What game are you wasting time on?

[e-mailio estevez]

This game is the bomb.

Damn you. Don't make me do it. Don't make me go into the Metroid rabbit hole again, it'll eat up all my precious free time.

Then again it's been ten years since my last playthrough of Zero Mission. Mastering the bomb jump and legitimately making it through some of those runs where you beat the game with minimal items and within speed running completion times were a lot fun and super satisfying.

 

[NecroLord]

Finished Blood and I am now playing Cryptic Passage.
I have to say that I like Cryptic Passage slightly better than Plasma Pak.
What a great 90s classic shooter.

Deathwish is next.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

So, in Crow Country:
Hold space to aim, and the arrows keys to move the laser sight.
L to reload
K to shoot
O/P to move the camera
And you cannot remap these controls? I cannot use the mouse? In a 2024 game? Fucking backwards nonsense.

You have no idea how many games I've had to refund because the game automatically assumes you're using a controller, does not allow you to remap the keyboard, and doesn't even bother to tell you any of this beforehand.

Fortunately my refund requests have never been rejected... yet.

 

[Necrensha]

You have no idea how many games I've had to refund because the game automatically assumes you're using a controller, does not allow you to remap the keyboard, and doesn't even bother to tell you any of this beforehand.

Fortunately my refund requests have never been rejected... yet.

Did you see the Resident Evil 4/Onimusha 3/Devil May Cry 3 ports that Capcom did back around 2007? They didn't have mouse support, there was no exit button and you had to alt + f4 to exit.
And Resident Evil 4 specifically had you using the arrow keys to aim and move, you couldn't even remap them, AND the fucking buttons on the quick time events were the ones from the PS2.
Completely absurd levels of not giving a shit.

 

[NecroLord]

Blood: Death Wish is awesome.
I like the fact that Bloatoid makes clever use of traps and other elements such as jumpscares to make the mod more interesting and gripping.
Like I said, this is what Blood 2 should've been.

 

[Fedora Master]

Been replaying Wasteland 3 on Supreme Jerk. It's really not a hard game but some of the design details are baffling. Why is there no zone of control? No height advantage? It's surprisingly primitive.

 

[Caim]

Picked up Space Marine 2 with the money I got from selling a few TF2 hats.

Splitting the story up into the main story with Titus & friends and the three stooges mode was a dumb idea. Now you have to manually switch out of the main story to the online section, do the mission, make sure you have set up everything in advance, do the mission, then switch back to story mode. Just add it to the main story, reuse some of the missions for multiplayer and go from there. The combat itself is pretty tight, but I'm not very good at it yet. So we'll see how it goes from here.

 

[NecroLord]

Picked up Space Marine 2 with the money I got from selling a few TF2 hats.

Splitting the story up into the main story with Titus & friends and the three stooges mode was a dumb idea. Now you have to manually switch out of the main story to the online section, do the mission, make sure you have set up everything in advance, do the mission, then switch back to story mode. Just add it to the main story, reuse some of the missions for multiplayer and go from there. The combat itself is pretty tight, but I'm not very good at it yet. So we'll see how it goes from here.

We wuz Macraggeans and sheeeit.

 

[goregasm]

Usually cycle back to "endless" sandbox type games around this time of year that can require as little as 1 hour a day to feel satisfied or as much as 20

Project Zomboid
Battle Brothers
Vagrus (understandably not the same)
Unreal world
Viking Conquest

Been itching to finish up a ton of games on my backlog like Dead State, Pathfinder, Days Gone, and more but 2 young kids, a wife and work and OT have crunched game time down to a few hours a week.

 

[The Decline]

Sekiro

Last time I tried playing it was right before Elden Ring came out and haven't played it since. I just got a new gamepad to replace my aging Xbox Elite controller and decided to try again.

 

[MakenBro]

Kinnikuman Muscle Grand Prix 2

 

[HansDampf]

A few short games.

Pepper Grinder: 2D platformer with a drill. You can drill through sand and get speed boosts to jump out again. It's a fun gimmick. But I can't give the game more than a meh/10. There are only 4 worlds with 5 levels (+ boss) each, and the level design doesn't do enough with the drill mechanic. Instead, the game later introduces more one-off gimmicks like a minigun or a giant robot suit that are neither challenging nor interesting to use. It's like the devs didn't know what to do with the drill anymore and added a bunch of other stuff on top, including lots of useless collectibles. Disappointing.

