-
Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.
"This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.
What game are you wasting time on?
- Thread starter Trash
- Start date
I thought Wiz 1 was quite easy if you played carefull and maxed out one or two stats.
Wiz 3 OTOH I thought was brutal in the beginning. It's also brutal in some parts later in the game.
Started playing Shovel Knight, game truly deserves the praise it gets, actually plays like a snes game, no compromises. Seems a bit easy so far, but I only passed the first village for now.
Wrapping up Baldur's Gate: EE. Just got back from Candlekeep. Anyway, my first time playing the 'Enhanced Edition' of BG 1, don't really mind the changes and additions, at least I haven't noticed anything that bugged me. Might've just missed it, I've been rolling with Dorn and I have zero clue what he's about, just skipped through his bullshit, think it's something about revenge? He's a solid melee DPS and that's all that really matters to me. I do like it how whenever he's fatigued, he tells me I'm tired and we should therefore rest. Cute. Also not playing Dragonspear. I'll give that a try when it's like 5 bucks.
EDIT: Just plowed on into BG2. Replayed it not too long ago, couple months ago, still kinda feel like playing some more now. Man, that shit pathfinding though.
EDIT: Just plowed on into BG2. Replayed it not too long ago, couple months ago, still kinda feel like playing some more now. Man, that shit pathfinding though.
Last edited:
Just finished Bloodlines again, this time playing as a Tremere. I was a little disappointed - I hoped there would be a little more Tremere-specific content with Strauss and the chantry but it's really just a different haven. Doesn't add to replayability nearly as much as a Malk or Nosferatu playthrough does.
Also, I have to say that thaumaturgy is OP as fuck. Not like Bloodlines is hard or anything, but blood theft is unbelievable. It's an insta kill for most enemies and actually gives you back more blood than it costs. But not only that, it's also really useful against most supernatural enemies. It won't kill them, but it will stun and leave them levitating for several seconds. The second encounter with Andrei is usually a fairly difficult (by Bloodlines standards) boss fight, but I just blood thefted him and then emptied a couple uzi clips and he died almost immediately. And that's without mentioning blood shield, which is a fantastic damage soak.
Frankly I think thaumaturgy is even more broken than celerity. At least with celerity you don't want to use it in literally every situation since you'd run out of blood.
Edit: Also, sleep and command are really useful too. Both are good for stealth, and command is also useful if you have low brawl and can't easily feed on enemies.
Also, I have to say that thaumaturgy is OP as fuck. Not like Bloodlines is hard or anything, but blood theft is unbelievable. It's an insta kill for most enemies and actually gives you back more blood than it costs. But not only that, it's also really useful against most supernatural enemies. It won't kill them, but it will stun and leave them levitating for several seconds. The second encounter with Andrei is usually a fairly difficult (by Bloodlines standards) boss fight, but I just blood thefted him and then emptied a couple uzi clips and he died almost immediately. And that's without mentioning blood shield, which is a fantastic damage soak.
Frankly I think thaumaturgy is even more broken than celerity. At least with celerity you don't want to use it in literally every situation since you'd run out of blood.
Edit: Also, sleep and command are really useful too. Both are good for stealth, and command is also useful if you have low brawl and can't easily feed on enemies.
Last edited:
pippin
Guest
I think there's an exploit to kill Ming Xiao only with Thaumaturgy instead of just using weapons or whatever.
What is that green penis a the top of the screen?Emulators. This game is better than 99% of what is currently available on Steam
_(En,Fr,De)-10.jpg)
dunno lah
Arcane
You stick 30 of those dicks into Mutti Brain's eye.
Tried the Nuclear Pack "Mega WAD" for Duke Nukem 3D.
Didn't like first map; too symmetrical, loads of ammo, no enemies, and I couldn't find the bleeping blue key card to progress, so I quit.
Googling the name resulted in very few hits, so I guess I didn't miss much.
Didn't like first map; too symmetrical, loads of ammo, no enemies, and I couldn't find the bleeping blue key card to progress, so I quit.
Googling the name resulted in very few hits, so I guess I didn't miss much.
Mustawd
Guest
Finally beat Titan Quest.
