Fenixp

Now that I have finally managed to finish my insane Shadow Warrior 2 binge (so good, yet so flawed on so many levels), I finally got around to giving Endless Legend with Tempest expansion a proper go. And Tempest is another fantastic purchase I made this year. It does shift Endless Legend a fair bit more into more obvious sci-fi territory, but I'm perfectly fine with that. Amplitude took the time to implement a bunch of brand new combat mechanics for sea battles and sea exploration/territory control is a ton of fun. I'm finally inclined to play on maps with a lot of water as water no longer serves as boring empty land you need to cross but instead has its own set of mechanics associated with it. I'm so looking forward until Endless Space 2 is out of Early Access. I also really, really hope that Endless Legend 2 comes after that.

I was mostly just extremely confused about what exactly is it that you were arguing against. I'd also really like to know what kind of precedent are you basing your entire argument on, I don't think I know of a single game which would sacrifice artistic integrity for modding - outside of games which were created with the sole purpose of modding, which Pillars of Eternity certainly won't be (and even there, the modding was their goal, so they were hardly compromised in any respect.) And really, opening up the engine is all Obsidian needs to do. After all, neither Doom nor Infinity Engine games were ever designed for modding specifically, yet their modding communities are still alive and very active. At any rate, yes, newer version of Unity should help. Obsidian following proper programming practices and not hard coding everything would help even more (and make the game less buggy by extension) as there actually are highly moddable games that make use of Unity. And... That's actually a bit of a general rule - when it's easy for general public to change big chunks of your game, it's then probably easier even for the development team itself. Creating a patch then shouldn't take three months...

What on Earth are "constraints of moddable engine" supposed to be? I'd love to explain what's wrong with your argument, but I can't even begin, so just... You do realize that every single game out there has to be moddable to some extent, since... Well, developers also need ways to add new content, right? And the only thing you have to do to make a game moddable is to open it up, without giving it all that much thought during development? Sure, you'll get bonus points for releasing modding tools, but that actually is some additional effort since you need to polish your internal tools for general public. Sure, it's another matter when you're constructing your entire game around modding - but that's not what majority here is asking for, majority seems to be asking for a game which is quite simply not locked from modding for the most part.

I just found a few secrets. Turns out I am actually just blind! I'm kinda happy about this. It does seem to just be money tho. Sunless Sea is not a trading game, don't even try it. It's kind of sort of possible, but it also is a real pain. Anyway, I have never finished Sunless Sea yet I consider it a classic - the time I spent with it has been remarkable, and now that I'm replaying it for Zubmariner it's even better with all the additional stories. I have also chosen a more attainable goal.

Yeah, "graphics style" is pretty much the distinction between a game which'll look good until it gets outdated and a game which'll always look good, period. I still think Age of Empires 2 is one of the prettiest RTS games I have ever played. And Zork still looks as good as the day it was released.

There's a whole bunch of secrets hidden in the hub level and some of the pre-designed locations crucial for the story, but I didn't find a single secret in any of the procedurally generated levels. I might have just been unlucky with the generation I suppose. Or I'm exceptionally blind, but I'm usually fairly good at locating at least some secrets as try to explore every nook and cranny.

Well... That was peculiar. Edit: Son of a ****

I bought Shadow Warrior 2 to have something to satisfy the FPS itch while playing Endless Legend, and now the game has completely consumed me. At first I thought it's just Skinner box, but since then I got fairly annoyed by the loot drops and I have a tendency to ignore them for the most part. Turns out the game just sports really solid mechanics, with fantastic movement system, far better gunplay than the original had (the game even managed to avoid issue of bullet spongy enemies present in borderlands!) and incredibly satisfying melee mechanics. Two things are worth mentioning aside from that: Levels are a mix of procedural generation and hand-made blocks. The game makes use of both - majority of a level is procedurally generated, but has a whole bunch of pre-made blocks mixed into it. This leads to the most impressive procedurally generated content I've seen in a game seen from first person perspective. It also means that all levels are pretty damn large and open - mix this with the game's excellent movement system and you get a winning combination. Naturally, levels are still not as good as hand-designed ones would be, there are no secrets that I would find and eventually, you start noticing building blocks getting reused. It's still a good way to ensure replayability as mob placements are also procedural. Oh, and the levels are bloody gorgeous - just check out screenshots. Weapon progression is great - because there isn't any. While there rarely are straight upgrades, majority of weapons you find are alternatives. This means that you get a massive amount of choice - do you want a punp-action shotgun with decent magazine size, automatic shotgun with lower damage or dual-barelled shotgun upgraded to shoot both barrels at once? Your pick, neither is better than the other. There's a whole bunch of various melee weapons, machine guns, pistols, uzis etc etc - what you use and how you modify it is all up to you. What you do get to upgrade are weapon modifications only. The game certainly does have a good share of problems, but I grew to love it to bits nonetheless. And I'm not even playing coop!

So, the melee is still awesome. More awesome actually as you get a ton more weapons with different attributes to use. Graphics are quite pretty AND, naturally, there's also cyberpunk in there because why the hell not, right? And nah, this certainly is not too many screenshots for a single post.

Your *spoiler* state takes a decent bit of skill, well done!

You can quite literally disable all means of communication. They're then just blips on the radar. Crappy ping on the other hand... Yeah. Isn't that an issue in Diablo III as well tho?

