What game are you wasting time on?

[Quatlo]

Decided to dust off Halo 1. I've never entirely understood why Combat Evolved gets so much hate - it spawned some pretty bad shit down the line for sure, but the game itself is just plain fun. What's not to like about pew pewing aliens, taking over their aircraft and throwing sticky bombs at grunts? The high production values also help. Shit can be pretty tough on the highest difficulty too.

In retrospective, its not bad, people just got angry at it for beggining (by being actually decent game) the typical console shooter fad of 2 guns, regenerating hp, inaccurate guns, etc.
I hated it for Myth dying because of it.

 

[Ash]

It's bland shit and boring. If you're going to play a real "console shooter", not a fraud one made by sellout PC devs like Halo is, play the prestigious Brahma Force, Turok, Doom 64, Alien Trilogy, Disruptor and many more...geez. The fucking gall to always use these derogatory terms when you have no idea what a console shooter is actually even like before all PC devs sold out in the early 2000s making mass market retarded slop for the xbox (which then got labelled "console shooter", ironically, when both the machine and the games were made by PC sellouts) is absurd. In the 90s, console shooters were pretty good, and design-wise basically the same thing as a PC shooter principally, with some interesting twists as you can expect from any game. Everyone was blown away by the likes of Doom, System Shock, Quake etc, and so that is where the inspiration is thankfully derived. There was 7 years of console FPS history prior to the shitty xbox great decline and PC mass sellout, starting with, I believe, Zero Tolerance (1994) on the Sega Genesis of all things. Shit game unsurprisingly, but that's beside the point. There were plenty good ones to shortly follow on the more newer tech coming out at the time. Brahma Force is a System Shock meets Doom hybrid, absurdly impressive and enjoyable game. Turok 1 is a hardcore as fuck FPS with gargantuan labyrinthian levels and arcade elements included (e.g limited lives). Doom 64 is simply more Doom, a true Doom 3 of sorts unlike that shitty PC shooter. Start with these three.

 

[Hellraiser]

Decided to dust off Halo 1. I've never entirely understood why Combat Evolved gets so much hate - it spawned some pretty bad shit down the line for sure, but the game itself is just plain fun. What's not to like about pew pewing aliens, taking over their aircraft and throwing sticky bombs at grunts? The high production values also help. Shit can be pretty tough on the highest difficulty too.

Halolz difficulty was a bit bullshit although kind of understandable in the "mankind is badly fucking outgunned" worldbuilding sense (I played on the level just below legendary was called) and some sections were very tedious because of it, especially with the fucking checkpoint system it had IIRC. I originally tried beating it on legendary and it was just a pain and dropped it, replaying it years later on a setting one level lower was better, but still kind of bullshit at times.

Main problem with it was all the mindless copying of its design choices by later games, made more annoying due to it being consoletard/fratbro/baby's first FPS. Regenerating shields make sense in Halo, regenerating health in CoD is retarded.

Anyway the high points of it for me are the space opera storyfaggotry with some rather interesting ideas (Covenant, wonder where they stole it from) and the great fucking soundtrack, one of the best and sadly one of the last proper AAA game soundtracks with actual themes before the dynamic music engine bullshit or retarded hollywood trends took over.

 

[NecroLord]

Continuing the Temple of Elemental Evil CO8 new content playthrough.
There's a quest where you have to find and fight some "slavers". By the way, those slavers are a bunch of mostly Chaotic Evil degenerates with one or two Lawful Evil members. There's seven of them in total and they are mostly Level 20!
You can find them in Emridy Meadows.
The hardest battle in the game right here!
First try went poorly for me, as I forgot to buff diligently, my Wizard got a Finger of Death thrown his way by the evil Sorceress of the Slavers band (she can cast other nasty spells too, she should be your first priority to take down) and failed his save. BOOM! Instant death...
Oh, the Cleric of the Slavers can cast Blasphemy, a very nasty spell that dazes your whole party or even paralyzes them depending on how levels you are behind his caster level (which is 20 by the way). The Cleric should be your second priority to take down, hell, maybe even the first one. Try to interrupt his Blasphemy casting, or you will be in serious trouble.
The rest of the Slavers are just two straight Fighters with high HP and decent Armor Class, a Rogue/Ranger Archer (watch out for sneak attacks and his enchanted arrows, he attacks four times per round), a Half-Orc Barbarian armed with a Flaming Spiked Chain (he has almost 300 HP and has reach granted by the Spiked Chain, you should try to disable him with a spell targetting his low Will save) and a Rogue who attacks with Two Kukris and deals huge amounts of sneak attack damage. DO NOT let this bastard flank one of your more vulnerable party members, or he will turn them into a pincushion...
I kinda deserved that failed first try. That's what you get when you forget to buff diligently, especially when fighting such dangerous and high level enemies. Death Ward should be cast on ALL your party members to avoid the Fingers of Death cast by the Sorceress. Stoneskin on your tanks. Mirror Image or Invisibility on your Casters. Conviction and Resistance to improve your saving throws.
Did manage to defeat them and claim a huge amount of experience and some very nice loot.
A really awesome battle.
Good luck!

