What game are you wasting time on?

[4249]

Finally finished my playthrough of KCD. Just shy of 120 hours according to Steam, took me like 2 months. Now I feel empty

Would definitely be interested in something new from Warhorse.

 

[Warlod]

Drakensang the river of time. I am enjoying it apart from the slow running speed

 

[Dayyālu]

Ashes Afterglow (2021) I was already a fan of the original Ashes 2063, that fittingly nailed the postapoc look and feel without being too janky. Sadly, we live in the era of the boomer shooter and I've been burnt already by retroclones that were mediocre (Dusk) autistically modderish (Ion Maiden) or simply too much for their own good (Hedon Bloodrite).

Ashes Afterglow is none of those things. I will not call it the best Doom mod I've ever played, because it's not a Doom mod in essence, the gameplay and structure is too different. It took everything that was good from 2063, upgraded it and created an excellent experience. I shit you not, I almost got a childish feeling of wonder in seeing what would I get next from the mapmakers.

Weaponry got updated and you can now unlock "tiers" of upgrades that give you new functionalities: the enemy roster is more varied and properly (and thematically) used, you get minigames and maps with a clear theme to spice things up. The soundtrack is excellent. The only minor negative is the dubbing, clearly amateurish.

Nowadays too many mods are in love with themselves, confused messes of detail done for detail's sake. Afterglow is instead focused, clear, varied (with different solutions to quests giving you different end results!) and almost every map is a wonder of "how the hell did they build this", from the mutant deathmatch in the sports arena to mutant races to exploration of sunken cities to the frankly phenomenal Dome, Secret Level and End level. I could not recommend it more, and it's fucking free.

Also, someone should explain to me why they got a fetish porn voice actress to voice one of the only relevant female characters - I checked the voice crew after the credits - but we're going for the full 90ies experience, I guess.

 

[Zizka]

So for the third time I’ve finished a quest at Fallout (of) Nevada and got no xp as a reward. I don’t know if this is an oversight or some quests don’t deserve any xp while others do, I’m not sure. I’m level 5 and really struggling to make some xp to reach my next level. All I can find for xp are mobs that give >100 each.. I sometimes heal myself for 25 xp each time but need… 5000 xp for my next level. I can’t recall this ever being an issue in Fallout 1 and 2.

The new talking heads I’ve seen look much better! Seems like someone else them.

Spoiler

While there are quite a few locations to discover on the west side of the map and a bit to the south, the north version is barren, completely empty. I’ve just about combed through the whole map by now. I would’ve imagined the locations would be sort of scattered but huge chunks of maps have nothing in them. I would imagine some thought was given as to where places should be but I have a hard time figuring out the logic here.

Locations look very similar to me.

I’m intrigued by the story so I’m pushing through. I think it’s worth playing provided you know you’re getting a 6-7/10.

 

[Psquit]

Resident Evil 5, Probably the worst mainline re-game out there (6 is not that bad). It's shit, the environments are shit, the enemies are shit, the plot is shit. It was supposed to be the conclusion of Code veronica, re 4, etc. plot...

 

[Zizka]

I decided to stop Fallout of Nevada. A lot of work went into it, it’s certainly a worthy effort. I think the little flaws here and there eventually got to me. Each thing on its own is minor but it keeps adding up. One thing after another. Designing a good CRPG is just so complex.

I hope we get a Fallout Conversion Mod which is willing to trim the engine a bit and optimise it. For example: Merging certain skills together to make each one worthwhile. Same thing with SPECIAL, change the way each attribute influences the game.

Maybe replace the traits with brand new ones. I can’t imagine trying another conversion mod with the same character creation process. Change the perks. Include a hunger and thirst meter.

It’d be a lot of work but I’d be so refreshing. While Fallout were great games, there’s room for improvement.

 

[deuxhero]

Tried KotOR 2 again. No issues with Nar Shadda this time (I suspect it's a conflict with the repair your speeder mod). I repeat how much the KotOR1 engine screwed this game. Was the no-MC segment on Nar Shadda this long pre-restored content? I think there was so much XP there that the MC is now the lowest level member of the party (certainly behind Atton and Kreia, haven't check others yet)

 

[flyingjohn]

Velvet Assassin.
Just don't play this game.

 

[Abu Antar]

I got one of the funnier endings in Way of the Samurai 4. People of this day and age would probably bitch and moan about it.

Spoiler

My dude won a tournament, and as a reward, he was boiled alive.

Edit: Since I am doing a few runs, I have reloaded to do more on this one. You can choose to not accept the reward and survive.

