What game are you wasting time on?

[Max Damage]

Just finished SOMA, and it was pretty underwhelming. The environments aren't particulary interesting, enemies are almost blind and don't react to noise from thrown objects, thus making all physics pointless besides that one glass you need to break at the beginning, and water sections are plaing boring and ugly. Pretty much all you need to know is said early on, so I just skipped all logs and corpse stories I could because they're basically filler. I guess story is OK, but there's basically no twist or any interesting ending, the sense of existential dread isn't there because nothing warrants it, and the antagonist (?) is defeated in an unticlimatic way. I expected more after Penumbra and Amnesia

 

[Vlajdermen]

Recently I bought the Jak and Daxter collection on a sale, and I'll post my thoughts on each one in due time.

Right now I'm near the end of the first game, it feels dated but still a lot of fun. By "dated" I mean the camera controls are rigid, like the developers were still getting used to having two analogue sticks, but everything else was intuitive enough for that to not be a problem. Jak controls like a dream, and the levels were all fun to explore and densely packed with platforming challenges. I don't have much to compare it to, the only other platformer of this type I've played is Toy Story 2, but the bottom line is it's a good game.

Spoiler

also, the name of that car

 

[Ivan]

Recently I bought the Jak and Daxter collection on a sale, and I'll post my thoughts on each one in due time.

Right now I'm near the end of the first game, it feels dated but still a lot of fun. By "dated" I mean the camera controls are rigid, like the developers were still getting used to having two analogue sticks, but everything else was intuitive enough for that to not be a problem. Jak controls like a dream, and the levels were all fun to explore and densely packed with platforming challenges. I don't have much to compare it to, the only other platformer of this type I've played is Toy Story 2, but the bottom line is it's a good game.

Spoiler

also, the name of that car

I've pretty fond memories of the first two titles. The 2nd takes a dramatic shift in gameplay and tone. Almost like they had a different setting/world in mind. Looking forward to your impressions.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Rayman 1 gets much more manageable once you get all your powers, ESPECIALLY the helicopter. Now that one's a life-saviour. Though it also helps to adopt a different attitude and just assume that everything is out to get you and there's terrible rape around every corner - truly preparation for the worst is key to survival.

I took the time to replay the levels where I didn't get all the cages, and even with the above in mind, my God, FUCKING BONGO HILLS. Bongo Hills has to be the most frustrating level this side of the Atlantic, although to be fair Mr Stone's Peaks are a very close second (p. sure I had to burn through some 20 lives to finish this one). Bongo Hills is still giving me PTSD though.

Now that I have all the cages in the levels I did so far, it's time to proceed to picture land! I can't wait to see the wonders this game still has to offer!

 

[samuraigaiden]

The Static Speaks My Name - Free walking simulator about a suicidal dude who is obsessed with a painting. It's like 15 minutes or so. Meh.

Gunman Clive - 2D platformer that plays a lot like Mega Man. Took me like 1 hour to beat or so. It looks really nice, but Mega Man is better.

Lords of Xulima - Very, very good turn-based combat system. Exceptionally good. Everything else in the game is kind of a mixed bag, but it's worth playing just for the combat. The game has 3 difficulty levels, I played on the middle option (Old-School Veteran). My playthrough clocked roughly at 66 hours and I finished with a party ranking between levels 58 to 62. Despite not caring much for the story and puzzles in the game, I can totally see myself replaying it on the higher difficulty (Hardcore) just to see how it scales and how the other classes play like. Combatfags should check this game out.

Bejeweled 3 - I have this on Origin. I think I got it for free years ago. Beat the quest mode.

Triennale Game Collection - This is not really a game, but rather a collection of 5 digital art thingies made by different artists for an Italian design and art museum. One of them is from the folks at Tale of Tales and honest to God it's better than their regular "games". It's free too, so anyone curious shouldn't feel too bad about checking this out. The entire thing lasted me 40 minutes or so, but I could see some people giving it more time.

