What game are you wasting time on?

[ERYFKRAD]

soul reaver 1 doesn't have shitty controls, learn to fucking play or just don't touch platformers if you can't handle them with your butterfingers

Here is my butterfinger for you.

Spoiler

Do you bitch about Gothic's controls as well?

 

[J_C]

soul reaver 1 doesn't have shitty controls, learn to fucking play or just don't touch platformers if you can't handle them with your butterfingers

Here is my butterfinger for you.

Spoiler

Do you bitch about Gothic's controls as well?

No. Gothic controls pretty good for me, I never understood the hate for it. Using mouse helps a lot.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Alternating between Soul Reaver and Silent Hill. I bought a wireless controller and redirected the pc video output to my TV. It's the first time in my life I have played a game using a controller (and also laying on a sofa). It's relaxing.

 

[Momock]

No. Gothic controls pretty good for me, I never understood the hate for it. Using mouse helps a lot.

I thought it was the opposite (you have to accept that the game is keyboard only and roll with it, and everything makes suddenly sense).

 

[J_C]

No. Gothic controls pretty good for me, I never understood the hate for it. Using mouse helps a lot.

I thought it was the opposite (you have to accept that the game is keyboard only and roll with it, and everything makes suddenly sense).

Well mouse is good for loogking around and looking at the direction you actuall want to look. But as for combat, yeah, all keyboards and I never had a problem with it.

 

[Puukko]

Xenoblade Chronicles hooked me. I'm emulating it with a HD texture pack though the characters still look like something out of a game from 2001, not 2011. I had some pretty bad stuttering issues too, but those were almost completely solved by offloading the shaders to the GPU (you'd think that'd be default behavior, but then again, I'm not an emulator developer...)

I'm positively surprised by how difficult the game is and how engaging and fast paced the combat gets. You can play as any party member, but the MC is favored due to his titular sword having special properties. His playstyle is comparatively inflexible, relying on good positioning (use special side attacks to boost attack power, then do huge backstabs and use another ability to reduce aggro) but there's a lot of systems in place that ensure you've always got your hands busy. Perhaps the most important is the MC's ability to see into the future to predict big busters - who will get hit by what kind of attack and what ability you need to use to prevent it from happening. There's combos that benefit from affinity between members as well as chances to encourage them, so it's a pretty dynamic system where you feel like you're controlling a party that's more than just units performing actions in a vacuum. Tying the social aspect into combat benefits is something I quite like.

My.only real complaint so far would be that the lockon isn't the easiest to use so sometimes I'm sitting there like a dumbass as I wait for the game to select the enemy right in front of me.

 

[baud]

I'm playing Rogue Squadron for the first time and I'm getting my butt kicked in like half of the missions, dying left and right It's quite fun, but I suck so much it's not funny

 

[Sceptic]

Also the voices sound like they were phoned in. Both the main characters and the stormtroopers. The new stormtroopers are very muted and sound more like generic guys rather than the god-tier stormtrooper screams and death cries of original JK1.

For some weird reason, MotS sound effects and voices are 8-bit instead of JK's 16-bit, hence why everything sounds phoned in and muted.

I liked MotS enough to finish it a couple of times, but if you end up abandoning it I would also understand.

 

[Darth Roxor]

you gotta play long enough just to see the SITH TURBOTIGERS though

Seriously speaking though, while MotS is worse than the base deal and has its annoying quirks, I think it's still good enough to play it to the end, and given that the final level is actually amazeballs-tier of map design (even if disabling your guns is a dick move), I would say it's very much worth getting to it.

