What game are you wasting time on?

[Unkillable Cat]

I miss the Phoenix Wrong memes they made back in 2007. Some of those were gold.

Some of them are on YouTube though.

 

[flyingjohn]

Finished shante series. Indie metroidvania with zelda like dungeons.

The only one worth playing is pirate's curse.Everything else is mediocre to bad.

The main gimmick of the series(dancing to transform) is the biggest weakness of the series.
It is slow,most forms have barely any use,you can't attack with most of them so you constantly have to transform back and forth.
Pirate curse changes them for instant use items that actually adds what you can do on top of your normal move sets instead of one shot gimmicks.

The metroidvania element also completely fails.The levels are not big enough to warrant so much backtracking and it gets tedious fast.The last game barely even has any metroidvania elements yet has a lot of backtracking for some reason.
The games also never actually get the "exploring one continuous level" feeling other metroidvanias have. It feels more like a loosely collected series of themes then one coherent world.
Pirate curse completely abandons the one world concept and gives you multiple levels that utilize the metroidvania formula on a smaller scale but much better.Also each level has its own little gimmick gameplay for more variety.

The combat in the first two game is solid but nothing on the level of pirate curse and half genie.That is because stuff like attack range and control responsiveness is miles better in the last tow games.

The overworld is just annoying in the first two games.The backtracking coupled with re spawning enemies gets tedious quickly.And fighting enemies barely gives you anything.(mostly a low amount of money and health)
Pirate curse gets rid of it and half genie changes to a more traditional plat former.

The magic system always changes for no good reason.First game uses a set amount you cna buy,second game gives you a mana bar,third game goes back to items and fourth game goes back to mana.
The mana system was perfect and it is the only thing i think pirate curse should have changed.

Dungeon design is the only thing i miss from the first shantae,there were some interesting things like polarization to solve puzzles.But pirate curse dungeons are not terrible and are only a small amount beneath teh original in terms of quality.(especially considering the first game last two dungeons feel way to gimmicky and the first one is just solid)

Pirate's curse is just so much better then everything else(including the latest shantae).Both in terms of game play and story.If you really want to play a shante with transformations get half genie hero at a discount.

xtra:If you are gonna play the original on the gbc get the gba enhanced romhack.
If you are gonna play risky revenge get the re shade mod on steam to eliminate the pixels.
For xbox360 ce emulation:
-Risky revenge requires that you tick the first and last 32 bit option in the game settings of the emulator.
-Pirae curse requires you to rename the xinput file to xinput9_1_0 in order to work.

 

[markec]

Finished MissionForce: CyberStorm, I played the fuck out of this game when it was released so I immediately bought it when it was released on GoG.

Its a really good game that is a must play for every fan of tactical games.

 

[Azalin]

Finished Unavowed,Dave Gilbert's latest game,it's certainly his best game when it comes to the technical aspects,graphics are better now with a higher resolution,voice acting was good and music was nice.It takes place in the same urban fantasy world as the Blackwell series and focuses more on the supernatural part,story had some nice surprises and the characters were mostly interesting.It takes some cues from Bioware games with companions and banter(I saw Hamburger Helper helped in this game) but the game isn't and adventure/rpg hybrid like QFG series,it's just an adventure with companions whose skills you can use in some cases to solve puzzles.The biggest problem is the gameplay because it took a hit,it was streamlined and made a bit too easy with too few puzzles in it.Still overall good enough although it could have been better,recommended

 

[Ivan]

Supraland
A fantastic puzzler in the vein of Talos Principle set in an open contiguous playspace. It feels like a metroidvania, shit combat to boot! I'm not super great at these games (didn't bother with the starts in Talos) and this game also features plenty of side content I don't see myself struggling over. That being said, the core puzzles and campaign left me completely satisfied. Thankfully all of the abilities you acquire change you traverse the playspace. There is very light combat but it's mostly just filler that doesn't get in the way much. They just ran a kickstarter for DLC and a sequel and am happy to say it's been a success. I highly recommend this, especially if you enjoyed puzzlers like The Swapper, Talos Principle and Portal.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Tomorrow, I will start Just Cause 4.

