What game are you wasting time on?

[jackofshadows]

Crazy in the head, crazy in bed

Probably one of the most true and verified stereotypes, in my experience.

The brain reflects in the bed, what's so unusual about that? Although towards original point about Aerie none of that is true I suppose.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Why? It was translated to English.

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).

Heh, before it came out, I found an early beta of Rage of Mages on Usenet and after investing many hours of playtime into it, I hit a game-breaking bug. It serves me right. Don't think I ever again played a beta after that. I ended up buying Rage of Mages 2. Most memorable thing about it was the awful voice acting of the wizard character. So memorably awful. Ah, the days when developers did their own VA.

 

[octavius]

Been playing some more HoMM 3 user made maps.

Gates of Wonder is an epic XL map where you control three characters in separate locations, as pioneered by the early Pride trilogy of maps.
Very promising, but a bit unclear what you are supposed to do at times; if you go the wrong way event messages don't make sense.
The map is semi-open and enemies are mostly static, but one über hero managed to get into one of my areas by way of two Summon Boat spells, which I think must be an oversight by the map maker since there's no way my hero can beat him.
Too bad, since it was quite an interesting map with some choices&consequences on the strategic level. For example, you get The Grail early in the game, but do you really want to use it on a castle with only three creature dwellings, or miss 5000 gold each turn when looking for a better place?

Wings of Heaven is a similar map, with two heroes, which most of the time feels more like a co-op game, since they follow two parallel branches. Quite linear and very static, but very enjoyable, with lots of quests, quest guards, and border guards.

Next full game on my play list is The Operative: No One Lives Forever, but I've decided to watch all the movies that inspired it first.

 

[Blonsky]

Warhammer 40k Armageddon
Finished Steel legion campaigns, was fun. Finished Vulcan campaign, the game was alot more fun with titans running around.

 

[octavius]

Installed Rune Gold.

This must be the buggiest piece of crap I've ever tried to run. It crashes no matter which renderer I use, including several third party ones and software rendering. And when I get it to work in safe mode the graphics are glitched and I can't even skip the intro.
I also tried Compatibility mode.

It uses the Unreal engine, but Unreal and UT still runs fine for me.

 

[Stormcrowfleet]

Pokemon Yellow. I had this on Gameboy when I was young. I think I had replayed it in my teenage.

The gameplay is very simplistic, but it is in a good sense. Different strategies, great variety of pokemon and types, interesting subsystem etc. Overall it's a pretty nice game. That being said, the level design is absolutely atrocious, I've rarely seen something like this. At every turn, there is something that's there only to make you loose your time, literally. It's not hidden that the goal is to waste time. Also IMO it should have been more open with regards to the gym order of completion.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

Gog version of XCOM2 War of the Chosen. Nice to be playing a fairly new AAA title without loot crate windows, server log-in screens, and highway banner ads all over the damn place. And I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but the gog version seems to run a bit faster than on Steam.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Almost done with Silent Hill 4 (I think). When I see this game mentioned it's always "it was a departure from the series, more experimental, 4 is its own thing", et cetera. Rubbish. It's Silent Hill to a T only without much of Silent Hill the location in it, which isn't that big a deal since there's already been three games of running around foggy streets. And 4 is just as good as the first three where it matters. Still hits that perfect balance between puzzle solving, storytelling and tense combat with a strong element of resource management. The titular "room" is also a very cool idea and works well (it's also just a bit too relatable in these Corona times ). Someone told me it goes downhill when you have to escort someone around during the second half of the game, and I see their point, but it hasn't bothered me too much, mostly due to the fact that the escortee doesn't seem too concerned about being left behind and/or clobbered by monstrosities.

Great game all around, that deserves to be held in the same esteem as its predecessors.

 

[DraQ]

Finished Ori: And The Will of The Wisps.

The game is very much YES! overall, although I think I liked the first part slightly better (think FO1 vs FO2), and it's currently a bit buggy.
It might seem somewhat easy-ish for Blind Forest veteran for most part.

 

[DraQ]

Finished Ori and the Blind Forest. Twice in a row.