 

[Ivan]

Red Dead 2

An impeccably pretty open-world western with disappointing gameplay. If you’ve played a Rockstar game, you know the drill: story missions consist of you sticking to the game’s script. If you deviate from your objective, the game will penalize you. The game is consistently condescending and presents you with boring tasks. Many times you will feel like you’re playing the world’s most elegant walking sim. Combat is still as boring as I remember from the first game. My main gripe with the game is that the survival mechanics are too lenient. You NEVER have enough incentive to hunt, rob, cook, or maintain your weapons. It’s all fluff to acquire new cosmetics that I don’t have the time/interest to put the time in. The game is extremely stubborn with what weapons you have on your back. Often it resets your loadout, or forces you to use certain weaponry. That being said, exploration still feels great because of the love and care put into the audio and wildlife of the game. While the itemization is extremely poor, and resource management is a joke, I maintain that this is the prettiest open world I’ve ever experienced. It felt like The Witcher 3 on steroids. I ran the game on a GTX1080 and tweaked the settings targeting 60 fps and I was in awe not just by the animations but by the lighting. These were my favorite moments in the game. When the game turns into hiking/horseback riding sim mode, I loved it. There are a plethora of wacky “WTF HAPPENED HERE” locations that are a joy to stumble upon.


I know Rockstar will never make the game I crave. I know that they will never adopt the kind of stringent mechanics that I hunger for, i.e. STALKER Misery type of resource management/survival mechanics. That being said, it’s always incredible to see how much love and care they put into their open worlds. Here are some mod ideas that would increase my enjoyment: have Arthur’s health core deteriorate faster if he doesn’t eat, have guns jam if they aren’t cleaned after being exposed to rain/long periods of time, for God’s sake sort the weapon loadout nonsense, more stringent Dead Eye, increases prices of all goods to incentivize robbing.


Story/Characters - Voice acting is great across the board, but the ambient and environmental sounds steal the show. The game has a lot of fat and didn’t need to be as long as it is. Dutch’s “decline” is milked and loses its impact by the end. That being said, it was great playing the role of Arthur and interacting with his compas.



Gears 5 (my first and prolly only GoW game)

A solid third person shooter. Doesn’t do anything unique. The most noteworthy thing about is that it has a hub level where you’re offered 5 or so slices of levels and gives you the option of whether you want to complete the 2 story-critical ones or do the optional ones as well. Traversal in this section is boring, hold W to go between A-B-C-D-E. In sum, solid popamole.

 

[baud]

I'm playing Rogue Squadron for the first time and I'm getting my butt kicked in like half of the missions, dying left and right It's quite fun, but I suck so much it's not funny

Finished it with a liberal dose of cheats (unlimited lives and all bonus), it was fun, the most difficult parts were the mission where I had to defend an objective, especially when piloting those fucking snowspeeders. The other missions were fun (like the bombing mission in a volcan and destroying the big vehicles on Mon Calamari). I like how different the handling of the different planes was. But if it wasn't SW, I don't think I would have bothered.

When the game turns into hiking/horseback riding sim mode, I loved it.

Those were the best moments for me in the first Red Dead, just riding around.

 

[Strange Fellow]

I've lapsed back into the bad habit of starting like 5 games at a time, and all this Jedi Knight talk made me want to make it my annual shooter of 2019, because Star Wars. I'm having a blast with it. Annoyingly it wouldn't let me run it with 3d acceleration enabled without also killing half the wall textures, but I honestly think the game looks better without it anyway, so no biggie.
P.S. I don't see what's supposed to be so bad about the Nar Shaddaa level ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Average Manatee]

P.S. I don't see what's supposed to be so bad about the Nar Shaddaa level ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

DF1: Its just a hard, long, confusing level in a game that has no mid-level saves. Whether that's good or bad is up to whether you're OK with that.
DF2: Its a good starting level.
DF3: It is complete and utter ass with snipers in every nook and cranny dedicated to one-shotting you from across the level through 2-inch wide slits because apparently the devs wanted to ruin the first level where you were a Jedi. Bind Quick Save and Quick Load to the left and right mouse buttons respectively.

Can't recall if Jedi Academy had a Nar shaddaa level. It probably did but Jedi Academy was so generally unmemorable as a random collection of missions with no real interesting protagonist (as opposed to Kyle Mother-Fucking Katarn) or plot progression that I can't remember what it would be like. There were definitely multiple Nar Shadda-like levels

 

[Darth Roxor]

Personally the most bothersome part of Nar Shaddaa in Jedi Knight to me were the FUCKING GRENADIERS.

There's also a nasty secret in the 2nd level that involves a jumping puzzle that can potentially land you in a point of no return. Bad news if you quick save after getting to said secret.

