What game are you wasting time on?

[HansDampf]

My Metroidmania continues with Axiom Verge.
I almost quit after the first 2 hours because the beginning is so boring. The first couple of areas have typical Metroid shaft layouts of which I've seen enough lately. I found like 5 or 6 weapons early which are all lame, and still preferred using the standard P-shooter. There is no nuance to the movement and jumping mechanics. Trace handles like Mega Man. And the bosses, lol... I mean, Super Metroid doesn't have the greatest boss fights either. But at least you have to move a bit more to avoid getting hit. You have to shoot them with missiles, so there is a bit of ammo management. And you have to aim your supers well because you don't have many of them. The bosses in AV otoh are incredibly static. You just stand in one spot and shoot their weak point, occasionally jump to dodge a projectile, and 2 minutes later it's over.

The reason I kept playing was the Disruptor and its ability to "hack" enemies to change their behavior. I was also hoping to get some weirder upgrades that fit the glitchy theme of this game. And the second half delivers on those promises with the ability to teleport through walls and the remote drone. They open up some unique possibilities and make just traveling from A to B more interesting. The later areas also have a more open (better) design that suits those upgrades. The teleport should have gotten its dedicated button though, instead of having to double tap the D-Pad, which causes me to teleport by accident all the time.
The Disruptor can have a variety of different effects depending on the enemy type. Some become friendly and kill other enemies or destroy certain walls. Some turn into platforms you can jump on. The best cases are those that are used to get to hidden items, like taking direct control of an enemy to shoot a switch. Or one type will teleport with you to the next room, which is also needed to get one optional upgrade. These are the biggest strength of AV.
And I'm glad that, with a total of ... *counting* ... 21 weapons, I found at least 4 of them useful besides the P-shooter.

Going for 100% items, I had to, once again, use a guide to find the last 2 remaining items. What's the appeal of random fake walls anyway? There are only a few of those in the game, but still, I don't feel like systematically testing every fucking wall for weaknesses with the laser drill and the teleport, not helped by the fact that the drill has the most annoying sound effect in the game. AV has at least the courtesy of telling you which area still has items, and most of them are better hidden than that.

Overall: Decent Metroid clone with unique abilities and boring beginning / 10

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Finally finished Bionic Commando Rearmed 2

It is really not such a bad game as some of the journalists and the players of the first game have made it out to be.
The controls are a bit of getting used to but the bionic arm mechanic is a lot more flexible than it was in the first game such as building up momentum without needing to use a shotgun.
Content wise the game is not just more of BCR1 as there is plenty of new additions though some feels like old content a bit re-imagined.
In general I think the game is on the same level as the first game.

I do however have some criticisms. Some of the level design is downright infuriating to I think both casuals and experienced gamers, as it requires such precision reflexes and movement.
And there are parts that when you start trying to get through it you better hope you don't make a mistake because it is instant death otherwise.

The semi final level really seems to have been designed to send me up the wall and ceiling as this one takes place above an instant death abyss and has various spike traps that can rapidly make you go through all the lives you have been collecting through the game.
I only barely managed to finish and it really makes me want to get my hands on whoever designed it so I can share my feelings about it with him or her.
This level is downright evil.

It is a damn shame as in general I was rather enjoying this game even if it did kick my ass from time to time.
I am not sure I will be replaying this any time soon.

 

[Denim Destroyer]

Decided to playthrough Hacknet again but this time making sure to go through /el's challenges. Really the game is pretty fun if you are interested in hacking games but I have several issues with the terminal.

• Not being able to jump through words with ctrl+(direction key),
• no local copy command
• home moving to after the first character instead of the beginning while end moves to after the last
• cannot create a file can only append or modify existing file
• game some times has issues with deleting text by skipping characters

These are really minor issues that don't subtract from the game, after all I didn't notice these during my first playthrough, but those with Bash experience may find this disappointing.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Replaying Duskers after many years, checking out what things got updated. Fantastic horror game, you basically command drones to explore abandoned ships nostromo style, you use command lines for it so if you like programming you should check it out. Might also do my yearly replay of Resident Evil Remake.

 

[Machocruz]

Been fooling around with Game Pass the past few months. Takes me back to the days of GameTap. I like services like these, as a substitute for physical rental stores, and more convenient than mail services like Gamefly.

