What game are you wasting time on?

[Abu Antar]

Played Dear Esther. Took me about an hour to beat.

I'm almost done with Shadow Tactics, I think. It's been a lot of fun and intense. Lots of swearing during sessions, but once you come up with a tactic that works, you feel a rush of joy.

 

[Puukko]

Played Dear Esther. Took me about an hour to beat.

I'm almost done with Shadow Tactics, I think. It's been a lot of fun and intense. Lots of swearing during sessions, but once you come up with a tactic that works, you feel a rush of joy.

Whatever caused you to pick up Dear Esther? Isn't just a literal walking sim with the narrative spoken to you?

 

[Abu Antar]

Played Dear Esther. Took me about an hour to beat.

I'm almost done with Shadow Tactics, I think. It's been a lot of fun and intense. Lots of swearing during sessions, but once you come up with a tactic that works, you feel a rush of joy.

Whatever caused you to pick up Dear Esther? Isn't just a literal walking sim with the narrative spoken to you?

I'm going through the Humble Trove (Humble Choice subscriber) and I knew it was a short walking simulator. I thought that I'd give it a shot. I neither loved it, nor hated it.

 

[overly excitable young man]

Knights of the Chalice.
Brilliant game. Combat is king and the game feels extremely polished.
It plays very fast and just downright lacks annoying things.

Really like that you have to search your campfires.
Combined with ambushes this reduces the rest spamming.
Only thing missing is the extended reach with longer weapons as featured in TOEE.
Guess you can't have everything.

But from pure playing comfort it's one of the best games i've ever played.

 

[Dramart]

Baldur's gate II, the classic version. I'm at chapter four, and finally things get interesting. I'm playing it for the first time. So far it's really good and better than Pillars of Eter. I haven't played the first one, but I played and finished the two Icewind Dale games. It has more story and dialogues compared to IWD and there is also companions with backgrounds and personality, because of these things it feels like being in a fantasy world, and not just playing a game like in IWD.

I made almost every quests available in chapter two. My current party is Minsc, Jaheira, Nalia, Yoshimo, and Viconia. I like Anomen more than Jaheira, but this fourth chapter is about rescuing Imoen so I think it's better if Jaheira is in the party.

 

[Grauken]

I'm preparing for a "How do you do, fellow Japanese People!" gaming trip.

- Septerra Core (I've just installed GOG version)
- Shogo (Played that one. Not sure if I finished it.)
- ONI (Never played it. I'll have to wait for it to appear on GOG)

Any more examples of serious studios pretending to be japs?

It's on GOG and Steam, never played it

 

[Citizen]

Turok. Mind you, I LOVE FPP platformers, so I might be biased here, but level design in the game is fucking amazing. Tricky multi-level mazes, creative environment puzzles, risky long-range jumps, and TONS OF SECRET PLACES!!!! Holy shit! I'm halfway through and having a blast.

Overall the game feels like a love child of quake and 3d Rayman games, with platforming sections cleverly weaved into a fast paced FPS gameplay. There were some disgustingly evil platforming puzzles tho. Imagine a row of equidistant absolutely identical columns across a canyon you have to cross. You jump them and gun some enemies around, BUT! The distance between two last columns is just a bit longer than the rest, so your muscle memory fails you and you fall down I died two times in that place

 

[newtmonkey]

King's Quest V
I enjoyed playing through Loom and Secret of Monkey Island in 2018, and wondered if maybe I had missed out on an entire genre of awesome games as I'd never really got into point-and-click adventures before, so I decided I'd play this nostalgic classic from my childhood (note: nostalgia based solely on reading coverage of the game in magazines at the time).

It starts out promising with some freedom to explore and the first few "puzzles" are kinda random but make some sense. An hour in, after mapping and exploring the desert, I had no idea what to do next. I slept on it, played some other games, went back to KQ5 and explored everything all over again to see if I might have missed something, but was completely stuck.

I really wanted to avoid walkthroughs, because if you spoil the puzzles what is even the point of playing a PNC adventure? Sometimes, though, spoiling a single puzzle can teach you what you should be looking out for. So I scanned a walkthrough and...

