What game are you wasting time on?

[GrafvonMoltke]

I have been playing Operation Flashpoint and so should you.

Come join us on our sacred quest against COMMUNISM!

Spoiler

Sometimes we fight for communism.

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

Except we don't really do and that's a real missed opportunity narrative-wise, typical of these toothless writers who want to have a go at "see the story from the eyes of the bad guys" but can't handle nuances in their precious mythos. OFP wasn't a Clancy game but it still followed all their trappings to a T, thus it was unconceivable to present the Russians as good, simply neutral, or at least justified in some capacity.

In the Red Hammer campaign you play as a Russian (Lukin)... except the first thing you do is murder civilians under a bloodthirsty rookie officer, then you eventually desert because you are such a good guy trapped in a bad guys army, and end up killing fellow Russians for the glory of Muhrica. Cherry on top, Lukin's background was that he was demoted and disgraced because he refused to commit war crimes in Afghanistan, just in case you forgot how unique Lukin is in being a Russian who's not evil.

Iron Front (standalone ArmA 2 mod) did that much more elegantly: the Russian, German and American campaigns are largely apolitical and focus on basic military drama like surviving, losing friends, getting promoted to meaningless ranks, finding your way home fron behind enemy lines, and simply getting the job done. Probably one of the few action games where you can play as WWII Germans without it being an "evil campaign" just for the hell of it.

We just play online bro, don't kill me!

 

[Kabas]

Tried Amid Evil
Fun and beautiful game

 

[Ghulgothas]

Just finished polishing off the new Destroy All Humans! Remake, and I think it's set a new bar for this era of re-releases. Graphical upholstering, preserved gameplay, what-you-remember-not-what-it-was blah blah blah; I found it's additions in the form of free-skating movement, integrated PSI and other general additions of convenience* made for a really fun time. Not a particularly challenging time or a mechanically deep time, but a fun time.

I'm wondering now if THQ Nordic's ever going to do anything with Second Sight or Timesplitters whenever they decide what to do with Gothic, push out Biomutant or finally get tired of Darksiders.


*Arbitrary removal of one very specific line of dialogue notwithstanding.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

I'm around 30 hours into ME Andromeda. Most of the bugs seem to be gone and they've scaled back the amount of times Ryder says "we've got this".

I used a mod to shorten the landing and departure cinematics, which were unskippable, and that is a vast improvement. It now just cuts the scene as soon as the next area has loaded, unless there's something unique about this particular arrival or departure cinematic.

I also modded the Remenant glyph sudoku puzzles to use actual numbers rather than glyphs. Vast improvement.

Aside from all that it's like a . I'm going to complete it but I certainly won't be playing it again

Spoiler

I've decided to fuck the Turian

 

[Average Manatee]

Decided to play through the Bioshock series. Have only played Bioshock 1 before, but it was over a decade ago, so I started there.

+ Game still looks and plays pretty well. Had some issues with mouse sensitivity being way too high but aside from that no issues.
+ Areas are fairly complex with some non-linearity.
+ Not too much handholding or waste of time in the tutorial area after the prerequisite Half-Life-esque intro.
- Wrench is obscenely OP and overshadows most of the weapons
- Poor enemy variety
- Way too easy on the resource management.

It's a real downer to the game that there is only 5 real normal enemy types of the game. These are: melee splicer, gun splicer, melee splicer-ninja that crawls on ceilings, grenade splicer, splicer with fire magic. Of these, the melee splicer is trivially beaten by walking backwards with a wrench. The melee ninja is slightly more annoying, mostly because of more health, but fairly similar. The splicer with fire magic is just a joke and will never hit you if you are dodging at all. The grenade splicer just has way too much health, eating huge amounts of ammo while his grenades are easily dodged. And the gun splicer is by far the worst enemy of the game. I'm not sure why they have so much health, you'd think it'd make more sense to give lots of health to the melee splicers, but the gun guys take huge amounts of damage to put down. Bullets basically don't scratch them unless you get a headshot and its pretty hard to get a headshot with how they move around (also mouse controls still not quite being perfect). Mostly you end up doing the "one two punch" as the tutorial describes which is sort of your cure-all for everything: shock with lightning damage then wrench. This takes them out in one or two hits without suffering any real damage in return.

