What game are you wasting time on?

[Cool name]

Sounds like a story about a tranny involved with royalty.

Spoiler

It is.

 

[Humppaleka]

Completed Alpha Brotocol. Quite the fun game, bossfights gave me cancer but I cured it by cheesing them like a motherfucker. Now... I think I'll play something light, like Doukutsu Monogatari and Atari 2600 games.

 

[Jack]

I too have been playing Mark of the Ninja. It's decent. The checkpoint system makes my blood boil though.

That's the only bad thing in the game, imho. Everything else was well done but this made my anger-o-meter rise several times since it can absolutely screw a perfect run and the only thing to do is start over.

I've just finished the game and I must say that I agree with you. While it had other minor issues like the consolish menu screens and giving the player too powerful tools to play with, I found that everything from level design to the controls were incredibly tight. It also looks amazing.

New game plus mode is great and I'm currently doing a non-lethal run but I've put it on hold since they've announced a special edition which will feature non-lethal takedowns and stuff.

 

[Cool name]

I did just finish my first complete playthrough of Loren the Amazon Princess with the Castle of Nmar expansion.

It was awesome.

They did pretty much make the perfect Bioware game with just Renpy, two dollars, and a bag of peanuts, and it is far better at it than what Bioware does make itself. By the end I was like totally engaged by the characters, and when those you are close to do start to get possesive and have those little fights over you I did actually feel so bad about breaking their hearts I did almost restart the game so that I would only romance one character and not feel bad about hurting the others. It did actually make me care about the feelings of male characters, which is usually kind of impossible (I am sexually attracted to guys but romantically attracted to girls so by general rule Boys are for porn and sex and have no feelings worth considering while Girls are for dating sims and romance and friendship). Though while likeable the guys were still total assholes for the most part: The only guy I did really want to romance did happen to be gay and thus non eligible if you play as Elenor. I am sure there is a pattern here.

Other than that the combat is fun and does allow for a lot of different parties and builds, and there are a few very hard battles to fight. The story is kind of a cliche storm that does plagiarize everything from Lord of the Rings to Dragon Age but the characters do make it cool and keep it fresh. I was sincerelly happy I did manage to get one of the endings in which no one does die, which is kind of surprising as I do usually go for the DRAMA ENDING. And it does manage to have strong female characters who are feminine while still more than able to kick brutal amounts of tail and decide what do they want for themselves. That's kind of totally cool. I am fed up with girls in games being either shrinking violets, absolute sluts, or total tomboys.

First thing I will do once I am done moving and have my own credit card will be to buy it both because it is awesome and because I am really hyped about the sequel and do want it finished for bleeping yesterday.

I am become , destroyer of worlds.



@ abnaxus: Pretty much, yes.

 

[Trash]

Heart of the Swarm. I really enjoyed Starcraft II so I was looking forward to this. I did not look forward to spending hours trying to get the game to install. Even now that it runs it stutters and often seems to find the need to download extra data. It's pissing me off.

Other than that it's Starcraft II again with a shitload of added cheese. Will see how it holds up.

 

[Cool name]

@ abnaxus:

How is Planet Stronghold?

I did only play a bit of it some time ago and while I did enjoy the combat system and thought the skill checks were a nice detail the game did seem really random. Like, you find this thingie in the middle of the wasteland. It is locked. One of your characters has a fair chance to open it. She does fail. It does self destruct. You don't get another try. It did make me feel I was kind of wasting points on non combat skills. And then my characters couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. I believe I did ragequit when the fat guy did manage to miss all shots for five turns straight while my room mate was getting pounded by three or four pirates and both my psion and the bald psion were taking turns healing her and resting to recover PP. On hard, so I did waste a lot of PP consumables to keep up with the damage because of that fat loser.

Does it get less frustating afterwards?

I have been thinking of giving it another go not giving a damn about non combat skills and just murdering everything with two psions, one tank, and one sniper.



Edit: And does the affection level for characters who are not romanceable either with your current character or at all have any importance later on? I did always wonder about that.

 

[Whisky]

I'm gonna be buckling down and completing Pathologic.

Wish I spoke Russian. Damned English translation.

 

[Humppaleka]

Started replaying Desu Desu Ex: Human Revolution. This time I'll sneak just for powergaming, but most of the time I'll just headshot everyone who tries to fuck with me. After that, it's Missing Link (or more like in-between, as it takes place in the HR timeline) and the original Deus Ex, see if it holds up as a prequel as my memories of Deus Ex are more than hazy.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Battle for Wesnoth again. On the hardest difficulty setting the campaigns are often pretty difficult, but they don't completely degenerate into "puzzle-like" gameplay the way Panzer General clones do.

