What are you playing at the moment? - November 2017

Serenegoose 2017-11-03 23:08:44 UTC #41

Engineers are pretty good but their forcefields are so OP it’s one of those cases where you ought to know what you’re getting into, because well managed, they almost reach into ‘might as well not be here’ levels of trivialising the game.

Serenegoose 2017-11-04 07:01:11 UTC #43

Turns out with diablo 3, what I was doing wrong with the necromancer was playing it on anything less than expert mode. I played diablo 3 first when it stuck with the same difficulty system as d2 - increasing difficulties of NG+ so I didn’t quite realise how it worked. Since they’ve almost completely reworked the game since, having my skeletos run around one hitting everything (I mean, I even one hit the act 1 boss with one of my own spells, a pitiful emulation of the butcher from ye old d1) was not very satisfying gameplay. Now that they do fairly crummy damage and I’m still required to actually do some things, it’s all good.

Part of me still wishes there was a foe in the game to give me the same sort o nightmare inducing psychologicalf trauma as the prime evils of my videogaming childhood - the sonic drowning music, the ‘your farms have depleted’ rattle from age of empires 2, and perhaps the most terrifying of all, the ‘LOOKING FOR BAAL?’ from Duriel in D2.

ToomuchFluffy 2017-11-04 07:09:19 UTC #44

I have been playing a bit of Minecraft, spending some more time in the world where I established a castle for about 20 hours a few months back.

After not really getting any ideas of what to build, I decided to explore my tunnels. I quickly realized that some of that had been built with a rather haphazard approach including one ladder that covered only about half the way down. And since the bottom is at the bedrock… well, it was a long fall. And I had no clue where the other exit for that shaft was, so that I tried to add the rest of the ladder from above (!). Not too surprisingly it resulted in a few more deaths. XD

Since then I have replaced most of the resources and my iron armor that I lost that way and have been removing some layers around my castle. It’s mostly about the aesthetics since I want - where possible - the surroundings to basically be plains of a significantly lower level than my outer wall. I don’t think that will help my security issues though. The inner area seems to be safe enough, but I had a few Creepers crawling around between my outer two walls. Maybe it was just a lack of torches along the walls, but it may not be the worst idea to take some more security measures.

Aside from that I have discovered a rather large natural cave-system, which I explored yesterday. It has reminded me that I still have not established a mining outpost. Not that it’s really needed, but I just like the idea of having safe outposts for specific purposes. Especially since this world is mostly about trying to emulate that old lost project of mine and I had something like that in there. Basically a foundry with a good amount of furnaces for processing ore and sometimes sand which was part of my old tunnel-system and served as the antechamber to the mine. It had some basic amenities and storage as well of course. I still need to decide on a sensible place for it.

Shadoko 2017-11-04 08:00:28 UTC #45

Ain’t it the case for many summoning/support classes in hack and slash games ? Because I’ve done a bit of respec on my Outlander and having a few summoning abilities make the game much easier.

Serenegoose 2017-11-04 08:13:05 UTC #46

Yeah, though I’ve been dabbling with a few classes since returning to it as a game, and whilst all of them were quite trivially easy to stomp through with, the necromancer took it not just to another level but to low orbit. I was having to construct bad builds just to slow down enough to enjoy the scenery. Figuring out the difficulty helped balance it out a lot to the point that I’m having quite a nice time.

Shadoko 2017-11-04 08:23:54 UTC #47

I remember having a ton of fun with the Witch Doctor in D3. Drowning your enemies under pirhanas, crocodiles and other completely out-of-place creatures never gets old, and I like the “fight weird magic with even weirder magic” theme.
Plus, my Witch Doctor looked like some kind of voodoo priest mixed with Bob Marley and in the oh-so-serious world of Diablo 3, it was a nice change.

In hindsight I think I’ve never really enjoyed or even played well a non-summoning class in a hack and slash game, with the exception of the Warrior/Dreamer combo in Titan Quest, but this one was so broken you had to choose a deliberately bad build to have a bit of challenge.

