What game are you wasting time on?

[octavius]

Gave up on Star Command.

Things I hate about this game:

Equipment can be destroyed by enemy fire. If your grenades are hit, so are all your "reloads". But if try to avoid all the eggs in one basket and stack up on individual grenades you end up with lots of 0 grenades that you can't equip or reload to actually use.

You can only reload weapons in combat. [EDIT: actually, it seems reloading from the ship menu will also load personal weapons]

You can reload ship guns outside combat, but only if they are empty. And you can only reload in combat rounds, not in rounds where enemy ships are out of range.

You can only re-equip weapons in combat. And even if you use the command to just check which weapon you are currently using, you waste a round. If you have forgotten which weapon you currently use, there is no other way of knowing, if you have several weapons. And you need more than one weapon in case your current one gets destroyed.

Some messages flash by so fast that it's impossible to read them. The text delay option only delays the time before the text appears, not how long it stays on screen. So I had to use the movie capping function of DosBox to check what ships I'm facing, for example.

I don't recall the Amiga version being so frustrating.

Checking CRPG Addict's blog I see I wrote 11 years ago:

I don't remember the game being particularly difficult

EDIT: The blatant level scaling is also a turn-off.
I would have liked to see a remake of this game, though, since the basic premise is good.

 

[Hag]

Once or twice a week, at dark, when the stars are aligned, I managed to be available for some Mechwarrior Living Legend game. Game's fun and hard, but there's something else I'd like to talk about.

There is something I dig in all of Battletech games I've played, be it MW3, MC2, or the indie MWLL, and that's the very realistic yet sci-fi buildings and props design. Bases have car parks with cars stationed there. There are timber works near forests. Office buildings. Tanks. Fishing villages, com towers, fences and barriers, bridges over streams, trains and streetlights. And next to them giant pyramids, tall concrete towers, massive fortresses, starships, skyscrapers cities with lanes everywhere, all mixed seamlessly. It all seems so credible despite the obviously game-centered maps and giant robots wreaking havoc. I love it, and that's something I missed in Armored Core 6 and which actually was a reason that made me stopped playing. Levels were just that, levels, without soul or fancy details.

YOUR MOVE, ARMORED CORE.

 

[Sigourn]

I decided to try out a bunch of games I had purchased in the past. Unfortunately the Steam refund window was well over for some of these, so...

• Many movie games I deeply regret buying. Alan Wake, Heavy Rain, Control, Hellblade Senua. I managed to refund Heavy Rain, though. The rest just plain sucked.
• Axiom Verge. I expected something entirely different. Refunded.
• Batman: Arkham Asylum. It had more gameplay than Control, but it felt very repetitive.

This should teach me to stick to RPGs and FPSs.

 

[NecroLord]

I decided to try out a bunch of games I had purchased in the past. Unfortunately the Steam refund window was well over for some of these, so...

• Many movie games I deeply regret buying. Alan Wake, Heavy Rain, Control, Hellblade Senua. I managed to refund Heavy Rain, though. The rest just plain sucked.
• Axiom Verge. I expected something entirely different. Refunded.
• Batman: Arkham Asylum. It had more gameplay than Control, but it felt very repetitive.

This should teach me to stick to RPGs and FPSs.

That'll teach you.

 

[Kabas]

Returned to Din's Legacy.

IMHO this game was great fun only during the first few hours i played it a long ass time ago. Just can't escape the feeling that i already experienced everything this game have to offer after completing a few zones.
Doesn't satisfy my desire to fuck around with various classes either. Din's legacy offers a big selection of classes but most of them lack that something that would make me call their abilies cool or impactful. Mutation system doesn't help much even though it can give you an occasionally cool skill combo.
Only tried the demo of Drox Operative 2 and it was honestly a better Soldak game. At least it doesn't have space consisting of nothing but mazes and dungeons that only offer more annoying to navigate mazes.

 

[Abu Antar]

I'm actively playing four games.

