What game are you wasting time on?

[NecroLord]

Here's a list of enemies in Doom 3 RoE that don't get one-hit-killed by the super shotgun (at point blank):

- Hell knight
- Mancubus
- Bruiser

That's right. You can even one-shot an arch-vile if you stick the SS into its face. And some others can be easily wiped even at medium range, like commandos, cacodemons and pinkies. The only partial exception here is the revenant, because while it also dies to one focused shot, its bony character model makes shooting it with the shotgun a lottery, and it's just generally a better idea to zap it with the plasma gun to also shoot down its rockets.

This has a very, very obvious effect on the encounter design in RoE, because many of those enemies that can be one-shot with the SS appear maybe 3 times tops in the entire game. This includes commandos (tentacle and chaingun), pinkies, arch-viles and shotgun guys. Their existence is simply pointless with the SS around. Meanwhile the revenant because of its above caveat is spammed like stupid by the end, to the point where in late Phobos you'll have to mow down groups of successively spawning revenants numbering even up to 5. It's ridiculous.

Point Blank you have to deal with the slow reload time, probably taking damage if you're off a bit and need a 2nd shot, and you have to generally be dodging around well mindful of enemies nearby. Just spamming plasma/chaingun from long range is far simpler and easier. I don't see how SSG encouraging a more difficult playstyle is a bad thing. Also, the enemies in general aren't tanky in Doom 3. All the enemies that can die to 1 SSG blast also die in like 3s of sustained fire from plasma/chaingun. It's not like SSG is significantly quicker.

Bottom line, they wanted to throw more, harder enemies at you. If they only gave you the regular SG then it'd be unusable and you'd have to go to plasma/chaingun all the time. It would have been a better expansion if they varied it up a bit more but that's a problem with the encounter design not the SSG.

On an unrelated note, the Chaingun and Plasma do feel pretty superfluous weapons that do basically the same things (except chaingun is better vs. Bertruger when he's flying back and forth). Funny enough I just checked and according to doom wiki Chaingun actually has more DPS than Plasma. I was actually kind of feeling that while playing but thought I must be crazy because it'd make no sense for the plasma rifle to do less damage than the chaingun, but in fact it does.

To whomever it may concern:

Since I've finished Repercussions of Evil, is id's RAEG any good? I paid zero attention to it after release because I was under the impression it sucks, but maybe I heard wrong.

I tried it once on the off chance that it might be good and dropped it almost immediately. Can't remember exactly why but it felt awful.

What the game could've used were large arenas in Hell type of environments (like good old Doom) where you fight against droves of demons.
There is a limit on monsters though, haven't tried it, but I heard spawning many monsters leads to problems.

 

[Darth Roxor]

The green arena in hell where you get swarmed by hell knights and mancubuses was definitely a highlight of RoE.

 

[Kabas]

Ashes has the optional racing segment.

My reward for winning was the premium golden crowbar skin and breeder dude being willing to pay 300 dollars instead 150 for my dog.

Feels great

Bonus

Sons of bitches

 

[Average Manatee]

What the game could've used were large arenas in Hell type of environments (like good old Doom) where you fight against droves of demons.
There is a limit on monsters though, haven't tried it, but I heard spawning many monsters leads to problems.

Pretty sure it was just for performance reasons they limited monsters. Dynamic lighting in Doom 3 was pushing the limits of what PCs could do and every monster both means more highly detailed geometry to handle in the scene along with all of their glowing plasma attacks producing more dynamic lights to be rendered. The requirements start to go up exponentially, e.g. 6 monsters with 6 attacks lighting up all 6 monsters is 36x as much work as just 1 monsters with 1 attack. It is a shame that more of the game isn't Hell, they seem to have an extra 1 or 2 monsters per fight, probably because they are a lot less detailed and pretty much just flat surfaces compared to the techbase environments so performance could be pushed further. 4ish seemed to be the limit for non-hell and 6 in hell.

Although it was also a good idea in original Doom 3 to have the player stripped of weapons when going to hell and back. It's a great way to force the player to scavenge for ammo and weapons again (like how Doom 1 did with episodes and lots of good doom WADs enforce a similar structure). Something like a first 1/3rd techbase, middle 1/3rd hell, final 1/3rd techbase/hell/ruins would have worked well. Instead Doom 3 is 80% techbase. I did notice that RoE inexplicably let you go to hell and not lose your weapons which was weird, not sure if a log explained that because I ain't listening to that crap.

