What game are you wasting time on?

[JDR13]

Doom ... comfy

Great game but ... comfy?

Who knows? Maybe he's the type who has his girlfriend punching his balls.

 

[Catacombs]

Doom ... comfy

Great game but ... comfy?

Just simple in its design and execution. Nothing like the hyperactive, clunky first-person shooter games of now.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Just finished the hottest in open world sci-fi action/RPG to come out of Poland.

This one took me completely by surprise. I wasn't expecting to give it more than a cursory spin and file it away for later (read: never), but instead I was absorbed by it. It didn't seem like a game that would pull me in like that, since it's sort of popamole-adjacent, and those games tend to leave me frustrated by what they could have been rather than happy about what they are, but this one managed to blend a lot of things together to create a genuinely compelling experience.

Pros:

• The open world. There's an enormous sense of freedom about it, and the attention to detail is impressive. All around there are cool structures and varied locales to explore, and you can go anywhere right off the bat. Traversing the environment is a joy. And while the design approach is generally Ubisoft-ish, it changes up certain things to good effect, like the way fast travel works.
• The systems. They're fairly standard for this type of game, but sneaking around, distracting and pickpocketing and silently disabling enemies, hacking security systems, picking locks, etc. is still a lot of fun, and indeed it's better than in some similar games by virtue of the open world always giving you many different avenues of entry and exit.
• The main character. He's not special with a tragic backstory or anything like that, and he's unassuming enough that the range of dialogue options you get don't clash with his personality, but his quips are among the best I've seen for this type of MC, and made me chuckle several times. I also liked the buddy cop relationship he has with the voice inside his head, which is another thing I expected would be trite and annoying but actually turned out enjoyable.

Cons:

• The loot. As usual with games where you can steal things, money becomes a non-issue within the first ten minutes, and there isn't much else to find. By straying off the beaten path you can get some good weapons early on, but it doesn't take long until you're outfitted with better stuff than you can ever come across as loot, which is a shame. There's still unique stuff to find which makes exploration worthwhile, but getting new weapons and armour becomes irrelevant too soon.
• Detective mode. I always hate it, but it's everywhere these days, and in this game as well. Please, devs everywhere, drop the detective mode already.
• The bugs. Unfortunately the game is still rife with them. Visual glitches don't tend to bother me much, but there were a couple of sidequests that I was unable to finish due to characters or items falling through the world, which was incredibly annoying. The game also kept crashing and even shutting down my computer, often several times per session.

But really, other those minor issues I had a whale of a time with this game. Been a long time since I was enraptured by popamole like this.

The game I'm talking about is of course Seven: The Days Long Gone. Cyberpunk, what the hell is that?

Spoiler

This is the stuff I'm talking about. The "see that mountain?" factor is off the charts.

 

[pakoito]

I'm 6h into Blasphemous and it's good. Not innovative or hard in any way, just average with amazing art direction. Also Españita PLUS ULTRA.

 

[samuraigaiden]

I'm playing Morrowind, 100% vanilla no mods imperial knight playthrough. First time mainlining it proper, I want to see it through. Just got the ring. Started making a new save pretty much at every sitting because I'm afraid the whole thing will fall apart. Game's pure gold, tho. Having such a good time I struggle to put it into words

 

[markec]

Recently in another thread I commented on Dishonored and then I realized that I never played any DLC for either game. As I was just in a mood for a stealth game I went and played the The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches expansions.

Not really any point in discussing the gameplay since its just more of the same, instead ill just comment on level design.

Now both dlc has three missions with varied quality and all of them feel a bit short while being more difficult then the main game. As always I played on highest difficulty with no powers, gadgets and pure ghost.

In Knife of Dunwall the first mission takes you to a factory that makes whale oil, a important part of the Dishonored worldbuilding and often part of the gameplay. There you will see how the oil is made and trough pieces of lore see how that work influences the people doing it. I simply love this level, overall its very well done in terms of gameplay and the writing revolving around the whales gives a nice Lovecraftian vibe to it. So much that It really made me hope that one day Arcane will make a stealth Lovecraftian game similar to Dark Corners of the Earth. This level alone is enough of a reason to play this dlc.

Second mission is a typical manor mission with nothing particularly standing out, it is still pretty fun and worth playing but its nothing special.

Third mission is easily the worst of the bunch, little creativity level or encounter design, it feels like a rushed way to introduce the next dlc.


The second dlc Brigmore Witches, is overall better designed and just more consistent experience then the first expansion.

First mission takes you to a jail that while interesting feels way too short.

The second mission is where this dlc shines, four hubs with one being optional and multiple ways of solving the main quest. Its a joy to play and just like first mission of Knife of Dunwall it alone is worth playing the dlc.

The third mission is also pretty good and challenging, although I found the end boss to be extremely easy. Still there are some visuals and encounters that make this level quite fun.


Overall both expansion are well worth playing and will provide hours of worthy Dishonored fun.



Currently Im playing Cyberpunk and Dungeon of Naheulbeuk.

 

[Lyre Mors]

But really, other those minor issues I had a whale of a time with this game. Been a long time since I was enraptured by popamole like this.

