What games are you playing now?

Originally Posted by azarhal
I like the game though, not as bad as some people made it out to be and I totally accepted it wasn't D&D before starting playing, so I was surprised to see it was more D&D than not.

Am still keeping an eye on this one.

There's already some interesting developments on the modding front for SCL. Have a look on the modding sub forum, bunch of guys have discovered much of the configuration of the game is controlled by relatively easy to manipulate files, xml and json I think I read. They're full steam ahead on creating a more faithful 5th Ed version of the game. Blowing out revive timer to 2 hours, setting HP and various damage out puts to PnP levels, modding loot tables, new campaign maps, lots of stuff.

Personally have been playing ESO but am starting to burn out on that. Played a few more hours of Tomb Raider 1 last night and also some of the steam release of ADoM.


-kaos

Originally Posted by kaos_war_monk
Am still keeping an eye on this one.

There's already some interesting developments on the modding front for SCL. Have a look on the modding sub forum, bunch of guys have discovered much of the configuration of the game is controlled by relatively easy to manipulate files, xml and json I think I read. They're full steam ahead on creating a more faithful 5th Ed version of the game. Blowing out revive timer to 2 hours, setting HP and various damage out puts to PnP levels, modding loot tables, new campaign maps, lots of stuff.

-kaos

It's not just the modders at work, NSpace is too. They really released this about a year too soon. They will have to make a "Enhanced Edition" release once they have everything in to gain back buyers.

I also find it amusing how modders are changing the classes so fast to be more 5th Ed-like, although it's mostly skill-tree re-organisation and cooldown tweaking.

Anyway, this should tie me in until Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen is released on PC in sometimes in January (hopefully it doesn't get delayed).

Didn't want to spend $60 on the new Star Wars Battlefront, so I downloaded the PSP game Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron to my PS Vita (along with the first SOCOM) … fun stuff

I decided to reinstall Fallout 3 because I wanted to refresh my memory of the game and also see how it felt after playing FO4.

The graphics still hold up better than I thought they would, but some aspects of the gameplay feel archaic after spending so much time with FO4. I immediately missed the sprint function and the fact that there are no hotkeys for things like the map, etc. You can't even aim down the sight without a mod.

There's a mod that adds sprinting, and probably one to add hotkeys too, but I was reminded how mediocre the vanilla game is.


I also briefly tried ADOM to see what all the fuss is about. I downloaded the latest free version and played for about an hour. It's definitely not for me.

I've put Fallout 4 on hold - as I'm enjoying it too much without having the time to really play it like it deserves. For this kind of game, I need time to finish it without too many interruptions.

I'm going to have more time in about a month, and by then I'm hoping some mods might have fixed/improved some of the issues.

I find that Bethesda rarely fix core stuff - so I'm not expecting them to do much about the companion AI - which is probably my biggest issue with it at the moment.

So, I'm playing around with a variety of games.

I've restarted Pillars of Eternity for the nth time - and this time I've chosen to play on Normal - in the hope that it's doable with 3-4 party members. Since the pathfinding is atrocious during combat in tight quarters - I'm thinking it should help to have 1-2 melee and 1-2 ranged members. That should make it workable. I like most of the rest of the game, and I'd like to actually finish it.

I've also installed Heart of Stone for Witcher 3 - and I've modded it in the hope that I'll be able to enjoy it more this time around. Obviously, I won't have time to play it properly right now - but I can do some of the initial stuff. Most importantly, I've added the Relic Weapons Redone mod, hoping it will make loot worthwhile and I've adjusted the XP you get from combat, so it actually feels rewarding. This time, I'm going to all but completely ignore the PoIs - as I found them tedious and repetitive last time. I'm think the game will be much more enjoyable if I just focus on actual quests and forget about exploration.

Originally Posted by Fluent
Ah! Nice to see another Lost Odyssey fan. I can't wait until Xbox 360 emulation happens so I can replay that game. What a brilliant gem, that one.





Blue Dragon is good, too. Very good, actually. Enchanted Arms is another 360 exclusive that features a tactical combat system that is a lot of fun to play. Have you played either of these?





Risen 2 was great, too. I prefer the first Risen overall but Risen 2 is much better than I expected. Great game.

