What game are you wasting time on?

[Dux]

When I entered the mystical land of Bullfrog's Magic Carpet, I had a few preconceptions about the experience. Some of them were accurate, others were not. While I can certainly see the appeal of the game, the one thing that really caught me by surprise is the absolutely ludicrous length of it - especially for its time. The only games made during the mid-90s considered to be long were usually strategy games and RPGs. Magic Carpet is a first-person action game, similar perhaps to Descent and the like. It is also a game that is at least 30 hours long - not counting the expansion. So if you want to see the end of the game that is what it's going to take. The game has fifty levels and each level takes about a half-hour to one hour to complete, depending on circumstances. That's pretty crazy.

So what is the game about? You're basically a fed-up Aladdin and you fly around on a magic carpet whilst carpet bombing (pun intended) civilians, worms, rival wizards, birds and annoying bees. When you kill things they explode into balls of mana, which you then tag with your mana claiming spell so that your hot-air balloons from your castle can siphon them up and take them back to the castle so that the castle can eventually be strong enough to be upgraded which allows you to cast more powerful spells in your elongated quest to gather more mana and summon skeleton archers in order to destroy enemy castles and then get roasted yourself by a rampaging wyvern.

I've also played some Sim City 2000 to salvage my sanity and it has actually turned out to be a very pleasant distraction. While not as refined as some of the later titles, it is still a very competent and relaxing game to play. The city-building is very straightforward and logical - which I like. Playing it made me feel nostalgic for Sim City on the SNES which I used to play quite a lot as a wee child.

 

[111111111]

I've been playing some D:OS2 coop with my gf.
Usually when we play games together she is just a healslut but this time its going pretty well.

 

[Sceptic]

When I entered the mystical land of Bullfrog's Magic Carpet, I had a few preconceptions about the experience. Some of them were accurate, others were not. While I can certainly see the appeal of the game, the one thing that really caught me by surprise is the absolutely ludicrous length of it - especially for its time. The only games made during the mid-90s considered to be long were usually strategy games and RPGs. Magic Carpet is a first-person action game, similar perhaps to Descent and the like. It is also a game that is at least 30 hours long - not counting the expansion. So if you want to see the end of the game that is what it's going to take. The game has fifty levels and each level takes about a half-hour to one hour to complete, depending on circumstances. That's pretty crazy.

I haven't played the game since its release, but my biggest problem with it was not only how long it was but how repetitive the levels eventually get. You mentioned Descent, and that was also a long game by shooter standards (considering the novelty, few of us could go through the levels as quickly as we were used to in Wolf3D or Doom), but Descent kept things fresh because the level design was very good most of the time and kept throwing surprises at you in addition to finding new enemies and new weapons. Magic Carpet was just more of the same after a while, and once you reached that point you still had 30+ levels of the same to go through. Magic Carpet 2 tried to shake things up by having different types of maps (like the Underworld ones) but even with that I found both games to be too much and never finished either.

 

[Dux]

Yeah, the monotony of the gameplay is problematic. If the game just had around 25 levels that would be fine and balanced but that's merely half-way. It doesn't really work.

 

[Average Manatee]

It's the kind of thing I would have appreciated when I was a kid, the internet and steam and stuff weren't a thing, and I only got around 2-4 games for an entire year. It was a different time.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE

HELHERRON NVBER FUCKING ENDS LOLOLLOLL

JUST ADDED INSECTMEN TO THE SUCCESSFUL GENOCIDE LIST

ONE THING I LIKE IS THAT ITA A GAME WHERE YOU ACTUALLY USE VONSUMABLES NOT JUST HOARD THEM

AND STILL PLAYING MINECRAFT TO TALK TO MY SON ABIUT SOMETHING

 

[flyingjohn]

No man sky multiplayer.
I have never played such a insulting piece of shit game in my life.
Everything is meaningless and everything is nothing more then a concept.
How can people enjoy this garbage?

 

[flyingjohn]

Dino Crisis 2.

I loved it... maybe fifteen years ago. Instead of replaying it straight away, I wanted to play the first (which I never played) to see what I had been missing.

