What game are you wasting time on?

[Abu Antar]

Geneforge. My first success is figuring out how to get that damn robe. Had to step away after that, but I'll be back.

I'm also playing Geneforge. 30 hours in. I've been humbled more than once in this game. There have been quite a few reloads. It's a lot of fun but the ambient sounds are driving me crazy. Especially the kid sounds in the cities. Exploration is fun. There are many areas that I have unlocked that just wrecks me. I'm slowly making my way through some of them, before returning back to town and heal. The positive thing is that I am lasting longer and longer. I have more healing/curing pods and some spells to help with being exploring for longer periods of time. Magical items are also more common now. I had the same stuff equipped for a very long period.

In X-Com: Apocalypse, I'm getting frustrated while still thinking that it is awesome. I sometimes nail a mission and then the game crashes. Redo the mission and everything goes to hell. I'm a few weeks in and very tempted to build another base. There are so many untold tales of codexers dying heroic or horrific deaths. The saddest part was when Sukhāvatī died trying to save Dreed

The sacrifice was almost not in vain, but Dreed got shot in the back by an unnamed codexer. 22 hours in and the emotional ride is real. I even tried real-time on a few missions. So much shit blown up. Interstellar hates me. Lifetree is starting to dislike me, and the mob likes me. I'm too poor or stubborn to pay them.

SaGa: Scarlet Grace is super fun. 26 hours in. Doing well in Balmaint's story. Got to fight some fiends in a "brutal difficulty" battle. Only my mage survived that one. I'm more and more sticking to one team, with 2 reserve characters. It doesn't feel worth it to grind more characters. I almost never have enough materials to have everyone's equipment up-to-date.

Other than that: In shorter sessions, I still play Tearaway, Titanfall 2 and Underrail.

 

[Catacombs]

I'm also playing Geneforge.

I've seen this game in passing but hadn't thought much of it. Seems pretty good.

 

[BLOBERT]

HAVE FUN BROS

GENEFORGE AND THE AVERNUM ESPCIQLLY THE ORIGINALS WERE SOME OF MY FAVORITE RPG EXPERIENCES IN RECENT MEMORY

 

[Catacombs]

HAVE FUN BROS

GENEFORGE AND THE AVERNUM ESPCIQLLY THE ORIGINALS WERE SOME OF MY FAVORITE RPG EXPERIENCES IN RECENT MEMORY

Avernum is good

 

[Daze]

Playing Oceanhorn right now.
Some kind of 2d-Zelda clone.

They got the Zelda feeling right but the game is simplified beyond recognition.
No big overworld just small linear islands like in Risen 2.
Dungeons are pretty short and have no great puzzles.

Standard items of a Zelda game:
bombs, bows, boots, fire staff
Nothing new which would result in new puzzle ideas. Meh.

I just want my A Link to the Past, Links Awakening, Oracle games clone with maybe 2 new items
Neither Nintendo nor stupid Indies deliver
And 3d Zeldas are fucking gay!

 

[pakoito]

A Link Between Worlds is decent.

 

[Daze]

Isn't it just the rape edition of one of the greatest games that ever existed?

 

[pakoito]

It's a new game on itself, a continuation of sorts. The later dungeons are challenging enough, and the overall game feels...okay. There was a whole series in youtube about Zelda design, and ALBW was lumped together with the ones you liked. The 3d ones, Spirit Tracks etc had other classification.

You may like CrossCode once you get past the starting area. The puzzles inside dungeons are on the hard side, and the rest of the game you can breeze through for the most part.

 

[Daze]

Thanks a lot. Will look into them.
Can't replay the same game for the 1000th time.

 

[Wunderbar]

Martian gothic - unification.

A big-ass alien tentacle is blocking my path.
I have an acid spayer in my inventory.
-use acid sprayer-
Main character says "i'd like to use it on something bigger" (not close enough to an invisible "use" zone)
Moving a tiny bit forward
"i'd like to use it on something bigger"
Moving a tiny bit forward
"i'd like to use it on something bigger"
Moving a tiny bit forward
Cutscene triggers, alien tentacle grabs me and lugs me off into vent shaft.

SAYONARA

 

[Modron]

Had a similar experience trying to walk up the kraken or whatever it was in Twitcher 2, took way too many attempts to get up it without falling off not quite as rage inducing but sure annoying. Pixel perfect tolerances should only be part of 2d side scrollers and shootemups.

 

[lightbane]

HAVE FUN BROS

GENEFORGE AND THE AVERNUM ESPCIQLLY THE ORIGINALS WERE SOME OF MY FAVORITE RPG EXPERIENCES IN RECENT MEMORY

I recommend downloading a graphics upgrade mod that is around the net for the first games. The UI is horrid and aged worse, and it has no music, so you better provide your own if you don't want to go crazy listening to default ambient sounds over, over, and over.

Talking about crazy: I played and finished Dusk. Quite cool, a fitting homage to old-school games. You can name one and I bet there's a reference or influence in this game. Nevertheless, it is actually fun, it has awesome sound system that lets you detect every enemy type before they even show up (or even when they start moving towards you), amazing soundtrack and fun level design. Sadly, no mods, expansion packs, DLCs, new levels or anything like that so far.
The first chapter is quite weak, but it is obvious how the devs improved and learned over time. The game also shows a standard evil Lovecraftian cult with a fun spin to make it different from carbon-copy Evil Cultists of Doom (TM) from other games. Highly recommended, for Quake veterans and FPS noobs alike.