Yeah, I liked Blue Dragon, but it just got a bit dull. Not a bad game at all, but I gave up around halfway through sadly.



Last Remnant is a fave of mine. I absolutely love it. Took a LOT of getting into, and again has it's flaws, but it's just very absorbing.



I liked Risen, but was genuinely blown away by some of the "vibe" in Risen 2. The combat gets slated, but it's livable, especially with guns. That humour and vibe though, sheer magic



Also, do I have to have a certain amount of posts to like other peoples posts? It wont let me like yours for some reason?

DOn't bother with "like", it's there just so you don't have to post "I agree", "awsome", "+1", etc.

Btw, I absolutely hate what Square Enix did with TLR, the idea is there, superb, ingenious and refreshing, but the amount of grinding neverending respawns killed the game for me.

I can't put down Thea: The awakening. Not sure if it will have lasting power but have played it for about 12 hours.

I've managed to finish ArcaniA: A Dragon Age Tale (a.k.a Dragon Age 2 ) in the meantime and would agree that it wasn't exactly too memorable. Not as horrible as some might have you believe either but hmmm… meh.

And now for something completely different. Because of the impending (well, at some point in the next six months) upgrade of my gaming desktop to Win 10, I went waaaaay back in my backlog and decided to clear out some old games that won't work without tweaking on Win 10 (SafeDisc issues and all that crap).

So I installed my boxed copy of the Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle Earth Anthology which includes the original game, the LotRBFME2 CE and the Rise of the Witch King expansion to the latter.
The first game wasn't too great and I abandoned it after I failed one timed mission twice (Helm's Deep defense). Screw timed missions in RTS games…

But the second game is really awesome so far. What a beauty still for a 2006 game! This easily looks on par with most other top-down games of the recent past like PoE or D:OS.
And the gameplay is vastly superior, too. More options, more upgrades, more unit variety, better missions… it's almost like a night & day difference compared to the first Battle for Middle Earth.

Aside from that I have also installed the Max Payne trilogy. I only played the demo of the original game back in the day and felt that the game did not have much going for it other than the novelty (back then) of the bullet-time feature.
Let's just say that my initial impression has been confirmed. I will probably finish it for the story though and because it's rather short.

Next up after that is GTA IV (plus Episodes from Liberty City) which is supposed to be very troublesome under Win 10 (it wasn't exactly a joy under my current Win 7 either with GFWL and the RSC shenanigans but I got it to work at least).

Thanks for reminding me about SafeDisc bot working on Win10. I hope someone will have a workaround for this. I have a bunch of unplayed SafeDisc games.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
Aside from that I have also installed the Max Payne trilogy. I only played the demo of the original game back in the day and felt that the game did not have much going for it other than the novelty (back then) of the bullet-time feature.
Let's just say that my initial impression has been confirmed. I will probably finish it for the story though and because it's rather short..

You're wrong if you think Max Payne was only popular for the bullet-time. The writing and plot are actually really good for a shooter, but you have to be a fan of the noir style to really appreciate it.

You might like it more than you're expecting if you give it a chance.

I played a bit more through Sword Coast Legends campaign story, finally reached Luskan. There is things I really like in this game and others I find annoying. I decided to make a melee-Ranger after trying all the classes through the prologue (less or more).

Annoying:
Why does setting a character in search mode means it needs to walk at half speed? There are proficiency to remove the speed reduction, but that just make the start of the game slow and force you to control the character with the highest search value for a few hours. PoE had a similar design, but at least there everyone was put at the same speed so you didn't need to control that character.

My ranger has to re-summon her wolf after zoning each and every time. I also think it disappear after some conversation/cutscene. PoE had a similar problem where the dev at some point made it so the ranger companion was re-summoned at zoning because of some issues with Unity.

Pathfinding is sometimes very good, sometimes very awful and on top of it Hommet is very slow to follow the party all the time. Yeah, that means you can get screwed in a fight because one of you party showed up late because is name is Hommet or she/he got stuck somewhere.

The AI can be a pain to work with. The Cleric doesn't always heal almost dead party members, I have to tell her to do it (this seems distance related though, she does it better when close to the melees). Also, I saw one case of Hommet casting his sleep one another enemy than the one I told him to…but Hommet is a Harpell from the look of it so it might be normal.

