What game are you wasting time on?

[Ezekiel]

Found Sleeping Dogs very average nine years ago. Tried to replay it just now, but the story just kept going on and on and on before I could even get out into the city on my own. Finally closed it when I was about to extort the third merchant in that busy nighttime market area. Didn't even get in a car.

 

[gabel]

Sleeping Dogs is shit indeed, no idea how that trash could kinda take off.

 

[BruceVC]

I completed Dying Light 2 after about 110 hours and I made sure I completed most of the side quests and activities like freeing up water plants and climbing all windmills

It was fun, I give it 62/100 on the globally respected "BruceVC game rating system ". That's not a terrible score , its effectively a C which is fine but end of the day its a Zombie killing game with the same repeated mechanics and quests that I found started getting tiresome

I can't really explain exactly what made me get bored but I think its to do with the repetition of the quests and just how the resource mechanics work?

I did appreciate the narrative choices like who do you support the PK or the Survivors

Anyway its fine as a Zombie killing game but I did enjoy DY1 more and I preferred games like Days Gone and definitely the Dead Rising games

 

[cretin]

Turns out the actual purpose of my 3060ti is to run good older games in 4k DSR. RE4 with the HD project, really a great work.

 

[Kabas]

Finally came around to play Ion Fury which belongs to that original boomer shooter revival trio which in turn also includes Dusk and Amid Evil. Was waiting for the discount this whole time.

Dusk was good but not good enough for me to consider ever replaying it in the future(thus zero interest in the HD remake). Amid Evil was alright, i liked the weapons and the "world drawn on the pinball machine" fantasy aestetic quite a bit but the final episode sucked(still interested in trying out the black labyrinth DLC however).
This one in comparison is definitely the prettiest one, don't see yet why some codex people call this game trash.
Did notice some wonky hitboxes on certain enemies tho and i dislike the grenade launcher(Edit: take my words back. It's actually pretty useful by itself, i only dislike long weapon switch animation if you're switching from a shotgun). After finishing Zortch i really miss the ability to kick my enemies instead of waiting for the reload animation to finish while they are free to unload bullets in my face.
Not sold on the main heroine. She comes off as tryhard instead of a badass action woman devs clearly wanted her to be.
A lot more secrets compared to some other genre examples, didn't manage to find the vast majority of them. They might have gone a bit overboard in this regard.
Still, for now at least i like Ion Fury a bit more than Dusk/Amid Evil. Heard that the later levels are not that good, we will see.
Bt the way, tried out loverboy secondary only after completing the first episode. I feel like an idiot right now.

I am also slowly playing through this free game called Ruza. It makes me weirdly nostalgic for a certain era of anime inspired flesh games.
Features a rather fascinating combat system. You have speed/defence/attack tokens that act as your secondary "HP" of sorts, spent on actions and are shuffling every turn. You can modify your actions with various adjectives like "chaotic" or "external", no idea what they do. Can't comprehend it fully yet but it's all very interesting.
Also, big vendigo GF

 

[Jvegi]

A friend gave me access to his steam and geforce now accounts, so I'm playing a bit of BG3. It's somehow playable with my crappy bandwidth, but I can only play in short bursts (life stuff, it's a mid-tear account), and the game looks like it can be appreciated when binged like meth, with no sleep for days. In those short sessions, it's just a curiosity and a window into "modern crpgs". Not very impressive, really.

I picked up my playthrough of BG1 with SCS. Nearing the end, with TotSC content still in front of me. Every time I play this game, I feel different about it, because I'm different. I notice different aspects, the gameplay is altered by my progressing familiarity with the engine. It's definitely way easier than BG2 scs, at least when it comes to non-boss encounters. I'm running at Insane with double damage and I hope the Durlag's Tower is going to cut me down to size, because those grunts do not.

I'm also playing some DUSK. I think it's good, I just can't get into kinetic gameplay for some reason. It feels disjointed from reality. I used to get immersed into action games, but not anymore.

 

[Abu Antar]

I checked off some more games.

Pleasure Puzzle: Portrait 趣拼拼：肖像画, a puzzle game, with mostly decent looking female portraits. Been playing this while listening to Tim Can videos on Youtube.

Ancient Enemy. Turn-based Card battler. While usually not my jam, it's also a game I played while listening to Tim Can videos.

Arctico. A mix of walking sim and survival/base building. It wasn't very demanding, and mostly chill experience. Survival elements are very basic, and barely there, and the base building part isn't much more complex. Why walking sim? because you don't actually fight anything byt your hunger. For those interested, you get to name and pet your dogs.

