What game are you wasting time on?

[antimeridian]

Gave Weird West a try. Whoever came up with the idea of an isometric immersive sim should be shot. There's the occasional nifty idea but the camera and combat - the core gameplay - is a fucking chore. "Immersive" systems are present but feel pointless. Level design is EVERYTHING in this type of game and you quickly realize this game doesn't have any. Trash loot, bullshit color-coded gun rarity... some truly baffling design decisions.

I'm glad this game seems to have done decently well, and I'm still looking forward to whatever Raph and his team work on next, but it better at least be first-person.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Been playing Medieval Dynasty. It can be a fairly slow-paced, relaxing game which is what I was looking for. It has a decent amount of stuff to do. I have been concentrating on growing my village with the right people for the right jobs while also making sure it is aesthetically pleasing. Pretty happy with what they have done with the game. The seasons are varied and nice to hang out it. It's a good game for the price.

I was really hoping to rekindle a love for MMO's but most of them have become utter abominations of what they once were. There are only a few that I haven't tried out over the years and they are mostly Korean ones which don't much interest me.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

My favourite superhero ended up being the Collider dude. An extra you can buy later.
No bullshit powers you need to micromanage. Just high speed, the highest strength stat and being immune to nearly everything. Simple AF.

can't shake the feeling that the gameplay is just completely banal shit boring

I can see where is this opinion coming from considering that i didn't finish the Freedom force vs the third reich myself.
Ironically one of my favourite sequel heroes to play as ended up being the green genie.

The sequel, FF vs The 3rd Reich is deeply inferior game. While the mechanics are only marginally different, they over-emphasize a weak plot with far too many cut-scenes, unenjoyable heroes, and weaker scenario and level design. The villains are also less fun and overstay their welcome. I do not recommend the sequel. Stick to the original.

 

[NecroLord]

Doom 2.
Learn to love and appreciate the Super Shotgun. A perfect sequel to the titanic Doom.
Also playing some Heretic and I am surprised by how good it is. I think that people who dismiss the game as a "Doom clone" are dumb and miss out completely on what the game has to offer and its qualities.
Also, there are A LOT of awesome Doom 2 wads. I will play Eviternity (honestly, this is one of the best wads ever made), Back to Saturn X, Sunlust (infamous for its crushing difficulty), Hell Ground and Plutonia.


Finally, I started Thief, another one of my personal favorites. For optimum experience, play Thief during the night with headphones on. Also play it on Expert. While it may give you a hard time, you are forced to play as a thief, listen to where guards are and see their patrol patterns, find more loot and don't kill any humans. You will also have to complete additional objectives.
The second mission called Cragscleft Prison can be really tough (especially if it is your first time playing), so watch out for the Hammerites.
Yeah, this is peak gaming.

 

[Adeptus]

Currently I am playing Dragon's Dogma. Nice game, but system of character development is strange and probably I am not using it as I should. Bored a bit with walking across the same zone few times in a row because of quests, so I have a break.
During the break I am playing Dawn of War II: Retribution. Probably after finishing Imperial Guard campaign I will come back to DD.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Revenant - Regen Boosted Run
Had to disable HP regen in the Solifuge (big insect) boss fight because dealing 1dmg to 5.000 boss that have a pair of long pincers - which have much better range than your spells and melee attacks - is a pain the arse when regen kicks in.
Devs were lazy enough to make regen (hp, mana and stamina) global and shared by every living being. How nice.
Focused my Locke on spellcasting more only to find out that most spells are useless shit. Fireball and Invisibility is all you really need. All those big AoE spells like Armageddon, Cataclysm, Tornado, Maelstorm, deals less damage and can miss the target. Waste of mana.
You can become invisible in the first chapter (if you know the right combination) with starting talismans (those orbs used to cast spells) but need to raise your casting skill close to required 15 by spamming Nourish spell (it creates food, mostly mana restoring, but some big chunk of meat drops from time to time - which is a nice healing items in the first chapter of the game) and then you can try to cast Invisibility at ~13lvl of Invoke skill. Which still results in failures... mostly. But when it hits then AI is helpless.
Also found out that ogre boss (Baez, who you have to defeat in the wrestling match with no Unarmed skill - because games won't warn you to raise it before that particular fight) is immune to offensive spells.
Manual says that you should not use fire on fire monsters... but Fireball still work on them better than other spells.
Ross Scott had bad time with respawns. In my recent playthrough only first - and then final - chapter had these respawns issues. Including surprise attack from behind by the monsters who popped out in the already cleared area.