As far as other enemies go, there's turrets, cameras, drones and big daddies. Turrets/cameras/drones are all best dealt with through shocking and hacking, so they kind of don't exist except as annoyances. Hacking doesn't take any in-universe time to complete so you can hack turrets and drones in the middle of firefights no problem, and in fact you should be doing that. It really lowers the strategy involved in dealing with them. Big daddies have two types, melee and ranged. The melee can basically be circle-strafed with an object in between you and them and aren't that deadly. The ranged ones are basically just a pure DPS battle early on and one of the few things that really depletes your resources since they just hitscan you while you dump ammo into them. By the midgame though there's a really easy trick to handle them: all it takes is 1 point of electric damage to trigger the stunlock state, so keep swapping between the chem thrower with electric ammo and the crossbow to quickly take them down.

As far as balance goes, the game really pushes you to use the wrench most of the time. Most of the weapons just fall off in damage. Every enemy escalates in health with every level while weapons only get 1 damage upgrade. Because of this the pistol quickly becomes mostly worthless even when using the specialized anti-personal or anti-armor ammo. The tommy gun fares a bit better, especially with AP ammo vs. big daddies, and can work decently for the midgame. The shotgun becomes almost entirely useless as the wrench just gets better at close range. The grenade launcher/chem thrower/crossbow are all the high damage weapons that can scale well enough to enemy HP and take down big daddies. But the wrench just kind of destroys everything. Assuming you are saving little sisters and doing the research camera stuff then you get lots of free wrench and melee upgrades which make it capable of killing in one or two hits most normal enemies the game so long as you shock or make a sneak attack with it. There's like a dozen ways to increase its damage or make it freeze enemies or make it swing faster or make it leech Health and Eve and so on. The whole research camera system is a real waste of time, you just buy 100 film with your massive cash and spam it at enemies for bonuses. The fact that hypos work instantly with no need for an animation also lends itself to a wrench playstyle, all you need to do is be watching your health bar and pressing the hypo button when it gets low to survive.

Regarding plasmids the actual amount of Adam you get when saving little sisters really stops you from trying to explore the variety since most of your income goes into buying the basic Health/Eve upgrades. It feels like a lapse in game design to base your game around cool magic powers and then disincentivize players from actually buying and using those powers because buying the basic upgrades you need to keep pace with enemy damage costs 75% of your income. And since saving the little sisters already predisposes you towards a melee build the natural incentive is to buy the one or two remaining melee buffs rather than risk your Adam on something like the bee plasmid when you have no idea if its going to be a total waste or not but you know that another wrench boost is good. This would change if you didn't save little sisters but everything about the game basically says that you are Hitler if you do it (even the ending cinematic) so I don't consider that a real option even if it means getting another 25% Adam or whatever. There's also the issue of a lot of the plasmids being ones that only work on groups of enemies, like several that cause them to attack each other or security to attack then or distraction plasmids, but since large groups of enemies are fairly rare (2-3 is generall the max and usually you are encountering 1-2), these feel like they'd be a waste to pick up.

I get the feeling the the game was originally much more like SS2, with the player needing to have weapon skills to do things and spend money to upgrade their guns, but that this was then thrown out around 80% of the way through development. The way you just find a bunch of 1-use weapon upgrade machines seems to confirm this (it doesn't make much sense as a gameplay system IMO, just something slotted in to allow upgrading guns in another fashion). There's also just way too much ammo and money lying around, as if you weren't supposed to be able to take full advantage of half the ammo and the money was supposed to go into something else. You have a $500 money cap and you will probably bit capped out on money for 80% of the game, only rarely stocking up on hypos or some anti-Big Daddy ammo. This really kills the resource management of the game as the only resource you really need (hypos) is both maxed out and the resource you use to buy the hypos (money) is also maxed out. In this situation I'd argue that you could make the game feel more difficult by making it easier. This isn't an oxymoron, the solution is to let players buy Adam with money. Even though this is objectively a buff to player potential it would make resources feel more relevant since you'd be more interested in constantly scrounging together more cash for plasmids rather than running around thinking "I have infinite hypos and nothing could ever kill me", and you'd also be able to toy around with more of the weirder plasmids.

