What game are you wasting time on?

[PulsatingBrain]

Playing Dishonored 2. Playing as Emily on a low chaos run. I think I like it enough to play again soon as Corvo and just slaughter everyone. It suffers visually, just like the first game did, in that the artstyle is nice and well done, but the environments themselves are just so fucking drab it feels like a wasted effort. I'm only like 6 hours in though so that could change. Game controls feel exactly like the first, which is good and the rune and charm crafting is a cool feature.

Also playing Road Redemption and Binding of Isaac Rebirth which are just good little fun games for an hour here and there, and I think I might start Endless Legend or maybe try once again to get into Mount and Blade Viking Conquest. I'm not sure what my issue is there. I've spent hundreds of hours with Warband and still really like it, and I like the setting for VC, but I always tap out a few hours in

 

[newtmonkey]

LEGO Batman 2
This is kinda fun. It's a game for kids, there is no challenge whatsoever, but it makes me chuckle. It's basically a nice thing to play in between more substantial games. I do like the game's approach to "open world," where you have your typical large hub world with optional missions, but the required missions all take place in nicely designed (linear) areas. It's the best of both worlds, I guess.

Blood: Fresh Supply
I think the difficulty is screwed up in this version. I've played/finished the DOS version several times on Lightly Broiled (the only difficulty level that is not bugged in the original) and have also played the game on LB on BloodGDX and NBlood, and I find B:FS to be noticeably more difficult on the same difficulty level. Cultists are much more accurate, for instance. Blood is a hard game for sure, but it's not THIS hard. I'll keep plugging away, but every time I play this I feel like I would rather just play NBlood or even the original DOS version.

Mordheim
I picked this up long ago but the interface/controls drove me nuts. I finally put a couple of hours into it tonight.
This time, I plugged my controller in and gave the game a try. Two hours later, I was hooked!
Sadly, the game was clearly designed to be played with a controller. When you try playing with mouse and keyboard as God intended, you feel like you are struggling to control the game, like you can't access the information you need. If you play with a controller, it's not great, but it's like, "it's a nice control scheme for a controller." For whatever reason, that made all the difference for me, as stupid as that sounds.
It's got a great atmosphere, as most Warhammer games do, and I'm looking forward to putting some more time into it (hopefully this weekend).

 

[octavius]

HoMM 3: Shadow of Death

Completed the third mini campaign, Hack and Slash. This time it's Crag Hack who must find artificats for Sandro, and it was a marked improvement on the two former campaigns, at least in difficulty.
Crag Hack suffers from low mana pool, and to make it more challenging the starting castles can't build Taverns, there's one way Teleporter exits into the starting area, the Necropolises hide behind border garrisons for which the corresponding tents are either in out of the way places or inaccesible, and in the last map they have some really souped up heroes who can kill 200 Marksmen or Halberdiers with a single Implode spell. But at least you get a Town Portal scroll in the last map.
So you have to think a bit outside your usual HoMM 3 safety zone, and focus on retrieving those artifacts, not conquering the map. But like the two previous campaigns it suffers from re-using the same themes.

 

[Blonsky]

Thea 2: Shattering
To much of a rougelike to be an enjoyable experience.

 

[unfairlight]

Soldier of Fortune.

Fuck Siberia.

That mission had TOO FUCKING MANY snipers that take out your entire armour bar and about 25% HP with one shot and kill you with a second that are BEHIND a fog that obscures your vision, but not theirs. You'll be 2shotted by invisible enemies who's position you can only know if you just "know", I guess. Your way to beat them? Just trial and error through the map and spam SMG at where they spawn, hoping to stunlock them with a stray shot and hoping they don't shoot you in 0.5 seconds when you turn a corner.

It also had these bullshit autocannon IFVs that will basically softlock the level for you unless you move fast once you trigger their appearance while they are still in their animation phase and unable to fire. If you trigger their appearance and retreat, you are softlocked because you only have that one small corridor to move through where they kill you in a second. No way to dodge their fire, no way to destroy them from afar. How would you know when and where they will appear? You don't, you just trial and error until you have their positions memorised. You play careful, you softlock yourself and have to restart the entire mission. How do you destroy them? Not with C4, nooooo, that makes too much sense, you have to run fast enough through like 3 fucking enemies in a 5 second window (including a sniper that can again take off all your armour and 25% of your HP by sheer bad luck) and get to their blindspot to shoot your normal guns at their exhaust until they blow up. Apparently 9 shots of .44 magnum is enough to destroy an IFV, but not plastic explosive.

This game is grinding down my fucking patience.

 

[Darth Roxor]

siberia is by far the worst part of sof

it was also the worst part of nolf2

i'm seeing a pattern here

i think it's safe to say that siberia is the local equivalent of the sewer level

 

[unfairlight]

Oh, and I'll also note that FPS is tied to game physics, and when you have over 60 FPS you can randomly get stuck on absolutely nothing at all while walking and you also cannot walk a straight line. Neither SOFPlus' FPS lock or my driver frame rate control manage to lock it at 60 full stop, and sometimes it stretches to ~64 FPS which is enough to get me stuck (and hence killed) in combat.