Can't recall if Jedi Academy had a Nar shaddaa level.

Yep. It was the one with SHIELDED ASSASSIN DROIDS. REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

 

[Average Manatee]

Personally the most bothersome part of Nar Shaddaa in Jedi Knight to me were the FUCKING GRENADIERS.

Yeah those were annoying too.

I can't understand the logic behind throwing all of the clearly anti-jedi enemies (snipers and grenadiers you can't block) at the player as soon as they get the saber while all of the blockable enemies come later. Like, the latter should be the first thing you come across because the player's block skills are still weak enough for them to be dangerous. Instead you only really start fighting stormtroopers once they've become effortless to beat and you're just force-pulling and pushing them around like a comedy skit.

Yep. It was the one with SHIELDED ASSASSIN DROIDS. REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Yeah, looking at walkthroughs that was actually Coruscant, and I don't think Nar Shaddah actually appeared.

 

[HansDampf]

Nar Shaddah in Outcast was supposed to be a level before you get the lightsaber. They must have changed it late in development.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

Nar Shaddah in Outcast was supposed to be a level before you get the lightsaber. They must have changed it late in development.

Even with the lightsaber it's a tricky level. Enemy placement was... sneaky. Lots of snipers + tons of jumping platforms = hours of fun.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Personally the most bothersome part of Nar Shaddaa in Jedi Knight to me were the FUCKING GRENADIERS.

Yeah those were annoying too.

I can't understand the logic behind throwing all of the clearly anti-jedi enemies (snipers and grenadiers you can't block) at the player as soon as they get the saber while all of the blockable enemies come later. Like, the latter should be the first thing you come across because the player's block skills are still weak enough for them to be dangerous. Instead you only really start fighting stormtroopers once they've become effortless to beat and you're just force-pulling and pushing them around like a comedy skit.

Yep. It was the one with SHIELDED ASSASSIN DROIDS. REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Yeah, looking at walkthroughs that was actually Coruscant, and I don't think Nar Shaddah actually appeared.

Remind me, wasn't there a level where you went looking for a crime lord in Academy? One with a butt load of building to building jumps? Wasn't that Nar Shadaa?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Nope, that was Coruscant and the aforementioned SHIELDED ASSASSIN DROIDS.

It uses the same tileset as Outcast's Nar Shaddaa so it's easy to draw wrong assumptions.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Nope, that was Coruscant and the aforementioned SHIELDED ASSASSIN DROIDS.

It uses the same tileset as Outcast's Nar Shaddaa so it's easy to draw wrong assumptions.

Righto, much obliged.

 

[Humppaleka]

Tropico 4. The missions take forever.

 

[Strange Fellow]

How can you be upset about grenadiers when there are concussion rifle dudes

Spoiler

 

[Kabas]

Playing Warcraft 2 for the first time.
It's pretty nice.

 

[Abu Antar]

I have 1 hour played on PC in the last 14 days. Currently playing South Park: Fractured But Whole on PS4. I think that I'm nearing the end. It's fairly fun, but I might prefer the first one a little bit more. Ubisoft manages to make it feel like a Ubisoft game. Well, duh is a good response to that, but they really do. There's all these bars you can fill for this and that. I will give them some credit: I was thinking that the game would be a lot "safer" than it is, but it feels like good old South Park to me, even if all the fart jokes get a bit old and stale. It's a decent time waster.

I'm playing through quite a few console games, since it feels like I have neglected them for quite a while. Maybe I'll even turn on my Switch one of these days.

 

[Lagole Gon]

Replayed Doki Doki Literature Club.

I unironically love it. But after replaying it... I can't help but wonder if the game wouldn't be even better without the meta creepypasta gimmick. Realistic psychological horror maybe? Fuck, I would play it as a normal anime dating VN. Yes, I'm a massive faggot apparently.
Gotta love the amount of clever details. Sayori theme variant being somewhat apathetic; some suspicious words she reacts to during the poetry minigame; realizing what was the meaning of her first poem. Genuinely clever stuff... in a free creepypasta gimmick game.