I wouldn't really call this popamole, and try to throw them some money next time the game is on sale (buy it as a gift or something) so we can keep getting games from these guys. The game sold like shit.

Was really hoping for another game in the same setting, but I don't know if it's going to happen. Game takes place in just a small part of the whole setting - a prison colony on an island (sound familiar? not the only cue it takes from Gothic). A first person stealth-RPG on the mainland of the setting would be amazing. Or even something like Seven, with an actual leveling system tied to the equipment progression.

 

[Strange Fellow]

I wouldn't really call this popamole

I would. I can't point to a single thing that disqualifies it, other than maybe the absence of physical breadcrumb trails to quest markers. In terms of systems it's more or less indistinguishable from your Far Cry or Assassin's Creed. I'm not saying that to disparage the game, but the reality is that I never had to think about what to do or pay attention to directions or other quest info, and the tools and abilities you get, innate or otherwise, are ridiculously powerful.

try to throw them some money next time the game is on sale (buy it as a gift or something) so we can keep getting games from these guys.

I'm planning on it (Edit: enter here). Sad to hear it didn't sell well.

 

[Abu Antar]

I beat Tearaway Unfolded, yesterday. An okaysih platformer. It's not very difficult, other than a couple of sections that use motion controls. It has charming graphics and an excellent soundtrack. I'd say that this should only be played if your looking for a chill out game.

Now that I don't have Underrail to think about. I can focus on Ho Tu Lo Shu and Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines.

I'm also playing Cyberpunk 2077 despite getting a refund on physical edition. I still haven't been told how/if/when I shall return the game to them.

I also intend to beat Yakuza 5 before the end of the year. I took a little break from it, but next week, it will be beaten.

 

[pakoito]

I'm 6h into Blasphemous and it's good. Not innovative or hard in any way, just average with amazing art direction. Also Españita PLUS ULTRA.

Not innovative or hard in any way, just average

Okay, I'm through most of the game and I'd say way above average. Better than Bloodstained and most other bland metroidvanias for sure. I have enjoyed it more than Hollow Knight.

 

[pakoito]

I'm 6h into Blasphemous and it's good. Not innovative or hard in any way, just average with amazing art direction. Also Españita PLUS ULTRA.

Not innovative or hard in any way, just average

Okay, I'm through most of the game and I'd say way above average. Better than Bloodstained and most other bland metroidvanias for sure. I have enjoyed it more than Hollow Knight.

I've just finished the game. It has the cojones of locking up lots of content that's not necessary to finish the game, even with the good ending. The free DLC bosses are in New Game+ so you know they're extra hard. Some of the quests are obtuse and intrincate, like in Dark Souls.

I seriously underestimated this game.

 

[Ezekiel]

Played Streets of Rage 4 again. I'm so bad at melee combat.

 

[octavius]

Been playing Dungeon Master again, this time with only two characters (Zed Duke of Banville and Wuuf the Bika) as an extra challenge, and it's getting more frustrating than fun.
Two characters means having only half the characters to distribute loot to and having to rest after every battle with purple worms, and generally being overburdened unless I leave a stash behind when exploring.
Also I'm noticing the same problem as in FPS games - I'm not very good at real time gaming anymore.
But at least I haven't had to reload yet, although Wuuf has had to be resurrected twice.

So I think I'll swallow my pride and get me two more heroes.

 

[Apostle Hand]

playing diablo 1

much better game than diablo 2 I'm in hell now

 

[Tel Velothi]

I'm playing Morrowind, 100% vanilla no mods imperial knight playthrough. First time mainlining it proper, I want to see it through. Just got the ring. Started making a new save pretty much at every sitting because I'm afraid the whole thing will fall apart. Game's pure gold, tho. Having such a good time I struggle to put it into words

I envy you good sir. How did you get in the game? What ring? Fatgoth's ring? Give it back to him!
Goddammit - I wish I could get into playing Morrowind again :/

 

[samuraigaiden]

I'm playing Morrowind, 100% vanilla no mods imperial knight playthrough. First time mainlining it proper, I want to see it through. Just got the ring. Started making a new save pretty much at every sitting because I'm afraid the whole thing will fall apart. Game's pure gold, tho. Having such a good time I struggle to put it into words

I envy you good sir. How did you get in the game? What ring? Fatgoth's ring? Give it back to him!
Goddammit - I wish I could get into playing Morrowind again :/

No, good sir. I'm talking about the ring from the cave with the talking door. You know the one. Under moon and star, outlander

Anyway, I can't say exactly what motivated me to go back to it. I remember watching the first 10 minutes of this video https://youtu.be/_kP6LMx4j2g when looking for some YouTube channels that cover RPGs and one thing led to another.

 

[Cael]

playing diablo 1

much better game than diablo 2 I'm in hell now

The lack of running in D1 drove me nuts. Your character is just so darned slow...

