What game are you wasting time on?

[Hag]

Finished my second Age of Decadence playthrough, this time going as a noble and fat merchant.
Went with 10 intelligence int and charisma, worked liked a charm.

Could not have been more different that the assassin part, where I was a no-named deadly guy trying to make it in a world full of travesty and deceit. Finished the struggle to survive another day, over with being fucked and manipulated by the powerful, now that I am a smiling liar that would sell a city for fun and have a good night's sleep when innocents are slaughtered in the streets.
Was good, albeit easy. No fighting, all talking, could have been over really quick but I tried to pierce as much lore as I could, so it took some time. It was worth it, even if I missed almost half of ancients area, still got my fill of mysteries. I like how from many small fragments a greater story appears, one to daydream about and to dismiss as old tales except that I saw enough to know it is not, it is worryingly not. You wouldn't believe what lies under the hills ! I know the truth about the Gods and the hellfyre ! I am not crazy !

So yeah, good writing. Was fun replaying the same events from an opposite point of view. While the game does lack polish, it makes up for great care in story-telling and many small details, from enjoyable lines to funny achievements, as well as let's say, a restrained self-awareness that never spills out on the fourth wall.
I'm gonna roll a third character, probably a fighter one. Fighting is fun, Kind of missed it with the merchant (well, I did try once just for giggles, had a good laugh seeing him immediately hit by a two handed-hammer and fall arm-spread in the sand, to die within ten seconds of the beginning).

Play this shit.

 

[Zibniyat]

A few months ago I completed Amerzone The Explorer's Legacy, a first-person adventure from 1999 made by Benoit Sokal and his team at Microids. A lovely game, which I played through several times already, and it only cost me $0.5 at GOG, which is an amazing value.

Just now, I've finished the next Sokal's game, Syberia, a point&click adventure game from 2002. What a wonderful adventure game! Indeed as all adventures you have to "think" in a way that the main character would think, which means leaving aside your own logic, so that if you are not particularly charitable you could get pretty frustrated. Beyond that, everything about it is so good, the art and locations are especially of great creativity and high-quality, and some of the puzzles were in essence simple but in practice very hard to "get". I very much liked the polite language used throughout, no swearing or vulgarity of any kind, even though there are subtle and not so subtle insults characters can say. The main character, Kate Walker, is just endearing, delicate but persistent. The ending cinematic was quite tense and dramatic, if rather short. I think it is a pretty length adventure game, it took me several weekends to finish it, playing for hours each time.

I bought this one on GOG as well not too long ago, along with its sequel Syberia 2, which is the next one I intend to play. And I payed not more than $5 I think, which is another incredible value.

I will even dare say how Syberia goes beyond mere entertainment and touches the territory of art as well, at least visual art if none other.

Definitely recommended, but you need to give it time to grow on you, and pay close attention to everything, every piece of adventure matters, even phone conversations.

 

[Frank Capicoli]

Well It has been over a decade so I decided to go through Bioshock 1&2 again. Both of the pc ports are plagued with crashing sadly. Preferred Bioshock 2s shooting and other mechanics more but found the story and characters more annoying than 1s. Skipping Infinite, don't care for the aesthetic of Columbia, and Elizabeth looks like an obnoxious character stuffed into the game.

 

[Morgoth]

Diablo 2 (the original), Subnautica (my first survival genre game and holy hell I'm actually enjoying it), and about to start Northern Journey soon.

Gaming is as fun as ever if you stick with the oldies or ambitious indies.

 

[Denim Destroyer]

For some reason unknown to me I decided to go on an adventure game binge and play though Loom, Secret of Monkey Island, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. I am not experienced in the genre so getting into the mindset of picking up everything then having to use the other interact options with what cannot be acquired took some time. The puzzles in these games are based less on logic than they are on guessing what the developers intend. After trying a few puzzles with that mindset the games became much easier. If I had to rank the three games it would be Monkey Island > Loom > Indiana Jones.

