What game are you wasting time on?

[Semiurge]

I finished Call of the Machine on Nightmare. It's considerably easier than Ground Zero because the designers were timid about throwing some more powerful enemies at you with the mook mobs. It had some creative and fun ideas like the secret levels being skirmish trials that reward you with powerups, and the overall style was very cinematic, like the way the music tracks change based on triggers. The strange thing about the secret levels was that the hardest - The Casali Effect, was situated in a middle mission instead of being the last. Some repetition was perceivable, such as the bosses getting reinforcements at certain HP levels and the way those goddamn mutants were used. I fucking hate them and their tiny hitboxes. The last mission - The Darkest Depths, was the laziest and obviously rushed, as was the final level. It is ironically the easiest of all six, and completely linear in design. Both it and the final level had suitably Lovecraftian endings though, and the references to Quake 1 will not go to waste...

Now, back to Quake 1 Remastered (2021) and its Dimension of the Past, then Dimension of the Machine.

 

[Ezekiel]

Muttered at my screen "This is so FUCKING boring" and other obscenities as I waited for some slow lifts to get me back to where I was in Hi-Fi Rush, after prolonged frustration with the hard-to-nail beat parry system against robot samurai enemies who attack from outside of the picture. Almost all modern combat systems are basically glue, their creators having become so reliant on either dodges or timed parries and auto-targeting (the player turned towards enemies, a HARD turn) because they don't remember what it's like to move freely in better action games like Streets of Rage 2 or are too pathetic to learn and appreciate the slower pace. There, enemies don't move so quickly all over the place that your eyes and brain can barely follow, and they wouldn't have to even if the idea was faithfully brought into three dimensions, because it's more about positioning, taking advantage of where they are, shoving one into the next for example, or using weapons to keep them at a distance. The environmental traversal in this is trash. The heroic trio is bland, ALL of them. Protagonist is just the butt of a joke, pathetic, always bumbling, uncool. Have no idea why Robbie Daymond gets so much work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_Daymond

This list makes no sense. He speaks as if so aware that he's in a booth, unable to let anything out naturally, certainly never really yelling.

All this game has is the fighting, which isn't even good. I'm sick of glue. I'll keep at it to be able to say I beat it and to see what's next, but I'm already thinking 2/5 like the only other game I beat this year, Soulstice (also glue). Feel like people are so desperate for unique studio games that they shower praise on games that, deep down, they know really aren't that good.

 

[soutaiseiriron]

I found beat parries something I just got used to with time. You can just dodge until you're eventually forced to learn. I thought it was a great game. There was only really one boss fight I didn't like too much, all the others were good, and I eventually improved from a terrible 50% beat accuracy to 75-90% at the end which was satisfying.

 

[Starwars]

Replaying Heaven's Vault, which is one of my favorite modern games. Sort of an interesting take on an adventure game in a way. But it's hard to classify it.

Relaxing, charming, a simple but fun gameplay hook (the translation minigame) and a sort of non-linearity that feels quite natural and comfortable. It feels simple, yet there's a fair amount of depth to it. A bit woke but the writing is generally good and thoughtful enough that it doesn't put me off that much. It's also very charming. Six is a great sidekick.

It's clunky though, the controls are quite bad and it really feels extremely low-budget in many ways. But the story, mystery (and uncovering it), atmosphere and relaxing just makes it such a pleasant game to play.

 

[Borelli]

Dark Reign

On paper, a solid C&C clone but a lot of little frustrations in it. Units die too fast, they are all glass cannons, turrets are too strong, if you want to use artillery to kill turrets you need a bunch of them since repair is also too fast.
Sight next to cliffs/hills is sometimes bugged. Unit AI is dumb. Tutorial is rude if you try to do things your way.
When you start winning the campaign mission AI just pulls units out of its ass to stop you. Still had fun with the campaign, interesting setup (replaying historical battles from both side's perspective). Some of the missions are devilishly difficult.

 

[Necrensha]

Age of Darkness Final Stand
It's a fucking cryptominer. It looks like some random 2005 Warcraft 3 copy cat and yet it demands 70% of my Ryzen 7, I have never seen a non-AAA game do that ever.
The pathfinding is 1993 tier, they only give you two units to move on the first mission and I already saw them getting stuck one behind the other on the first group of enemies. Then an archer popped out and my dudes were standing still 2 centimeters away, completely oblivious as they took damage.
And that story
-The elves are good guys who create crystals to contain the endless horde of nightmares
-Humans go on a genocide campaign against them as thanks
-Main priest guy touches a crystal, starts being like ''OOoOOoh, I can hear the voices!! And they tell me that we need to make a blood sacrifice!!'' and everybody just follows his word because church bad
-Main character is married to an elf
-He gets branded as a heretic, his arm is cut, he gets stabbed and thrown into the water, then they burn her in a pyre
-You then start playing as the other guy who chicken'd out at the last second and his brave/stupid brown wizard apprentice girl
And that's when the game crashed. And it didn't save. Amazing.