 

[__scribbles__]

Finished Dark Sun: Shattered Lands.

Spoiler

Very fun game that lived up to the hype. Fairly deep and fast combat, lots of interesting little quests and a big world to explore with lots of fun stuff to find. Overall recommended

 

[Darth Roxor]

Finished Shogo: Mobile Armor Division.

I didn't remember this game feeling so... unfinished. It's like the entire thing is held together by zip ties. The connections between levels are ad hoc at best. The plot must be the result of cutting 3/4 of the content and leaving a rudimentary number of voiced lines to make sure that it makes a modicum of sense.

And don't even get me started about getting one-hit-killed by everything all the time. Whoever thought it was a good idea to give enemies the ability to random crit you should be hanged. Not to mention all those fuckers with shotguns hiding right behind doors or 90 degree bends.

It's not exactly bad but certainly not as good as I thought it was back in the day.

 

[Krivol]

Not to mention all those fuckers with shotguns hiding right behind doors or 90 degree bends.

Now please give a try to Redneck Rampage

 

[Caim]

The Cinders mod for Dark Souls 3.

One of the big two mods for the game alongside Convergence. Where that mod focuses heavily on magic Cinders is an all-round overhaul that touches just about everything in the base game. It mostly adds a shitload of new starting classes, weapons, armor, rings and spells, many of whom were taken from previous games in the series. There's even entirely new weapon types like battlestaves and guns. This gives you a massive amount of options to play the game, and while the levels themselves are mostly the same aside from a few new teleports here and there it's the new enemy placements and several new bosses (even though they all use existing movesets) to test your mettle.

One of the big new mechanics is the upgrading of your spells, rings and even covenants. All covenant items give you a different bonus, ranging from increased item discovery to extra elemental damage, faster HP/FP restoration or healing from your estus flask. Equipping a covenant item also gives you drops unique to that group, which both lets you upgrade your rank in the covenant for better bonuses and buying special weapons, armor, spells and consumables. Some of these upgrade items can also be used to upgrade your spells, so if you play a caster of that type (Chaos Servants, Vinheim Scholars and Way of White for pyromancies, sorceries and miracles respectively) membership into that group is a smart move. There is also the option to begin the game in New Game+, add a variety of curses to make the game tougher, the option for several different challenge runs, replace weapon upgrading with a system that gives you damage increase and bonuses every time you kill a boss (highly adviced to play with this mode) or turn the game into a straight up boss gauntlet.

The final update to the mod, 2.15, was less than two weeks before the release of Elden Ring, and an update seems unlikely. The balance of the mod's a bit wonky (casters are extemely good, and the Thieves Pact is the best covenant in the game since it straight up lets you buy the otherwise incredibly rare resource you need to upgrade your rings), there's a few minor bugs (sometimes chest you already looted lock themselves again and are empty when you open them), you are absolutely showered with items that you will likely never use, and casters are very powerful. But if you want to play Dark Souls 3 in a fresh new way and Convergence is a bit too far for you, give it a shot.

Links:
Nexus download page. Note that the total files are almost 7.5 GB, so with Nexus' slow downloads this might take a while.
The game's Wiki, a highly complete resource. Make sure to read the installation instructions.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

A small roguelike game that was released earlier this year is Quest of Dungeons. I've been playing with this and it's quite nice. While it has been released it's also still in development, with added content and minor tweaks being released now and again.

The plot is simple, journey into a dungeon to kill the Big Foozle and recover the MacGuffin. You get to choose four character classes, a Warrior, a Wizard, an Assassion (archer) and a Shaman which combines melee with magic. So far I've only tried the Warrior, so I can't comment on the other classes.

Each floor has about 4 different monsters with the option for stronger versions appearing if a Quest requires you to kill one. Boss Encounters can also pop up anytime and anywhere. There are 4 difficulty levels and the game has "Hell" (the hardest one) as the default one.

I've played around 3 hours and already I've had those LOL moments that only roguelikes can deliver. Two examples:

# I start a game, only one door from the starting room, next room is empty, one other door. Open that, Boss Encounter. I'm slaughtered in 4 blows.

# In my longest-running game so far I reach level 5. I quickly find 2 quests to kill 2 named monsters. I proceed a little further and find one of the named monsters, it hits me pretty bad and I need an escape route. In the room is a portal which will send me to another portal on the level. I jump through, only to emerge RIGHT NEXT to the other named monster, which promptly finishes me off.