 

[Straight elf]

Detroit: Become Human - This one I actually liked. Despite the "gameplay", which consists of button-mashing quick time events. Luckily it is possible to reduce the difficulty, which makes the timers pretty forgiving. The storied got me intrigued at first, or maybe not so much the story but rather the world, which is superbly built and really made me feel like enjoying exploring the streets of Detroit and watching its human and android inhabitants to go about their business. Unfortunately, the game quickly progressed with its super SJW-heavy, black lives matters story, complete with segregated space for androids at the back of the bus. Eventually all the propaganda felt almost too much and also the world starting devolving into something increasingly unbelievable. Honestly, what kept me going was the graphics, the game looks amazing and is actually full of attractive people - a refreshing sight after all the Bioware and Obsidian ugly people only worlds.

Anyway, I felt like I want a little bit more of that, but preferably without so much SJW crap so I also got two older games by the same devs - Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. I started

Heavy Rain and am about quarter way through. This one really shows the limits of a game based purely on (PS 3 era) visuals. The game honestly does not look good by todays standards and some of the animations when for example a person is supposed to look afraid seem downright comical. I also dislike the setting of 2010 America. In particular one of the playable characters, an FBI agent, uses a sort of futuristic gadget - a pair of VR googles which however look totally stupid when he uses them for stuff that could have been much easier to do on an Ipad. The story is again boring, not so SJW thanks God but there are too many unremarkable characters who are too similar. On two occasions I already felt like I was playing a certain character and then it turned out it is actually a new character just introduced by the game, which however looks pretty similar to one that I encountered earlier. I feel like playing this is what playing Detroit will feel like in 2025.

I don't know if I will manage to finish Heavy Rain, luckily it seems only some 10 hours long and I am kind of intrigued by the serial killer storyline. So I might. But as for the Two Souls, I don't really know if I will bother. The reviews seem much worse than for Detroit and Heavy Rain but then again, reviews are quite often wrong. Anyone tried playing Two Souls? Did you like it?

 

[Villagkouras]

Two Souls was boring for me, it's better than Heavy Rain in technical terms obviously, but the plot was flat and progressed slowly. I just didn't care.

Heavy Rain was much more interesting to me, at least before the ending which is a letdown and I assume I'm not the first to say this since you're checking reviews.

The wildest ride was Fahrenheit, the game is absolute bonkers. But very rough and I'm not recommending it if you value your sanity.

I wouldn't recommend to play Two Souls after Detroit and Heavy Rain, it will feel much worse that mediocre which it really is.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

Syndicate: American Revolt. Thanks to Unkillable Cat I replay this data disk at least once a year or more. Making corporate America great with all those insane ambushes and gauss guns flying all over is like a moving through the land mine field. Enemy agents behave like during the Atlantic Accelerator mission in the original. Very aggresive, and they detonate often near when they feel the battle is lost for them. Also air raids are making me sweat.

Spoiler

 

[Xelocix]

I've started playing Attack on Titan 2 recently to satisfy my A.o.T craving between manga chapters/anime episodes.

The games main story mode has you take the roll of a new character, a fully customisable cadet from the 104th training corps who trained alongside Eren and the rest of the main cast. Although you'll be interacting a lot with the pre-established characters of AoT, your protags involvement in the story doesn't really impact the original plot in any meaningfully way (at least for me so far). You basically just loosely follow around Eren and co. while the main events of the story unfold.

This game has a surprising amount of character customisation. It's more in-depth and has more cosmetic options than the majority of character creators I've used.

Although the game can be pretty janky at times and takes a while to get the hang of, it's pretty fun once you give it a shot and get a solid feel for how the game works.



The special kill animations are also incredibly satisfying and fun to watch in-game. Here are a few for example:



I'm enjoying this game quite a lot so far. I see myself sinking a good amount of time into it. Check it out if you're a fellow A.o.T fag needing a fix.

 

[Ghulgothas]

Kero Blaster. It's real good. Just the nicest. Just the absolute best.

 

[Carrion]

I finally caved in and gave Max Payne 3 a shot. I'm in chapter 7 or something now.

