What game are you wasting time on?

[Abu Antar]

After 14 months, I booted up Bravely Default II.

I finished a few side quests, and then I beat a main story boss fight, which awarded me the dragoon job.

I'm currently using two glass cannons, one tanky character, and a thief that deals an insane amount of damage. It's fun messing around with different setups. My setup might not be ideal, but it worked well for the boss fight. She only has physical attacks, but that was countered by a debuff that reduces said attacks up to 65% if used multiple times.

I might go after a few of the "super strong" enemies scattered around on the world map in my next session.

 

[Hag]

Finally finished Besiege.

Difficulty ramps up steadily but by the middle of the third island it gets really serious and you have to learn new ways of building your machinery. The last island is no fucking joke and the "ambush" mission had me stuck for hours. Had to look for help online. Otherwise I'm happy I've solved all other scenarii by myself. There are several achievements that are "finish mission x without using such block" that are very nice for additional challenge, I'm now gonna get'em.
Wonderful game. I really appreciate there are no limitation on block use, you're very free to fuck around as much as you want and it is refreshing. If the idea of building weird siege machines to lay waste to various nice places rings a bell for you, do give it a try.

Nothing to take away. Perfect as it is, does few things but does them well.

 

[Silence]

Playing Etrian Odyssey 1 on Nintendo DS : currently exploring B17F.

 

[Kabas]

Yeah, i am not gonna finish Titan Quest either.
After reaching Egypt i realised i don't enjoy my champion build and i don't wanna go through Greece again.
A few thoughts:
-Never played the orginal version but this game definitely looks very pretty.
-Class system and the excitement you get upon level-up, they definitely nailed this part
-Felt like the time between each level-up is a bit too long, i kinda dislike being stuck using the same two skills for a long time.
-A lot of time is spent fighting the same satyrs, centaurs and maenads over and over again. Methinks it's a missed opportunity to introduce blemmys or sciapodes.
-Dungeons and beastmen encampments all feeling samey doesn't help either
-The mythology lessons you get from certain NPCs is a nice touch


So, now i am trying the Grim Dawn. In terms of visuals i kinda prefer Titan Quest more.
I made necromancer/occultist for more summons and their buffs, but now i will be sticking mostly with my primary tree(Necro) before putting anything into the secondary one.
I like the introduction of the side-grades passives(like the one that changes your aether life leech spell into the ice one) and you seem to be leveling up a lot faster, granted i am playing on veteran.

 

[Krivol]

TQ is another game that is too big for its own good - it's getting boring in Egipt, and you still have so many chapters to finish...

Also, as someone mentioned somewhere - you need to walk a lot between mob groups (which probably makes the leveling-up issue you mentioned so visible).

GD with all add-ons have a similar issue (being too big), but fixed walking-too-much stuff.

Both games are great anyway, probably the best single-player N'n'S games.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Ace Combat Skies of Deception, which is a PSP Ace Combat game. Heard the game is short so i will probably finished it today, i got the game recommended here actually after playing Ace Combat Zero. I can see the game having a lot of replayability because every chapter you have a main objective ex "Take x city" but first you have to reach it, you have three routes to take and involves helping ground troops, the other interjecting a counter attack and other one stopping a delivery of supplies to the city you have to take. If you don't stop the counter attack one of yours citiesll be taken and you will have a mission to take it back, if you stop the delivery of weapons when you attack the city they won't we allowed to use a supper weapon etc these are just examples and not really what happens in game.

It's very solid for a portable game and if you like Ace Combat you should go for it.

Playing Ace Combat laying in bed is great.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Beat UFO Aftermath, playing UFO Aftershock now.
It's different. There are a lot of new mechanics and interesting ideas, but they really spiked up the difficulty. Morelman, which used to be easy to kill with basic weapons in the first game, are now obscenely tanky, and the track mechanic is very poorly designed. They consume so much alien tech (why?) that if you try to link your bases you go bankrupt, so basically you're stuck on one base unless you get lucky and find more alien tech nearby.

The more I play the UFO series the more it occurs to me how much Phoenix Point was inspired by it.
The Pandoravirus mist is like the Biomass, the story and premise are very similar, you have those unseen enemy markers and it uses the same sort of non-linear weapon system where you want to use a mix of different weapon and damage types rather than "lol, plasma."

 

[Curratum]

Managed to bully two of my colleagues / friends into buying Deep Rock Galactic. Ended up playing until 3am last night. Good times.

 

[Tweed]

Blowing through the Spiderweb catalogue. Finished all the Geneforges and I'm up to Avernum 3. I dunno if I'll have the stomach for the other games once I finish the Avernum series though.

