melkathi

I know the feeling

And one last batch of Age of Barbarian. Even sprinkled some male ones in there

Age of Barbarian Action platformer with loads of gore and scantily clad protagonists. Gameplay; Been playing with X-Box Controller. I would prefer it to be a bit more reactive. Yet it is sometimes hard to judge reactiveness as there is the "Hunger" system which worsens the players reactions as hunger increases. Sounds good on paper, in effect it is mostly a minor annoyance, as it forces you to regularly use a food consumable. Which though you'd probably do anyway for the minor healing. Controls are pretty standard. Walk left and right. Crouch and/or pick up items with down. Enter doors with up. One jump button, one block button, one high attack and one low attack, and dodge/cartwheel/tumble left/right buttons. As you level up you unlock attack combos - so pressing forward and both attack button will do a high swing with your blade aiming to decapitate your opponent, while pressing both buttons while running will do a jumping spinning attack. You unlock one new attack per level until level 8. As you progress through the 7 levels, enemies will also gain access to some of those moves, though the AI can get stuck resulting in tumbling like mad troglodytes in the mountains (you put some distance between yourself and the offending opponent and it stops). QTEs: There are a few QTEs that are easily beaten and to a certain extend avoidable: sabertooths if allowed to get close enough will throw you to the ground and try to maul you - beat the QTE and you grab your blade and chop off their head. Crocodiles will try to drag you under - beat the QTE and you manage to go crocodile dundee on them. And lastly, when resting on the world map, there is a chance you will get ambushed at night - the QTE (the only one you can fail - if you mash only one button instead of all of them) will let you wake up. Riding mini-game: In two places you find a mount and rush from left to right on the screen. In theory you try to outrun and avoid your pursuers, but as they are faster than you, they will always catch up. Then you slash left and right with your sword to kill them a la FFVII motorbike mini-game. Graphics: The visuals are quite good. They managed to capture the feel they were aiming for with its strong Frazetta vibe. It works, and you do forget that you are playing a game a lot of people would consider only has eye candy as a draw. Very disappointing: hardly any options in the settings: Full Screen or Windowed, and that is pretty much it. No changing resolution? Censorship: The game has two settings: Just Blood and Gore OR Blood, Gore AND Nudity. So the game will always have gutting, beheading, amputation, blood splattering, limbs and heads flying, but you can choose whether nipples offend you. Nudity ON will have little effect: In the male character's intro a female NPC will not be wearing a bra. In the female character's intro some (not all) of the slave girls will not be wearing bras. On the mountains the troglodytes have full frontal male nudity. And in two instances the female character's pubic hair is visible (I expect the male char will have full frontal nudity there). Story/Writing: Ignore it. It is obvious the devs are not native English speakers and sadly they did not find a native speaker (or someone else who actually *knows* the language) to proof read. The story is nothing to write home about: Evil overlord is conquering the world. Hero who gets screwed by the overlord (literally in the female character's case) sets out to seek revenge. The End. With the female character there are some attempts for suggestive humour to lighten the mood. So for example when the skeleton warriors tell her that they have plans for her, she complains that all men only think of one thing, even when they are dead *shrug* Level Design: The idea is that you need to explore levels and there may be more than one way through them. Sometimes you need to kick something over to open the way. Sometimes you need to smash your way through to find a secret room. Three maidens have been captured by the various enemies for you to rescue, meaning you need to find the key, find the door it unlocks and beat the optional boss. And once you have rescued the maiden you need to escort her the rest of the way through the level. And if she falls behind, enemies may sneak up on her and try to carry her off while you are fighting. Luckily the path you escort the maiden only ever has the standard enemies for that level. The levels can have traps, which will probably kill you the first time you encounter them. For example in the snakemen's temple, the spinning blades can be hard to spot until you have walked into them a couple of times and had your head or legs cut off. There is no way to move the screen in a direction to get a glimpse if there is anything there. So sometimes jumping of a ledge will get you somewhere. Sometimes it will have you falling to your death. Trial and error. Boss Fights: The boss fights are not fun. Some bosses are straight forward enough: spot the attack animation, dodge out of the way, hit the boss a few times, rinse repeat. But the bosses do not follow a set pattern, have no coded in sequence or cooldowns. So it is possible for a boss to spam one attack continuously. The giant ape that does that is still manageable, as the roar deals no damage, while its normal attack is slow enough for you to interrupt with your own. The basilisk though... worst boss fight in any game ever - even knowing what to expect, if it gets caught in a gaze attack loop from the start, you may not even land a single hit before it kills you. Luckily the worst offender is an optional boss guarding the second maiden. Still, I see people online saying it is what made them quit the game. I tend to agree with the people who doubt it was playtested. Verdict: If you liked this kind of action platformers back in the days, then you can probably get 10 hours of fun out of this game. I ragequit from 20 odd basilisk attempts at around 8.5 hours.