I remember a Remedy interview from a time when Max Payne was still in development. The interviewer asked if Max Payne was cinematic enough to be classified as an "interactive movie", which the devs didn't like because for them Max Payne was first and foremost a game. Well, Max Payne 3 probably comes closest to an interactive movie out of any game I've played. The way it wants to control the pacing every step of the way is fucking obnoxious. There's literally a cutscene after every gunfight, sometimes several. If you stop to explore one time room for a moment, Max or some other character starts telling you to hurry the fuck up. Sometimes you get a game over for taking a quick look around. As if that wasn't enough, there are parts where the game disrupts you control in other ways, like automatically turning Max into a specific direction or slowing his movement down to a walking speed in specific areas, whcih is fucking infuriating. Max Payne 1 & 2 never did this – they were very linear games with "cinematic" action and heavy story focus, but those things never got in the way of the superb gameplay.

The most hilarious thing is how the game likes to swap your weapons after every cutscene, meaning all the time. If you're using a rifle or a shotgun, every gunfight starts with you cycling through your weapons to find the right gun. Why are people who hate games allowed to make games?

There's also a bunch other modern "features" that plague the game and piss me off, like the outright crimical Rockstar DRM and everything being a fucking achievement. You kill X enemies in a specific way and get an achievement. You examine an item in the game world and the game congratulates you for unlocking a clue. There are hidden gun parts scattered around the levels, either for mulitplayer or some other purpose I haven't figured out yet. Fuck off with this shit.

The writing feels very "GTA" with several caricature characters, although it seems to take a darker turn quite early on. I'm not a huge fan of it since it seems to lack the tongue-in-cheek cleverness of the Remedy games, being instead pretty dry and forced, but at least James McCaffrey is as good as ever and delivers his line as well as you could wish for.

The actual gameplay isn't too bad, I guess. There are some sucky parts (a turret section...) but also some pretty decent gunfights. The game doesn't have the razor-sharp controls of the true Max Payne games, and there's a cover system, but fortunately staying in cover doesn't make you invincible since the AI is pretty aggressive, cover is often destructible, there's no health regen and you can very much get killed the moment you expose yourself. At times it creates this enjoyable rhythm where you might switch between attack and defence several times during a gunfight. The game also feels a lot harder than either MP1 or 2, although it might just be because I've played those games to death several times over. If MP3 wasn't riddled with anti-gameplay features, it might actually be a decent mix of old school Max Payne gameplay and slower-paced modern stuff, without the worst decline features of the latter. As it is, installing MP1 or MP2 for replay number twenty-something seems more tempting than a second playthrough of MP3.

 

[Ezekiel]

Finished Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb. As a casual consumer of the game series now, it will be entertaining to see how much dumber the new one will be. I somehow doubt I will play it.

 

[I'm Big Into Anal]

fallout 4

had it my gaben catalogue for ages so thought id give it a spin because i needed a serious loot-whore fix and didnt want to replay titan quest and grim dawn again

and wouldnt you know it but 40 hours have flown by and im having legit fun with (what i thought was) a joke 10 LUCK char

turns out im a critical hit king with the grim reapers sprint/beter criticals/crisitcal banker perks holy shit

my 10mm pistol is now a full auto armour piercing death machine that takes out raider bosses with ease

im prepared for retardred ratings so bring it on but the fact remains is im having fun

classic music station is a nice touch and is playing in the background... with hilarious results for example the hall of the mountain king plays while you are stalking a raider apartment block room by room, floor by floor... simply outstanding

also; not doing main quest lol

 

[Malamert]

You using any mods?

 

[I'm Big Into Anal]

You using any mods?

nope, vanilla all the way baby; didnt want to muck around with this and that, just wanted to install and play


suggestions? no graphics mods please; i find the art style quite satisfactory as it is

 

[Malamert]

nope, vanilla all the way baby; didnt want to muck around with this and that, just wanted to install and play


suggestions? no graphics mods please; i find the art style quite satisfactory as it is

Check out this guide. It's nothing over the top. Just a minimal setup with fixes and some tweaks here and there that help quite a bit. If you enjoy the settlement aspect of the game then you can also get Sim Settlements. It's pretty rad to drop some building plots in a settlement and then return later on to see what people built there and how the settlement is growing.

