What are you playing now?

[melkathi]

Yes, pretty much my feeling so far.

[Drowsy Emperor]

I'm on the last mission in Xcom and the game has revealed several flaws that can be quite annoying.

 

Firstly, the game is still quite buggy. The worst bug of all is the loading screen. Its an oversized console type affair that would be passable if it were not for the fact that the sorting system doesnt work. The saves are automatically named and are thrown together in a jumbled mess instead of being sorted properly by date. This is worsened by the fact that the screen displays only 4 saves at a time and that mouse wheel scrolling is broken. It goes properly in one direction and skips four saves in the other. I dont know if its intentional but its hugely irritating having to spend a few minutes gingerly scrolling so a not to skip the save the game tucked away god knows where.

 

Secondly, interface issues. The interface itself is a cumbersome console turd that could be overlooked if it didn't glitch so much. I experienced issues from the whole interface disappearing, to displaying different hit probabilities on the alien head notification and on the actual attack command. Grenades and rockets are a pain to use because the cursor skips so much due to getting stuck on terrain features. Furthermore, whether or not a unit sees an enemy from a certain position is pure guesswork. Sometimes its impossible to tell until you move it. This is a burden in certain situations where its crucial to move a unit in a certain place to fire an important shot. Another dubious design decision is ghost armor. Its fun to use but it allows you to rape enemies from halfway across the map with a sniper without any frear of retaliation.

 

Last are the story issues. The final mission is an uninspired cliche, and altogether too easy with the advanced gear. I haven't finished it yet but its been a pushover so far.

 

The game has a lengthy single player campaign but no effort wa made to supply it with a fleshed out story or characters. Its way too long to be played in a sitting like civ or another turn based affair, way to linear to let you make your own story, and too shallow to be replayed for its story alone. Its a sort of worst of both worlds affair, the blandness of a strategy campaign without the open ended nature of other turn based strategy.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Other issues regarding design come about, because of how enemies appear and the cover system, every shootout is similar. 99% of the time, they take cover in a location thats hard to flank or too far to even be flanked without risk. Tactics are all about minimising risk, that's the whole point of the game. Charging forward from cover to cover to flank the aliens is generally stupid because they shoot very well and every approach increases their chances. The imperative is to drop enemies quickly so they don't get opportunities to shoot. Manouvering around is often too inefficient because its a waste of time and its risky. It pays much more to use high aim soldiers like snipers and to scout with expendable troops and then rape the enemies from afar. Sine its impossible to surprise enemies lower range troops can never be as good since they're on a level playing field with the aliens. Heavies are the worst culprit because their aim is crap and their special abilities are either useless or situational.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Done with XCOM. 7/10

 

-For bugs 

-For lack of replayability

-For weak story

-For lack of tactical diversity

 

+For visual design in some aspects

+For decent sound design

+For fun factor for most of the game

Edited June 7, 2013 by Drowsy Emperor

[Tale]

Deadly Premonition

I think I've said "what the ___" too many times before it even gave me control.

[Humanoid]

While waiting on the E:C patch before starting my next walkthrough, played a few hours of Sleeping Dogs for the first time. It's damning it with faint praise perhaps, but I liked it more than SR3 (a game I suspect might need to be played with a friend to get the most out of). Probably mostly due to the environment design.

 

Verdict - eh, let's say I'm not in any rush to fire it up again, but it's something I'll consider when I'm bored on a weekend afternoon and am scrolling through a list of something to burn a few hours on.

[Majek]

KoA:R ... somehow i managed to get back into it. Still don't know what to think of it.

[Tel Aviv]

KoA:R ... somehow i managed to get back into it. Still don't know what to think of it.

You mentioning it has made me want to give Amalur another go. Have you warmed to the art style any?

Edited June 8, 2013 by Tel Aviv

[Keyrock]

I personally am neutral on KoA:R's art style.  I neither like nor dislike it.  I like the gameplay well enough, unfortunately the world is just so dull, which is why I generally lose interest rather quickly.

[Humanoid]

Thinking of retrying Arcanum after a decade or so. Got the following mod recommendations from GOG. Any further suggestions (or advice against the below)?

 

 

The latest version (12/28/2009) of the fan patch. Essential. Must have. Get it here.
http://www.terra-arcanum.com/downloads/arcanum/fixes/UAP091225.exe

High-quality townmaps (Better looking in-game maps, also fixes some potential missing map errors):
http://www.terra-arcanum.com/downloads/arcanum/fixes/HQ_Townmaps.exe

And the High Resolution Patch. Weidu-based, so follow the directions to set it up for your system. Will allow you to run Arcanum at pretty much ANY resolution, provides an optional "compact" UI and optional high-res fonts:
http://www.terra-arcanum.com/downloads/arcanum/highres/HighRes1.1a.exe

 

[HoonDing]

I personally am neutral on KoA:R's art style.  I neither like nor dislike it.  I like the gameplay well enough, unfortunately the world is just so dull, which is why I generally lose interest rather quickly.

For an action RPG, the world is surprisingly interesting; it's basic Seelie/Unseelie Court but with a sprinkle of Silmarillion Elf lore. It's lightyears beyond Rivellon from Divinity series or Ancaria from Sacred.

[Majek]

Nope, still dislike  the art style, combat is even worse. I also hate that i'm level 11 and only getting gear for level 4 or so. WTH.

 

And the world is actually pretty dull to me. I'm not paying attention to anything since nothing ever seemed interseting to read, watch or hear. :S

 

I guess as a time waster this game works and that's why i'm still playing it.

[BruceVC]

Nope, still dislike  the art style, combat is even worse. I also hate that i'm level 11 and only getting gear for level 4 or so. WTH.