Yep. That's how you know you're playing Ori.

Gameplay, story, visuals, music all converge into singularity of pure awesome. Then you notice that you have run out of game but need moar.

This means that the game relies on your memorization of the proper sequence of actions, perfectly timed and executed

The only thing I strongly disagree with - the game really goes out of its way to give you enough information beforehand for all your split second gameplay decisions. Yes, you die and trial and error a lot, but you wouldn't have to if you just were a smidgen faster at evaluating and reacting to changing situation.

However, despite the negatives, the positives are so enormous and so much outweigh them that I literally started a new game a day after I already finished it. That is a very rare reaction from me a game has elicited. So on a scale of 1 to 10 of enjoyment and quality, I will give this game 10. It is not perfect of course, but giving it less than 10 would be a disservice and injustice.

The sequel titled Ori and the Will of the Wisps will apparently be Windows 10 exclusive And I hate that OS.

Good news. Works just fine on W7.

 

[Fedora Master]

Mordheim is on sale. Had it pirated earlier this month and its so good I bought it.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb (2003) with widescreen & xinput controller patches. It's a very nice 3rd person Tomb Raider type game given the full LucasArts AAA treatment. Runs like turd on modern Windows 10 with Nvidia 10 series cards with microstutters galore due to subpar DirectX 8.0 optimizations in newer geforce drivers. Was about to give up because of this until I discovered that you can use the DGVoodoo2 wrapper to make it run like a particularly satisfying wet dream with no stutters. Be sure to uncap the locked 30 FPS framerate to 60 (but no more else you get massive physics farts with the engine) for best enjoyment.

 

[Ezeekiel]

Been a while since I last logged in to the codex, so here:

Doom Eternal.
More obnoxious than enjoyable to me so far.

Synthetik Rising.
Was recommended by SSeth, so. I'm not really big on roguelite sort of mechanics, but this one is suprisingly fun. More fun than Doom Eternal. Still has issues of it's own, of course.

Dungeon Defenders Awakened.
A remake/reboot of the first, sort of. It's too similar. Has some more quality of life stuff but not nearly enough. The formula is too simplistic though. Turn off volumetric fog if you want to get rid of the goddamn haze everywhere, and turn off those horrid outlines as well.

Mechanicus with Heretek expansion.
Allows you to take out the busted cognition point bs, but the game was designed around that so it just leaves a hole where better mechanics (haha) should be. Still quite atmospheric and enjoyable, but too simple/tabletop -like. Will we ever get a well-designed squad tactics game/tactical rpg again? it's been like 20 years or something.

Hedon.
Kinda cool, reminds me a lot of Arx Fatalis in terms of level design. Would probably be improved with some voice work and more story stuff, the many non-shooter influences make me wish it was more of an actual RPG, not just a shooter.
Has some problems with brightness in some areas. Art assets can vary quite a bit in quality.

Stoneshard early access.
Not much in there yet, wait before you play it. Not bad, but maybe the complexity is in the wrong places right now (not enough in the combat vs the health/status system?). Larger actor sprites would be nice. Devs coded themselves into a corner from the start so save system is quite limited.

Gemcraft Frostborn Wrath.
Meh. After figuring out a proper strategy (crappy manafarm, basically) and getting some levels it's just the same shit over and over again. Same weakness as Chasing Shadows. Once you've figured out the game, then there's no real reason to keep playing because it's just a grind for the sake of being able to grind up further. Performance can still go to shit once you get enough enemies on screen, in spite of looking like it was made in 1994 by an unpaid intern.

Monster Sanctuary.
Decently fun, but has some scaling bullshit going on. Not much else to say. Feels like it was made for handhelds.

Stygian Reign Of The Old Ones.
Not much to say that the Codex review hasn't said about it already.

Wrath Aeon Of Ruin early access.
My old completionist instincts make this game something of a chore because of the pointlessly large levels where a lot of it is just finding some ammo tucked away in some alcove only to spawn 30 enemies to waste it on.
Level and encounter design is a real issue here. Not feeling it yet, but the devs seem to be keen on improving it and are actually taking player feedback into consideration.

