Fenixp

Binging on Star Traders: Frontiers since yesterday. Great news is that, as of yet, I did not have to do any star trading whatsoever - I did, however, investigate a political play between two factions which spanned throughout an array of quests and side-quests, did some minor diplomatic missions across friendly systems, told a whole bunch of pirates and mercenaries to feel free to investigate my cargo hold as it was entirely empty, pissed a bunch of people off, encountered a Xeno ship multiple times, and found out that my chief engineer is a greedy POS, but damn good at his job. I also explored a bunch of uninhabited worlds and locations, mostly to find resources or pirate stashes. There's a ton of other things to be found tho... Not so great news is that while this may very well be the best freeform story generator thing I've ever played, it still doesn't quite hit the mark with me. I mean, I'm enjoying the hell out of it and can see myself playing it for loads of time, especially when I understand the mechanics better and when I'll be able to fully build my own captain, with the attributes I want, ship I want and crew I want, but that'll still take a bit of time. In other news, Captain Snape's mug is so ugly I may buy him a helmet. Edit: Oh yeah, I also learned just how easy it is to make a side-view 4-lane combat system with absolutely no impact or weight to it, and thus appreciate Darkest "Executed with impunity!" Dungeon system even more.

We're gonna be a ... Nomad! We shall explore strange new worlds and ... Y'know ... Possibly find loot to pawn off somewhere. And after noticing that there's a face that looks like Snep from Martin Swordsman or some such, I present to you... Captain Snape!... I mean, Snep! Captain Snep and his small band of heroes will now depart on their voyage of joy and discovery! Yes, miss Ayyykl.... Ae... Akkkk... Redhead! Thank you for this valuable information! I'm ready to inspect the cr... HOLY CRAP what is this!? This manifest has three pages! Where did I even get a ship this large!? So uh... Captain Snep and his fully manned crew of like 20 million people will now depart on their voyage of joy and ... HR, apparently, on their trusty ship, the Frontier Liner! ... It used to be a tourist liner but after buying all the new equipment we didn't have enough cash left to scrape off the labels, so it stuck. Anyway, we were asked to take a special ... Arbitor ... Person with us to help with a case of falsely accused daughter who tots did not blow up another faction's space port. There's even dialogue choices and stuff! Branching questlines! Strange new worlds! Upon reaching this one, containing a local prince whose daughter has been accused, I went 'Sure I'll help, I'll even jump over to the next system and find stuff out for you!" So, like right next to the planet I departed from, I've encountered a pirate ship that went "Yo, give us your cargo and we'll let you live!" Naturally, I chose to fight them, so I got massively damaged ship, lost the combat which resulted in the pirates boarding and emptying my cargo hold anyway, and then spending all my cash on fixing the ship. Like 3 members of my massive-arse crew left me, including an experienced pilot, and on second attempt to leave the planet, missing crew lead to an array of disasters on board of the ship, costing more repair money. *sigh* Anyway, in my attempt to get some cash back, I did start actually exploring strange new worlds: I found free fuel and PIRATES! It was a day well-spent. Now excuse me as I'll go and experience more adventures of captain SNEP.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! I've had it with these motherplucking changes in this motherplucking visual interactive entertainment product!

Desktop with game icons looks okay to me. Besides, Steam's interface both looks like ass and handles like ass. You could fix a big part of that with skins, but skin support will be removed, so ... Yeah.

The devs seem like the kind of group who love their game, I'm pretty sure contacting them with a proof of purchase that Desura most likely sent your way back in the day and explaining the situation will get you a Steam/GOG key

And before Steam Workshop was a thing, there was Desura and Nexus Mod Manager for mod management - both with vastly smaller budget, yet far more impressive set of features.