 

[JDR13]

I have decided to play Oblivion next. I played it in 2008 but this time I will using mods

Its a public holiday on Monday in SA so I basically have nice long weekend to really get into Oblivion again

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I got one of the funnier endings in Way of the Samurai 4. People of this day and age would probably bitch and moan about it.

Spoiler

My dude won a tournament, and as a reward, he was boiled alive.

Edit: Since I am doing a few runs, I have reloaded to do more on this one. You can choose to not accept the reward and survive.

Going for the golden ending?

 

[Abu Antar]

I got one of the funnier endings in Way of the Samurai 4. People of this day and age would probably bitch and moan about it.

Spoiler

My dude won a tournament, and as a reward, he was boiled alive.

Edit: Since I am doing a few runs, I have reloaded to do more on this one. You can choose to not accept the reward and survive.

Going for the golden ending?

I am undecided. If I decide to do all endings, I will go for that one, too.

 

[Ezekiel]

Vane. One of the most pretentious games I've ever played. You fly around pretty but empty desert as a crow and occasionally turn into a boy who has the most basic platforming. A 2.4:1 aspect ratio is forced, but it's not used as an excuse for performance, as in something like Evil Within or that early PS4 game everybody made fun of. At least I hardly notice it with the black bed sheet hanging behind my decently sized TV. Would bother me more if I was playing on my monitor. So many indie devs wish they were early Team Ico.

 

[laclongquan]

Fallout New Vegas.

After 3 complete runs of Tale of Two Wasteland 3.32, from starting in DC, then starting in Mojave, then back to start in DC... Now I am waiting for 3.3 to get completed with mods first before jumping back into THAT.

Meanwhile, I am trying out with the infamous Dust 2.0 This I estimate can get me tens of hours more.

There's New California after that but we shall see~

 

[Great Deceiver]

I've been playing Ninja Gaiden Black on Xemu this past week. Runs pretty decently, but it has shader compilation stutters. Nothing too bad, but it's kind of annoying sometimes.

I had only played the original Ninja Gaiden on Xbox when it came out in 2004 or so (I finished it back then but hadn't played it again all these years), so I remembered almost nothing about the game. I decided against playing the Sigma versions if I can help it.

The first thing that comes to mind is that NG/NGB is more of an action-adventure game than just pure action. I'm currently at the boss of Chapter 10 and there's been a lot of running around, backtracking for keys, etc. Levels are pretty big and interconnected to a small degree. It's refreshing in a way, NG2 is more of a pure action game and people seem to remember the entire series as being that, but it really wasn't at first.

However, although the game controls pretty well during the action sequences, it doesn't fare so well during platforming and exploration. There's a weird inertia to Ryu and he kind of shuffles forward when you just want to turn him around on a dime. Lining up jumps up is sometimes annoying and the primitive camera control is very sluggish (the base NG didn't even have a controllable 3rd person camera if I recall correctly, just a first person perspective when you moved the right analog stick).

Combat feels punchy and Ryu's hits are meaty and pretty satisfying, however enemy hits feel off somehow, like they're not really making contact. This is especially bad in bossfights, the feedback isn't really there when you get hit. This was also a problem in the very first Devil May Cry, but to a lesser extent.

There's a roll in the game but it doesn't have invulnerability frames, so it's hard to turn off the Souls mentality and realize that rolling is a positioning tool more than anything. There's a few different melee weapons in the game and they're all satisfying, but I've always been partial to the sword and it's still true after all these years. On normal difficulty the game is challenging without being bullshit, and you can vary your playstyle a little bit. Higher difficulty levels play quite differently but from what I remember that's not exactly a good thing, because gameplay can kind of degenerate into spamming Ultimate Techniques and abusing UT invulnerability frames.

In any case, I'm enjoying my time playing it, there's a case to be made that these games were more fun when they were action/adventure hybrids instead of pure action for spergy types (not that there's anything wrong with that per se, but Devil May Cry is a significantly better pure action game than NG).

I plan on playing NG2 afterwards on Xenia - I played the original on Xbox 360 back when it came out, finished it too, but don't remember too much about it, only that it was much more of a straightforward action game with more moves and more spam. Maybe I'll check out NG3 too, but everyone seems to think it's shit (even after the Razor's Edge update).

I wonder if they'll ever make a NG4. Nioh 2 was a pretty good game by the same team (minus crumbleface Itagaki), but I didn't like the loot aspect of it, and the level design was unremarkable. I suppose it's possible that they do make it and that it turns out alright - after all, Devil May Cry 5 is the best game in the series in my opinion and it came out a couple of years ago, against all odds.