And a bunch of other stuff I've already forgotten about. Oh well.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb (2003) with widescreen & xinput controller patches. It's a very nice 3rd person Tomb Raider type game given the full LucasArts AAA treatment. Runs like turd on modern Windows 10 with Nvidia 10 series cards with microstutters galore due to subpar DirectX 8.0 optimizations in newer geforce drivers. Was about to give up because of this until I discovered that you can use the DGVoodoo2 wrapper to make it run like a particularly satisfying wet dream with no stutters. Be sure to uncap the locked 30 FPS framerate to 60 (but no more else you get massive physics farts with the engine) for best enjoyment.

Pretty good brawling system. One of the few games I know of which let you pick up anything lying around and clobber dudes with it.

 

[Azalin]

Finished Devil May Cry V , the first DMC game I have played,good spectacle slasher game,good graphics,cool music,tight controls and 3 characters to use.Dante is the coolest one although I think V might be the most interesting to play as,he is the first summoner type character I have seen in an action game and he is done pretty well.Recommended

PS I recommend to play the game in the Devil Hunter difficulty unless you are a complete noob with beat em ups since Human difficulty is too easy

Also having fun with Earth Defense Force 4.1 playing coop and I am close to finishing this one too.Never played an EDF game before and I am enjoying my time with this one,it's like Stasrhip Troopers going full Nippon.Had some really fun and funny moments playing coop.Recommended

 

[Abu Antar]

I beat Geneforge 2. Destroyed the forge and sided with the Shapers. Death to the serviles. I skipped some content that I had a tough time beating. I little step up from Geneforge 1, but not a major difference, imo. This time around, I hade more creations with me, which was more helpful and frustrating at the same time.

In Arc the Lad II, I just got past a long sequence, with lots of story exposition and fights. It was good, but I was still annoyed. This section is very long and it doesn't allow you to save for over an hour and a half. Luckily, I got through it, despite me thinking that I was going to lose one of the fights. You get several characters back, but mine were underdleveled and not properly equipped. I had some spare equipment for some, but others had to just hide in a corner. The funny part of this whole part is that the boss was the easiest battle. At that point, I had access to my strongest party members again, and the party could wipe the floor with him.

I've been playing some longer rpgs lately, so I decided to check up on two humble originals games that I knew were short. First one is titled Arrog. Some artsy game that took me about 3 minutes to complete. The other title is Cut & Run. A comet is about to hit the planet in five days. Each day (there are five) you get three levels to beat. It's mostly about cutting smaller things to grow your sword, so you can cut bigger things.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Hammer & Sickle might just be the game that forces me to throw in the towel, auction off my computer, order an Xbox with the new Doom game and concede that "I'm too old for this shit".

 

[octavius]

Nival, eh?

As for me I decided to do the Cult of Storm campaign of Age of Wonders, since I didn't quite finish that campaign back in the days. But both my Willpower and Endurance has increased since then (too bad about Dexterity and Intelligence).

I decided to go with the default leader and resist the temptation to make an über hero, and play it more as a pure strategy game. So that means Vision IV instead of things like Lifesteal, for example. Vision is in fact quite useful and possibly even underrated. Especially in dungeons it's a life save combined with Night Vision since monsters can no longer surprise you.

Completed the Unitied Cities map in 38 days, which must be close to a record, I think.
I then decided to do the Lizardmen map just for the hell of it (the Orcs map will be the canon one when I reload the save the game made after winning the United Cities map). I was not amused when my gold medal Troll immediately deserted, since now my "race" is apparantly Lizardman and thus alignment is Neutral.

 

[Wunderbar]

Installed Rune Gold.

This must be the buggiest piece of crap I've ever tried to run. It crashes no matter which renderer I use, including several third party ones and software rendering. And when I get it to work in safe mode the graphics are glitched and I can't even skip the intro.
I also tried Compatibility mode.

It uses the Unreal engine, but Unreal and UT still runs fine for me.

steam version is supposedly more stable (but be sure to install a mod that reverts back some of maps changes).