Another thing giving me the feeling that the game was originally more SS2-like: the fact that items like alcohol and food exist. It makes little sense without an inventory system to allow you to use them when needed. In fact they often turn up with other items on containers and there is only a "take all" key, so you can't avoid downing alcohol that lowers your Eve in exchange for Health if you also want to pick up the bullets or cash or whatever that are on something.

Regarding the plot, maybe I missed something. From what I can tell the whole reason for Jack's (the main character's) creation is the fairly mundane fact that Bathyspheres could be locked to Ryan's DNA but that close relatives could still use them. Is that it? They completely revolutionized several fields of science with the ability to speed-grow humans with fully adult skills, mental brainwashing, all in the midst of a societal collapse, just to get around what is effectively an electronic lock by using Ryan's son? I mean there's even a quote from one of the in-universe characters stating something to the effect that "they may say that their system is un-hackable, but we'll hack it", but we're supposed to pretend that the freaking public transportation system is so impossible to crack that this workaround was necessary? On top of that this is explicitly a universe where re-writing people's genetic code is commonplace to the point of commodification, so... just do that to someone's hand or something? Or, shit, just get a big daddy outfit and go for a swim? All Fontaine wanted to do was kill Ryan so he could have just sent a loyal lackey. It feels like all this SCIENCE! could have been put towards innumerable other obviously better uses, like genetically engineering a race of domestic catgirl servants.

Also Ryan killing himself seemed entirely illogical for a character that is supposed to be logical. Jack didn't cause Rapture's demise, he didn't really ruin any of Ryan's plans. Ryan proved that he could control Jack. Why commit suicide? If it was because of Rapture going to shit then he should have done it long before, Jack didn't do anything to add to that. It's not clear if Rapture is 100% fucked or if we're seeing the shitty parts with other sections that have normal people holed up until things get better, but either way nothing Jack did screwed that up. Even if Ryan was afraid Fontaine had some secondary control method and so saying "would you kindly go kill Fontaine and put some earplugs in first so you can't hear him" wasn't an option then he could have said "would you kindly lie down in these restraints while I buckle you up".

Overall, game was OK. Not much replayability, maybe in another 10 years. It was decently enjoyable and the pacing was good for the first 2/3rds of the game. Will be interesting to see how much is changed in Bioshock 2, which I've never played.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Yeah, BS is a typical case of a game maybe being something, but the devs pussying out along the way, because otherwise it won't sell. Happened with a lot of titles inspired by classic PC games, but then consolified. Dead Space is a much better kinda-SS2-made-for-consoles.

Btw, hypos did have "reload" animation, didn't they? Medkits didn't. Or am I imagining stuff.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, Eve hypos did have a reload animation. I was referring to medkits as hypos, forgot that med hypos were only in SS2.

Dead Space is a pretty good SS2 clone. DS2 not so much and DS3 completely shit the bed.

 

[Wunderbar]

Dead Space 3 isn't all that worse than previous DS games.

Yes, coop ruins the scare factor, but Dead Space 2 was already a full blown action game. Yes, unified ammunition is a decline, but the ammo management in previous games was an afterthought and enemies/containers were dropping ammo for your currently equipped guns. I'd rate them 7/10, 6/10 and 5/10 (and Awakened dlc - 6/10).

 

[JDR13]

Dead Space 3 was a big step back from DS 1 & 2. I'm surprised anyone would even try to claim otherwise. From the full-retard plot, to having universal ammo, to the focus on co-op... it was decline in almost every way.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

Dead Space 3 was a big step back from DS 1 & 2. I'm surprised anyone would even try to claim otherwise. From the full-retard plot, to having universal ammo, to the focus on co-op... it was decline in almost every way.

Don't forget the game throwing cash shop features at you at every reload station. I liked 3, but it was decline for the series.

