0 users browsing Discussion. | 11 bots  
    Main » Discussion » Games You Played Today REVENGEANCE
    Pages: First Previous 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Next Last
    Posted on 20-12-18, 15:36 (revision 4)
    Dinosaur

    Post: #840 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 3 days
    Last view: 13 hours
    Posted by Nicholas Steel
    https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/17/22188013/cyberpunk-2077-ps4-refunds-playstation-store

    CDProjektRed is not having a fun time. The game was removed from the Playstation Store and refunds are being offered.

    And now, they recognized they're getting fondled by the CCP tentacles "messages from gamers" to delist games already blacklisted on political grounds on other stores:

    https://twitter.com/GOGcom/status/1339227388438306817
    https://gbatemp.net/threads/devotion-announced-for-gog-then-gets-blacklisted-from-the-storefront-hours-later.579008/
    https://www.gog.com/forum/general/devotion_is_coming_to_gog_on_dec_18th/page1
    The week in recap: https://www.pcgamer.com/cd-projekts-very-bad-week-a-breakdown/

    As much as it would hurt me to say this, I'll go and say it: FUCK GOG/CD PROJEKT RED.
    You have just become another Steam/Ubilol, folks. I could have expected this from American corporations, but from Poles?! Eh, guess that stupid is worldwide :/

    Releasing broken shit because gamers are self-entitled miscreants, THEN bowing down to Winnie The Pooh!? This is just pathetic, guys.

    Also: to all those "gamers" threatening to "defect" from GOG to Steam over the latter: go fuck yourselves, guys. You're trading a now-enemy being seduced by the CCP, to another enemy deeply invested in DRM and with the CCP's slimy tentacles all over the place? Give me a fucking break, people! It's like those the now CentOS refugees switching in droves to Oracle Linux, completely ignoring that Orrible® is like 100 IBMs in one, and who can (and will) pull the rug under them at any moment with bloody consequences.

    2020, can you go to hell already!?

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 20-12-18, 16:04

    Post: #309 of 449
    Since: 10-29-18

    Last post: 8 days
    Last view: 4 hours
    That's not the only thing China has done recently...

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Hololive/comments/keu2g5/asusxhololive_stream_got_cancelled/
    https://www.reddit.com/r/VirtualYoutubers/comments/kevqgo/asus_x_hololive_stream_got_cancelled_xpost/
    https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/kezcpc/asus_cancelled_their_hololive_collab_stream_after/
    https://linustechtips.com/topic/1282276-china-pressures-asus-to-remove-rog-and-hololive-collab-broadcast/?do=findComment&comment=14311774

    My current setup: Super Famicom ("2/1/3" SNS-CPU-1CHIP-02) → SCART → OSSC → StarTech USB3HDCAP → AmaRecTV 3.10
    Posted on 20-12-20, 03:55
    Dinosaur

    Post: #842 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 3 days
    Last view: 13 hours
    Name me a major game store that hasn't yet bent over Xinnie the Pooh yet:

    - Steam: Their second largest userbase comes from China, and Devotion is not the first victim of the 50 Cent Army shills downvoting burials. Plus, the large number of Chinese-only games on a store traditionally catering to Western players (who expect all and any game to be available in English at the very least - someone selling a Spanish-only game won't fly too far). We can safely assume Valve already has their very own CCP officers on board.

    - Epic Games Store: 40% ownership belonging to Tencent. Yes, Sweeney has already told to not pay attention to the CCP officers on board, but we all know that he is another sellout. (Plus, there are many other non-China/politics-related reasons to NOT give a single cent to Epic on their lackluster shop)

    - GOG: we already know the history. Most likely CDPR is going to let this slide, taking advantage of their biggest shitstorm with the botched Cyberpunk 2077 launch.

    - Blizzard: Did we already forgot the Blitzchung controversy!?