 

[Kabas]

After finishing my RTS demo spree i went back and finally completed Beyond Citadel. Pretty much a "more and better" version compared to the orginal Citadel, can confirm yet again that gunplay is amazing.

I also decided to try a few different surivor-like demos.
Tower of Babel: Survivors of Chaos. Compared to Halls of Torment this one is more inspired by Diablo 3, visually at least.

More focus on an action RPG gear progression(randomized stuff like gloves with +4% cold damage, +2% stuff...), you have an active secondary attack that costs mana to use... I didn't like it to be honest.

Slime Attack: Survivor on the other hand.

I enjoyed it a lot more, probably because gameplay is heavily inspired by Brotato. Visually it reminds me of those old anime inspired flash games so bonus points for nostalgia.
Liked it enough to complete all of the avaliable difficulty modes in the demo. My only gripe is that i doubt that the full version will have the breath of options or characters class as cool as the ones in Brotato.

 

[NJClaw]

Replaying Heaven's Vault, which is one of my favorite modern games. Sort of an interesting take on an adventure game in a way. But it's hard to classify it.

Relaxing, charming, a simple but fun gameplay hook (the translation minigame) and a sort of non-linearity that feels quite natural and comfortable. It feels simple, yet there's a fair amount of depth to it. A bit woke but the writing is generally good and thoughtful enough that it doesn't put me off that much. It's also very charming. Six is a great sidekick.

It's clunky though, the controls are quite bad and it really feels extremely low-budget in many ways. But the story, mystery (and uncovering it), atmosphere and relaxing just makes it such a pleasant game to play.

I just finished it for the first time and I'm still wrapping my head around what to think of it. I loved exploring new locations, uncovering the mysteries of the world, and discovering new words and translations. The small cast of characters works quite well and every small interaction feels important. However, I can't remember the last time I played a game so deliberate in its attempts to waste my time. Driving around the galaxy to reach new places is absolutely atrocious. Only an insane mind can add something like that to a game, test it, and decide to leave it in. Walking around cities to reach key NPCs requires you to watch the same pseudo-cutscenes over and over and over and over and over. I don't mind the slow walking speed, but these two aspects are so mind-bogglingly horrible I can't imagine trying the NG+ anytime soon.

 

[NecroLord]

Kabas
Have you played American Conquest?
Been thinking about it recently and probably going to give it a spin once more (like in the old days).
Pretty good RTS game made by the STALKER devs.

 

[Ezekiel]

For a game about music, the music of Hi-Fi Rush is so lame. Why is he beating to it? I see that Hideki Naganuma of Jet Set Radio is still alive.

 

[Starwars]

Replaying Heaven's Vault, which is one of my favorite modern games. Sort of an interesting take on an adventure game in a way. But it's hard to classify it.

Relaxing, charming, a simple but fun gameplay hook (the translation minigame) and a sort of non-linearity that feels quite natural and comfortable. It feels simple, yet there's a fair amount of depth to it. A bit woke but the writing is generally good and thoughtful enough that it doesn't put me off that much. It's also very charming. Six is a great sidekick.

It's clunky though, the controls are quite bad and it really feels extremely low-budget in many ways. But the story, mystery (and uncovering it), atmosphere and relaxing just makes it such a pleasant game to play.

I just finished it for the first time and I'm still wrapping my head around what to think of it. I loved exploring new locations, uncovering the mysteries of the world, and discovering new words and translations. The small cast of characters works quite well and every small interaction feels important. However, I can't remember the last time I played a game so deliberate in its attempts to waste my time. Driving around the galaxy to reach new places is absolutely atrocious. Only an insane mind can add something like that to a game, test it, and decide to leave it in. Walking around cities to reach key NPCs requires you to watch the same pseudo-cutscenes over and over and over and over and over. I don't mind the slow walking speed, but these two aspects are so mind-bogglingly horrible I can't imagine trying the NG+ anytime soon.

Technically I agree with you, but for some reason the sailing part just never bothered me. I am glad for the fast travel to places you've been though for sure. I actually saw a mod somewhere in the steam forum for it though that claimed to speed up the sailing I think, so maybe that could be a thing to look into if you want to replay it at some point. I think my cloud saves got wiped or something along the way but I did replay it back in the day shortly after the game was released and I quite enjoyed the NG+ aspect of it (keeping the translated words), which I almost never do.

I'd say the main thing that bothers me about moving around is how the areas seem to be chopped up in little "zones", so you'll get trapped in a little cutscene of the main character walking to the next place so to speak. I really dislike how it feels like the game takes control away from you in that sense.