 

[BLOBERT]

LOTS OF KSP LOLLLOL STARTED OVER CAUSE I HAD TO DELETE THE GMAE BECAUSE I WOULD GET TOO OBSESSED

BROS FINALLY CAVED AND BOUGHT FAGBOX GAME PASS SO I CAN SATISFY MY NEED FOR AAA FAGGOTRY

BOUGHT FAR CRY 5 WHICH IS FAR WORSE THAN 3 FEELS IN EVERY WAY MORE LIKE A CARNIVAL RIDE FOR YOUR AMUSMENENT THAN AN ACTUAL WORLD

OR MAYBE IM TIRED OF THE FORMULA BUT THE WEAPONS FEEL LAME AND THERE IS LESS VARIETY MORE STUFF IS LOCKED

ON THE PLUSS SIDE MONTANA IS BEAUTIFUL ITS FUN HIKING AROUND SOMETIMES

THE VOICE ACTING AND MUSIC ARE NICE AND THE MAIN BAD GUYS ARE DONE ESPECIALLY WELL

I GIVE IT A MAYBE WORTH YOUR TIME ESPECIALLY WHEN DRUNK AND HIGH CAUSE THE BAD STUFF MATTERS LESS THEN

CARRION WAS FREE ON FAGPASS ITS BEEN ON MY STEAM WISHLISTS SINCE SOMEONE MENTIONED IT HERE

GRAPHICS LIKE BUTCHER

GAME IS MORE SORT OF A PUZZLE GAME WITH A LOVECRAFT IAN SLIME MONSTER WHERE OCCASSIOBALLY YOU EAT PEOPLE

THE ART STYLE IS GOOD SLIMEMONSTER LOOKS SUITABLY ALIEN AND CREEPY

FAGBOX CONTROL SUCKS BUT GIVEN THE COMBAT ISNT THE MAIN POINT IT WORKS IT HAD THE SAME SORT OF BUTCHER OR ABUSE CONTROLS

ALSO HAS LOW LEARNING CURVE SO NO REAL WAIT TILL IT GETS GOOD THING

WORTH 5 TO 10 DOLLARS IF IT SEEMS INTERESTING TO YOU

 

[DalekFlay]

Playing Ocarina of Time for the first time to find out what all the fuss is about. This is also my first Zelda game because i've never owned a console.

I like it so far, except for the slowly appearing unskippable text during dialogues. The Owl is the worst offender - his tips are a waste of time, and he always asks whether you want him to repeat it. I already know how to assign an item to a C-button, i'm not a retard!

As a fellow 99%-not-console- gamer, the Zeldas I have really enjoyed were Link to the Past, Wind Waker and the recent Breath of the Wild. They're the least linear, and Wind Waker's sailing and islands is really unique, and Breath of the Wild especially is the most RPG of all of them. Ocarina was good too, but I find it hard to go back to because of the 20fps framerate cap. It literally makes me nauseous.

 

[HansDampf]

Playing Ocarina of Time for the first time to find out what all the fuss is about. This is also my first Zelda game because i've never owned a console.

I like it so far, except for the slowly appearing unskippable text during dialogues. The Owl is the worst offender - his tips are a waste of time, and he always asks whether you want him to repeat it. I already know how to assign an item to a C-button, i'm not a retard!

Give Majora's Mask a shot, regardless of what you think of Ocarina.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Vulture (NetHack with a graphical 2D overlay) on and off for 10 years. On a really deep run now, got down to level 40 of the main dungeon, clearing 5 side dungeon as well. You can see me running into the final villain in the screenshot below:

 

[JDR13]

Playing Ocarina of Time for the first time to find out what all the fuss is about. This is also my first Zelda game because i've never owned a console.

I like it so far, except for the slowly appearing unskippable text during dialogues. The Owl is the worst offender - his tips are a waste of time, and he always asks whether you want him to repeat it. I already know how to assign an item to a C-button, i'm not a retard!

As a fellow 99%-not-console- gamer, the Zeldas I have really enjoyed were Link to the Past, Wind Waker and the recent Breath of the Wild. They're the least linear, and Wind Waker's sailing and islands is really unique, and Breath of the Wild especially is the most RPG of all of them. Ocarina was good too, but I find it hard to go back to because of the 20fps framerate cap. It literally makes me nauseous.

Those would be my favorites as well along with Twilight Princess. I know a lot of people will disagree (mostly due to nostalgia) but, OoT and MM, along with the original NES titles, have not aged well imo.

 

[compvet24]

Warhammer 40k: Mechanicus
The music is great, I'm starting to enjoy the music more than the game itself which is just X-COM.

 

[HansDampf]

Playing Ocarina of Time for the first time to find out what all the fuss is about. This is also my first Zelda game because i've never owned a console.

