What game are you wasting time on?

[Hag]

Medieval 2 Total War, and wow! It's pretty impressive how little they changed things if you take a look at the latest warhammer games. Graphically it didn't age badly and it's also runs a lot better than the modern ones, which is a big plus for me.
So far i am sucking pretty badly at this game.

I remember the AI sucking so much it made the game almost unplayable. Either the enemy so braindead you could make its units stay in the AoE of your siege machine, oblitering its army, or your own troops who suffered some heavy pathfinding issues, most notably knights aborting their charge most of the time for no reason and then running around aimlessly.

 

[Kabas]

Medieval 2 Total War, and wow! It's pretty impressive how little they changed things if you take a look at the latest warhammer games. Graphically it didn't age badly and it's also runs a lot better than the modern ones, which is a big plus for me.
So far i am sucking pretty badly at this game.

I remember the AI sucking so much it made the game almost unplayable. Either the enemy so braindead you could make its units stay in the AoE of your siege machine, oblitering its army, or your own troops who suffered some heavy pathfinding issues, most notably knights aborting their charge most of the time for no reason and then running around aimlessly.

The game does indeed have some serious pathfinding issues, they're especially notable during sieges. Sieges ain't any better than the ones in warhammer total war.
At least ost is good.

 

[Machocruz]

Was in the mood for a side scroller of some sort, so tried a little Ori and the Blind Forest.

Lovely game to look at. Stunning, honestly. It's pretty embarrassing that so many 2.5D/3D modeled side-scrollers from major game companies and famous directors look like cheap asset store trash, when you have smaller studios putting out the highest quality of visuals in that domain, like this game. Forest settings aren't my thing in this style of game (I prefer caverns, dungeons, castles, etc.), but it's rendered exquisitely. I'm interested in watching a making of video, if one exists.

Controls are precise and responsive, at least as much as I can expect on an Xbox One pad. Any problems with traversal are user error. Mostly. Things feel a little slippery at times. I've died quite a bit, but I also haven't played a platformer in at least 5 years.

A problem I'm seeing with "metroidvanias" lately is too many offering the same abilities. Double jump, wall jump, dash, some kind of block breaker. Maybe I shouldn't expect much creativity or individuality from people who begin from the mindset of "I want to make a game like that/those game(s)" in the first place, but it's pretty disappointing to see the same suite of powers over and over.

The tone of the game is very twee, sentimental like a Disney movie. Gentleness and (family friendly) darkness co-exist in a similar manner to classics like Fantasia, Snow White, and especially Bambi, which is an obvious influence in both tone and art direction. And you control a furry. I find it hard to believe so many adult males vibe to this sort of atmosphere, but T levels have been dropping over the decades.

Can't make a final judgment since I've only played a portion of it, but it seems like the definition of a good game. They play it too safe for me in a few ways, but it's thoroughly competent in every salient aspect (exceedingly great in one) and no design flaws standout in my mind.

 

[His Dudeness]

Magic Arena and Slay the Spire.

As of late the though of entertaining another person's imagination in the form of narrative has become a chore. Only pure gameplay games have become viable.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I bought a key for Mudrunner for about a buck and was shocked that it was under 1.5 GB. How can such a big world be so tiny on the hard drive space? I thought this must be a masterpiece and record for the greatest compression... until I heard about .kkrieger which, in case you don't know, is a full 3D FPS that takes 95kb! Believe it, muthafuckers.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

How can such a big world be so tiny on the hard drive space?

Why not?

 

[JDR13]

until I heard about .kkrieger which, in case you don't know, is a full 3D FPS that takes 95kb! Believe it, muthafuckers.

That's impressive even if the game itself looks like garbage.

 

[what am i doing]

A problem I'm seeing with "metroidvanias" lately is too many offering the same abilities. Double jump, wall jump, dash, some kind of block breaker. Maybe I shouldn't expect much creativity or individuality from people who begin from the mindset of "I want to make a game like that/those game(s)" in the first place, but it's pretty disappointing to see the same suite of powers over and over.

The tone of the game is very twee, sentimental like a Disney movie. Gentleness and (family friendly) darkness co-exist in a similar manner to classics like Fantasia, Snow White, and especially Bambi, which is an obvious influence in both tone and art direction. And you control a furry. I find it hard to believe so many adult males vibe to this sort of atmosphere, but T levels have been dropping over the decades.

I don't really play metroidvanias so I don't know if this is common in them, but later in the game you get an ability that lets you do a sort of brief grab / time slow on enemies and then blast yourself in one direction and them in the opposite. The hardest sequence in the game (it's frustratingly difficult, which is good, because it feels great when you finally get past it) mostly centres around this ability.