 

[Maxie]

Just reforged Masamune in Chrono Trigger

 

[Just Locus]

I've returned from my Slumber boys, Got ahold of my account again, Cryptogremlins got it and proceeded to spam my account, now it's protected and everything.

But anyways, I've been playing Left 4 Dead 2 for the better part of 3 months and It's been nothing but a blast - Excellent Level Design, charming cast of characters, well-thought-out Special Infected, the A.I Director and how he was implemented was way ahead of its time, large and diverse Weapon pool that makes it so you'll always be finding new things throughout each campaign, Mutations like Death's Door offer a more challenging but more rewarding experience and put a nice spin over the core gameplay loop.

The Sound Design is stellar, The Music Director manages the core sound space based on how each player is currently experiencing, for example; If four players were roaming, and the fourth one was way ahead of the others and was near a witch, then the Music Director makes it so only that player would have the Witch's theme play - In addition, the several sound cues for many of the infected which are even further telegraphed by the Special Infected's moans, screams, coughs etc and how the Horde have their own theme when attacking(Each Unique when playing the L4D2 Campaigns), and how at the end of Each campaign a credit roll plays showing the entire team's stats and even put a spin on the whole "No animals died during the making of this film" to an overall counter of how many common infected were killed in total during the Campaign.

I can talk about this game for hours, it has endless replay value and is nothing but excellent from top to bottom(except Cold stream, fuck Cold Stream).

 

[Valestein]

This Contra-like, where among other things, you end up playing as a dog piloting a mech blasting aliens whilst an experimented on flying chicken shooting lasers accompanies you at one point.

 

[Gamezor]

Playing ff16 and lotro. FF16 is good for what it is movie game so far. There’s actually attractive looking characters in it! And no sjw stuff yet!

Lotro is worth playing if you are into Tolkien but probably not otherwise. It’s tab targeted mmo. If you are into Tolkien I’d at least play up through the shire, visit Rivendell, visit some of the other big locations. Moria is also really cool. Shire is very well done and the game is based on books not movies. If you want to play I’d play now bc signs of sjw shenanigans have begun. I am worried about that so I level boosted to 130 so I can get through the epic quest faster and explore more easily. Also since I’m so overlevelled I don’t have to interface with the legacy systems and confusion you run into with such a long running mmo with systems and expansions stacked for days.

I spent real money to get a bunch of travel skills and premium currency that lets you do things like teleport to quest givers.

Ideally you would play through this slowly like 30 minutes a day and savor the journey and imagine you are there.

I want to exercise my imagination so looking for a text based game or ones with really rudimentary graphics. Been trying some MUDS.

 

[HansDampf]

I played a bunch of Super Mario World romhacks. Starred my favorites:
- A Plumber For All Seasons* (41 exits, 6? hours): Easy difficulty, DKC-inspired level design, and high detailed backgrounds. A good start to get into SMW hacks.
- Mario's Keytastrophe (37 exits, 3 hours): A bunch of cool one-screen puzzles.
- Super Mario Logic (94 exits, 2 hours): Another one-screen puzzle hack, but ... meh. Worst hack I've played.
- Of Jumps and Platforms (7 exits, 30 minutes): Play this to git gud at platforming.
- JUMP½* (130 exits, 30 hours): This is like SMW2 - Ultra Deluxe Edition with very un-Nintendo-like level design, a shit ton of variety, and a smooth difficulty curve that ranges from 'slightly harder than SMW' to 'I can't believe it's not Kaizo'.
- stick mice in my head and then beat my head in with a hammer and let them back out

(19 exits, 4 hours): More from the JUMP team. Almost every level gives you a unique power-up. Very gimmicky.

