What game are you wasting time on?

[BruceVC]

I started playing Operenica : The Stolen Sun and its been fun so far but I am only 2 hours in. I like East European games because I enjoy the different types of mythology and the overall fantasy interpretation

And they not worried about beautiful women in their games

 

[flyingjohn]

Mgs 1 integral and 2.
They suck hard because of level design and camera.

MGS 1 level design is the msx game copied.It is small and the backtracking only makes it worse.
Levels are a small containment of 2-3 guards and a couple of rooms,it feels like a snes game instead of a psx 2 disc game.
Each level has a one time gimmick.In fact,this might be the only game in existence that never iterates on anything.Everything is just a one time use gimmick.
MGS 2 level design is just boring.
It feels like the same thing copy pasted a hundred times.It lacks the original levels's unique theme.
The smaller additions like lockers are nice but that's it.
The water level certainly isn't a grand masterpiece worth adding.
It is certainly a improvement over the smaller original but,it just feels boring to play.

MGS 1 Camera is a terrible choice for a stealth game.
Isometric means you will be reliant on the radar since you can't see jack shit minus constantly pausing to activate first person view.
Removing the radar shows how much the game relies on it for basic information.
Constant fp mode from integral is not good.You can see further,but corners and going near anything will trigger the third person back.It is a novelty that the game wasn't designed around.
The shit isometric view also makes the ai have shit vision,which makes the game a joke.
MGS 2 Camera is practically the same with the addition of fp shooting while standing still.
It is certainly a improvement but,a small one since the bigger issue is still around.And having to constantly go from tp to fp feels kinda jarring.
The radar is also removed until you do some shit.Which adds a little bit of a needed challenge.
There are gimmicks like radio chatter and ai shakedown,but those are gimmicks that get boring quickly.

Personally mgs3-s is where the series actually gets gameplay right.

 

[otteaux]

Just finished up playing The Ascent. Really fun double stick shooter that is a mesh of Blade Runner and Diablo.

Pretty good writing and surprisingly deep lore. Some nasty difficultly spikes at times, but it never kills you enough to force a rage quit.

Hopefully the devs will make a sequel, as the world is definitely interesting enough to support one.

 

[Abu Antar]

I have to ask myself what I am not playing. I'm juggling a crapton of games.

On PC, I am playing Betrayal at Krondor. I don't hear enough talk about its writing. I really like it. Combat is fun, the word lock chests are a fun distraction, and I love the music. An excellent game.

I'm also playing Freespace 2. To be honest, I can't remember the last time I played a game solely focused on aerial combat. It's my first time playing, but it has aged well in my eyes. Controls work well, and and the mood is great.

I recently beat The Legend of Heroes: Tits2, which was much better paced than the first game. The turn-based combat is fun, and I liked tinkering with orbments.
The third game, which I have started playing is also good, but it's more a dungeon crawler with long cutscenes mixed with exploration. The structure of the game was a bit of surprise for me, but I'm okay with that. There are no side quests or exploring the worlds /villages/towns/cities, talking to a crapton of people.

I stopped playing Solasta some days after release, but I've gone back to it. There are some things that I greatly enjoy, while there are other things that need improvements. I will probably share my opinion once I beat the game.

As the weakling that I am, I intend to beat The Knights of the Chalice II with easier settings. I never beat it when it released, which I sort of regret. In the early game, my psion is by far the most useful party member.

On Nintendo Switch, I am trying to beat Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle before starting SMT V. I was expecting a piss easy game, but it has been fairly challenging. You can't afford to mess up your turn. It's a bit easier now that I have found a trio of characters that seem to compliment each other well.


On PS5, I'm finally giving Yakuza: Like A Dragon the attention it deserves. It is not my favorite game in the series, but it's not far behind. It's just as batshit crazy as you can expect from the series.

Other than that, I am giving The Last of Us a try. My PS+ subscription is ending soon, but I have no intention of renewing it in the forseeable future. That's why I'm trying to try as many games that the service has offered. I remember when I bought five years of PS+ in 2017, for $25/year. Those were the days.