 

[Ivan]

Hitman Season 2

Spoiler

Hitman 2018 continues the tradition of the previous entry: Blood Money level design with more authored ways to take out targets. The level design is stronger than ever, so good in fact that I want to keep returning to the game to try the Escalation game mode (in which the game marks NPCs populating the map as your targets and sometimes forces you to take them out in specific ways). One of my complaints is that it's a bit too easy to get close to your targets and take them out. Often it feels like the game is a bit too generous/hand-holdy with its signposting. NPC dialogues reveal too much info and are often spell out what you need to do to take out your targets.

I feel like the authored kills are too signposted for my liking. I find myself playign the game much like I do RPGs, in that while I do love the idea of there being alternative ways of completing objectives, I'm completely content with only experiencing what comes naturally to me the first time. The replayability that is there is not one that appeals to me nor excites me. When I come across a scripted dialogue I roll my eyes and know that I'm being spoonfed an alternate solution to the level. I don't think any of these have ever resulted in true satisfaction. That gripe aside, the visuals and art direction are fantastic. Each locations feels disticnct and very much succeed in preseting the player a new space to explore. Voice acting still leaves much to be desired. I think my main wish for the next iteration is to be for the NPC dialogues to be less black/white with the information they're feeding to the player. It's like playing the game on trainingwheels/autopilot.

That aside, the humor took me by surprise. This Hitman is as much, if not more so, self-aware and goofy than the previous entry. I also must say that the game does a nice job of offering sprawling levels populated by crowds, and a few smaller maps (which I prefer and would like to see more of, thankfully the DLC offers more of this).

All in all, I had a great time with this. I didn't mind re-playing the old levels, since they really do tie in nicely with those of 2018. I look forward to seeing IO wrap this trilogy of titles together.

Reflection: I keep returning to the feeling I had that the game feels like its on rails whenever you hit an NPC dialogue.

The Messenger + Picnic Panic DLC

Spoiler

An excellent platformer with a unique aesthetic twist: transitions from 8 bit to 16 bit a few hours in. Enemies are mostly there to serve the platforming, as such, combat is not the focus here. That being said, the game does have excellent bosses that test attack pattern comprehension, platforming, and some even introduce new gameplay mechanics (SHMUP section). Backtacking becomes noticeable in the endgame, exacerbated by ONLY being able to teleport to very specific locations. I would have much preferred if the player were also able to teleport to any shop. I'd say this extra backtracking probably adds a good hour+ to the game. This is especially annoying when you discover a new area on your own, but can't explore it fully b/c you don't have a necessary power up. The worst moment of the game for me came at a chase sequence toward the end of the game. It was infuriatingly punishing. Also, some of the challenge rooms to get the collectible coins rely more on luck thank skill, I found. All in all I'm having a blast with this. The excellent, humorous, writing and fantastic soundtrack round out the experience nicely. Looking forward to their new game (on kickstarter now). See you in 2022!


Picnic Panic DLC

Ane excellent expansion pack that adds another great hour of content featuring a new setting and some fantastic bosses (one of my favorites in fact). All in all I am super happy that I gave this game another chance, because this time it really, truly left me satisfied.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Spoiler

I remember the first game not leaving a particularly great impression on me. I remember it being pretty, and featuring some on rails chase sequences. I also remember the combat being forced, and some backtracking. Now onto the sequel: it's gorgeous as ever, the music fits nicely in the background, it's more on the classical side so not quite my cup of cafe de olla. Combat here is much improved, they essentially give you a freaking sword right of the bat. It has a nice 5 hit combo, you can juggle enemies. Instead of unlocking new moves for most weapons, the game offers you different tools, but really I don't feel like bothering with it as the platforming is the key thing here. The chase sequences make a return here, and more than before they remind me of the God of War QTE sequences. It still annoys me that these are pass/fail sequences, but they add some nice Hollywood drama. It's been interesting playing this alongside The Messenger. I feel like Ori feels like "more of the same" but with better combat, while The Messenger has been a more fresh experience for me. The aesthetics appeal to me more there too (writing and music). Final thoughts to come, but so far, I'd say that this is an improved take than the inaugural title.