    The biggest problem with all this junk is that for the average gamer it's just "noise", and they don't give a damn - they will forget this in a few weeks, just in time for the next random controversy. But unfortunately China is now using their poisonous tentacles to mess not only with our freedom (god damn it, I fucking hate getting politics involved with ANYTHING, but as a Soviet Venezuelan citizen, I have my axe to grind over the CCP and friends for obvious reasons), but also with our pastimes!

    This has to stop, people. This is dangerously reaching the point of no return. No, I still don't care about Devotion (I don't like terror games), but when the CCP gets involved, it gets personal.

    tl;dr: Fuck China, fuck the CCP, fuck Xinnie the Pooh, and go buy all your games from itch.io or Playism before they become China sellouts too!

    ---

    To rinse the bad taste from the CCP cock from our mouths, I'll leave this marvel of technology here:
    https://freds72.itch.io/poom
    It's good ol' DOOM, but in 8 bits of glory!
    Apparently it's a port for a Lua-based homebrew platform (PICO-8) which can supposedly run on nearly every device under the sun, provided someone writes an implementation for it (hardware implementations DO exist). Think on it like a NES Master System on steroids.

    This thing leaves nearly every official console DOOM port in shame (that's with you, SNES, 32X and 3DO!)

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 20-12-20, 05:57
    Snapped
    Post: #2 of 48
    Since: 12-19-20

    Last post: 1177 days
    Last view: 1177 days
    Kinda going off-topic and extremely political, but you got me thinking.

    I'm really starting to think my theory with COVID-19 was true: distract everyone from the real political issues with a global pandemic; gain mass control over every single piece of media in the process by building back up their own economy first before anyone else can do so; make the USA look even more pathetic than it did before the 2020 election began; job done!

    Given the eerie timing between the start of the pandemic and the 5G/Huwaei trade ban in the USA (one of the few Trump moves that was genuinely smart), WHO's declaration that it was a pandemic in the first place supposedly 'coinciding' with China being just about to rebuild their own economy, presumably to keep Xinnie The Pooh happy, depressing everyone else in the world and killing off people by shutting them in with lockdowns - while everyone with the rather typical celebrity/political authority is allowed to ignore the rules, like say, Dominic Cummings, and get away with it - the eggheaded little shit - I'm gonna suspect the Pfizer-BioTech vaccine is also a sellout to China and the CCP to aid in its conquest to take over the world, too.
    Posted on 20-12-22, 03:15
    Full mod

    Post: #428 of 443
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 863 days
    Last view: 59 days
    Conspiracy theories like that are stupid. Not only are they generally ridiculously unlikely, they distract people from actual productive things they could do to improve their lives.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 20-12-22, 05:27
    Snapped
    Post: #15 of 48
    Since: 12-19-20

    Last post: 1177 days
    Last view: 1177 days
    I mean, it's not something I care about too much. It's not something anyone could fix at this point even if it was true, China has way too much goddamn control by proxy over everything anyways.
    Posted on 20-12-27, 12:29

    Post: #34 of 40
    Since: 10-29-18

    Last post: 473 days
    Last view: 473 days
    And to be honest, this whole thing screws up the opinion about China's government even more than helps, there really isn't winners over here.

    Posted by CaptainJistuce
    And that maybe China will clean op their food supply. And not fucking lie about their local plagues next time. This could've been contained, but China lied to save face and the WHO took their lies at face value.
    Hell, it could've been contained in Wuhan, but local officials lied to save face and their national government took the lies at face value.
    Posted on 20-12-27, 15:55
    Dinosaur

    Post: #859 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 3 days
    Last view: 13 hours
    10 days have elapsed since GOG bowed down to Xinnie the Pooh announced THEN de-announced Devotion.

    No official answer so far, their lips remain tightly shut during this controversy, hoping it gets drowned during its even bigger drama with Cyberbugged 2077 (which despite the angry complaints, game-breaking bugs, refunds, console delistings and lawsuits, it has become CD Projekt's very own License to Print Money™, which shows once again that gamers are willing to eat shit through a tube by accepting to purchase unfinished works, while making me to lose whatever trace of faith I still had on mankind). And it seems to be working OUTSIDE GOG, as no media has talked about this specific issue. They... just pretended it never happened!