Nox Archaist, a neo-retro rpg. There have been some QoL additions. Stop, heathen! you might say, but this game is awesome. There is love and understanding of what made older games great. Exploration is fun, the turn-based combat works well. I have two characters focused on melee combat, one of them mage/fighter hybrid. Two rangers, one being a mage/archer hybrid, and two out-and-out casters with staves. Dialog works well enough. Just remember to write down the words that you want to ask for in dialog. You should maybe also write down names of locations, and where they are located. Graphics are spot on. Really charming, and I love the idle stances of the living things.

Star Ocean: The Second Story R. I completed "disc 1", or the point where you had to change discs in the PS1 version. Combat is fun, graphics look good to me, and the general flow of the game is great. There isn't real much downtime or padding. Go do this, do that, oh a side quest here, move on to this, and so on. This is how you remkae/remaster a game, and not demolish it.

Daymare 1998. I'm not going to go into detail on this one. I'll keep it very simple. We've got Resident Evil at home.

Football Manager 2024. I have finally started my legendary save of picking a bottom tier team (Always Boston United, since 2001), and going for the top tier divisions. I am using the same super weird tactic that worked wonders with Liverpool. It is hilarious to see the difference in the quality of play. Not only are my players totally crap, but the formation is also confusing the hell out of lower tier teams.

Dragon Quest VII on Nintendo 3DS is also getting some play time, but it is not a game that I play a lot. A few hours per week. I won't be done with this until mid 2024 at this rate.

 

[Ezekiel]

Played Metal Gear Solid 3 most of my weekend. First I finished it for the story (It's alright. MGS1 and 2 are better in that regard.), then I replayed it on Extreme with no alerts, no kills, no life medicine (Never take them in any playthrough because they count against you.), all the kerotans (frog figures) hit. The kerotans were the one thing I never accomplished in these twenty years. The ones in the chase were frustrating, some of them. I had to switch to another controller for better aiming, use XInput instead of XSX (Dual Shock 3). The Retro Fighters Defender that I use for pressure sensitive face actions is way too touchy in XSX. That chase was also when I started looking up kerotan locations on the internet. Would have taken too much time to find them on my own. I saved 48 times, including several where I moved through multiple areas without dying (so useless saves). Not proud of that, but I didn't wanna risk excessive repeats, for my time is more precious than it used be.

Even though I didn't kill anyone, I finished with five suppressors for the M1911, five for the Mk II tranquilizer pistol and one for the XM16 (prototype M16) rifle. They give you way too many suppressors. I barely took any of them from soldiers. Most were just laying around. I tried not to shoot too many people.

Only used the "fixed" camera. I'll never play with the rotational cam introduced in Subsistence again.

Hardest was the The Fury. I took him down in about a minute and a half on Hard, but on Extreme with no lethal weapons it took three hours (including coming down from the top of the mountain over and over, until I gave up and created a save at the beginning of the boss). His fire does so much damage and litters the map. Most of the bosses are pretty good. Volgin on his Shagohod I'm not impressed by.

Uploaded the five and half hour long video. Processing now. This is one of those I'll never delete, even at 158 GB, because I don't trust YouTube. Wasn't too long ago that they said inactive accounts would be deactivated.

 

[Tel Velothi]

Bruhs, I really tried to get into old games that I played in childhood (escapism, because my childhood was not happy and lonely so I played video games all the time).
Now I browse hundreds of games on steam/gog and even if I like some game I drop it after 15 minutes. I can't get into old games, new games, indie, etc.
I feel like life hit hard and now "life" is that game I'd rather play and character skills and attributes are now not of those in game, but mine as human. So now I prefer watching some webinar or read books about psychology - and really psychology is really an RPG game where there are different magic schools. I don't know if anyone feels something similar, but now life is about being happy and joyful - to enjoy looking at trees, drinking tea and talking to people.
I fucking try to get into games and I think it's time to let go. Games were really great and they served purpose in a huge part of my life. But it's time to let go I guess
tl;dr
im not wasting my time on games instead im wasting it by watching psychology webinars (to give you an example like: how my parents affected my adult life and how can I change it; what am i thinking about myself, do I accept myself, what makes me happy, etc)