Not really, AFAIK Steam has always been all over the place. The only idea of theirs I digged was creating an OS for PC dedicated to gaming - but, as with all of their ideas, they forgot about it halfway through. Most of their actually successful stuff like Community features or Market has been done before multiple times - and the other stuff, like Greenlight or Curator system, were all half-arsed attempts at a systematic solution to problems that can't really be solved systematically. At this point it's just a store filled with shovelware - after all, Valve's latest decision on controversial content was "Can't be arsed, sort it yourselves"

Speaking of, Valve pulls a game for alleged cryptocurrency mining. So uh... Yeah. That may very well be the thing Steam did actually manage to do first - they didn't invent digital distribution, community features or any of that other bloat Steam comes with, but publishing a bitcoin mining game on a supposedly safe PC gaming platform? That may very well be the first! Truly heralds of the industry.

The timed missions are actually the reason for me giving up on XCOM 2 multiple times. I hate cheapass design of the "Complete the mission in x turns or you'll lose instantly!" sort. Then again, a whole lot of people seemed to have liked the timers after they grew accustomed to them, so ... Eh. Also, no, there was only a single timed mission type in the original, and it was reasonably rare.

An expansion to Endless Space 2 happened. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17IMRk5JFq4 An expansion to Endless Legend also happened at the same time, but the faction intro is not quite as impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MfKfrDVDME

Oh nice, the Steam Friends update broke skins. Uninstalling the thing that made Steam's UI bearable then.

I've never actually played a Zelda game so I can't really speak for myself, but according to a whole bunch of people, Nintendo has already done that a long time before Dark Souls existed. Anyway, there's a whole bunch of Metroidvania games around - including stuff like Darksiders. The grimness, greyness and depressiveness of it all is a large part of what makes Dark Souls work, so stripping it wouldn't make a whole bunch of sense.

Yeah, when that happens, it usually means you're trying to go somewhere you're not quite supposed to yet - at the beginning, you should go towards the viaduct, not towards the graveyard nor underground (they're actually both valid choices, but only for experienced Soulsers. That's another thing - character level is not really that important, learning the game is.) And yes, the game doesn't really signpost anything and yes, it could have been a bit more clear in what it expects of you at the beginning, you're not the first player to be stuck at skeletons without knowing what else to do.

It's a fantastic metroidvania (or Zelda-ish?) kind of thing, basically. You explore a big, interconnected map that slowly unlocks as you find new items or defeat bosses. That, connected with a very unique atmosphere (and storyline if you're willing to delve into that, it's really not shoved in your face) and entirely revolving around extremely well done risk and reward system makes Souls games very compelling - even if you're not into MP, like me (I mostly avoid all MP in Souls games, except for occasional co-op.) Ignore the 'git gud' and 'It's so hard!' crowd - it's not really that difficult if you get into it (the game requires patience more than anything, really) and difficulty's not the main appeal either. Edit: Oh and combat system is really well fleshed out. It's not as unique as some may have you believe, but it's just extremely well done.

I'm still trying to heal the trauma of Bed of Chaos. You show respect lest I shall gut your games and leave them hanging for all their families to see. It's cool in local co-op, but ... Yeah.