And a few Kaizo beginner hacks:
- Learn 2 Kaizo (1 hour): Just a tutorial that explains one trick per level.
- Baby Kaizo World* (44 exits, 6 hours): Maybe the best hack to get into Kaizo, if you don't mind the patronizing style.
- Baby Kaizo World 2 (34 exits, 5 hours): Good sequel.
- Quickie World (14 exits, 3 hours): A tiny bit harder than Baby Kaizo. Gets often recommended as a first Kaizo hack, but...
- Quickie World 2* (22 exits, 3 hours): ...you could skip the first QW and just play the sequel. It's plain better, imo, with similar difficulty.
- Love Yourself (17 exits, 1.5 hours): Very easy and painfully wholesome.
- Akogare Mario World* (28 exits, 10 hours): Considered to be a must play if you want to "ascend" from beginner to intermediate skill. Forces you to master regrabs everywhere.

I had to pause Akogare for two weeks because of wörk, but I finally found the time to finish it.
These hacks are dangerously addicting, and I've found a new appreciation for SMW's controls. There are some invisible mechanics that you won't notice from just watching the game. Most important is the regrab, which is releasing and re-pressing the jump button in mid-air to make little adjustments to your jump height and distance. Combined with low bounces and high bounces when jumping on enemies, this gives you a lot of control over your jumps. Regrabs aren't required in the original SMW, but they are useful for more precise platforming and also the bread and butter of Kaizo hacks.
Modern Kaizo hacks have come a long way since the original Kaizo Mario World from 2007. There is a trend towards more "chocolate", new enemies, power-ups, gimmicks, custom graphics, and custom music. They also tend to follow many player-friendly design conventions, like infinite lives, instant retries, frequent checkpoints, and color-coded coin guides (yellow coins = normal jump, blue coins = spin jump, green coins = throw item, etc.). They have a similar gameplay flow to hardcore platformers like Super Meat Boy or Celeste.
I'm also seeing many parallels between SMW hacks and Doom WADs, and how both games have been treated by their communities.

I still have a lot more hacks downloaded and installed, but I need to stop!

 

[Maculo]

After many years, I played through the Dawn of War 2 series again, and my impressions have changed. In the past, I held up Chaos Rising as the best in the series, but my recent all-ranged playthrough on Primarch difficulty was lackluster. Even on Primarch difficulty, I felt that I attack-moved the entire campaign, with the exception of the first mission. In contrast, I appreciated the base campaign and even Retribution more. The base campaign did a good job of creating the sense that the whole sector was fucked and you were just barely holding the line. Retribution's campaign was short, streamlined and practically abandoned the expectations of CR. Nonetheless, I appreciated the difficulty, the return of armies, and scripted events. Furthermore, it was nice to have the option to play Imperial Guard, Chaos, Eldar, etc. I just wish there were more missions and the traits were not so simplified in Retribution.

I had a momentary thought to play DOW3...but I remember the last missions being bonkers and not in a good way.

 

[Axel_am]

Just finished playing Darksiders. It felt really good to play something that focuses on being fun, short and good looking.
Even on Apocalyptic the game felt pretty easy. But I guess that's fine for a Power Fantasy game. I was really impressed by the amount of world building they did here. That and the voice acting are one of the more impressive things within the game. I highly recommend this to anyone who is looking for a brake from anything - even gaming. It's pretty straight forward, doesn't waste your time and anybody can agree that slashing demons/angels for a weekend is good for the psyche.

