What game are you wasting time on?

[Derringer]

I was going through Wild Arms 4 and 5 since I was just bum-rushing them after 2, 4 gets retarded as fuck and the puzzles suck ass even compared to the earlier ones and 5 feels only slightly less empty, Wild Arms as a whole is a dodgy as fuck game series but I can't say it's any worse than most throwaway JRPGs I've played since the well produced music helps to make them playable.

 

[Stella Brando]

 

[Vic]

Game #4 of the year is beaten.

Respect, it made me aware that I'm slacking, still haven't beaten the first game of this year, despite being initially motivated to beat lots of games by last year's "games you've beaten" thread. I am playing 4 different games currently.... maybe beating games is not for me, I enjoy playing a little bit of this and that depending on what mood I'm in.

 

[Modron]

I mean as long as you stick with those games it's not really a bad thing to diversify can help with not getting burned out. Eventually you'll finish those four games.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I'm playing Dishonored. Doing the last DLC, the one with Delilah. But it's getting tiresome. Did a High Chaos run as Daud, since it makes no sense for him to be stealthy like Corvo. I'm at this mission where you have the dogs with the skulls but I think I'm just going to leave it there.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I've been playing the Blackwell series of adventure games by Wadjet Eye. So far I've finished the first two (Legacy and Unbound) and started the third one (Convergence). It's interesting to see how more mechanics were gradually incorporated over the games as the developers obviously became more proficient at AGS.

I think they're ok so far. Not great - they're a sort of hybrid between an investigation game and a traditional adventure game. You have to check your notes, make connections between events/people to open up more dialogue options, etc. Puzzles have been very primitive and the times I got a little stuck were because of procedural rather than conceptual issues. For example, in the second game you have to find out the first name of a reporter who works at the New Yorker. The "investigation" method of that game is looking up names in a phonebook, so you look New Yorker up, and the main character tells you that she knows where the address of the magazine is located. However, the location doesn't open up on the map until you call the place, which makes no sense.

The writing is serviceable but somewhat bland. These games give off a GK-lite vibe that's not altogether unpleasant, and they're quite short, which probably means I'll finish all of them eventually.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I think the first three games are quite short, yeah. Somewhere between 2 and 3 hours. The fourth one is a bit longer, and the fifth one is 5 hours long.

 

[Ezekiel]

Got bored of all the modern open world games I was playing, dropped them for the time being to replay Portal 2. Better than any of the games I was playing, but a lot of the puzzles are for babies (Excessive tutorial areas.) and it tries too hard to be funny, with much more talkative GlaDOS (and Wheatley and Spider-Man's boss) than in first game. Been long enough that I don't remember any of the puzzles.

 

[Darth Roxor]

And das it for Hexen. Second time I finish it, oddly enough this time around I had a much easier time with 'doors opening elsewhere', and certainly not due to remembering their locations, because I couldn't remember shit from my previous playthrough. Maybe I just paid more attention this time.

Still a great game though, and perhaps the only one of its kind. I wouldn't even call it a shooter per se, it's more like a dungeon crawler of sorts. It's also nice to see the Doom engine pushed to its limits, though I guess Strife could give it a run for its money in this particular regard.

Checking my old-ass posts about my previous playthrough, one thing that stuck was my final impression how each and every single monster type in this game is somehow fucking annoying, and boy this is definitely still the case. The fucking centaurs are easily the worst though, ESPECIALLY when you aren't playing the Cleric and can't just go Chemical Ali on their fucking asses when they shield up.

 

[Abu Antar]

Game #5 beaten. This time, it is Mini Ninjas. Reminds me of a PS2 mascot action adventure game. Not the best game out there, with some medium tier controls, low enemy variety, and QTEs. It had a decent soundtrack, so I went to check the composer's discography, but it seems that he only composed for this game. Not a game that I could really recommend. Didn't love it, didn't hate it. It's just one of those games that I stuck with until the end, for some reason.

