannibalism used to be a staple of the game, but it was relatively recently changed so that you could only eat human meat when starving (Or some similar state).

Probably a good balance change considering how easy cannibalism made survival in URW.

Yeah, sadly you cant eat The long pig as your every meal this days.

But still, if you could kill one robber, butcher him and let his meat dry, you could have an emergency supply of food, just in case...

 

[laclongquan]

You can use human meat as spirit offerings, and do it every chance you get to max that meter. Raw for hunting offerings. Roasted/spoiled for general.

Back to Afterlight. I also dislike fighting in high hostility due to the press of time. HOWEVER, if you got two medics with 10+ canister, you can use them to cure the damage while station at an ambush site. End of mission, those healing point convert to science Xp and they get a huge jump compared to non-combat scientists. Late game those hundreds of XP doesnt worth as much due to high level requirement, but early to middle it's a strong opportunity.

TNT is cheap and easy, also pretty reliable in its timer. Contact mines, terran or alien, are finicky and not 100% immediately explode when enemy stepped on.

My Impossible difficulty has used up 500 TNT, and more than likely same number for the rest of the game. Averaging 15 booms per missions, TNT is about the fastest we can produce. Contact mines are too slow in production, and I plainly run out of Ret mines and nearly out in Beastmen mines.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Been really enjoying Renowned Explorers.
And F.E.A.R. Jump scares are derpy ass hell, but gunplay is really solid.

Also decided to mess around with DosBox.
Which one of these I should try to play, Worlds of Legend:Son of the Empire, Veil of Darkness or Shadowlands (this one I have actually played as a kid)?

 

[Deleted member 7219]

I finished Rise of the Tomb Raider. Nothing special. Story is quite boring, characters are dull, but the gameplay itself is ok and that is what sustained me to the end.

I have to wonder why some people (mainly critics) prefer the reboot and this over, say, Underworld and Anniversary, which mixed shooting with lots of good ol' fashioned puzzle solving. I really don't know how to classify these games. They really aren't Uncharted. The Uncharted games, particularly 2 and 3, were witty, charming and had varied environments. These games are serious, grimdark and mostly have the same scenery changed a little bit here and there.