Big mistake: the first is such a gigantic pile of shit that I was legit beginning to worry that my fond memories of the second were mere nostalgia.

Thankfully... NO!

Dino Crisis 2 is just fantastic. Everything is good about it: the gameplay is slick and precise, the weapons are varied and feel powerful, the dinosaurs are superb and their animations are expressive and lifelike, and I'll be damned, why is every single place so fucking gorgeous?

The first game is fully in 3D, but the second switches to prerendered background and it's hard to explain just how beautiful and evocative they are. The jungle, the deserted city, the decrepit facilities, the labs, rarely has a game given me such a sense of presence.

The non-combat dino moments deserve a mention: sometimes, especially in the early game, you will see large dinosaurs walking in the background as you traverse an area. It just has such a magical feeling, I'm a child all over again. Sadly, there are all scripted and there should have been more.

I just reached the city. I vaguely remember dinos that needed to be knocked over before they could be killed that gave me trouble, hopefully that was just me being young and clueless.

TL;DR: Dino Crisis 2 is just as great today as it was back then.

Yup,Dino crisis 1 tried to be resi with dinos,but that failed.
It lacked the level design and charm of the original resi games while adding nothing to the survival horror genre.
Dino crisis 2 embraced the action part for better.

 

[Deflowerer]

We need a new Dino Crisis game.

 

[Villagkouras]

I finished the new God of War.

First of all, let me say that this is the best presented game of all time. From cinematics, to small details like the (very enjoyable) banter stopping and resuming after something happens, the audiovisual quality of the game is fantastic.

Also, the gameplay has some potential, the further you go, combat feels better, but never reaches great heights.

All in all, as a AAA game it sure is better than most of the AAA's of this world.

But the game has some glaring issues.

First of all, I finally realize why I don't like most PS4 formulaic exclusives, like TLOU, God of War, Uncharted etc. These games don't let me move freely. It's not a thing of "immersion" that Kratos can't climb a meter, it's a matter of fluidity and mobility. It's like driving a truck.

Combat is ok. The thing about camera was thoroughly discussed, it was a bad decision. It has more cons than pros and it hampers the combat experience.

Also, the game has terrible pacing at times, I mean who the fuck thought of all these fetch quests to design the main story? At least there was some variety between realms.

Other issues: Nornir chests were poor (who the fuck thought that trying to find runes or timed runes were fun?), rehashed bosses, level is tied to gear, bad fast-travel with horrible loading times.

The story wasn't bad except, I liked the Kratos-boy interaction except from a certain part which felt rushed and added nothing to the story.

Overall it's a good game, worth experiencing once, but I couldn't bother with side content, it's not that engaging to do so. I hope the sequel will have much better gameplay which honestly, I don't believe it will, considering all this 10/10 "game of generation" reviews.

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

Going to play some of Fallout soon (and hopefully complete it, for the first time). Now where's that guy who had a link to a guide (kind of, for a lack of a better word) on bettering Fallout's look on modern systems placed in his signature? I knew I would need it one day, and now the time has come - but for some reason I can't seem to find it in my bookmarks...

 

[Strange Fellow]

Going to play some of Fallout soon (and hopefully complete it, for the first time). Now where's that guy who had a link to a guide (kind of, for a lack of a better word) on bettering Fallout's look on modern systems placed in his signature? I knew I would need it one day, and now the time has come - but for some reason I can't seem to find it in my bookmarks...

agris

 

[J_C]

First of all, I finally realize why I don't like most PS4 formulaic exclusives, like TLOU, God of War, Uncharted etc...., it's a matter of fluidity and mobility. It's like driving a truck.

This is true to most AAA third person games. The game industry is obsessed with fluid animations, so whenever you start moving, or stop, or try to turn with a character, it has to play the mandatory smooth animation for that movement type. So if you start moving from a standstill position, you don't just immediately start moving (which I always prefer, even if it doesn't look good visually), but you slowly accelerate. I think this is one of the reason why controls feel like moving a truck.

