What game are you wasting time on?

[CthuluIsSpy]

Playing wasteland 2, the original one. I like but, but they made some pretty frustrating design choices.

1) The camera keeps changing and sometimes it hides some important things. In Fallout the isometric camera was fixed and you can see everything. That's not the case here.

2) There is no explanation for some of the skill interactions. Its very vague what something like Charisma interacts with, for example. Or how barter works; do I need to have my barter special active in the trading window, or is it global? I thought I needed to have him active because that's how it works with diologue, but there's a barter bonus at the top that's for everyone.

3) The RNG lies. It says that there's a 5% chance or so of jamming, yet my weapons seem to jam frequently.

4) No respec, which punishes new players as its very easy to make the wrong stat investments due to the curveballs the game throws at you.

5) Why is going rogue even a thing?

6) Some weapon types are pretty bad compared to others. Why would I ever go shotgun if I can use an assault right, which is better in everyway.

7) Explosives are OP. Seriously, they need no requirements, have 100% chance to hit and will always deal max damage.

8) there's like 4 dialogue skills and you don't have an indicator of which ones are useful as no checks come up. I'm up to the prison and I have yet to see a hard ass check, and I think I had a grand total of 2 kiss ass checks and 1 smart ass check.

 

[the_shadow]

Playing wasteland 2, the original one. I like but, but they made some pretty frustrating design choices.

1) The camera keeps changing and sometimes it hides some important things. In Fallout the isometric camera was fixed and you can see everything. That's not the case here.

You couldn't see some things in Wasteland 2 because of the rotating camera, and you couldn't see some of the things in Fallout because of the isometric view. I wouldn't have even been aware of some important containers in Fallout 1 and 2 if I hadn't read a walkthrough.

3) The RNG lies. It says that there's a 5% chance or so of jamming, yet my weapons seem to jam frequently.

Hahah, yes, especially with critical fails on skill checks. If the game said I had a 50% chance to critical fail a skill check, I'd critical fail almost every time, not 1 in 2. It doesn't help that reloading takes a while.

4) No respec, which punishes new players as its very easy to make the wrong stat investments due to the curveballs the game throws at you.

Yep.

5) Why is going rogue even a thing?

I dunno, I kind of liked have that sort of reactivity.

6) Some weapon types are pretty bad compared to others. Why would I ever go shotgun if I can use an assault right, which is better in everyway.

I'm not sure about the original, but shotguns are decent niche weapons in DC, although assault rifles are still probably your best bet. From what I've heard they are even more OP'ed in the original Wasteland 2.

7) Explosives are OP. Seriously, they need no requirements, have 100% chance to hit and will always deal max damage.

Yeah, explosives are your trump card. On the downside, they are pretty heavy, and lower tier ones won't output enough damage late in the game.

8) there's like 4 dialogue skills and you don't have an indicator of which ones are useful as no checks come up. I'm up to the prison and I have yet to see a hard ass check, and I think I had a grand total of 2 kiss ass checks and 1 smart ass check.

Hmm, maybe they changed this in DC, or perhaps you need to turn on an option where it displays all the dialogue options and their corresponding skill requirements.

-------------------------------

I've just started playing Beyond Divinity and expected the worst from some of the reviews I've read. The first ten minutes are sort of bad simply because some stuff is counter-intuitive when it comes to controlling both your party members and game mechanics/key mapping. Also, the game runs on steroids in that everything is so *fast*, way faster than Divine Divinity. Some tips:

- Your characters start with autorun *on*. My advice is to turn it off, since walking pace is fast enough and way more manageable.

- Since combat is so fast, you *have* to treat it as a RTwP game, unlike the original DD. Pausing to drink points and reselect skills is essential.

- You can map skills to the F keys, but not to F1-F5, since they are used for party control.

- Follow mode (F4) is sort of weird, in that if one character attacks, the other one just stands around doing nothing.

- When you learn defensive/healing skills in the 'individual' spell category, they only work on the casters, not on the PC you target.

- Characters will auto-attack in melee and ranged, but not with spells.

Now that I understand all the above, the game is actually pretty fun. The opening dungeon is way more enjoyable than the one in the original DD, the skill system is better designed, the atmosphere and artwork are great for that time, and the map design is pretty good. They have also given ranged combat a huge boost with a variety of arrows that do a variety of elemental damage, explosive arrows, and even splitting arrows. Should be interesting to see how the game holds up as I continue playing it.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Silent Hill 1 (Mednafen emulator). Might be the first horror game I actually enjoy.

 

[Old One]

I've been playing Silent Storm and Silent Storm Sentinels again. It's strange...Sentinels fixes almost every interface problem and inconvenience with the first game, but I prefer the story and setting of the original.