D44M 4 2016

It's...not bad. But it's a Doom game in name only, inelegant and lazy in many ways. Enemies spawn in rather than being carefully placed in the levels, so gone are interesting and challenging setups and combinations of monsters types and environment. Unnecessary addition of upgrade systems that are antithetical to the perfect simplicity of the classics. The human environments are bland as hell, everything looks prefab, the imagination and design bravado seen in the early Doom games is absent. I think the new weapons and enemies are decent adds, but I miss the human solider enemies, and they have the boring Hell Knight design from 3, inferior to the iconic original. A somewhat faithful re-imagining of the Baron of Hell kind of makes up for it. As something of a Doom purist, I have more criticism than praise, and it's not the direction I would have taken the series, but I do enjoy the game overall. It's surprisingly immersive and combat is best in any AAA FPS in recent memory.

Gears of War
The very definition of popamole. Mindless "fun" that defined the Era of Decline. Was always curious about this one, not enough to buy shit hardware though. Turns out it's not very interesting, not these days at least. Too simple, low variety of uninteresting weapons, boring enemies, etc.

Halo 3
Have some fond memories of Halo 1 co-op back in the day. Heard that this was considered by many to be the best of the trilogy. Didn't play that much of it, but it felt familiar and, as they say, comfy. Not a priority game right now, but someday.

Fallout76
LOL

No Mans Sky
Spent more time on this than I should have. The first hour is the best, when you're trying to not die. Then for a few hours more you enjoy the feeling of discovery of new planets and alien mysteries. Ultimately you realize it's a confused and diluted combination of mechanics from other games, mostly errand running and grinding mats, doing nothing as well as any of them. Some of the planets are really beautiful, I must admit, and you want there to be more to do on them, but there is nothing substantial to do for any substantial reason. The game needed focus, not breadth. Exploration, combat, crafting, building are all undercooked. There is a decent space action-adventure or action RP game somewhere in there, but they chose to try to be all things to all people. Even following the "storyline" is just an errand boy/skinner box simulator, it actually becomes less interesting the more you learn about what's going on and what to do. Despite all that I did put in a fair amount of time before I realized the game is never going anywhere compelling.

Elite Dangerous
EVE-lite. A far more complex game and challenging game than NMS, but has even less personality. I think the "make your own goals" concept only works on paper or in the imagination. In practice, it is far less satisfying than a well crafted campaign with memorable characters, events, etc., with the sandbox freedom complimentary to that. The flight control is probably the best part of game as it's quite involved. I just find no compelling reason to do anything for long. Seeing numbers go up and buying more shit isn't it. Somewhere between Elite, NMS, Mass Effect, etc. is a really good space game.

State of Decay 2
This deserves its own separate post, but briefly: Was interested in this series for a while, but I'm quite surprised by this game. Basically it's a streamlined, consolized Project Zomboid or Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, with some base building elements like This War of Mine. Tonally, I'm reminded of Dead Rising, Dying Light and GTA. And it works, better than I imagined. There is a lot of content and decision making. You have to deal with fatigue, infection, noise, morale, build up and manage a community and a base, base sieges, scavenge for resources, know when to fight/run/sneak, build and maintain relations with other communities (called 'enclaves'), recruit the right people with useful skills, etc.. There is a fairly developed and satisfying melee combat system with stamina, dodging, execution movies, combos, counters, grabs, throws. A surprisingly robust array of melee and ranged weapons, the latter which you can modify with suppressors (recommended), muzzle breaks, sights. Out of the Game Pass games I've tried, this is easily the most compelling one. Survival games have been my jam lately, and this is one of the more enjoyable ones I've played. They really came up with some good ways of shaping features from more hardcore survival sims to fit a mainstream package.

 

[samuraigaiden]

I beat ICO three times in the past couple of weeks on the PS2.

First, I played the US version. Then I became aware that the PAL and JP versions came out a full year later and were different in several ways. So I played the PAL version and then played the New Game + not available in the US release.

It's an insanely good game. Really, really well made.

Then I decided to check out Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and was surprised by the amount of similarities. Apparently, the dev team really liked ICO and took a ton of inspiration from it to create this game. This is no secret, a quick Google search led me to a video interview with the Creative Director where he confirms it.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Care to elaborate on the differences between the versions?

 

[samuraigaiden]

Here are all the differences I was able to spot or read about in the web.

New Game + and Extras - The PAL and JP versions have two secret weapons and a New Game +. Both secret weapons are obtained in the same place. One can only be obtained in normal playthrough while the other one can only be obtained in the NG+. In NG+, Yorda's dialogues are not displayed in runes and you can finally know what she is saying. NG+ also has a co-op option where one player controls Yorda, which is activated in the options menu.

Level design and puzzles - The biggest change is in the top part of the waterfall area, which has two new puzzles. The windmill level design is a tiny bit different too. Some camera angles are changed or pan differently. Some textures are different.