 

[Cool name]

It's pretty decent. Sequel is bound to be much better in every way, though.

Winter Wolves' sequels do have me very hyped as well. Both Planet Stronghold's and Loren's do promise to be quite awesome, which is partly why I did want to finally get through Stronghold. Though being a hardcore Otome player I am more interested to see what does Aleema do with the continuing romance arcs instead of the general gameplay improvements. The difference in dialogue and general writing quality before and after her recruitment is very noticeable, and story arcs in which you do already begin in a relationship instead of building up to beginning one are pretty much a rarity in the genre, even the best japanese games I did play do in general just make the 'forever alone' ending canon for the sequel or if there's not one such ending do just pull an Invisible War and begin from a point in which events from all routes did happen but the character did not end with anyone in particular. She's bound to do something awesome with both games.

In any case I did just start my 'let's kill everything' playthrough and the game is much more fun now than it was when I did actually care about non combat skills. Psionics is best investment ever: Lisa and Jacob do recover PP so fast I am throwing Harms left and right just because they are actually recovering PP faster than to keep Michelle alive does require. And Phillip may be a prick but bleep he is totally lethal with a sniper rifle.

Though I am not touching Tom with a twenty foot rusty pole. His smile, God... HIS SMILE.

Is that translated? It's not on brokenforum.

It is not translated. I doubt it will ever be: We just recently did begin to get Otome games translated both by fans and by actual companies, and Crimson Empire isn't nearly as famous or important as Hakuoki and the like. I did myself find it kind of by accident a couple of years ago when I did read a review on an otome gaming blog. It is pretty obscure and odd in that the protagonist is pretty much a sociopath, the characters are all pretty twisty and manipulative, and the game does include an actual combat system as your character is a total badass instead of the so-common-it-did-become-its-own-cliche 'useless otome protagonist.'

Spoiler

That aside are you on brokenforum actually as a poster or just a lurker? I do love that place, though I usually do not visit often as every time I do I can waste pretty much an entire day reading their let's play threads instead of studying and bleep. Kodeksia does need more VN let's plays.

 

[Dim]

Hierofania a free indie VN. Then SpringRts again though Balanced Annihilation this time.

 

[Heresiarch]

Stuff that I've played for the last two weeks:
Dead Space 3: finished. Heh, I played it not unlike Doom 3, aka mindless zombie shooter. Waiting for the DLC now.
AoW: SW: this is I think the 3rd time trying it out, and this time I still can't get even the 1st level done. To be honest, I don't like AoW's art design. All those 3d/2d hybrid character sprites are making my eyes bleed. Otherwise, I just can't get much of the charm the game supposedly has...what a pity.

Then I looked here and there trying to find a good strategy game to play. From HOMM3, SMAC, CIV, to DOM3, AI War. Also looked at Endless Space and Stardriver, but none really hooked me...

Until Eador Genesis.

That game is just, fucking, awesome. It has great art, great soundtrack, great control. Most importantly it has balanced unit & spell design, great RPG elements, and awesome tactical combat. Also the game designer put a lot of efforts of constructing the background story and characters, with tons of humor in it. The game somehow reminds me of Space Rangers 2 - seemly simple game with predominately 2d graphics, but with actually fucktons of text and details behind. Is that true for all the Russian games?

Unfortunately, the game's campaign is waaaaay to long, and the game doesn't have much variety in the game world design. It's just green grass everywhere, unlike Heroes that have snow, desert, and so on. Now that I know the remake will come out within a month, I stopped playing Genesis, so I can preserve my lust for it to continue on the remake. However one month is a long time to wait...

I think I'll play Bioshock Infinite, and DS3's DLC. But not many stuff (especially strategy games) to keep my attention long enough on it.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Been chunking along on Gothic 1. Explored and quested up a fair part of the old camp, done a bunch of new camp, and will probably swing by the sect camp and see what I can sidequest/plunder before really advancing my joining with the old camp. I was briefly tempted to join the new camp instead since they're the only ones that seem to be genuinely trying to escape, but I talked myself out of it because A: the bandits are assholes, and B: looks like the water wizards and fire wizards are in communication, and if the water wizards had a solid theory on how to escape you'd think the fire wizards would be with them. Either they've got separate agendas (Which doesn't seem likely since they're on good terms and are both trapped) or they're working together and manipulating people, most likely the new camp.
Been enjoying it but I really do wish the combat was less clunky. Been playing keyboard only since that works way better for me than trying to wrangle the mouse in combat, but still. Even Morrowind levels of clunkiness would be preferable. Still enjoying it since the setting is pretty fun and the quest design seems nice. Fair number of quests look like they have a few alternate solutions/paths. World design is pretty nice too, even the old mine probably has more NPCs in it than any 2 or 3 Skyrim cities. Sure, it might have the same number of UNIQUE NPCs as maybe one Skyrim city, but filler NPCs help with the mood!