I like it so far, except for the slowly appearing unskippable text during dialogues. The Owl is the worst offender - his tips are a waste of time, and he always asks whether you want him to repeat it. I already know how to assign an item to a C-button, i'm not a retard!

As a fellow 99%-not-console- gamer, the Zeldas I have really enjoyed were Link to the Past, Wind Waker and the recent Breath of the Wild. They're the least linear, and Wind Waker's sailing and islands is really unique, and Breath of the Wild especially is the most RPG of all of them. Ocarina was good too, but I find it hard to go back to because of the 20fps framerate cap. It literally makes me nauseous.

Those would be my favorites as well along with Twilight Princess. I know a lot of people will disagree (mostly due to nostalgia) but, OoT and MM, along with the original NES titles, have not aged well imo.

If you are talking about technical issues like low framerate and excessive menuing in the Water Temple, those are fixed in the 3DS versions. Though I would consider the MM remake to be inferior to the original.
Twilight Princess is the most bland of all the 3D Zelda games.

 

[Sceptic]

Decided to play through the Bioshock series. Have only played Bioshock 1 before, but it was over a decade ago, so I started there.

+ Game still looks and plays pretty well. Had some issues with mouse sensitivity being way too high but aside from that no issues.
+ Areas are fairly complex with some non-linearity.
+ Not too much handholding or waste of time in the tutorial area after the prerequisite Half-Life-esque intro.
- Wrench is obscenely OP and overshadows most of the weapons
- Poor enemy variety
- Way too easy on the resource management.

Agree with your assessment of the game. The early levels are quite linear and cinematic, but the game does open up after 6 or so levels and some of the level design is pretty neat (and the handholding abets a bit). I enjoyed the game for it was, the atmosphere is excellent, and while the story isn't very original and takes its bits and pieces from better narratives, it manages to pull itself together satisfyingly. I felt the game is at its best in the middle part; it gets a bit repetitive towards the end, and Ryan is a much more interesting antagonist than Fontaine. You were right about it initially being more like SS2, a lot of the things Levine talked about initially just did not end up in the game, and it doesn't compare very well to SS2 as a result, but if you take it on its own it fares better I think.

Many people praise BS2 for being the better game but I don't agree. It's a slight improvement mechanically, but then mechanics were not the game's strong suit anyway, and it loses a lot in all of the "non-game" areas like atmosphere and design, and Lamb is much more boring than Ryan. Some of it may also be because the art deco design isn't as striking the second time around. Normally I'd agree the gameplay should matter the most, but BS2's isn't that compelling even with the improvements, and with the atmosphere being a downgrade I just didn't feel the sequel was worth it.

I never touched Infinite, interested to see what you'll think if you make it this far.

 

[JDR13]

Playing Ocarina of Time for the first time to find out what all the fuss is about. This is also my first Zelda game because i've never owned a console.

I like it so far, except for the slowly appearing unskippable text during dialogues. The Owl is the worst offender - his tips are a waste of time, and he always asks whether you want him to repeat it. I already know how to assign an item to a C-button, i'm not a retard!

As a fellow 99%-not-console- gamer, the Zeldas I have really enjoyed were Link to the Past, Wind Waker and the recent Breath of the Wild. They're the least linear, and Wind Waker's sailing and islands is really unique, and Breath of the Wild especially is the most RPG of all of them. Ocarina was good too, but I find it hard to go back to because of the 20fps framerate cap. It literally makes me nauseous.

Those would be my favorites as well along with Twilight Princess. I know a lot of people will disagree (mostly due to nostalgia) but, OoT and MM, along with the original NES titles, have not aged well imo.

If you are talking about technical issues like low framerate and excessive menuing in the Water Temple, those are fixed in the 3DS versions. Though I would consider the MM remake to be inferior to the original.
Twilight Princess is the most bland of all the 3D Zelda games.

Yoda would say... "The nostalgia is strong with this one."

 

[HansDampf]

It's cheap argument, because it assumes I've played MM as a child, and even if I did, that I wouldn't be able to look at both versions with a critical eye today.

 

[JDR13]

Could be you just have shit taste.