I got a lot of Warhammer vibes from the whole armor and enemy design. Got me wondering what would happen if the same team made a Warhammer game with a similar Hack and Slash flow. Once again I am getting the urge to play Space Marine. But the wiser thing to do would be to finish my Wrath playthrough and save that one for a different time. It's crazy how much they've improved on Kingmaker.

 

[Kabas]

Tried Dungeon Lords the steam version. Posted my impressions
here

 

[Abu Antar]

I beat God Wars: Future Past, after playing it on and off for years. Without debuffing the final boss, and buffing your party, the fight would have been unwinnable. It was a decent fight. In general, if you want a worse Final Fantasy Tactics with Japanese mythology, play it. I'd probably give it a 7/10. While it is not close to FFTs quality, it scratches the itch.

In Devil Survivor 2 (which I have played an insane amount of during vacation), I reached the sixth day. I like the gameplay more, plus how the events are set up. On the other hand, I like the characters less than the first game. The soundtrack reminds me of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel series. The game starts out more challenging than the first game, but I now have a great team setup, and am destroying enemies.

I'm obviously playing many more games, but I will write about them some other time.

 

[Late Bloomer]

I beat God Wars: Future Past, after playing it on and off for years. Without debuffing the final boss, and buffing your party, the fight would have been unwinnable. It was a decent fight. In general, if you want a worse Final Fantasy Tactics with Japanese mythology, play it. I'd probably give it a 7/10. While it is not close to FFTs quality, it scratches the itch.

I have God Wars The Complete Legend on Steam which sounds like the same game. I have been meaning to get around to playing it. How difficult would you say the game is overall? I have mostly been playing games that are low stress lately but a tactical adventur type game is sounding rather fun.

 

[Abu Antar]

I beat God Wars: Future Past, after playing it on and off for years. Without debuffing the final boss, and buffing your party, the fight would have been unwinnable. It was a decent fight. In general, if you want a worse Final Fantasy Tactics with Japanese mythology, play it. I'd probably give it a 7/10. While it is not close to FFTs quality, it scratches the itch.

I have God Wars The Complete Legend on Steam which sounds like the same game. I have been meaning to get around to playing it. How difficult would you say the game is overall? I have mostly been playing games that are low stress lately but a tactical adventur type game is sounding rather fun.

The Steam version includes all the DLCs, has a raised level cap, and I think you can deploy a larger number of units per fight.

There are a couple of fights that can be challenging, but you'll mostly be fine. I grinded a couple of times. There are three difficulty options that can be changed at any time.

Overall, I think that most players interested in the genre would do well. I have played more challanging jtrpgs. You gain different stat boosts at level ups, depending on which main class you have equipped. Important to think about is that every character should learn the priest passive skill proficiency+ to gain more job points. Not having it is a pain in the neck.

 

[deuxhero]

After playing Duke 3D again and realizing it's even better than I remember it (the episode 2 levels aren't nearly as samey as one remembers, sentry drones are really only spamed in a few levels of episode 2, there weren't that many waste of time switch puzzles you had to brute force) I realized I had no memory of Doom outside of the shareware. Played and beat episode 2, and hate to say it, but I'm not impressed.

The levels are either back tracking across a samey empty level to find the key door for the key you got or very small. Secret level and final level both made me go "Huh? That's it?!" and very few parts are memorable for good reasons (the warehouses, the opening part of the final). The one level with a fake second exit fails because the real exit will always be seen first so the player more looks at it out of curiosity than anything. Also the RNG for shotgun damage meaning you can never be sure if an Imp needs one shot or two to kill is just annoying and shows damage being RNG based adds literally nothing to the game but annoyance.

From what I can find, Shores of Hell is the most divided in fan opinion. It's either amazing (sans secret level), or worst of the four by far. Everyone hates the secret level though. I didn't realize the enemy infighting gimmick till after I completed the tedious process of killing everything in the first room the hard way because everything is segregated into a second room.