Serenegoose 2017-11-04 08:27:18 UTC #48

Yeah, the witchdoctor is fantastically silly. Baneling toads, spiders, spiders, spiders, spiders, spiders, BANELINGS. Just needed a zombie badger and you could make a song out of it

Pink_Gregory 2017-11-04 12:04:39 UTC #49

I’m getting a few hours of Dishonored : The Knife of Dunwall here and there; with the .ini difficulty mod still installed. Which genuinely led to a near encounter with about 20 guards in a big open street; and I don’t think I even did anything exceptional to bring them all out…

I’m trying to play without reloads, but of course all I do now is get myself killed (the .ini tweaks are a bit brutal when it comes to combat. Also I’m not very good at combat) and it basically does the same thing…so…

Narratively speaking, I feel a lot more free to do anything with Daud; whereas I feel awkward stabbin’ folks as Corvo, although coming off this playthrough I was a bit messier than usual. Which is nice.

I also found my new favourite thing to do, which is attaching stun mines to closed doors while hiding and swinging them open when a guard happens to pass. Great loff.

Pink_Gregory 2017-11-04 12:15:48 UTC #50

And in non PC news - really pleased that I’m managing to stick with Fire Emblem Awakening. Sometimes I’ve shied away from tactical games with unique units and inventories to manage; but the simplicity of working with the maybe 15 at any time unique peeps and the simplicity of the weapon triangle - actually I think maybe it might be down to not having to deal with a strategy layer; I suppose this is what I’m in the mood for.

And yet I haven’t stuck to Advance Wars yet. I 'unno. Maybe I like playing with the cards I’m dealt rather than choosing the deck myself.

sonson 2017-11-04 14:11:59 UTC #51

I see your dreaded audio cues and I raise you a single sinister Age of Empires “Wololo”

MantisTobogganM.D.4 2017-11-04 14:34:24 UTC #52

Pink_Gregory:

I’m getting a few hours of Dishonored : The Knife of Dunwall here and there; with the .ini difficulty mod still installed. Which genuinely led to a near encounter with about 20 guards in a big open street; and I don’t think I even did anything exceptional to bring them all out…

I’m trying to play without reloads, but of course all I do now is get myself killed (the .ini tweaks are a bit brutal when it comes to combat. Also I’m not very good at combat) and it basically does the same thing…so…

Narratively speaking, I feel a lot more free to do anything with Daud; whereas I feel awkward stabbin’ folks as Corvo, although coming off this playthrough I was a bit messier than usual. Which is nice.

I also found my new favourite thing to do, which is attaching stun mines to closed doors while hiding and swinging them open when a guard happens to pass. Great loff.

I need to play that. I forgot and went straight from 1 to 2, I even have that and the witch one too.

Det.Bullock 2017-11-04 18:42:14 UTC #53

After many months I finally finished Phantasy Star IV: The End of The Millenium on Sega Mega Drive
This is a weird series, this is the last game in the series yet it’s the only one that feels like a proper 16-bit RPG and for the little I know about the genre (mostly an aborted run of Fantasy Star IV for Gameboy Advance) it’s a bloody good one.
There is little grinding (mostly towards the end as the enemies start to scale up at a brisker pace), the “retreat” command works 9 times out of 10 instead 1 out of 10 like in the first three games, the graphics are colorful, there are actual dialogues and characters show… character, even though they are a bit generic.
Combat feels much better than in 2 and 3 (which was already a bit improvement over the awkward interface of 2), and the game in general seems committed to avoid wasting your time: I didn’t even use the option to create macros because giving menu commands during battles was lightning fast and the characters while there is no run button walk at a very brisk pace which can sometimes be problematic when trying to face a certain NPC you want to talk to.
Not ony that: the teleport spell now allows to choose the city where you want to go among those you already visited, which means that you can backtrack without having to endure random battles.
About the only time it got frustrating was one of the last bosses which was a bit difficult and was at the end of a rather long and tedious dungeon, though really while more complex than in 3 the dungeons aren’t frustratingly huge and complex like in 2 and I could navigate them without consulting a map easily enough.
I had to consult a map only towards the end, not for a dungeon but for the overworld because you gain a hydrofoil (though it acts more like a hovercraft) and I kept missing the islands I was supposed to go to for a couple of sidequests.
I’ve read that the game originally was supposed to be a Mega CD game that was later scrapped and reworked to fit on a high capacity cartridge, I wonder how much of the difference between this grand finale and the other two games on the Mega Drive was influenced by that.