I found the same as I got older. I started feeling guilty - like what the fuck am I doing with my time on Earth? Especially when playing RPGs, which I love, but which take dozens and dozens of hours. So, like you, I put more energy into skill learning now. I've been studying a few instruments and I've gone back to school to continue my education and advance my career. Though, since my dog died back in April I've started playing games more again. In fact, a week after she died I bought a brand new desktop setup and an expensive new guitar to cope. Speaking of being happy and joyful - enjoying the trees, drinking tea, and talking to people - my taste in music has changed. A lot of the heavy metal I listened to when I was younger just doesn't speak to me as an adult.

Nice bro! Yes, exactly - me too - a lot of nihilistic/mysantropic alt/experimental hip hop/electronic music with dark themes just doesn't speak to me anymore that much. Even though I still have that dark abyss inside of me. Now I try to see life as a beautiful experience - that's a choice we make - pondering on how shitty/cruel world is just doesn't have any upsides

Drinking again, huh?

Nah, man - gave up drinking - although I still have thoughts of alcohol - they come and go - but I choose to stay sober. I do some shrooms

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Played Metal Gear Solid 3 most of my weekend. First I finished it for the story (It's alright. MGS1 and 2 are better in that regard.), then I replayed it on Extreme with no alerts, no kills, no life medicine (Never take them in any playthrough because they count against you.), all the kerotans (frog figures) hit. The kerotans were the one thing I never accomplished in these twenty years. The ones in the chase were frustrating, some of them. I had to switch to another controller for better aiming, use XInput instead of XSX (Dual Shock 3). The Retro Fighters Defender that I use for pressure sensitive face actions is way too touchy in XSX. That chase was also when I started looking up kerotan locations on the internet. Would have taken too much time to find them on my own. I saved 48 times, including several where I moved through multiple areas without dying (so useless saves). Not proud of that, but I didn't wanna risk excessive repeats, for my time is more precious than it used be.

Even though I didn't kill anyone, I finished with five suppressors for the M1911, five for the Mk II tranquilizer pistol and one for the XM16 (prototype M16) rifle. They give you way too many suppressors. I barely took any of them from soldiers. Most were just laying around. I tried not to shoot too many people.

Only used the "fixed" camera. I'll never play with the rotational cam introduced in Subsistence again.

Hardest was the The Fury. I took him down in about a minute and a half on Hard, but on Extreme with no lethal weapons it took three hours (including coming down from the top of the mountain over and over, until I gave up and created a save at the beginning of the boss). His fire does so much damage and litters the map. Most of the bosses are pretty good. Volgin on his Shagohod I'm not impressed by.

Uploaded the five and half hour long video. Processing now. This is one of those I'll never delete, even at 158 GB, because I don't trust YouTube. Wasn't too long ago that they said inactive accounts would be deactivated.

The original camera made the game unplayable for me. With these wide open maps you need to constantly switch to FP to see what's in front of you, or you get spotted from a mile away.

 

[Ezekiel]

Played Metal Gear Solid 3 most of my weekend. First I finished it for the story (It's alright. MGS1 and 2 are better in that regard.), then I replayed it on Extreme with no alerts, no kills, no life medicine (Never take them in any playthrough because they count against you.), all the kerotans (frog figures) hit. The kerotans were the one thing I never accomplished in these twenty years. The ones in the chase were frustrating, some of them. I had to switch to another controller for better aiming, use XInput instead of XSX (Dual Shock 3). The Retro Fighters Defender that I use for pressure sensitive face actions is way too touchy in XSX. That chase was also when I started looking up kerotan locations on the internet. Would have taken too much time to find them on my own. I saved 48 times, including several where I moved through multiple areas without dying (so useless saves). Not proud of that, but I didn't wanna risk excessive repeats, for my time is more precious than it used be.

