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Started playing Silent Hill 4: The Room. Very spoopy, I have already been much spooped. Reading impressions over the years had led me to believe I wasn't going to be playing a troo Silent Hill game, but I was wrong, and I am. I guess there's less fog, but that's about it. Cool so far.
Revisiting Imperialism 2 after many, many years. One of the best strategy games ever despite some shortcomings, a title that still holds up well even after 20 years. Will post some screenshots as I get to play more of it.
Geneforge 2. Man, I'm struggling to get any progress made. There are many areas open to me, but several of the fights, I fight 2-3 times before beating. I enjoy this as much as the first game, but I laughed when I realized it has the same ambient sounds as the first game. I've been looping the Nier: Automata soundtrack while playing.
Arc the Lad 2. It's a lot of fun. Just like the first game, there aren't many jrpgs with exploration and trpg style combat. One thing bothered me today, though, and that was no saving for two hours. Several fights and then a boss at the end. I managed, but I don't like games to be designed this way.
I briefly played Tales of Symphonia {PS3). I will finish it, but my first impression is that this won't be my favorite Tales game. I'm not feeling the combat system. It feels very slow.
Finally got around to finishing Severance: Blade of Darkness and it's great. My biggest problem is with the controls: the game switches from tank-like when you're moving around, to WASD when you're locked onto an enemy for strafing and dodging. Problem is that you can only strafe/dodge around the enemy, the mouse playing no role over the direction you'll be going. So if you want to reposition yourself during a fight with multiple enemies, you have to first disengage by pressing TAB (which, if pressed again, will also sheathe your current weapon), move away and turn 180°, either by moving the mouse (fast but imprecise) or by pressing W and S simultaneously (very slow) and press CAPS again (locking you onto the nearest target, not the one you're facing), pretty clunky. All of which could have been solved by doing away with the locking mechanic and giving the mouse more freedom.
But after a while I found this impediments to be somewhat part of the learning curve. The game asks you to learn the specific patterns of every enemy, and how to avoid being stun-locked and make quick attacks of opportunity when facing multiple opponents.
I find the graphics to hold up impressively still (especially the lighting and reflections), some levels are amazing. Even the music is enjoyable. Game oozes with atmosphere, and it never takes itself too seriously (there's one knight you're supposed to save early on, game presents him as somewhat relevant to the story - but when you finally free him from his prison cell he carelessly takes a few steps out and is swiftly beheaded by a lurking troll). Encounter design gets sloppier and more repetitive in late-game but who cares. Loved it.
Finally got around to finishing Severance: Blade of Darkness and it's great. My biggest problem is with the controls: the game switches from tank-like when you're moving around, to WASD when you're locked onto an enemy for strafing and dodging. Problem is that you can only strafe/dodge around the enemy, the mouse playing no role over the direction you'll be going. So if you want to reposition yourself during a fight with multiple enemies, you have to first disengage by pressing TAB (which, if pressed again, will also sheathe your current weapon), move away and turn 180°, either by moving the mouse (fast but imprecise) or by pressing W and S simultaneously (very slow) and press CAPS again (locking you onto the nearest target, not the one you're facing), pretty clunky. All of which could have been solved by doing away with the locking mechanic and giving the mouse more freedom.
But after a while I found this impediments to be somewhat part of the learning curve. The game asks you to learn the specific patterns of every enemy, and how to avoid being stun-locked and make quick attacks of opportunity when facing multiple opponents.
I find the graphics to hold up impressively still (especially the lighting and reflections), some levels are amazing. Even the music is enjoyable. Game oozes with atmosphere, and it never takes itself too seriously (there's one knight you're supposed to save early on, game presents him as somewhat relevant to the story - but when you finally free him from his prison cell he carelessly takes a few steps out and is swiftly beheaded by a lurking troll). Encounter design gets sloppier and more repetitive in late-game but who cares. Loved it.
I'm so bored that I've been playing 40+ hr of Skyrim for the past weeks. I realized I went too far with the modding when I pickpocketed a bloody tampon.