Oh boy...this game sucks. I thought these Just Cause games were about blowing shit up and liberating settlements.

2 days in (and now out!). This game is about flying/driving thru rings and other mini-game bullshit.

Yeah...I don't have time for that shit. Uninstalled.

Moved on to Sniper Elite 4, seems pretty good so far. After this I'll probably try the new Resident Evil.

Zep--

 

[DalekFlay]

I am officially obsessed with Hitman 2. Didn't play the first reboot, so playing all 13 levels in Hitman 2. Up to like 80 hours this month according to Steam. Don't see it stopping either. Series never clicked with me before, I think because of some clunky mechanics, but this "reboot" hits the sweet spot. I'm up through Mumbai so far, taking it slow and savoring it, replaying old missions to unlock challenges. My favorite mission so far is probably Hokkaido, with Sapienza in second. I like the more spy feeling ones.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

some clunky mechanics

 

[Prime Junta]

I got ground down by DA:O so for some reason not entirely clear to myself I decided to give DA:I another shot.

Rather to my surprise I'm kinda liking it. The mechanics are still shit and the leveled loot especially is frankly cancerous, and it is continuously trying to throw OCD collect-umpteen-this-that-or-the-other shitquests at you, but. But. But, it has redeeming qualities.

One, the story, writing, VO, and mocap are actually... good. This is a pulp power fantasy but it's a good one. Like Deadfire, this is an epic yarn with gods and sheeit, but unlike Deadfire, the epic main quest isn't in conflict with the rest of the stuff (other than the OCD collecting of course, more on that later). It also treats its themes with surprising intelligence, faith for example -- sure, you're a chosen one and hailed as the Herald of Andraste, but what does that actually mean? This is explored at surprising depth both through your own dialogue options and through that of your companions'.

Those companions are also head and shoulders better, more interesting, more nuanced, and more lifelike than most you see in this type of thing. It's almost as if they have minds of their own, personalities with various facets. They're in fact way better than anything, say, Obsidian has written since... I dunno, Mask of the Betrayer at least.

The real crying shame of it is that it's all buried under some seriously dull, rote, repetitive mechanics, worse than DA:O, and an even bigger mountain of that OCD collecting and questing. The only redeeming thing about that is that a lot -- not all, sadly -- a lot of that OCD questing is ignorable, it's actually possible to focus primarily on the main quest and most important sidequests while ignoring the rest.

DA:I would have been a legit good game with better mechanics and if they had just dumped about 80% of cookie-cutter sidequests. I'm a bit ashamed to actually kind of like it while never being able to get into DA:O, because DA:O ticks a lot more of the boxes I like to think I like in a RPG -- better choice and consequence, actual character mechanics with ability scores and stuff, marginally less retarded loot and magic, much much less collecting, and so on. But there it is.

 

[DalekFlay]

Yeah I mostly agree. Mass Effect Andromeda had the same potential, only the story is worse. Still both games have great open areas and a good foundation, ruined by shit quest design and boring tasks.

 

[Prime Junta]

Yeah I mostly agree. Mass Effect Andromeda had the same potential, only the story is worse. Still both games have great open areas and a good foundation, ruined by shit quest design and boring tasks.

I tried Millennial Effect: Andromeda a while back and I disagree about that. The problem with it is that the story/writing/companions are incredibly juvenile and un-relatable.

DA:I isn't great littrachaw mind, but the characters are not one-note. Cassandra has unshakable faith but grapples with dilemmas related to duty, but secretly reads romance novels. Leliana has transformed from a bubbly dreamgirl into a hardened spymaster (still with perfect skin tho, missed product placement opportunity there) who is grappling with a crisis of faith. Sera acts, looks, and talks like she had foetal alcohol syndrome but while muddled is pretty coherent about how she sees the world and her place in it, the only companion in fact who doesn't seem to have any great existential questions at all, and is pretty perceptive about how things really work. You've got Dorian with his family history and conflicted relationship with his fatherland, Solas who is at the same time a genuine bro and extremely creepy, and so on and so forth. The scene between Varric and Cassandra when Varric finally gets Hawke to turn up is great, here we have characters each with their own agenda they feel very strongly about but show in quite different ways.