Spoiler

apparently that one time a rat seemingly randomly ran across the screen being chased by a cat at the very start of the game, I was supposed to throw a boot (which I didn't even have yet; I got that later while mapping out the desert) at the cat so that the rat would save me later on in the game. The encounter is a one-off event, so I was locked in a dead end. This seems completely unfair and ridiculous... (1) unless you have the game speed turned way down, the encounter lasts all of two seconds and if the game didn't pop up a text box telling me what was happening, I would have had no idea what I was looking at, (2) no one is going to explore the desert before they explore the town area, so you won't have the item you need when the event happens, (3) even if you did have the boot and somehow knew that you could use it to save the rat, why would you think to do so? They could have made this far fairer by having the event reoccur until you resolve it, because after seeing it a few times you'd realize that you need to do something!

I am not 100% against dead ends, when it's something like not picking up something early on that you need later. You can get around this somewhat by saving often and giving descriptive names to your save games, so that you can load an old game, collect the item, and then retrace your steps. However, I can't imagine anyone ever clearing KQ5 without hints, and at that point are you even playing a game anymore?

 

[Au Ellai]

The Sierra adventure games had a lot of bullshit like that. They always ended up as "click all the items on all the pixels on all the screens" and just hope something happened to put your score up. Lucas arts was so far ahead of the competition it's insane.

I finally got around to playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and fuck it's awesome. I slept on it because the buggy release and wanted to give it some time to get patched up and get all the dlc out and such. I'm incredibly impressed by the game. It's the first RPG I've played that actually holds up to its lineage of Baldur's Gage, and is especially welcome after the shit-tier Pillars of Eternity trying to grab the "new Baldur's Gate" crown. Sucks Pillars ended up being the popular one because it's quality is a mere fraction of Kingmaker's.

I hated the Kingdom Management part at first. Straight-up shut the game down and didn't play it for a week because of how much I hated it initially, and figured since the rest of the game would be like that that I already played the good stuff in Chapter 1, but read up on it a bit and went back to it and am actually kinda enjoying that aspect of it as well. Typically I hate timers in games, I just like going my own pace, but somehow Kingmaker makes the timers work in its favor. Just enough pressure to make you do a bit of prioritization on where you travel and when (as opposed to just lawn-mowering the whole map), but enough time to never feel stressed that you won't be able to do everything you want.

I still have the unpopular viewpoint of hating the Pathfinder / 3.5 rule-set with a burning passion, but they worked it into the game well enough that I'm not too bothered by it (it's not like the weird 2nd edition spliced with bits of 3rd did Baldur's Gate any favors anyways and that's still a near-perfect game).

Game seems massive too. I barely got to Chapter 3 and I've already dropped dozens of hours into the game. I tend to play games really slow so I'm looking forward to the fact I've barely uncovered 1/3 of the map.

 

[Moonrise]

I've been playing with Bard's Tale Construction Set. I'm surprised not much has been done with it, because compared to FRUA it's far less restrictive. Chalk it up to brand, I guess. So for example, there's no limit on the number of maps. Granted, too many would stretch the monster variety thin--but that's not the point! Items and spells are completely editable. The event editor features primitive scripting, allowing for all kinds of shenanigans. You could even code little mini-games. It's kind of amazing. What's even better, the lessons I learned modding/hacking TES Arena apply to BTCS. I've already been able to overcome some of the supposed engine limitations. The sample game included is absolutely terrible, but I'm convinced a dedicated person could make this goose drop a golden egg.

 

[octavius]

dead ends

Thanks for reminding me why I quit playing Adventure games those decades ago.

 

[Average Manatee]

I never really got into adventure games much, but I remember playing Space Quest 1 (because my grandparents had a computer over a decade old with like 5 games that we'd play when we were over there). It was not really that bullshit at all. Did the adventure game genre just get progressively worse over time? Some kind of "we need to make each game more hardcore than the previous"? Or some attempt to get more money out of people by forcing them to pay for the hint books?

 

[Grauken]

Played through Castlevania - Circle of the Moon, with a hack where instead of randomized card drops all of them were hand placed ( https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4725/ )

Right now playing through Metroid - Zero Mission with a hack that takes out the Chozo hint statues ( https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3317/ ), and really enjoying it. Lovely pixel art

 

[Abu Antar]

X-Com: Apocalypse
It's the same as the previous games, yet it is not. Playing in one city feels weird but not bad. I guess the biggest difference for me is that I can't blow everything up. Gotta be careful to not piss off different factions. I've got 12 fighters and they have survived the first three missions.