Finally got around to finishing Severance: Blade of Darkness and it's great. My biggest problem is with the controls: the game switches from tank-like when you're moving around, to WASD when you're locked onto an enemy for strafing and dodging. Problem is that you can only strafe/dodge around the enemy, the mouse playing no role over the direction you'll be going. So if you want to reposition yourself during a fight with multiple enemies, you have to first disengage by pressing TAB (which, if pressed again, will also sheathe your current weapon), move away and turn 180°, either by moving the mouse (fast but imprecise) or by pressing W and S simultaneously (very slow) and press CAPS again (locking you onto the nearest target, not the one you're facing), pretty clunky. All of which could have been solved by doing away with the locking mechanic and giving the mouse more freedom.
But after a while I found this impediments to be somewhat part of the learning curve. The game asks you to learn the specific patterns of every enemy, and how to avoid being stun-locked and make quick attacks of opportunity when facing multiple opponents.
I find the graphics to hold up impressively still (especially the lighting and reflections), some levels are amazing. Even the music is enjoyable. Game oozes with atmosphere, and it never takes itself too seriously (there's one knight you're supposed to save early on, game presents him as somewhat relevant to the story - but when you finally free him from his prison cell he carelessly takes a few steps out and is swiftly beheaded by a lurking troll). Encounter design gets sloppier and more repetitive in late-game but who cares. Loved it.
Tukaram. I like the mechanic, it looks and feels nice. It's just that it would be better if it wasn't bound to circular motion, but that's because of how the lock-on works.
Baldur's Gate II. Still at the beginning but you can spend tons of hours at the start town it seems. Really fun right now, just found a Pirate hideout hidden in an inn. Still unsure what characters to keep and which to throw out of my group.
Right now I have Minsk, Yoshimo, Aerie and Nalia. Guess I will kick Nalia out as soon as I have Imoen again
Baldur's Gate II. Still at the beginning but you can spend tons of hours at the start town it seems. Really fun right now, just found a Pirate hideout hidden in an inn. Still unsure what characters to keep and which to throw out of my group.
Right now I have Minsk, Yoshimo, Aerie and Nalia. Guess I will kick Nalia out as soon as I have Imoen again
Right now you have the worst possible crew in BG2, maybe except Yoshimo. So kick them all, and get Edwin, Viconia and Korgan ASAP, unless you are a fag who dislikes evil chars .
Baldur's Gate II. Still at the beginning but you can spend tons of hours at the start town it seems. Really fun right now, just found a Pirate hideout hidden in an inn. Still unsure what characters to keep and which to throw out of my group.
Right now I have Minsk, Yoshimo, Aerie and Nalia. Guess I will kick Nalia out as soon as I have Imoen again
Right now you have the worst possible crew in BG2, maybe except Yoshimo. So kick them all, and get Edwin, Viconia and Korgan ASAP, unless you are a fag who dislikes evil chars .
In searching for perfect Civilization I played a bit Civ 4 C2C (got bored in modern era), Civ 3 (is this game really worth it? For some reason I like it less than Civ2) and Call to Power 2 (just started, I remember playing CtP 1 a lot and liking it).
Also I played some metroidvanias - Super Panda Adventures (great one! really worth playing! finished it!), Hollow Knight (so far seems great) and Gacamelee! (I have a blast with that! such a good game and I bought it for a potato and roll of toilet paper on gog).
Oh and Book of Deamons - quite funny little game with some depth. Really nice come-back to Diablo 1 :D.
Underrail. Got the expansion a while ago but never could find time to play it. Now I'm playing a psychic build and really enjoying what the game has to offer(again). Around halfway to level 13 and doing Foundry quests atm.
Funny enough this is my second time buying the game(owned a GOG copy as well) but I'm glad with giving this dev more money.
Baldur's Gate II. Still at the beginning but you can spend tons of hours at the start town it seems. Really fun right now, just found a Pirate hideout hidden in an inn. Still unsure what characters to keep and which to throw out of my group.
Right now I have Minsk, Yoshimo, Aerie and Nalia. Guess I will kick Nalia out as soon as I have Imoen again
Baldur's Gate II. Still at the beginning but you can spend tons of hours at the start town it seems. Really fun right now, just found a Pirate hideout hidden in an inn. Still unsure what characters to keep and which to throw out of my group.
Right now I have Minsk, Yoshimo, Aerie and Nalia. Guess I will kick Nalia out as soon as I have Imoen again
Right now you have the worst possible crew in BG2, maybe except Yoshimo. So kick them all, and get Edwin, Viconia and Korgan ASAP, unless you are a fag who dislikes evil chars .