*sighs deeply*
This game was such a chore to finish it literally felt like my second job. But after getting 5 hours in, I just had to beat it. I blame my autism. The worst part is that I basically played the first 5 hours over and over and over again. That's how copypasta this thing is.
And the end game? Jesus F Christ. I've never seen so much HP bloat in my life. It was apparently made even harder for the version on Steam. Finally beat it after my stock of Mana and Health potions went down to 15 or so from the original 100. And the ending was so fucking underwhelming. I mean it's an ARPG, but for the sheer boredom in finishing this thing you'd think the devs would offer to come over and suck your dick or something.
Well congrats Titan Quest. You have broken my 8 month long ARPG fever. I played 56 hours of Torchlight and it was so fun. I replayed Diablo and still had tons of entertainment. I even enjoyed the art in Bastion. But you take the cake Titan quest. You wasted 52 hours of my precious time and took advantage of my completion tendencies. I don't think I'll be playing an ARPG anytime in the next couple of months. Thanks.
********
Moving on to my next game. I'm thinking something turn-based for sure. Trying to decide between replaying the original HoMM series (from the beginning game), playing Age of Wonders, Civ 2, or playing Age of Fear 1 ( an indie tacticool game).
*sighs deeply*
This game was such a chore to finish it literally felt like my second job. But after getting 5 hours in, I just had to beat it. I blame my autism. The worst part is that I basically played the first 5 hours over and over and over again. That's how copypasta this thing is.
And the end game? Jesus F Christ. I've never seen so much HP bloat in my life. It was apparently made even harder for the version on Steam. Finally beat it after my stock of Mana and Health potions went down to 15 or so from the original 100. And the ending was so fucking underwhelming. I mean it's an ARPG, but for the sheer boredom in finishing this thing you'd think the devs would offer to come over and suck your dick or something.
Well congrats Titan Quest. You have broken my 8 month long ARPG fever. I played 56 hours of Torchlight and it was so fun. I replayed Diablo and still had tons of entertainment. I even enjoyed the art in Bastion. But you take the cake Titan quest. You wasted 52 hours of my precious time and took advantage of my completion tendencies. I don't think I'll be playing an ARPG anytime in the next couple of months. Thanks.
********
Moving on to my next game. I'm thinking something turn-based for sure. Trying to decide between replaying the original HoMM series (from the beginning game), playing Age of Wonders, Civ 2, or playing Age of Fear 1 ( an indie tacticool game).
Last edited by a moderator:
- Joined
- May 13, 2009
- Messages
- 28,700
Finished cruising through the Shadow Warrior remake. I consider the original to be an ambitious, but generally average FPS game, dragged down by needlessly convoluted level design. The remake doesn't fail on the same points as the original, but instead fails on some of its own points so that in the end it's pretty much on par with the original.
The original set up a simple premise and just kept things at that: Lo Wang is Zilla's personal enforcer. When Zilla starts dabbling in the dark side of the occult, Lo Wang quits and only starts fighting back against Zilla and his forces when they try to kill him. Cue one-man crusade of a stereotypical Asian superninja up against a horde of corporate thugs, demons and vorpal bunnies, with far too many frequent breaks as Wang struggles to find the keycard to progress in the level. Except for a healthy repertoire of one-liners and a penchant for violence, Lo Wang has little to no personality or motivation to him.
The remake sets up this larger story about Lo Wang being one of Zilla's enforcers, one who is tasked with getting an old sword from someone, no matter the costs. Wang quickly realizes that there's more at stake here, but still decides to stick with his orders, even though everything points to his boss being one of the bad guys. The remake also has a cast of supporting characters, including the nigh-essential sidekick (because video games have a hard time fleshing out protagonists if they don't have someone to talk to), gratuitous oversexualized characters of the opposite sex and, oddly enough, a set of antagonists that are actually somewhat relatable. This all helps to spin a yarn that actually has some substance to it, but comes with the downside that you have to wade through too much of this game to get to it. The intro is quite nice though, but it doesn't convey a proper image of the game as a whole.