I have probably 10 more games started that I need to get back to.

Oh, I've also made a new save file in Championship Manager 01/02... fuck.

 

[anvi]

How are people playing KOTC2? Pre orders?

 

[Denim Destroyer]

How are people playing KOTC2? Pre orders?

It is possible to buy a key from the developer by emailing him.

 

[Abu Antar]

How are people playing KOTC2? Pre orders?

I backed the game on Kickstarter. It is also possible to contact Peirre, and buy it that way.

 

[spectre]

I've been playing this, looking to scratch an Street Rod itch:

It's like Car Mechanic Simulator with freeroam and actual racing, or My Summer Car without vaccination.
Nice game if you want some sort of an entry-level gearhead experience, without having to sperg about tightening every single bolt.
It's still detailed enough as far as I'm concerned with the major parts being represented and able to fail
(figuring out what exacly failed or is about to fail through in-game feedback is good fun, so is experimenting with which parts you can actually do without).

The game is basically about buying wrecked cars, pulling useful shit out of them and throwing it together into something that's driveable,
eventually turning it into an actually decent ride.

As you progress, you unlock a bunch of new tracks and racing modes, some are fairly typical like a simple oval for offroad races, there are also drag and street races.
Each track typically has a reversed version to spice things up, and some races come with a twist, like limiting your HP, part selection or car make.

If you want, you can also play mechanic with a tow truck, you can also accept orders like fixing cars while sticking to a given budget. The cheaper you get it done, the higher your profit.

Brands are all made up, but inspired by a bunch of stuff from the 70-80s. Not a bad thing.

The bad: graphics are dated (especially for a 2017 game), it's not bad in the garage view, but becomes noticeable during freeroam, which also suffers for rather obnoxious artificial fencing you should totally be able to run over with a 4x4, but nah.
It could also use some more visual variety and a few more cars. It's not exactly bad since you can customize the rims, paintjobs and the dashboard as well as get convertible variants, but
more is better in this type of game.

In short: this genre always seemed very polarized, games are either very arcade-y or turbo autistic (like automation + beamng.drive). This one rests, rather comfortably, somewhere in the middle, without feeling like shovelware.
The devs are actually still doing content updates, but there are also talks about a sequel, but I imagine the game is less popular than it probably should.

 

[YldrE]

Tomb Raider: Legend is a massive improvement after the painful disaster that was The Angel of Darkness.

Movements, animations, camera, platforming, combat, they fixed almost everything that was tedious or broken. Admittedly their platforming engine could still use some fine-tuning, I sometimes miss trivial jumps for no discernable reason; someone sensitive to that kind of shit should consider playing it on PCSX2 or Dolphin for save states.

The plot is still somewhat disjointed but the environments are really beautiful so it's nice to move on to the next part.

I'm on PC but I played the DS version a few years back. It's little more than play&uninstall fodder but it truly deserves praise for how faithful it is despite being a 2.5D conversion, you can recognize almost every environment and setpiece. Good job. Tomb Raider: Underworld is still one of the best 2.5D platformers on DS and I'll be curious to do the same comparison with the PC version once I'm done with Legend.

Of note: on PC, the Kazakhstan level is known to cause several crashes-to-desktop. Disable the "next-gen" setting until you get to the motorcycle part.

 

[Hag]

Finished my first playthrough of Age of Decadence. Took me about 16 hours to rise from a no-name assassin to a silent and efficient killing-machine, managing to bring to power House of Daratan, my initial RP objective, even if the way I did it was not... well let's say I should have killed the other bastards when I could, but that's the game.
Overall it has been deeply enjoyable. Many choices, good character progression. Going with stealth and critical strike was logical for an assassin and gave great results, daggers and poison took care of those you were lucky enough to survive the first strike and outnumbered I could trust a few bombs or liquid fire for crowd control. Coherent. Still, some fights really were hard. Maybe because of the limited number of bombs through the game. Still knifed the fuckers. Really liked that you have to make choice and can't do everything, or please everyone. Knowing what to do was easy in the beginning but then it became a good political game of "which guy should I have to betray ?". Always nice to carry on with the easy path to realize you are a tool doing every idiot's bidding. Good writing on this part.