 

[octavius]

Fuck Siberia.

That mission had TOO FUCKING MANY snipers that take out your entire armour bar and about 25% HP with
one shot and kill you with a second that are BEHIND a fog that obscures your vision, but not theirs. You'll be 2shotted by invisible enemies who's position you can only know if you just "know", I guess. Your way to beat them? Just trial and error through the map and spam SMG at where they spawn, hoping to stunlock them with a stray shot and hoping they don't shoot you in 0.5 seconds when you turn a corner.

Siberia and the last level were the most annoying ones due to the fog.
I only played on normal difficulty, though, so it was more annoying than hard. I assume you played on higher difficulty?

 

[unfairlight]

I only played on normal difficulty, though, so it was more annoying than hard. I assume you played on higher difficulty?

I'm playing on Challenging, that's one step below the hardest which is Unfair.

 

[pakoito]

Just finished Victor Vran without doing too many sub-quests, 13h total. It's a very entertaining and lightweight ARPG. It's so delightfully self-contained. There's no story and the combat system is just fun. No classes, just outfits that specialize you. No skill tree, every weapon has 3 skills and that's it (which is what most ARPG builds end up looking like anyway). There's a bit of power creep but not much. There's some loot that opens new skills and it isn't just 5% improvements. Dungeons have challenges that are well defined. The levels aren't randomized so the designers were able to do some cute shit with encounter design and exploration.

I want to jump to Grim Dawn now, but I'm scared of the grind I'll find.

 

[Modron]

Play a hack and slasher without grind then like Siege of Avalon, Divine Divinity, or I guess Prince of Qin (has potential random encounters on map change).

 

[flyingjohn]

Trying out kremlingames (crisis in kremlin ostalgie,china).

They all have the same problems:

-Horrible translation and grammar unless you speak fluent russian
-Horrible ui which is useless at presenting any information
-Bugs with many events which might never happen
-Trial and error coupled with rng. You will need to play the game multiple times just to understand what influences what because the game doesn't tell you anything how different systems influence each other.
-The games aren't really complicated,just obtuse and convoluted.


But the events are really well done and you have plenty of options how to lead your country.If you are looking to larp a communist country in a historical setting these are the games for you.
I just think that the games fail in the strategy part and succeed in the cyoa part,which is not what i am looking for.

 

[Wunderbar]

i think it's safe to say that siberia is the local equivalent of the sewer level

can confirm

source - i'm from siberia

 

[Darth Roxor]

Kyle Katarn marathon has brought me to Jedi Outcast, and I found a funny thing. When you kill imperial officers, it makes any stormtroopers in the area suffer morale failure and run. I'm pretty sure I've played this game the proverbial seven times by now, if not more, and I've never noticed this.

 

[Maggot]

I only played on normal difficulty, though, so it was more annoying than hard. I assume you played on higher difficulty?

I'm playing on Challenging, that's one step below the hardest which is Unfair.

If you think it's bad now, it only gets worse and the final boss is a total slog on challenging.

 

[Darth Roxor]

You can get the final boss to bug out and stop moving by jumping on the submarine kiosk. It's much more enjoyable that way.

 

[Average Manatee]

However, one thing that is striking me in this playthrough is how full of shit many people are who say that Outcast was total decline from JK in terms of level design. To be brutally frank, I find this accusation total nonsense, because if anything, JK's level design is a sharp decline from Dark Forces. Dark Forces had the approach where maps were used in their entirety consistently throughout the levels, barring some exceptions, despite having neither underwater swimming nor force jump. Meanwhile in JK, barring a few exceptions, the levels are mostly of the "keep moving forward until you win" variety, which in essence is the same thing as Outcast. It may have more weirdo jumping puzzles and leaps of faith to it, but that hardly makes it as groundbreaking as most people here would have you believe - and when some say that these levels are labyrinthine or whatever, now that's just straight up untrue.

The big difference between JK and JO is that JO has hardcoded neutral force power levels that game levels are built around while JK is designed for complete freedom of force power choice. This means that JK levels are completable with no force jump or force speed, so when you use those to get around obstacles it feels like you are actually a superhuman shortcutting around the level. In JO there is no such thing because everything is strictly designed so that e.g. force jump level 2 across an obstacle is the one way to progress and the way you aren't supposed to go is at force jump height level 2 + 2 feet higher. JO level design is a constant onslaught of disappointment every time you find ledges that are 2 feet higher than your current jumping ability.

 

[Darth Roxor]

P. sure Jedi Knight forces (ohoho) 2 or so levels in force jump upon you by assigning them automatically because a handful of places do require you to use it, so that's a negative.

 

[Harry Easter]

Shadowrun: Dragonfall: Directors Cut. The last time I played this game was five years ago and I have to say, this game has aged quite well. It even gets a bit challenging on hard, but the reason why I'm coming back is for the questdesign, the atmosphere and the story. The writing is so good after the first scene (which starts a bit flowery) and I like the characters and how well the developers catched the idea of how Shadowrun can work, if you take the pulpy, over the top - setting serious. It's a smart story about a cycle of revenge, but also an exciting actionmovie.

