What game are you wasting time on?

[octavius]

After a round or 12 of Master of Magic, I am back in the mood for another IWD2 run.




Throw it to the Codex to come up with 6 characters to make a party.

What do you guys think?

Lord of the Rings party with one Halfling representing the four hobbits.

 

[RK47]

Midget Mafia run imo. 6 Dwarves.

You can delete the beardless retard and go for the 6 bearded ones.

 

[Cael]

After a round or 12 of Master of Magic, I am back in the mood for another IWD2 run.




Throw it to the Codex to come up with 6 characters to make a party.

What do you guys think?

Lord of the Rings party with one Halfling representing the four hobbits.

No casters makes me sad...

 

[Chaosdwarft]

Well right now I am in bizarre phase.

I am learning how to fly combat planes in DCS. Very different experience from my Cessna take offs from the Twin Towers (yes the ones from New York) back in Flight Sim 98.

Still playing that Civ4 Caveman2Cosmos Persia Game I started 3 months ago. Doing small one hour sessions every week. Finally reached the Ancient Age!

Apart from that not much since real life tends to get in the way lately.

Cheers!

 

[ERYFKRAD]

No casters makes me sad...

Abandon this foolishness. Embrace the barbarian.

 

[octavius]

After a round or 12 of Master of Magic, I am back in the mood for another IWD2 run.




Throw it to the Codex to come up with 6 characters to make a party.

What do you guys think?

Lord of the Rings party with one Halfling representing the four hobbits.

No casters makes me sad...

No casters?
Gandalf was a wizard, and Aragorn could heal. So Human Mage and Half-Elven Ranger/Cleric, which I used in IWD1, or whatever is applicable in IWD2.
Unless you're a real Tolkien purist, of course.

 

[Average Manatee]

Completed Diablo 2: LOD 1.09 Normal with PlugY playing all seven characters.

All characters are fun to play except the Necro. Summoning and Curses is just too much micro-management, since you have to raise new skellies all the time. The other options for the necro don't look much better, though, except maybe Corpse Explosion. So maybe I'll go with the CE+Amplify Damage if I continue this character.

I recall summoning Necro being so easy a retard could roll their face on the keyboard and defeat Baal on the current patch, all you had to do was max the normal skeletons and swap between amplify for trash mobs and decrepify for bosses. Must have either been changed in patches or you wasted too many points on the basically useless summons like skeleton mages (useless except for freezing bosses) and golems (think they scale better in Nightmare/Hell). CE is absurdly, cheesily OP at high level for clearing trash but definitely shouldn't be required for normal.

 

[octavius]

Completed Diablo 2: LOD 1.09 Normal with PlugY playing all seven characters.

All characters are fun to play except the Necro. Summoning and Curses is just too much micro-management, since you have to raise new skellies all the time. The other options for the necro don't look much better, though, except maybe Corpse Explosion. So maybe I'll go with the CE+Amplify Damage if I continue this character.

I recall summoning Necro being so easy a retard could roll their face on the keyboard and defeat Baal on the current patch, all you had to do was max the normal skeletons and swap between amplify for trash mobs and decrepify for bosses. Must have either been changed in patches or you wasted too many points on the basically useless summons like skeleton mages (useless except for freezing bosses) and golems (think they scale better in Nightmare/Hell). CE is absurdly, cheesily OP at high level for clearing trash but definitely shouldn't be required for normal.

I read somewhere that skeletons were beefed up in later patches. In 1.09 they are basically one hit wonders, and I used them for something to Iron Maiden the enemies. I have some 5 extra skill points in the skeleton skills from items, but haven't spent more than 1 one on them.
The Golem is much more resiliant, and has the advantage that he can be instantly summoned as a meat shield. And I've spent some skill points on the top golem IIRC.

 

[olgar]

System Shock 2

 

[Valky]

Nearly wrapped up with Trine 4. It's almost entirely a decline from Trine 2.

 

[Hellion]

Received a review code for Six Ages, activated it, turns out the PR company sent me Boyfriend Dungeon instead by mistake.

Best. Day. EVER.

 

[FreshCorpse]

I played and completed Hyper Light Drifter which was incredible. Great game, great artstyle and reasonably well calibrated difficulty (one late game boss is notably too easy, possibly some early game groups are too hard). As is often the case in these games, the shotgun is OP, particularly for bosses. I'm sure a lot of people have played it before me in the past three years so not a great deal to say except perhaps that

Spoiler

I disagree with the consensus that the ending is weak - I thought it was fine.

.

