What game are you playing?

[Roguey]

Finished Pikmin 3.



It was stressful at first because of the time limits, but the longer I played and the more fruit I acquired, the more I was able to adjust. Pretty neat real time strategic puzzle game.

[Emphyrio]

@The_Mask why did you laugh at my post

[The_Mask]

Because I didn't think it was easy. I just thought that its difficulty depended a lot on the abilities your boys get.

But the bulk of the laughter was because you mentioned nothing about MCA writing for it.

[Emphyrio]

Because I didn't think it was easy. I just thought that its difficulty depended a lot on the abilities your boys get.

But the bulk of the laughter was because you mentioned nothing about MCA writing for it.

I have won so far with Rusting Hulks, Flame Behomeths, Bombermechs and Zenith Guard. I made it to the ending island with the starting squad on the first run but I ****** something up and died somehow, don't remember. The only squad I've played with that seems just plain bad is Steel Judoka.

I've never cared about MCA, but I guess all the ugly dangerhair pilots suit his crowd.

[Tweed]

Gnomeworld: Kittyclysm

[General Reign]

I got Injustice for 5 bucks since it came with the DLC.

[Element]

Have decided to dive into Fear and Hunger 1 for the first time. I can see the appeal, whatever you may say about the game it's definitely a memorable one.

[Ratcatcher]

Fear and Hunger

It's ******* good. And contrary to many modern titles injecting sex and degeneracy for the sake of it, it's a game that goes into those topics boldly and gives them meaning in the setting itself. I normally cannot stand RPG maker **** but I played both FaH titles a few months ago back to back and was both impressed by the design (single dev), loved the setting (altho engrish) and rly didn't care for the sub par engine.

[Element]

Fear and Hunger

It's ******* good. And contrary to many modern titles injecting sex and degeneracy for the sake of it, it's a game that goes into those topics boldly and gives them meaning in the setting itself. I normally cannot stand RPG maker **** but I played both FaH titles a few months ago back to back and was both impressed by the design (single dev), loved the setting (altho engrish) and rly didn't care for the sub par engine.

I have some reservations about the combat being akin to puzzles which you can't really figure out without dying a bunch of times, but other than that it's an impressive achievement. Very atmospheric so far.

[Ratcatcher]

I have some reservations about the combat being akin to puzzles which you can't really figure out without dying a bunch of times

I agree it's definitely not the best. It suits the setting tho and it's within the scope of what he could achieve as a single dev. Better to provide a tight but ultimately limited system than give players tools that will never be properly used within the setting.

They are very short games, the trial and error are a way to pad out the amount of content. It's not original in this but imho it pulled it off much more graciously than most titles.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Mount & Blade Warband. Enjoying it so far. A quest bugged out and I'm going to have to restart, but I was only a couple of hours in so no big deal. Before I start a new game I have been looking at patches and mods which might be worth downloading. Apparently Floris is the best mod for newcomers as it adds content without altering the game itself too much. However I'm still undecided on whether to just play vanilla. Any recommendations would be appreciated.

I have sunk hundreds of hours into M&B. The early to mid game when you are a small warband leader who is taking big risks like raiding villages, or doing army work for lords is the most fun. Once you become a king, the game starts becoming boring as you have to slowly take each castle and town one by one while your lords eventually become exhausted and leave and you have to call off the campaign and feast for a while, and sometimes you are losing castles to other kingdoms. But eventually once you have a couple dozen lords, you will have enough armies with you all the time that you can just keep taking castles and towns uninterrupted, so the game becomes very easy but you still have many hours ahead of you to take over the world and finish the game. So I usually stall out before I finish. The only playthrough I have ever finished was Prophecy of Pendor.

I would recommend playing:

Diplomacy. It's the vanilla game but with some additional features implemented that were not finished by the devs. Many conversion mods use diplomacy as a base.

Gekokujo 2. Set in medieval Japan during the warring states. There are no shields so you have to be good about blocking with your sword and archers are more dangerous. Uses diplomacy (already included in the mod).

Prophecy of Pendor: the most popular M&B overhaul. The two notable features are the huge 1,000+ man bandit armies wandering around that you can't fight until endgame when you marshal two dozen lords to your aid, and the ability to establish Knighthood Chapters (aka build your own army list), but those are very expensive and take time and by the time I began fiddling around with that I had already mostly taken over the world. PoP does not use diplomacy so if you are used to those features you might feel a little bummed. This is the only time I ever finished a M&B run and took over the world. PoP's world is smaller than the vanilla game and most mods, so by the time you finally have a couple dozens lords under your command and you're faced with the slow, methodical, tedious process of taking every castle and town, you already own 80% of the world so it only takes you a couple more hours to finish.