    In the meanwhile, the revolt across GOG official channels (boards, wishlists, social networks) has barely cooled down, with dozens of messages every day threatening with boycotts over the platform. Unfortunately most gamers don't give a fuck, either because they don't care at all about the game, or because they're happy playing their China-friendly games. Even worse, the threats of defecting to Steam/TencentEpic are still there, because people is dumb.

    The world is doomed, maybe COVID-19 is our punishment for being such entitled assholes?

    Even if I lived on a sane country with access to real money and non-broken/banned payment methods, I wouldn't be buying videogames this season, not at the usual channels. Why bother anyway when I lost where my backlog begins AND ends?

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 21-01-07, 15:13 (revision 1)
    Dinosaur

    Post: #877 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 3 days
    Last view: 13 hours
    Remember when I discovered Mille Bornes during my brief adventures with Visual Basic decompilers?

    Then I went looking for computer implementations of the game (just to learn that the only good one so far only works on cellphones). Apparently I had missed somehow that all those years there have been a X11 version on the Debian repos: xmille.

    It has the charm of late '80s graphical applications (look at those cards!)... because it was originally developed for X10, then quickly ported to X11... and aside of the rare compiler fix, it hasn't received love at all. We now have 8K displays, proportional fonts, scalable vector graphics, and video display processors that can't actually do 2D anymore, plus it's supposed that X11 is sentenced to death because it's OOOOOOOOOOOOOLD (despite having no really usable replacements right now for the average consumer, aside of cellphones!). Well... xmille has received a new lease on life thanks to... the Nedflanderists at Debian Software License Compliance Department, who found the unholy capital sin of source files missing copyright headers, therefore making those Nedflanderists panic due to the impure code as this is their sole purpose in life.

    The current author of the X11 xmille unexpectedly reacted (he's one of the former X11 gurus, no less!) by bringing his 1980s X10/X11 code kicking and screaming to the year 2000, now with menubars, smooth proportional fonts, and a SVG card deck instead of barebones pixel art (he did chose to vectorize the original pixel art designs instead of using the SVGs from Wikipeda, however). The writeup is full of good history about reviving obsolete X11 code in the year 2020, it's absolutely a good read.

    Expect the new, improved version sometime this year on the next Debian Testing repos (it's too late for Bullseye considering that the freeze is near), hopefully! In the meanwhile I decided to test the current X11 version:

    - Its main window does not fit on screens under <900px! (Remember: early X11 boxes often had Very Expensive hi-rez CRTs instead of puny 768p LCD panels)
    - No difficulty levels other than "the computer is a cheating bastard" (I still managed to win a game at the end... barely!)
    - It does allow to save/restore games.
    - Checking your current mileage is confusing, until you learn that instead of decoding the progress bars, you can also take a look at the scores.
    - Haven't checked if it does allow for coup-fourre (counterattack), the signature move of Mille Bornes.
    - The game does tell you when a move is legal or not, for those learning the game.
    - Play with left-click, discard with right-click (manpage says that middle-click decides for you).

    Veredict: For Linux computers, you really have not many options - it's xmille or that bloated, broken Xojo application. If you throw cellphones in the mix, Road Rally 1000 is still the gold standard to beat.

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 21-02-15, 02:21 (revision 3)
    Dinosaur

    Post: #904 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 3 days
    Last view: 13 hours
    Gameloft Classics: 20 Years

    Remember when in the Dark Ages of cellphone gaming, Gameloft games used to be freakin' everywhere? I spent a good deal of money on its BREW versions (and even some more on the J2ME port of Block Breaker Deluxe 2 - I paid thrice for that game in the end: 176x220 BREW on a V3m, QVGA BREW on a VE20, QVGA J2ME on a V9x, is it that good for a cellphone game~), but it's quite sad to learn that most of those never made the cut to the modern buttonless glass slabs that we dare calling "smartdevices". Ah, the good old times, where a single, one-time payment was all you needed to have fun while waiting on a bank queue, or during blackouts...