 

[agris]

Going to play some of Fallout soon (and hopefully complete it, for the first time). Now where's that guy who had a link to a guide (kind of, for a lack of a better word) on bettering Fallout's look on modern systems placed in his signature? I knew I would need it one day, and now the time has come - but for some reason I can't seem to find it in my bookmarks...

agris

Hello. Kinda, it’s both a FO1 patch guide and a “how to not play in 1080p and thus ruin the games” guide.

 

[Average Manatee]

First of all, I finally realize why I don't like most PS4 formulaic exclusives, like TLOU, God of War, Uncharted etc...., it's a matter of fluidity and mobility. It's like driving a truck.

This is true to most AAA third person games. The game industry is obsessed with fluid animations, so whenever you start moving, or stop, or try to turn with a character, it has to play the mandatory smooth animation for that movement type. So if you start moving from a standstill position, you don't just immediately start moving (which I always prefer, even if it doesn't look good visually), but you slowly accelerate. I think this is one of the reason why controls feel like moving a truck.

Yep, it's awful. Designed for games to look good rather than play good. The worst is when you need to make fine movements like platforming or simply not falling off a small ledge but the character is literally unable to take less than a full step forward.

 

[BlackGoat]

First of all, I finally realize why I don't like most PS4 formulaic exclusives, like TLOU, God of War, Uncharted etc...., it's a matter of fluidity and mobility. It's like driving a truck.

This is true to most AAA third person games. The game industry is obsessed with fluid animations, so whenever you start moving, or stop, or try to turn with a character, it has to play the mandatory smooth animation for that movement type. So if you start moving from a standstill position, you don't just immediately start moving (which I always prefer, even if it doesn't look good visually), but you slowly accelerate. I think this is one of the reason why controls feel like moving a truck.

Yep, it's awful. Designed for games to look good rather than play good. The worst is when you need to make fine movements like platforming or simply not falling off a small ledge but the character is literally unable to take less than a full step forward.

One of the reasons why moving around in Witcher 3 feels like such shit, even after they added a second (better but still bad) option for movement control.

 

[octavius]

Finished The Lord of War for HoMM 3 after over a week.

After having played the HoMM 2 map Fear 1 by the same map maker, and seeing that the final enemy (who is actually the player hero in Fear 1) had 99 in all stats, I became too cautious and for a while abandoned my usual style of continuing relentlessly to finish in as few game days as possible for optimal score, and instead wasted time developing a second hero.
It just led to the game becoming too easy, and in the end the fight against legions of Minotaur Kings on Cursed Ground turned out to be the most difficult fight in the game, with the final fight against 2000 Archangels and their entourage an anti-climax which I could beat even when letting the computer take control.
Still, I managed to get an Archangel rating and my best HoMM 3 score so far.

This is a great map; easily one of my favourites.
There's lots to explore, lots of events, and a hell of a lot to fight, with immense armies at the end. The map is not very dynamic, since none of the other players can reach you or each other, but it's still more open than most post Border Guard HoMM maps*, since you can choose in which order to tackle some of them, or even use two different armies to really shave off time for a perfect score.

*Typically the first good HoMM 2 maps, like Dead Dragons and others by Greg Schneider, were open and dynamic maps with much more nerve and tension when you don't know when and where the enemies will strike. With border guards you lose that aspect of the game.

EDIT: Overall I'm impressed by the quality of the early HoMM 3 maps I've played so far. The Pride trilogy, Goldheart and The Lord of War are all masterpieces, and far more enjoyable than the vanilla campaign.

 

[Sceptic]

Since I was reading through all of Larry Niven's Known Space, I ended up replaying the adventure games as well, released by Tsunami in the early 90s. They both have a certain charm, and are very faithful to the books in parts. It's obvious the writers and designers were big fans, but the games do suffer from problems.

The first one, Revenge of the Patriarch, is simply too short and too small. The whole point of the Ringworld is vastness, a scale that has to be relearned over and over because the mind refuses to accept it. The game gives you a handful of sequences, each taking place over less than a dozen screens (some over just 2), and calls it a day. Return to Ringworld sins in the opposite direction: the size of each location is immense, but what it translates to in game terms is walking back and forth, over and over, through maze after maze pixel-hunting for that one item you missed. Bad padding at its finest.

