What game are you wasting time on?

[BruceVC]

After finishing the exciting Exanima I am having a break from fantasy type RPG and I have just bought Days Gone on a Steam sales special

I want to engage in mindless Zombie killing in a post-apocalyptic world ....I love slaughtering Zombies

 

[Kabas]

The beginning spells are boring as fuck so far

I take these words back, spellforce 2 magic is somehow even more boring.

 

[Caim]

I made a nervous wreck of a man think his dead mother had come back to life, I shot him and dumped him in his mom's closet. I then disguised myself as his golf instructor, called the guy's handler who said golf instructor was slipping his 9" iron, tried to poison her drink but since I didn't have a lethal poison I just roofied her, snapped her neck, dumped her in another trunk, and went into a secret biolab underneath the nervous wreck's house. I knocked out several people and dumping their bodies in trunks, closets and laundry baskets along the way, messed around with lab equipment until the FOXDIE virus they were making exploded and escaped past the armed guards who didn't care that someone was casually strolling away from the carnage in a HAZMAT suit towards a seaplane and escaped the scene.

Hitman 2016 is a strange game, but I'm having fun so far.

 

[NecroLord]

Playing Arcanum.
Have to help Stringy Pete get rid of his curse,after which he will give me his ship so I can sail to Thanatos.
Must go to the Bangellian Deeps and destroy the "Bangellian Scourge",an evil sword,but also one of the best weapons in the game(for an evil character).

 

[adddeed]

Making good progress in Tomb Raider 3. Love these older tr games, zero hand holding of any sort, just you and your ability to observe and then execute your plan. Great atmosphere with a sense of isolation. So far TR2 is my favotire of the first trilogy but all of them are great.

 

[Wasteland]

I want to thank you all for your role in designing one of my favorite games. I play it every year, just after Thanksgiving.

The game opens with the player gleefully poring over hordes of heavily discounted titles on Steam and GoG, selecting perhaps a dozen or more for purchase. Then he looks up each title on Codex to find out why it sucks; repeat until the shopping cart is empty. There isn't a ton of play time, but the content can be quite deep (some of the discounted titles suck very elaborately). And once you've won, you're rewarded with a great ending sequence: the protagonist pats himself on the back for saving money, then rides off into the sunset to spend it all on liquor.

Prior to Black Friday, I played through Cyberpunk 2077, mostly because I have a fairly beefy computer that was crying out for some graphics whoring. Cyberpunk does deliver on that front, though it seems we passed the point of heavily diminished returns long ago. My tired eyes don't see a huge difference between Cyberpunk's visuals and stuff from 8-9 years ago--and that's just on a technical level. A lot of older games actually win on the basis of art direction.

Anyway, the game was ok. I enjoyed the shooter combat until it became ludicrously easy, which happens pretty early. I'm all for autistically engineering character builds (I'm half German) to break games, but in this case there's really no effort or thought necessary. Select quickhacking or Sandevistan and you become a god. The hacking is especially ludicrous; I had to ditch that whole section of my skill tree when I realized I could sequentially one-shot-kill whole buildings full of enemies from like half a mile away. On the hardest difficulty setting.

Cyberpunk also has a decent narrative that suffers from irregular pacing, but I think maybe I'm just too old and jaded to enjoy narrative in games generally, or at least narrative as it tends to be presented in high-budget entries. So many of the "main storyline" missions in Cyberpunk feel like slow-motion quick time events, where the player is forced to throw out token keyboard inputs just to disguise the fact that what he's "playing" is actually a 20 minute cut scene. Sure, sometimes it helps immersion if the player can interact with a dramatic moment, but most of the time I'd rather just have the cut scene--better yet, keep cut scenes short too.

But yeah, I'm jaded about fiction generally and gaming fiction particularly. After a certain point in life, you feel like you've heard it all before, and what's more, you heard a better version before. What insights into the human condition, what ingenious literary flourishes, could possibly spill from the pens of the cosseted soyjacks and bearded lesbians who write this stuff nowadays? Insipid is the best case scenario here.

None of which is to say that narrative in games doesn't serve a purpose, or that game narratives must rise to the level of great art to serve that purpose. Quite the opposite; I think game writing was better back in the day when it was expected to do less. Now it isn't just about telling a fun or interesting story, or providing thematic context for the game play loop; modern games are expected to portray a more-or-less holistic life experience, up to and including fully consummated (and poorly animated) romantic relationships--a painfully elaborate standard that can make even decent writing look ridiculous when the core of the player's active participation boils down to "shoot the bad guys."

 

[Spukrian]

I'm still going through Fallout New Vegas. When I got to New Vegas I decided to pause the main quest and just do lots of exploring and sidequests. After playing through Honest Hearts, Dead Money and Old World Blues I felt that it was time to continue. So I guess I should choose faction now, don't really know which one yet.

I started Bioshock 1. I've played it before when it was new. I chose Hard difficulty but it was too easy, so I restarted with Vitachambers turned off, much better! The plan is continue with Bioshock 2 and later Bioshock Infinite, I haven't played those. Curious to see if Infinite is as terrible as people think.