This game is Shadowrun. It's dark and atmospheric, pulpy and fun and creative and crazy. I guess, I am in love with the freestate Berlin again. Lucky for me, that this game is at least thirty hours long, if you do everything.

 

[Gregz]

Shadowrun: Dragonfall: Directors Cut. The last time I played this game was five years ago and I have to say, this game has aged quite good well.

pet peeve

 

[DalekFlay]

Shadowrun: Dragonfall: Directors Cut. The last time I played this game was five years ago and I have to say, this game has aged quite well. It even gets a bit challenging on hard, but the reason why I'm coming back is for the questdesign, the atmosphere and the story. The writing is so good after the first scene (which starts a bit flowery) and I like the characters and how well the developers catched the idea of how Shadowrun can work, if you take the pulpy, over the top - setting serious. It's a smart story about a cycle of revenge, but also an exciting actionmovie.

This game is Shadowrun. It's dark and atmospheric, pulpy and fun and creative and crazy. I guess, I am in love with the freestate Berlin again. Lucky for me, that this game is at least thirty hours long, if you do everything.

The writing and atmosphere/style are definitely off the charts good. I have quibbles with other areas of it, but those things are so good it can't be ignored. I'm actually playing Hong Kong right now for the first time (alternating with Mass Effect Andromeda because I'm a masochist) and it's not quite as good. It's solid, but the writing takes a bit of a step back.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Shadowrun: Dragonfall: Directors Cut. The last time I played this game was five years ago and I have to say, this game has aged quite good well.

pet peeve

I'm extremely disappointed that your misspelling of the word 'peeve' here was apparently not intentional, seeing as you've fixed it.

 

[Harry Easter]

The writing and atmosphere/style are definitely off the charts good. I have quibbles with other areas of it, but those things are so good it can't be ignored. I'm actually playing Hong Kong right now for the first time (alternating with Mass Effect Andromeda because I'm a masochist) and it's not quite as good. It's solid, but the writing takes a bit of a step back.

I think, I know what you mean. I recently played the start of Hong Kong for comparison and for some reason it feels slower compared to Dragonfall: DC, because it wants to do more. And I think there are some changes for the better (graphics, the matrix and maybe the U.I. got a bit smarter, I think) and I also like the motive of the villain

Spoiler

which is depressingly mundane and therefore quite realistic in my opinion.

but Dragonfall: DC does it a bit better. I think it's because Dragonfall: DC connects it themes and stories better and the villain is a bit more interesting and better build-up. It also waffles less, than Hong Kong (because it's true, they take a while to get to the point in that game).

Hong Kong on the other hand does its best to make this story more personal and adds a lot more humour and crazyness to the setting, which I also appreciate. And it still has some excellent quests. I will replay it soon ... after the mod for DMS, which takes the old module and just adds more stuff to it. I liked that story too and think it was the best paced compared to the other ones (and I kind of liked, that you had to save up money to hire other runners).

I like all of the stories to be honest :D.

 

[FreshCorpse]

Shadowrun: Dragonfall: Directors Cut. The last time I played this game was five years ago and I have to say, this game has aged quite well. It even gets a bit challenging on hard, but the reason why I'm coming back is for the questdesign, the atmosphere and the story. The writing is so good after the first scene (which starts a bit flowery) and I like the characters and how well the developers catched the idea of how Shadowrun can work, if you take the pulpy, over the top - setting serious. It's a smart story about a cycle of revenge, but also an exciting actionmovie.

This game is Shadowrun. It's dark and atmospheric, pulpy and fun and creative and crazy. I guess, I am in love with the freestate Berlin again. Lucky for me, that this game is at least thirty hours long, if you do everything.

I played DMC and then for some reason skipped to Hong Kong which I played little by little over a very long period of time (a year? maybe longer), finishing the post-game mini campaign a couple of months ago. IMO the Shadowrun setting is at it's weakest once you start to get very supernatural which is unfortunately how both DMC and Hong Kong end. That said I think the writing, the setting and the plotting of individual missions is generally brilliant in Hong Kong. Looking forward to seeing what CDPR do with Cyberpunk 2077. Hopefully they are able to refrain from putting elves and dwarfs into it.

 

[octavius]

HoMM 3: The Shadow of Death

Completed the fourth mini campaign, Birth of a Barbarian.
Hardest campaign so far, and I had to save scum on the third and fifth (last) map. Playing on Impossible it's very hard to get enough troops to defeat enemies that can kill any of your stacks with one spell. Expert Diplomacy helped. And it's amazing how useful a Ballistas is when you have 40 Attack, but are very short on troops.

I won by avoiding the main enemy hero, and captured their Titan enabled capitol defended by a lvl 1 hero. Main hero then suicided against her old capitol.

A common theme for many of the SoD campaign maps is that you should not get too attached to your starting castle. And you are virtually forced to focus on troops in the beginning and to fund your army with gold from Naga Banks and Dwarf Treasures instead of using a whole week to build a capitol.