The original Shadow Warrior was generally average, but at least the fights were quick affairs of violence, despite hordes of enemies present. The remake not only opts for the duller 'arena fight' model of combat, but doesn't even try to hide it. Every time I noticed a drop-off of no return, I knew that a big fight was coming. The levels in the remake are also easier to navigate than in the original (and look tons better), but they went too far in the opposite direction, now the levels are all dull as dishwater and present no challenge. They were all just background vistas as I plodded along the same generic 'corridor' of modern-day FPS design (with the added burden of forced backtracking) over and over again. Not one level stuck out as being ingenious or clever in any way, and with the exception of Lo Wang's man-cave they were all something I'd seen and plodded through a hundred times before in other FPS games.
At least both games did the same things with the weapons: Get them wrong in that odd fashion that you can't put your finger on. The only weapons I felt behaved like they should were the flamethrower and the rocket launcher. The shotgun was a monster at point-blank range, yet couldn't hit a powder keg at 3 meters away. The crossbow (supposedly the epitome of "silent but deadly") only occasionally hit what I was aiming for, despite being a very accurate weapon in general and having iron sights and me taking all the time in the world to line up a headshot. The katana offers lots of potential for fun melee combat, except the game balance is so skewed that there's no need to do anything more than just swing wildly at the enemy until it dies while moving - not once did I see a reason to use any of those special moves like Shield or Shockwave. More often than not I just ended up using the machine gun to get the job done.
The enemies...felt like they were borrowed from Serious Sam. You have your generic "run-at-the-player-and-scratch-him" enemy, your "hang-back-and-shoot-him-with-slow-projectiles" enemy and "fly-slowly-overhead-while-shooting-slow-projectiles" enemy. There's a suicide bomber in there as well, but his (lack of) speed makes him a non-issue. The teleporting katana-bitches amounted to nothing more than a nuisance once I figured out their gimmick, and the human enemies are of the "let's-advance-slowly-without-using-cover-until-we-see-him-and-then-fire" variety, which is easily exploitable. The bigger enemies provide a bigger challenge, but with the exception of the berzerker it all just amounts to HP bloat - just shoot at them until they die (the berzerker can only be hit from behind).
The game includes an upgrade system which for pointless reasons is divided into three sections with three different 'currencies' to upgrade with (where one would have sufficed) and some of those upgrades are so overpowered that it makes the game a breeze and a chore to play through. I only had to reload twice after a fight, and only once did I have to reload more than once to beat a fight. What killed me most often was the 'dash' command sending me flying off a rail/stairwell and instakilling me upon landing, and in one notable instance I dashed into a wall with full health and armor and died instantly.
Overall this is just another generic modern-day FPS with nothing that makes it stand out.
The original set up a simple premise and just kept things at that: Lo Wang is Zilla's personal enforcer. When Zilla starts dabbling in the dark side of the occult, Lo Wang quits and only starts fighting back against Zilla and his forces when they try to kill him. Cue one-man crusade of a stereotypical Asian superninja up against a horde of corporate thugs, demons and vorpal bunnies, with far too many frequent breaks as Wang struggles to find the keycard to progress in the level. Except for a healthy repertoire of one-liners and a penchant for violence, Lo Wang has little to no personality or motivation to him.
The remake sets up this larger story about Lo Wang being one of Zilla's enforcers, one who is tasked with getting an old sword from someone, no matter the costs. Wang quickly realizes that there's more at stake here, but still decides to stick with his orders, even though everything points to his boss being one of the bad guys. The remake also has a cast of supporting characters, including the nigh-essential sidekick (because video games have a hard time fleshing out protagonists if they don't have someone to talk to), gratuitous oversexualized characters of the opposite sex and, oddly enough, a set of antagonists that are actually somewhat relatable. This all helps to spin a yarn that actually has some substance to it, but comes with the downside that you have to wade through too much of this game to get to it. The intro is quite nice though, but it doesn't convey a proper image of the game as a whole.