 

[TommyH]

I am also playing World of Final Fantasy, and Demon's Rise - Lords of Chaos. WoFF is fan fan service JRPG that has characters and monsters from the whole series, up to Final Fantasy XIII. Demon's Rise is a mobile port of a turn-based rpg, with heavy focus on combat. The game won't blow your mind, but it's a decent enough time waster for a mobile game ported to PC.

 

[Abu Antar]

I'm almost done with Beautiful Desolation. Gameplay is pretty chill. Nothing really challenging at all. The world is really pretty, I like the characters that you meet, and audio is spot on. I wouldn't mind playing a role playing game in this setting.

Other than that, I am also playing World of Final Fantasy, and Demon's Rise - Lords of Chaos. WoFF is fan fan service JRPG that has characters and monsters from the whole series, up to Final Fantasy XIII. Demon's Rise is a mobile port of a turn-based rpg, with heavy focus on combat. The game won't blow your mind, but it's a decent enough time waster for a mobile game ported to PC.

I am also playing World of Final Fantasy, and Demon's Rise - Lords of Chaos. WoFF is fan fan service JRPG that has characters and monsters from the whole series, up to Final Fantasy XIII. Demon's Rise is a mobile port of a turn-based rpg, with heavy focus on combat. The game won't blow your mind, but it's a decent enough time waster for a mobile game ported to PC.

 

[Krivol]

Ok, I finally finished Siege of Dragonspear for the first time (during my current BG saga playthrough).

It's much better than I thought (yet my expectations were incredibly low):
- some encounters are fine and well taught
- locations look really good! (I thought it would be blurry shit known from BGEE companion quests)
- there are parts of writing not especially bad and the story - even if naive and "another high-fantasy bullshit" - goes smoothly
- voice acting and length - you don't feel like playing another fan mod
- new companions are mostly good! (much better than Neera/Dorn/Rajiiisssh - shaman class is fun to play, scald with some itemization can be very potent, archer tearing enemies in no time, the gnome is an ok cleric/thief)
- battle of dragonspear is exhausting (in a good way ) - I used almost all my spells and a lot of potions, and a few combats were rather hard

But still, it's Beamdog so a lot of bullshit there:
- whole SoD is linear as fuck
- evil choices are creepy and cringe
- eh... Neera and Rajish are still there (Neera being annoying as a character is at least a competent spellcaster, but paki just sucks balls and is useless!) :/
- there is literally no new enemy - we are fighting dragons, vampires, liches, ilithids, and demons, and even the final boss is taken from another game!
- story... fuck, that plot is thin as paper and just stupid; crusade to conquer half of Sword Coast to open a portal to hell to rise dead people from the dead... WTF? WHOS IDEA IS THIS? all Infinite games had better plots! and Celar is an insanely bad-written character.
- SJW stuff - it's not just Mizogina, there is more, but more subtle (stronk wymyn etc)
- that's a long game to explain why you end with Minsc, Dynaheir, Jaheira, Kahlid and Imonen in BG2... I mean they could just add a cutscene with one person dying, a trial and a whole Epilogue and we would be set
- oh, trial - I know a lot of people love trials in games like Chrono Trigger or NWN2 but here and there are little-to-no consequences of those trials, and SoD is no different.
- after the prologue, your exp is set to 250k just like this... I don't like such gimmicks...
- companions switching - arghhh! You can't do some companions quests without them in your party, so for max gains, you should shuffle your team, which is just stupid and tedious, as you should usually switch items between party members which gets boring really fast...

Overall if you are an Infinity Engine hard fan you will have a lot of fun with that - more exploring, a lot of great encounters, and nice maps.

If you just play BG saga from time to time just for that "adventure feeling" - feel free to skip this, you will lose nothing and save some time.

If you hate BG then SoD won't change your mind :D .

For me - 4/10, and would not replay again (really, probably I would just cheat exp and items to BG2 to save some time).

 

[Red Hexapus]

So I guess I should choose faction now, don't really know which one yet.

You can always choose yourself - the best faction there is

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS FINISHED SPEC OPS

THE GAMEPLAY WAS STANDARD POPAMOLE NOTHING GREAT

THE SUPER SHOCKING VIOLENT PLOT POINT AGAUN HARD TO TAKE SERIOUSLY WHEN YUOIR HEADSHOTTING PEOPLE BY THE DOZEN LOLLLOLLOL WHY NOT BURN A FEW

EVEN WHILE DRUNK AND HIGH IT WAS AT LEAST A LITTLE MEMORABLE

I DID GET A CHANCE TO PULL AN IDF MOVE AND FIRE INTO A CROWD OF UNARMED ANGRY ARABS

NEXT IS BINARY DOMAIN CAUSE ONE OF YOU FAGS RECOMMENDED IT

IN WARBAND FUTURE QUEEN BRO OWNS BUSINESSEESS IN EVERY TOWN AND IS NOW KISSING EVERY SWADIAN LORDS ASS BEFORE I BECOME A LORD

 

[Hag]

Dropped Death Crown after 3 hours or so. The second campaign somehow is even worse than the first, and anyway you can only play this unreadable mess for so long before getting bored of the randomness, repetition and overall complete lack of fun.
So art is 4/5, idea is 3/5, depth is 2/5 and playability is 0/5, so I give it a that is ok for the price I paid it but not much more.
Gimmick game.