Even though I didn't kill anyone, I finished with five suppressors for the M1911, five for the Mk II tranquilizer pistol and one for the XM16 (prototype M16) rifle. They give you way too many suppressors. I barely took any of them from soldiers. Most were just laying around. I tried not to shoot too many people.

Only used the "fixed" camera. I'll never play with the rotational cam introduced in Subsistence again.

Hardest was the The Fury. I took him down in about a minute and a half on Hard, but on Extreme with no lethal weapons it took three hours (including coming down from the top of the mountain over and over, until I gave up and created a save at the beginning of the boss). His fire does so much damage and litters the map. Most of the bosses are pretty good. Volgin on his Shagohod I'm not impressed by.

Uploaded the five and half hour long video. Processing now. This is one of those I'll never delete, even at 158 GB, because I don't trust YouTube. Wasn't too long ago that they said inactive accounts would be deactivated.

The original camera made the game unplayable for me. With these wide open maps you need to constantly switch to FP to see what's in front of you, or you get spotted from a mile away.

Enemies are myopic, though. They can't see far. The right camouflage further eliminates the need for the rotational camera. Also, before discovering you, they usually say things like, "Huh? What's that?" In stereo/5.1. I don't think you have to use first-person view too much. I mean, I use it often, but don't find it to be an inconvenience.

 

[Ezekiel]

Just realized/remembered that's part of the reason the bosses are so talkative. The camera. MGS4 was the first game built for the orbital camera and the whole B&B unit is less charismatic and quieter than the bosses in MGS1 to 3.

Edit: Done processing.

 

[Kabas]

Taking another shot at Grim Dawn now that i am in the mood again and there is a huge update apparently.

Choices choices, huh?
Let's go with the local paladin for now.

Details are nice but i never was a fun of "grey and brown super serious everything grim and derp you're fighting mostly zombie things and bug things and everyhting blends into shit" fantasy aesthetic.

Not sure if this is alright. I want to make a melee focused paladin with some extra focus on fire damage probably. For heretic burning.
That charge ability is a given but what else i should spend my points on? Passives look useful, that shield throw ability looks fun but if anything Titan Quest has taught me is that these games reward you for focusing on a few skills at a time or rushing towards a few higher tier skills.
Can't play it now unfortunately as it appears that my laptop's got some overheating issues. Gotta fix 'em first before going into GD properly.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Enemies are myopic, though. They can't see far. The right camouflage further eliminates the need for the rotational camera. Also, before discovering you, they usually say things like, "Huh? What's that?" In stereo/5.1. I don't think you have to use first-person view too much. I mean, I use it often, but don't find it to be an inconvenience.

Well, I had my PS2 hooked up to a 14" CRT, maybe that had something to do with it. It made me angry as I used to play MGS2 on European Extreme. Anyway, you made it look easy, congrats!

 

[Chippy]

Call me a consumer, but was really enjoying Middle Earth: Shadows of War until I realised you can only have one upgrade active at a time. Now I can't be bothered to continue. Autists said something about the player being too overpoweed and the developers just went along with it.

The game is basically Superman + Batman killing orcs and 'tards are talking about balance. All of the skills should have been passive. Technically if I'm enough of an autist I can open the menu and activate each skill as per needed, so they're only taxing the players' time and patience by allowing 1 at a time to be used.

Fucking spastics. I'm already at level 20 and have all the basic skills and the game has another 80-90 skills available. Even RPG-lite should have a sense of progression. I'd knock 25% off the review for this game just for that.

 

[Ezekiel]

Was playing Mario Bros. 3 on the shitter and at work, but Lemuroid lost my save. I saved manually whenever I was finished with my session to make sure the phone didn't lose the running session. The Decline recommended Retroarch, but I hate it. Maybe I'll ask my brother to set it up for me. Or I could pay for one of the good NES emulators. Also thinking of possibly only playing in my room again, since it's a pain to sync the 8BitDo M30 to the computer again.