The original Shadow Warrior was generally average, but at least the fights were quick affairs of violence, despite hordes of enemies present. The remake not only opts for the duller 'arena fight' model of combat, but doesn't even try to hide it. Every time I noticed a drop-off of no return, I knew that a big fight was coming. The levels in the remake are also easier to navigate than in the original (and look tons better), but they went too far in the opposite direction, now the levels are all dull as dishwater and present no challenge. They were all just background vistas as I plodded along the same generic 'corridor' of modern-day FPS design (with the added burden of forced backtracking) over and over again. Not one level stuck out as being ingenious or clever in any way, and with the exception of Lo Wang's man-cave they were all something I'd seen and plodded through a hundred times before in other FPS games.
At least both games did the same things with the weapons: Get them wrong in that odd fashion that you can't put your finger on. The only weapons I felt behaved like they should were the flamethrower and the rocket launcher. The shotgun was a monster at point-blank range, yet couldn't hit a powder keg at 3 meters away. The crossbow (supposedly the epitome of "silent but deadly") only occasionally hit what I was aiming for, despite being a very accurate weapon in general and having iron sights and me taking all the time in the world to line up a headshot. The katana offers lots of potential for fun melee combat, except the game balance is so skewed that there's no need to do anything more than just swing wildly at the enemy until it dies while moving - not once did I see a reason to use any of those special moves like Shield or Shockwave. More often than not I just ended up using the machine gun to get the job done.
The enemies...felt like they were borrowed from Serious Sam. You have your generic "run-at-the-player-and-scratch-him" enemy, your "hang-back-and-shoot-him-with-slow-projectiles" enemy and "fly-slowly-overhead-while-shooting-slow-projectiles" enemy. There's a suicide bomber in there as well, but his (lack of) speed makes him a non-issue. The teleporting katana-bitches amounted to nothing more than a nuisance once I figured out their gimmick, and the human enemies are of the "let's-advance-slowly-without-using-cover-until-we-see-him-and-then-fire" variety, which is easily exploitable. The bigger enemies provide a bigger challenge, but with the exception of the berzerker it all just amounts to HP bloat - just shoot at them until they die (the berzerker can only be hit from behind).
The game includes an upgrade system which for pointless reasons is divided into three sections with three different 'currencies' to upgrade with (where one would have sufficed) and some of those upgrades are so overpowered that it makes the game a breeze and a chore to play through. I only had to reload twice after a fight, and only once did I have to reload more than once to beat a fight. What killed me most often was the 'dash' command sending me flying off a rail/stairwell and instakilling me upon landing, and in one notable instance I dashed into a wall with full health and armor and died instantly.
Overall this is just another generic modern-day FPS with nothing that makes it stand out.
Mustawd
Guest
I'm playing Age of Fear: The Undead King. As I mentioned earlier, it's an indie tacticool game.
I've logged almost three hours so far. It's a nice breath of fresh air after the copy pasta hell that was Titan quest.
The game offers two campaigns. I'm on the first. The narrative is not anything groundbreaking, but it's really inoffensive so far. So it's easy to get into. The turn based mechanics and UI are ok as well. There is a bit of annoyance as the game, even in the early stages, relies heavily on ambush tactics. But it gives some good length to the game as you end up retrying missions 2 or 3 times.
So far I'm really liking it. We'll see how it holds up.
I've logged almost three hours so far. It's a nice breath of fresh air after the copy pasta hell that was Titan quest.
The game offers two campaigns. I'm on the first. The narrative is not anything groundbreaking, but it's really inoffensive so far. So it's easy to get into. The turn based mechanics and UI are ok as well. There is a bit of annoyance as the game, even in the early stages, relies heavily on ambush tactics. But it gives some good length to the game as you end up retrying missions 2 or 3 times.
So far I'm really liking it. We'll see how it holds up.
DeepOcean
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2012
- Messages
- 7,405
After playing a bit of SoD, gone on an IE engine binge. Plan replaying BG 1, 2, ToB, Icewind Dale 1 and 2 then go on some NWN modules binge as I'm short in time, guess this will take the whole 2016. After replaying BG 1 and comparing it with modern RPGs, I got some admiration for old Bioware before that insanity of romances started. BG 1 is a truly ambitious game for 1998, we are talking of an RPG that kicks ass of the mediocrity released these days after 20 years and made on 1998 where the development tools were on the stick and stones stage.