 

[Kabas]

Tried a bunch of games lately
Neverwinter night: diamond edition SOTU campaign
I ended up regretting a bit choosing the wizard class. Dorna the dwarven cleric/rogue is kinda garbage at being the frontline companion, tempted to switch my familliar to fairy for trap disarming/lock opening stuff and try monster summoning spells instead, dunno if this will work. Didn't bother recruiting the gnolls and i probaby should have filled my slots with some different spells(i am not very proficient at DnD, not sure which spells i should metamagic or not), nevertheless the ch1 final boss was fun.
Currently on hold
Revenant
Looks damn pretty, animations are beautiful, voice acting is great. The instantly respawning enemies are very annoying and as usual the diablo-likes bore me quickly, this game wasn't the exception unfortunately.
Warhammer: Mark of Chaos
Funny trying this one after the total war warhammer. There is a fun part in a chaos campaign where you need to choose between Nurgle and Khorne though judging by what i picked from the army builder it doesn't seem to change much apart from the looks and 1-2 units. Also put it on hold.
Temple of elemental Evil
Currently playing it and having a great time, i intend to actually finish it. I followed the advice of a certain person codex knows as Lilura and rolled a glaive fighter with combat reflexes/greater cleave, dual wielding rogue, lawful good cleric with very high stats, generalist wizard with echnantment focus feats and archer ranger - all humans.
The fact that my fighter and ranger started with only 17 in their strength and dexterity respectively didn't ended up hurting me as much as i thought.
Entered the moathouse immediately at lvl 1 because i dislike the usual fetch quest rpg routine, probably shouldn't have in retrospective.
The fight against the drow priest was a bit tricky to me at first until i changed some of my tactics, wizard charm spells and properly placed cleric summons worked great in this fight.
I am an idiot who figured out way too late how to actually trigger sneak attacks, my rogue finally became useful after this.
The fight against the king toad and the sea hag was also very memorable, tackled it at level 5. I wasn't sold too much on sleep/deep slumber spells until i found out that the enemies(even if they're at the level of ogre or sea hag) tend to prioritise the waking up of their comrades over attacking my party, even if the sleeping enemies in question are relatively low threat lizardmen. Also the nice thing about the giant toads is that their tongue grapple doesn't prevent my grappled fighter from attaking them and while they're trying to eat my fighter my rogue is free to land her sneak attacks, reminds me of something.
Fireball is a very satisfying spell to use and the celestial bear summon is damn nasty.

My party is currently just reached level 6 and is slowly clearing the first level of the Temple and i have question about crafting. I am not going to screw myself over if i immediately give a +1 enchantment to my fighter's glaive? Or should i wait a bit until i can enchance it fully to +3 weapon with Holy/Axiomatic or elemental damage and stuff?

 

[OSK]

I'm playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut. It doesn't hold a candle to the original Deus Ex, but it's pretty good. I should be nearing the end, and I'll probably start up the sequel shortly after.

 

[Kabas]

Almost forgot, i also tried Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Liked it, though the turn based combat in ToEE is better than the turn based mode in this one. Will restart later as a new class, not enjoying playing as archer slayer that much even though he is very efficient.

 

[Cael]

Tried a bunch of games lately
Neverwinter night: diamond edition SOTU campaign
I ended up regretting a bit choosing the wizard class. Dorna the dwarven cleric/rogue is kinda garbage at being the frontline companion, tempted to switch my familliar to fairy for trap disarming/lock opening stuff and try monster summoning spells instead, dunno if this will work. Didn't bother recruiting the gnolls and i probaby should have filled my slots with some different spells(i am not very proficient at DnD, not sure which spells i should metamagic or not), nevertheless the ch1 final boss was fun.
Currently on hold
Revenant
Looks damn pretty, animations are beautiful, voice acting is great. The instantly respawning enemies are very annoying and as usual the diablo-likes bore me quickly, this game wasn't the exception unfortunately.
Warhammer: Mark of Chaos
Funny trying this one after the total war warhammer. There is a fun part in a chaos campaign where you need to choose between Nurgle and Khorne though judging by what i picked from the army builder it doesn't seem to change much apart from the looks and 1-2 units. Also put it on hold.
Temple of elemental Evil
Currently playing it and having a great time, i intend to actually finish it. I followed the advice of a certain person codex knows as Lilura and rolled a glaive fighter with combat reflexes/greater cleave, dual wielding rogue, lawful good cleric with very high stats, generalist wizard with echnantment focus feats and archer ranger - all humans.
The fact that my fighter and ranger started with only 17 in their strength and dexterity respectively didn't ended up hurting me as much as i thought.
Entered the moathouse immediately at lvl 1 because i dislike the usual fetch quest rpg routine, probably shouldn't have in retrospective.
The fight against the drow priest was a bit tricky to me at first until i changed some of my tactics, wizard charm spells and properly placed cleric summons worked great in this fight.
I am an idiot who figured out way too late how to actually trigger sneak attacks, my rogue finally became useful after this.
The fight against the king toad and the sea hag was also very memorable, tackled it at level 5. I wasn't sold too much on sleep/deep slumber spells until i found out that the enemies(even if they're at the level of ogre or sea hag) tend to prioritise the waking up of their comrades over attacking my party, even if the sleeping enemies in question are relatively low threat lizardmen. Also the nice thing about the giant toads is that their tongue grapple doesn't prevent my grappled fighter from attaking them and while they're trying to eat my fighter my rogue is free to land her sneak attacks, reminds me of something.
Fireball is a very satisfying spell to use and the celestial bear summon is damn nasty.