The abilities/talents/spells or the lack of it. I don't mind the cooldowns or that you have to buy stuff with proficiency points, but I don't like the lack of variety and "layout". For example, Rangers can use two-handed weapons, but they don't have access to the two-handed "skill tree" so that means they don't get access to cleave which doesn't even require a two-handed weapon. Mage and Clerics have very few spells to select from too. The good news is that modders are already working to fix this, changing classes seems to be relatively easy as is making new abilities. Actually, modders are hard at work making the game more in line with 5e, the real question is if this will work with the main campaign or not.

The fun part:
Half-randomized dungeons. In story mode, the dungeon maps have similar rooms, but they aren't necessarily organized the same way each time you replay it. Also, some of them are large with inter-connected rooms which I really like after playing lots of dungeon-corridors RPGs in the last few years.

Hidden stuff: doors, loot, traps, etc. I love finding hidden stuff. There is also hand-placed and randomized one.

Scouting is fun. Having a rogue or ranger using stealth to scout is great, just be careful if you get spotted in a room full of enemies and the rest of the party is far behind (because you know periodic DC checks…)

Game difficulty, I'm playing on normal and I gets into bind once in a while. Apparently, that evaporate once you get lots of cooldown reduction gear and gets a few more ability. We will see.

Also, I like the companions and the storyline so far. It's a bit over the top in a way, but I think it just make it more PnP-like because of it. In the prologue, there is a few quests with different ways of resolving them as well. Also, stats check in conversations, but unlike PoE you won't know in advance if you pass or fail them.

Finally, WTF is an abyssal rat, this game need a bestiary like PoE does. it does have a beastiary, I just didn't look at all the tabs in the journal.

Originally Posted by azarhal
I played a bit more through Sword Coast Legends campaign story, finally reached Luskan. There is things I really like in this game and others I find annoying. I decided to make a melee-Ranger after trying all the classes through the prologue (less or more).

Annoying:
Why does setting a character in search mode means it needs to walk at half speed? There are proficiency to remove the speed reduction, but that just make the start of the game slow and force you to control the character with the highest search value for a few hours. PoE had a similar design, but at least there everyone was put at the same speed so you didn't need to control that character.

My ranger has to re-summon her wolf after zoning each and every time. I also think it disappear after some conversation/cutscene. PoE had a similar problem where the dev at some point made it so the ranger companion was re-summoned at zoning because of some issues with Unity.

Pathfinding is sometimes very good, sometimes very awful and on top of it Hommet is very slow to follow the party all the time. Yeah, that means you can get screwed in a fight because one of you party showed up late because is name is Hommet or she/he got stuck somewhere.

The AI can be a pain to work with. The Cleric doesn't always heal almost dead party members, I have to tell her to do it (this seems distance related though, she does it better when close to the melees). Also, I saw one case of Hommet casting his sleep one another enemy than the one I told him to…but Hommet is a Harpell from the look of it so it might be normal.

The abilities/talents/spells or the lack of it. I don't mind the cooldowns or that you have to buy stuff with proficiency points, but I don't like the lack of variety and "layout". For example, Rangers can use two-handed weapons, but they don't have access to the two-handed "skill tree" so that means they don't get access to cleave which doesn't even require a two-handed weapon. Mage and Clerics have very few spells to select from too. The good news is that modders are already working to fix this, changing classes seems to be relatively easy as is making new abilities. Actually, modders are hard at work making the game more in line with 5e, the real question is if this will work with the main campaign or not.

The fun part:
Half-randomized dungeons. In story mode, the dungeon maps have similar rooms, but they aren't necessarily organized the same way each time you replay it. Also, some of them are large with inter-connected rooms which I really like after playing lots of dungeon-corridors RPGs in the last few years.

Hidden stuff: doors, loot, traps, etc. I love finding hidden stuff. There is also hand-placed and randomized one.

Scouting is fun. Having a rogue or ranger using stealth to scout is great, just be careful if you get spotted in a room full of enemies and the rest of the party is far behind (because you know periodic DC checks…)

Game difficulty, I'm playing on normal and I gets into bind once in a while. Apparently, that evaporate once you get lots of cooldown reduction gear and gets a few more ability. We will see.