Combat balance and enemy AI - This is where they really improved the game. Combat is completely rebalanced. Enemies have less hit points in general and the difference between the damage output of different weapons is much more pronounced. The sword takes much less hits to dispatch one of the shadow monsters than the wood stick. The changes to the combat balance clearly aim to make the player more lethal. However, this is evened out by improvements in enemy AI. The shadow monsters have more evasive behaviors which make them less trivial to hit when engaging in direct combat. Also, their behavior when grabbing Yorda is different. In the US version, they would always take her to the same spawn point, allowing the player to camp right next to it. In the PAL and JP versions, they take her to the spawn point furthest away from the player, making these situations more dynamic.

 

[RK47]

Had a funny chat with someone I played Dawn of War Soulstorm with recently.
Apparently, he can't get enough and went to check out the sequels.
But instead of asking my opinion, he went to Reddit.

He asked if there was anything as cool as Titans on tabletop for Dawn of War?
And one Reddit guy told him there are TITANS IN DAWN OF WAR 3.

The next morning, he said everything is shit. Why do they have to kill the franchise like that?
He wanted a refund but couldn't get it.

 

[j2alg]

redownloaded Fallen Haven for old times sake
it feels pretty simplistic now, but it's like comfort food to me - the sound of artillery hitting my enemies is like a drug shooting up my veins and giving me a warm&fuzzy feeling.

 

[Azalin]

Finished Desperados III and its dlc.A good game made by the makes of Shadow Tactics,the gameplay is very similar to their previous game,so if you like that one you will like this one.Graphics are good,the story is ok,there to move you from mission to mission but nothing special.There are two new characters in this one,Hector is interesting but the black woman is kinda meh and her voodoo supernatural powers seem out of place.Like I said before the gameplay is good and it will please fans of the genre,overall a good game although not as good as Shadow Tactics imho.Recommended

Also played Okami HD,but dropped it.It not such a bad game but it outstays its welcome and becomes boring after a point.The graphics are nice for a game of its age,the unique waterpainting art style makes them look ok even now with an hd upgrade.The story is kinda meh and it devolves as the game progresses,the gameplay is ok and the magic brush idea was interesting but in the end not that deep to keep you interesting after a while.They should have ended the game after you take down Orochi,if they wanted to make a bit bigger they could have added another dungeon before you face him but not have a whole second storyarc after you kill him.Not Recommended

 

[Krivol]

I sink in TW Shogun 2 - I finished RotS and S2 campaigns and now started FotS. Quite a fun game but in the first two campaigns economy was broken (like giving trade rights to small dynasties for a nice amount of money, and after small ones were swallowed by big fishes rights were sold to those blobs). Scope seems to be too small for this type of a game (I only played plenty of hours in Rome TW so maybe I am wrong, but army development seemd a bit better in that game) - in RotS developing monks was just everything I needed for war - zounds of monk-archers + naginata monks finished Sengoku in few years.

After some artillery fun in FotS, I am considering playing TW Napoleon next.

Still, IIRC RTW gave me more fun. Is remake (or RTW2) any good?

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Vanilla is fucking painfull, install divide et impera, makes the game good. Shogun 2 was the last good total war for me, it's been mediocre since then.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Currently playing Castlevania Symphony of the Night.
I have reach half of the game and it seems that at this point the designers thought "Oh, the challenge has become too easy for you huh? Lets raise the attack stats of the enemies."
The amount of damage I do to some enemies is still the same, but I get a lot more punishment back but that is not the most annoying part.
What I hate are that attacks in the CV games always knock you back, and this can definitely cause problems when you move over platforms. Several times now that these small pathetic enemies that can easily be destroyed have made climbing up a tower very difficult as they have this attack that throws bones that start to bounce around.
These little f'ers themselves can stay out of my attack range but they can throw this crap all over the place, making you keep being knocked back.
Of course my mistake is also that I keep forgetting to use the shield to deal with these objects.

In general I like SotN but I can't say I find it the best Mertroidvania style CV game, perhaps because it was not the first such a style game in the series that I played. I find it a bit overrated.

With the Metroid series I did play Super way before Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission, but it is not my favorite 2D Metroid either. I do think it helped establish gameplay and world design mechanics that future games would build on, but I find that the game itself has aged.
I think most of the popularity comes from the speed running.

 

[Comte]

Finished the Blitzkrieg campaign in Panzer General 2. P. cool stuff, though I felt it was much easier than PG1 - particularly the maps in Russia. In PG1 you had to struggle with the fucking weather that made all your shit near-useless all the time, here there was hardly any trouble with that barring two maps maybe.

That said, it's possible that I just snowballed out of control after invading Britain and the RUS)))) cannon fodder just couldn't hope to catch up. But still, apart from Dunkirk and Windsor, I was mostly scoring brilliant victory after brilliant victory with little effort.