Interesting point about the tone because I think I'd sort of subconsciously noticed the Trine series heading in that direction (the original was dark and vaguely apocalyptic, the second was sort of neutral, but trine 4 was pretty much exactly as you describe) but it didn't occur to me that this was part of a wider trend. But, personally, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing in the context of modern developers. I would actually prefer devs move back to more simplistic good vs mild evil than mire themselves in endless shades-of-grey or everyone is bad stuff. Morally ambiguous settings and stories require skilled and intelligent writers, and flat out "everything is shit and everyone is a bad guy" settings & stories require writers who don't give a fuck. But if you take some mediocre writer, and they try to do some shades of grey morally ambiguous stuff, they'll end up writing pretentious garbage, and if you take someone who's worried about offending people, and they try to write something grimdark, it'll just be bland and shitty and not very engaging. I would prefer writers like that stick to lighthearted Disney stories because those are a lot harder to fuck up for those sorts of writers.

 

[Hag]

That's impressive even if the game itself looks like garbage.

T'was ok for 2004. But if I recall correctly it was more like a technical demonstrator. The idea was not to store any asset, but only instructions on how to generate models, textures or sound from primitives. Never tried, but always been curious of the loading times.

 

[I'm Big Into Anal]

22.4 hours into chronicon

tight gameplay; a bit clusterfucky with the effects sometimes but you kinda always know whats going on

got my berserker boy to level 40 and its been fun so far

really scratches that stat-whore loot itch too; i swear ar least 10 of those 22 hours have been staring at inventory and trading screens.

options out the ass in settings too; you can pretty much tailor the experience even turn down the splodeys and numbers while smiting

doesnt like to alt-tab or stay in pause too long though; some real gameplay slow-down occurs so bear that in mind if thats your bag

overall recommended if you like your arpg's

 

[Bigg Boss]

Vigilantes. Get it on sale and play it on Hard Boiled.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

That's impressive even if the game itself looks like garbage.

T'was ok for 2004. But if I recall correctly it was more like a technical demonstrator. The idea was not to store any asset, but only instructions on how to generate models, textures or sound from primitives. Never tried, but always been curious of the loading times.

It takes about 5 seconds to generate a new lvl on my i9-based rig using an SSD. Visually, it reminds me of a cruder UT2004 but still impressive for what it is. Since it still generates assets from the tiny exe, I wonder what the full-size is on the drive/memory once it's been generated. I'm guessing at least still hundreds of megabytes before getting deleted... or at least I hope it gets deleted.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

How can such a big world be so tiny on the hard drive space?

Why not?

Well, considering that Snowrunner, the sequel to Mudrunner, is literally 30 times the size Mudrunner is, I was impressed and not expecting that. But I've been conditioned to assume any game released within the last 8 years or so is far far larger than it needs to be (I think one of the games in my Steam library is close to 500 GB installed and I'm sure that's not even the worst). The days of Carmack and his optimized engine code seem looong gone.

 

[Abu Antar]

I finished Eliza by Zachtronics. I mostly played their puzzle games before this. Went to check what they are doing next, and it seems that the studio is planning to close down.

My brother is leaving soon, so we're ploughing through Chaosbane. We started on normal but it became mind
numblngly boring, so we switched to very hard. The first two acts are cleared. Judging by the pace of the game, it doesn't seem like the campaign will last more than 10-15 hours.

I'm 45 hours into Trails of Cold Steel. While I like the general story, and the combat, I feel like Trails in the Sky series (2 and 3) were better games in general. It's still q fine jrpg, but too much of little girls, and "awkward moments".

I'm about 15 hours into my Grimoire run. I finally have decent equipment on my party members, and most things I fight go down fairly easy. As long as I buff/protect the mages, things go well. I haven't rested so much in a game in a long while.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Took me long enough but I finished the storyline of Yakuza 7.

Spoiler

But nevermind that, more importantly I scored 3 on 3 on the UFO catcher.

 

[Abu Antar]

Took me long enough but I finished the storyline of Yakuza 7.

Spoiler

But nevermind that, more importantly I scored 3 on 3 on the UFO catcher.

That mini game is my worst enemy.

 

[Ezekiel]

Max Payne 3 has such better flow when just replaying one level now that the abundance of cutscenes can be skipped with the mod. Shame most of it's such a corridor and there is so little room for experimentation. I've long thought it would have been cool if Max wasn't the only one shoot dodging, meaning leaping into the air.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Took me long enough but I finished the storyline of Yakuza 7.

Spoiler

But nevermind that, more importantly I scored 3 on 3 on the UFO catcher.