Also, I like the companions and the storyline so far. It's a bit over the top in a way, but I think it just make it more PnP-like because of it. In the prologue, there is a few quests with different ways of resolving them as well. Also, stats check in conversations, but unlike PoE you won't know in advance if you pass or fail them.

Finally, WTF is an abyssal rat, this game need a bestiary like PoE does.

What is the story like please?

[annoying pedant] Did you have to quote the whole post to ask that? [/annoying pedant]

Originally Posted by lostforever
What is the story like please?

I'm just in early Act 1, so I can't speak for all the game. I also had low expectation and wasn't spoiled for the plot outside of "your one of the last member of the Burning Dawn guild" synopsis.

Right now, the story is building a sense of mystery and I really want to know why something happened, why something else is happening and just what the hell is going on in general. Outside of X is trying to destroy the Burning Dawn, I don't have information about the why. I will probably know more once I get to talk to someone in Act 1. There are twists too, even in side quest. Twists I didn't actually expect which is very rare these days. In other word, despite being written by ex-BioWare writers, they don't telegraph their twists 100yds away like BioWare writers do. There is a lot of Forgotten Realms references, I'm not sure how someone who is clueless about the FR would fair here.

Also, the games doesn't shy away from Luskan being a cesspool of crime and villainy. It's a lot more darker in tone than I was expecting. Who wants to live there anyway? Well outside of that crazy elf I met who wants to become a pirate…

The writing kinda reminds me of the Princess Bride: slightly cheesy, slightly over the top and slightly comic with a dark undertone (the slightly might vary). I think it fit Forgotten Realms very well though. The companions made me like halflings and dwarves as well, I actually find them refreshing, I probably (r)play too many Bioware games…

They just announced on the official forums that the game is going to e 33% on Steam during the Fall sales for people who might be interested.

Originally Posted by JDR13
You're wrong if you think Max Payne was only popular for the bullet-time. The writing and plot are actually really good for a shooter, but you have to be a fan of the noir style to really appreciate it.

OK, that may be the problem then because I'm not sure what exactly the noir style is or if I'm a fan of it… probably not then .
All I know is that Max is not coming across as very convincing. Of course it's always difficult in a game to avoid cheesiness when dealing with emotional events but right at the beginning of the game when Max loses his wife and kid, well, it all comes across dramaturgically like "Aw crap, beer is empty, I better head out and buy me a new crate".

Likewise when his partner (Alex? Damn, I forgot the name already…) is killed.
Maybe it's because the player knows near nothing about Max at that point. I don't know… there is no connection to Max, no emotional bond. The game should have probably started differently and first introduced the player properly to Max so you can establish at least a bit of an emotional link with the character.

But as it is it's all very unemotional and just… weak.
Or maybe I'm just spoiled by the cinematic story-telling of modern games and by the much more convincing digital acting of modern digital characters where every face wrinkle is animated.
It doesn't help though that the voice actor has this very monotonous style when doing the narrative. It's probably supposed to come across as "jaded Max" but to me it just emphasizes the lack of emotion and connection to the character.

Oh well, I will persevere since the game is rather short and it's not really that bad per se but I don't think it will stand a chance to make it into my personal hall of fame .

I was not a fan of Max Payne, either, and I used to love *every* first-person shooter back in the days. Didn't like the setting, didn't like Max, didn't like Mona.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
But as it is it's all very unemotional and just… weak.
Or maybe I'm just spoiled by the cinematic story-telling of modern games and by the much more convincing digital acting of modern digital characters where every face wrinkle is animated.

Well, you did wait 15 years to play it. Like most 3D games from that era, it probably hasn't aged well without nostalgia.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
It doesn't help though that the voice actor has this very monotonous style when doing the narrative. It's probably supposed to come across as "jaded Max" but to me it just emphasizes the lack of emotion and connection to the character.

That's part of the noir style. I like it tbh, but many people don't.

Originally Posted by joxer
DOn't bother with "like", it's there just so you don't have to post "I agree", "awsome", "+1", etc.

Btw, I absolutely hate what Square Enix did with TLR, the idea is there, superb, ingenious and refreshing, but the amount of grinding neverending respawns killed the game for me.

Thanks.



I just loved the vibe and the slightly different combat system. It's the only 360 JRpg I've finished more than once, so I must like it lol.

just passed 100h in lords of xulima