My party is currently just reached level 6 and is slowly clearing the first level of the Temple and i have question about crafting. I am not going to screw myself over if i immediately give a +1 enchantment to my fighter's glaive? Or should i wait a bit until i can enchance it fully to +3 weapon with Holy/Axiomatic or elemental damage and stuff?

There is a Holy one running around, IIRC.

 

[Frank Capicoli]

Wasting time waiting for the pc port of Nioh 2 in February I picked up Project Warlock: It's a competent 'Boomer Shooter' like many others we've been showered with in the past couple years. The level and enemy variety is nice, and it has a weapon/magic upgrade system that gives you two meaningful options for weapons. The level design itself is on the bland side it never feels like it reaches the level of Dusk or Amid evil to use a modern comparison. The soundtrack is just sort of there as well nothing terrible but nothing memorable. Overall it's not a bad game but it just doesn't draw me in like Dusk did.

 

[blurbo]

Playing it safe

Gothic 1 - Things that bothered me in an otherwise amazing game, in order of importance: 1) the fact that you have to restrain yourself from stealing OP weapons because the combat is all about 2) whacking people repeteadly in the head with a blind man cane's swing motion (only exceptions I can recall are the fight with Kharim where you have to block his combos, and the little timing game involved with hornets/leaping wolves/dinos etc. 3) the fact that you can go through the orc encampment/temple TWICE, first time with the orcish staff the other with the supersword (or three times in my case because of that damn bow), as it kills any sense of momentum. Anyway what bought me right from the start was the "quest" where the guy in the old camp tells you there's a treasure somewhere, so you follow him outside and he robs you blind (I feel that most of Age of Decadence is an exploration of this concept of a world where the nicest guy acts like Jordan Belfort).

Fallout: NV - Very mixed feelings about this one. It's too long, epic endgame is epic except for the fact that it's that terrible engine and everything looks ridiculous, plus "prepare for the battle!" quests, which I did because I'm an idiot and trust developers they won't wind me up by throwing 40 hrs of nothingness at my unemployment, just for fun. But on the goodside, all the small atmospheric western things worked very well for me: the goodsprings gunfight (not the gunplay itself, which in general didn't seem to involve more than either sitting still taking headshots or spraying bullets in close quarters), the exploration of the abandoned gas station, hearing from the sniper lady in the NCR outpost that there's a pile of smoke coming from Nipton and then finding out about the Legion, the ghouls near Novac, Mr House trying to protect his Vegas, Benny's plan to take over etc. In general, I think all these well fleshed out small-scale conflicts always worked well in the post-apoc setting, while the big battle for Hoover Dam is absolutely over the top and out of place. Plus movement and gunplay in this game are the kind of things that make you look at sleep paralysis in a better light

 

[Durandal]

Got the 2-ALL on ROLLING THUNDER 1 (ARC) (New version). It's pretty messy, but the mistakes made do neatly illustrate some of the jank in the game, which I'll get into later on.

The gist of Rolling Thunder is that you're playing as a Super Spy called Bames Jond, on a mission to rescue his partner from the LGBT-division of the KKK, led by Piccolo from Dragon Ball. Rolling Thunder isn't about bare-chested excess and covering the screen in spreadfire and brimstone like Contra is--instead you're a spy, and spies act with lethal precision. Most enemies take only one or two shots to die, and as for Mr. Jond, taking one bullet means instant death (despite the misleading size of his health bar), and colliding with enemies shaves off half. Yet, the ensuing mercy i-frames on a collision are so short that most enemies will simply collide with you again right after your recovery, so a collision usually means instant death anyways (unless you get very lucky).

Maskers struck with awe and terror in the face of Mr. Jond’s shining new pair of red Yeezys (1986) (Colorized)

As ammo is limited, enemies are everywhere, and you can't shoot while moving or jumping, so you need to be quick and precise to not get overwhelmed and Hitler-greeted to death. The premise and limited ammo is also what makes it satisfying to calculate how many shots you need to take out a group based on the amount of enemies and the enemy types present, and then execute them with no shots wasted (even though the game is pretty lenient with ammo refills and lets you carry your stockpile over between stages). Besides your semi-auto pistol you also have a full-auto SMG, which you want to apply some trigger discipline with and not waste more shots than necessary. Enemies that take more than one shot to kill subtly reinforce this with their slight on-hit i-frames; taking one bullet knocks them back into a crouching position, and á la Shinobi AC they're invulnerable until they land on the ground (but unlike Shinobi this only takes a fifth of a second and doesn't feel like it takes ages). This means that if you fire a stream of bullets from a standing position at an enemy, one will connect, but all other bullets will go right over his head. Therefore you want to follow up with a shot from a crouching position or be shooting from crouch to begin with, but you also want to slightly space out your shots to take the i-frames into account. Firing full-auto from crouch will have the enemy soak up three bullets instead of two because of the way the collision works in this game, so you’re better off manually double-tapping.