The Secret of Monkey Island: This one was a pretty consistent experience that didn't outlast its welcome. Writing, music, and puzzles were all high quality. I did get stuck on Monkey Island trying to find the fort. I had a hard time distinguishing it from the background which I want to guess would have been less of an issue on the EGA version.
Loom: The only thing keeping me from liking this over Monkey Island is how short it is and how underdeveloped it feels at times. I wish the game was closer to the length of Monkey Island and made better usage of the various staff chords. It was disappointing to finally get a full distaff then to have the game end not even ten minutes later. I love the concept of the distaff and wish it would be ripped out for usage in another game. Also would recommend to the adventure game newcomers as it is pretty easy.
Indiana Jones: I don't like this one. I can't really pin it to one thing but the game felt tedious at times but mostly in Atlantis. An issue I have with Atlantis, the games big selling point, is how bland it seems until the very end. It's just a bunch bland grey and green rooms that remind me of a few Quake levels I played.

Anyways I'm going to try Quest For Glory next as the idea of an adventure/RPG hybrid sounds interesting.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

For some reason unknown to me I decided to go on an adventure game binge and play though Loom, Secret of Monkey Island, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

Loom: The only thing keeping me from liking this over Monkey Island is how short it us and how underdeveloped it feels at times. I wish the game was closer to the length of Monkey Island and made better usage of the various staff chords. It was disappointing to finally get a full distaff then to have the game end not even ten minutes later. I love the concept of the distaff and wish it would be ripped out for usage in another game. Also would recommend to the adventure game newcomers as it is pretty easy.

Loom was intended to be the first installation of an trilogy, where the protagonist would have a specific profession and the name derived from that. The planned sequel was to be called Forge, which should give you some ideas.

 

[baud]

Finished Inquisitor Martyr, an ARPG set in the 40k universe. Finished the main storylines from the base game and DLC, the optional storylines and a bunch of side content.

Final boss

Spoiler

a clone of Fabius Bile, which is a nice trick to have a well known character in the story, killing him, but then his death doesn't change anything,

went down like a bitch, even on +10 difficulty level, but then I got a lot of good loot on void crusades and had enough money (a good chunk coming from my seasonal character) to reroll all the enchants to fit my build (direct damage with the Heavy Flamer, a very fun build, seeing packs of enemies just disappear in flames was really fun).
Talking about loot, I like being able to reroll enchants on items, that way I could get exactly what I wanted, even if it's usually very expensive, that solve the issue of having to search for the right item with the right combination.
There's a system, called tarot cards that allow to customize the difficulty and the rewards of missions, which is nice, but I feel like there should be available on more missions, like the Warzone and Priority assignments missions. Also it's quite fun when the difficulty modifier rolled isn't much of a hindrance, like getting enemy resistance to physical damage, while all I'm dealing is heat damage (or bonuses to horde-type enemies to eldar, who don't get any horde-type enemies).

Instead of the customary health potions, having a equivalent that can be customized with various effect is nice.

The story of the base game is alright, I like how it's not just smash a random bad guy (even if there's a some occurrences of that, especially in the non-main storylines), but more of trying to solve a mystery, as befitting an inquisitor. The story expansion is fine, but I feel like it's trying to go to fast and the how the different sequences articulates suffer from it, with little set up or explanation why the main character decide to go after an obscure prophecy.

Having the skills tied to the weapons and two equipment slots is limiting, but I didn't feel too constrained by that, there was enough possibilities to build my characters (stats, passive skills trees, perks and equipment). It's less of an issue with the Psyker and Tech priest, since they get slots where they can put any of their skills/summons.

As a 40k adaptation, I'd say it gets more things right than wrong and it translates rather well the look (not so much the feel, not Grimdark enough).

The fights in Imperial knights were particularly unfun, between the clumsy movement and boring weapons, especially for situation that my character on foot would have easily solved (except maybe the last one).

Compared to say Titan Quest, I'm missing the permanent map, since it gives a (kinda) tangible sense of progression, instead of disconnected maps with opposition scaled on player's level. Though it's easier to get infinite levels with this setup.