 

[Dayyālu]

Feels great

The racing theme is 9/10.



Also I've found it easier to snipe the opponents, racing is hard.

 

[Kabas]

Wait, you could snipe your opponents?
It was difficult indeed. If you allow even one dude to overtake you at the very beginning it's almost impossible to catch up.
Reward was worth it though. Would kinda prefer if i could sell the bike instead of a dog as it handles a lot better and is actually a good fighter if you dismount it.

Spoiler

Hope i didn't screw myself over by deciding to wipe out the roamers on my own. Sheriff was warning me about how the shootout might atract unwanted attention and that the baron had the plan or something. Not like i care that much about Propserity or anything, just hope that i didn't lock myself out of extra reward.

 

[gabel]

Yeah, performance.
That's why Doom/2 is still the best FPS ever.

 

[Dayyālu]

Wait, you could snipe your opponents?

Killing them all was my preferred solution. You won legit? My hat to ye.

Without going into spoilers, Prosperity has several endings, Fallout-style. If I remember right, you can ally with the Roamers, with the Baron, support the coup against the Baron, or ignore the situation altogether. I don't remember you getting particularly big rewards, the only "secrets" you can easily lose in the entire game are the PIG, the laser gun - almost useless - and the secret level. Hope you didn't miss the secret level, it requires the radio and getting several radio signals and it's magnificent.

EDIT: there's also the fake retrogame in the Nuclear Power Plant inside one of the secrets. Also the mutant seller in another secreat area before the mutant trap.

Fuck it, Afterglow is a wonderful game.

 

[Kabas]

Hope you didn't miss the secret level, it requires the radio and getting several radio signals and it's magnificent.

Spoiler

Found the laser gun and assembled the PIG. Didn't find the mutant merchant.
Does the secret level has something to do with the disc you can find in the ruins of bunker from which you freed Athena? A certain terminal later gave me the coordinates to what i assume is a russian submarine.

 

[Strange Fellow]

This Ashes thing sounds kickass as shit. Is it?

 

[gabel]

Looks pathetic, but my reference is Doom.

 

[Don Peste]

Halfway -I hope- through Alan Wake 13 years after its release. Nobody told me it's actually a TC of Max Payne 2!

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 

[NecroLord]

Playing Soldier of Fortune.

 

[antimeridian]

is id's RAEG any good?

It sucks. The combat itself isn't outright horrible despite being pretty consolized, but you're not engaging it in often enough - you spend most of your time either driving around, engaging in shitty vehicle combat, or listening to shitty NPC dialogue. It was admittedly a technological achievement on the PS360 boxes since it ran solid 60 fps with some nice art direction, but there was no vision for the game and it ended up with no identity. It's id's worst shooter and it's not even close.

 

[JarlFrank]

is id's RAEG any good?

It sucks. The combat itself isn't outright horrible despite being pretty consolized, but you're not engaging it in often enough - you spend most of your time either driving around, engaging in shitty vehicle combat, or listening to shitty NPC dialogue. It was admittedly a technological achievement on the PS360 boxes since it ran solid 60 fps with some nice art direction, but there was no vision for the game and it ended up with no identity. It's id's worst shooter and it's not even close.

It's Carmack doing his tech magic without a Romero to make cool levels.

 

[Gostak]

My PB is 1:52 so far. It's great fun, I would love to see streams of this I think. But bot races are also fun to watch, rooting for the underdog or the upcoming star you see in a newcomer.

I recently played this for so long that I had the chance and the following occurred:
The top bot pilot I raced suddenly had a cool red fire and smoke trail (which also made it harder to pass him). At first I thought he might have gotten some new gear, but there likely is no such thing.What must have happened is: One of the finish indicator flares of another race pair landing on his blade and sticking there for quite a looong ride. Sadly he lost it again, though.
Looked absolutely great!

 

[Shin]

I've just finished Gothic 2: Gold.

My spotty memory was pretty convinced I played Gothic 2 (without NotR) back in the day, but while Khorinis felt familiar, I'm pretty sure I've never played beyond the first act of G2. So I basically played G2 for the first time and mostly had a good time. Mechanically and content-wise, it's a bigger and more expansive version of the first game. I enjoyed the improved combat system and thought the various new systems were pretty neat, yet I think that I prefer the first game over G2, mostly due to its setting and story. G1 has a low fantasy world and the plot makes sense, as you're trying to escape your imprisonment. The fact you get caught up battling the Sleeper is merely an extension of that main plot point.

