marelooke

Finished Wolfenstein The New Order, was a fun romp. Now trying to finally finish the Witcher 2. I really really loathe the combat, especially the lack of a group stance for most of the early game is something I consider a beyond horrible design decision. Here's to hoping they came to their senses for Witcher 3.

Tried to finish the Cinders of Faith quest in PoE, turns out it might be a tad too hard at lvl7, wish that had been clear before I had spent nearly 30minutes fighting the boss (I spent more time on it, that was *one* try). Ugh. Of all things about the BGT they could have messed with why did they have to pick combat? It's a testament to the rest of the game that I keep going, despite the combat.

Yeah, the extra slots were a waste of space. I kinda disagree about the swords though, I think there's one in each chapter at least and having them be sufficiently rare seems a lot more realistic (*especially* the silver ones), than finding new ones all over the place. Combat (and movement in general) wasn't really Witcher's strong point, but imho it was even worse in Witcher 2 (certainly at release), so here's to hoping Witcher 3 will actually improve things. I'll also never forget Witcher 1's DRM, scarred for life by that abomination. On another note, finished the main story and DLC for Saints Row IV. It was fun and all but I think I enjoyed Saints Row: The Third more (also spent more time in it), maybe because the aliens aren't such great opponents or maybe because you just get way too strong way too fast (even though you can't become 99% invincible in the same way you could in SR3). It was nice how the story of the previous (and especially the first two games, which I didn't play) was sort of explained though.

Playing PoE little bits at a time to avoid getting burned out on it (and the combat, especially). Still somewhere in Act II, went back to my keep, cleared the first 5 or so levels of The Endless Paths of Od Nua and going back to sidequesting now to get my reputation with Defiance Bay up so I can continue Edér's quest. Aside from that I'm burning through Saints Row IV in the same way as the previous game: doing every single side-mission available before continuing the main story, I already found out in SR3 that that isn't such a good tactic (because you end up only getting rather fun weaponry near the end that way) but recent games have given me an irrational fear of unannounced points of no return...

Trying to clean up my massive list of partial playthroughs, so alternating between Saints Row IV and Legend of Grimrock 2 right now. Just arrived in the "castle area" and not really feeling like figuring out the spikey floor puzzle (given its speed it's gonna be die&reload style puzzle solving, not my favourite, especially sine the LoG2 loading times aren't exactly instant) EDIT: and only minutes later I retry that bit and ace it. Heh.

Finished up Saints Row 3 and I had a blast. Seems I haven't car-jacked a lot since I don't even have that achievement. Heh, I must be getting soft. Decided I might as well plunge into SR IV when I remembered this "share your character feature" that I got bothered about on more than one occasion in the game, so rather than recreate my character I tried to export her. Well, no such luck, seems that feature has been down for two years (according to Volition forums) and all I can find about it is a standard cut and paste mod message saying they "are working on it". Yeah, guess if it' s been down that long I'll be recreating my character after all, "whatevs". Pretty gruesome way to treat your fans though.

Yeah, I'm kind of in agreement, although probably for different reasons. I like party rpg's, but these days I'm not as into managing large parties. I much prefer having 2-3, I think. It feels more ... personal. (not that I didn't goof off with mods to have more companions in FO:NV...but that was for lulz after finishing the game). Since I was never a big stealth/rogue type, Pillar's version doesn't really bother me ... but neither does it reinvent the wheel in a way that made me go "cool, now I like stealth." It's definitely a bit weird. It's odd that the party management hasn't really ever bothered me in the BGT (even in a recent playthrough I started, so I can't blame changing tastes), while it does annoy me in PoE (and I tended to have loads of casters in my BGT parties, so the hands-offness of most melee classes ain't it either). Maybe it's the engagement system that's more complicated than (imho) necessary (especially for trash fights). BGT seemed to have *very* simple aggro mechanics and no disengagement penalties ("whoever is closest gets the first punches and whoever hurts me the most is the one I am gonna chase" seems like a rather good summary) and aside from the PC always being plunked at the front after a conversation (better Stoneskin up before a convo, just in case...) I can't recall them ever really bothering me (simple to understand and easy to work with). Or maybe it's something else entirely that I haven't figured out yet. In other news getting near the end of Saints Row 3, found the last collectible I was missing and completed all the vehicle theft challenges. Think I just unlocked a few more assassinations and once those are done there's probably only a few missions left before the credits roll (oh, and Sad Panda Skyblazing stuff from the Genki DLC, a gamemode I don't really fancy so I'm probably just going to skip those)

Playing through SR3 and having a blast, I'm at 86% completion, did all the city takeover stuff so I'm now alternating between messing with the DLC, doing main story quests and trying to find that one or so collectible I managed to miss so far. The plan is to go back to PoE once I'm done with this one, though I'm sort of tempted to just jump to SR4...