 

[flyingjohn]

101 airborne,a squad based war game depicting the Normandy para drop operations.
What i expected:
A brutal game detailing the combat operations of the 101.
What i got:
The most realistic "Getting lost in France simulator".

Strengths:
-It is realistic to a fault.Weight dictates a lot of stuff including AP points usage and paradrop injury chance.
-AP points is the simple but great x-com like system.
-Touring your base and selecting load outs/men and even plane seat arrangement is nice
-The units you can pick have different specializations/stats making them unique.
-The UI/Font are amazing for a game of this era.Simple and clean.
-Graphics look nice
-The auto walk ability(moving automatically to the target area beyond your ap range) is a gamesaver.
Group movement makes this even quicker.
-The AI is deadly and not a moron.
-Map being broken into multiple loading zones.This one is good because the designer can focus on on specific objective per zone making the most of the level.
-Npc you can talk for information
-Once the action actually starts,the scenarios show their strength in terms of level layout.It is pretty impressive how much of it was made to emulate the actual thing.
-You can immediately play any scenario you want.
-Not a a lot of squad games based on this scenario.
Weakness:
-RNG dictates who lives/gets injured after a drop.This can be game breaking.This practically invalidates the setting up phase.But you can load/save layouts and retry if you get screwed.
-It takes a while to get to the action
-Line of sight mechanics are weird.The notifications for being seen don't really match what you are seeing.
Rating:


It is ironic that both positive and negative reviews never made it past the first levels.You can see it by them just talking surface points about getting lost/slow movement. Also no mention of tanks.
The movement was annoying until i figured out you can use group movement to traverse huge terrain at the beginning and auto walk to get where you want when you need to be careful.
If you want a slow methodical recreation of the Normandy airdrop element,i don't see any other choice.

EDit: Forgot about running this game on modern windows.
I tried multiple color fixes and only dxwnd worked. Dgvoodo would probably work also.

 

[Abu Antar]

In Way of the Samurai 4, I met my previous character from my last run. Of course, we ended up fighting.

In Tales of Xillia, I'm probably at the half way point.

I'm also playing Avernum 5 and The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky The Third Chapter.

These four games are the ones I have come the farthest in. I have around 10 other games that I have started.

 

[Psquit]

I finished Re 4, I enjoyed it! It falls into mediocrity in the other half of the game in the last 2 chapters. Also finished Re 5, I hated the game for the previous reasons I described in my previous post. Resident Evil Revelations is a decent 3DS game, the PC port it's... okay, I think the best way to experience the game is with an actual 3DS. Outbreak File 1, is a boring offline multiplayer game the actual fun was interacting with actual players and not the brain-dead NPCs. Finally, I finished the Leon chapter in Re6 but unlike 5 I actually had some fun with 6. Now I'm playing Re2 original (Dreamcast version) and probably I'll do Re3 (also Dreamcast) then I'll finish the remaster of 1.

 

[Zizka]

Ion Storm. Tightly, well designed levels have confirmed my suspicions: the “open world” is a step backwards in game design.

 

[thesecret1]

Just finished Infernax. It's pretty neat, though the beginning feels better than later parts of the game (it promises a lot of recativity, but that's only true for the first couple side quests and never after that). It's practically discount Blasphemous, but it's short, has a nice aesthetic and story, and generally scratches that metroidvania itch.

 

[Psquit]

Finished Re2 the original. I like it but I feel that the remake is better.

 

[Gibson]

The Messenger.

Properly casual Platformer.

Easily 7-7,5/10 game.

 

[Ezekiel]

That Ocarina of Time PC debug that was completed a few days ago. A little more complicated to set up than the Super Mario 64 port. Had to download the debugged Ocarina of Time ROM, the files that make it run and another program that let me customize the buttons. At the end of Dodongo's Cavern, when I went into the light, my game crashed, so I have to do the entire dungeon over again. Wonder if OpenGL is less buggy than D3D. If I use D3D, there is a white border around the picture in fullscreen.

Though I remember everything too well, I forgot how quickly the game gets on its way. Later Zelda openings bury you in dialogue and cutscenes.

Still like it, but terribly easy.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Playing Ace Combat Zero on my fucking PS2 that i found cleaning the house just the other day. Amazing how the balcan wars inspired a lot of jap games in the late 90's and early 2000's but no western game was really inspired by, might be because of the good guys and bad guys Marvel comic mentality.

Anyway, bombing civilians NATO style is fucking fun, might become one of my top ten games of all time.

 

[jackofshadows]

CP2077. Fucking great, I'm having a grand time.