    Someone at Gameloft was old enough to remember too that life was better prior to the iPhone and the IAP mess we have today, so in a incredible act of goodwill they've released Gameloft Classics: 20 Years sometime last year, preserving 30 of their old dumbphone games for the new generations. Best of all, it's completely free as in beer (no ads, no mandatory accounts/social media whoring, and no obvious tracking/spy bits). But since every coin has two sides, not everything is perfect, so here goes my analysis:

    - Most of the games are shovelware. Thankfully (for me) it has not only Block Breaker Deluxe 2, but also its sequel (hope it doesn't have the game-breaking bug present on the original BREW version that made the game impossible to continue after the 5th stage boss!). Of course, there are 27 other games you might like/made you feel the nostalgia/whatever, so YMMV.

    - Localizations! Each game I've tested so far seems to be available in a bunch of languages, including BBD2 that was only available in English until now! While Gameloft actually was generous with translations back in 2009, most games released until then never got updates of this (or any) kind. Nice touch, I appreciate it.

    - At a first glance, it looks like these are emulated J2ME versions (on BBD2 the graphics are a exact match, plus there is a "support.txt" inside the APK enumerating both standard JSRs and proprietary OEM extensions, but that's a red herring), but don't expect to pull the original .JARs from it: while each game assets are there on its original format (more or less), the actual game code is native Android, so technically these are ports (and it explains why they used the J2ME versions instead of the superior, much faster and prettier looking BREW ports... which were done in C++ as mandated by Qualcomm!)

    - Speaking about emulating the J2ME experience... ugh, that's where the Achiles' heel of these ports shows its ugly colors: they emulate a weirdass hypothetical GameBoy-esque phone (with a D-pad and ABXY gamepad layout, but also L/R softkeys) with a QVGA screen. The latter is important, as you're likely to run these games on much MUCH larger displays, and while keeping the postage stamp sized display helps ensuring pixel-perfect graphics, they also become quite unplayable for those of us with poor eyesight. A better approach would have been to allow display scaling options (like any half-decent J2ME emulator does), but alas, this is not the case here.

    - That ABXY gamepad layout is odd for dumbphone games, and you are not offered any option to remap controls (which is silly, considering that most games don't even use X/Y - on the original phone versions all they relied on was on the D-pad and fire key, which usually was the "5" on your numpad). Plus these come with obnoxious, distracting "clicky" sound effects each time you "press" them, and you can't mute those :/ ONE MORE THING! The controls may get "jammed" every now and then. This is not a big deal on a pool game, but on BBD, this quickly becames a game-breaking bug!

    - While most games were updated to change numpad references to ABXY, they forgot to do that on some games, like Midnight Pool (why they didn't put the sequel instead for that one?), so gameplay quickly gets confusing where you're supposed to press "3" on a gamepad that doesn't have a 3 key!?

    - Since these are straight Android ports of J2ME games, it means they do have another Achiles' heel, but this one comes with the platform: touchscreens simply don't work with games requiring fast reflexes and focusing on quick action on screen! Case in point: Block Breaker Deluxe, again. These games were already challenging but very playable on those ancient phones with actual physical keys, but they're on the verge of unplayability on touchscreens! On other games (say, Cannon Rats, Midnight Pool), this is not that bad as the action is slow-paced on these and you can easily get away with touchscreen controls only, but for the two ACTUAL games I want from this collection... ugh. Mind you, this is not really Gameloft's fault: I have the original, paid release of J2ME BBD2 installed on J2ME Loader, and it exhibits the same problems with the emulated keyboard controls (but at least I can scale the screen on that one!). Touchscreens SUCK for action games, and there is no fix for that... except for a physical keyboard that you are not likely to find on your next cellphone :/ (FWIW it doesn't seem this Gameloft collection doesn't work with Bluetooth gamepads, but I can't test as I have no suitable hardware)

    Veredict: Nice to see a longstanding cellphone game studio rekindling the flames of nostalgia (and completely free, to boot!), but uh... touchscreens and a barebones UI fell short of expectations :/ Still, well worth the 74MB download, so if you miss your dumbphone, this is the SECOND next best thing. Fix your "sticky buttons", add display scaling options, key remapping, and you've got a winner here.