Then I tried Indivisible, the "JRPG" from the studio that made Skullgirls and I'm pretty disappointed. Combining JRPG format (semi-action, semi-turn based) with 2d platforming is a cool idea but they've just executed it really badly. The combat is completely broken and mashing buttons works a lot better than any other strategy due to bonuses you get when your characters attack in quick succession. Indeed this seems required for bosses - good luck managing to string together a "combo" necessary to deal meaningful damage any other way. The platformer half of the game is perhaps worse - it's just braindead linear platforming with so far only two very minor pieces of optional content and indeed the game as a whole for at least the first 3-4 hours is a 99.9% linear run. I don't see the point in incorporating platforming when nearly every screen has one and only one (immediately obvious) solution with no material optional content. Perhaps someone here is going to tell me that it all changes 5 hours in but otherwise I'm going to give it up now. Disappointing.

Then I tried the just-released remake of Zelda: Link's Awakening for Switch and christ what a difference. Just 5 minutes with this thing reminds you that Nintendo's back catalogue is really fucking great and makes me wonder why I wasted 3 hours on Indivisible? That said, I'm dumbfounded how I'm getting occasional severe slowdowns (in the opening 10 minutes no less) when Nintendo presumably designed this game for the exact hardware I'm holding in my hand. If the Switch can't handle the blur and motion effects just turn them off for christs sake.

 

[Cael]

After a round or 12 of Master of Magic, I am back in the mood for another IWD2 run.




Throw it to the Codex to come up with 6 characters to make a party.

What do you guys think?

Lord of the Rings party with one Halfling representing the four hobbits.

No casters makes me sad...

No casters?
Gandalf was a wizard, and Aragorn could heal. So Human Mage and Half-Elven Ranger/Cleric, which I used in IWD1, or whatever is applicable in IWD2.
Unless you're a real Tolkien purist, of course.

I was thinking of Half-Elf for Aragorn as well, given the history of the Dunedain, but he was a warrior, not a healer. Pure ranger, I'd say.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Half-Elf

was a warrior, not a healer

The hands of a king are the hands of a healer.

 

[Cael]

Half-Elf

was a warrior, not a healer

The hands of a king are the hands of a healer.

Rangers get healing spells at mid-levels, which Aragorn was. You don't need access to cleric for healing, and Aragorn wasn't exactly the religious type.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Half-Elf

was a warrior, not a healer

The hands of a king are the hands of a healer.

Rangers get healing spells at mid-levels, which Aragorn was. You don't need access to cleric for healing, and Aragorn wasn't exactly the religious type.

I know, just wanted to quote that line.

 

[Cael]

Half-Elf

was a warrior, not a healer

The hands of a king are the hands of a healer.

Rangers get healing spells at mid-levels, which Aragorn was. You don't need access to cleric for healing, and Aragorn wasn't exactly the religious type.

I know, just wanted to quote that line.

Fortunately for you, while I like the extra conversation options that comes with being drow, I don't particularly like the favoured class restrictions :D Therefore, you got your 1 level of barbarian :D

 

[Average Manatee]

I'd consider Gandalf more of a Cleric than a Mage. He's almost always fighting on the front line and his sort of magic tends to be more supportive rather than directly offensive. When he does use magic it tends to be described as stemming from light or the sun. He is himself specifically a divine character sent to middle earth to serve his patron. I'd suggest Lathander

 

[Dux]

EVIL ISLANDS: CURSE OF THE LOST SOUL

This game isn't exactly mint but it ain't bad either . For those of you (which is probably most of you) who don't know what this is: it is an RPG of sorts with a camera and interface somewhat reminiscient of an RTS. You control the main character and at most two companions as you traverse the wilderness and between worlds, usually solving quests by clicking on an enemy or an item. Not always, though: sometimes you have to use stealth and guile.

I liked the first half of this game. You find yourself in an unknown land filled with borderline neantherthals, as well as your standard fantasy assortment of monsters. You start out using stone and bone weaponry, eventually working yourself up to steel and better. There's magic, both defensive and offensive in nature, but only the former is really worth a damn in a fight. Killing enemies and solving quests gives you XP which you can spend on various skills. Sword, bow, strength, encumberance etc. In combat there's really only one approach to ensure survival: armour, high DPS and save-scumming. There's a good reason for the save-scumming part and that is critical hits. Critical hits are completely broken in this game. You WILL die instantly many, many times because of these ludicrous criticals and you can never predict how or when they're going to occur. So save often and in different slots. Having good armour will help but you're still going to die out of nowhere. During the latter part of the game you have to craft your armour and weapons with the best materials available, also infusing them with spells to stand any chance of making it. Even then it's up in the air.