 

[Average Manatee]

Agree with your assessment of the game. The early levels are quite linear and cinematic, but the game does open up after 6 or so levels and some of the level design is pretty neat (and the handholding abets a bit). I enjoyed the game for it was, the atmosphere is excellent, and while the story isn't very original and takes its bits and pieces from better narratives, it manages to pull itself together satisfyingly. I felt the game is at its best in the middle part; it gets a bit repetitive towards the end, and Ryan is a much more interesting antagonist than Fontaine. You were right about it initially being more like SS2, a lot of the things Levine talked about initially just did not end up in the game, and it doesn't compare very well to SS2 as a result, but if you take it on its own it fares better I think.

Many people praise BS2 for being the better game but I don't agree. It's a slight improvement mechanically, but then mechanics were not the game's strong suit anyway, and it loses a lot in all of the "non-game" areas like atmosphere and design, and Lamb is much more boring than Ryan. Some of it may also be because the art deco design isn't as striking the second time around. Normally I'd agree the gameplay should matter the most, but BS2's isn't that compelling even with the improvements, and with the atmosphere being a downgrade I just didn't feel the sequel was worth it.

The end part of BS1 could just be cut out. There's basically nothing new introduced and unlike SS2 its not like its a particularly grueling gauntlet of pain through a radically different environment (aside from the little sister escort which is just tedious and annoying). Fontaine feels more like a villain from Borderlands than Bioshock. The middle stretch before Ryan is definitely the best.

I do like what changes I've seen so far of BS2, namely hacking taking real-world time, weapons being entirely different, and the melee having a seeming cap on how much you can use it as full power in drill fuel. But... yeah, lamb is lame.

 

[502]

Played DUSK and WRATH a bit more.

Gave Dishonored and Transistor another attempt and uninstalled both again. To this day I haven't finished either of them even once. Hades, also by Supergiant, seems promising though.

 

[Decado]

Been playing Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Surprisingly good. Ruleset is basically their own homebrew variant of 3.5e, many quests are direct adaptations of pnp modules. Original game was based in Eberron which is cool, but it also goes to other D&D universes. Sometimes this is just for a dungeon or two, but I think there's actually entire cities/campaigns for Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk. My favorite so far has been hands down the Ravenloft content.

The DMs are probably the one thing that set it apart from other D&D RPGs though. Each quest has a DM guide you through it, sometimes they're barely there other times the DM is commenting on things all the time with great voice acting. The latter is more common with newer content and generally, really fucking good. You'll even get DM narrations when you do things like pass a listen check when approaching a door or a spot check to notice a lever behind a waterfall.
An example of the kind of content you hear from the DM while progressing through a quest:

Also, there's some dungeons DM'd by Gygax and Dave Arneson.
Ravenloft content is some of the best D&D-based content I've played in any cRPG, all of it is a direct nearly 1:1 adaptation of the pnp material including the dungeon layouts/maps themselves. I spent like two hours being lost in Strahd's castle which is only a tiny part of the whole Barovia implemented in the game. Even minor characters from the module show up in the game.

Some quests are murderhobo stuff but a lot of quests have different ways to solve them based on how you build your character. Level layouts are pretty darn good and tend to have a lot of stat/skill checks for optional content or shortcuts like jump skill to reach otherwise inaccessible areas, swimming skill for e.g., swimming against a current or needing to hold your breath for a long time, strength checks to open a barred door, etc.,
Expect to get blown up by traps unless you play a rogue or artificer. They're lethal on higher difficulties.

If you decide to check it out, enter the code DDOFREEQUESTS ingame to unlock basically all the quest content for free, valid until august 31st something or other.

[edit]
Forgot to add that it has very limited resting when on quests, it has rest shrines similar to kotc campfires. On lower difficulties they're timed, on higher difficulties you can only use them once.

So I've been on the fence about this game and your post convinced me to download and give it a try.

But, the technical aspects of the game itself are fucking impossible. I've been downloading 28,000 (!!) DAT files over the last few days, off and on, through their terrible shitpile of a launcher. Seriously, they should be absolutely ashamed for producing such a garbage piece of technology. What the fuck is wrong with these idiots? Don't they realize they're turning players away with a launcher from circa 2003?

So if this fucking game ever installs, maybe it will be fun to play? Who knows. Turbine are idiots.