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 21-02-16, 02:58
    Post: #392 of 426
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 260 days
    Last view: 17 hours
    Did you pass that feedback on to Gameloft?

    AMD Ryzen 3700X | MSI Gamer Geforce 1070Ti 8GB | 16GB 3600MHz DDR4 RAM | ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero (WiFi) Motherboard | Windows 10 x64
    Posted on 21-04-03, 03:57

    Post: #14 of 16
    Since: 10-03-19

    Last post: 920 days
    Last view: 204 days
    I've been playing this fairly kickass Prime 2D fan-game by Team SCU. Seriously, they nailed the sprites and atmosphere of this thing! (And I love their version of Samus' design)
    Check it out here, if you haven't already.

    Posted on 21-04-03, 04:15
    Custom title here

    Post: #992 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 6 days
    Last view: 1 day
    Posted by picto
    I've been playing this fairly kickass Prime 2D fan-game by Team SCU. Seriously, they nailed the sprites and atmosphere of this thing! (And I love their version of Samus' design)
    Check it out here, if you haven't already.

    In before Nintendo issues a fraodulent DMCA takedown request!

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 21-04-04, 03:23

    Post: #15 of 16
    Since: 10-03-19

    Last post: 920 days
    Last view: 204 days
    It isn't really an "if" but a "when" when it comes to Nintendo, but hopefully it slides under the radar long enough for them to get some nice progress done on it.
    Usually it's the widespread news coverage that kills these games, when Nintendo can't ignore it any longer (Which is why developing these hobby projects in secret is the best way to go)
    Posted on 21-04-21, 14:43 (revision 1)
    Post: #1 of 1
    Since: 04-21-21

    Last post: 1071 days
    Last view: 1070 days
    Posted by tomman
    Posted by Nicholas Steel
    https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/17/22188013/cyberpunk-2077-ps4-refunds-playstation-store

    CDProjektRed is not having a fun time. The game was removed from the Playstation Store and refunds are being offered.

    And now, they recognized they're getting fondled by the CCP tentacles "messages from gamers" to delist games already blacklisted on political grounds on other stores:

    https://twitter.com/GOGcom/status/1339227388438306817
    https://gocdkeys.com/en/buy-cyberpunk-2077-pc-cd-key
    https://www.gog.com/forum/general/devotion_is_coming_to_gog_on_dec_18th/page1
    The week in recap: https://www.pcgamer.com/cd-projekts-very-bad-week-a-breakdown/

    As much as it would hurt me to say this, I'll go and say it: FUCK GOG/CD PROJEKT RED.
    You have just become another Steam/Ubilol, folks. I could have expected this from American corporations, but from Poles?! Eh, guess that stupid is worldwide :/

    Releasing broken shit because gamers are self-entitled miscreants, THEN bowing down to Winnie The Pooh!? This is just pathetic, guys.

    Also: to all those "gamers" threatening to "defect" from GOG to Steam over the latter: go fuck yourselves, guys. You're trading a now-enemy being seduced by the CCP, to another enemy deeply invested in DRM and with the CCP's slimy tentacles all over the place? Give me a fucking break, people! It's like those the now CentOS refugees switching in droves to Oracle Linux, completely ignoring that Orrible® is like 100 IBMs in one, and who can (and will) pull the rug under them at any moment with bloody consequences.

    2020, can you go to hell already!?


    I think you take it too seriously: D. But it's true that GOG and CD PROJEKT RED have been accumulating hate in an incredible way for some time. In my opinion, they have done much to make the whole community so angry, but I find that the position of many people far exceeds the real consequences of what they have really done wrong.
    Posted on 21-08-01, 23:00 (revision 4)
    Custom title here

    Post: #1017 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 6 days
    Last view: 1 day
    So I'm onboard my own personal hype train and playing Blaster Master Zero Three. And yes, that's a terrible title. I know.
    I think at this point it is easy enough to answer the question "Do I want to play more Blaster Master Zero?". So I'm not going to try to talk you into BM03. Instead I'm just gonna celebrate.