Geneforge
I've never beaten this, or even gotten very far. I'm playing the guardian class. Reached the first village, and it's been fun. I'm not used to games not having music, but it does have nice ambient sounds. It's a shame that Vogel have gone from this to Quuen's Wish. I'm not sure which faction to side with yet. I'm thinking the awakened. We'll see.

SaGa: Scarlet Grace
I've been progressing slowly. Completed one part in Balmaint's story. I also went back to some previous battles that I couldn't beat. They netted me some nice items and a new mage ally. The game is great. Ugly, but great. Combat feels really tactical, and what actions you take can greatly influence the outcome. Status effects are super important, and you don't always want to finish off all the weaker enemies first. Getting off unity attacks feels great, once you find a way to manipulate the turn order and defeat the right enemy at the right moment. The BP system is interesting. I was unsure at first. Your whole active party share a BP pool. You can decide if you want to have all your characters use weaker attacks or a few characters using stronger attacks. I'm probably not explaining well, but all these systems create a more intricate battle system. You wouldn't think that, because combat seems deceptively simple at first.
Exploration has been fun. There's a world map that you explore. It gives me a board game feeling. There are no cities or dungeons to explore, they are simply menu based. It sounds bad, but works pretty well.
The game is all about combat and exploration, and the game nails both parts, imo.

 

[Alienman]

X-Com: Apocalypse
It's the same as the previous games, yet it is not. Playing in one city feels weird but not bad. I guess the biggest difference for me is that I can't blow everything up. Gotta be careful to not piss off different factions. I've got 12 fighters and they have survived the first three missions.

Are you playing turn-based or real time? This might sound heretical but I always found real time the more fun experience in Apocalypse.

 

[Abu Antar]

X-Com: Apocalypse
It's the same as the previous games, yet it is not. Playing in one city feels weird but not bad. I guess the biggest difference for me is that I can't blow everything up. Gotta be careful to not piss off different factions. I've got 12 fighters and they have survived the first three missions.

Are you playing turn-based or real time? This might sound heretical but I always found real time the more fun experience in Apocalypse.

I was thinking that I might go real-time just to try it out, but I'm a turn-based lover at heart. And I started the game because I wanted to play a TB game. I can see why people would enjoy real-time, though.

 

[Alienman]

Yeah, me too, But there is just something with the real-time system in Apocalypse. Battles usually turns into chaos & death, aliens and humans alike getting vaporized and buildings collapsing to the sheer amount of bullets and fire. It's kinda hilarious to watch the spectacle

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Still playing Black Mesa. Loved the pre-Xen chapters but the Xen portions, while beautiful, are tedious as fuck. One of the most difficult decisions professional game developers face is exactly how long a game should be. Most get it right, but the modders of Black Mesa are not professional game developers, and it shows. These guys do TEN+ separate incidents of the same "power cable" puzzle that pros would do a fraction of. I was playing Xen, thinking it nearly was over, when I hit an illogical puzzle that forced me to look up a YT walk-through to proceed. I was horrified to discover that I was only half-way through the goddamn thing. Also, even on Normal, difficulty can suddenly take a MASSIVE spike with variations of previously slow, lumbering enemies suddenly becoming fucking hit scan reaperbots. Fuck that shit. I may continue but will have to change my play style to accommodate. My tendency has always been to conserve my big weapons & ammo for boss fights but it looks like I'll have to bring out the big guns all the time. Black Mesa really is a nice looking game however and it's a stunning accomplishment overall but Xen is a dull, repetitive slog. I mean, how many of those octobrain midgets are we gonna have to kill by the end?

 

[Humppaleka]

Been playing Witcher 1 for the first time.

It's pretty okay, and serviceable. It's any wonder this series took off if I'm being honest. I like a lot of concepts for both the gameplay and narrative, but the execution isn't there to elevate the rest of the game.