Actually, there's like 8 weapon categories, our of which majority behaves very similarly with significant differences in stats - like you can use a shotgun with low damage and a big magazine or a shotgun with massive damage and a small magazine, but they'll both be very similar. Additionally, majority are your generic shooty McBangBangs, just meele weapons are extremely well done. Anyway, weapons are not that much of an issue - the amount is cool, even if majority are just slight variations. It's the loot drops you get. Like 99.9% of loot you collect is utter trash, and even the most interesting upgrades are of the "+2% #insert_damage_type# damage." There's the very cool aspect of weapon modifiers which make them behave differently in fun ways, but there's too little of that - I wish the game focused on those instead of the crappy gems that don't do much of anything except allow you to bypass enemy immunities. ... Oh god, I just got flashbacks of the terrible enemy immunities in that game. Just... Why? Yes, just like in Diablo 2, not all levels are procedurally generated :-P But as opposed to Diablo II, level design in FPS matters and when majority of it is bad, well... The few that are decent won't save it. And that's what the hand-crafted levels are at best - decent. Might as well be as majority are collect x of that and kill this, but it's an FPS, so who really cares. Swords and chainsaws behave pretty much the same, actually. And enemies are even worse - yes, there's a whole bunch of enemy types, but that doesn't mean a whole lot when there's like 4 different AI routines and majority of enemies end up feeling like the same thing with a different skin. The only thing the game tries to do to vary things up are damage resistances and immunities, but that's never been a fun system to implement in an FPS. Still, I've had like 30 minutes of gleeful murdering when I found my first chain sword. DOOM/Serious Sam made me constantly feel like I was shooting bullets, not peas. Altho this is very much hit and miss in Shadow Warrior 2 - when the gunplay works, it's amazing, with enemy models showing damage, reacting well to hits, falling apart as you massacre them. That's bloody awesome. But when it doesn't work, you're going to be shooting rubber pellets at a bunch of enemies that are often too dumb to really do anything to you, which is ... Not fun. And since the encounters are procedurally generated, whether you'll have fun or not gets decided by a dice roll, not a person that designs encounters. Now don't get me wrong, I finished Shadow Warrior 2 while also completing all side-objectives and as I said, when the gunplay worked, it was bloody amazing. But... That's about it, really. The game tends to fall apart and contradict itself in most of its other aspects. For me, it was a big disappointment after enjoying SW 2013 a whole lot. All in all, I'd recommend the game to FPS fans - but there's a whole bunch of reason for why it's not as well-liked as the original. And yes, marelooke made a good point about story which is rubbish in SW2 but was actually pretty nice in the original. (Oh yeah, I just remembered the movement system in SW2 which is also pretty awesome, allowing you to jump, hop and slide around the levels with incredible speed if you were being skillful. It's just a shame most of the levels were so dreary.) Thank you, I'm trying!

Well... Something may have changed with late patching, the last time I've played it was about a year after release - nonetheless, the game's attempt at being Borderlands and failing at it miserably didn't really inspire much confidence in me. Almost entirely unsubstantial loot (My gun now shoots blue bullets which do 3 more damage to most enemies, yay?), even more spongy enemies than the original and, worst of all, entirely random levels and encounters - which meant they all ended up being the same - cluster****s of differently colored enemies ("I can use my blue gun on red enemies because it does more damage to them! Meaningful decisions!") thrown around in levels that weren't constructed in any semblance of logical fashion, resulting in a game that never really heard of 'pacing itself'.

Precisely my point. And when a game does punish you in spite of using common sense and doing in-game research, it's not particularly well designed (common sense: When the game allows me to pick any class without warming me off, that means they're all equal, right?)

Create a front-line meele fighter that'll only wear light armor with constitution and might dropped to minimum and tell me how the game doesn't punish you. 1. Game that lets you do whatever with no consequences would be a poorly designed game. 2. Game that lets you get away with stat combinations that actually make sense without any meta-knowledge is a well designed one. 3. Game that requires you to have meta-gaming knowledge in order to get a decent character is too a poorly designed game. As simple as that, pretty much. Pillars of Eternity sits firmly in the 2nd territory, whereas Baldur's Gate is much closer to the 3rd. Punishing player for something as elementary as picking a class without him having any in-game means of knowing said class is sub-par is extremely poor design.

That's a terrible point; When one choice leads to success and the other one dooms you to fail, then there's no point in giving you a choice at all. When all available long-term choices are more or less equally valid then you get a system in which the game won't punish you for playing the way you want to - and isn't that the whole point of offering any sort of character customization in the first place?

Oh I see, it also displays real time - that's quite neat actually.

Is that a mod displaying position of sun in the sky? I mean ... Can't you just ... Y'know ... Look?

There was a dude who started punching me for no reason in Watch_Dogs 2, so I called the cops and they arrested him. ... am I playing this GTA-like game right?

It's, like, so deep, man.

It's not, Fallout was better even back when BG came out. #FalloutForLife There's depth to Forgotten Realms? Well BG games didn't do a very good job of conveying that then. Which characters? Where did it go when I played? I mean, you got that one thing right - it was rewarding to get through some of the gimmicky fights where you had to figure out how to not die of insta-kill attacks. Oh, wait, relieving. Not rewarding, it was a bit of a relief.