This is legit good companion writing, much better than par for the industry. All the Pillars companions and their dilemmas seem one-dimensional by comparison. It's also much better than in the Mass Effects, in fact I think it might be the best BioWare has ever done.

I'm also digging the look and feel of the world. It doesn't completely avoid the theme-park effect but does a pretty good job of it a lot of the time -- the maps are lush, beautiful, and a lot of the time feel lived-in rather than just set up for your benefit.

(There's a lot of derp with the worldbuilding though, some of it facepalm-worthy. Like how they've gone out of their way to make the cast a complete rainbow coalition of all genders, skin colors, sizes, and orientations, and then just replaced that with elves = jews, dwarves = also jews but a different variety, qunari = the invading muslim horde, orlais = france but with even sillier accents and clothes, and so on.)

 

[Delator]

Series never clicked with me before, I think because of some clunky mechanics, but this "reboot" hits the sweet spot.

Which of the previous games have you tried?

 

[DalekFlay]

I tried Millennial Effect: Andromeda a while back and I disagree about that. The problem with it is that the story/writing/companions are incredibly juvenile and un-relatable.

Oh I tore Andromeda's writing a new asshole a while back, it's terrible. I meant the premise is good... going to a new galaxy, huge maps you have to quest on to make them habitable, a local race seeing you as invaders and trying to stop you. The combat is decent, not amazing but entertaining. Unfortunately the writing sucked, and the quests you do on those open worlds are MMO style trash, and it all falls apart because of that. I remember DA:I being pretty similar, but I haven't played it since release so it would be hard to comment on the writing specifically. I agree DA as a series has a good setup and premise as you described.

Which of the previous games have you tried?

I know I kept trying to enjoy the original Hitman 2 because I love stealth but I couldn't get into it. It was a long time ago and I don't remember specifics, but "clunky" is the vague memory I have. I don't think I played Contracts or Blood Money. I love Death to Spies 2 though, so I imagine I might like the older Hitmans if I gave them another shot. I don't know.

 

[octavius]

Deus Ex (GMDX)

You know it's an old game when you can't romance Anna Navarre.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

AssCreed 4: Black Flag. Really great entry in the series. Builds on the brilliant gameplaying concepts of II & Brotherhood and has the best, most fun implementation I've played of pirates & naval battles. Why did I waste all my time with that PotC mod New Horizons? This is just... fun. So much to do, and feels like a real sandbox. Sad that the series got simpler and simpler until it became a game for retards. I'm playing it with all details turned up now that I got a decent mid-entry rig, except Nvidia PhysX, which is broken in Black Flag and destroys your framerates.

 

[samuraigaiden]

I'm playing Zombi, the Ubisoft survival horror zombie game that was originally released for the Wii U under the name ZombiU. It's a weird one. There as a lot wrong with this game, but I'm still enjoying it. I credit this largely to the fact they got the George Romero style of zombie apocalypse mostly right. So far, all zombies are just human zombies, no crazy giants or mutants. Also, zombies are slow and only really threatening when in numerical advantage, as it should be. You play a generic survivor and if you die you lose that character and start as another generic survivor. However, you don't really lose progress, only the inventory items which remain on your previous survivor, now turned zombie. The very linear plot ignores your death and replacement completely. It's a game with rogue-lite aspirations that will be better appreciated if you go all the way through without dying, which in itself makes no sense. Controls are clunky and have no real depth. This would be unacceptable if the game wasn't a survival horror. The focus here is on being weak and not dying, it's not a power fantasy, so the fact you always have to hold the right mouse button before performing an action with the left mouse button works in favor of the experience the game is aiming to offer. The story is stereotypical in an serviceable way. The real problem is everything is kind of shallow and the cracks show up pretty fast, both from a technical and a design perspective. The game is not very optimized for PC, so objects pop in and other visual glitches are common. Because the game is designed to be played in a linear way, every "big moment" feels like a set piece from Half Life 2. "Hey, a hoard is approaching. Get behind that turret!" I'm not quoting word for word, but that line is in the game. The zombie in the elevator, the zombie in the air duct, all the tropes are used as you'd expect. Maybe I have too low expectations, but this game (so far) isn't shit. It's just underwhelming.