The latter part of the game is where it loses a lot of steam. The charming writing, down to earth problem solving and intrigue is replaced by gruelling combat and boring fetch quests. The game loses much of its personality, slowly falling victim to its own unbalanced combat and uninspired quest design. The final boss is also a big disappointment, to say the least. I've played through many games and I can safely say that this boss is easily up there in the top 5 worst of all time. It's absolutely catastrophic how bad it is. Then the game just ends. So, this game is, in a way, about the journey and not the destination.

The reason I stuck with the game all the way through (other than my autistic persistence) was the main character of Zak. I don't know if the voice-actor portraying him was taking the piss or just playing him straight and failing. It always sounds like he's about to burst into derisory laughter and the way the character is written is rather refreshing: off-kilter and weirdly confrontational.

So, should you spend the 20+ hours required to get through this one? Probably not, in all honesty, and I don't even dislike the game. I think it's quaint but it loses way too much of its charm along the way.

 

[DeepOcean]

Playing Grim Dawn's expansion Forgotten Gods.

Man, playing this game now and I remember why I have this love and hate relationship with Diablo clones. Grim Dawn has all that is good on the genre, actually, it is a big evolution from Diablo II, you have a crazy amount of builds you can make, the game offers 3 layers of customization with skills, devotions and itemization, each one with its systems that interact with each other allowing you to make really interesting builds, not only that but the game offers a very interesting lore that is actually very well written. The setting is really interesting, it is like the Empire from Warhammer fantasy lost the fight with chaos and the other factions and the remains of humanity had to survive while the other factions fight between themselves to decide who will be the winner.

One faction, the aetherials want to terraform the planet to suit their plane of existence and meanwhile, use the humans as hosts while they don't achieve that and the Cthonians want to kill all human beings on blood sacrifice to revitalize a dead god that was betrayed by other gods who stole his vitality on the time of creation and cast out his remains that created the void (the chaos plane equivalent). Pretty cool stuff but then it comes the hate part...

All those Diablo clones follow certain formulas from Diablo II as if it was a religion, doesn't matter how terrible those design decisions are, it is a unexplainable cargo cult complex. All those games are designed around RNG loot but they make the process of trying to obtain this RNG loot as painful as possible for no reasonable reason beyond "Diablo II did this, so we will do it.". Grim Dawn is no different on this regard, you have completely contradictory things like: 1)Majority linear content on a game based on repeating the same content to get loot, 2) The game requiring you to play the same game three times to get max level for no reason whatsoever (when there are much better ways to level up like the maps on Path of Exile), 3)Minimum level requirements for items, meaning that you won't use those items for a long time for no reason, 4)All loot that look cool and is unique only drop when you already finished the game, meaning you will be restricted to the ultra boring common loot (That is designed to be as bland as possible for no reason whatsoever) until reaching max level that will only happen when you already played the game three times.

If I were to design a Diablo clone, I would ditch the linear campaign progression model entirely, you would be able to get loot with unique build relevant modifiers since day one and you would level weapons up instead of your character and the difficulty would be dynamic and customizable, the most DPS you can deal and quickly kill enemies, the stronger enemies get but with more chance to drop loot. Instead of focusing on enemy HP and DPS to create artificial difficulty, I would use a modifier system, the harder you wish to get to get more loot, more dangerous abilities enemies have like ressurecting dead enemies, damage reflection, making you lose levels if you die, life leaching, stop your healing, immobilizing, blocking your attacks and etc.

I would have random events like bosses making enemies more powerful and the longer you take to find him and kill him, more powerful they become, a boss trying to ressurect another boss and if you don't destroy the ritual seals, you will face two bosses instead of one (with better loot), if you don't kill a boss in time, he might escape and he will release powerful monsters to delay you while he gets some relic to make him even more powerful.

 

[Dayyālu]

Bioshock 2. I hated Bioshock 1. I mean, the art design was pretty before everyone else copied the fake art deco style. As a game, Bioshock was a extremely disappointing blend of cargo-cult elements (the only reason a shitton of gameplay stuff was there was because We Need to Copy System Shock), a frankly embarassing enemy range and some frankly puzzling graphical choices (making everything look like it was smeared in mud). It had a fairly amusing weapon&power selection, completely crippled by the need to juggle the control scheme. The setting was borderline interesting, I'd rate it as a good French BD, but the plot was beyond retarded (DO YOU EAT BABIES OR NOT? DO YOU?). I dimly remembered Roguey arguing that Bioshock 2 was far better from the gameplay point of view....

