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What game are you wasting time on?

Yldr

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New Super Mario Bros. (2006) on DS

I'm evidently not the audience for these cartoonish platformers but you can't argue how rich it is, new systems and gimmicks keep coming up until the very end. Only the useless minigames make real use of the touchscreen so it's very landscape/controller-friendly.
 

Wyatt_Derp

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Okie Land
Silent Hunter 3 w/ GWX mod. Forgot how fun this game was. Ran into a large convoy in grid BE. Sunk two large merchants, damaged a Revenge class battleship and dived just before two destroyers hit their assault on my sub. Went down to near crit depth and sat quietly on silent run while the destroyers dropped a ton of depth charges over my head above. They finally gave up and moved on, and I proceeded back to base. 22,000 tons and 5 patrols so far in my 1940 campaign.
 

DalekFlay

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I'm nearing level 40 in Assassin's Creed Origins and there's still tons of quests to do. I get why these games pile up tons and tons of repetitive side activities so people talk about how huge they are and shit, but why have so many fucking story quests when you'll max level way before doing them all? Just seems silly. Guess I'll just beat it, it's not like the quests are some amazing shit or anything. Also there's vast sections of the map I've barely touched, because who cares at a certain point.

I remember exploring and memorizing every nook and cranny of games like GTA 3 and Risen, but these vast empty worlds in modern games are just pointless and empty.
 

Daemongar

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Codex Year of the Donut
Playing Morrowind for the first time in about 8 years. Have the MCP 2.4 mod - and a mana regen update. I was never able to play a mage in this game as mana was just too damn painful to manage. However, I have this regen mod and casting spells way more often feels like cheating. On the other hand, the most annoying thing in the universe was trying to cast a spell 3 times, having it fail every time, then being out of mana for the day.

The balance seems off, but damn - I'm 6th level and there is a cliff racer every 10 feet. I remember it being awful, but damn! I don't want to make the game too easy, but I can't stand another cliff racer fight - there has to be a mod for this...
 

DalekFlay

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Morrowind's combat is universally terrible, I usually just play a whacky-whacky sword dude and make it as quick as possible. It's not a hard game anyway.

Magic is fun to play around with though, for random combat lulz or whacky shit like flying shirts.
 

Azalin

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Finished Battlefleet Gothic Armada's sinlge player campaign,it's an rts with some fleet management,graphics are good,gameplay is ok,customization is nice but side missions start getting repetitive after a while. Recommended only for a steam sale
 

overly excitable young man

Guest
Dishonored. God is this thing boring. I don't know what kinda game this even is.
It's no stealth game.
It's no action game.
It's a game where you warp around and kill stuff and are completely op.
Whoever compared this to Thief has lost his mind.
 

JDR13

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I'm nearing level 40 in Assassin's Creed Origins and there's still tons of quests to do. I get why these games pile up tons and tons of repetitive side activities so people talk about how huge they are and shit, but why have so many fucking story quests when you'll max level way before doing them all? Just seems silly. Guess I'll just beat it, it's not like the quests are some amazing shit or anything. Also there's vast sections of the map I've barely touched, because who cares at a certain point.

You expected otherwise from an Ubisoft title?
 

DalekFlay

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You expected otherwise from an Ubisoft title?

I honestly don't play them often at all. Last AC I played was Black Flag, and I never finished it. Haven't played a Far Cry since 3, never played Watch Dogs. So I guess I just forgot how pointless half the game is. If you stay laser focused on quests though, it's not too bad, and you still hit max level.
 

SausageInYourFace

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Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit. Pathfinder: Wrath
Dishonored. God is this thing boring. I don't know what kinda game this even is.
It's no stealth game.
It's no action game.
It's a game where you warp around and kill stuff and are completely op.
Whoever compared this to Thief has lost his mind.

I am also playing it right now. Thought it was brilliant at first but I agree, the character gets way too powerful too fast and all the challenge goes out of the window. It is still pretty similar to Thief in some regards, particularly the level design, which is excellent.
 

JDR13

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Dishonored. God is this thing boring. I don't know what kinda game this even is.
It's no stealth game.
It's no action game.
It's a game where you warp around and kill stuff and are completely op.
Whoever compared this to Thief has lost his mind.

I am also playing it right now. Thought it was brilliant at first but I agree, the character gets way too powerful too fast and all the challenge goes out of the window. It is still pretty similar to Thief in some regards, particularly the level design, which is excellent.