 

[Kabas]

Returned to Total war Warhammer 2 for a bit, decided to try Bretonians/Repanse campaign on vortex. I was having a lot of fun at first, but after i wiped out all of the Tomb Kings from Nehekara and the three main vampire coast factions i reached the point where i am able to afford a doomstack of gryphon riders and i realised that i am not having fun anymore. There was still a lot chivalry i needed to farm in order to trigger the final quest battle and i simply didn't want to do it.
I am yet to complete any of my campaigns so far.

Ventured a bit into Might and Magic 8 The day of the destroyer. It's cool that you can have stuff like trolls, minotaurs or vampires all being in the same party.
Simply exploring and stumbling across a group of enemies(and the phat chests of loot behind them) feels great.
I already dislike all this running back and forth between different merchants in order to sell your loot though. Also not a fan of running around in search for the right trainers, seems like there will be a lot of backtracking in order to get master/grandmaster in the skills you want. Still, i do love all these various animations you see when you enter buildings.
And the Arcomage mini-game is fun.

 

[Biscotti]

I think I played about 30 or so hours of FO4 recently. It's fun as long as you forget it's supposed to be an RPG.
Settlements, gun modding, exploring, etc. kept me entertained until they didn't and I started being bothered too much by the simplistic quest design, gutted dialogue, voiced/railroaded protagonist, etc.
There's also the fact that it is probably the most literal example of the infamous Bethesda themepark design yet. The world feels very artificial and disjointed, there's very little about it that hooked me.
I instead started my first replay of NV in about 5 years, and with FO4's world fresh in my memory it really made me appreciate how organic the Mojave feels in comparison: Many of the locations you visit make actual sense within the context of the world and its ongoing conflicts, and help build a bigger picture of what is to be the story's backdrop.

 

[Fenix]

fallout 4

had it my gaben catalogue for ages so thought id give it a spin because i needed a serious loot-whore fix and didnt want to replay titan quest and grim dawn again

and wouldnt you know it but 40 hours have flown by and im having legit fun with (what i thought was) a joke 10 LUCK char

turns out im a critical hit king with the grim reapers sprint/beter criticals/crisitcal banker perks holy shit

my 10mm pistol is now a full auto armour piercing death machine that takes out raider bosses with ease

im prepared for retardred ratings so bring it on but the fact remains is im having fun

classic music station is a nice touch and is playing in the background... with hilarious results for example the hall of the mountain king plays while you are stalking a raider apartment block room by room, floor by floor... simply outstanding

also; not doing main quest lol

Try Horizon mod.

 

[J_C]

I have finished Oxenfree. It is 90% walking simulator and 10% very light, braindead puzzles. I wanted to uninstall after the first 15 minutes because it just bored me. But then something clicked and pulled me in. It is definitely not a Codex type game, but the story really grabbed me, with its dialogue based gameplay and solid voice acting. The atmosphere was also great, so I'm glad I finished it. The artstyle was artsy-fartsy, but it had its charm, one can get used to it. And thankfully it is not long, it's around 5 hours long if you take your time, so it doesn't overstays its welcome. There are several ending, which can warrant more playthroughs, but personally one was just enough for me, it was just the right lenght. Another run would have been boring, so I just watched the other endings on Youtube.

 

[Borian]

Valheim has consumed the last week of my life, being stuck inside by the frozen wasteland outside. It brought me back to the same obsession I had with Minecraft and Terraria when they first came out. Yesterday was the first day in a week that I didn't have an hours long Valheim session. The game touts itself too much towards co-op in the advertisements and it doesn't tell you that the game is completely different when playing on your own. I've played it entirely by myself so far, meanwhile watching multiplayer streams on the side. It's that kind of obsession for me. But it's enlightening. This game is genuinely difficult, for starters. The combat is fun and intuitive. There are a few things I think can be improved, like vertical aiming with melee, and which I think certainly will be improved because the devs promise a combat update. When you first enter a new area, you get completely fucked by the enemies. The design is so that you need the best equipment and food you can gather from the last area just to survive the next one. Soon enough, however, you learn the patterns and practices you need to defeat the enemies, and at that point you can even run around in that area with the middle tier items from the previous area. It's a combination of item progression and personal skill progression. So once you conquer the Black Forest and enter the Swamp, you're going to be deathly afraid of the leeches after they one hit kill you with a poison DOT until you get enough food to be brave enough to watch how they act. After that, the leeches are no longer a problem. You then learn how to deal with Skeleton and Draugher archers, and finally you learn how to handle groups of Draugher fighters and Slimes. Then you venture forth to find the plains and get instantly gibbed by an enemy tinier than any other you've seen yet. Great game.