 

[Jinn]

You working through your backlog sounds like a depressing day job a lot of the time, Abu Antar. It make-a me sad sometimes.

 

[Abu Antar]

You working through your backlog sounds like a depressing day job a lot of the time, Abu Antar. It make-a me sad sometimes.

Don't be. I don't complete all games. Besides, the first two games of the year, I only played for one hour, and two hours respectively in 2023. The other three games took me a combined 40 hours. If there's something that I absolutely can't stand, or if I'm too shit at the game, I will abandon it.

 

[Caim]

Game #5 beaten. This time, it is Mini Ninjas. Reminds me of a PS2 mascot action adventure game. Not the best game out there, with some medium tier controls, low enemy variety, and QTEs. It had a decent soundtrack, so I went to check the composer's discography, but it seems that he only composed for this game. Not a game that I could really recommend. Didn't love it, didn't hate it. It's just one of those games that I stuck with until the end, for some reason.

Still weird that a game like that was made by the same studio that made Hitman.

 

[Darth Roxor]

For some reason Hexen made me feel like playing Rune again. I got it off ZOG, and the first thing that surprised me was that the 'main' version of the game there is called 'Rune Classic', while 'Rune Gold' is included as a bonus. So I go whatever and install Classic, maybe it's easier to run on a modern OS, since it's a 2012 re-release.

I start playing and I quickly notice that things are suspiciously not as I remember. First, the weapon special powers don't match - I could clearly remember the viking short sword invoking an energy shield, while here it had life steal that I remembered from the viking broadsword.

Then once the proper action starts after the intro, I jump down three times and suddenly end up in Hel. This made me go very strongly wut because I was sure that the first chapter in the sunken caves was much longer and involved going into the bowels of the earth while whacking big crabs all over the place.

Still, I ran into a technical problem with it where the engine refused to do proper light mapping so everything was DARK AS ALL SHIT and just about unplayable at times. A bunch of workarounds I tried didn't werk, so I installed Gold instead to check if maybe it'll work there.

And it did!

And what do you know, the weapon powers returned to how I remembered them when I started anew.

Still, I was glad that I wouldn't lose a lot of progress from the Classic version since I quit relatively at the start.

And then it turned out that the first chapter was ABSOLUTELY GUTTED in the Classic version. It was reduced to like 1/4 of its original size, IF EVEN THAT.

"Classic" my ass. Should have been called "Director's Cut" or something. Avoid like the plague.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Finding the roman sword in R00n might be one of the most satisfying moments in gaming history.

 

[Abu Antar]

Got hooked on Alt254. Got it with as an extra DRM free game with an old Humble Bundle. Booted it up, like I tend to do with most of these, that used to be part of it every month. I was expecting to play it for 20 minutes, just to try it, and then delete. Instead, I got hooked. It's great in its simplicity. Combat has you bump into enemies, but be careful that they don't bump into you. Exploration is where this shines. It's a good feeling to find the way to progress, by finding keys, solving puzzles, or beating enemies. Everything is boiled down to its simplest form, but done in such a manner, that I can't but adore it. I will use master Todd's mantra: It simply works.

So, without further ado: Game #6 of the year, Alt254 is done.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Tried to get into Frostpunk but there's no strategy element to it. You go through the motions without a real consideration for a viable tactic other than the one they want you to play. And I'm not talking the story beats... I mean, if anything, the story suggests the worst possible things you could do at any given moment in time. I'm tempted to make the generator explode for shit and giggles.
I made it to the Mountaintops of Giants in Elden Ring, but I'm taking a break from it because it reached that point where bosses are normal enemies now (one of these ruins is filled with the ice dude from one of the gaols). So I fired up DS2 and man, I missed this urgency of having to watch every corner, every step of the way, and also do some actual resource management. Was invaded, even, but I managed to kill my invader. For some reason DS2 is the game where I do stand a chace when invasions happen (and oddly enough some of the NPC invasions used to be more complicated than the PC ones). Maybe the Soul Memory thing is working as intended? Maybe DS2 players are just bad?