I think BG 1 isn't the best RPG on the world, something like the Golden Box rpgs and ToEE have a much better combat system and take on DnD, the Fallouts offer much better reactivity, Torment offer a much better story. Compared with the greats of its time, BG 1 is a mediocre RPG on alot of things BUT Bioware hit the nail on the corny, "Let's go on an epic adventure!" feels of the ole DnD PnP, that ole corny 80's fantasy adventure feels of movies like Conan The Barbarian. Modern RPG designers completely miss the strenghs of the old Bioware games and when they talk of those games, they talk of their problems and you rarely see them talking of why those games were so popular back on the day in the first place.
People that hate BG 1 and 2 based on their particular interests, be it CnC, TB combat or storyfagness, seem to miss the strenghs of the BG games. Check the menu of BG 1:
Yeah, with that background, it is no secret of what this game is about and with this music:
Check this old intro that Beamdog butchered on their Enhanced Edition but thankfully I don't use their crap:
High brow? No. Philosophical? No. Asks what can change the nature of man? No. Ask from where it comes the juice that keeps the lights of the gods on? No. Corny as hell? YES! And that was the point. Fuck, I miss this stuff. I think Bioware understood that the player wanted to be on a fantasy world, not hear about it. On BG 1, you start as an orphan with no clear past (Cliche as fuck, I know), you have a special birth (Cliche) and people want to murder you for some reason. People talking of "subverting" cliches as if it was a smart super intellectual thing to say while missing the reason of why the cliches exist. Hummm, an orphan with a special birth... I wonder why that be? Subverting cliche for subverting sake and try to be hipster to look cool and intellectual because you laugh in contempt of DnD nerds with their high fantasy won't make a good game or you a good designer.
I like that Bioware don't give a fuck to lore too and only care about it when it wants to use it, you don't know who Bhaal is and the game barely take the effort of explaining to you into much longer in the game, if you aren't a DnD nerd, Baldur's Gate city is a mistery and you don't fucking know what the Sword Coast is. You only know that some creepy skull armor dude REALLY want you killed for some reason and there is this Iron Throne trade cartel and some Sarevok dude is involved and you have strange dreams while you explore a big ass map on a fantasy world.
If you look to a game like PoE, you notice that there was some effort on the lore but the developers didn't think much of the place of the player on this lore, what is FAR more important. PoE have plenty of occasions of NPCs you barely know or care telling you what you are, that you are a Watcher and you are supposed to be a barely defined mystic/crazy cursed person? YOU, the player, didn't experience for yourself what to be a Watcher is, what your place on this world is, you had the game telling you all the time but that is boring and uninteresting as fuck. It was obvious that who made the lore and designed the story forgot the player existed or didn't know how to include him.
I think BG 1 isn't the best RPG on the world, something like the Golden Box rpgs and ToEE have a much better combat system and take on DnD, the Fallouts offer much better reactivity, Torment offer a much better story. Compared with the greats of its time, BG 1 is a mediocre RPG on alot of things BUT Bioware hit the nail on the corny, "Let's go on an epic adventure!" feels of the ole DnD PnP, that ole corny 80's fantasy adventure feels of movies like Conan The Barbarian. Modern RPG designers completely miss the strenghs of the old Bioware games and when they talk of those games, they talk of their problems and you rarely see them talking of why those games were so popular back on the day in the first place.
People that hate BG 1 and 2 based on their particular interests, be it CnC, TB combat or storyfagness, seem to miss the strenghs of the BG games. Check the menu of BG 1:
Yeah, with that background, it is no secret of what this game is about and with this music:
Check this old intro that Beamdog butchered on their Enhanced Edition but thankfully I don't use their crap:
High brow? No. Philosophical? No. Asks what can change the nature of man? No. Ask from where it comes the juice that keeps the lights of the gods on? No. Corny as hell? YES! And that was the point. Fuck, I miss this stuff. I think Bioware understood that the player wanted to be on a fantasy world, not hear about it. On BG 1, you start as an orphan with no clear past (Cliche as fuck, I know), you have a special birth (Cliche) and people want to murder you for some reason. People talking of "subverting" cliches as if it was a smart super intellectual thing to say while missing the reason of why the cliches exist. Hummm, an orphan with a special birth... I wonder why that be? Subverting cliche for subverting sake and try to be hipster to look cool and intellectual because you laugh in contempt of DnD nerds with their high fantasy won't make a good game or you a good designer.