You also want to be quick about your Tactical Espionage. Not only is the time limit pretty strict and you get more score the faster you clear a stage, but the longer you take, the more chaos you subject yourself to. Enemies in Rolling Thunder primarily enter the field through the right side of the screen, but also through the many doors in the background, and they will keep coming out of those doors at regular intervals unless you move on. So a stage will behave more predictably when you’re blazing through, but less so if you're being a turtle as enemies that you didn’t originally account for in your route start making themselves known. It's a bit how Ninja Gaiden (NES) discourages backpedaling by giving you more respawning enemies to deal with if you do back up instead of facing towards danger. The enemy types that come out of the doors in RT also tend to be semi-random (usually one of two possible Masker types, where there's 8+ of them in total), so even if you're blazing through you still need to take this into account.

RT is also pretty interesting to play for speed, primarily because bunnyhopping forwards lets you move faster than your walking speed. Doing so also carries an inherent risk, because you cannot attack while jumping, and enemies come out of doors unannounced and quickly enough that a misplaced jump can make you fall right into a Masker's bosom and die. At the same time there are enough obstacles in your path that you can't just bunnyhop past everything like it's a Half-Life 1 speedrun, so you need to be smart about knowing when to go fast. The ability to bunnyhop also brings rise to a technique that I call 'queueing shots', which operates on a similar principle as the jumping attacks in Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden. It involves firing a bullet and then bunnyhopping alongside it to increase the distance it travels before it hits an enemy or exits the screen. This allows you to kill enemies right as they enter the screen while moving at max speed without having to stop and shoot right as they appear, adding more depth to optimizing a given stage for speed. This is also partially made possible because the speed of your bullets isn't blazingly fast--it's only slightly faster than you moving at bunnyhopping speed. If the bullet speed was practically instant like in Rolling Thunder 2, it would despawn before you could even begin bunnyhopping.

One thing Rolling Thunder introduced that other games would steal is the ability to high jump and vault onto the platform below/above you, effectively presenting two planes of combat. Not only are you worrying about enemies coming from the left and right and the background, but also from above and below, because all enemies will high jump up to where you are. High jumping also makes you invincible against bullets (except for the startup of the jump), so it makes for a good escape tool. All this is cool on paper, but the game rarely does anything interesting with it. Short of being physically blocked off by walls, there isn’t a lot that makes you want to move towards the other plane (like enemy groups that shoot bullets from both standing and crouching), or being forced to vault towards a plane that’s already contested by enemies. Most enemies will already move towards your plane, who you can catch by staying on yours and safely shooting them as they vault in (unless they’re vaulting exactly into your position for a collision kill). Enemies that can badger you from other planes, like grenadiers that will spam grenades on the plane below, are surprisingly rare. Moreover, multi-planar combat is only really a thing in Stage 1 and 5 for both loops, in all the other stages they only play a minor factor, usually because there’s no other plane to begin with.

Instead, too many stages in RT seek to impose a challenge through diagonals or height differences in terrain and enemy placement, even though your moveset isn’t always well-equipped to deal with them. For example, take the chest-high peekaboo shooting sections near the end of Stage 5, where you and the enemy are forced to wait for each other and take potshots like some kind of generic cover shooter. This is precisely where having another plane would give you more options to negotiate obstacles like these instead of being forced into playing peekaboo, but unfortunately they are absent here. Another example is the staircase section in Stage 2. Because the enemies come in diagonally from below and because you can only shoot to your hard left and right, your only option is to wait for them to ascend/descend into your line of fire. You can jump over them, but usually there’s another enemy group at the bottom, so the collision damage would kill you. Here I again wonder why the game doesn’t use multiple flat planes to let you vault down repeatedly (like Stage 2 in Rolling Thunder 2). The end of Stage 1 does employ staircase formations in the same way, but the enemies are placed in a way where you don’t have to wait more than a second for them to fall into your line of fire, so it’s much more tolerable in comparison.

Some sections of the game are even worse in this regard, which involve you having to drop down or ascend to proceed, except your path forward is blocked off by very inconvenient enemy placement which you can’t jump over without dying to contact damage, and said enemies simply won’t budge. The only way to negotiate these situations is to abuse the hidden ability of your jumps to induce spontaneous brain aneurysms in the enemy AI, and make them move the other way. I can only surmise the devs knew about this and designed parts of the second loop around it, because there’s simply no way you can pass through certain sections without this knowledge. But because this only works when an enemy is in a neutral state and some of these enemies will be attacking non-stop, you will have to jump repeatedly until their AI gets the message, and then you gotta wait for them to process their brain aneurysm and slowly turn the other way, which just puts a massive dent in the pacing of the game. This is honestly a band-aid solution for situations that the player character turns out not to be properly equipped to deal with, and would be better solved by designing situations around your existing toolset (i.e. add more planes), or giving you the proper tools necessary for these situations (jump while shooting/non-lethal contact damage).