Edit: Though I've got to say that the UI is definitely not as good as the previous ARPGs from the same devs, with information split between 2 different screens instead of all visible at once

 

[what am i doing]

I played Dead Space 1 for the - kind of - first time. I'd actually tried it previously, when it came out, but ran into technical difficulties (it seemed like X and Y mouse inputs were being scaled incorrectly) and shelved it, never to play again. Well, having played Dead Space 2 to death (73.6 hours) and having a hankering for a similar game with new environments, I gave DS1 another go.

It's a great game. It's not is good as DS2, but I consider DS2 one of the best action games ever made, and DS1 is certainly excellent. The lighting and sound effects are top-notch, and the areas mostly feel purposeful and make the Ishimura feel like a real place. Story is reasonably good - as good as DS2, at least. And the combat is fun, even if not as fun as DS2. Even if the surroundings are a lot less varied than DS2, the layouts are varied, and I like that everything feels like it has a purpose. The objective structure was generally less linear than DS2; I'm not sure structure which I prefer, but I lean towards DS1, though that could just be because I liked having a map. I also liked the rare "dying survivors" encounters.

The game did have some issues. DS1 has worse controls than DS2, but for its goal of being a horror game that actually plays well for it, at least early on. Awkward controls mean you can have combat while still having enemies be frightening, because the player is less certain about their ability to kill the enemies. The problem with having lots of combat, however, is that the player does quickly get better at the combat and adjusts to the bad controls. DS1 starts out with combat being somewhat sparse, but then migrates into having it be more and more abundant. By the end of the game it's almost non-stop combat. I found two general components of the game to be frightening - sections that were mostly quiet with enemies being hinted at or only rarely encountered, and sections with the Hunter. Actually just the first chapter with the Hunter, because by the second encounter I was overflowing with ammo and had bought everything I needed, and upgraded all my gear.

I think DS1 could have benefited from fewer enemies, and fewer player resources. Maybe more gameplay related to kinesis / stasis puzzles, and more walking around in general. Not full on walking sim, mind you, but far more downtime. Encountering one enemy in a quiet area while you have limited ammo and tools is generally going to be more frightening than fighting a huge horde of enemies.

The first few times the game dumped enemies behind me to attack me, this was unsettling, because I don't like being surrounded. After a certain point, it just registers as annoyance when they actually attack. The resource issue is present, and it's actually more pronounced in DS1 than it is in 2 (possibly because 2 has larger power node upgrade trees so you have more of a cash sink) - if you're efficient with your resources and carry one cost-efficient weapon and one valuable-ammo weapon, using the cost-efficient weapon for general gameplay and selling ammo that the game drops for the valuable-ammo weapon, and you are careful to avoid damage, you'll end up overflowing with money. I had the Plasma Cutter, Contact Beam, RIG, Stasis, and Kinesis all fully upgraded by the end of the game, plus a ton of ammo and large medkits and stasis energy, and 140,000 credits, at the end of the game. I get that you have to tune the game for a variety of skill levels and not assume that everyone will use the same amount of resources, but, I dunno... I was playing on Hard and the only parts of the game that were hard were in the earlier chapters.

If they were really going for a horror game I think they should have scaled both enemies and ammunition way down, and not had an upgrade system. As an action game, though, it's pretty good - but DS2 is much better. More weapons, the weapons that are present are more fun to use (my beloved Ripper doesn't really work well in DS1), kinesis that can be used offensively, and of course, better controls.

Overall, really good game, looking forward to the remaster, and I hope some gameplay elements from 2 make it into 1, such as impalement. I would also like to see the Javelin Gun in 1, and DS2-style Ripper functionality.

Still sad what happened to the series. They put so much into building the world of Dead Space and now it's all over.

Edit: few other things I forgot. Not letting Stasis recharge on its own was a good move. It's too frequently available in DS2, though this might be because DS2 doesn't allow as much backtracking so they had to let it regen. Kendra was hot. Nicole looked much better in DS1. Isaac Clarke also looked better, insofar as he looked more like a normal tradesman and less like his action-hero-looking voice actor, as he did in DS2.

 

[Ezekiel]

Was able to fix the save bug in Jet Set Radio, but lost my 100% save file, so I'm redoing it. Just need to find two more Graffiti Souls and finish all the Jet Technique and Jet Graffiti modes. It's a very easy game to complete.