    I think I've mentioned before my delight with how Inti Creates made Blaster Master Zero a remake of BM but a sequel to the japanese MetaFight. Because that is absolutely something they did, and a clever way to handle both games having VERY different plots.
    So you can imagine how giddy I was when at the end of the the first area Blaster Master's Jason meets MetaFight's Kane.

    ...

    And then this happened...


    A. I love everything about this encounter. The background's styled after the hanger the Metal Attacker launched from in MetaFight. The first clump of text is lifted straight from the original game's pause/weapon select/tank schematic screen. The second clump of text is... well, the jumptank's name IS the Metal Attacker.

    B. Kane is a cheating bastard. First boss fight in the game, I have no powerups, and I'm dukin' it out with a fully-upgraded jumptank. I'm sittin' here bunnyhoppin' and hammerin' my pea-shooter while this bastard drives up walls and across ceilings spamming homing missiles. When he isn't just flying above me raining lightning down on my head.

    C. And in post-fight discussion(Spoilers: Kane's a good guy, I ain't killin' him here), he decides to up the fanwankery ante. He asks if I know what boss name his jumptank's AI generated for ME
    This has two significant implications. 1. It makes the boss name warning screens an actual in-universe thing.
    And 2, well...

    FUCK. YES. I have a boss name, and it's right there in the title!

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 21-09-02, 11:34
    Full mod

    Post: #439 of 443
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 863 days
    Last view: 59 days
    It's been a long winter here, dealing with lockdowns and the daily worries of Delta COVID on top of the regular cold and dark. I decided I wanted to play something that involved blowing up hordes of monsters rather than something thoughtful and emotionally invested, and it's been a long time since Path of Exile worked reliably under Wine, so I decided to check out Grim Dawn, which was a free giveaway on GOG a while back.

    A long story short: I liked it. The moment-to-moment gameplay is fun, the graphics are pretty, the music is atmospheric, you have that push-and-pull between progression by playing better and progression by levelling up, there's a ton of side-quests to do, the story is suitably creepy and disgusting, I enjoyed having a reputation with different factions and getting different stuff from them.

    The things I didn't like:

    - About half-way through (level 25 or so) I'd settled into a build, and there didn't seem to be anything interesting or new to unlock beyond that point that would measurably help my build, just investing more points into the skills and abilities I'd already unlocked. There's various different classes and class combinations to choose from, so I'm sure there's lots of interesting possible builds, but the synergies didn't stick out to me at least on my first playthrough.

    - There's a *lot* of sidequests. Like "randomly generated" a lot. It very much wasn't clear to me when those side-quests would be appropriate for my character to tackle - often I'd attempt a side-quest I'd picked up (or stumble into one before I'd picked it up), get my ass handed to me, and come back five levels later to discover that the monster were five levels higher now, and have my ass handed to me again.

    - Compared to PoE, there's a lot of kinds of elemental damage to worry about. I capped most of them, out of an abundance of caution, but that meant I didn't dare change most of my armour after level 35 or so, which made loot less interesting.

    To be very fair to the game, it does seem to be focussed on providing content for repeat play, rather than on a first-time experience. And my expectations were set by PoE and the quirks of its free-to-play business model. To be incredibly fair to the game, I have a pretty conservative style of play that messes with the difficulty curve a lot, to the point where I beat the final boss without really noticing: I'd spent the entire game investing into life-leech, so I mostly just face-tanked the boss and mashed all my attacks until he fell down. Once I'd handed in that quest I couldn't find the next one, and I had to go check the wiki to discover that no, that was actually the final boss.