Hyper Light Drifter: I tried this game 2 years ago but couldn't get into it. Gave it another shot and was determined to finish it this time. And I immediately remembered why I couldn't get into it before. This would be a cool game if everything wasn't so slow! It's like even the controls are made unresponsive on purpose. You know how it feels when you are in a dream and you are trying to run, but you are barely moving because it's dream physics? That's how it feels to play Hyper Light Drifter. Maybe it's just me but it doesn't feel good to play.
It's a nice game otherwise, or else I wouldn't have finished it. Normally I would also go for 100% completion. But the thought of having to go through the entire game world again to look for secrets with these controls and the ... "fast" travel system? Nah. (Even the teleport is so slow, I would always alt-tab, read something, order a pizza, eat the pizza, alt-tab back into the game and watch my character finish teleporting.)

Fowl Damage: Simple 2D platformer that is all about fall damage. You control an egg, and all you can do is move and jump. You always jump 7 tiles high, but you can't fall more than 2 tiles without getting destroyed. This is more like a series of small platforming puzzles with instant reset in every room. Collect optional feathers for an extra challenge. Neat. But this style of game is also something I could imagine seeing in a (free) Mario rom hack.

Flutter: Speaking of rom hacks, Flutter is a hack for Yoshi's Island, made by a couple of Super Mario World veterans. First, they removed everything that's annoying about YI. Baby Mario is gone. On death, you immediately respawn at the last star ring without losing a life. And there are no more hidden red coins. But you can still try and collect the flowers (often found in mini puzzle rooms) to unlock bonus levels.
Then they came up with lots of cool and weird level ideas and explore mechanics and enemies you don't get to see much of in the original game. Sometimes they went a bit too far, maybe, fully embracing the jank. For example, in one level they show you how Yoshi can clip into walls and then gets pushed to the left until he is free again. This glitch is then turned into the level gimmick with many different setups that push you into walls and pose different challenges. And it's ... fun? Yeh. Best game on this list tbh be honest.

 

[Necrensha]

Thronefall
Imagine a tower defense game where you cannot chose where to place your turrets, your units return to their spot on the other side of the map after every wave making you go and grab them manually, and your main character is so useless that the best strategy is to kamizaze enemy waves because you deal more damage dead than alive. Another 4/10 game to the list.

Cult of the Lamb
I only played up to the second boss when it first released and decided to check it out again after 5 dlc. Nothing has changed, the entire game is still like 3 hours long but with 20 hours of unnecessary micromanagement of your cult since you cannot reach the next stage until you reach an arbitrary number of followers, and they just LOVE dying if you stop looking at them for 5 minutes or they decide to literally eat shit and get sick and also make everybody else near them sick too. Not much else has changed, most of the new additions are cosmetics or just redundant automation that takes longer to unlock and construct than to actually beat the game without it. Waste of a concept.

 

[Ezekiel]

Started playing Skyward Sword for the first time today. The Switch version.

Taking a long time to leave me alone. Even worse than Twilight Princess in that regard.

Having to hold L1 for camera control is weird. Wonder if it's better with motion controls, with joycons. My Switch is in a storage unit.

Faces look weird. Eyes are just flat textures, but it's far enough into the advancement in 3D graphics that the flatness stands out on the model. Link appears slightly East Asian.

Oh, the run button with stamina started in this game. Gefällt mir nicht. I made a long list showing that the sprint button is out of control in modern games. You always have to change the whole design for it.

 

[Ezekiel]

Started playing Skyward Sword for the first time today.

Just maxed out my hearts in Breath of the Wild. 112 of 120 shrines finished. Left none that I found unfinished, because none are really hard to figure out. Skyward Sword has the ugliest heart rows in the series. They're fat.

Spoiler

 

[Raghar]

I played against cute moo and it created weird geometric shapes.

 

[Raghar]

And this is what happens when I don't sacrifice queen against cute moo.

 

[NecroLord]

Cult of the Lamb

Is that the super degenerate/satanic game I keep hearing about, making the rounds on Steam?

 

[Necrensha]

Is that the super degenerate/satanic game I keep hearing about, making the rounds on Steam?

Satanic, yes. Degenerate? More like pre-school humor with all the animal people sending you *hilarious* quests to make another follower eat shit as a prank that escalates into eventually sacrificing them to a tentacle monster on the altar.

 

[asper]

I played two PC Fighting Fantasy books, House of Hell and Forest of Doom

Very nostalgic and worthwhile experience and reminded me of the incredible time when I was kid and we didnt have a PC so books and Tabletop games was how we played fantasy games. These PC versions of the books are exactly like the original narratives with some understandable mechanic changes like how you can save and restore anywhere and a convenient map

I bought 3 more to play later

I decided to play Two Worlds 2, its fun. It has some unusual designs and mechanics but its a cheesy and entertaining RPG, its not complex but its fun

You made me remember that I have the paper House of Hell somewhere in my bookshelf!
Do the digital ports include the original illustrations?

Currently "wasting time" on my playthough of PLanescape: Torment. Having a blast!