I like that Bioware don't give a fuck to lore too and only care about it when it wants to use it, you don't know who Bhaal is and the game barely take the effort of explaining to you into much longer in the game, if you aren't a DnD nerd, Baldur's Gate city is a mistery and you don't fucking know what the Sword Coast is. You only know that some creepy skull armor dude REALLY want you killed for some reason and there is this Iron Throne trade cartel and some Sarevok dude is involved and you have strange dreams while you explore a big ass map on a fantasy world.
If you look to a game like PoE, you notice that there was some effort on the lore but the developers didn't think much of the place of the player on this lore, what is FAR more important. PoE have plenty of occasions of NPCs you barely know or care telling you what you are, that you are a Watcher and you are supposed to be a barely defined mystic/crazy cursed person? YOU, the player, didn't experience for yourself what to be a Watcher is, what your place on this world is, you had the game telling you all the time but that is boring and uninteresting as fuck. It was obvious that who made the lore and designed the story forgot the player existed or didn't know how to include him.
- Joined
- Nov 6, 2013
- Messages
- 798
I just restarted an old classic : Life 2.0: Return to Slavistan
I am trying this as a no combat run but I decided I would skill up strength and close combat skills just in case things go south on some random encounter.
Also trying a limited comm run. I only accept quests from people who are conversant in my selected native language. So as you can imagine this is not quite hard core setting but close and is an ironman run.
So far the game is okay but has a long learning curve. The controls are kinda fubar due to long years spent at a keyboard rather than hands on.
Finding decent equipment proves a major hurdle as some items are expensive as f*ck but luckily provisions are not too pricey so my character can stay healthy and upping strength is coming along nicely.
Some of the encounters are weird as hell I'll admit. Sometimes this game seems more science fiction than other genres but there is a smattering of a little bit of everything that makes Slavistan edition what it is. Where the limited comms really shines is when interpreting the actions, sounds, and images of encounters. Makes for some humorous times as well as frustration on a grand scale. Patience is key. Adapt and overcome. Channeling powers can be a real chore due to their remaining dormant for so long. I'm only a fraction of the way through this play through but the open world sand box environment is engaging and challenging. Not recommended for the casual.
I am trying this as a no combat run but I decided I would skill up strength and close combat skills just in case things go south on some random encounter.
Also trying a limited comm run. I only accept quests from people who are conversant in my selected native language. So as you can imagine this is not quite hard core setting but close and is an ironman run.
So far the game is okay but has a long learning curve. The controls are kinda fubar due to long years spent at a keyboard rather than hands on.
Finding decent equipment proves a major hurdle as some items are expensive as f*ck but luckily provisions are not too pricey so my character can stay healthy and upping strength is coming along nicely.
Some of the encounters are weird as hell I'll admit. Sometimes this game seems more science fiction than other genres but there is a smattering of a little bit of everything that makes Slavistan edition what it is. Where the limited comms really shines is when interpreting the actions, sounds, and images of encounters. Makes for some humorous times as well as frustration on a grand scale. Patience is key. Adapt and overcome. Channeling powers can be a real chore due to their remaining dormant for so long. I'm only a fraction of the way through this play through but the open world sand box environment is engaging and challenging. Not recommended for the casual.
pippin
Guest
exe
Augur
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2010
- Messages
- 362
Just finished the Chronicles of Riddick games. I actually liked Dark Athena more, Aguerra was quite beautiful and a much need fresh breath of air, even though it degenerated into a shooting gallery pretty fast.
I really liked the whole atmosphere/setting, like 80/90s dark future or whatever you want to call it. Any games with similar tone/setting?
I really liked the whole atmosphere/setting, like 80/90s dark future or whatever you want to call it. Any games with similar tone/setting?
Excidium II
Self-Ejected
Nu-Shadow Warrior looks like Hard Reset.
As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.