And you know, it is. It's refined. Someone took a good look at what was wrong in Bioshock and worked on it. And it shows. Useless and retared hacking? Simplified and added a ranged options, with autohacking if you need speed. You can use powers and guns at the same time, and you can simply buy special ammo. Upgrades give new life and utility to weaponry. Enemy design tries to give you something interesting to shoot at, and the level design attempts to create enviroments where you can quickly dispatch enemies with some skill, even if the firefights are in cramped spaces. Graphics have been sharpened and the art deco style now looks a tad better.

It's still not quite a good shooter, tho. The game is still....floaty, the enemies are still somewhat unfun to fight (I'll honestly admit that my enjoyment of the game went up fairly quickly when I got the Spear Gun and started focusing on headshotting everything). The enemy variety is still... meh, but i guess that for a 00ies shooter it was adequate. The plotline is ... less dumb than the original game, I must say, even if it has the sin of forcing a Committee Waifu, but hey, it ain't Alyx Vance.

Amusing to think that Infinite , as a game, is far far inferior to this, from basic gameplay to retarded plotline to Committee Waifu IN YOUR FACE. COSTANTLY.

 

[ebPD8PePfC]

The theme park was great, and the orphanage was also fun.


But the game feels way to similar to the first, it's like a DLC that lasts too long.

The FPS is better, but it's not good enough. I wish they got rid of it and made a short and interesting walking simulator, or came up with something original. I don't care for Infinite because I don't want to deal with the bad FPS parts.

 

[Jvegi]

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Bioshock 2. I hated Bioshock 1. I mean, the art design was pretty before everyone else copied the fake art deco style. As a game, Bioshock was a extremely disappointing blend of cargo-cult elements (the only reason a shitton of gameplay stuff was there was because We Need to Copy System Shock), a frankly embarassing enemy range and some frankly puzzling graphical choices (making everything look like it was smeared in mud). It had a fairly amusing weapon&power selection, completely crippled by the need to juggle the control scheme. The setting was borderline interesting, I'd rate it as a good French BD, but the plot was beyond retarded (DO YOU EAT BABIES OR NOT? DO YOU?). I dimly remembered Roguey arguing that Bioshock 2 was far better from the gameplay point of view....

And you know, it is. It's refined. Someone took a good look at what was wrong in Bioshock and worked on it. And it shows. Useless and retared hacking? Simplified and added a ranged options, with autohacking if you need speed. You can use powers and guns at the same time, and you can simply buy special ammo. Upgrades give new life and utility to weaponry. Enemy design tries to give you something interesting to shoot at, and the level design attempts to create enviroments where you can quickly dispatch enemies with some skill, even if the firefights are in cramped spaces. Graphics have been sharpened and the art deco style now looks a tad better.

It's still not quite a good shooter, tho. The game is still....floaty, the enemies are still somewhat unfun to fight (I'll honestly admit that my enjoyment of the game went up fairly quickly when I got the Spear Gun and started focusing on headshotting everything). The enemy variety is still... meh, but i guess that for a 00ies shooter it was adequate. The plotline is ... less dumb than the original game, I must say, even if it has the sin of forcing a Committee Waifu, but hey, it ain't Alyx Vance.

Amusing to think that Infinite , as a game, is far far inferior to this, from basic gameplay to retarded plotline to Committee Waifu IN YOUR FACE. COSTANTLY.

I like Alyx.

 

[Dayyālu]

But the game feels way to similar to the first, it's like a DLC that lasts too long.

I do somewhat agree, but I played it long after Bioshock 1 and it didn't felt too tiresome. The thing is, while Infinite is a complete shitshow both in gameplay terms and plot/design terms, Bioshock 2 feels like, i dunnow, someone truly started thinking seriously "how we salvage this messy shitty cargo cult pseudoartsy game and make it borderline fun and good-looking". Credit where credit is due.

I like Alyx.

Then we need to duel to the death. Half Life 2 Deathmatch or the traditional Unreal Tournament?

I have an unending hate for Alyx. She's nerd bait and Committee Waifu, adds nothing to the game, to the plot or to the gameplay, and I endlessly got that uneasy feeling that late age Valve truly wanted to completely focus on the cute, relatable mixed-race STEM-focused girl as THE REAL protagonist. Nothing wrong with women or tiddies in games, but when something is so clearly a focus group creation thrown in YOUR FACE endlessly.... well, let us say I liked more the Barneys from HL1. At least they promised me a beer.