What game are you wasting time on?

[Denim Destroyer]

Just finished my first play-through of Gothic 2 + NOTR. As a an overall package this is most a near improvement over Gothic 1 in all regards but I found the setting and scenario to be more generic compared to the first games penal colony. It doesn't help that two of the six chapters take place in the colony. Aside from that every other aspect is improved: quests, world design, RPG systems, graphics, and content variety are all much better in Gothic 2. Now what I could not stand in this game are the dragons. These enemies were hyped up to be major world ending threats but in game are weak farts. All they do is fly around and knock you back with fire which makes them more annoying than dangerous.

Gothic 1 spoiler

How do you go from defeating the extra dimensional Sleeper who, in addition to his own attacks, used highly trained religious fanatics that shared your moveset, to a single undead dragon who is no different than the other four dragons you killed? Well as it turns out you don't because the latter was an immense disappointment that is a stain on an otherwise excellent game.

Now for Night Of The Raven, I don't really have much to say about this expansion. It was perfectly serviceable by providing an extra ten to fifteen hours of combat heavy content, I like the games combat so this was fine for me but I imagine some people would hate the expansion on this basis. Overall a decent experience but not as great as the base game.

 

[Abu Antar]

I'm now done with the Deponia series. The first two games, I liked a lot. The last two were weaker. Not as funny, interesting, and both had crappy endings. The games look good, and have okay puzzles.

I'm in act two of Baldur's Gate III. That is on my solo run. I also have a murderhobo co-op run. Combat is good, with some really fun encounters here and there. Exploration is decent to good. Writing is Larian fare. It's not great, but I don't really hate it. There's some degeneracy here and there. I swiftly rejected all romances, and the character creator with the body type/genital thing is lolworthy, but other than that, it has mostly been fine. There have been one gay couple speaking to each other, but I have mostly not noticed anything else.
Itemization is much better than DOS2. I have a few setups of armors/weapons/accessories that I use depending on what type of enemy is faced. In general, I do not like what I have seen from D&D 5E compared to older versions. Playing a monk that gets a crap load of attacks each turn. Music is hit and miss. The same goes for atmosphere. First area is too bright. Grymforge, Underdark, and Shadowlands are better in this regard.

Mafia Remake or Definitive Edition (don't know what it's called). It's not the definitive edition of the game, the original is. Still, it's solid enough for me to keep playing. I just stick to missions and don't really explore anything else. I beat the race, and a couple of missions after that. I think the quest with the Church shootout is where I left off.

INSOMNIA: The Ark. This one is longer than I expected. 40 hours in. After having pumped up only non-combat skills, combat skills are now improved, and main character doesn't die so fast. I still wish that they didn't change to third person camera. On several occasions, I though that I was done with the game, but stubbornness have kept me going despite numerous deaths, and some bugs.

Ganbare! Superstrikers. I play a game every few days. I think that I have six games left to beat the game. It's a time wasting game, when I am not up for doing anything else.

Other than these, I have co-op campaigns in DOS, DOS2, and few converted turn-based bros want to co-op Jagged Alliance 3, Wartales, and Solasta. Told them that I won't do those until we finish the DOS/DOS2 runs.

 

[BruceVC]

I completed King Arthur Wargame 2 after 50 hours, I was surprised how much shorter the overall narrative was compared to KA1. I mentioned previously in KA2 they changed certain mechanics and I dont think some of them made the game better but things like artifact crafting is fun and useful and then you can train more units like monsters which adds variety to overall battles and your strategies

KA2 gets a 60/100 on the " BruceVC game rating system" and in summary its not as good as KA1 but its still worth playing if you enjoy RTS and RPG hybrids

 

[NecroLord]

Finished Thief Gold two days ago. I've played a lot of Thief: TDP in my youth but never finished the last 3 maps. To be honest, those last few maps kinda blow so I haven't missed much. Of the three new missions in the 'Gold' version, I personally thought only 'Songs of the Caverns' was cool. Fuck that Thief Guild mission though.

Best thing about finishing Thief 1 however, is the fact that I can now continue on to Thief 2: The Metal Age, which is (imho) superior in almost every way. Just like with its predecessor, I've spend a lot of hours in Thief 2: TMA but never managed to finish it. I'm currently on mission 6 and I'm having a total blast. I adore the gameplay, the world building, the voice acting and the large sandboxy maps. Such a good game and you're a fucking taffer if you disagree.