The biggest advantage BG2 mages had were spell triggers and suchlike. Encounter starts and *boom* mage fully shielded, so you already had to have your counters ready. In PoE you can just zerg them and be done with them before they can do anything of note, something that usually didn't work in BG2. And yeah, PoE mages feel particularly underwhelming in the damage department. I'm not big on CC, just nuke stuff to hell please. So I'm kinda disappointed in them really. That said I find PoE compares more with BG1 than BG2: combat starts out hit and miss and annoying until you get a decent size party and mange to fill out all your gear slots with *something*. Mechanics wise I'd rate them BG1 < PoE < BG2 right now, but that might change once I get further in (I'm somewhere in Chapter 2 right now).

I also think the random banter around you isn't subtitled (unless they changed that in the Redux versions) and quite a bit of it is pretty good. (if not for that I'd probably have played it in Russian with English subtitles) Personally game-hopping a bit, mostly playing PoE though with some Diablo 3 and EVE mixed in. The Gog reclaim thing also has me a bit itchy for some S.T.A.L.K.E.R. such a shame that it's unlikely we'll ever see a second installment

Also playing PoE, having some trouble with the combat system. Or maybe starting out as a wizard was a mistake as doing the Temple with two wizards and a fighter was rather a painful affair (at least the second floor was) and I feel like I got through some of the hard fights more by sheer luck than skill (and cheesing them by just unloading everything and heading back for more resting supplies, of course). Enjoying the setting, the art and the dialogue so far but the "aggro" system will have to grow on me (I also dislike having a designated "tank" with "tanking skills", which is something I consider a MMO-ism, but I was aware that was gonna be in, spoke out against it when it was proposed etc, so whatever).

They did this, although they did it as form of Kickstarter update where they reminded people to fill their surveys. Major bummer Even though I read most of them I guess I must've filled out the survey late since my name is quite obviously missing. Sending out a timely reminder by email certainly would have been nice. Oh well, at least we made this awesome game happen

De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum. Disregarding my own advice: I liked it, even though I am rather bad at the combat (and currently stuck somewhere early in because I ran out of things to kill and I gave up getting past the bossfight I need to get past) and I consider quite a few of the mechanics to be clunky. Then again, I'm Flemish, like Larian, so I guess tongue-in-cheek humour, sarcasm, cynicism and black humour are right up my alley...

None of the Half Life games on that list? For shame! No Half-Life? No Duke Nukem 3D? No Quake? No Doom? WTF is this ****ty list? EDIT: Besides we all know that Lord Gaben will give us Half Life 3 > All others Which part of "off the top of my head" do people not understand? It wasn't meant to be a comprehensive list, it's stuff that came to mind without even thinking about it and all those are games I've played somewhat recently, hence they were fresh in my mind. Allow me to add the missing part to my post: On topic, I started playing Civ Beyond Earth and fell victim to the "one more turn"-syndrome. *yawn* stupid alarm clock.

None of the Half Life games on that list? For shame!

That's just *cool*, it totaly gives the sense of Scale that EVE has a hard time providing. Didn't really catch what ship they were flying in (I think it's supposed to be the fighters/fighter-bombers that are generally launched by (super)carriers). But flying alongside all these iconic ships looks pretty damn awesome, it's also pretty cool how the collateral damage of the Doomsday being fired by the Avatar "accidentally" annihilates the player ship, not sure if that was just done for the sake of the clip tho, CCP is pretty good at making awesome clips after all...

If your profile didn't say otherwise I'd think you designed the roads in and around Brussels...

Playing The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, it's a fun game, I really enjoy the banter between Lady Katerina and Van Helsing. Just got to place traps in the Lair for the first time, let's see where things go from here

Liked BD so much I replayed just to get best ending. Controls get better after some minor tweaking. And you sort of get used to them after a while. Though the Howitzer fight was obnoxious, I think I had to slide me mouse to the other end of my desk (actually, I think that's not even that far off...) to turn the goddamn thing 90 degrees. Thankfully it was only that one fight and some creative manoeuvring on my end managed to compensate for the insane inverse acceleration or whatever the hell was going on there. Anyway, I moved on to the next item on my "playthroughs I really ought to finish" list: D:OS. Seems I just suck at the game, I made it to level 6 and I'm having major trouble with the Orc boss on the beach (and can't really see any other way to gain experience, all that is left are a bunch of level 7 undead (and whatever is past them). Guess I need a change of tactics, or party composition, or just keeping my tank alive long enough to keep the boss in melee, because he does far less damage that way, but my tank getting stunned *somehow* (either zapped, knocked over or knocked down) every time kinda puts a dent in that plan. Maybe I need to switch the ranger girl for Madora again. Either way, seems I'm relying far more on luck than tactics which can't really be the idea...