The Maskers come in many different color schemes, all of which signify different behaviors and properties (in a clever bit of asset reuse). Strawberry Green Tea is your standard mook that wants to get all touchy feely, Banana Blueberry is the same but takes two shots, Orange fires bullets from standing positions, Lime Green Tea fires from crouching, Lime and Chocolate Lime throw grenades in an arc, and you also get the illusive Ninja Maskers that appear from thin air. It’s a bit of a basic line-up, but they’re often employed in great numbers and from several different directions on the screen that it still allows for a good deal of variety in the stage design. Signifying different enemy behaviors through color coding helps you formulate a plan to deal with a given situation instead of being forced to guess whether an enemy will shoot from crouching or standing, which is why it’s especially frustrating when the game decides to break this rule in the second loop. Suddenly Strawberry Green Tea can throw grenades, and Orange fires from crouching instead of standing. On its own enemies being able to do things like randomly decide between shooting from standing or crouching would push you to take the safest and most consistent option for dealing with it, but because the game actively misinforms you with no warning, dying as a result can’t help but feel cheap and disrespectful of your time and effort.

There are also other non-Masker enemies, most notably Mutants whose small stature means you can only hit them while crouching, but once they come close enough to you they will quickly leap into your face and jump right over your crouching shots. So at long-range you want to shoot from crouch, at close-range you want to catch them mid-air with a standing shot, which makes them pretty effective to force you to stand up every now and then, considering crouching shots will take out most other enemies. Aside from Mutants you also got Panthers, which behave the same except less aggressively, but they’re more of an annoyance because of their growl. Their growl actually lowers their hitbox and makes it impossible to hit them on a flat plane. This is not an attack, this is just a taunt that wastes your time. There are also Owlbats, which are horrible enemies that thankfully only appear rarely. Upon getting triggered they will fly around at the top of the screen for several seconds, then swoop in like a homing missile. Much like the Panther, them flying around just wastes your time. Owlbats could be a good fit if you were forced to deal with other enemies on top of the Owlbats (like in an autoscroller section), but as is, you can just back off instead of moving forwards and deal with more enemies, and then wait for the Owlbats to swoop down so you can safely take them out.

BORING STAGE-BY-STAGE NITTY-GRITTY

Spoiler

Although most of the enemy cast can be dealt with by shooting from a crouching position, the stage design does a good enough job of using the stage terrain in a way to force you out of it, particularly Stage 1, 3, and 5, on account of actually presenting different planes for you to vault around, and using doors to spawn enemies right next to you.

Stage 3 is mostly a retread of Stage 1’s ideas, but with the addition of Mutants to spice things up. Initially you will have to get used to their ability to leap over your shots when they get close, but over time you can mitigate the threat they pose by memorizing most of their positions. One interesting thing of note is that Mutants cannot enter the screen via doors (nor can any other non-Masker enemies, although all other non-Masker enemies beside the Mutant suck and are better off not appearing at all) and only appear from the sides of the screen, which all things considered makes sense, if they spawned within leaping range they’d come at you so fast that you can only survive by memorizing these spawns. However, this lack of response time could be mitigated if Mutants could only spawn through doors on the plane that you’re currently not on, so you would still have adequate time to react.

Stage 4 opens with another staircase where you have to wait for the enemies on it to drop down into your line of fire, and then giving you Owlbats to deal with. After that you have to drop down into a pit, but if you take the most straightforward path of simply dropping down, a Ninja Masker will suddenly spawn in your face, which will make you collide with another very inconveniently placed Ninja Masker. Instead, you have to descend platform by platform to get down safely. This isn’t particularly hard to execute or get around, it’s just some bullshit designed to get first-time players considering the Ninja Masker isn’t remotely telegraphed. And after that you get a platforming section, which again involves more trial ‘n error. The first part is the running men-on-fire that keep bouncing around the screen, and split into four ascending spirits when you shoot them. You have to memorize what platforms to shoot them from, else their erratic bouncing will make it infeasible to get them in your line of fire (especially if you’re on a higher platform and they’re on a lower one), and shooting them while they’re close means their released spirits can get you by surprise. Again, it’s easy and consistent once memorized, but their erratic nature is primarily designed to catch first-time players by surprise. But the second part involves the actual platforming itself, which takes some time getting used to, as you’ll probably often end up falling off platforms by accident while trying to jump. This is mainly because the player’s hitbox and neutral stance is pretty thin. Most platformers allow the player character to eke over the edge in order to make jumping off the edge off a platform more lenient; you can see how the character’s sprite is standing with one foot on the platform and the other on thin air. But as this isn’t the case in Rolling Thunder, you have to be very precise with your jumps, which IMO is a bad fit for a game that primarily isn’t even about precision platforming at all.

Stage 5 is where all enemies and bullets start moving faster. Even though the actual enemy compositions aren’t that hard by themselves when compared to previous stages, it’s certainly more engaging because of their numbers and all the different directions/doors they are coming in from, on top of the increased enemy/bullet movement speed. In this stage the foreground/background plane switching comes (somewhat) into greater play, although bizarrely going into the background is never required to progress, so you can just ignore this altogether. There is an interesting dynamic to combining background/foreground switching on top of the existing plane switching; being in the background protects you from enemies on the foreground and plane above you because enemies on the top plane cannot jump down into the background (but enemies can jump from the background towards the top plane), but you still have to contend with enemies spawning from the background doors, and you eventually have to exit into the foreground through a chokepoint doorway. Being in the foreground means you no longer have to deal with the background doors, but you’re still vulnerable to enemies on the top plane, and on the top plane you’re vulnerable to background doors AND the bottom planes on the foreground AND background. This kind of asymmetric set-up in terms of potential risk is something the terrain could have played into--where there’s trade-offs in taking one plane over the other, with hard counters forcing you away from one particular plane. Sadly the terrain in Stage 5 never plays with this, so the foreground/background switching ends up being an underutilized gimmick.