Dunkirk was pretty hard because it's a big map with lots of shit to cap, which means you run out of fuel and ammo at the worst possible moment, and then it hinges on luckerfaggotry to chase the niggas away from the final point in the last possible turn.

And then Windsor is just brutal as hell. The Brit units are either on par or better than you, they have AA guns up the ass and their Spitfires turn all your flying stuff into mincemeat, the victory locations are all over the place and heavily guarded, and ofc the AI has unlimited cash that it keeps spending on more and more and more tanks. I don't see how brilliant victory could be got here without extreme luckerfaggotry or developing your army exclusively with this map in mind from the start.

So yeah, Russia folded like a stack of cards after that.

and then

then came fucking kwanzania

KWANZANIA WAS ULTRAVIOLENCE TIER.

By far the worst part of it was the Kwan air superiority. Everything else you can handle sort of reliably with clearly superior tanks and artillery, but achieving air superiority is insanely hard, especially since those American fighters are so incredibly better than your Focke-Wulfs, especially in the first mission - in the second one where you gotta stop them from getting the a-bomb you have noice high-tek messerschmitts and shit that can sort of match them, but it's still brutal. And that's without even mentioning their ridiculously strong bombers that almost invalidate your doom stacks of armour.

Nevertheless, rolling through Kwanzania with all the high-tek German toys that hardly even left prototype stage IRL was very fun.

You playing open general or pg2?

 

[Darth Roxor]

PG2

 

[Billi205]

Finally finish another XCOM 2 challenge run (no squad upgrade, no death, permanent dark event) and this time without frost grenade and the axe. The strategy was to get higher level soldiers fast through Resistance Ring.

Got lucky this run due to permanent dark event Lost Swarm (which I failed to prevent) and the bonus Between the Eyes. Lot of soldiers got level up pretty fast. Got two Majors in July and rushed the Warlock in July and the Assassin on 31th August.

Now, feels like the right time to play ELEX 2.

 

[Kabas]

Took another shot at Brigand: Oaxaca, aka a mexican post-apocalyptic deus ex with voodoo magic. I have chosen a premade businessmen as my character.
The stat boost from the motivational speech appears to be fairly strong, seems like taking a direct control of the buffed companion is the way you're supposed to play as a charisma character. Murdered Zac with this.

Unsure about whatever i should invest into crafting skills like survival and hardware or should i be fine with just guns and software.

 

[Hag]

Took another shot at Brigand: Oaxaca, aka a mexican post-apocalyptic deus ex with voodoo magic. I have chosen a premade businessmen as my character.
The stat boost from the motivational speech appears to be fairly strong, seems like taking a direct control of the buffed companion is the way you're supposed to play as a charisma character. Murdered Zac with this.

Unsure about whatever i should invest into crafting skills like survival and hardware or should i be fine with just guns and software.

How good is it ? It has been on my wishlist for months but the level design looks poor, and the game not that fun.

 

[Abu Antar]

I beat Iratus: Lord of the Dead. Reverse Darkest Dungeon. It was a fun game. Less frustrating rng automatically made me enjoy this one more than DD. on the other hand, I will hopefully give DD another chance in the future.

Championship Manager 01/02. Am I still playing? Yes. This time, with updated squads for the 21/22 season. Not only squads are updated, but the tactics used are also updated. Inflation is counted in, etc. Played as Liverpool first. Spent a few seasons with them. After that, I made a new save file, controlling Ipswich. Got promoted two years in a row, then the game crashed. I'm a CM "purist". The save file is tainted. I deleted all the updates, and started playing the OG version again. Picked Liverpool. I've been fine tuning a tactic for a few months, and it paid off. In my second season, I won everything, and had a 33-5-0 record in the league. Tried it with a few other teams. Tactic is legit, but needs a good central midfielder.

I unplugged my PS5, and hooked up my PS3. Why? I got pissed off by God Wars: Future Past. I was playing an escape mission. There were strong monsters chasing me, no time limit to escape. Take a gamble and fight everything. Win, then start escaping. Suddenly, the defeat popup window appears. One of your two main characters must be the last one to escape. There is no indication of such a condition.

I had planned to plug in the PS3 after beating God Wars, but screw it. I have four games in the PS3 backlog that want to complete.

Other than these, I am actively playing Betrayal at Krondor, ELEX II, and Ultima Underworld 2.