The biggest gripe I have with the game right now are the thieves. You encounter them on Level 4, they make a "steal" attack, which has a failure chance. But if it succeds, the thief either clears out a whole inventory slot, or steals around 3% of your total gold. Clearing out a whole inventory slot wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that HEALING POTIONS STACK, and it only took a handful of thief monsters for me to have "lost" all my health potions. What's worse, killing the thieves doesn't bring the stuff back. The developer is aware of this and will address this in the next update, which promises to be rather big.

The game's only $5 on Steam, one can do a lot worse than pick up this game.

Note: The above post is from August of 2014.

So, I revisited this game this month as I noticed it saw updates and support until 2021, and I figured I'd try to finally beat the thing, put it to rest.

The good news? The above bug with the Steal-ability was addressed and fixed. If a thief steals a stack from you, you have a set number of turns to kill the thief to get the stack back. (Money stolen is gone for good though.)

The bad news? The game is quite barren on content and gameplay, and one of the character classes is laughably broken.

There's plenty of monsters to fight, but they come in three categories: Brawler, archer or spellcaster. Brawlers try to get close to you and 'push' you to death, archers just shoot at you from where they stand, and spellcasters cast spells at you from where they stand. The spellcasters are by far the most dangerous, as some of their spells can one-shot you. Fortunately they're uncommon and you're in real trouble if a Boss-monster happens to be a spellcaster (like the endbosses of the game).

The dungeons are just a set of rooms, randomly generated and placed together to form a dungeon. Sometimes you need keys to unlock the doors. My theory is that the required keys are always available in-game, but since some loot is hidden in 'secret stashes' that are only discovered when you walk over them, it can be hard to find them. Otherwise it's just hoping the shopkeeper stocks the key the next time he restocks his wares.

But in the end it's the character classes that make or break the game... and they do so in style. The Warrior is the brute, he has no magic and hits things with a big weapon. He's the hardest to kill, but also the most vulnerable as he has to close the distance with every monster. The Wizard is the easiest to kill, but has the biggest firepower due to his spells. Unfortunately he also takes the longest time to level up to be able to cast those spells, so caution must be used. The Shaman is some kind of mix of the Warrior and the Wizard, using magic to boost his melee-abilities. But it's the Assassin where things go Wrong. He's the archer, and he can kill things from a distance. A great distance. In fact, click on a tile within sight that contains a monster, and the Assassin can attack it, scenery be damned.

That's not the broken part. I'm not 100% certain what the problem is, but when a character gains a level he gains some boosts to his stats, including the 'Attack'-stat. For the other classes that boost is a 'add_plusX'-value... but for the Assassin it seems to be a 'add_multipleX'-value. So the Assassin's 'Attack'-stat quickly jumps into triple-digits, and will go into quadruple-digits if the dungeon is long enough. Meaning that by around Level 9 the Assassin is one-shotting most normal monsters (and some of the Boss-monsters as well) and by around Level 13 that chance is all but guaranteed. In the longest dungeon I got my Assassin to Level 24 and he one-shotted the endboss for thousands of points of damage. There really is no need to play the other classes, the Assassin is the God-King of the Universe. (Oh, there's also a hidden fifth class that's unlocked if you beat the game once, but they play pretty similar to the Shaman. Sadly the rhythm-gimmick is not included.)

The only other point of the game worth mentioning is the music, it's composed by Aaron Krogh and you can check out his music over on Soundcloud. This is the in-game shop music and it's a tune that grows on you.

 

[Ezekiel]

Metal Gear is the only game in the main canon that I have not finished. Found Gray Fox and escaped the cell. There's a shotgun boss that I don't know how to beat without my equipment. My equipment is hidden somewhere around here. Progression is enjoyable enough that I want to stick through it. Maybe I should have picked easy mode, though.

 

[Ezekiel]

Oh, when you die enough times the game gives you free ammo and rations...

Kojima reused so much in the sequels that I felt like I cheated when I detected the lasers with my cigarettes before finding the infrared goggles without anyone telling me. I don't get that. Why would you want to repeat yourself so?

If it sounds like I don't like the game, no, I do.

 

[Ezekiel]

After I search for mines all over, go all the way over the sand field with mines and tank shells firing at me and mine the tank again, this time with enough mines to destroy it, I get to a door and am told I need a disguise to get in. Nothing around, so I give up and look online and find that the uniform is behind a wall in the basement somewhere and that I would have been told if I had a radio frequency found in the manual. That's the kind of backtracking that just annoys me.

 

[Axel_am]

Log 7:
Rough week. Not the roughest from the year but it's up there.