I agree about the level design. I really enjoyed Dishonored for the most part. I went pure stealth and didn't feel too OP, but I hear the game is much easier if you go the chaos route.
 

SausageInYourFace

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Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit. Pathfinder: Wrath
I agree about the level design. I really enjoyed Dishonored for the most part. I went pure stealth and didn't feel too OP, but I hear the game is much easier if you go the chaos route.

Yes, that is mostly the way I am playing it. It becomes harder if you try to ghost everything. I am playing a bit of a hybrid 'whatever happens happens' style (to which the game really lends itself) mostly because I don't want to autistically reload every time I am spotted. Ironically, the game does indeed become way waaaay easier once you go into combat because it is incredibly easy to take out several opponents at once even on harder difficulties (eg. stop time and line up several headshots). It is fun, so I don't mind too much when it happens once in a while but I imagine if you play the whole game like that it will become retarded pretty soon.

Still, even when you are mostly stealthing, powers such a seeing through walls and teleporting around can feel very OP. Another element that hurts the otherwise excellent level design is the quest marker, of course. Imagine you'd have that shit in Thief, always exactly pointing you to your objective. I know you can turn it off but it introduces the usual problem. There is still reason to explore and find some loot, but it hurts the game imo.

All that being said, the game is still fun, it is just that it could have been so much better.
 

JDR13

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Another element that hurts the otherwise excellent level design is the quest marker, of course. Imagine you'd have that shit in Thief, always exactly pointing you to your objective. I know you can turn it off but it introduces the usual problem. There is still reason to explore and find some loot, but it hurts the game imo.

I don't recall having any issues playing without the quest marker. Dishonored is one of those games that generally gives you enough in-game information to complete your objectives without an onscreen marker. Besides, you can always turn it on temporarily if you really need to.
 

SausageInYourFace

Angelic Reinforcement
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Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit. Pathfinder: Wrath
Dishonored is one of those games that generally gives you enough in-game information to complete your objectives without an onscreen marker.

Sometimes it does but sometimes it doesn't. I guess I could turn it off and on as needed but that seems cumbersome. Tried it in the beginning and didn't like it. Maybe I will give it another shot on the next mission and see if it works.
 

JDR13

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Dishonored is one of those games that generally gives you enough in-game information to complete your objectives without an onscreen marker.

Sometimes it does but sometimes it doesn't. I guess I could turn it off and on as needed but that seems cumbersome. Tried it in the beginning and didn't like it. Maybe I will give it another shot on the next mission and see if it works.

 

DalekFlay

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Sometimes it does but sometimes it doesn't. I guess I could turn it off and on as needed but that seems cumbersome. Tried it in the beginning and didn't like it. Maybe I will give it another shot on the next mission and see if it works.

I played all three games without ever having the marker on and had two issues the whole series that I recall: putting a dude in a specific dumpster and finding a code behind a breakable object. I think turning it on for those two moments was worth it overall for not having it on the rest of the time. I don't think I ever had to turn them on a Bioshock or modern Deus Ex game at all.

As for the challenge, on the very hardest mode you do die pretty quickly in combat which adds some challenge. However yes, the game's big flaw is its low difficulty in a typical playthrough. If you go 100% stealth and try to get all the upgrades though, it can be pretty tough at times. The sequel even more so, as enemy awareness is dramatically improved in harder modes. I honestly never played any of them as all-out combat guy, to me they're stealth games.
 

HansDampf

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Joined
Dec 15, 2015
Messages
1,471
I tried to waste time with The Long Journey Home. You could describe this game as a mix of FTL, KSP, Star Control II, and Star Trek Voyager. The premise is, you got stranded far away from the Sol system and have to make your way back home, jumping from star system to star system and other galaxies, and encountering lots of alien species. I got about one third of the way home on my first attempt, until my ship got blown to pieces by some alien sheriff for smuggling. Sounds and looks all interesting. There is just one problem for me that permeates the entire game: It's slow.
There are four basic gameplay challenges. Navigating through star systems with gravity wells, landing on planets to gather resources, navigating through asteroid fields to mine resources, and combat. And they're all slow. For example, navigating through asteroid fields is trivial as long as you fly slowly. If you go fast, you'll likely bump into something and damage the ship because the view distance is limited and it takes a while to turn and slow down. But there is no hurry. You can take your time. It's just boring. But you are incentivized to visit asteroid fields to gather useful resources. Or another example, when you are flying to another planet within a star system, much of the time is spent waiting. You accelerate in a certain direction to correct your trajectory, and then wait. You could accelerate more to go faster, but that would waste fuel. And when you arrive at your destination you would have to spend even more fuel to slow down again. So, the optimal way to play the game seems to be to go slow? There are also lots of little cutscenes (some can be skipped, but not all of them) and load times. You encounter another ship, the screen goes black and the game needs to load for a few seconds. Want to check the galaxy map, same thing. Installed on an SSD, btw.
I don't know, maybe I've been playing too many fast-paced games lately and just don't have the patience for this right now.
 