No idea if Amid Evil is of similar quality or better though.

 

[JDR13]

Tried Castlevania: Lords of Shadow today. I was in the mood for something with vampires, and the series has been sitting in my Steam library for years.

I'm not sure what the developers were thinking when they designed this game with fixed camera angles. It seems like a decent action title otherwise, but the infuriating camera sucks most of what fun I might have had right out of it.

 

[Bigg Boss]

I thought it was ok but some of the platforming was hard because of the camera. I had high hopes for the series after the game was released, but apparently hardcore fans disliked it because they wanted more shitty handheld sequels, and LoS 2 was total dogshit

 

[octavius]

Playing vanilla Icewind Dale without expansion or any mods (Widescreen mod doesn't work), but using DgVoodoo (a bit choppy) to get the correct aspect ratio.
I'm running a power trio of Fafhrd (Ranger), Gray Mouser (Fighter/Thief) and Cappen Varra (Bard). My plan was for CV to function as a healer once reaching lvl 11, using the War Chant of the Sith, but I just realized that all the fun bard songs were introduced in the expansion.
So the Bard is rather useless in the original game with only one weak song, but becomes rather OP in the expansion. Oh well, there's always potions.

 

[JDR13]

I thought it was ok but some of the platforming was hard because of the camera. I had high hopes for the series after the game was released, but apparently hardcore fans disliked it because they wanted more shitty handheld sequels, and LoS 2 was total dogshit

It would be a lot better imo if they had just implemented a rotatable camera.

 

[JDR13]

Not going to continue with Castlevania. I might return to it in the future, but it's not grabbing me at the moment. I just reinstalled Doom (2016) and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Not sure which I'm going to play first. I've finished Dark Messiah in the past, but it's been at least a decade since I've done a full playthrough. I got about 2/3 through Doom when it was released before my saves got corrupted.

Playing vanilla Icewind Dale without expansion or any mods (Widescreen mod doesn't work), but using DgVoodoo (a bit choppy) to get the correct aspect ratio.
I'm running a power trio of Fafhrd (Ranger), Gray Mouser (Fighter/Thief) and Cappen Varra (Bard). My plan was for CV to function as a healer once reaching lvl 11, using the War Chant of the Sith, but I just realized that all the fun bard songs were introduced in the expansion.
So the Bard is rather useless in the original game with only one weak song, but becomes rather OP in the expansion. Oh well, there's always potions.

Why play without the expansion? Just curious.

 

[octavius]

Why play without the expansion? Just curious.

To experience the vanilla IWD again, especially the final battle. With the expansions installed I seem to recall you were supposed to do the bosses on reverse order. Also, I want to check out the differences since I've played the expansion several times, but the original only once.

 

[ebPD8PePfC]

Gardenarium – nice visuals, even if they aren’t tied to riveting gameplay.

A Short Hike – An excellent game. The gameplay matches the story perfectly. The greatest achievement was keeping it short. Takes a little less than an hour to finish, and more if you want to collect everything. The game nails down everything it tries to accomplish and then ends without any repetitive tasks or meaningless challenges.

 

[octavius]

Things start to get really hoary as my power trio ventured into the second level of Krasselack's Tomb in Icewind Dale. I think the undead having no Call for Help scripts was by conscious design, since taking on one Skeletal Mage (dual classed Priest/Mage that can cast both Stinking Cloud and Hold Person), two Imbued Wights, five Skeletal Archers with Fire Arrows, and lots of melee skeletons of different sizes in an open fight would be suicide for any party you could have at this stage.
It's always unsatisfactory when you're forced to take them out one by one.

This is probably the relatively hardest area of the map for my party, since I have no cleric or paladin, and little proficiency with crushing weapons. And backstabbing is of little use.

 

[Farewell young Prince into the night]

Things start to get really hoary as my power trio ventured into the second level of Krasselack's Tomb in Icewind Dale. I think the undead having no Call for Help scripts was by conscious design, since taking on one Skeletal Mage (dual classed Priest/Mage that can cast both Stinking Cloud and Hold Person), two Imbued Wights, five Skeletal Archers with Fire Arrows, and lots of melee skeletons of different sizes in an open fight would be suicide for any party you could have at this stage.
It's always unsatisfactory when you're forced to take them out one by one.

This is probably the relatively hardest area of the map for my party, since I have no cleric or paladin, and little proficiency with crushing weapons. And backstabbing is of little use.

Are you planning on doing a lil' write-up for IWD in the same vein as your Diablo II showcase? I quite enjoyed that.

 

[Farewell into the night]

Eye of the Beholder

 

[octavius]

Are you planning on doing a lil' write-up for IWD in the same vein as your Diablo II showcase? I quite enjoyed that.

Probably. Although IWD has better coverage here, and Lilura has also covered vanilla IWD on her blog, so less "new" things I can say. OTOH I can't recall anyone writing about taking a trio through the game.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Well, I was wasting time on Dex and enjoying it but today I did an acronis full backup restore because my system was getting sluggish and naturally Dex put my save somewhere on my Windows drive so... I hate when that happens. I was about 2/3 of the way through but I just don't have the drive to start all over again. On to something else.

 

[Farewell young Prince into the night]

Probably. Although IWD has better coverage here, and Lilura has also covered vanilla IWD on her blog, so less "new" things I can say. OTOH I can't recall anyone writing about taking a trio through the game.

True. I'd still like to see your characters/loadouts.