    If I were in a super-grindy mood, I could have a *lot* of fun with Grim Dawn, and I would recommend it to anyone else in that mood. But for now, I think it's time to uninstall it and pick up another unplayed or unfinished game from my backlog.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 21-09-12, 11:06 (revision 1)
    Post: #402 of 426
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 260 days
    Last view: 17 hours
    Posted by Screwtape
    - There's a *lot* of sidequests. Like "randomly generated" a lot. It very much wasn't clear to me when those side-quests would be appropriate for my character to tackle - often I'd attempt a side-quest I'd picked up (or stumble into one before I'd picked it up), get my ass handed to me, and come back five levels later to discover that the monster were five levels higher now, and have my ass handed to me again.


    Note that only the Bounties are randomly generated, all the other side quests are fixed (at least before you get to the end game on the 3rd, hardest playthrough). There's also a great Discord server for getting help with the game.

    AMD Ryzen 3700X | MSI Gamer Geforce 1070Ti 8GB | 16GB 3600MHz DDR4 RAM | ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero (WiFi) Motherboard | Windows 10 x64
    Posted on 21-09-23, 13:39
    Full mod

    Post: #441 of 443
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 863 days
    Last view: 59 days
    Recently I've been playing Avernum: Escape From The Pit, a 2012 remake of 2000's Avernum, which was itself a remake of 1995's Exile I: Escape From The Pit. It's an isometric turn-based RPG with a party of four randomly(?) generated characters, so it's a little bit like Ultima, a little bit like Rogue, and a bit like Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment — except that unlike those last two, it's *not* trying to shoehorn a turn-based tabletop ruleset into a real-time combat system, so it's actually comprehensible and fun.

    It also reminds me a bit of Morrowind, since although it doesn't have the amazing worldbuilding and fantastic architecture (Spiderweb Games is just one guy working in a basement), after the initial tutorial dungeon it gives you a couple of quests as suggestions, but mostly sets you free to explore the overworld as you see fit, including wandering into places where the monsters will one-shot your party. A few hours in, I managed to sneak into a back-entrance to the Ruined Tower of the Nephilim, and was doing OK against the rank-and-file monsters but the bosses were ruining me. So I fled, explored and found some new towns, did some job-board quests, levelled up a bit, and when I went back I had more potent spells, smarter tactics, and tougher gear, and I emerged victorious.That might not *sound* amazing, but it didn't feel like grinding at all; I still had (and still have) a huge mass of unexplored territory and quests beckoning me to all quarters of the map.

    Probably the worst aspect of the game is the graphics. Despite being vastly better than the games it's a remake of (see the screenshots linked above), sometimes it's hard to see exactly what's going on. Partially that's because it's all 2D pixel art that can't be scaled up, partially that's because it's not drawn to make important things (items, buttons, interact-able objects) distinctive and recognisable (see Transport Tycoon or Diablo), and that is because Spiderweb Games is just one guy working in a basement so I can't complain too hard. But I have been squinting at the screen.

    The second most annoying thing about the game is there doesn't appear to be a way to take notes on the map. The game is very good about quest markers (at least when an NPC tells you a location), and there's a button to bookmark any random page of dialog even if it's not actually a quest, but occasionally you'll find a patch of ground that gives you a message like "Gee, if your Cave Lore skill were high enough, you might find something here!" and it would be nice to be able to mark *those* on the map alongside actual quests.

    Those two quibbles aside, I'm having a great time so far and I'm looking forward to playing more.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 21-10-14, 22:31
    Dinosaur

    Post: #1005 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 3 days
    Last view: 13 hours
    Someone with way too much free time in his/her/its hands decompiled Space Cadet Pinball (and its full version, Full Tilt Pinball), and you can now play it on many things not running Windows!

    I never expected to play this Win95-builtin on Linux over 20 years later of its initial release, but... I'm not complaining~~~

    Now, clone your gits before Electronic Assholes brings the DMCA banhammer over this repo!

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Pages: First Previous 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Next Last
      Main » Discussion » Games You Played Today REVENGEANCE
      [Your ad here? Why not!]