It's a shame too because, as Ringworld adaptations specifically, both games do quite well. Everything looks exactly like you'd expect from Niven's descriptions, aliens are lovingly recreated from his descriptions, Return is voiced so you finally get to hear how to pronounce Kzin, Chmeee, Kdatlyno, Tnuctipun, and so on. Music is all composed by Ken Allen (of Sierra fame) and is great. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the games is how they come up with combining various elements from Niven's work into genuinely interesting ideas (the ghoul protectors, a cutout Dyson Sphere replacing the Shadow Squares, and so on), so interesting in fact that Niven himself would "borrow" them back from the games in the later sequels. The writing itself is sometimes cringey even by average adventure game standards, but the overarching plot and some of its intricacies could well have been coming from Niven at his best. The end result is flawed by worth it IMO. Do get a walkthrough for the sequel though - not for the puzzles, which are reasonably good, but to make sure you have everything you need at each section so you don't have to backtrack through mazes any more than you have to.

 

[RK47]

Starting to use commands more in Warband. What a world of difference a hill makes. Nord Marshall party got caught vs 250+ Vaegirs warband consisting of 6 Boyas and their King. The rest of the Nords ran but I decide to assist. We made a stand on a hill. Infantry stands behind a line of archers and just fired away.

Enemy cavalry tries a charge and gets overwhelmed and slaughtered. I started with 90 arrows and ran out, had to pick up all the missed arrows the enemy fired at us. Vaegir infantry tries the suicide climb and gets mowed down as well, while the rest of their archers routed.

A glorious day for Nords.

 

[octavius]

Tried motherfucking Kingpin: Life of motherfucking Crime.

It motherfucking reminded me of why I motherfucking disliked motherfucking The Wire. Motherfucking bunch of motherfucking niggers and motherfucking wiggers. Motherfucking graphics looked motherfucking good in high motherfucking resolution, but the motherfucking faces was still in motherfucking low resolution, and looked motherfucking silly.
Too motherfucking edgy for me.

 

[RK47]

More Warband this time with Prophecy of Pendor mod.
Loads of interesting new content here, with mini factions like cultists, knights orders, anti-human elves and inquisition etc.
I was hired to follow a siege on a city but an event pop up told me a yuge heretic army is assembling within the region.
Not sure wtf that meant but suddenly a stack of 600 heretic army appears from the forest just beyond the city we're sieging.

I laughed and decided to bait the heretics into attacking me and to my surprise, the army of 1000 dropped their siege and decided to join in.
What followed was an epic 20 minute battle between two yuge armies. My warband was so small so the losses didn't really matter. Things were pretty insane when their demonic cavalry dude just will not die. But things got better once we bring down their heavy hitters and what's left are just weak cultists. Mowed them down like chips. I was allowed my pick of freed captives to recruit and re-stocked my decimated warband with a mix of seasoned troops and peasants. And sweet, sweet loot. But the surprise didn't end there:

My neck hurts. Fuck yeah.

 

[sullynathan]

Well I beat Ass Creed 3. It wasn't good. Starting Ass Creed 4

 

[Gregz]

More Warband this time with Prophecy of Pendor mod.

PoP is the most monocled of all Warband mods, I wish I could play it again for the first time.

 

[mastroego]

I've finally beaten Cthulhu


Arrived at the final confrontation with 3 investigators. Luck didn't help with the first attempts despite my being FULLY prepped for the confrontation.
1 Investigator ended up insane and 2 almost dead.
But I tried again with what I had, and won despite having just 1 chance out of 6 for the very last, decisive roll.

Glorious.
Another investigator unlocked.

 

[RK47]

More Warband this time with Prophecy of Pendor mod.

PoP is the most monocled of all Warband mods, I wish I could play it again for the first time.

Yeah overall I liked it but I have a question - is there any way to increase the battlefield sizes? The castle siege maps are okay but open battles tend to be very cramped.
Literally have less than 10 seconds to issue commands before contact with the enemy. Once the scramble starts, I can hardly distinguish anything in the seas of bodies.