 

[soutaiseiriron]

I obviously meant around here, not in normie circles. Most people on the Codex shit over Halo.

because pc-only grognards have bad elitist opinions because of the platform the game was made for. that's literally it. halo is a good/great game on both console and PC.
doesn't matter if halo has infinitely better core gameplay design, level design, gunplay, pacing, AI, etc than any number of circlestrafey grognard PC fps slop or WW2 shovelware like MoH:AA, they'll still attack halo and defend those because they have to.

Halolz difficulty was a bit bullshit

can't remember anything of the sort on legendary. you're bad at FPS i think.

 

[Ash]

I am not a PC-only grognard., but true hardcore gamer master race. Always played on all - PC, consoles, handheld (even the FPS on the handhelds). Halo is decline. It threw out like 10 core tenets of FPS gameplay and replaced it all with...stupid vehicles and nothing much more of value to speak of. Sure I'd rather play it over WW2 shovelware, but that really is the bottom of the barrel, I'd play almost anything over those.

That said, multiplayer is a completely different case. Multiplayer gameplay is about locked-in arenas and pure combat focus, always has been, so the majority of things removed by Halo (such as resource management) are not so relevant here, and things it does have (shields, vehicles) actually shine. Singleplayer the game is straight trash though.

 

[jackofshadows]

Olympus 2207. Really good, I'm surprised. Especially after dull as shit beginning of it where I was thinking about dropping the game. Good thing I didn't! Took my more or less favorite long shot build

Spoiler

fucked it up a bit though by setting 7 per (which isn't enough for sniper) probably will need to google where the hell is the per token is (there're tokens for each stats I assume like in uhh Krishna forgive me for uttering this like in Fallout 3) if that's even work like that for taking perks. Unless I'll stumble at it myself but that's unlikely, so far I've found only 1 token.

And with these (useless) skills the early game on hard was well quite fucking hard especially since here you cannot just travel wherever you like early on because of radiation everywhere. Neat mechanic by the way except almost no one around is talking about how hard is to get anti-rad gear and drugs etc, so it looks like as if only the PC is having troubles with that. A shame. Although some tooltip was saying this mechanic is non-existant on easy so let's pretend every other NPC is playing on easy lmao. So the money are ultra tight at the start but all you need is to get lucky once or twice and get a good old encounter where one side almost getting killed by the other one and get some free loot. Still, even with free stuff it wasn't easy for me to get on my feet so to speak and to finally stop be concerned about constant rad-away consuming.

The writing is totally amateurish but the thing is - that doesn't bother me at all unlike it was the case with ATOM games (and to extend, with Fallout 2 itself at times). It feels as it was written by "professional programmers" like in the good old days, I don't mind that, uh "style" one bit.

What impresses me the most is the visuals, art-style in particular but the execution too. It's hard to believe that this is just a free mod, so many high quality assets it's insane. And the audio isn't lagging behind either: sure, many effects were taken straight out F1-2 but not all and the ambient is very good. Also what's excellent is the overall consistency of it all, Fallout 2 could only dream about this bar I dare to say.

While I'm praising this I suspect that the amount of random encounters in it and game being kinda depending on that (economic wise etc) may be not to everyone's liking. Especially when after the prologue you're expected to cross the desert a bit where you're having constant analogue of Enclave patrols (means 100% death). That's brutal.

At any rate, I'm continue being glued to this and probably finish it in a day or two. Good stuff. Afterwards will probably (finally) try some other global F mods.

 

[Average Manatee]

In retrospective, its not bad, people just got angry at it for beggining (by being actually decent game) the typical console shooter fad of 2 guns, regenerating hp, inaccurate guns, etc.

This is the fate of every good, popular game that spawn a genre of shit imitators that don't understand what made the original work so well.

 

[soutaiseiriron]

I am not a PC-only grognard., but true hardcore gamer master race. Always played on all - PC, consoles, handheld (even the FPS on the handhelds). Halo is decline. It threw out like 10 core tenets of FPS gameplay and replaced it all with...stupid vehicles and nothing much more of value to speak of. Sure I'd rather play it over WW2 shovelware, but that really is the bottom of the barrel, I'd play almost anything over those.