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Cult of the Lamb
I only played up to the second boss when it first released and decided to check it out again after 5 dlc. Nothing has changed, the entire game is still like 3 hours long but with 20 hours of unnecessary micromanagement of your cult since you cannot reach the next stage until you reach an arbitrary number of followers, and they just LOVE dying if you stop looking at them for 5 minutes or they decide to literally eat shit and get sick and also make everybody else near them sick too. Not much else has changed, most of the new additions are cosmetics or just redundant automation that takes longer to unlock and construct than to actually beat the game without it. Waste of a concept.

I'm hearing the weirdest thing about this game: There's a comic book adaptation of the game currently being released (by Oni Press) and readers are saying it's miles better than the game it's based on.

So it's scoring the rare twofer of not only being better than the source material, but also an above-average comic book.

 

[BruceVC]

I played two PC Fighting Fantasy books, House of Hell and Forest of Doom

Very nostalgic and worthwhile experience and reminded me of the incredible time when I was kid and we didnt have a PC so books and Tabletop games was how we played fantasy games. These PC versions of the books are exactly like the original narratives with some understandable mechanic changes like how you can save and restore anywhere and a convenient map

I bought 3 more to play later

I decided to play Two Worlds 2, its fun. It has some unusual designs and mechanics but its a cheesy and entertaining RPG, its not complex but its fun

You made me remember that I have the paper House of Hell somewhere in my bookshelf!
Do the digital ports include the original illustrations?

Currently "wasting time" on my playthough of PLanescape: Torment. Having a blast!

They do and you can download coloured illustrations

Its such a nostalgic experience playing these PC books again. I also bought Creature of Havoc, Citadel of Chaos, Assassins of Allansia and Bloodbones and the last 2 I never played as game books

I have already played the more advanced versions of Deathtrap Dungeon and Warlock of Firetop Mountain but the ones I bought are considered DLC of the free Fighting Fantasy Classics game on Steam and they exactly the same as the books with the added convenience of the save\restore and map

https://store.steampowered.com/app/856880/Fighting_Fantasy_Classics/

If you grew up playing these books then you wont be disappointed with the PC adaptations , highly recommended

 

[Cael]

I played two PC Fighting Fantasy books, House of Hell and Forest of Doom

Very nostalgic and worthwhile experience and reminded me of the incredible time when I was kid and we didnt have a PC so books and Tabletop games was how we played fantasy games. These PC versions of the books are exactly like the original narratives with some understandable mechanic changes like how you can save and restore anywhere and a convenient map

I bought 3 more to play later

I decided to play Two Worlds 2, its fun. It has some unusual designs and mechanics but its a cheesy and entertaining RPG, its not complex but its fun

You made me remember that I have the paper House of Hell somewhere in my bookshelf!
Do the digital ports include the original illustrations?

Currently "wasting time" on my playthough of PLanescape: Torment. Having a blast!

They do and you can download coloured illustrations

Its such a nostalgic experience playing these PC books again. I also bought Creature of Havoc, Citadel of Chaos, Assassins of Allansia and Bloodbones and the last 2 I never played as game books

I have already played the more advanced versions of Deathtrap Dungeon and Warlock of Firetop Mountain but the ones I bought are considered DLC of the free Fighting Fantasy Classics game on Steam and they exactly the same as the books with the added convenience of the save\restore and map

https://store.steampowered.com/app/856880/Fighting_Fantasy_Classics/

If you grew up playing these books then you wont be disappointed with the PC adaptations , highly recommended

UGH! I hate you so much, you bastard!

I was so stoked and ready to launch into the games, only to be told I need to install a Steam app. Fuck that shit!

 

[Necrensha]

I'm hearing the weirdest thing about this game: There's a comic book adaptation of the game currently being released (by Oni Press) and readers are saying it's miles better than the game it's based on.

So it's scoring the rare twofer of not only being better than the source material, but also an above-average comic book.

It is, I've read it. The problem with the game is that the roguelike part and the cult part don't mix together, they're ductaped. So by having the followers be actual characters and having the Lamb not be a mute protagonist, it's already massively improving on the concept. Still satanic and full of poop jokes though.

 

[Cael]

I'm hearing the weirdest thing about this game: There's a comic book adaptation of the game currently being released (by Oni Press) and readers are saying it's miles better than the game it's based on.

So it's scoring the rare twofer of not only being better than the source material, but also an above-average comic book.

It is, I've read it. The problem with the game is that the roguelike part and the cult part don't mix together, they're ductaped. So by having the followers be actual characters and having the Lamb not be a mute protagonist, it's already massively improving on the concept. Still satanic and full of poop jokes though.

I watched a Let's Play of it. The combat is pretty bad.