Song of the Caverns is a really awesome mission. I think it embodies the philosophy of designing not merely a half assed game level, but a place, a location which nearly mirrors a real one (an opera in this case).
Anyway, Thieves Guild is not that bad (but not great either), although I am at a point where I know every place where there is loot after having played the Thief games so extensively. The thieves themselves are a problem because of how many of them there are.

 

[Vyadhis]

I was playing non-EE BG1 but my game got corrupted and anytime I entered the Beregost smithy my game would crash. Backing up saves replicated the problem on new installs so I had to start over which pissed me off. Right now I'm playing Quake in dosbox, in all its 320 x 200 goodness. Might play some unmodded X-com later. I spent most of yesterday configuring my favorite games to run near perfectly in W11, even got pre-reforged/non-pozzed Warcraft 3 working because I wanted to replay TFT's campaign. No online but nuBlizz ruined the current version of their game so who cares?

I have Armored Core 6 but have only played a bit so far.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I just moved so I haven't had much time to game lately, but I played a few rounds of Shotgun King last night. It's fun and quirky, basically a turn based roguelike (new roguelikes, not traditional) that relies on chess movement, shotgun spread, and RNG boons for both sides after each round that modify the board and your stats.
It won't keep you engrossed for a significant amount of time, but worth checking out if you want something bite sized and original to kill up to a few hours with. A full successful run of the "campaign mode" probably takes roughly 20-30 minutes if I had to guess. I had one successful full run and a few attempts and clocked in an hour of playtime. There's also an endless mode and something else I haven't unlocked yet.

EDIT: Clarified/corrected time estimate for gameplay.

 

[Kabas]

Monk promotion quest was definitely the most annoying one. Finally finished with the class promotions and is currently halfway done with the Serpent Temple.
My dudes so far:
-Gourk Barbarian. Second highest kill count on the team and is currently the only guy on the team who doesn't know any magic. Just bought a blacksmith trait for him so that he can learn item repair skill.
-Human Paladin is both a decent fighter and a good enough secondary healer. She only suffers from somewhat mediocre stats but access to two guild trainers at the same time should help compensate for that.
-Dwarf Monk i focused purely on a spiritual magic so far. Considering switching focus to unarmed fighting skill once i finish with mastering the healing magic. Also suffers from mediocre stats.
-Omphaaz Warlock has the highest kill count so far, twice as high as my barbarian. This elephant is out for blood and thus will focus on the Fiend Magic and then Stone right after mastering the Sun Magic. Despite having the Ancient lore trait i still didn't get an access to artifact skill for some reason.
-Gnome Bard, also just got promoted and already maxed out Dex and Int. Made me realise that i really understimated the usefulness of Int attrubute. She will be focusing heavily on the moon magic now.
-Whiskah Ranger. Doesn't feel useless but at the rate things are going the Serpent Temple will be cleared by the time he finally learns the cure posion spell.
The game is still fun to play, just need to take occasional breaks.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Replayed Quake (Id's original levels) after many years. On a modern source port (Ironwail) on an OLED display at 120 FPS it's almost a completely different game. Gone is the gloom of the original release. Some people dislike Sandy Petersen's 4th episode but I felt it really keeps you on your toes like none of the other episodes with all the traps and surprises; in fact the most I've ever seen in a game. Some enemies like the dreaded hopping blue blobs (almost impossible to kill once they get hopping) keep that tension right up until the final episode. I don't remember any of this stuff back in 1997. However, the end boss Shub-Niggurath was a disappointment. Brilliantly conceived but buggy as fuck. I guess you're suppose to jump through the portal and telefrag it. Sometimes it worked, most often it didn't. I replayed that ending at least ten times to understand why I was able to get the "Congratulations!" screen 3 times without firing a shot at the boss and other times jumping through the portal right into a pool of red hot magma. Now I'm gonna hit the mods starting with Arcane Dimension because I got the quake bug and the modding community is in the Top 5, up there with Doom and Thief, imo.

 

[Axel_am]

My initial Divinity Original Sin co-op playthrough fell apart as me and the other guy haven't been able to synch our schedules. Not for lack of trying on my part. Co-Op in CRPGs are a different beast. You can't really start the game and finish it with somebody else in one session. Or even in ten. The difference in knowledge about the game is also a factor. Maybe DLC content specifically for co-op can fix this.