That said, multiplayer is a completely different case. Multiplayer gameplay is about locked-in arenas and pure combat focus, always has been, so the majority of things removed by Halo (such as resource management) are not so relevant here, and things it does have (shields, vehicles) actually shine. Singleplayer the game is straight trash though.

halo was designed around juggling different weapons since you could rarely use one type for too long since you'd just run out of ammo and/or have to downgrade, which is still resource management. this isn't to mention grenades either.
(also, most classic FPS games are not tightly designed enough to justify "resource management" as a premise, since the majority of them always have a severe excess of ammo/health for the vast majority of game time, unless you're really bad at the game. ammo is the more bullshit premise of the two, because in classic FPS you have 9 fucking weapons. who gives a shit if you need to swap from SSG to chaingun or plasma once per level? you'll find ammo soon enough anyway.)

 

[Ash]

What classic FPS have you been playing lol? Weapon juggling (without having to backtrack to the thing on the floor constantly, or otherwise rely on the limited selection devs allow you to have from the enemies) and resource management (health, armor, ammo and sometimes other) is an absolute staple of classic FPS, and is pretty meaningful in most.

 

[soutaiseiriron]

mostly thinking of doom and quake since they're foundational. it's not that it doesn't exist, it's that it doesn't actually matter unless you're awful at the game, particularly with ammo. you basically have to force yourself to use one specific weapon for an extended period to ever run out, there's always more ammo right around the corner.
health and armor (which is just complicated health) matter slightly more since you always want to maintain a buffer, but games like these tend to be easier than console FPS because you always have the ability to just savescum instead of having to do the entire stretch of a checkpoint, and you can nearly always pull a pool of power weapons out of your ass.

 

[Ash]

True. But anything is better than two weapon limits and regen health in a singleplayer game. Not even just FPS. A two weapon limit is far too restrictive in the case of combat freedom, strategy and management, and a 75% regen health trivializes health management. This is without getting into all the other things it removed. Halo isn't a good (singleplayer) game, sorry.

 

[Average Manatee]

Bear in mind that Doom is intended to be played from a pistol start. With that maps do absolutely tend to have ammo management as a focus.

 

[soutaiseiriron]

True. But anything is better than two weapon limits and regen health in a singleplayer game. Not even just FPS. A two weapon limit is far too restrictive in the case of combat freedom, strategy and management, and a 75% regen health trivializes health management. This is without getting into all the other things it removed. Halo isn't a good (singleplayer) game, sorry.

This is what I like about you, you actually argue instead of pressing buttons because somebody defended a game that is le bad.
As for your points, I can't agree. I've already argued why I think regenerating health is good previously on this site (depending on circumstance and general game design goals. also, Halo CE only had regenerating shields, health was separate and non-regenerating). As for weapons, I think if anything it adds strategy and management because you're always trading off something else. A Magnum is more ammo efficient than a rocket launcher on a per-enemy basis, but the rocket launcher is so much stronger and will help with tanky enemies or vehicles. You just don't have to think about something like this or make that tradeoff in Doom or Quake.

Bear in mind that Doom is intended to be played from a pistol start. With that maps do absolutely tend to have ammo management as a focus.

I'd agree if it wasn't for the fact you get a shotgun in E1M1 and chaingun in like E1M3, and both are pretty ammo efficient, especially the shotgun.

 

[Average Manatee]

Bear in mind that Doom is intended to be played from a pistol start. With that maps do absolutely tend to have ammo management as a focus.

I'd agree if it wasn't for the fact you get a shotgun in E1M1 and chaingun in like E1M3, and both are pretty ammo efficient, especially the shotgun.

They are also the minimum weapons to actually be viable in Doom, since the pistol is essentially a joke weapon only good for zombiemen. Of course most levels will give you one quickly. Not carrying over heavier weapons and their ammo is a significant limitation when going through later levels.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Decided to dust off Halo 1. I've never entirely understood why Combat Evolved gets so much hate - it spawned some pretty bad shit down the line for sure, but the game itself is just plain fun. What's not to like about pew pewing aliens, taking over their aircraft and throwing sticky bombs at grunts? The high production values also help. Shit can be pretty tough on the highest difficulty too.

Rejuvenating health
Two weapon bullshit
Boring open maps with nonexistent level design

That about covers it

 

[Ash]

True. But anything is better than two weapon limits and regen health in a singleplayer game. Not even just FPS. A two weapon limit is far too restrictive in the case of combat freedom, strategy and management, and a 75% regen health trivializes health management. This is without getting into all the other things it removed. Halo isn't a good (singleplayer) game, sorry.

This is what I like about you, you actually argue instead of pressing buttons because somebody defended a game that is le bad.
As for your points, I can't agree. I've already argued why I think regenerating health is good previously on this site (depending on circumstance and general game design goals. also, Halo CE only had regenerating shields, health was separate and non-regenerating). As for weapons, I think if anything it adds strategy and management because you're always trading off something else. A Magnum is more ammo efficient than a rocket launcher on a per-enemy basis, but the rocket launcher is so much stronger and will help with tanky enemies or vehicles. You just don't have to think about something like this or make that tradeoff in Doom or Quake.