You mean the players you can literally walk trough, disable global chat for and not see for 90% of the game? Do they ruin your immersion into this action RPG or something? :-P

I got all the way up to Normal, the difficulty doesn't actually ramp up that much. And yes, I also suck, shut up, Malcador. The writing in that game is ... Not good. I'm getting a feeling Rhianna Pratchett might not be a great games writer maybe? Anyway, I just enjoyed the gameplay and exploration. A lot of stories will start making sense while you're completing them. For a lot of stories complex enough to do so, you'll wish they didn't. Yeah, wait for better ship and weapons before starting to partake in combat. Veils will make you less visible, just as turning off the lights. The latter also significantly reduces fuel consumption.

So, the new Shadow Warrior. It's good fun. If it was more expensive than 30 bucks I'd get a refund. All right, to elaborate: - The game is obviously designed for multiplayer first. So when you die, you just respawn and enemies regain some health, there's no manual saves and checkpoints work as ... Well, respawn points, that kind of stuff. - Procedurally generated levels. While in theory it means endless replayability, what it also means is that the level design isn't particularly impressive. - Loot and weapon upgrades. There's loot which is rather awesome, like mods for weapons that substantially change how weapons behave - splitting bullets, dual-wielding, that kind of stuff. On the other hand, majority of stuff you're gonna be dealing with is +x% converted to fire damage - numbers, numbers, numbers, and most of them not even particularly exciting. There are definitely upsides tho. The optimization's great, combat is nice, mobile and visceral, movement system is stellar, with many ways of adding up to your momentum, I like all of these things. Meele's as much fun as ever, with a bunch of weapons added, including chainsaws and chainswords (which actually slow down while passing trough enemy, making for a nice, gory, spectacle.) Generally, the weapon variety is bonkers. Oh wait, Endless Legend: Tempest just got released too!? Whelp, see ya'all. Edit: Ad SW2: Shockingly, the original actually had very cool cutscenes, nice voice acting and I'd even dare to say decent writing for what it was. Well don't expect any of that in the second game.

Nnno. All right, Rise of the Tomb Raider is great, and throughout the game, there are scattered so-called "Challenge tombs". Those are essentially optional puzzles of varying scale and difficulty (altho most are rather easy), and these are the most reminiscent of the original Tomb Raider games and I kinda wish that's what the entirety of Rise was because they are probably my favorite bits of that game. But then there's the rest of the game, and it's very similar to the Tomb Raider reboot - you run around, shoot some dudes, explore some lost cities inexplicably populated by baddies etc. etc. If you disliked Tomb Raider reboot, I don't think Rise of the Tomb Raider will magically make you like the new series.

I still don't quite understand what on Earth would possess Relic to abandon what they were the absolute number 1 on the market and try to compete with a company like Blizzard. That is, of course, assuming they're trying to develop a StarCraft 2 killer - maybe Dawn of War 3 will just be ... Well, bad.

As a sanity measure, you can speed up combat animations only when creating a new game, in the Game Settings Summary there's a "Battle Pace" option. You might have already found it and I might be utterly stupid, but having to wait forever for units to animate in combat was pretty much making me auto-resolve everything. It's a lot better now. I find approaching the quests as another option as opposed to something you necessarily need to complete helps. Sometimes they're helpful, other times they're no - the only thing that irritates me now is that faction quests are sometimes tied to regions you have no knowledge of. Anyway, yeah, I find it rather difficult to play other 4x games now. Amplitude has done splendid job with Endless Legend.

Probably the only thing I really disliked about Dungeon of the Endless was just how fast your characters could die, without any auto-pause options or any sort of slow-mode. At times it was so insane that I quite literally took my eyes off a character at good health for mere seconds and when I glanced back said character was dead. Those levels of frustration are kinda off-putting to me.

"whowantssome.wang" Okay, the game just gained a whole bunch of points in my book.

While this is quite likely correct, it shows a fundamental difference in how DoW 1, 2 and 3 are approached. The two original games didn't actually concern themselves with balance and competitive play that much - sure, these aspects were hardly ignored and a lot of resources were invested into at least sort of, kind of balancing the races so that multiplayer remains entertaining, but entertainment was always the main concern. As I see it, Dawn of War 1 and 2 wanted to portray two slightly different aspects of conflict in Warhammer 40k universe, and they wanted to do so with with style fitting WH40k. They were games which brought this universe alive, and focused on details which throw off balance but add in substance and differentiate DOW games from your usual "Units dat stand in front of each other and shoot until one of them falls over" - this attention to detail and utter disregard to esports was why I always preferred my Dawn of War games to ... Majority of RTS really, including both StarCraft games which always felt incredibly sterile to me. Well, lo and behold, Dawn of War 3 now feels rather sterile from trailers. On the other hand, let's be fair - Dawn of War 2 was a very different game from Dawn of War 1 and I enjoyed both. I won't condemn the game before it's released. But thus far, watching a gameplay video from DoW 1 or 2 still feels fresh, the games feel very ... Relic-like as Relic have always been kings in making thematically strong RTS games. Gameplay vids from Dawn of War 3 feel like watching Generic Rts no. 106 with cool unit designs. And even if it is good - let's just say StarCraft 2 is also considered good and it bores me to tears.

So when a criminal organization uses some concepts and ideas, these concepts and ideas should then never be used again?

Do try to achieve Quest victory at least once. The last quest required for quest victory is identical for all factions so no need to worry about that, it should unlock right after finishing the faction's main questline.

Zubmariner is out. It contains many new and wonderful words. And there are also many words I have not seen yet or completely forgot about. I will go out and explore all of these words, possibly. Probably not.

Speaking of the devil, 75% off for the base game and most DLC on Steam. Edit: Endless Legend Collection, which contains most DLC, is 80% off Edit2: Oh, Tale already noticed. That's what I get for not clicking unlabeled links.