 

[Kabas]

Finished Quake

The most surprising thing is how much i ended up liking the environments despite it beeing mostly shades of brown or grey.

 

[Kabas]

After finishing Quake decided to give Severance Blade of darkness a try and, well...

Codex, i have a confession to make. I didn't enjoy Arx Fatalis. Felt it was way too slow, gathering 1000 things i might or might not need is a chore and the magic system is unenjoyably clunky. Also noticed hints of future backtracking by the time i decided to drop it.
Severance reminded of Arx Fatalis for a bunch of reasons. Love the atmoshpere, general vibes and severing people's/orc's limbs feels satisfying but i just can't get used to the controls and how slow the character walks. It's also belongs to that genre of video games in which you smash a lot of crates, with added pain of having to fight against the controls each time you try to smash one. Maybe it plays better with a gamepad but i already lost interest.

 

[Starwars]

I replayed Tyranny

Actually enjoyed it more than I ever did before I think. I was disappointed in it when it first came out but now I must say I think it's really good. It's a shame that it misses the mark here and there, the combat in particular turns into a real slog in a few places. It's too bad since there are some genuinely fun ideas, like the spell creation system. Having the spires as your base where you can do various things is also a fun idea but sadly it doesn't amount to as much as one would like.
I think the DLC stuff released for it really managed to make the game feel a bit more fleshed out. Even something as seemingly inconsequential as the random encounter pack really added some much needed density to the game. A small thing on its own but really helps the game's pace.

The writing is all over the place, sometimes getting quite bad. But it's also pretty entertaining a lot of the times. And the setting is actually great, sort of a shame we never got to see more of it. At the same time, I like that you have a sort of limited scope of the world in Tyranny. You never solve all of the mysteries.

The reactivity is mostly excellent, though sometimes you can tell it all gets a bit jumbled.

Had a good time overall. Unfortunately it didn't quite live up to its potential, but it's also pretty underappreciated I'd say.

Will say that my enjoyment of the game went up quite a lot after turning the voiceacting off.

 

[Kabas]

Quake

Fuck, i only just now realised that i have beaten the game without music. And i was wondering why the game was weirdly quiet.
Well, i am yet to try the hard difficulty anyway.
Edit: plus the fan missions, heard there is a bunch of good ones.

 

[Beggar]

Playing Syberia. Checked how long this game is, it is written that it takes around 10-12h to finish it. Based on the pace and things going on I think I completed about 70% of it and I already clocked 16 hours. That's how you know you are stupid.
At the same time this game is such a fresh air, everything is beautiful and feels so alive.

 

[adddeed]

Playing Oblivion in 3D Vision, gotta say looks pretty great and having fun with it.

 

[ferratilis]

Quake

Fuck, i only just now realised that i have beaten the game without music. And i was wondering why the game was weirdly quiet.
Well, i am yet to try the hard difficulty anyway.
Edit: plus the fan missions, heard there is a bunch of good ones.

You're not a real man until you beat it on Nightmare.

Spoiler

The version sold on Steam includes music, some fan-made levels, a few other improvements, and is pretty good overall. If you're interested in it, that is.

 

[Gamezor]

Playing Oblivion in 3D Vision, gotta say looks pretty great and having fun with it.

How do you play it this way / what is 3d Vision?

 

[adddeed]

Its nvidia's stereoscopic 3D tech that came around 2009 i think. You need to have an nvidia video card (i think driver version 425 was the last one that supported it, although there is a way to manually install the 3D vision drivers on later versions, for example im on 473) , and also need to have a 3D vision compatible LCD that supports 120Hz.

Then you enable it and make any game 3D, a whole bunch (mostly older games circa 2010-2013) are officially supported, while tons of others have fixes to fix support, so can play pretty much any game in 3D.

Gotta say looks great and next best thing after actual VR. To me it looks exactly like VR looks (in terms of hwo things are actually 3D) except you're not "in" the game as you are in VR in total immersion.

But yes playing Oblivion (or any other game ) in 3D is super cool. And of course going back and playing it normally is a bit of letdown and you realize that we never really play games in 3D even though they are 3D. We are just playing them flat and two dimensional, 3D makes a big difference to immersion.

If you ever played a game in VR its like that but as i said you're not in the game but watching it in 3D, that's the main difference. But as tech 3D Vision works great , it basically renders the game twice for each eye. So if you are getting 80 FPS in the game normally, you'd get 40 FPS with 3D Vision.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Reminds me of

 

[Darth Roxor]

Fuck, i only just now realised that i have beaten the game without music.

Many such cases!

 

[udm]

Fuck, i only just now realised that i have beaten the game without music.

Many such cases!

I completed Jedi Knight and almost completed Quake on pirated discs back then, so soundtracks weren't included. At some points they felt more like horror games lol.