Joined
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Bioshock Infinite. It's shit.

- 80% of enemies are hitscan
- Regenerating shields
- 2 weapon limit.
- Insufferably stupid SJW setting (muh racism) dominates the first half.
- Time travel/dimensional travel crap
+/- you travel with waifu bait most of the time

It's your standard CoD shooter with regenerating health most of the time. They try to add a bit of difficulty with melee enemies that rush you. It's honestly depressing and a bit disgusting being forced to kill endless hordes of what by all accounts are normal, everyday humans who are the city's police, especially when its a guy with a billy club charging across a WW1-level warzone. That kind of suicidal ridiculousness makes no sense. Splicers were mad ADAM-junkies. System shock had man/alien hybrids and mutants. Bioshock Infinite mostly just has normal dudes trying to stop you destroying their city. Most enemies are hitscan so you do the normal thing where you crouch and peek out only a degree at a time till you can see 1 enemy, head shot them, then get back into cover if you get hit. I played on "1999 difficulty", supposedly for the true epic gamers who have played System Shock 2, and Bioshock Infinite apparently thinks that System Shock 2 worked like this. There's not really any grenades or anything that regular enemies do to force you to stop this strategy, only a sprinkling of melee enemies who run straight at you and get mowed down. So hug that cover forever. Most of the difficulty comes from the fact that past mid range virtually everything gets doused in incredibly cinematic fog with lights shining on it and bloom and everything that makes it very hard to see enemies' heads (or enemies at all) whilst of course you can always get shot with perfect accuracy and have to use the directional damage indicators to pin down where the enemy is.

The stronger enemies are used fairly rarely. There's a guy in a fire mech suit. He doesn't do much different from normal enemies except with a lot more health and he'll make a suicidal rush at you and explode when near death. There's a Crow enemy who teleports and is overall trivial and rare to fight. There's a Mech that looks like George Washington with a minigun (pretty cool), but for the most part its just an ammo sink that doesn't really do much more damage or act much more threatening than a regular enemy. There's heavily armored guys with heavy weapons who are probably the biggest threat (they look a lot like regular enemies but have much more HP and its hard to hit their heads). And finally there's a giant guy in a bigger mech suit (handyman) who... is so rare I don't really know what all they do, but it hurts and they have a bunch of health to go through.

The vigors are mostly just renamed plasmids. Possession converts a weak enemy to your side for a time, after which they kill themselves. It has an AoE strike version that works pretty well. Fire is basically a grenade which is kind of weak, but it stuns and hard counters to crow guys. Crows are basically reskinned bees. Don't really find them that useful generally. Lightning can chain stun large groups, greatly increase the amount of damage you do to them, and is very cheap, an absolutely superb vigor. It works on everything except the handyman and will keep enemies still while you effortlessly headshot a group. Bull rush stuns and levitates enemies so I guess its kind of light lightning except worse. Charge is basically the Mass Effect 2 ability where you teleport infront of an enemy and recharge your shields, but its pretty suicidal to use. There's a vigor to push and pull enemies which is OK when you're on airships or near ledges.

Elizabeth is the waifu bait. She's completely invincible and runs around finding health and mana potions to throw at you, and helping you find money. You can't actually carry health or mana potions yourself now for some insane reason, so basically she is the one who seems to carry 1 or 2 with her most of the time and will graciously let you have one a few seconds after you are low (which sucks if you die in the meantime). It's... fine, I guess. I do like how she acts in non-combat scenarios, often running ahead a bit to look at something or sitting/leaning against something to take a break while you are looking around. They did take one of my advices for Bioshock 1 and made the entire upgrade system based around money, with vigors and weapon upgrades costing a very hefty amount, so exploration feels like something that is constantly rewarding. There's also a system where you find lockpicks that can later be used to open doors that generally hold great stuff like max shield/life/vigor bar upgrades or large cash payouts, which is neat.

