What are you playing?

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Jaedar
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by Jaedar »

Heroine's quest.

It's a cool(and free) point and click adventure game with rpg elements. It has nice pixel art and some very cool writing in places. Puzzles are pretty reasonable too since I have been able to get pretty far without looking up a guide. I wish the game autosaved more though, because it is perhaps a bit easy to starve/freeze to death with a viable save being far back in time.

I'm also playing the new Tomb Raider.
Enjoying it a lot more than I expected, it's a pretty good cinematic adventure. I swear every single animator working on the game is a huge sadist though, all the death animations are so brutal.
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Jonas
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by Jonas »

I played through DXHR again for the third time, this time with the Director's Cut stuff. It was worth the money, but not worth the time. I enjoyed the little side mission to save Tracer Tong though. And I am way too good at that game now. I'm pretty sure I know it well enough to ghost the whole game, if I wanted. I know all the little secret passages and vents. And since you get to keep the Missing Link stuff on top of getting all your original stuff back in the Director's Cut, I was literally fully maxed out on mods when I reached Singapore. It was crazy.

Now I'm quietly playing through Gelo's mission for The Dark Mod, Requiem. It's very good so far. Very good.

In general, I'm pretty blown away by how well The Dark Mod has managed to replicate the aesthetics and the feel of Thief 2. Even with vastly enhanced graphics and detailed physics and so on, it really feels like playing Thief 2 again. It's quite remarkable.
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kdawg88
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by kdawg88 »

Jonas wrote:Now I'm quietly playing through Gelo's mission for The Dark Mod, Requiem. It's very good so far. Very good.

In general, I'm pretty blown away by how well The Dark Mod has managed to replicate the aesthetics and the feel of Thief 2. Even with vastly enhanced graphics and detailed physics and so on, it really feels like playing Thief 2 again. It's quite remarkable.
Just started playing it today. I completely agree.
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by bobby 55 »

Tomb Raider: I like how (in the beginning) Lara is all average human and it's her determination that's keeping her going. What I'm not so fond of is a fricking QTE that is fucked up and is stopping my progress. For those who've played it's the wolves den and she's ex-filtrating and a big bad wolf pounces. The keystrokes (on screen) aren't getting the job done.
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Jonas
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by Jonas »

Yeah it's 2014 now and people are still using QTEs. I don't understand how this can be :(

It's a good game though and if you're only up to the wolves' den you're missing out on some excellent sections.
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bobby 55
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by bobby 55 »

The QTE aside, I've really enjoyed the game so far. Anyhow, I Googled and found that it's happened to other people and have a solution...hopefully.
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Jaedar
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by Jaedar »

I think I died 5 times during the first QTE because I could not comprehend which button to press or when to press it. Not sure if I should feel dumb or vindicated for thinking QTEs are shit design(or both).

I am currently quite a bit into the game, and have basically gotten bored with it. Will see if I feel like finishing.

Finished Heroine's quest too, really good adventure game. Probably on my top 5 games released this year list.
Jonas wrote:Yeah it's 2014 now and people are still using QTEs. I don't understand how this can be :(
Greed to leads to wanting to be like hollywood
Hollywoods leads to cinematic games
cinematic games lead to cutscenes
cutscenes lead to lack of gameplay
lack of gameplay leads to shittily shoehorning it into cutscenes in the form of QTEs the dark side.
bobby 55 wrote: Tomb Raider: I like how (in the beginning) Lara is all average human and it's her determination that's keeping her going.
Yeah, I liked that too. It's a shame it sort of stops being beleivable at around 30 minutes in when her body count reaches more than a dozen.
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Jonas
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Re: What are you playing?

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Jaedar wrote:Greed to leads to wanting to be like hollywood
Hollywoods leads to cinematic games
cinematic games lead to cutscenes
cutscenes lead to lack of gameplay
lack of gameplay leads to shittily shoehorning it into cutscenes in the form of QTEs the dark side.
Succinct and accurate.
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Cybernetic pig
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by Cybernetic pig »

Tomb Raider wasn't a terrible game but it wasn't Tomb Raider. The mysterious atmosphere, the challenge, the beautiful music, the great platforming and level design in terms of layout, variety and challenge, there wasn't none of that. And ffs yes, the fucking QTEs :x
But hey, at least it was a modern third person action game where I could actually jump of my own accord. :/
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by DDL »

I decided to look through my backlog, and opted for..dungeon siege 3. It's..interesting.

Full disclaimer, I never managed to stick with either dungeon siege 1 or 2 long enough to get any idea of any kind of plot (and to be honest, the first game was basically: "you are a farmer...MONSTERS APPEAR ZOMG! KILL THEM....NOW GO RAMPAGE, AND NEVER STOP MURDERING, EVAR") so I have no fucking idea about the mythos, pantheon, or history of the world (or indeed what races populate it), and am thus clueless about who all these historically legendary characters are supposed to be, or why I'm happily robbing their graves for equipment I can't even wear (!!!), but I assume I'm still a good guy right? Hell, if Croft can pull off being heroic while simultaneously being just an acrobatic grave robber, then I guess I can.