 

[markec]

Finished Yakuza 6 and I think its a good game. The main story is ok but not great, it gets a bit convoluted and has some plot holes, but overall is ok. The main issues are that there are too many new characters and majority of them are not particularly interesting, some have potential but they could have used more screen time. This is a particularly big issues when majority of your villains arent interesting. Its a game with good pacing, good story, with lots of good moments, few bad ones but also few great ones.

So far my Yakuza series ratings are 0>1>2>5>6>4>3

Now going to play Yakuza Like a Dragon.

 

[Caim]

Now going to play Yakuza Like a Dragon.

If you've played all seven so far I wonder what your take on the changes to combat will be.

 

[markec]

Now going to play Yakuza Like a Dragon.

If you've played all seven so far I wonder what your take on the changes to combat will be.

Honestly I dont really care that much about the combat since I play for the story.

 

[BruceVC]

Im about 80 hours into Gothic 2 and its been the fantastic PB experience I was expecting. Most PB games have the same excellent design which include

• no level scaling and you get killed easily if you try to face all enemies on lower levels
• no map hand holding, you need to actually explore to find quest objectives
• open world, you can go where you want and you can progress your character on multiple paths in different ways

I am now level 25 Paladin and I have just started the dragon hunt, I havent faced any dragons yet but Im killing orcs and other monsters in the Valley of Mines and gaining XP. I like the Paladin magic and ease of use of runes

I adopted a good strategy to kill certain monsters at lower levels which included the following tried and tested PB mechanics

• using spells, most scrolls only use 5 mana
• running away and using long distance attacks
• finding companions and letting them draw aggro and then I helped in combat. Im using Biff the dragon hunter at the moment for that but Im at the level and skill where I dont really need him as much

But its a fantastic game, very entertaining

 

[Matador]

Im about 80 hours into Gothic 2 and its been the fantastic PB experience I was expecting. Most PB games have the same excellent design which include

• no level scaling and you get killed easily if you try to face all enemies on lower levels
• no map hand holding, you need to actually explore to find quest objectives
• open world, you can go where you want and you can progress your character on multiple paths in different ways

I am now level 25 Paladin and I have just started the dragon hunt, I havent faced any dragons yet but Im killing orcs and other monsters in the Valley of Mines and gaining XP. I like the Paladin magic and ease of use of runes

I adopted a good strategy to kill certain monsters at lower levels which included the following tried and tested PB mechanics

• using spells, most scrolls only use 5 mana
• running away and using long distance attacks
• finding companions and letting them draw aggro and then I helped in combat. Im using Biff the dragon hunter at the moment for that but Im at the level and skill where I dont really need him as much

But its a fantastic game, very entertaining

Is it the best PB game?

 

[BruceVC]

Im about 80 hours into Gothic 2 and its been the fantastic PB experience I was expecting. Most PB games have the same excellent design which include

• no level scaling and you get killed easily if you try to face all enemies on lower levels
• no map hand holding, you need to actually explore to find quest objectives
• open world, you can go where you want and you can progress your character on multiple paths in different ways

I am now level 25 Paladin and I have just started the dragon hunt, I havent faced any dragons yet but Im killing orcs and other monsters in the Valley of Mines and gaining XP. I like the Paladin magic and ease of use of runes

I adopted a good strategy to kill certain monsters at lower levels which included the following tried and tested PB mechanics

• using spells, most scrolls only use 5 mana
• running away and using long distance attacks
• finding companions and letting them draw aggro and then I helped in combat. Im using Biff the dragon hunter at the moment for that but Im at the level and skill where I dont really need him as much

But its a fantastic game, very entertaining

Is it the best PB game?

Thats such a good question and its going to lead to different subjective views, I have now played all the PB games which include Gothic, Risen and ELEX and I loved them all. But personally I enjoyed ELEX1 the most and then Gothic 3 because of the size of the game world but G2 is definitely my next best

 

[Valestein]

This 2D mech action game where you can dismount and fight on foot too.