 

[Eirinjas]

I'm playing Anvil of Dawn but it's starting to feel very repetitive and boring. I'm maybe a third of the way through it. I can tell it's going to be a game that I'll have to force myself to finish.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm playing Anvil of Dawn but it's starting to feel very repetitive and boring. I'm maybe a third of the way through it. I can tell it's going to be a game that I'll have to force myself to finish.

You and everyone else.

Don't forget your bag of rocks!

 

[octavius]

Overall I found Anvil of Dawn surprisingly good. Repetitive, sure, but still fun enough that I wanted to finish it (it bugged out on me).

 

[BruceVC]

I completed Kotor 2 after 40 hours and I thought it was an overall better game than Kotor 1. It gets a 72/100 on the globally popular " BruceVC game rating system "

I enjoyed the narrative and was surprised how the " good " Jedi were actually my enemies at the end. I did have to use heal cheats in one or two combats when my main character wasnt fighting because the combat was almost impossible

But I ended up saving my party members at the end, staying true to the light side,supporting the Republic and trying to Romance Visas which was disappointingly just a platonic Romance and sharing some sort of spiritual force bonding ..boring

But good game overall, my character was deadly at the end with dual wielding lightsabers and using speed and quick heal to win most battles..oh and my trusty Verpine Prototype shield was invaluable

 

[Kabas]

Spoiler

Lost all of my shiny new loot right after i beaten an optional challenge area in Grim Dawn.
Thought i managed to solve the overheating issue at least partially but the laptop still crushed and the game didn't save my progress.

 

[Shuruga]

I beat Control. It is not really an RPG; it had no narrative agency and build customization is basically incremental "which power do you want to make a bit stronger"... but the story was interesting, the combat was fun, and the paranormal setting was a nice change of pace from typical fantasy fare.

At one point partway through the game I was levitating above a bunch of enemies, telekinetically caught a RPG mid air, sent it back to the sender, then slammed down to the ground so the ensuing shock wave could finish off the last stragglers. I paused and thought to myself, "OK, yeah, this is pretty cool."

Also, the guy who voiced Max Payne voices a prominent NPC, Trench, in this game. My head canon is that it is actually the same character: Max Payne assumed the name Trench after the events of Max Payne 3.

After you beat the main campaign it goes into endgame mode where you can go back and do leftover sidequests and/or the expansions. I'll probably mess around with it a bit more before moving on to Shadows over Silesia, Greedfall, or Dark Souls 3 (decisions, decisions...).

 

[Eirinjas]

I'm finishing up The Barrier in Anvil of Dawn. I like this area because you get to fight:


Scottish men

And

Scottish women

 

[AdamReith]

In depths of a playthrough of Kings Field 2. Usually when people call a game a proof of concept for its sequel I get a bit annoyed but you can really see it here.

The first game was a lot of fun but the sequel takes nearly every element to the next level. The dungeon itself has gone from 5 floors to one big sprawling area but every distinct part remains well designed and unique enough that mentally mapping it all still works.

Really glad I played them in order, doubt I could go back to such slow turning and absence of sprinting now. I've been casualized.

Oh also, the guy who turns up randomly and explains what items do needs to be in every game.

 

[Hammerite]

Been playing The Quest, a comfy dungeon crawler. I haven't played a lot of games in that genre because they always make me feel like I'm playing them wrong in regard to party composition, which sucks the fun right out of it for me. In The Quest you only ever use one character and that soothes my autism.

 

[Zlaja]

I figured I should finally get around to playing Mass Effect 2 & 3 (only ever played the first game), so I got the Legendary Edition earlier today. I started the download and it says.....120 GB. THIS IS FUCKING BULLSHIT! Fuck the stupid 4K shit and fuck having to download 38 different language packs and every piece of DLC.