[KnightoftheWind]

Have decided to dive into Fear and Hunger 1 for the first time. I can see the appeal, whatever you may say about the game it's definitely a memorable one.

Not as memorabe as what you get just by looking it up on Youtube.

[Element]

Have decided to dive into Fear and Hunger 1 for the first time. I can see the appeal, whatever you may say about the game it's definitely a memorable one.

Not as memorabe as what you get just by looking it up on Youtube.

I can't watch youtubers any more. Too much playacting before the camera. Reviewers who don't have facecam are alright though

[Mr.Wonderful]

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey

I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would, I'm 20 hours in and I really barely scratched the surface (this playthrough is done, all my gang was eaten or starved to death because we settled somewhere near where a lion roams). I saw somewhere an interview with a developer years ago, remember the line from it that this is more close to learning an instrument.
This is pretty much abandoned on an island simulator, only you are a monkey that can bond with other monkeys, breed and make a commune, also discovering what every rock or leave does. I remember at first I could barely walk the ground without getting torn apart by a lion, puma, pantera, python, crocodile... Then I equipped my harem with pointed sticks and 7 of us managed to scare a boar. I enjoyed Sims: Castaway for PS2 too.

[Tweed]

Missionforce: Cyberstorm, a game nobody around here will care about because you can't **** the HERCs.

[Acrux]

Missionforce: Cyberstorm

I care, I've mentioned the game 3 or 4 times on this board. I play a mission every couple of weeks.

[Humbaba]

Tf2 is still great fun in 2023 and the best rpg shooter there is.

[Roguey]

Finished The Technomancer. Liked it better than Bound by Flame, though not as much as Mars War Logs. Liked the writing and characters, hated how they addressed the criticism of their small levels by making them pointlessly longer and without the convenience of fast travel hot spots. The difficulty scaling on the endgame enemies was also absurd because Spiders gave them more health, damage resistance, and made them dodge your attacks more often. I guess they really wanted you to use traps, but it seems a bit silly to make an RPG and then expect you to rely far more on item spam than your character's build to get through the end. The final boss was also aggravating, though I was able to heal potion-spam my way through it. I enjoyed how there was a compelling case for all three endings with none of them being all bad/good, good ending for the series.

[General Reign]

A friend gifted me Dragon Age Origins. I played it years ago on Xbox for a few hours but I was not aware that the pc version is in isometric. I might actually beat it since I got burnt out on Darksiders.

Ok the combat is pretty boring but it scratches the KotOR itch.

[Tweed]

Well, that was a fun trip down memory lane. I used the mining cheat because **** all that grinding for ore, do you have any idea how much money it costs to fully equip a Juggernaut and train a pilot?

No, of course you don't because there's no bears to **** in Cyberstorm.

[Tweed]

Oh and I finished ROTT. Nightdive sure loves to congratulate themselves, don't they?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Trails in to Reverie/Hajimari no Kiseki

It seems there has been a running trend since the Crossbell games. The Trails franchise depicts cities as being the source of warmongering populaces. In Crossbell you had the cityfolk becoming zombies en masse and then later supporting Dieter's one world order. In CS3 and CS4, the Great Twilight not only takes the most root in Heimdallr and Crossbell, the protagonists also comment "seems he has been affected by the curse" on several NPCs in cities such as Saint-Arkh, Ordis, and Raquel. You can find nary an NPC losing their minds in the rural villages like Milsante, Leeves, Eryn, Saint Ursula's Hospital, etc. Only the mayor of the village of Alster becomes affected. And then here again in Reverie, you have the cityfolk of Crossbell going crazy (for the fourth time in three years!) while the rural populace of Armorica keep their heads on straight. I'm guessing in the Kuro games, we will see the city populations of Calvard - particularly the capital of Edith - thirst for blood.

► Show Spoiler

The clownshow always begins in the urban hellhole. The reclamation always begins out in the boonies.

[agentorange]

Finished The Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder. A Lovecraft tribute game that for the most part really gets the sensibilities of a Lovecraft story right. No tentacle monsters, but a lot of research into local and exotic folklore, exploration of old and lonely places, dissolution of identity and so on.

Being that you are a detective in the game trying to piece together the trail of a killer, the game has a very novel and fitting mechanic for puzzle solving, which involves underlining meaningful looking information in the various notes, books, articles you read throughout the game; underline the right stuff and you are given clues which you can then combine into a new solution/lead. It's nice when it works, giving a tangible reason to carefully read all the literature in the game, frustrating when you are left wondering what the developers intended you to underline and combine.