For the story, take Chapter 1 for example. I don't know if I missed anything here, but it seems a fairly straightforward goal of solving quests, and figuring out information about Salamandra while doing them as you try to find Javed. At the end of it, Abigail mentions all these twists and turns about how the people you've been working for the entire time are all rotten to the core, and have done evil deeds that caused them to unintentionally conjure up the beast. I love the idea behind that if there were a bit more foreshadowing around this concept. Instead of having clues here and there (the most you get is maybe a small scene with Odo's dog), it's just a bit of a twist that turns the narrative on its head instead of a proper build-up leading into a crescendo

Replaying this for about the fifth time or something after a hiatus of maybe three years. I somewhat disagree. You can spot evidence for all of these things before the end of C1. They do come all at once though, and the witch is slightly suspicious although the lesser evil.

Spoiler

Ilsa killed herself with poison, mentions of her violation, Mikul being a bitch. Odo's dog barking at his brother's grave, him being a lousy drunk (this is the biggest leap though before the reveals at the end). Haren dealing with all sides. Reverend being obviously a bastard. When the Beast is bit by bit revealed to have come from the wickedness of men, all the parts start falling to their places. But that's just my two cents.

 

[Strange Fellow]

dead ends

Thanks for reminding me why I quit playing Adventure games those decades ago.

I like adventure games, but even the best adventure in the world will have me doubting whether it's worth it if I see that it includes unannounced dead ends like these. I hate them. Just give us a game over screen, for crying out loud. Of course, if they did that, the bullshit would be exposed for what it is, and the games would not have been made that way in the first place. At least that's what I like to think.

"A rat ran across your screen uninterrupted. Your adventure is doomed." No game designer could type that out and think everything is fine.

 

[Viata]

It could be worse, mate. Like you are playing Gabriel Knight 3 and Gabriel needs to disguise himself as a man to rent a motorcycle. Now the stupidest thing is that you need to create a fake moustache(the way you get it is so dumb) and the man you are disguising yourself as doesn't even have a moustache. That was the most stupid shit I have ever seen in an adventure game.

 

[octavius]

One of my "fondest" memories was a rather obscure game which name I can't remember (may have been something similar to Azaroth). On one of the first screens you can go in several directions. Go East resulted in "you fall down a cliff. You die". At least it was a qucik death...

 

[ERYFKRAD]

One of my "fondest" memories was a rather obscure game which name I can't remember (may have been something similar to Azaroth). On one of the first screens you can go in several directions. Go East resulted in "you fall down a cliff. You die". At least it was a qucik death...

That did happen in A tale of two kingdoms

 

[Jack Of Owls]

One of my "fondest" memories was a rather obscure game which name I can't remember (may have been something similar to Azaroth). On one of the first screens you can go in several directions. Go East resulted in "you fall down a cliff. You die". At least it was a qucik death...

I once wrote a text adventure on my old Commodore VIC-20 in Basic around 1982. It was basically a 3 maybe 4 minute game because if the player stepped in any direction -- East, West, North, South -- a grisly lovecraftian death, one by hideous multi-colored alien tendrils, awaited you if you took one step further. The only other human being beside myself to play it was my twenty-something niece, Theresa (may she R.I.P). She actually had a mild anxiety attack when she realized that her player character was doomed with the increasingly horrible and vivid descriptions of a weird death in any direction she stepped. Burger Becky claimed that Michael Cranford wrote Bard's Tale 2 with the strict intention and cruel idea that the player wouldn't be able to win (not true, btw). Hey, that was MY idea, Becky, not Mike's.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I've been playing with Bard's Tale Construction Set. I'm surprised not much has been done with it, because compared to FRUA it's far less restrictive. Chalk it up to brand, I guess. So for example, there's no limit on the number of maps. Granted, too many would stretch the monster variety thin--but that's not the point! Items and spells are completely editable. The event editor features primitive scripting, allowing for all kinds of shenanigans. You could even code little mini-games. It's kind of amazing. What's even better, the lessons I learned modding/hacking TES Arena apply to BTCS. I've already been able to overcome some of the supposed engine limitations. The sample game included is absolutely terrible, but I'm convinced a dedicated person could make this goose drop a golden egg.

I'm thinking Krome Studios should release a construction set for their excellent Bard's Tale remasters. Authors could do wonders with that, and it'd have broader appeal for RPG gamers instead of just a tiny or non-existent niche audience.