Final Thoughts:

It's pretty much what I expected it to be. I don't remember if the story was so forced/hamfisted in the first, but here control of the camera is often taken away, and it pulls the same bullshit of forcing you to walk in certain areas for dramatic effect. As I said before, platforming is the clear focus here. Combat is still a bit flimsy and weightless for it to particularly good, but it is a step up from the first. I would have liked to have seen more platforming elements in the boss fights, most you could mash attack to win. So overall, yeah I had a much better time with The Messenger than this, but this was still a solid experience. Not a classic in my good, but it does have moments of greatness. I loved the sand digging mechanic and comboing that with the "hookshot" ability. I'd be happy to see what Moon Studios does next. I feel like they've done all they could with Ori.

I will end with some banging tunes:

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Hammer & Sickle might just be the game that forces me to throw in the towel, auction off my computer, order an Xbox with the new Doom game and concede that "I'm too old for this shit".

This reminded me of a favorite line from a favorite short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer called The Admirer about an elderly but passionate story writer who encounters a young female literary groupie who plays coy with him. He chases her around for the first half of the story with the ardor of a young man, but after a series of hilarious, slightly grim misadventures, he says to her near the end: "I'm too old for this!" :D

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb (2003) with widescreen & xinput controller patches. It's a very nice 3rd person Tomb Raider type game given the full LucasArts AAA treatment. Runs like turd on modern Windows 10 with Nvidia 10 series cards with microstutters galore due to subpar DirectX 8.0 optimizations in newer geforce drivers. Was about to give up because of this until I discovered that you can use the DGVoodoo2 wrapper to make it run like a particularly satisfying wet dream with no stutters. Be sure to uncap the locked 30 FPS framerate to 60 (but no more else you get massive physics farts with the engine) for best enjoyment.

Pretty good brawling system. One of the few games I know of which let you pick up anything lying around and clobber dudes with it.

Controls are much clunkier than I'm used to, but serviceable. Can't get 5.1 dolby surround sound working even though I used the IndirectSound patch (couldn't be arsed to do the additional registry hack though when all else fails... I'll leave that stuff up to the true autists). Tip: if people decide to play this, and they too find the controls too clunky and feel they can't go on, just play a few minutes of the earlier Indiana Jones & The Infernal Machine (1999) by the same team. Suddenly Emperor's Tomb's control scheme won't seem so bad anymore. Worked for me.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Nival, eh?

Oh hey, I had no idea the guys who made that Evil Islands game you were talking about were actually the Silent Storm (and HOMM V) devs. And now some of them are at Owlcat. They wear many hats, these Russians.

With H&S however, it seems to have been a case of a fan-made SS campaign which Nival decided to support:

Novik & Co. is not a studio or a company per se, but a creative team that worked on a fan mod/sequel called Hammer & Sickle for S3: Silent Storm - Sentinels. Nival, the original developer, was so impressed that they offered to hire them as subcontractors, join the development and release the product as a full retail game. To date, it is their only project.

I can confirm that it has some Typical Modder bullshit in it. Surprisingly enough the writing is all right, which is the last thing I'd expect from Russian modders.

 

[octavius]

Hammer & Sickle might just be the game that forces me to throw in the towel, auction off my computer, order an Xbox with the new Doom game and concede that "I'm too old for this shit".

This reminded me of a favorite line from a favorite short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer called The Admirer about an elderly but passionate story writer who encounters a young female literary groupie who plays coy with him. He chases her around for the first half of the story with the ardor of a young man, but after a series of hilarious, slightly grim misadventures, he says to her near the end: "I'm too old for this!" :D

You remind me of the kind of demographic I prefer to have as colleagues: men who are half a generation or more older than me. They are good at telling stories and anecdotes of which they seem to have a limitless supply.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I can confirm that it has some Typical Modder bullshit in it.

Can't say I care much for their taste in music either.