But yeah, it's definitely a clunky and slow game overall.

 

[Kabas]

Have you played American Conquest?

Heard about it but never played it. Same for Cossack games but i did play Heroes of the Annhilated Empires. I thought it was good.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I've never tried a third person shooter that didn't feel bad to play but this feels particularly awful.

The solution is to punch everyone

 

[Average Manatee]

Spent the weekend figuring out UFO Aftershock. There's really not much good information to find about strategy for the game, so I decided to summarize what I found in my own guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3416052162

The game is really fun for about the first half. Past that there's a severe lack of content and the game becomes trivially easy even on Super Hero difficulty at the same time it starts to spam you with infinite amounts of defense missions. For example there's no advanced human weapons beyond what you can find lying around in the first few missions, and you only need to equip 7 soldiers, so most of the weapons labs research and manufacturing is useless. And the alien races are all pretty easy to beat, human cultists and very early missions with level 1 badly equipped recruits are the hardest parts of the game. It's actually sad how the final mission to kill the wargots is set up as so epic and feels like a finale, then you are dropped back into the geoscape and learn that you're only 75% though the game, you have nothing to do except finish a bunch of research that can't be spend up, and you're gonna be spammed with a million of defense missions against the most annoying enemy in the game in the meantime. Clearly the game is unfinished and the starghost plotline could have been cut off.

Kind of want to try and figure out how to beat UFO Afterlight on maximum difficulty, but that game is seriously hard as fuck. The difficulty modifiers are a lot more drastic and research and weapon/ammo production is insanely slow. And there's no allowance for character deaths, you get like 4 replacements max who uselessly start at level 1 and past that you need to develop robots that you will never be able to actually get out due to aforementioned research and production slowness.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Finished Halo: Reach. Not even feeling like writing too much about it. Game felt pretty uninspired though inoffensive enough to play it from start to finish painlessly. What boggles my mind is how you can make a game about a team of badass mufugga space marines wrecking shit through an alien invasion THIS FORGETTABLE. Completely forgettable characters, no top kino action moments, no real memorable levels... it's a far cry even from ODST, not to speak of shit like Republic Commando. Also lots of plot stupidity and forced drama involving characters you give no shit about. Profoundly meh game, though not as infuriatingly bad as Halo 2, 3 and 4. Also retcon upon retcon upon retcon with regard to Halo 1.

Oh well. Time to finally uninstall the master chief collection after having witnessed everything it had to offer. I'd rank the gaemz:

Halo 1 > ODST >>> Reach >>>>>>> The rest. Honourable mention goes to Halo Wars which I'd put along Halo 1 when it comes to fun games in this series.

 

[Ryzer]

Only Beta males dislike Alpha Protocol.

It was released 7 years after MGS3, do I need to add more?

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

Halo Reach is at its best with strong multiplayer scene to make use of the sandbox custom servers.

There were a bunch of fun minigames made in custom levels. I still remember queuing into lobbies with a friend and us just inviting everyone we come across until we have a full lobby to play fun custom maps like obstacle courses, race tracks, dodgeball, etc.. Or spending all day making your own world with friends.

Damn Darth Roxor you unlocked gaming memories I forgot I had

 

[NecroLord]

I never liked Halo.
What's so unique about it?

 

[Caim]

I never liked Halo.
What's so unique about it?

The protagonist. Halo is a pretty cool guy, eh kills aleins and doesnt afraid of anything.

 

[Fargus]

I never liked Halo.
What's so unique about it?

Unique? Always thought Haylo is just CoD with aliens and a recurring protagonist. I only played Reach and it was godawful, can't force myself to finish that pos. The first game looks fun however in a more "trad" sort of way, but i doubt the encumbrance from other unplayed games will ever let me try it.

 

[NecroLord]

I never liked Halo.
What's so unique about it?

Unique? Always thought Haylo is just CoD with aliens and a recurring protagonist. I only played Reach and i was godawful, can't force myself to go finish that pos. The first game looks fun however in a more "trad" sort of way, but i doubt the encumbrance from other unplayed games will ever let me try it.

Console shooter.
Worst kind of shooter, especially if it is of the military variety.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Halo was going to be the big jump that gaming in PC would make, to get ahead and into the big leagues after being second fiddle to consoles sales wise. Then it became an XBOX title.

 

[NecroLord]

The big jump that turned into a deep plunge into console abyss.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

iirc, Halo was meant to be a pc game too, or at least, a very early iteration of it was gonna be a pc exclusive. They made a big deal of being able to use vehicles.

 

[rubinstein]

at very early stage it was supposed to be a rts/tactics game like myths. we could have had sci-fi myths, but got halos instead...