The mechanic of combining several clues to cogitate into a new lead also works well most of the time, but sometimes you are left wondering why your character couldn't simply act on the clues themselves. A slight spoiler, but one such occasion is when you need to go to a certain new location to follow up a lead, the location is found through a map puzzle, but the name on the map is old and the name of the place has changed, so before you can go there you need to read some notes and research the original name of the place. But, why couldn't your character simply go to the location on the map regardless of what the name is? I suppose it could be chalked up to the location on the map being somewhat vague.

Also I'm not one to usually complain about bugs, but there is a progression stopping bug in this one that is very easy to run into. So if you decide to play the game and you get to a certain area where you can't progress, and you could swear you picked up a flashlight but it's no longer in your inventory, that's a bug.

Despite the flaws I'd highly recommend it if you are into first person adventure games.

[maidenhaver]

Quake 2

[Tweed]

Gave up on Corporate Wars, total pile of ****. Moving on to Mechcommander.

[agentorange]

Finally finished Myst. One of those games I've played numerous times over the years but never completed.

► Show Spoiler

The game seems overwhelmingly complex at first, which resulted in me dropping the game many times before, but it's only because you are given little to no direction at the start while seemingly everything around you looks like a possible puzzle with no solution. Once you stick with it for a little while and get a sense of your overall goals and the methods of progressing, understanding how to isolate the individual puzzles, it's really not a very difficult game. Most of what I would call the puzzles are very simple, and the only times I was stumped in the game were due not to puzzles but because I missed something that I was supposed to click or didn't navigate an area properly.

I consulted a guide three times. Once to get my bearings after coming back to the game after not playing it for around 6 months, because I had forgotten how to access the forest world despite having been there before. Second time was In the treetop area of said forest world, there is a switch you have to press to progress, the switch is extremely obvious and the area isn't that big, and all you have to do is navigate to it, but somehow I managed to miss it despite wandering around the area for hours on end. And last was for a hint as to where to start looking for the page for the true ending.

I look forward to moving onto Riven.

[General Reign]

Quake 2

The remaster or the og?

[maidenhaver]

Quake 2

The remaster or the og?

The KEKS engine remaster.

[Tweed]

I lied, I went back and finished Corporate Wars, something about it taunted me. Anyway, don't bother, it's just not very well put together, nowhere near as good as Cyberstorm. I really love the part where everyone starts to gang up on you so you have almost no hope of defending your resources, hope you enjoy 6 vs 18 HERC battles towards the end. Game also loves to give you missions you that are pure **** moves, there's no threat assessment of any kind in the mission run downs. In one patrol mission I got jumped by two sides on turn one and lost my entire fleet, oopsie! It was an ambush!

The game seems to have been built around real-time with turn-based bolted on and it does neither one well. One scripted mission has you trying to navigate a map with active volcanos that randomly rain down damage in real time without regard to your selection so you can enjoy watching your units die as you wait for your turn to come around. Someone also decided that it wasn't enough for derms to degrade and die, they also go apeshit and start moving at random if they have low discipline and when that happens I just reload.

And boy did I reload a lot, whereas Cyberstorm is too easy even on hard Corporate Wars makes you bite the curb and once you start to get ahead they gang up on you. The final goal is to destroy all the other corporation command centers which boils down to loading up HERCs with the longest range weapons and bulldozing through a swarm of enemies, hoping to God you level it before everyone dies.

I can see what they were trying to do and I wanted to like it, but they didn't get it done. I like how each of the factions are set up, but I can't see how you'd ever be able to finish the game with corpos that don't let you field at least 6 units (some only permit 4). Researching your own stuff is kind of fun at first, but everything gets so prohibitively expensive towards the end that you'll just spend a lot of turns garrisoning and waiting for funds. Speaking of which they solved the mine grind by changing it to mining sites, the more you control, the more money you get each turn. Enemies can attack your sites and they love to do that more than anything else in the whole world, at first you can defend them fairly easily (unless they blow it up in the first turn which happens a lot) but once they start allying against you you better just ******* forget it, it's a farmer trying to defend a stalk of corn against a swarm of locusts.

It's no wonder that this game is forgotten, so forgotten that there wasn't a single guide, tip, or tactic to be found on the internet.

[KnightoftheWind]

I had played through the Quake II remaster as well. Gave up on the main campaign as I always found it dull, but the new campaign by Machine Games is surprisingly good, just as their work on Quake was. Every level is fleshed out with great, cohesive visuals and some nice surprises thrown in. Every level feels like an adventure of sorts, and you end up doing some pretty serious damage along the way.

The twist at the end was pretty surprising too, as

► Show Spoiler

I didn't think they would link the Strogg's origin story to the main antagonist of Quake. It offers a very Based supernatural explanation for their origin, beyond just being evil alien machines. It shows that Evil forces truly animates the things we sometimes view as mundane or purely material.