Finished Binary Domain, it was decent. I got the "normal" ending, I guess (both the good and the bad seem to take some deliberate effort to get). The controls were at some points truly infuriating (the howitzer fight especially, but judging from a Youtube video of that fight it's mostly due to terrible porting as the guy seems to be able to turn a lot faster with a controller). I'd be tempted to do another play-through to get the "good" ending but some parts of the game I just don't feel like going through again right now. I also finally finished my F:NV playthrough, only took me 4 years...and I still remembered most of the characters in the ending slides too, so good job on that one Obsidian!

I doubt it will. InXile's smashing success with Torment: Tides of Numenera shows that there is great potential for follow up success, particularly if your first project is well received, which PoE hopefully will be (by the backers, first and foremost, and the press, second). To be fair though, inXile got a lot of flack for trying to launch a second Kickstarter before the first game was done (as such Wasteland 2's success has little or no bearing on the success of the TToN KS imho since it wasn't released when that KS ended). On topic, they've shuffled a bit with the stretch goals: enhanced music was added to the companion stretch goal, which was subsequently reached (which imho was a smart move, while companions are neat and stuff "more music" is a bit higher on my "do want"-list), hopefully they'll reach the Dynamic SFX goal too. Don't care much for the translations (I don't think I've ever played a game in my mother tongue, even if it was available), I can see the appeal of translating a game (not everybody understand English, after all), but I fail to see the appeal of it as a strech goal for the majority of backers.

After trying to get into the game on and off I've started another D:OS playthrough, damn the game has come a long way since the original release, I especially like how there's now a companion for each major archetype (Mage, Ranger, Warrior and Thief) and the game in general feels "smoother" (but maybe that's because this time I'm playing on my desktop...) Has anyone tried the new Resident Evil: Revelations? I'm kinda curious as to how it holds up. Or are you all also waiting for it to be released in its entirety before touching it?

Trying to get through Binary Domain, it's one of those games I love to hate as somewhere under the shoddy gameplay is a decent game. But maybe cover shooters just aren't for me (though I rather enjoyed ME2s combat, so maybe it's not that after all)

Then they (the project promoters) need to start disclosing it, and how much. With a 600k minimum, I'm not sure what to think. KS supporters are starting to hold projects at greater levels scrutiny than ever before. They don't. Divinity: OS had external funding. Broken Age and Wasteland 2 had funding exceeding their KS earnings, which they filled in mostly through sales of their own backlogs. I can't remember if there's clear details about POE and Shadowrun. Otherside have said that they have external funding, which puts them in the same camp as those other projects. I haven't read the 200k comment marelooke mentions, so I can't be sure, but I suspect that's not all of it. Took me a bit to find the quote again, turns out it was in the anti-anti-crowdfunding article on http://www.underworldascendant.com/the-game/dev-updates.php (doesn't look like I can link directly to the exact post, it's titled "Time to Trash Talk Kickstarted Games?") The exact paragraph went like this: Yeah, the KS has been rather shoddily managed, I suggest they contact Larian and ask those guys how it's done. Since Swen is a pretty overt Ultima fanboy I'm pretty sure he'd be happy to help

Wasn't the end boss of Cataclysm Deathwing? But yeah, multiplayer can have some memorable moments. One of the funniest was when we did our first split group (2x10man group, because not enough lvl80s for a 25man raid) raid in Wrath of the Lich King and we had a bear of a time with the first boss in Naxxramas (the beetle, don't remember his name), to the point where someone looked up tactics, which didn't match with what we were seeing...at all (damage on tanks was insane, more adds were spawning than tactics said, it was a pretty big *wtf*). Turned out we were 10manning 25man Naxxramas in Black Temple/Sunwell gear, since we forgot about the, then new, 10/25man raid toggle, ouch...) Unfortunately the LFG system, the raid finder and all the other cross-realm features hollowed out the sense of commitment between guildies as well as the sense of community on a realm.