The levels are almost entirely linear. You don't even get a map, presumably the linearity of the levels would be too embarassing to show the players. There is a lot of verticality along with skylines that you can ride along to get to places (and fire, but not use vigors from). Its more annoying than anything else though. The enemies are able to utilize the quick, evasive, flanking movement of riding along skylines much more than the player is because the AI is omnipotent and always knows where you are despite your cool maneuver while when an enemy flanks you you are notified of this fact by losing all your shields and half your health almost immediately. So combat tends to devolve into finding a corner of the map that can't be flanked or retreating to the entrance of an area to use it as a choke point. The special heavy enemies that break up this formula (crow guy, handyman) aren't really used in conjunction with regular enemies because it'd be suicidally difficulty running across open terrain to get away from them while under fire from regular enemies. I feel the game could have been much improved if this wasn't the case. Lower overall enemy damage a bit, especially hitscanners, allow players to stock up on health/mana like before, lower some enemy health amounts a bit so it doesn't take 30 crits from fully upgraded weapons to kill shocked enemies, and you can start throwing more of the big boss enemies into normal fights.

What good can I say about the setting? Uhh... the architecture looks nice and the first 15 minutes of the game give you hope that you're exploring something really cool. A city in the clouds built in the early 20th century around a religious founder where everything is clean and shiny and every resident is selected to be a moral and just person... and somehow everyone non-white is a slave and every white person is racist (except the main character and Elizabeth, despite the former being a rather horrible person with an awful backstory and the latter living in a cage her entire life with little human contact). The game should really have a "This is what SJWs actually believe" caption like South Park did when they spent several minutes going through Scientology beliefs (https://vimeo.com/272691039). Just plaster that on the screen for the entire first half of the game. You even have to go through what is basically a museum of American racism at one point (Boxer Rebellion suppression was entirely justified btw). Naturally you end up being forced to join the communist resistance, led by a strong black female. But the communists become enemies about half way through at which point the setting becomes bland (an improvement, but its still bland). The Irish are also slaves because they needed white people for you to kill when the communists become enemies, because I guess the game doesn't want you to be able to kill non-whites?

Everything in the story is completely dependent on one character: A woman/man (depending on what your reference dimension is) who finds magic particles that can bridge dimensions and meets themselves as a man/woman in another dimension. Now, I'm sure those two fuck constantly, and bridging a dimension specifically to fuck the opposite sex version of you is a goal I can completely get behind, but then they basically create the whole city for the main villain (Comstock) and do all the work for him to make a perfect city among the clouds and advance all this technology so that they have personal shields, robots, etc. Then Comstock kills them and they become basically gods that can go anywhere and do anything, but decide specifically to select you to stop him because otherwise his evil plan will lead to New York being destroyed. These two characters make everything about the city feel unearned. Andrew Ryan was literally just a normal, rich dude who built Rapture to be his vision of a perfect city (the same way Elon Musk is just a rich dude who wants to go to space). Basically everything fantastical about Bioshock 1 was merely a consequence of the society. Comstock on the other hand was handed Columbia on a platter and neither him nor anyone basically did anything worthwhile except import slaves to... scrub floors? There's just no relevant usage for slavery in this society yet they do it anyone because US bad communism good. The whole setting is a disgrace to America and its creator should be shot for treason.

Oh well, back to the Bioshock 2 DLC.
 
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smaug

Secular Koranism with Israeli Characteristics
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Insert Title Here
Started playing the first Doom for the first time, I don't have much experience with shooters but damn.

The atmosphere is amazing, I love how the flashing lights are used to temporarily blind the player and how the levels have many claustrophobic areas which increase the tension. (Also having unique traps spread around is really cool.). Haven't gotten to far but enemy design is p. great.

Aesthetically beautiful, great soundtrack (sound design in general), feels very smooth for a DOS game, it's so damn fun.

Choosing not to save scum, died on the 4th level.

So damn fun. I'm guessing the future dooms aren't like this?
 
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Doom 2 is Doom 1 with a much expanded and better roster of enemies, the supershotgun, and levels that are significantly larger with more enemies but arguably a bit lower in quality.

Know that the "correct" way to play Doom (as in the intended balance for levels) is to start the level with just a pistol. Type IDCLEV xy where x = episode number and y = level number to warp to a level and start fresh. Doom 1 partially enforces this because the episodic structure automatically restarts you with only a pistol at each episode but Doom 2 is entirely continuous and gets very dull starting every level past the first few with every weapon available.
 

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