Stage 5 isn’t the end; you have the second loop as well. It’s not just the same thing as the first loop but slightly faster; you get new enemy types, revamped enemy placements, some stages feature redesigned terrains, and the Stage 4 in the second loop is a completely new stage that doesn’t resemble Stage 4 in the first loop at all? Given how short the first loop is, (10 minutes) this is basically the second half of the game, and if you intend on playing this game you shouldn’t skip out on it.

So Stage 6 (or ST2-1) features way more enemies, tougher enemy types appear more often, and previously flat hallways now feature enemies poised to drop down from the windows above. The second half features laser gates that you have to time your approach through (while being mindful of their wack hitboxes), but their inclusion feels kinda wasted. You can usually dispatch all enemies first and then safely pass through the gates while the lasers are down, although this way the laser gates always pose the exact same challenge regardless of how the enemies are placed. Laser gates would be more interesting if you were forced to pass them while having to deal with enemies that you can’t permanently remove. Doors to both of your sides that spawn Maskers at a higher rate would be a great fit). Laser gates aren’t used again until Stage 9 (and in the same lacklustre capacity to boot), so there’s some wasted potential.

The most bizarre change between loops is that the final stretch of Stage 6 features enemies that will jump up unannounced out of the sandbag mountain you are standing on. You cannot see this coming because the sandbags are obscuring their sprites (save for teeny bits sticking out), and whether they will jump up to begin with is mostly random. You can kind of route around this, but the only way possible against a threat that you literally can not see coming is through trial ‘n error. This part is a headscratcher and I cannot even guess what the rationale behind it is.

Stage 7 plays mostly the same as Stage 2 with slightly tougher enemy types, the only noticeable changes are the addition of Owlbats in the crate sections and Mutants in the staircase section. For Owlbats you want to memorize their positions so you can pre-fire them while they’re still on the ground, so you don’t have to wait for them to stop flying. The Mutants don’t really add anything to the staircase section, all you do is stand on top of the staircase and shoot while standing as all the Mutants leap into your line of fire. It’s a static threat that doesn’t overlap with anything else, and is repeated several times in a short timespan in the exact same way. Just a waste of time.

Stage 8 doesn’t look all that different from Stage 3, but then it keeps going, and it just keeps going, until you’ve realized that they slapped a remixed version of Stage 4 at the end of this stage. The No Miss clears on YouTube can only manage to finish this stage with less than 20 seconds left on the timer because of its sheer length, and only with an airtight route and a compliant AI at that. The role of time limits should be to discourage excessive dilly-dallying and encourage more aggressive and engaging playstyles. All making them this strict/making stages this long is make only the most optimized routes feasible, while making any elements of RNG a massive pain in the ass.

One such RNG element is the new Panther cage. Whereas you could just pass by it via the foreground in the first loop, now the foreground path is blocked off, and you have to get around it by going into the Panther cage. And the only way you can do so is via two narrow doorways, while there’s a massive group of Panthers on the other side unpredictably walking around and making it unsafe to enter it. All you can do here is wait until an opening presents itself--costing valuable time, or try to force one by jumping and making all Panthers jump along with you as well. But all of this is subject to a lot of RNG, because sometimes the Panthers will decide not to jump (because they randomly decided to growl), sometimes they will decide to leave their cage and get the jump on you, and how they move around is unpredictable.

Particularly cruel here is that if you move a slight bit to the left before entering the cage, a Panther can spawn on the left side of the screen and immediately maul you before you can react. There’s nothing inherently wrong with enemies spawning in from the left, but the player character’s position then ought to be locked to the center to give you enough time and space to react to this, as opposed to Rolling Thunder 1 where your position is locked a one-third screen width from the left. This makes RT1 more suitable for threats that come in from the right, but certainly not from the left edge of the screen.

The ensuing lava section has to be one of the worst cases of trial ‘n error in the game. First you get an Owlbat that for some reason decides to fly around the bottom of the screen instead of the top, and in order to hit it you must jump on a platform amidst lava. The only issue here is that this platform is placed just close enough that if you jump off the very edge of the prior platform (as the game taught you several times before), you will overshoot and land on hot lava instead. Air control is very limited in this game and your jump arc is mostly fixed, so you can’t adjust your trajectory mid-air by much. The only way to avoid this is to unintuitively jump a few steps before the edge of the platform. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall even Castlevania ever doing this. Again, there’s nothing inherently with this kind of setup, but Rolling Thunder isn’t primarily about platforming and never drilled fundamentals like these into you, so being expected to suddenly know about not having to jump from the edge of a platform (while the time limit is almost running out) is a bit obscene.