Age of Barbarian Extended Cut. I'll write something in the other thread after lunch.

Age of Barbarian boss fights are terrible. Worse than the writing...

This screenshot was begging to become a reply to your post

Probably why I keep dying

Age of Barbarian. Gameplay is rather meh. Quality of writing seems to be inverse proportional to the skin the characters are showing. Let's see if the spoiler tags are working so people can choose not to look at skimpy outfits.

No experience with military bullshait talk, but I could go through the file. If you need to check my writing quality, check my signature

How does it differ from the Typhoon Explosive System ?

My witch hunter snuck up on a sister of sigmar augur. Slashed at her with his blade, and she swung her flail around, got him right in the temple. My smuggler ran round to lay down covering fire with her dueling pistols. Matriarch jumped down from the balcony above, charged the smuggler and... ouch. Flagellant managed to keep the Augur busy enough for the Witch Hunter to stumble back to his feet. The Witch Hunter Captain and Zealot who rushed to help my Smuggler were less successful. She woke up back at camp raving mad. Megalomania. Having decided nothing can kill her, she refuses to use ranged weapons and will fight opponents face to face. If only I hadn't been specking her as a sharpshooter for 4 levels now...

I wonder if Geralt has noticed the vampire goblets. They cast no shadows!

Fun to zoom in on some of the hills in the distance and see they are basically just coloured mesh

We got time

How else would you be able to identify it's murderer?

Am about 10 hours into Victor Vran. I am not impressed The gameplay is different enough to at least in this respect not to feel like a cheap Van Helsing rip off, but I found it fairly unresponsive. Too often Victor does not use the ability I want when I want because he is still finishing some animation or doing something else. Of course the monsters have far fewer limitations. If a thrall hulk wants to charge you, dodging out of the way will do very little, as he'll continue charging after you until he finally reaches you. That includes charging around corners all across the map - the special move does not stop until he hits, apparently. A lot of monsters are like that: spam damage just for spam's sake. I have now turned down the volume. The attempt at a funny narrator has failed for me; I just find him annoying. Especially when they try to copy jokes from the Van Helsing games. Not uninstalled yet, but disappointed and considering it.

Indeed. And damn was that a letdown.

It's free to play. No pay to win either.

Waiting for Keyrock to play Shadwen and post about it here.

Yeah I thought about that too. Change of plans anyway. Still going with ceramic tile downstairs but the stairs and bedroom are getting carpet. I found a place that will do the whole house both carpet and tile for $4.50 per square foot. I figure that is only $900 over my original budget for the floor and all I have to do is give them the keys. Avoiding the back soreness alone is probably worth the $900. Sounds like a plan. Don't know prices over there, so can't comment on them - it would be too much for the going rate here in Greece. And you sound like someone who knows to keep an eye on them and check that the carpet on the stairs is securely fastened and won't come off when someone runs down stairs

Finished the early access part of Ghost of a Tale. Apparently I spend about 7.5 hours in game. I replayed a few sections. I ran around lost a bit. I tried and retried some bits. I think I missed some stuff for a side-quest. As this is around a quarter of the expected content, I guess the final game length will be around 12-15 hours, depending on whether the game adds stupid boss fights (no combat so far) or tricky jumping puzzles down the road. So far there has been one big "choice" - it will be interesting to see how that affects things.

Not liking the idea of laminate on the stairs. Laminate can be slippery, a quality you do not want on stairs. Tiles on the stairs will be a bit more expensive, but potentially safer.

Apparently the current state is the first quarter of the game content complete, and it stops at the point where content starts becoming incomplete. So there shouldn't be spoilers, just a cliffhanger as you can't go on playing after a point.

For my own sanity and freedom, I do not follow what those (enter here your choice of characterizations that would get me banned on more forums than Longknife could even dream of joining) of a government say. If I did, I'd buy one of those small drones. Buy a gun. Mount gun on drone. Figure out a way to compensate for recoil. Then go for a coffee near parliament and do a flyby shooting. I doubt the police would actually catch me for the first kill. But since I wouldn't stop, they'd get me eventually.

Agreed on the Ghost of a Tale camera issue. Had to plug in the controller to play. Then it plays fine