Right now I'm going through the original Pillars of Eternity on Path of the Damned. My party just entered Twin Elms and are about to proceed with Act 3. My aim is to - resolve my conflict with Thaos, deal with The Master Below, defend my position as Master of Caed Nua and proceed further into the White March.

Progress is slow and battles are tougher. I'm starting to feel the pressure but I am determined to reach my goals.

 

[Avonaeon]

Got through Halo 2 of the master chief collection, and it's a pretty good game. A lot more story, which I liked from the first one. The anniversary cutscenes looks amazing, so I switched to those when they happened, but mostly played with OG graphics otherwise, mostly because it ran real bad with the anniversary graphics. Overall the level design is a lot less copy-pasty, but still quite samey when it comes to the alien stuff, but not unbearable as with the first one. A few places were so dark I couldn't see where to go though, so I'd switch to the anniversary graphics, just to see if it was signposted differently, which is usually was. Fidelity wise I actually preferred Halo 1, and I can't really explain why.
I liked playing sections as an alien, but it sometimes got a little confusing since you're so used to shooting all the aliens, but now all of a sudden some of them are friendly.
Overall, I enjoyed it more than Halo 1.

 

[BruceVC]

I have decided to play Fallout 1 as my next game, I have never played that or FO2

But Im leaving on Wednesday for about 7 days for a work trip so I will start when I come back, I was researching some mods for FO1 and the only one that seems recommended is the Fixit mod which I have installed?

So until I get back I started on King Arthur Wargame 1 Druids DLC. Its excellent and has the same mechanics as KA1 and it has added some additional ones. I set the victory criteria as conquering all the provinces and making sure I have 10 knights so it should be challenging

'

 

[Vyadhis]

What's the best way to play Doom 64 outside of the offical remaster?

 

[Sigourn]

What's the best way to play Doom 64 outside of the offical remaster?

What don't you like about it?

 

[Semiurge]

Quake I Enhaced Edition, aka QuaKEX

I'm currently in Scourge of Armagon and there's some things I've only now noticed - the decals from gunfire, the random fly buzzing where there are corpses starting from the second episode, and the fact that some gremlin corpses seem to gib by themselves after a few seconds. That could well be a bug, but it would also make sense. The gremlins also seem to prefer fighting each other once they've stolen a weapon.

The centroids seem to have even more pathing problems than other enemy types, it was already too easy to exploit corners against others. Oh, they and the gremlins also have glowing shaders now despite the models being orherwise untouched.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

I have a problem.

 

[Caim]

No. You have completed the game, and now you are free.

Until it gets updated of course.

 

[Jaesun]

I actually backed the System Shock remake and now very slowly going through the game (I'm a story fag so I have to find all the data logs and stuff). I am really liking how the finished game turned out. I think they so far got that delicate balance of preserving the old but also bringing it up to date. Very happy I backed this.

 

[AlwaysBrotoMen]

Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart - mediocre game with good graphics. Not worth playing

Witcher 3 - Campaign is a bore fest and the main character sucks. It drags too long.
World Building ++++
Characters -------
Witcher 1 >>>>>>> Witcher 3
Most Overhyped video game of the past 10 years.

Yakuza Like A Dragon - boring story with awful dialogue. Drags on too long. Most of the characters are downright cartoonish and all the NPCs always want to fight with you without any reason. This is the first yakuza game that bored me to death. Side missions are similar to previous yakuza games.

Lost Judgement - I like the combat but the story drags on too long with unskippable stupid side missions which affect the flow of the main story. Everything is copied and pasted from yakuza games.

Yakuza Ishin is a good game with a decent story. I did not like the combat. There were many parts of the story which were nonsensical. This game is inspired by Japanese folklore/history and it was a breath of fresh air away from Kamurocho.

 

[Avonaeon]

Finished Halo 3 and it's OK. It feels significantly dumbed down, like the way characters talk to you or the oversized HUD. The story is still the best part, but it's not as good as Halo 2. The level design feels very intuitive, as every turn I took turned out to be the right way, but backtracking unfortunately made a return. Out of the 3, it also had a bit more variation in its environments. Graphically it looks a fair bit better than Halo 2, but one thing that really stood out in a bad way was the last driving sequence, which just seemed slapped together at the last minute.
And Ron Perlman's character looks

 

[Vyadhis]

Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart - mediocre game with good graphics. Not worth playing

Witcher 3 - Campaign is a bore fest and the main character sucks. It drags too long.
World Building ++++
Characters -------
Witcher 1 >>>>>>> Witcher 3
Most Overhyped video game of the past 10 years.