That mini game is my worst enemy.

Don't get me started. I still got to do the minigame substories in 3 so I can kick Amon's ass.

 

[Kabas]

Tried Star Wars - Galactic Battlegrounds, aka age of empires with star wars coat of paint.
It's rather good for a reskin game, they took a bit of creative liberty with star wars universe in order to justify AoE mechanics and made an interesting choice of playable factions.
I like the unit design and i am suprised how good the voice acting is.

The only thing i dislike is how long it takes to crush the enemy base even if you bring some heavy artillery and slammers(battering rams). Trade Federation invasion must have been suprisingly tedious if it took that long to commit warcrimes against the population of Naboo. Missions overall tend to be very long, i prefer the Age of Mythology pacing.
Still, i am curous about that expanded front mod, last i heard they planned to further add some factions from the old expanded universe.

 

[Machocruz]

Interesting point about the tone because I think I'd sort of subconsciously noticed the Trine series heading in that direction (the original was dark and vaguely apocalyptic, the second was sort of neutral, but trine 4 was pretty much exactly as you describe) but it didn't occur to me that this was part of a wider trend. But, personally, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing in the context of modern developers. I would actually prefer devs move back to more simplistic good vs mild evil than mire themselves in endless shades-of-grey or everyone is bad stuff. Morally ambiguous settings and stories require skilled and intelligent writers, and flat out "everything is shit and everyone is a bad guy" settings & stories require writers who don't give a fuck. But if you take some mediocre writer, and they try to do some shades of grey morally ambiguous stuff, they'll end up writing pretentious garbage, and if you take someone who's worried about offending people, and they try to write something grimdark, it'll just be bland and shitty and not very engaging. I would prefer writers like that stick to lighthearted Disney stories because those are a lot harder to fuck up for those sorts of writers.

It's not bad, maybe too calculated or formulaic. I can appreciate the skill in which they wield the same devices as Disney, Spielberg, etc though. But my sensibilities go more towards the rousing, like Actraiser, Castlevania, Mega Man, Strider. Not grimdark or morally ambiguous either.

I only played the first Trine. Loved it, but it was already a bit twee at times. Can't say I'm into soft, tinkling music, but it did effectively evoke a children's storybook atmosphere. Both games are great successes in setting a tone, just not a tone that speaks to a hot-blooded alfa male poosy slayer like me bruh. Coincidentally, it's one of the few other 2.5D side-scrollers that don't have the lazy asset store look.

 

[Stella Brando]

Check out this 'convert the Romans' game at 9:30 (the video is set to that time)

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Playing Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead, BN version which is free from Kevin's bullshit. Love role playing in this game, i never found min maxing fun, someone should make a thread about this game, it's surprising that it doesn't have one with the amount of autism this game has.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Playing Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead, BN version which is free from Kevin's bullshit. Love role playing in this game, i never found min maxing fun, someone should make a thread about this game, it's surprising that it doesn't have one with the amount of autism this game has.

It's so weird how that happens, community made games where the person who ends up in charge of it all seems to just utterly hate the game and its playerbase. Kevin for cataclysm, dpeg for dungeon crawl... ok it's only two examples but still...

 

[deuxhero]

Pokemon Conquest. Almost finished the main campaign, which is very short. Core gameplay is fun, but I'm not sure the game was entirely finished. The balance is all over the place, the power curve is whack (everything is fairly easy till you get to the steel type domain, then prepare to grind up for in-game years), unit deployment is not player controlled, some things are clearly meant to combine with things that don't exist (there's a Pokemon that can only attack sleeping opponents, but almost nothing can cause sleep on command, and there's lots of defensive Pokemon that are useless to the player because any offensive battle has a time limit and there's no way to deal damage over time), and from looking around Electroball is genuinely broken in a coding sense. That's not even getting into how the strategic elements are essentially non-existent during the first (several hours long) campaign (the enemy only attacks you if you leave the border literally undefended, they don't gain in strength over time) but that appears to be deliberate for some incomprehensible reason.

Still, like I said the tactics part of the game is genuinely fun. I think Pokemon having only one move was a bad choice for a game that's otherwise deep. Two would have worked a lot better.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Playing Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead, BN version which is free from Kevin's bullshit. Love role playing in this game, i never found min maxing fun, someone should make a thread about this game, it's surprising that it doesn't have one with the amount of autism this game has.

It's so weird how that happens, community made games where the person who ends up in charge of it all seems to just utterly hate the game and its playerbase. Kevin for cataclysm, dpeg for dungeon crawl... ok it's only two examples but still...

Likely due to them dealing with fanboys which are usually insane.