Anyway, I used a hack to make infinite ammo and infinite action points so I can use full-auto machine gun fire to demolish entire buildings. That's some satisfying destruction.

 

[Siveon]

Playing wasteland 2, the original one. I like but, but they made some pretty frustrating design choices.

Why are you playing the "original one"? DC fixed some of your problems.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Playing wasteland 2, the original one. I like but, but they made some pretty frustrating design choices.

Why are you playing the "original one"? DC fixed some of your problems.

I always start with the original, so I know what the remastered version changes.
So I'm at the canyon of titan now. Am I stuck there, or can I leave at anytime in case I don't have the proper gear for it?
Also that tactical nuke in the main base is hilarious. Fastest game over ever :D

 

[Gregz]

Playing wasteland 2, the original one. I like but, but they made some pretty frustrating design choices.

Why are you playing the "original one"? DC fixed some of your problems.

I always start with the original, so I know what the remastered version changes.
So I'm at the canyon of titan now. Am I stuck there, or can I leave at anytime in case I don't have the proper gear for it?
Also that tactical nuke in the main base is hilarious. Fastest game over ever :D

Big mistake, they fix a lot of bugs. DC is a misnomer, should be called 'working version'.

 

[laclongquan]

I've been playing Silent Storm and Silent Storm Sentinels again. It's strange...Sentinels fixes almost every interface problem and inconvenience with the first game, but I prefer the story and setting of the original.

Anyway, I used a hack to make infinite ammo and infinite action points so I can use full-auto machine gun fire to demolish entire buildings. That's some satisfying destruction.

Silent Storm Sentinels make a big change for fans of storied missions and lotsa exploration, while Silent Storm original give you big illusion of freedom. You can choose to tackle storied missions in whatever order you want.

Plus, the feeling of war imminent is more present in SS while it's more like apocalypse in SSS.

 

[the_shadow]

Silent Hill 1 (Mednafen emulator). Might be the first horror game I actually enjoy.

Silent Hill 1 is in my top 10 games of all time. Silent Hill 2 is even better.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Playing wasteland 2, the original one. I like but, but they made some pretty frustrating design choices.

Why are you playing the "original one"? DC fixed some of your problems.

I always start with the original, so I know what the remastered version changes.
So I'm at the canyon of titan now. Am I stuck there, or can I leave at anytime in case I don't have the proper gear for it?
Also that tactical nuke in the main base is hilarious. Fastest game over ever :D

Big mistake, they fix a lot of bugs. DC is a misnomer, should be called 'working version'.

All the more reason to play the original then, so I can appreciate the changes. I did have a glance at the changes in the DC, and I'm not sure I like the Energy Weapons change. I'm fine with the damage only affecting a certain armor type, but was the reduced damage against everything else that necessary? It doesn't even make sense; I'm sure plasma or lasers hitting you will hurt like hell, even if you are wearing combat armor or something.
I understand that they changed it because the best counter to energy weapons was to just strip and fight naked, which was laughably stupid, but how does this system fix that?

 

[the_shadow]

Got a bit further in Beyond Divinity, and from what I've seen so far I can safely say it's far better than Divine Divinity. Less empty outdoor maps, a better driving central plot, decent side quests, a better system of resistances/vulnerability, a wider variety of weapons, and a better spell casting system. I haven't played Original Sin, but from what I understand there are a wide variety of arrow types in it, and this was drawn from Beyond Divinity. It's unbelievable this game got overlooked.

 

[Ezekiel]

Downloading The Division again for another free weekend. I don't find the game decent enough to buy, but I'll always play it for free.

 

[Dux]

Elder Scrolls: Arena

After nearly 30 hours spent I'm finally done with it, having melted the face of Jagar Tharn and brought peace to the land. Oh boy... oh boy. Oh boy oh boy. Where the hell do I even begin? So many sanity points lost with this one...