Baldur's Gate II. Still at the beginning but you can spend tons of hours at the start town it seems. Really fun right now, just found a Pirate hideout hidden in an inn. Still unsure what characters to keep and which to throw out of my group.
Right now I have Minsk, Yoshimo, Aerie and Nalia. Guess I will kick Nalia out as soon as I have Imoen again
Right now you have the worst possible crew in BG2, maybe except Yoshimo. So kick them all, and get Edwin, Viconia and Korgan ASAP, unless you are a fag who dislikes evil chars .
Great game that had deserved more recognition.
Despite some things I dislike, like too much hand holding instead of exploration and figuring things out yourself, and stealth in 3rd person, the overall results was still a very enjoyable game.
The Good:
The first part, which is about half the game, is a very nice stone age with low magic kind of setting.
Best crafting system by far that I've seen in a CRPG, where you can craft both spells (templates + various Runes) and items (different materials of variable quality and price), and imbue items with spells.
Very nice graphics for its time. Especially the desert environs looked nice, and very good use of colour at dusk and dawn.
Very good and fluid animations, some even of elementals taking a break and sitting down.
Camera controls are very good once fixed, except inside caves (not many of those, though).
I liked that you could avoid most fights if you liked, by sneaking past enemies. There's support spells for this, like Invisibility and Silence (footsteps). Some enemies just can't be defeated since I don't think there's any way to counter a Cyclops' 150 Armour rating, for example. Maybe a fully maxed out mage can make a powerful enough spell, but I doubt it.
Quite open ended, especially the first part.
The game doesn't moralize about the increasingly cruel governments on the three different islands. There's no save/free the world plot; it's all very pragmatic (or should I say Russian?).
You may or may not like:
A...different protagonist. His looks and mannerism is rather effeminate, but OTOH he's got spunk and doesn't take himself too seriously, so overall a refreshing change of pace to me.
Interesting character system. You can only raise the base stats (STR, DEX, INT) marginally, by raising their relevant skills. Every time you raise a skill, the cost of all skill increases are doubled, so at the end of the game you'll need millions of XP to raise some skills. Careful planning is really needed.
One of few CRPGs where the Spear is the best weapon.
No random loot. It's mostly fixed amount of resource and/or semi-random amount of money from enemies, and some enemies are set to drop specific weapons or armour parts. Very few magical items to find.
Real Time with Pause combat. Personally I think it worked out pretty well. Has some of the same pathfinding issues as the IE games, but with three characters at most and usually only one or two enemies it never turns into a clusterfuck.
Variable quality of voice acting. Every line of dialogue is voice acted and fortunately those with most lines have the IMO best actors. Typically the young female voices are weak as nearly always in games.
Kind of crude damage system. Armour reduces damage from both spells and physical damage, so getting as high weapons damage (attack rate being not as important) and spell Effect as possible is paramount.
The game is hard. That is a plus for me, as it helps me stay sharp. Once a game gets too easy, boredom sets in.
On the downside it does encourage much save scumming.
It's funny reading the initial reactions of the comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg Usenet group. Lots of butthurt over an impossibly hard game. I thought gamers were more hard-core back then, but obviously not.
You are told exactly what you need to do and it's marked on the map like a Quest Compass, and there's no fog-of-war. So no real exploration of a (to the protagonist) strange land, which gives the game a feeling of being more of a strategy game than a CRPG. OTOH the in-game maps look very nice (I love that artwork) and I guess having things spelled out cuts down on potential frustration.
The Bad:
Can't customize starting character; he's always the same character, including his name.
Encounter design could have been better. Too much fighting the same enemies over and over again, and there's just too many of them. I got really tired of Old Spiders at the end!
GOG version is inferior to the disk version. You need to edit the registery to get Shadows and workable camera controls.
No dialogue options. There's only one path and no choices&consequences.
The ending was anticlimactic.
The Curse is some evil demon who just laughs evilly, and if there is some explanation for his ambitions in life I must have missed it.
Overall I give it + despite some flaws, since it's the most fun I've had with a "new" game (as in not having any former experience with or knowledge of it) since Outlaws.
The really oustanding quality of the game is the crafting system.
In an attempt to avert extreme boredom, I've been checking out a lot of NES racing games this week with my three year old. The NES controller is the only gamepad he can manage with his tiny hands and racing games are his favorite so far - everyone of them stars one of the characters from Pixar's Cars according to him.