 

[Modron]

Exiles were better than Avernums; speaking of that, you should give original Nethergate a shot.

 

[Abu Antar]

I'm very far in Tower of Time.

Is it good, should I try it?

Hey, man, sorry that I forgot to respond. It's pretty decent. It doesn't excel at anything, yet I wouldn't call it bad. If you like rtwp combat (more real-time-with-slowdown), with a party, there is some fun to be had. It's not a tower defense game by any means, but you do face waves of enemies. You get attribute points, like you would expect. Different skills, which can also be upgraded. You can respec at any time. You won't be able to level up your characters, until you find the right upgrade for their upgrade building. Itemization is decent, with different effects on gear and weapons. There are some hidden rooms, some (not very demanding) puzzles. The floors of the tower are basically dungeons. It's not a straight line, but fairly linear. Every floor has check boxes for how many things you have left on them. For me, if I had to score it, I'd probably give it a 7/10.

 

[deuxhero]

Beat Sonic Adventure after over a decade of not touching it, using the modded PC version. 12 hours having done a bunch of side content but no Chao Garden. This is a great game wrapped in a shit game wrapped in an OK game wrapped in a bad remake that was even worse in the PC port before mods fixed it. There's no consistency in the quality. It's amazing one moment, then terrible the next. Even in Sonic stages you regularly run into issues with the camera and what I'm calling "Sonic's Crotch Segments"* and Light Speed Dash being something you have to charge to use. Almost the entirety of Tails' story is just rehashing segments of Sonic's (the final boss and one minigame are unique) with a time limit and a few new alternate routes. The smaller areas, three shard radar and clear directions make Knuckles mostly meh instead of the horrible they are in the sequel (which I have played relatively recently), but he has two puzzles that are just all bullshit (breaking the golden Sonic statue, which had me wandering around looking for a way to activate the ship cannons because at least those are visible when I'm actually supposed to attack a tiny crack the camera refuses to show you and wandering a maze till you find a key you need with zero direction). Gamma is actually really fun and I can see why that gameplay style was made more focal in the sequel, but all Gamma's levels except the last are just short segments of Sonic's levels and are already over by the time it gets really fun. Amy is... fine, but under developed (actually a lot more fun with modded physics so she faster). I don't really need to explain why Big is terrible because everyone has already done that. One really annoying flaw I do not see mentioned a lot though is the angle and range for talking to people and picking up objects is absurdly narrow, forcing you to be actually touching and at a very specific angle. Ring layouts are frequently anti-speed (a problem solved in SA2) forcing a choice between "collect rings" or "go fast" since they're often in mutually exclusive sides of a path and in rings instead of lines.

The plot follows the trend of really high peaks and really low bottoms. Sonic's signature personality is totally absent (his theme song starts with "I don't show off" for fucks sake) with nothing in its place and there's a lot of characters standing still talking when standing still is really stupid. The multi prospective view of the same events is neat, except when you're watching the same cutscene yet again (Remember, these weren't skippable in the original release). It does some neat things with the tools it has though.

Frequently, mostly , and occasionally.

*You know how Crash was internally "Sonic's Ass" because your camera is constantly directly behind the main character? Well imagine that but the camera faces behind you so you have no idea where you're going. The Orca was cool because it's effectively a cutscene (as is the Gun Truck in 2 with an easy to get magnetic shield, the only instance I can think of there). Here you will miss rings and even run into obstacles you can't see.

 

[Tweed]

Beat Sonic Adventure after over a decade of not touching it

Did you see the shower scene?

 

[deuxhero]

What?

 

[Naveen]

Baldur's Gate, but in French. I don't speak French. Still, I have already learned that save against ¿wand? is save against baguettes, and a halfling is a petite-personne. This is not a serious language.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Baldur's Gate, but in French. I don't speak French. Still, I have already learned that save against ¿wand? is save against baguettes, and a halfling is a petite-personne. This is not a serious language.

It should really be halfelines or semi-hommes.

 

[Kabas]

Got bored of Grim Dawn shortly after my 20/16 skeletons wrecked the Warden boss.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Finished Ace Combat Skies of Deception. It's an amazing game for a PSP game and i had fun with it, is it one of the best Ace Combat games? No, but for a portable Ace Combat game it's really good. It's really worth playing on a portable console and the fact that you have multiple paths before reaching the main objective of each mission makes it extremely replayable.

 

[Wunderbar]

Completed Alone in the Dark - The New Nightmare.