Atmosphere is good and the game feels like a labor of love. I really enjoyed the skills descriptions as well as many little details which lead me to think the writers are men of culture and taste. It makes for a pleasant immersion in this intriguing world, despite sometimes a bit too much talking ("gather around and let me introduce world's backstory with ten screens of writing") and very non-plussing graphics. I don't care much for modern effects and polygon count but even then some game's areas are looking bad or even unfinished. Animation is ok though, and the death blow movements are great. For once I'd say a graphical remaster of the game would be a real improvement.

I am going to roll another character, probably a merchant or another non-violent guy with high lore, just to see how it goes.

so far, was good surviving this shit, even had to think in the process. It's incline all around.

 

[Catacombs]

Finished my first playthrough of Age of Decadence. Took me about 16 hours to rise from a no-name assassin to a silent and efficient killing-machine, managing to bring to power House of Daratan, my initial RP objective, even if the way I did it was not... well let's say I should have killed the other bastards when I could, but that's the game.
Overall it has been deeply enjoyable. Many choices, good character progression. Going with stealth and critical strike was logical for an assassin and gave great results, daggers and poison took care of those you were lucky enough to survive the first strike and outnumbered I could trust a few bombs or liquid fire for crowd control. Coherent. Still, some fights really were hard. Maybe because of the limited number of bombs through the game. Still knifed the fuckers. Really liked that you have to make choice and can't do everything, or please everyone. Knowing what to do was easy in the beginning but then it became a good political game of "which guy should I have to betray ?". Always nice to carry on with the easy path to realize you are a tool doing every idiot's bidding. Good writing on this part.

Atmosphere is good and the game feels like a labor of love. I really enjoyed the skills descriptions as well as many little details which lead me to think the writers are men of culture and taste. It makes for a pleasant immersion in this intriguing world, despite sometimes a bit too much talking ("gather around and let me introduce world's backstory with ten screens of writing") and very non-plussing graphics. I don't care much for modern effects and polygon count but even then some game's areas are looking bad or even unfinished. Animation is ok though, and the death blow movements are great. For once I'd say a graphical remaster of the game would be a real improvement.

I am going to roll another character, probably a merchant or another non-violent guy with high lore, just to see how it goes.

so far, was good surviving this shit, even had to think in the process. It's incline all around.

What were your starting stats for the assassin? That sounds like a fun build.

 

[Caim]

Tomb Raider: Legend is a massive improvement after the painful disaster that was The Angel of Darkness.

Movements, animations, camera, platforming, combat, they fixed almost everything that was tedious or broken. Admittedly their platforming engine could still use some fine-tuning, I sometimes miss trivial jumps for no discernable reason; someone sensitive to that kind of shit should consider playing it on PCSX2 or Dolphin for save states.

The plot is still somewhat disjointed but the environments are really beautiful so it's nice to move on to the next part.

I'm on PC but I played the DS version a few years back. It's little more than play&uninstall fodder but it truly deserves praise for how faithful it is despite being a 2.5D conversion, you can recognize almost every environment and setpiece. Good job. Tomb Raider: Underworld is still one of the best 2.5D platformers on DS and I'll be curious to do the same comparison with the PC version once I'm done with Legend.

Of note: on PC, the Kazakhstan level is known to cause several crashes-to-desktop. Disable the "next-gen" setting until you get to the motorcycle part.

I've played a bit of Legend and it felt like the gaming equivalent of a popcorn flick. I know that of the LAU Tomb Raider games Anniversary is a remake of the first and Underworld is a sequel, but how do they turn out as a whole? And how do they compare to the recent games?