Yakuza Like A Dragon - boring story with awful dialogue. Drags on too long. Most of the characters are downright cartoonish and all the NPCs always want to fight with you without any reason. This is the first yakuza game that bored me to death. Side missions are similar to previous yakuza games.

Lost Judgement - I like the combat but the story drags on too long with unskippable stupid side missions which affect the flow of the main story. Everything is copied and pasted from yakuza games.

Yakuza Ishin is a good game with a decent story. I did not like the combat. There were many parts of the story which were nonsensical. This game is inspired by Japanese folklore/history and it was a breath of fresh air away from Kamurocho.

Again and again I've tried so hard to get into the Witcher 3 but I get so bored. I can't get into the combat and the story feels like a slog. I don't understand why people orgasm over these games, there's no depth or nuance to the gameplay and the story just wasn't doing it for me. Yay I guess because in an age of tranny bait games we have a protag who's masculine, isn't portrayed as evil and who fucks lots of women. Cool, I guess.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart - mediocre game with good graphics. Not worth playing

Witcher 3 - Campaign is a bore fest and the main character sucks. It drags too long.
World Building ++++
Characters -------
Witcher 1 >>>>>>> Witcher 3
Most Overhyped video game of the past 10 years.

Yakuza Like A Dragon - boring story with awful dialogue. Drags on too long. Most of the characters are downright cartoonish and all the NPCs always want to fight with you without any reason. This is the first yakuza game that bored me to death. Side missions are similar to previous yakuza games.

Lost Judgement - I like the combat but the story drags on too long with unskippable stupid side missions which affect the flow of the main story. Everything is copied and pasted from yakuza games.

Yakuza Ishin is a good game with a decent story. I did not like the combat. There were many parts of the story which were nonsensical. This game is inspired by Japanese folklore/history and it was a breath of fresh air away from Kamurocho.

What a waste of like a hundred(s)+ hours there. You sound like you hardly enjoyed any of it. Stop playing videogames, or play something you actually enjoy. How depressing.

 

[AlwaysBrotoMen]

Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart - mediocre game with good graphics. Not worth playing

Witcher 3 - Campaign is a bore fest and the main character sucks. It drags too long.
World Building ++++
Characters -------
Witcher 1 >>>>>>> Witcher 3
Most Overhyped video game of the past 10 years.

Yakuza Like A Dragon - boring story with awful dialogue. Drags on too long. Most of the characters are downright cartoonish and all the NPCs always want to fight with you without any reason. This is the first yakuza game that bored me to death. Side missions are similar to previous yakuza games.

Lost Judgement - I like the combat but the story drags on too long with unskippable stupid side missions which affect the flow of the main story. Everything is copied and pasted from yakuza games.

Yakuza Ishin is a good game with a decent story. I did not like the combat. There were many parts of the story which were nonsensical. This game is inspired by Japanese folklore/history and it was a breath of fresh air away from Kamurocho.

What a waste of like a hundred(s)+ hours there. You sound like you hardly enjoyed any of it. Stop playing videogames, or play something you actually enjoy. How depressing.

Most of these were recommended by codex

 

[Vyadhis]

BG1 non-EE on insanity is starting to filter me. I killed the insane cleric guy (Bassilus?) but whenever I get ambushed by tons of skeletons or archers I have to save scum. Its a good thing I'm not into no save no reload playthroughs but I'm starting to feel cheasy. Kagain and MC proffed into bows are my mvps. Viconia is really dependable too. Monty is fine, I gave him crossbows, Edwin is as well but Xzar kinda feels like wasted space right now. I love having magic users but maybe I should pick up Shar-teel instead and dual her for backstabbing.

I'd just need to leave Xzar in a building, right?

 

[502]

Replaying Quake II with Nightdive's update. The leap attack doesn't bother me. Super shotgun is love.

And mere weeks after finishing the legacy Mass Effect trilogy I'm playing Legendary Edition.

 

[Vyadhis]

Replaying Quake II with Nightdive's update. The leap attack doesn't bother me. Super shotgun is love.

And mere weeks after finishing the legacy Mass Effect trilogy I'm playing Legendary Edition.

The series has its flaws but was kind of the last hurrah of Bioware before they went absolutely to shit. Not ashamed to say that the trilogy is a guilty pleasure of mine, the first game especially does a great job replicating the feel of 80s scifi.