I noticed the first achievement is broken. Seems I never unlocked it and apparently can't. But I'm not doing this for the achievements anyway. Didn't need them on Dreamcast.

Edit: Oh, I always incorrectly assumed the tutorial was the beginning with Tab and Gum. But it's something in the main menu even more excruciating.

 

[flyingjohn]

Played a couple of games for 2-3 hours max to get the general feeling.

Stalker SOC.
A fps sandbox with tactical like shooting and light survival elements and amazing atmosphere is worth most people's time.
Add a slight faction system and a bazillion mods(personally recommend NLC7 for maximum SLAV) that change any elements you might hate,and you get a excellent game.
My biggest problem with the game though,is that there is too many human enemies and the zone life take s a big backseat.
Also,it is not a rpg/stealth game,like most people will tell you.The gun progressions tries and fails to emulate rpg progression and fails(any weapon that can actually hit anything trivializes the game).
Stealth is terrible though,because any loading leaves the ai state and ai vision is completely inconsistent due to bugs.

Xenus series.
On the other hand,we have stalker-like but open world.
Found it kinda boring,the open world means you will mostly be traversing large amounts of land with nothing really interesting to find minus faction wars.
The faction system is leagues better then stalker(you have to pay attention in who owns what) but that is it.
The light rpg elements just don't really work for these types of games.The second one doesn't even allow you aim down iron sights without unlocking that perk.

-Escape from butcher bay.
It is solid i guess?
The biggest strength of this fps is the variety.You are constantly jumping from exploring/fighting/stealth.
Unfortunately nothing really stands out.
The level design is small,the stealth is functioning without any real toys to play with guards and the shooting is decent with a generic fps armory.
The enemy variety sucks though.

-Void bastards
Roguelike fps with new characters getting positive/negative traits and a permanent upgraded system.
It gets boring really fast.
Go to location,scavenge what you need and repeat with most ships having very similar layouts.Not even two hours in and i didn't wanna continue.
Fps games need better levels and a better arsenal and rogulikes need different playstyles across characters,this has none of those elements.
The art is nice though.

-Slime rancher
It is a very mediocre first person slime raising game.If you are interested in a casual fp harvest moon without any social elements,this is isn't a bad way to spend a couple of hours.
I liked it,but i am a sucker for these types of games and a couple of mods adding more slimes and unlimited jetpack certainly helped.

-Messiah.
Tps "stealth" action game where you are a angel and can posses people.
It isn't good because the gameplay is not very good.Controls feel off(there is mandatory platforming) and the stealth sucks and feels more puzzley then actual stealth when it comes to possessions.
But i will admit the concept sold me to try the game.

-Second sight
Timesplitter devs make psychic tps stealth game.
The devs were not experienced with tps and it shows.Camera and control feel off and targeting stuff while there is anything nearby enemies is painful.There are multiple camera options,and they are all inadequate.
The game also constantly switches between action and stealth parts,don't like that.
The levels(like the asylum) are actually perfectly fine.And when you add multiple powers like possession/invisibility/tk you get toys to play with the guards.
Possessing a guard and just killing his buddies never gets old.
Unfortunately thanks to said powers game is quite easy(you also have unlimited healing).That and the camera/controls made me give up from further playing the game.
I would recommend people try it at least,but you will need a controller.

-Alekhine's gun.
Third entry into the death to spies series.It is a much worse,buggy cold war hitman.
The original games are better both in stability,ai and level design.Here you get stupid ai,tons of bugs and small or medium empty levels.
Not even gonna go in how much better the modern Hitman games actually are when it comes to creating a stealth sandbox.Even conviction is better then this.
If you must play it,you can track some fanpatches/missions on steam.

 

[AdamReith]

Just finished Silent Hill 1. Only thought to pop on headphones for the second half but was a big enhancement, lots of details in the sound design of this game you can miss easily.

Came in at just over five hours for the "bad" ending, which I found hilarious and completely satisfying. It felt very much like "Lost Highway: The Game" in some ways, a must for anyone interested in horror at all and is very playable.