 

[Ezekiel]

Finished that 2D art game Gris yesterday. I don't recommend it. Feels too one-note, not interesting enough mechanically, music could be made by an AI in a few years. Briefly played some Ecco: The Tides of Time (Mega Drive OST, not Sega CD one) in the background, which was a marked improvement for that little while. But that's not why I wanted to talk about it. The ending was a video plagued with giant macroblocks/pixelation, washed out colors, fuzziness... I really wanna see better compression for videos in games. Even in the games with giant installs the videos still look like some low res porn vids or anime fansubs from 2004.

 

[Sigourn]

I would like to start wasting my time with Shadow Warrior. The question is, which source port should I go with? At the moment I'm torn between Raze and VoidSW. I quite like the new gimmicks from Raze (ambient occlusion, UI improvements), but which one offers the best fidelity?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

For some reason Hexen made me feel like playing Rune again. I got it off ZOG, and the first thing that surprised me was that the 'main' version of the game there is called 'Rune Classic', while 'Rune Gold' is included as a bonus. So I go whatever and install Classic, maybe it's easier to run on a modern OS, since it's a 2012 re-release.

I start playing and I quickly notice that things are suspiciously not as I remember. First, the weapon special powers don't match - I could clearly remember the viking short sword invoking an energy shield, while here it had life steal that I remembered from the viking broadsword.

Then once the proper action starts after the intro, I jump down three times and suddenly end up in Hel. This made me go very strongly wut because I was sure that the first chapter in the sunken caves was much longer and involved going into the bowels of the earth while whacking big crabs all over the place.

Still, I ran into a technical problem with it where the engine refused to do proper light mapping so everything was DARK AS ALL SHIT and just about unplayable at times. A bunch of workarounds I tried didn't werk, so I installed Gold instead to check if maybe it'll work there.

And it did!

And what do you know, the weapon powers returned to how I remembered them when I started anew.

Still, I was glad that I wouldn't lose a lot of progress from the Classic version since I quit relatively at the start.

And then it turned out that the first chapter was ABSOLUTELY GUTTED in the Classic version. It was reduced to like 1/4 of its original size, IF EVEN THAT.

"Classic" my ass. Should have been called "Director's Cut" or something. Avoid like the plague.

I could swear it was Classic that I played and it was exactly as I remember the not removed from inventory version.

 

[Hagashager]

Currently doing sporadic sessions of Civ V. Yes, yes, I know, shit taste, worst in the series, blah blah. Literally the first Codexian lynch mob against me I had here was saying I thought CiV was worth emulating for Master of Magic.

In any event, playing as Venice, doing a one-city challenge with the civ meant for one-city challenges. It's been fun, though even with one city, having both the Iroquise and Greeks as my neighbors has forced to be fairly martial. Protecting city-states has been a real bastard.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS DONE WITH MONSTER HUNTER RISE JUST SEEMS SMALL

PLAYING FOREGONE FUN ENOUGH I GUESS

 

[muckguppy]

Mobile Legends and Marvel Snap because I've lost my way

 

[I'm Big Into Anal]

zero sievert

best game ive played since underrail, I dont know why the codex isnt talking about this little game it is pure INCLINE

its hard; holy fucking shit its hard. i have a 50% survival rate on hunts and bosses WILL one shot you

and fuck boars man, fuck them right up the arse holy fuck if two of them surround you you are FUCKED

anyway, i digress

oh, and its something to play to scratch that tarkov and STALKER itch.

its early access and expensive for what it is but 50+ hours over 2 weeks playtime for me is unheard of since, well, as mentioned before; underrail.

made by Cabo Studio, an italian dude (yes, one dude). He regularly updates the thing and is obviously passionate

totally flown under the radar and thats a shame.

places like the codex should be buying and shilling this shit

highly recommended

 

[Frank Capicoli]

I dont know why the codex isnt talking about this little game it is pure INCLINE

its early access

Found out why.