So the progression is like this: You build a base on the outskirts of the area you next need to progress into. This base acts as a spawn point and a teleport entrance to your main base. It's an outpost from which to begin your assault on the new biome. You bring the new resources back and teleport to your main base to store and use them. Combat is based around preparation. So you learn what damage types an enemy is weak to, you then gather enough materials to make better weapons and foods so you can buff yourself with enough HP to survive a trip. Food isn't a "eat or die" thing but is instead the potion and buff and health pool. This game is an item-based RPG with minimal character progression. Instead, the world progresses solely due to your actions. It's completely possible to fall backwards into a previous era and end up needing to spend the time once again collecting the ores and foods you need to progress forward again. This is possible because certain items are needed to "unlock" the potential of other items. Like a pickaxe, or a bronze axe. That happened to me, when I died on another continent before I learned how teleports worked, and made a mistake with my spawn point. I spent another hour building myself back up to sail again, this time prepared with a portal and even better gear than last time. And that setback made the game a lot more fun, because I was forced to go through the same routine as I had last time, but I knew all the tricks and secrets. Instead of finding the Greydwarfs and Trolls tricky like I did before I first set sail, I completely mastered fighting them and learning to farm them.

Everything is so integrated and deeply designed and well thought out. This game is a little bit Wurm, a tiny bit Minecraft, a decent bit of Terraria, but it's mostly just Valheim. In my opinion, it's the culmination of the idea behind Terraria and the adventure-focused half of the Minecraft modding scene. It's what I always wanted out of these games. It is a fantastic incline.
Play it without learning anything about it. If you must, then look at nothing but the pictures and videos on the Steam store page. Don't consult the wiki until your interest begins to wain due to stagnation. Playing it alone makes it into more of a horror game. The dense atmosphere is omnipresent and heavily weighs on you. It's not horrifying, but it's sometimes frightening to suddenly realize you have no stamina and these enemies are far too tough for you and you're very far from your base. The storms played on my nerves sometimes, wondering if enemies were about to break down my house in the night during a thunderstorm, when I would have no way of knowing what's going on because of how loud it was. Not until a troll's tree trunk battering ram opened some inopportune skylights directly over my storage chests. But soon you learn how to deal with these challenges. Mastery of the mechanics isn't the end of the fun, but instead opens new challenges in resource gathering and good base design, even good base placement within biomes and terrain features. You then start over with the horror aspects once you're forced to begin again in a new biome. The world constantly evolves with you, purely by your own doing.

Pro time saving tip: Biomes are connected based on their progression. So Black Forest is always near a Meadows. At least, as far as I've found. The game doesn't hold your hand on this aspect past the first tutorials. It lets you discover this on your own. There are also many different terrain types, some of which you won't even see within the same biome. Some Black Forests will have features that you won't see in other Black Forests. Don't get to thinking the biomes all look the exact same. There are terrain features I call "overworld features" as well, that generate regardless of biome. There are many very pretty sights.

 

[Manon Mathew]

I waste time on CS GO and AOE2

 

[baud]

Played some of Brigador. It looks good, blowing shit up is fun, I like how heavy projectiles (like cannon shots) can penetrate flimsy/light obstacle, so that your 80 mm gun round doesn't get stopped by the first tree. The height of the gun also has an influence, so that you can fire above obstacles if you're tall enough. Still, since aiming takes vertical aiming in consideration (in a 2D game, by looking how far your cursor is from the vehicle), sometime it's hard to hit targets, because of readability issues, even if the game tries to help you via UI elements.
Works well in short sessions, like doing attempting one map or two.
Though I don't really get how the different vehicles work and now that the difficulty of the campaign is ramping up I get blown up constantly.
Edit: played again today, I like how the different mechs have different playstyle, between more hit-and-run and stand and blow up everything in sight