Actually the modernity of everything kind of surprised me, the only thing that almost got to me was a few difficult puzzles but I did manage to solve them myself and it felt fantastic to do so. There's an autosave and many save points so it's not like resident evil where the first playthrough can be kind of brutal if you are not prepared. This was a joy to play through and swinging a big hammer at midgets and women was highly enjoyable.

Also noticed quite a few similarities to Dark Souls?

Spoiler

Giant moth battle, little half invisible entities which are not hostile and come with a sound cue.

Anyway, going to try the second one now. Will be fascinating to see what they they were able to achieve with a step up in hardware and budget.

 

[Hag]

Stalker SOC.
A fps sandbox with tactical like shooting and light survival elements and amazing atmosphere is worth most people's time.
Add a slight faction system and a bazillion mods(personally recommend NLC7 for maximum SLAV) that change any elements you might hate,and you get a excellent game.
My biggest problem with the game though,is that there is too many human enemies and the zone life take s a big backseat.
Also,it is not a rpg/stealth game,like most people will tell you.The gun progressions tries and fails to emulate rpg progression and fails(any weapon that can actually hit anything trivializes the game).
Stealth is terrible though,because any loading leaves the ai state and ai vision is completely inconsistent due to bugs.

Stalker games are made to be played on Master difficulty for better appreciation. It kind of fixes the gun progression issue, since you need top equipment to dispatch efficiently the increasingly dangerous opponents before taking the one bullet. Also means that cover and basic stealth are required all the time to survive any gunfight, did not know about the save reset issue but even when savescumming in the middle of a fight you need to move carefully anyway since a handgun bullet to the head is game over.
Zone's life is ok and gets a bit better after the initial area, but it is not an open world.
Well, the game is actually very flawed, but you won't see it much during a first play-through if you don't wiki your way through. My first game was a blast, one of my best gaming memory, while I stopped my second one after a few hours since my previous knowledge of the game flow totally spoilt the fun for me.

 

[flyingjohn]

Zone's life is ok and gets a bit better after the initial area, but it is not an open world.

I would say that is it's biggest positive.It is quite a interesting radioactive sandbox.
Xenus showed what happens when you go open world and considering they were ex gsc,stalker dodged a bullet.
And not because of the ak 74 accuracy.

 

[Ezekiel]

"Number One Artist" in Jet Set Radio is one of the worst achievements ever. It requires using all graffiti. It's really finicky and confusing to figure out. There is a bunch of incorrect information out there about how to make using a graffiti count. You don't have to finish the level and you don't exit the level right after using the graffiti. All you have to do is use the graffiti and then wait for your score bonus to disappear from the corner of the screen. That's it. This achievement is a good example of why so many people hate achievements. Really tedious. Getting the Graffiti Souls is the true achievement. I've done it four times, including once on Dreamcast, and never bothered using them all, until today.

 

[Wunderbar]

Bought new Quake remaster during the recent steam sale, finished all episodes. This new edition contains both the original game, its two old expansions, and two new expansions developed by Machinegames (formerly Starbreeze).

Spoiler

I already beaten OG Quake many times, but this playthrough was somewhat fresh because I played on Nightmare, and remaster's Nightmare caps your max health at 50. In OG Quake, Nightmare made enemies more aggressive, but also more predictable (for example, nightmare Ogres could've been easily abused, because they no longer go into melee mode and instead just spam their grenades). I found remaster's Nightmare way more challenging and fair than the original one, except for the final episode where 50% HP handicap really makes things difficult thanks to bullshit spawns.

The first expansion, Scourge of Armagon, is great. In some places I even felt it was better than OG Quake. Excellent level design, memorable encounters, distinct locations (like the gondola lift from Tur Torment, or the Black cathedral). It even has setpiece moments, something that was entirely absent from the original game. The only problem i encountered is that it looks like this expansion wasn't properly playtested on a new Nightmare mode, because certain sections (like the boulder tumbler, or the power generator) are just plain bullshit that can be only passed through save-scumming.