This is one of those games that really drains the human spirit. It's quite merciless to the psyche but sitting back and assessing my full journey I can't really lambast the game too much. Sure, it is blighted by its technical shortcomings but still manages to retain a certain old school charm. However, this is not an easy game to deal with. I "credit" my autistic completionist persona as the sole reason I perservered to the bitter end. The main story is linear and extremely repetitive. Here's how it goes: you need to find a piece of the Staff of Chaos. In order to find that piece you need to travel to the appropriate province where it's located. When you're in the right province you have to ask someone where exactly to find it. They'll most likely direct you to the local Mage's Guild or temple for further information. There you'll find that this vital information is lost somehow and needs to be retrieved from a dungeon somewhere nearby. Only then can they divine the location of the staff piece. You're going to repeat this ordeal about eight times during the course of the game and that is the main quest in a nutshell. There's nothing else. You trudge through dungeons and mazes, fighting hordes of annoying enemies. The enemies which will kill you a thousand times over are the ones with ranged damage. For example, there is nothing preventing a wraith from launching ten fireballs at you in the span of two seconds, if that is what it wants to do. If that happens you're dead, unless you had the foresight to cast resistance or imbide the right potion. Enemy spellcasters need to be closed down immediately in order for you to have any chance at all and even then you have to hope against hope that another similar enemy hasn't spawned on your flank or behind you. If that happens you're dead, pretty much. The most infamous and rage-inducing encounter scenario in the entire game is the one where you're locked down in a fight with a monster right in front of you, only there's another one with ranged damage just behind the one you're fighting. You can't reach it but it can still fire away at you with abandon THROUGH the other monster. If that happens, you're dead, unless you can kill off the first monster very quickly. The philosophy of any successful Arena dungeon crawl is this: kill an enemy - save - rest (if needed) - save - and then continue. That's how you do it. Just bear in mind you're going to have to deal with monsters disrupting your sleep. It'll happen a lot. A LOT.

The performance is abysmal, by far the worst of any DOSBox game I've ever played. Arena is infamous in this regard so there's not much to say about it. The sound design is ass, as well, simply because only one sound effect can play at any time. So if there's obnoxiously loud drums playing the background, that's all you're going to hear. The combat is very simplistic. You swing your weapon around using the mouse just like in Daggerfall and periodically cast spells. I played as a Spellsword, which gave me both martial and arcane capabilities. I have no idea how you're supposed to do this with a pure fighter or mage. You can do it, of course, but it just seems like a trip to Hell not worth making. The Spellsword seemed to give me the right kind of balance. One good thing I have to say is that the combat is more fluid and responsive than Daggerfall, which seems quite cumbersome in comparison, AND it actually has a good, fully functional automap. Imagine that. Going back to the negatives again, there's the strange and arbitrary spawning of enemies. Every dungeon has a finite number of enemies. They'll only respawn if you leave any particular level. Sometimes, however, you'll have enemies spawning right in front of you, or behind you. You can walk into a room and see that it's empty, only to turn away and find that you're being clubbed to death by a random troll. That is quite enervating.

This sounds like the world's worst game, doesn't it? It's troubled, for sure, but it still has its place in the annals of CRPG history. If you take your time and don't invest too much energy into it, then it's a decent dungeon crawler. Simplistic but straightforward. You don't need to think a whole lot. The main quest offers more flavour than the rest of the game but ultimately it's not really worth the bother. Prepare for a dungeon by outfitting yourself with potions and whatnot, bring back loot to be identified and sold. Buy superior equipment and get back out there. Or spend some time at an inn and be insulted by its patrons or do the odd job around town. There's some charm to that, I guess. Additionally, Jagar Tharn's delivery (which you'll hear a lot) reminded me somewhat of Skeletor and that amused me.

This is such a difficult game to grade.



A weak three, I guess.

 

[Sceptic]

I have no idea how you're supposed to do this with a pure fighter or mage.

Pure mage is pretty much the game's easymode. Spells are insanely powerful when you use Spellmaker and you can make spells that do pretty much anything, including skipping entire levels of a dungeon or that one-shot any enemy, not to mention making you immune to all damage, and all that at reasonably low mana cost if you know how to abuse Spellmaker (set the fixed benefits to 1, then play with the per-level increases only)

I don't think the game has many redeeming qualities, and even on release the thin veneer of "exploration" and "open world" were revealed for what they are (not to mention the strict level-scaling - this is the TES game that started it, not Oblivion), and trying to play the game that way is an exercise in masochism. Still the game has qualities, the main quest dungeons were quite well designed for the most part.

 

[unfairlight]

Lichdom: Battlemage.
It's pretty good. There's quite a bit of depth with how you can combo your abilities but one thing that I hated about it is how slow it starts. It really doesn't allow you to go very crazy with your combos or anything, later on you can basically AOE everything dead but your options are limited at first. The graphics are also really good because of Cryengine.
For the price you can get it for today on CD key reseller sites which is around 1 euro it's worth trying out at least. So far I think it's 8/10. The devs should really consider toning down the price on Steam to 10 bucks or something, it's like 25 bucks on there which is pretty crazy, unfortunate they decided their next game had to be some garbage survival game which bombed hard, the devs do have potential and some talent but it's kinda wasted on early access garbage.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

Grim Dawn: Ashes of Malmouth. Reasonably entertaining for a Diablo-like, some mildly annoying shit like mobs that spawn temporary terrain hazards that bypass resistances and more fucking death-nova shit from the Chthonian mobs, but still pretty fun. Better than most other Diablo-likes on the market at the moment, I would say. Crate is reasonably on the ball with patches and are promising at least one new "roguelike" dungeon within the next patch or two I think.