Bear in mind that Doom is intended to be played from a pistol start. With that maps do absolutely tend to have ammo management as a focus.

I'd agree if it wasn't for the fact you get a shotgun in E1M1 and chaingun in like E1M3, and both are pretty ammo efficient, especially the shotgun.

Well, if you like me then I like you! But please play more 90s classics.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Decided to dust off Halo 1. I've never entirely understood why Combat Evolved gets so much hate - it spawned some pretty bad shit down the line for sure, but the game itself is just plain fun. What's not to like about pew pewing aliens, taking over their aircraft and throwing sticky bombs at grunts? The high production values also help. Shit can be pretty tough on the highest difficulty too.

Rejuvenating health
Two weapon bullshit
Boring open maps with nonexistent level design

That about covers it

I remember a user from another forum whom I used to respect (haven't heard from him in years) who went on a tirade of how awesome Halo 1 was.

Just Halo 1. Not the sequels.

But sadly the gist of his argument was how tight the popamole combat was.

If you happen to like that kind of gameplay then his arguments are solid... but keep in mind he's still praising popamole combat.

 

[NecroLord]

Not carrying over heavier weapons and their ammo is a significant limitation when going through later levels.

Not only that, but it also makes them very difficult.
Stuff like Inferno or worse - Thy Flesh Consumed?
Yeah...

 

[Kabas]

it's not that it doesn't exist, it's that it doesn't actually matter unless you're awful at the game, particularly with ammo. you basically have to force yourself to use one specific weapon for an extended period to ever run out, there's always more ammo right around the corner.

It's not very fun if your ability to shoot in a shooty game is being constantly removed as a reward for being effecient with ammo.
I do recall that Scourge of Armagon expansion for Quake was very stingy with giving you ammo on Hard.

As for weapons, I think if anything it adds strategy and management because you're always trading off something else. A Magnum is more ammo efficient than a rocket launcher on a per-enemy basis, but the rocket launcher is so much stronger and will help with tanky enemies or vehicles. You just don't have to think about something like this or make that tradeoff in Doom or Quake.

Disagree on "not having to think about this in Doom or Quake". You're constantly making choices like "should i use my nailgun now or hold onto nails in case of surprise shambler" or whatnot. Granted, how often you make these choices depends on how good the map is.
Never played Halo but this weapon tradeoff sytem does sound more interesting compared to something like Call of Duty Black Ops where swapping to a different weapon and ammo management really doesn't matter.

 

[GamerCat_]

I won't disrupt another thread with my Haloposting but if you want to read the most dedicated defense of it you'll ever see it's happening in this thread.

 

[kites]

The cursed paladin and his slaves have been molesting me in Arcanum, and now that I’m nearly 100% tech I have no healer in Virgil. I know I should travel back to civilization and re-up with flashbangs and bandages for Jayna but I’m just worn down by the constant travel and rate of trivial encounters at this point.

On a positive note; really enjoying some Doom wads like Waterlab and Capybara, they’ve been a great time. Anyone have any reccs for some more.. “exploration”-based wads? A large part seem to aim only for difficulty.

 

[NecroLord]

The cursed paladin and his slaves have been molesting me in Arcanum, and now that I’m nearly 100% tech I have no healer in Virgil. I know I should travel back to civilization and re-up with flashbangs and bandages for Jayna but I’m just worn down by the constant travel and rate of trivial encounters at this point.

The Bangellian Deeps?
One of the hardest areas in the game.

 

[Kabas]

Anyone have any reccs for some more.. “exploration”-based wads?

Amongst those i played recently Diabolus Ex is the one that clearly focused on exploration rather than difficulty. Treasure Tech Land too arguably.
Heard Lullaby might also fit the criteria but i didn't try it myself yet.

 

[flyingjohn]

Playing some ps3 games on a emulator since i couldn't do that on my older pc.
Infamous.
What i expected:
A super hero action adventure where i unleash cool electric powers on baddies.
What i got:
Generic shooter where the grenade/ pistol has been replaced by a electrical grenade/pistol. Also the game never stops spawning enemies constantly around you. You don't get anything for defeating them and they mostly use guns(they are not fully hitscan but might as well be) and spawn on roofs where are you actually supposed to go to bypass them.

I know what the game is attempting. It is trying to be electric sonic where you just blitz though everything, but the main character simply will die in seconds if you try that and most of the objectives don't let you do that anyway. I am not impressed whatsoever.
Oh and the morality and rpg systems are practically meaningless. Morality rewards doing only one action for the rest of the game, thus making it useless. And unlocking abilities is practically drip fed to you so it might as well have been unlocked normally as you progress.