The second expansion, Dissolution of Eternity, is unfortunately quite lame. The encounters are dull, the levels are so flat and cramped they feel like something from Doom instead of Quake, and the time-hopping concept of the second episode wasn't particularly interesting either - the egyptian assets just made this expansion feel inconsistent with the original. Also, just like SoA, DoE has its fair share of Nightmare-exclusive bullshit moments, such as the final boss. It takes minutes to kill, and can randomly one-shot you or drop you into lava.

Dimension of the Past, free episode originally made by a single person (Jerk Gustaffson from Machinegames) to celebrate Quake's 20th anniversary. Pretty fun little diversion, doesn't have much in terms of new assets/weapons/enemies, and mostly tries to be as vanilla as possible. Despite that, it's clearly influenced by modern level design principles and has a lot of convenient shortcuts that loop back to where you must use a recently found key. On Nightmare it is also the hardest episode of the bunch, the ammo shortage was absurd and i had to axe enemies on numerous occasions.

Dimension of the Machine, a huge new episode, is the only actual new piece of content made exlusively for the remastered edition. Unlike Dimension of the Past, which was made by a single mapper, DotM was developed by a team of level designers, and it feels less like a cohesive episode, and more like a map jam of sorts. Similarly to Arcane Dimensions and other recent mappacks, it doesn't have a single campaign, and just allows you to choose a specific mini-episode from the hub menu. Of all the mini-episodes, I enjoyed Realm of Blacksmiths and Realm of Astrologists the most. Blacksmiths has amazing visuals, satisfying flow, decent encounters, good use of verticality, and impressive darksoulsian (sorry for this word) interconnectedness, all while having an immense scale. Astrologists has a very interesting concept - first we barge into a typical tech base with soldiers running experiments on fantasy-type monsters, and then we explore an archeological dig site with scifi machinery on the outside, and gothic/runic underground. The rest of the maps were ok. Cultists had an intersting twist with upside-down castle, but other than that it was pretty boring, with linear progression and mostly arena-style encounters. Machinists and Stonemasons had neither good visuals nor interesting encounter design - just a repetitive slog through samey-looking brick tunnels with mostly frustrating fights (because it's so satisfying to pick on two shamblers with a shitty single-shot shotgun and weak nailgun).

Also replayed the original Doom, and also finished Thy Flesh Consumed and Sigil for the first time.

Spoiler

This was my first time playing it on Ultra Violence (last time I played Doom I was in high school, and i picked easy difficulty). Was using GZDoom, with freelook disabled, and perkristian's higher-quality SFX pack installed.

The OG Doom is a great game, I enjoyed it immensely. It's amazing how just cohesive and whole this game feels - the shooting, the enemies and the way they work together. Great soundtrack too.

Thy Flesh Consumed was a major letdown - other than the first two maps (which were ball-bustingly difficult), it was just an OK experience. Also a lot of annoying encounters and dickish traps made me use saves (I managed to finish OG Doom without saves). The flow was off too - the OG Doom had a such good flow i was breezed through episodes in just one sitting, but with TFC i did frequent breaks because of frustration.

I remember there was a minor controversy back when Sigil was released - some people (including major youtube reviewer Gmanshills) crapped on it for being too hard. I didn't find Sigil all that hard, after E4 it was almost a cakewalk. For the most part Sigil felt like "Thy Flesh Consumed Done Right" - it was fun, tight, challenging, and mostly fair. Mostly. Flows very similarly to E4M2 Perfect Hatred - the supplies are very scarce, and you are basically forced to use telefragging and infighting to get rid of enemies (I just googled and found out that e4m2 was also designed by Romero, not surprising). The only thing i didn't like about Sigil was the abundance of hurt floors with a very limited amount of hazard suits, had to ocasionally use saving.

 

[markec]

Finished SiN: Gold, yet another FPS that I played ages ago but never finished. I was having a fun at the start of the game but the more I played it the more I just wanted it to end already.

At first the levels were pretty interesting, with side missions and secret objectives. There were even stealth segment which made me hope the game will turn into something like NOLF but nothing of sort happened. Instead it just devolved into a standard, railroaded shooter with boring enemies and bland weapons.

The story is generic but its done in a such over the top manner, presented by equally over the top main character and villainess that it manages to be entertaining. Basically the only thing that made want to finish the game is jus to see where the story will end.