 

[DalekFlay]

Deus Ex (GMDX)

You know it's an old game when you can't romance Anna Navarre.

She gets wet every time you shoot a terrorist in the face. You just can't see it because of the old graphics.

 

[octavius]

That would explain why she got rusty.

 

[Delator]

Which of the previous games have you tried?

I know I kept trying to enjoy the original Hitman 2 because I love stealth but I couldn't get into it. It was a long time ago and I don't remember specifics, but "clunky" is the vague memory I have. I don't think I played Contracts or Blood Money. I love Death to Spies 2 though, so I imagine I might like the older Hitmans if I gave them another shot. I don't know.

IO didn't get the disguise mechanics right until Contracts, so Silent Assassin plays differently to the later games, which are also a lot better.

Unfortunately, Contracts is uneven -- it appears to have been rushed; as far as I know, it was developed in less than a year during Blood Money's development.

 

[Comte]

Deus Ex (GMDX)

You know it's an old game when you can't romance Anna Navarre.

Probably cause you got caught in the ladies room.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Why did I waste all my time with that PotC mod New Horizons?

Should have played City of Abandoned Ships. Best one in the series and the most RPG.
If it's sword and sail you're after, Man o' War Corsair has its moments.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Why did I waste all my time with that PotC mod New Horizons?

Should have played City of Abandoned Ships. Best one in the series and the most RPG.
If it's sword and sail you're after, Man o' War Corsair has its moments.

Perhaps I should have but I think I was always scared off by stories about the developers' tendency to release their games with hordes of bugs and not followup with adequate patches. The thing I remember most about PotC was that when you grappled a ship and had to fight the crew to gain possession of it, the resistance was always just one solitary fat guy that was easily dispatched. At least in Black Flag you sometimes had multiple conditions/goals that had to be met once you boarded a ship to take it, and there was always a full sized crew.

 

[DalekFlay]

IO didn't get the disguise mechanics right until Contracts, so Silent Assassin plays differently to the later games, which are also a lot better.

Unfortunately, Contracts is uneven -- it appears to have been rushed; as far as I know, it was developed in less than a year during Blood Money's development.

Pretty sure I'm going to try Blood Money again once I leech all I can from these new games. We'll see how it goes.

 

[deuxhero]

Doing yet another playthrough of Jedi Academy (with OpenJK), and I'm onto the final strech of levels. The gameplay of this game has been discussed and (rightfully) praised a lot already. Instead I'll talk about the level design.

All fifteen selectable missions are all wildly different from eachother, in objective, design, appearance and enemy types making good use of its change from a linear story to chosen missions. One levels has you rushing forward across a train to stop some stuff going on at the front, another retrieving parts on an open map (but sandworms will eat you if you stand outside of a safespot too long), another engaging in a speederbike chase, and more. Gimmicks never really repeat, and the extremely obtuse puzzles and level design of Outcast (which is the primary reason I don't replay Outcast that much) aren't nearly as frequent (there's still a handful, like the door that only opens when an enemy gets close to it in the mutant rancor level and some broken glass in the Hoth level that's immune to all damage but force push). A surprising number of levels can be completed pacifist (Outside of killing a handful of key holding officers, the Rancor level where you have to kill a bunch of guards to protect the hostages and the Dreadnaught level where you kill the entire 16,000+ crew are the main exceptions) and your mobility and defenses mean it actually is more practical that you'd expect to just run past enemies, even if this doesn't quite make sense.

Unfortunately that's about where my praise for the level design ends. Actual mapping rarely wowed me. There's secret areas, but they never really feel rewarding since they just give common items you won't use and lose at the end of the level anyways. I think including the original Jedi Knight's bonus force point for finding all secrets in a level would have greatly helped in this area, as would secrets that make fights easier or bypass parts of the level. Level play time varies wildly, especially if you know what you're doing: Some can last just a few minutes, others are half hour+ and start to outlive their welcome.

 

[The Decline]

Started playing the PS1 version of the Wizardry series.