The character select system forces you to choose one of four pregenerated gimps, which turns out to be because they've actually written interlocking backstory/character development arcs for them all, so while you're not allowed to be a custom-made fuckup of epic proportions, at least you're a person who fits in the world. Of course, the four options have some fairly typical archetypes, the first two being

HUNKY MANTANK with floppy hair and father-figure abandonment issues
TITS WOMAN with insanely lowcut shortshorts and GUNS because WHY NOT (also she is foreign, but SEXY foreign)

However, this is almost forgivable because the other two are

OLD GUY WITH A CLOCKWORK MACHINE FOR A STOMACH who is apparently magical or something IDGAF
ADDITIONAL TITS WOMAN who is less sultry, more angry and aloof and TURNS INTO FIRE

So obviously I picked the latter, because tits AND fire? Man, who could pass that up?

Plot-wise a lot of it seems a little discordant and jarring, with characters expressing stark disbelief at the idea that magic warp gates could exist, while being happily surrounded by ghosts and a woman who turns into fire. Still, it gives you lots of nice conversation options with the possibility to be as mercenary or noble as you like, so it has that nice mass effect-y feel to it, and everything is voiced (quite well, actually) so that also helps.

Gameplay-wise, so far it's actually punishingly hard, which is a surprise. I kinda figured I'd have at least a few levels of mindless trashmob slaying before getting to bits where I need to bring my A-game, but thus far I've frequently had to resort to lying dead on the floor waiting for TANKMAN to finish soloing the boss so he can come pick me up. It's odd...it's like the glass cannon paradigm writ large: I have a ton of health (more than tankman, actually) but it drops to zero in nothing flat. However, I have a ton of vampiric abilities, so I can also go from "nothing" to "full" in more or less a single good attack. Why tankman gets to just park his chunky arse down and whale on shit for hours without suffering from the same fate, I don't know. He doesn't have any more armour than I do, and he doesn't turn into fire even slightly, so fuck knows. When the combat isn't me going "whup-ARGH" and twiddling my thumbs, it's actually pretty fluid and fun: I've needed to employ the full range of skills, so my firechick will run up to guys in non-fire mode, enchant her big smashing stick to be firey+vampiric, run off a few AoE burny attacks, then turn into fire, leave a big burning puddle in the middle of everyone (that also heals me when it burns people because vampiric abilities are hilariously unfussy), teleport out and summon a dog made out of fire (a lot of this game seems to be designed around WHY THE FUCK NOT, EH), then fire some fireballs before turning back into human form and running in for some more AoE lolz. It's suprisingly twitchy.

Having said that, I've just got a skill that makes me turn into lightning (lightning that is on fire, no less), vanish from the map for three seconds and then plummet down and ruin the shit of everything in the vicinity, so I'm pretty sure my tactics are going to change to "doing this, over and over again, while giggling", but we shall see.

6/10, overall. Probably won't finish it, because that's clearly my track record for the dungeon siege games.
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gamer0004
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by gamer0004 »

I find your review entertaining. 8/10.

Am I right in thinking the take-away message here is: much fire, some boobs, little sense?
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kdawg88
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by kdawg88 »

Playing The Dark Mod. It's the best single-player game I've played in a while. It not only gives Thief a graphical update but actually makes the gameplay more interesting with little things like the physics (rotating/pushing and pulling objects) and the lockpicking 'game', amongst other things. You never see this sort of thing happen with major commercial titles and it sure as hell won't happen with Thief 4, although I have my hopes for it. Been playing quake as usual - played in a tournament last month and actually won it :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouJrblcLWcs). I'm playing as 'cerno'. I am also delighted to begin yet another playthrough of DX.
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Jonas
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Re: What are you playing?

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DDL wrote:[Hilarity]
Hah! I actually found Dungeon Siege 3 to be surprisingly compelling as well. Very much too linear in its level design for me (I like my RPGs with a healthy dose of exploration) but its story and characters did give me that good old Obsidian buzz. The story gets better and better as you go, once you realise what the main antagonist is all about and how your own character fits into that. I've been wanting to give it another play through with fire-girl for a while, having originally picked gun-girl which was quite fun, so maybe I'll get around to that once I finish No One Lives Forever 2.

Speaking of which I've been playing NOLF2, and it's much more fun so far than I anticipated. I quite enjoyed the writing and aesthetics of NOLF1, but I was never that big a fan of the gameplay. It was very shootery, but with the occasional out-of-place adventure bits, and I don't remember exactly where I stopped playing but I think it involved a shark. The first real mission of NOLF2 has some semi-serious open level design which ties fantastically well into the espionage premise. I've just learned that there's a whole separate co-op campaign for it as well apparently so I'm really looking forward to trying that out.
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Hassat Hunter
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by Hassat Hunter »

Where you got the NOLFs? *wants the NOLFs*

As for DS3, hated it.
Love DS1, love DS2. Canned DS3 pretty early the start. And that for an Obsidian fan. It's just... not very fun.
Maybe that's my fault for picking melee Lucas guy instead of distance woman though...
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Jaedar
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Re: What are you playing?

Post by Jaedar »

Hassat Hunter wrote:Where you got the NOLFs? *wants the NOLFs*
Thepiratebay if nowhere else. and since it's not on steam or gog, it's probably your only resort.
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