Overall its a fine game but nowhere near top of the genre.

 

[HansDampf]

Sigil got nerfed though because of all those complaints, didn't it? Like the 2 surprise-in-your-face Barons at the end of M7.

 

[Shasta]

Team Fortress 2,mortal kombat 2 on fightcade.com and I am speedrunning blue stinger for dreamcast every 2 weeks

 

[Catacombs]

I'm about 10 hours into Solasta: Crown of the Magister

 

[toughasnails]

Also replayed the original Doom, and also finished Thy Flesh Consumed and Sigil for the first time.

Spoiler

This was my first time playing it on Ultra Violence (last time I played Doom I was in high school, and i picked easy difficulty). Was using GZDoom, with freelook disabled, and perkristian's higher-quality SFX pack installed.

The OG Doom is a great game, I enjoyed it immensely. It's amazing how just cohesive and whole this game feels - the shooting, the enemies and the way they work together. Great soundtrack too.

Thy Flesh Consumed was a major letdown - other than the first two maps (which were ball-bustingly difficult), it was just an OK experience. Also a lot of annoying encounters and dickish traps made me use saves (I managed to finish OG Doom without saves). The flow was off too - the OG Doom had a such good flow i was breezed through episodes in just one sitting, but with TFC i did frequent breaks because of frustration.

I remember there was a minor controversy back when Sigil was released - some people (including major youtube reviewer Gmanshills) crapped on it for being too hard. I didn't find Sigil all that hard, after E4 it was almost a cakewalk. For the most part Sigil felt like "Thy Flesh Consumed Done Right" - it was fun, tight, challenging, and mostly fair. Mostly. Flows very similarly to E4M2 Perfect Hatred - the supplies are very scarce, and you are basically forced to use telefragging and infighting to get rid of enemies (I just googled and found out that e4m2 was also designed by Romero, not surprising). The only thing i didn't like about Sigil was the abundance of hurt floors with a very limited amount of hazard suits, had to ocasionally use saving.

The drama around Sigil made it obvious how, for most people, the extent of their familiarity with Doom modding ends with replaying the OG games with latest builds of Brutal Doom or Project Brutality or their derivatives.
Sigil is by no means hard compared to how modern wads tend to be.

 

[Average Manatee]

Sigil is a bit unique in that it's difficult as a Doom 1 wad as opposed to a Doom 2 wad. A lot of players probably aren't used to more confined areas, no SSG, mostly HP sponge demons as opposed to wide open areas with better weapons and the difficulty coming from chaingunners/revenants/archviles.

 

[Apostle Hand]

playing icewind dale 2

good game bit easier with summons

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Tried to play Dragon Commander again and I can't do it. Never liked RTS games. The idea of it is cool but damn.
Sorry, Swen.

Playing Divine Divinity again now though. Really wish the "Diablo" genre went in this — more RPG, more mechanically involved, more world interactions, etc., — direction instead of the mindless grind/loot one.
If you liked Diablo but didn't like the direction the genre went afterwards, would recommend.

 

[Spukrian]

I recently played INDUSTRIA, the indie FPS heavily inspired by Half-Life 2. The game is pretty, unfortunately I had to turn everything down in order to play it (and then turning shadows back up because the game became so bright I was unable to see anything). The art direction is good, the story is a bit slow but gets interesting later on, shooting the robots feel good... A nice detail is that you can pick up and look at many of the props, pointless but fun for a few minutes. Sometimes you can shoot the arms off of your enemies. Here and there you can find notes that give background lore, standard fare.

The story actually gets VERY interesting right as the games ends and I guess this is the largest complaint about the game: it's too short.

If you're interested in the game, get it when it's cheap.

https://af.gog.com/game/industria?as=1649904300

 

[BruceVC]

Im playing Bioshock : Infinite and its my first Bioshock game and I am thoroughly enjoying it

I appreciate the combat mechanics and choices of different weapons and skills you adopt in battles. I also like the death and spawning component as its very reasonable and death doesnt mean you waste time
And finally I like lore and general narrative, its nice to play a game where Colonialism is seen in a more positive way and not just negative :D