 

And the world is actually pretty dull to me. I'm not paying attention to anything since nothing ever seemed interseting to read, watch or hear. :S

 

I guess as a time waster this game works and that's why i'm still playing it.

 

Geez your view of the game sounds awful, that's one way to put someone off playing it...

 

You are clearly bored to be playing it

[melkathi]

The world is dull because you ignore everything in it? Hmm I wonder why it is dull then

[kirottu]

Journey on PS3. Short adventure game, easy problems and tons of atmosphere.

[Raithe]

Finished off Remember Me.

Eh, yeah, flawed but interesting. That's where I'm going to settle on it. Very linear, very little actually getting to "feel" the world around you even if it does look quite glossy and nice in the background.

 

One thing that's kind of disapointing is that the whole "remix people's memories" thing that they were pushing, only happens 4 times in the game and is strictly story related. I was hoping there'd be something a bit more to it then that.

 

There's some cluky dialogue, although I have to say that the voice work for Nilin is pretty damn good at capturing the mix of emotions through the story.

 

The "your choice of combining these moves in all sorts of wonderful ways" really isn't that impressive, and the combat starts to bog down at a couple of points where it's all "swarms of enemy".

[Tigranes]

 

Thinking of retrying Arcanum after a decade or so. Got the following mod recommendations from GOG. Any further suggestions (or advice against the below)?

 

 

The latest version (12/28/2009) of the fan patch. Essential. Must have. Get it here.

http://www.terra-arcanum.com/downloads/arcanum/fixes/UAP091225.exe

 

High-quality townmaps (Better looking in-game maps, also fixes some potential missing map errors):

http://www.terra-arcanum.com/downloads/arcanum/fixes/HQ_Townmaps.exe

 

And the High Resolution Patch. Weidu-based, so follow the directions to set it up for your system. Will allow you to run Arcanum at pretty much ANY resolution, provides an optional "compact" UI and optional high-res fonts:

http://www.terra-arcanum.com/downloads/arcanum/highres/HighRes1.1a.exe

 

 

From memory that's really all you need.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Journey on PS3. Short adventure game, easy problems and tons of atmosphere.

 

I so want to play this but there's no point to buying a PS3 to play the couple of titles I'm interested in.

[melkathi]

Played a bit more of Remember Me, but don't see myself finishing it as fast as Raithe. The gameplay is just not good enough for me to be able to stomach it without looong breaks.

The art is great. The world design and story could be great if the game wasn't so extremly linear that it prevents you from beginning to enjoy the world.

The combat I found terrible. It's more like a series of QTEs dressed up as action combat: "time your attacks right for the combo" and true QTEs in at least one boss fight so far.

Setting up the combos is rather disappointing as well. A three hit combo has to be three punches. The punch you intitialize it with and two of your special punch attacks. By putting a punch into one of the 3 hit combo slots, it can't be used in any other slot of any combo. The 5 hit combo (which is kick-punch-kick-punch-kick) will not be able to use either of those punches but also non of the attacks used in it will be useable for the 3 or 8 hit combos.

The altering of memories, as Raithe already mentioned, is rather disappointing. They made it sound like a major part of the game, but it only is very specific situations.

 

Game had a lot of potential, didn't really come close to reaching it.

I'd say 6/10

[AGX-17]

Civ V after getting the Gold Edition upgrade for $5.00 on steam (75% off all Civ V content this weekend,) feels good to have the Inca back. And the Temple of Artemis.

 

The world is dull because you ignore everything in it? Hmm I wonder why it is dull then

I paid attention and found the bulk of it uninteresting. The story was initially interesting but then the whole initial hook gets sidelined by mountains of irrelevant side quests and the story veers so far off course from the original setup that finishing the game was more of a chore than anything else.

Edited June 8, 2013 by AGX-17

[melkathi]

Civ V after getting the Gold Edition upgrade for $5.00 on steam (75% off all Civ V content this weekend,) feels good to have the Inca back. And the Temple of Artemis.

 

The world is dull because you ignore everything in it? Hmm I wonder why it is dull then

I paid attention and found the bulk of it uninteresting. The story was initially interesting but then the whole initial hook gets sidelined by mountains of irrelevant side quests and the story veers so far off course from the original setup that finishing the game was more of a chore than anything else.

 

 

Yeah, I can see that. I felt the story started well and there were interesting things going in the first part with the house of Ballads and the summer court, the widdow and the maid. The last part in the lands of the Winter Court started tying back into that, but by that time you had waded through so much of stuff inbetween that the coherence was lost. Add to that, that there weren't really any interesting npcs in the main story.

[Oerwinde]

Downloaded the trial of State of Decay. I wish there was an option to make the subtitles bigger. Much like Dungeon Siege 3 and Dead Rising I have to sit like a foot from the TV to read them.

[SadExchange]

Downloaded the trial of State of Decay. I wish there was an option to make the subtitles bigger. Much like Dungeon Siege 3 and Dead Rising I have to sit like a foot from the TV to read them.

I'm hoping they soon announce a release date for the pc version. Would much rather play on something that can keep a consistent frame rate.

[Humanoid]

Arcanum at 25x14 lags out something fierce graphically. Like Crysis eat-your-heart-out lag. Reinstalling to see if that's the root of the problem and might just go with monitor scaling if so.

[BruceVC]

Arcanum at 25x14 lags out something fierce graphically. Like Crysis eat-your-heart-out lag. Reinstalling to see if that's the root of the problem and might just go with monitor scaling if so.

 

Ask the GOG community for advice, there are a wealth of solutions that people can provide if you ask. I can't see a reinstall fixing the issue but you never know ?