 

[YldrE]

felt like the gaming equivalent of a popcorn flick

That's a good way to describe it. Fun platforming, nice vistas, shallow shooting, forgettable story, it's one of these nice little games that you lazily ride to the end credits.

With Angel of Darkness you essentially have to white-knuckle through the shit controls if you really want to cross it off your backlog, but Legend is one of these alright games that you can check out and have a good time.

The recent games are probably superior to most people, if only because they have the budget and production to give meat to that kind of casual experience.

 

[Hag]

What were your starting stats for the assassin? That sounds like a fun build.

Str 6
Dex 9 -> 11 action points
Con 4 -> 20 hp
Per 9 -> +15 accuracy
Int 5
Cha 7

Went well. The 30 hp were ok but I probably wouldn't have been able to finish the game with less, and I still had trouble reaching the end of tricky fights. Per 9 is maybe over-the-top but for most of the game I had ok success throwing poisoned daggers around despite my low skill, so may have been worth it. Game probably would have been much easier with more hp and less accuracy though.
11 action points somehow felt low. Maybe because with dagger and low strength my damage output was underwhelming.
Minus spoiler on skill progress :

Spoiler

After trying around I went full dagger + dodge + critical strike + sneak + alchemy. Was good enough for most of the game, also put few points on throwing, spear (useful for crowd control, which is much needed when fighting unarmored). If I had to do it again I would do away with dagger entirely and go with anything else, and switch throwing for bows.

My advice : by midgame, never allow all your skill points at once. You don't know what the future is made of.

 

[Starwars]

Almost finished up the Hearts of Stone DLC for the Witcher 3. The gameplay is still rubbish I think. There's some more effort put into the fights and they definitely upped the difficulty but it's still not a very fun combat system to me. And the added difficulty is honestly a bit annoying at this point in the game. The DLC is fairly high level, and since the Witcher 3 is such a gigantic game, I tend to be a bit fatigued this late in the game. Not really looking for a new gameplay challenge.

Anyways, the story is where it's at. CD Projekt RED does characters really well and this is definitely true for Hearts of Stone. Gaunter O Dimm is a wonderful villain, well acted and just really well portrayed. He has that on-screen magnetism, as odd as that sounds for a game character. Threatening, just the right amount of charisma mixed with sleaze, and an evil but at the same time very common appearance. Works really well. And Olgierd is a great character as well with a very nice backstory. In many ways, some of the most humane writing in the game, with the relationship breaking apart and all of that.

Shani is pretty one-note but still a really pleasant character. Her own struggle with her job and relationships and all that is just briefly explored but the writing is sharp enough that it just cuts through.

Very enjoyable DLC overall that definitely ends up being more than the sum of its parts (if looking at the quests and what you actually do in them).

 

[mediocrepoet]

I had put my "serious" Wrath of the Righteous playthrough on pause again while I waited for the patch that dropped today, so it's probably time to check that out again.
While I was waiting for it, I spent some time tooling around with the roguelike mode of Pathfinder Kingmaker and a little bit in Solasta.

More recently I went for a palate cleanser and started playing the looter shooter Outriders. I've actually been having a lot of fun with Outriders now that it's been patched up. There are a few technical glitches, but they're pretty minor. I'm not sure why I like looter shooters so much, since I generally don't like FPS and TPS much and have to be in a really specific mood for it. It's like if you take the same game and then when you shoot someone, numbers pop out of their head, suddenly my inner geek is satisfied.

 

[anvi]

I got Halo Infinite and Watch Dogs Legion. Played both a bit, they take so long to load and to do anything, I decided to replay an old dos game instead.

 

[Sunri]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/424370/Wolcen_Lords_of_Mayhem/
Game is not good don't play it

 

[what am i doing]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/424370/Wolcen_Lords_of_Mayhem/
Game is not good don't play it

Honestly if they got the bugs under control I'd probably recommend it for one campaign playthrough. Though I doubt they've fixed the bugs.