Also been poking at Far Cry 3. Still feeling the burn on buying that one. It's not too bad and seems way less annoying than Far Cry 2 (Though the animations in 2 seemed better) but eh. EH. I dropped the hardcore mod since one or two shots to kill anyone made all the guns feel essentially the same which fucked it up horribly. Vanilla game's popamole but playing on hard it's tolerable as long as I don't snipe.

Finally, was playing some Fallen Enchantress Legendary Heroes beta. Posted in the thread on the strategy forum, but TLDR summary thus far is exactly the same as Fallen Enchantress only worse.

 

[ohWOW]

Spoiler

you will be forced to choose between new camp and the sect camp sooner or later

 

[RedScum]

Civ IV: Fall from Heaven 2 mod
Jagged Alliance: Back in Action

 

[ManjuShri]

 

[Metro]

 

[Humppaleka]

*gasp*

*phew* indeed.

Great game, next time I'll try and get the bonus endings.

 

[Boyarpunk]

About to play Unity of Command for the first time. Any tips for playing as United Soviet Potato Republic?

 

[Sranchammer]

Wars in America. Snuffing out the hope of :patriot: within those ungrateful rustics as the British is devilishly fun

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I dropped Jagged Alliance 2 (although I was liking it) in order to focus on the Gold Box games and Ultima Underworlds. I'll definitely come back to it, though I am on the fence about whether or not I should go back and retry JA1. I liked JA1's mercs a bit more, but the interface is much better in JA2.

Luckily I downloaded a mod that will allow me to input the JA1 mercs into JA2.

So I am playing Pools of Darkness and Ultima Underworld 1 right now. The goal will be to finish all of the Gold Box games and Ultima Underworld 1, Ultima Underworld 2, then Arx Fatalis. After playing through the Might and Magic series, it feels good to be playing the tactical combat of the Gold Box games.

 

[Jaesun]

Deuce Traveler are you familiar with the story of Ultima VII Part 1: The Black Gate (of which Ultima Underworld is part of IIRC).

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Jaesun , yes. I'm a bit of an Ultima fanatic, though I never finished U6 (I will when the Exult fan update is finished) and U9. It's been about 20+ years since I beat Ultima 4, but I thought that the Stygian Abyss was raised up by the Avatar in the middle of a hostile sea. Being thrown into the the Abyss so easily by an uppity baron seems a bit odd to me. I take it that the Black Gate will tie into this somehow by your post, but haven't seen how so far.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Error in my previous post. I am playing Secret of the Silver Blades right now, not Pools of Darkness. Man, The Brazilian Slaughter would be so disappointed in my clerical errors.



Now I'll never get tickets to watch the female Brazilian national volleyball team play.

 

[Machocruz]

Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Conflicted on this one. Alternate between liking it a lot and dreading picking it up again. Just got to Hengsha, but the last mission, Highland Park, was a boring slog. The street missions are way more fun than the major indoor missions, so far. They phoned in the indoor environments. Mind numbingly bland, vents ahoy. I also may be burned out on sneaking due to juggling Thief and playing a thief in Skyrim and Morrowind at the same time.

Thief Gold. Started playing for the first time last year. Masterful game design. Until Escape mission. Boring banal shit red caves and lame creatures. Lost complete interest at that point. I finished the game afaic. But up until that point....would play again.

New Vegas. Have had this since launch, but randomly started crashing on me. Just this week got it to where it crashes every 30-45 minutes instead of every 10-15. Still, after only 19 hours in the game, it feels way better than Fallout 3. Already have a larger variety of weapons on my person than there exists in all of FO3. Quests have more than one solution. Gunplay feels better. Have to be on my toes lest I get reped by that giant radscorpion I didn't notice. Casuals complain you can't go anywhere you want from the start, but you can. Just takes caution and ingenuity, little things they don't teach in school anymore I guess.

Dwarf Fortress. I'm never not playing this. Game of Forever™