Basically I'm randomly selecting games from my list of roms with any word like "race", "car", "speed", "circuit", etc., in the title. Yesterday we happened to stumble upon Alex DeMeo's Race America.
I had never heard of this game anywhere. It's surprisingly cool, with very good graphics for an NES game. I was honestly in disbelief. Haven't played single player though, so keep that in mind. I'm talking about the multiplayer game here.
It's one of those racing games with an intense focus on shifting gears and fuel management. Controls are kind of strange, you have to let go of acceleration and push up to change gears.
The racing happens in three phases. In the beginning of the race, the game is viewed sideways, the challenge is to accelerate faster through stick shifting. Then it changes to a behind-the-car view, whomever is first is in a larger window in the top of the screen, the other player is in a smaller window underneath. Now here's the cool part. When the cars approach each other and there's a chance for overtaking, the game changes to an overhead view!
All these transitions are fast and seamless. It's very, very impressive stuff for an NES game.
Anyone who digs NES games and happens to be fortunate enough to have someone to play multiplayer with should check this out.
Fun fact: Alex DeMeo is NOT a race car driver of any kind. He was the game's lead designer. So basically, Race America is Alex DeMeo's like Civilization is Sid Meyer's - except it's an unknown game and a developer more noteworthy for some sound engineering technology than for this game.
TLDR: Alex DeMeo's Race America is a hidden gem among NES multiplayer racing games
Making progress in Evil Islands: Curse of the Lost Soul.
Part 2 was shorter and with a more generic medieval world, but still very enjoyable.
As in part 1 I only used companions in the final stages, since some enemies are virtually impossible to beat without backup, especially for healing, buffing and debuffing. Direct damage spells are only slightly more useful than nipples on a breastplate.
I remember playing this game years ago and really enjoying it. I was just breezing along, busting baddies' balls as if they those chocolate covered malted milk candies... then I encountered a certain boss mid-game and it was my turn to get my malted milk balls busted. I couldn't figure out the combat puzzle/configuration to defeat him so I just rage quit. Of course in those days I played these games with my face just rolling on the keys, finding what I thought was the most powerful weapon and just trying to steamroll it. I'd probably do much better today... or much worse since I am a bit of an elder compared to my tween years.
Making progress in Evil Islands: Curse of the Lost Soul.
Part 2 was shorter and with a more generic medieval world, but still very enjoyable.
As in part 1 I only used companions in the final stages, since some enemies are virtually impossible to beat without backup, especially for healing, buffing and debuffing. Direct damage spells are only slightly more useful than nipples on a breastplate.
Since companions are tied to each "chapter" (correct me if I'm wrong, played years ago) I have always played solo, so it's definitely doable, maybe something wrong with your build, unfortunately cannot help due to reason above.
P.S. To see someone actually playing this outside of russian-speaking community is quite bizarre. Not a bad game though.
Making progress in Evil Islands: Curse of the Lost Soul.
Part 2 was shorter and with a more generic medieval world, but still very enjoyable.
As in part 1 I only used companions in the final stages, since some enemies are virtually impossible to beat without backup, especially for healing, buffing and debuffing. Direct damage spells are only slightly more useful than nipples on a breastplate.
Since companions are tied to each "chapter" (correct me if I'm wrong, played years ago) I have always played solo, so it's definitely doable, maybe something wrong with your build, unfortunately cannot help due to reason above.
I could probably have used the XP spent to build up a mage support character into building up Zak's magic abilities, although he would never be as effective as a companion specializing in the magic skills, Stamina, Recovery and Intelligence.
Also, for a solo effort it's probably a good idea to max out Backstab. But that again means all the more XP needed for the magic skills later.
P.S. To see someone actually playing this outside of russian-speaking community is quite bizarre.
Yup, I'm aware of that, as well as translated versions of previous games (known as "Rages of Mages I/II") but they was waaaay less popular than here at the time, at least to my knowledge. Despite the fact that "Rage of Mages" was actually one of the best known titles on west market at thouse times among other games made by russian devs (again, at that time, and before the Space Rangers).
The Bridge – I finished the third chapter. It’s an ok puzzle game to play while listening to stuff in the background that demands attention. The puzzles could be better, but it’s good enough to keep me entertained while doing other stuff.
+ despite some flaws, since it's the most fun I've had with a "new" game (as in not having any former experience with or knowledge of it) since Outlaws.