This is also why the last section of the stage where you have to platform across incredibly narrow pillars also feels rather out of place, but the most offensive thing about it is the men-of-fire that get spawned mid-jump--in a game where you can’t attack while jumping. Even if you land safely, they will inevitably collide with you and kill you. The only way to avoid this is to pre-fire a bullet before you jump, which is some mighty kuso. I did say before that I liked queueing shots for its speedrun potential, but only because it was optional. Forcing the player to pre-fire obstacles is always going to be a problem if you don’t telegraph what’s ahead.

Stage 9 is on the mild side, all things considered. Not a lot of doors or multi-directional spawns to worry about. Instead you get a lot of boring sections where you have to drop down something, but have to wait for a Masker at the bottom to move out of the way so you don’t collide with them. There are also more Stage 3-style Ninja Masker pits, where you gotta drop down several platforms, but standing on particular platforms causes Ninja Maskers to spawn in your face, so you just have to trial ‘n error your way through until you find a consistent route. Not particularly interesting on replays. The only interesting obstacle of note is the two laser gates stapled to each other that activate at asynchronous intervals, since you need to use your brain a little to find a gap between the laser gates, although their RNG nature makes it crappy when playing for speed. One thing I’d suggest for laser gates in general is to have them move back and forth horizontally, allowing for more interplay with enemy spawns by making laser gates more of an overlapping and persistent threat, as opposed to the current implementation where you can just chill near one and take out all enemies first, effectively isolating the element of enemy placement from the stage hazards, instead of combining them.

Stage 10 is more of the good ol' stuff. More enemy swarms, less gimmicks. However, the foreground/background switching is still mostly boring, and there is one crappy part that involves enemies pre-firing at a place you have to drop down towards, which again involves more jumping to get the AI to GTFO. At first I was convinced that the extension of the final stage in the second loop was some bullshit that you couldn’t reliably pass through, namely having to ascend a staircase populated by Maskers that refuse to budge unless you bait them into dropping, so I used an invincibility glitch to waltz past the whole shebang. Turns out my Google-fu just wasn’t up to snuff and I somehow missed the existence of a No Miss clear before the time of recording. Designing games around gaming the enemy AI like this is tricky, because behavior is not something that you can really telegraph until it’s too late, like the Red Arremers in the Makaimura games or Donovans in Streets of Rage hard countering your air attacks. It’s more tolerable in beat ‘em ups because you have a wider margin of error thanks to the beeg health bar the genre usually affords you, but less so in precision run ‘n guns like Rolling Thunder. At the very least you want to teach the peculiarities of the enemy AI in a controlled environment early on in the game, not the absolute last stretch.

Finally there’s the final boss fight against Piccolo himself, where you must face his most powerful technique of Running Into You. This is actually an interesting fight where you must constantly gauge how many shots you can afford to let loose before having to jump over him again, because the distance after which he decides to turn around after you jump over him is AFAIK random. And often that distance is so short that you have no choice but to immediately jump again. Cool fight, but the randomness makes it bad for speedrunning, which is also especially bad in a survival context, because if you no missed everything up until this part you will likely have about 20 seconds remaining on the timer, and RNGesus making you pay more of it really makes you want to scream. However, all this is assuming you let the fight play out as intended. Instead, if you have at least 25 bullets, you can simply spray him to death before he even gets close. You can do this by conserving SMG ammo throughout the stage, but if you enable autofire your pistol basically functions no different from the SMG anyways.

All in all, Rolling Thunder has a good core of ideas and mechanics, it’s just not utilized as well as it could be, and it often throws situations at you that are better suited for a different kind of game. The amount of trial ‘n error in the second loop kind of sours the whole thing, and although the game is fun to be played for speed, often it just doesn’t let you.

 

[CyberModuled]

So rather than playing anything decent or in my recent RPG backlog like Naheulbeuk or Labyrinth of Refrain for the holiday, some part of my brain decided to go, "Yep, it's time to finally play Deus Ex: Invisible War." Honestly, it's hard to say much about something that is universally criticized even outside of these forums but man, that was astonishingly bad. The closest thing I can compare it to is something like Thief 3 which likewise had a lot of consolization decline to its general design when compared to its predecessors but I found it was still at least able to be a generally enjoyable experience. Nothing about that was remotely reflected in IW though. The moment the game just decided to drop five multi tools at the player's feet for no explainable reason was the moment I realized it wasn't about consolization or even being too handholding (like getting three upgrade canisters and a black market canister within the tutorial mission) but just the designers outright thinking whoever was playing it was an absolute, utter retard. Honest to god, how the fuck did people like Harvey Smith and the rest of Ion Storm end up working at Arkane after this when nothing about the game design, RPG mechanics, and simple world building make any sense at all?

Really, I only got two things out of it.

1. I can finally say from firsthand experience that any individual who says IW is a bad Deus Ex game but a "good" game on its own can fuck off.
2. I have newfound appreciation for HR and MD that I thought I'd never have after playing the original Deus Ex and find it better than either of them. For all their narrative issues, at least Eidos Montreal's level design team clearly knew what the hell they were doing to make a fun world to play around in and explore which is the absolute bare minimum I think is needed to make these games engaging at all.