Haven't had the chance to game as much as I want to but I've been grinding DotA and enjoying The International during the weekend. I've also started my journey through The White March in Pillars of Eternity. So far everything I've seen is a delight. I can't wait to get deeper into the expansions and see what challenges await.

DotA is such a time sink that I really have to cut down the hours I'm spending with her. It's been hard for me to find the balance. Thing is that even if I set a goal that will satisfy my DotA ambitions I'll still need weeks to reach it. Regardless, changes have to be made.

 

[Kabas]

Ion Fury is a very long game.

 

[Darth Roxor]

it is also a very bad game

 

[BruceVC]

I decided to play Arx Fatalis as my next game, I am using the Arx Libertis game overhaul mod

https://arx-libertatis.org/

And I installed Arx Extended and Arx Neuralis mods

I just reached Arx city and Im having a great time with the CRPG mechanics and design

 

[Abu Antar]

Been playing The Scroll of Taiwu and Yakuza 6 the most, these past few days.

Taiwu is basically a mix of rpg, and a simulation game. While the game is still in Early Access, I chose to play it. I've had my eye on it for the longest of time, and a full version release feels like a utopia for now. I'm going around fighting, in a very strange battle system, where range of attacks, and movement matter more than I though. All the while, I am losing money in my village, yet still managed to build some stuff, and expanding it (money situation is slowly getting better). I got married, got a kid, chased crickets (even did some cricket fighting!), beat up dozens of beggars, arranged marriages to get more workforce, I mean more friendly villagers, learned lots of martial arts, and other non-combat stuff, watched people die of old age or injuries (time passes monthly), and also chilling to the soundtrack. The game wasn't really what I expected, but I'm sort of digging it. Of course, this is being played with a fan translation, because an official English translation seems like a pipe dream.
EDIT: I looked up a couple of mods for convenience sake, like being able to save whenever I want, and some other stuff.

Yakuza 6 was supposed to be the last game for Kazuma Kiryu. This has been in my backlog for years. It's fun to be back, doing the brawling style combat. Currently, the goal is to beat the game, and do whatever stuff I find on my way. I will do the rest in premium adventure mode. Story is as usual batshit retarded, but in a way that I enjoy. There have been some cool characters, but I miss baseball guy from Yakuza 5. He would have been perfect for the baseball side stuff. There are some interesting mini games, like spear fishing, and heading your own gang (called clan). The clan stuff is a very, very simplified rts mode, but sometimes, when you have beaten certain bosses, they will fight you in regular combat. It's fun seeing your clan grow, and develop your characters. Overall a fun game, and will be way shorter than Y4 and Y5.

 

[samuraigaiden]

Every level in Max Payne 3 is the same. The game isn't horrible in small pills, but you have to be a glutton for boredom to play more than 30 minutes at a time.

 

[samuraigaiden]

Ion Fury is a very long game.

Was hoping I'd like it because Duke 3D is one of my all time favs. Level design, gunplay and enemies all feel way more like Marathon than any build engine game. Floaty, sparse, annoying.

 

[NecroLord]

Ion Fury is a very long game.

Was hoping I'd like it because Duke 3D is one of my all time favs. Level design, gunplay and enemies all feel way more like Marathon than any build engine game. Floaty, sparse, annoying.

Old-school revival shooters just feel odd to me.
Still, some are better than others.

 

[Kabas]

Was hoping I'd like it because Duke 3D is one of my all time favs. Level design, gunplay and enemies all feel way more like Marathon than any build engine game. Floaty, sparse, annoying.

Agree, partially. Never played Marathon and yet to play Duke.
Ion Fury does have a few gameplay issues. Like junky enemy hitboxes(on flying enemies especially), charged bowling bomb having trouble finding enemies during large arena fights, Loverboy secondary often doesn't work if you peek on enemy from a different room, enemies with no intelligence placed in an area that clearly doesn't account for it, etc.
None of that would be really noticeable if the game was shorter. But it's not and the game doesn't have varied enough enemy roster or gameplay to compensate for it.

Still, i intend to finish it. Won't be trying the DLC after this one tho, heard it belongs to the "more of the same" category.

 

[octavius]

Serious Sam 2.

Just like the first game it's too hard for me on Normal without save scumming, and a bit too easy on Easy. And like the first game there's a very good enemy variation, but unless I'm imagining things, smaller numbers at one time.

I like the visuals; nice and bright and with nice artwork. Got both Unreal and Hexen 2 vibes from certain parts of the game so far.

But I'm a bit worried at the amount jumping and avoid-being-crushed puzzles. These things are just not very fun.