 

[bloodlover]

Finished Saints Row 2. Thank you Vorak for telling me about the mod, it does indeed remove the need to do side missions.

The game was fun overall even though it's not really my fav. genre. I wasn't really into the whole hood theme so I just used whatever car I found to drive well and painted it black, dressed my character rather fancy and my homies were a bunch of ninjas for the lulz. I'm not sure that I'm sold on the franchise but maybe one day I will try the other games too.

 

[BLOBERT]

WOLFENSTEIN 3D BROS

USED ECWOLF SOURCEPORT AND SOME HIGHER DEFF TEXTUREZ

FUN FOR TGE ORIGUBAL 30 LEVELS ACTUALLY VERY COOL THOUGH PORT HSS MAP

THAT WAS ENOUGH FOR ME THOUGH

 

[Starwars]

Finished up a replay of New Vegas. Great, great game. Didn't go into the DLCs this time around because I didn't want to spend too much time on it. But yeah, the base-game is great and also feels a bit more "Fallout-y" than the DLCs if you ask me.

Prett uneven but awesome.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

Finished up a replay of New Vegas. Great, great game. Didn't go into the DLCs this time around because I didn't want to spend too much time on it. But yeah, the base-game is great and also feels a bit more "Fallout-y" than the DLCs if you ask me.

Prett uneven but awesome.

OWB captures the "50's scifi schlock" part pretty well, I think. HH is pretty decent IMO (I liked Graham) and DM is ok (if gamebreaking when abused), the only one I kind of went "meh" at was Lonesome Road. I still am upset that the Legion feels so flat and uninteresting due to cut content, though - I don't even really like the Legion but I prefer my punching bags to have some kind of substance to them.

 

[Abu Antar]

I'm replaying Okami HD on PC. It's just as slow paced as I remember it from 4 years ago, yet it has so much charm and is fun to play.

 

[Perkel]

Okami is fucking amazing game. I still remember finishing it and not believing that what i thought was small short artsy game was actually amazing 50 hour of pure gaming joy with great writing, funny and great characters, fun gameplay and amazing amazing art. It is definitely in my top 10 games i have ever played.

By end of the game you feel like you just read a very good book. There is something super charming and fun following story of white wolf and micro sized Issun following stories of normal people who treat you as just friendly wolf.

There are so many things in that game that just starts to bewilder you thinking "how the F this was made in the first place, it is unbelievable". There are so many details, small animations, monsters and characters design etc. that you would think it would take ages to design and implement. And it isn't just about graphics, everything feels like someone took real shitload of time to perfect it.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Silent Hill 2 (PCSX2), continuing the series. Somehow the camera is worse this time around but overall it seems like a better game.

 

[Perkel]

Silent Hill 2 (PCSX2). Somehow the camera is worse this time around but overall it seems like a better game.

You are in for a treat dude. My definitely game in my top 3

 

[newtmonkey]

Fallout 4
I had hoped this was just a case of Codex being Codex, but this game is just totally awful. I would rather play Fallout 3 than this.

Nothing makes sense. It's been 200+ years since the nuclear war ended? And people are still living in ruins, living in fear of raiders wearing leather straps and wielding pipe guns? Meanwhile, people have hand-cranked LASER GUNS??? Suddenly you are on a mission with BoS and you encounter dozens of 99% humanlike robots, sitting around in a dilapidated lab ruin. WTF?

The interface is not only a failure as a console OR computer game interface, it is a failure as an interface. I laugh out loud every time I need to use a stimpack in battle, and I have to press I, hit D to scroll right to AID (LOLWUT), and then scroll through the longest list of shit ever in ALPHABETICAL ORDER ONLY all the way down to S, when the screen only shows like 5 lines at a time. I thought the Skyrim interface was bad, but they really topped that!

Every quest is either "go there and eliminate everything" or "go there and get A (and you'll end up eliminating everything too)." That one dick who dislikes you when you first join the BoS... am I supposed to be pissed or hurt?? All the dialog options seem to point that way. Who fucking cares when every NPC is a quest dispensing machine, whether they love you or hate you?

The loot system is also the worst I have ever seen. Nothing worse than clearing out some station, and being rewarded with a box full of wrenches, bolts, and thread. Am I expected to hoard all this shit??? When I have zero idea from the start what makes what???

How on earth did Fallout 4 review as well as it did???

"Fallout 4 is an argument for substance over style, and an excellent addition to the revered open-world series." Gamespot review
WHAT SUBSTANCE?!?!?!?!?!?! All the game has is STYLE (and that is arguable).