In G2 there's a lot more high-fantasy stuff going on and from the get-go the hero is set on a mission to save the world from evil, something that works to its detriment. I would've preferred if our hero would just try to gtfo of the island, just like Lee (former general/now merc captain) is aiming towards. Contrary to popular opinion (of having skimmed a few G2 threads here), I did like the NotR content a lot and thought Jharkendar was a lot of fun and together with Khorinis it's probably my favorite area of the game. The valley of mines is alright although it got quite tiresome (especially at first) to run circles around orcs, also the paladins are kinda lame and they're obviously the only faction running around in the VoM until the dragon hunters show up (who also kinda suck imho). The dragon fights are mechanically just bad, standing around regenerating extremely fast while they knock you back with a lame fire attack. Bah. The final act (6) is the worst of all, running around some catacombs battling skeletons while having to solve a bunch of 'puzzles' with trial and error. Bah. Also, the game doesn't wrap up nearly as neatly as G1, and while having Xardas turning out to be evil (probably) makes sense, it's sort of lame they drop that on you during the ending cinematic.

Having said all that, I enjoyed my ~60 hour-ish playthrough (finished it as a level 40 merc/dragon hunter) and I'll probably give Gothic 3 a shot, despite it's horrid reputation.

 

[Average Manatee]

This Ashes thing sounds kickass as shit. Is it?

I found it had a far too much hitscan for my liking. You can think of the gameplay as being more like a Build Engine mod than a Doom one. It's interesting but not what I'd consider great in the same way that I'd enjoy a particularly good Doom level WAD.

 

[JarlFrank]

The final act (6) is the worst of all

Something that would become a staple of Piranha Bytes from Gothic 2 onward.
Every game of theirs, the good and the bad, all have their worst part at the ending.

 

[NecroLord]

Finished Soldier of Fortune.
Game is as good as I remember it. An oldschool shooter with BALLS that feels like an early 90s action movie.

 

[octavius]

Finished Soldier of Fortune.
Game is as good as I remember it. An oldschool shooter with BALLS that feels like an early 90s action movie.

What did you think of the last level?

 

[NecroLord]

Finished Soldier of Fortune.
Game is as good as I remember it. An oldschool shooter with BALLS that feels like an early 90s action movie.

What did you think of the last level?

The fight with Dekker?
Not too bad, I avoided the turrets by staying near the door where he makes his entrance. Just kept blasting him with my MG.

 

[Frank Capicoli]

Ping ponging between a few Dark Souls series mods while waiting for Lords of the Fallen.

Age of Sunlight for Dark Souls 1 is probably the most subtle of them. I haven't played the first Dark Souls in probably 7 years so sometimes it can be hard to remember exactly what the mod changes. Over all pretty gud not really any complaints.

For Dark Souls 2 I'm redoing Seeker of Fire. This one is my go to mod for Dark Souls 2. It remixes the boss challenges and changes world progression paths. It changes the lighting system to where torches are actually needed in dark places. Soul gain is adjusted drastically down so you no longer easily out level every challenge with ease. Very nice.

Dark Souls 3 is my least favorite so I've spent considerably less time with the Convergence mod. From what I've seen so far this is a mod that spends a lot of time fleshing out the magic system in 3 to not feel as weak and boring as it was in the default game.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I've been playing Cocoon, an abstract puzzle game where you play as a winged bug of some sort.



I'm a few hours and and so far there's been some pretty creative iterative puzzles and nice atmosphere. It's a bit on the easy side but there's no handholding. There are bossfights too, which have been equally creative. It's a very simple game mecahnically - only directional movement and one action button. However, there are contextual actions and some puzzles have a timing/spacial aspect to keep things fresh.

Probably a good game to play while high, if I did that sort of thing - the scenes and the way they transition into one another are quite trippy. Environments have a clean biomechanical quality that is endearing to me, although the graphics are, again, quite simple. Apparently the game was designed by the same guy who designed Limbo and Inside, but I never played those, so I wouldn't know how it compares. I'll probably play this to completion, which is a rare thing these days.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS LEIS OF P

GOOD SOULS CLONE MANY FUN TO BE HAD