The good:
- it's a gorgeous looking game with one of the best 2d background art and lighting in the business (the only better ones are Resident Evil remake and Resident Evil Zero);
- the game has a pretty intriguing story with a ton of readables (some of which are so lengthy, the devs even highlighted important bits with a red color, so the lazy players who don't want to read couldn't get stuck on puzzles);
- the puzzles are very good, and feel like something you could see in a proper adventure game rather than in a survival horror/adventure hybrid.
- the game has a RE1/2-like two protagonist system (a dude and a gal), but unlike RE1/2, AitD4's campaigns are vastly different and were designed to accommodate each other. There are no plot contradictions, Edward and Aline solve different puzzles, encounter different enemies, and visit their own unique locations. Aline's campaign even features a Nemesis-like stalker miniboss.

The bad:
- Sadly, the actual survival gameplay kinda sucks. The enemy variety is low, the combat is braindead, level design leaves a lot to be desired, and the resource management is basically nonexistent since you get tons of ammo and your inventory capacity is unlimited;
- the game is really janky - hitboxes and collisions for items are badly aligned with 2d background, so it takes a while to find the sweet spot where you can interact with environment. Sometimes you can't go through a door even though your character stands right next to it. I don't remember having issues back when i played it for the first time many years ago on my first PC with WinXP on board, so maybe it's a compatibility (or an overly high FPS) thing;
- end game location is fucking horrible - looks like the devs ran out of funds, so they just slapped together a bunch of empty and linear caves where you mow down dozens of copypasted monsters;
- Edward Carnby looks like a hippie.

It's a neat adventure game with some janky survival elements slapped on top of it. If not for the abysmal last quarter of the game, I would've easily recommended it to all genre enthusiasts. Well, I actually do recommend it to genre enthusiasts - just stop playing once you get to the final stretch, and look up the ending on youtube.

 

[Sigourn]

A few levels away from finishing Episode 4 The Birth in Duke Nukem 3D.
I love this game. Episode 2 was definitely the weakest IMO, if only because I grew tired of the spaceship setting.

I do admit I'm not as keen on certain weapons. In particular the proximity laser bombs, I haven't really used those. And the shrinker I used only when facing strong enemies. I should have probably rebinded the keys on some of the weapons, because I kept getting them mixed up compared to those of Doom.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I wish I could travel back to 1995 to a time, to a certain callow, innocent state of mind, where I had the most fun I would ever have playing video/PC games, with Duke 3D, Wolfernstein 3D, Doom, Heretic, Quake, Shadow Warrior et al but I can't, so I must content myself with far-approximations like, say, Powerslave Exhumed. You can never go back, though you may be able to go home if you're desperate enough.

 

[Abu Antar]

I was playing Bravely Default II, and actually feeling pretty good about the progress that I made. Got three new jobs. The Phantom, and two other jobs. Nice! Progress with the story, and get to a fight with one of the main villains. I do well the entire fight. Sure, some party members get knocked out, but I resurrect them. I get the boss to almost zero health. But of course, before I did that, I made sure everyone in my party was healed. After all, he might make a super move before dying. Alright, now let's finish this sucker off! Boss makes super move, killing all of my healed party members. I got fuming, and turned the game off.

To let off some steam, I messaged a bro, and we are now playing the pirate rpg, Tempest. We're sailing around, acting like we're good at the game, confronting every ship that we see. It's mostly going well, but I hate it when enemy ships escape. I would probably not have liked this if I played it on my own.

 

[Sigourn]

Finished Duke Nukem 3D. The last two levels of The Birth were pretty shit if I'm honest. The last one in particular, as you are essentially playing through a mirrored map...

Now I'm facing a crossroads:

• Do I play through the DN3D expansions in order? (Potentially omitting Nuclear Winter)
• Do I play Doom 64, which I recently acquired in GOG?
• Do I play Strife: Quest for the Sigil?
• Do I play System Shock?

 

[axx]

Life's a beach and DC are both solid expansions.

 

[Kabas]

Drox operative 2, i did play the first one. A hack'n'slash in space but the gimmick is that the AI plays real-time 4X game in the background that you can influence or ignore.
Didn't spot much differences from the first one aside from introduction of the new talent tree. Had fun for a bit, but lost interest during the second sector. Never reached the point of unlocking new races in both games.

Also tried Din's legacy demo from the same guys. My assassin mutated and got extra damage for his basic skill, new mirror image spell from illusionist that boosts his defeneces and an upgrade for my poison strike that now causes earthquakes.
It's actually fun.