 

[HansDampf]

Finished Environmental Station Alpha with the "Maze" ending.
I found this game via Matthewmatosis who compared it to Axiom Verge. Can't disagree with anything about the games' strengths and weaknesses, but I've enjoyed ESA a lot more than AV. It has a more relaxed atmosphere (AV's soundtrack and glitch effects can be annoying at times), deeper mechanics, better secrets, and proper boss fights for a change. The hookshot is even my favorite grapple upgrade of all Metroidvanias (so far). The way it's used to gain more height and speed almost feels like exploiting the physics, but it's all required to make progress and lots of fun once you get the hang of it.
While the main content is a bit shorter than AV, there is a lot more optional stuff to do besides finding the typical optional upgrades and health expansions. The "final" boss only leads you to the bad ending. Then you can explore the station further and collect the 12 McGuffins to unlock the final movement upgrade. Once you've collected 100% of the items, the game switches gears and wants you to solve cryptic, La-Mulanaesque puzzles and decipher an alien language (I've done this in so many games now, it's getting a bit old...). I like La-Mulana, so I didn't mind. There are fake walls involved again, except this time there are always enough hints that point you in the right direction, so it doesn't feel cheap. You'll face more platforming challenges, some interesting new enemies that automatically zapp you when you use certain abilities, and a couple of difficult extra bosses. It's good stuff for the most part, until ... the cave.

Fuck the cave! It feels like the game should have been over at this point, but this cave section with the maze at the end is full of dumb puzzles that only waste your time, and it just drags on for too long. You have to backtrack between the station, the cave, and the maze many times, always having to solve the same tedious puzzles again and again. You also have to revisit a lot of specific places on the station to do a thing, which reminded me of the key hunts at the end of the Metroid Prime games. Those basically force you to explore the entire world with your full set of upgrades. But at this point in ESA you've already thoroughly explored the station. And thanks to that final movement upgrade, this is all trivial now. The hookshot is obsolete.
What's the reward for going through all this? Maybe another epic boss fight? Nope. Just a lame ending scene with retarded dialogue and childish "horror" elements. A sad end to an otherwise cool game. Then again this is optional.

 

[Kabas]

Took another shot at Brigand: Oaxaca, aka a mexican post-apocalyptic deus ex with voodoo magic. I have chosen a premade businessmen as my character.
The stat boost from the motivational speech appears to be fairly strong, seems like taking a direct control of the buffed companion is the way you're supposed to play as a charisma character. Murdered Zac with this.

Unsure about whatever i should invest into crafting skills like survival and hardware or should i be fine with just guns and software.

How good is it ? It has been on my wishlist for months but the level design looks poor, and the game not that fun.

Well, the game is junky and looks like ass. I tried it once with the same charisma build but ended disliking using companions and forgetting about the game. This is my second attempt and i am still unsure about whatever i enjoy this game or not.
I can say for sure that starting the game as a certain character options like witch doctor can be a frustrating experience if you don't know what you should be doing.
Edit: Just encountered a bug in which my companion's main weapons just dissapeared. And apparently my companions are bitches who won't enter certain locations with me. Yeah, i should have just gone with the gunslinger and be done with it.
Seems like you get a different second chapter depending on how you decide to search for Pochutla entrance, cool.

 

[4249]

Been having tons of fun with KCD, even with all it's quite apparent flaws. Almost a 100 hours in now and I don't think I'm even at the halfway through main quest yet, since there's been so much side content to play around with.

I love the way they handle the map in hardcore. You have clear indicators where they want you to go but no handholding regarding getting there. I just wish they had either let you fast travel between towns or designed the quests to be a lot more local. Getting objectives to go get this one thing from the other side of the map and then return it are getting quite old and traveling between towns is such a chore by now.

 

[Utfärd]

I just finished Crusader: No Remorse and I loved every minute of it (except, perhaps, the jumping puzzles). Warpig recommended it and he is always right about cool 90s games and movies. It has taken up most of my gaming time these last couple of weeks and I did find it quite hilarious how the evil mastermind destroys Kiev and laments the resources needed for his puppet president to regain popular support. Some timing. Final mission was quite a blast (heh) and really went all-in. Finished it on Loose Cannon, originally I played on No Remorse difficulty but it became untenable around mission 6 or so (quick load: the game).

Not sure what to play now, there's of course the sequel No Regret (Warpig says it's superior) but I also want to try out Neo Scavenger.

 

[Darth Roxor]

The soviet campaign in PG2 sure feels representative of the real deal. Your units are all shit, the germans keep throwing tigers at you everywhere, but somehow you manage to win even though your army is thoroughly wrecked. Prokhorovka was brutal as hell.

Meanwhile the kwan/brit campaign was so pathetically easy it was almost insulting. I didn't break a sweat at any time, and only the final mission had me scrambling a little to get that brilliant victory.