I started playing Faery - Legends of Avalon. It's a strange mix of RPG styles: combat it basic turn-based JRPG (except that you get multiple actions per turns) and no random encounters (all enemies are visible), very easy so far, you only control the equipment and leveling of the main character, the maps are small hubs, but you can fly freely (the second map is set around a giant tree and you can fly all around): the fly around freely is really enjoyable and it really cuts down the tedium of moving around.
The setting is kinda European tales and myths (but bowdlerized, a bit like the faeries you'd find in tourists shop in Britany/Western France), for the main quests there’s sometime two different ways of getting to your goal (usually dickishly/violently or with some diplomacy/light exploration), but the general tone is not too serious so far; the game also copies the Mass Effect dialog wheel and the red/blue dialogue choices, but here it’s not to fill colored bars, rather it'd change how well you get along with the party members, but it doesn't seem to change anything other than some generic dialogue lines.
Still I’d say the mix has been enjoyable so far.
There's some jank, but nothing too severe (like the journal which gets info you haven't found yet)

 

[Spacer's Nugget]

Finished Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 the other day, after repeatedly trying and rage-quitting the first one. The quicksave in the sequel is a godsend, along with other small but much needed fixes and additions to the QoL side of things (regarding the team selection menu, the top-down tactical map options, etc), which inscreased my tolerance to the game's shortcomings.

Before that, I replayed Fallout 1, and paid a high price for skipping towns, "mistreating" my companions and rushing to the end. After dealing with the Khans (punching, spear-throwing, and eye-stabbing all the way) and saving Tandi, I decided to go straight to the water merchants in the Hub, that then lead me to Necropolis, where I helped the sewer ghouls, got the chip, and went back to home sweet home. Now I had to deal with those pesky mutants. I took off to the Mariposa Military Base, taking Ian with me. Managed to snipe and kill all the mutants in the exterior area without savescumming (much), and got in. And died. Repeatedly. Either to the shower of bullets of a gatling gun or a missile. Decided to get the power armor from Brotherhood of Steel. "Accidentally" found their bunker, triggered the mission, then went to the Glow and all that jazz. Skipping forward, now it was the time to try Mariposa once more. The Brotherhood knights by my side were completely useless, since the mutants didn't respawn at the stronghold entrance. Inside, no sight of my newfound "brothers", too. Fuck them. Now that I'm basically imune to the minigun, I could handle the mission at hand. I make my way in, not remembering how to disable the force fields. Also, turns out Ian dies easily from crossing them. I leave him behind. Eventually my exploration comes to halt. I Google search the possible solutions to the power walls. I feel dumb. Decide to go with "using a radio at the computer" solution. Now Ian joins me once again. We manage to get to the control center and trigger self-destruction. Time is running out. We haul ass to the elevator. On Level 1, I leave the elevator, cross the red force field and take some damage. Now it's Ian's turn. As I'm running to the exit, I see Ian in the top of my screen trying to keep up and get fried by a force field. I don't reload... Leaving the Mariposa outskirts, the game triggers a glorious cutscene. Mariposa is deep under rocks. The moment feels bittersweet. That was not the end to my shamelessness. Later, at the Cathedral I get lazy and decide to open the backdoor that would lead me to the hidden Vault by force. I set a time bomb, and drop it to the floor. The Children and the remaining faithful doesn't like that one bit. I move away from the door. Katja, my guide to the Cathedral, remains in place. The enemies, though numerous, are not a problem to us. Then the bomb explodes. Katja survives, but is pissed at me. God. DAMN IT. I decide once more to avoid reloading. We keep fighting, until the moment I punch her so hard she flies many meters back. She doesn't get up. She won't. Karma is a fair bitch, so when I get to the Vault, I'm incapable to reach the Master. I look up a walkthrough. I can trigger a Nuclear bomb. But I also can't get there. I "hack" my stats to increase substantially my Science and Lockpick skills. I set the nuke countdown, and as I try to leave the Vault, my game crashes. Hah. I give a few more tries, but it's no use. Now I have to accept my destiny. In the end I managed to save my people (and the whole wasteland for that matter). Oh well. BOOM! Mushroom cloud. Nuclear winter awaits! Fallout.

 

[slymer]

Legend Of Grimrock - too many puzzles