Or maybe not now, I heard they toned down some of the boss fights, which used to be absurdly unfair and thus fun to complete.

 

[Sunri]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/424370/Wolcen_Lords_of_Mayhem/
Game is not good don't play it

Honestly if they got the bugs under control I'd probably recommend it for one campaign playthrough. Though I doubt they've fixed the bugs.

Or maybe not now, I heard they toned down some of the boss fights, which used to be absurdly unfair and thus fun to complete.

I started as melee character and game was kinda hard after that I switched to dual pistol and difficulty went down drastically at last I tried summoner now games plays itself necros as always op another thing dialogues in this game are really bad Lords of the Fallen level of cringe.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I started as melee character

Haha Bladestorm go brrrr

 

[ChaDargo]

So I've been getting back into Brood War. Anyone want to play? lol

 

[what am i doing]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/424370/Wolcen_Lords_of_Mayhem/
Game is not good don't play it

Honestly if they got the bugs under control I'd probably recommend it for one campaign playthrough. Though I doubt they've fixed the bugs.

Or maybe not now, I heard they toned down some of the boss fights, which used to be absurdly unfair and thus fun to complete.

I started as melee character and game was kinda hard after that I switched to dual pistol and difficulty went down drastically at last I tried summoner now games plays itself necros as always op another thing dialogues in this game are really bad Lords of the Fallen level of cringe.

You're not wrong about the dialogue, but it does contribute to the game's "Fantasy 40k" feel. Speaking of summoner did they actually get that necromancer update in? When I played (around release) summoner builds were pretty shit.

 

[Sunri]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/424370/Wolcen_Lords_of_Mayhem/
Game is not good don't play it

Honestly if they got the bugs under control I'd probably recommend it for one campaign playthrough. Though I doubt they've fixed the bugs.

Or maybe not now, I heard they toned down some of the boss fights, which used to be absurdly unfair and thus fun to complete.

I started as melee character and game was kinda hard after that I switched to dual pistol and difficulty went down drastically at last I tried summoner now games plays itself necros as always op another thing dialogues in this game are really bad Lords of the Fallen level of cringe.

You're not wrong about the dialogue, but it does contribute to the game's "Fantasy 40k" feel. Speaking of summoner did they actually get that necromancer update in? When I played (around release) summoner builds were pretty shit.

No idea about the end game but I'm breezing thru chapters with my smoll army

 

[flyingjohn]

Never really played stalker so decided to start with retro stalker,boiling point.
Start the game,crashes my pc. Try again and everything works for a couple of hours and then while attempting to load my pc crashes.I think the game is trying to tell me something,and i don't think i am gonna need a spirit board for the translation.
Pro tip,play the pirated russian version.You get two unofficial patches/addons that flesh out the endgame and generally fix the more crazy bugs.
Minus,the pc crashing ,at least in my case.

Mark of the ninja:
2d stealth platforming game.Best stealth game released in decades(not counting the dark mod).
Inbuilt verticality,plenty of way to screw with guards,decent ai,plus the most ingenious use of lighting in any stealth game i played.
Shame about the length and upgrade system.I think it clashes with some game elements unfortunately.

Bioshock 1:
It is system shock 2,but without any of the good things.
Played on hard and managed to break the game by using wrench and shock on hard mode not even 1 hour in.Levine MASTA designer indeed.
Doesn't help i maxed out my medkits 15 minutes in.
None of the mods really help.(it also doesn't help they are beta/alpha).Silver is just a tougher version of bio shock without really changing the rpg system.Which just gives you a mediocre shooter.
The reborn mod descriptions talks bout energy/health regen and that is big fuck no from me.
There is a codex mod mentioned here which i didn't try since it seems to be a mess to actually run because of how the game treats mods.
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/bioshock-aint-that-bad.123966/page-3#post-5800570

Edit:
Is zone reclamation the only recommended mod for first time stalker playthrough?