LexW 2017-11-04 19:08:28 UTC #54

Good old Duriel. Part of it was just how hard it was to get your body and gear back without immediately being killed again and that’s not something we really see in modern games. But yes there is still a cold chill of fear to that name.

Re: difficulty, it’s the key to making D3 a good game - you have to keep increasing it as you get more powerful. The upside is, the harder it is, the more XP and loot and gold you get, so you become ever-more-effective at farming even as you make the content harder. Which might not sound great on paper but can actually be huge fun.

Shadoko 2017-11-04 19:36:54 UTC #55

Playing (and being bad at playing) the Outlander in Torchlight II made me start a new playthrough of Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel as Nisha and, well, outside the horrendous voice acting, Nisha is awesome.
She might very well be the best singleplayer character ; she is a DPS beast with her Confrontation skill and the Order perk makes her even more durable than Athena.
Besides, auto-aim skill when you have flying and teleporting enemies feels like it’s borderline cheating.

The_JG_Man 2017-11-04 20:08:06 UTC #56

I think in the next Steam sale I’ll pick up the version on Steam. I’d like to play through it again being an adult who understands more than a small amount of what is actually going on, including the combat. I just about worked out combos which were pretty neat, but at the time I couldn’t really establish why they were happening with one or two exceptions. Still, I do remember it being an excellent game that was full of colour and variety and a killer soundtrack.

Det.Bullock 2017-11-04 21:09:42 UTC #57

The_JG_Man:

Det.Bullock:

Combat feels much better than in 2 and 3 (which was already a bit improvement over the awkward interface of 2), and the game in general seems committed to avoid wasting your time: I didn’t even use the option to create macros because giving menu commands during battles was lightning fast and the characters while there is no run button walk at a very brisk pace which can sometimes be problematic when trying to face a certain NPC you want to talk to.

I think in the next Steam sale I’ll pick up the version on Steam. I’d like to play through it again being an adult who understands more than a small amount of what is actually going on, including the combat. I just about worked out combos which were pretty neat, but at the time I couldn’t really establish why they were happening with one or two exceptions. Still, I do remember it being an excellent game that was full of colour and variety and a killer soundtrack.

The funny thing is that the Mega Drive games on Steam can be played on original hardware using an Everdrive since they are basically roms for a proprietary emulator, a few months ago I bought a bundle of Steam Mega Drive games and all the Steam roms I tried worked perfectly.

Yeah, the 16-bit version of the original Phantasy Star dungeon theme in particular is spectacular.

The_JG_Man 2017-11-04 21:48:19 UTC #58

Oh that’s pretty cool. I know a lot of people will be wanting to try out Sonic 3D Blast what with one of the devs doing some pretty neat tricks to it, but I’ll probably make do just playing it in the stock emulator, although fishing out my cartridge does carry with it some appeal.

4 was the only PS I played, but I was alright with that. It seemed fairly self-contained and sensible?

Serenegoose 2017-11-04 21:49:36 UTC #59

soldiers on the battlements tremble as wololos sound in the deep. They are coming…

Det.Bullock 2017-11-04 22:30:02 UTC #60

Most essential things are explained, though really if we want to stretch it the Master System one is the only one that is really necessary.
II is rather forgettable (and has a plotline that gets resolved largely offscreen) and III is largely a sidestory to IV that only gets a nod in a sidequest of IV.
The story of Alis Landale is the one that has most bearing on Phantasy Star IV, the heroes of II only get a cameo very late in the game and for the rest you just have to know that the terraforming seen in II is breaking down.
Though the Master System game while very modern for the time (it’s the only old JRPG that allows to save everywhere for what I know) it’s still a pretty basic game that necessitates of maps and some grinding. If you aren’t OCD like I am I suggest to find some abridged gameplay video with all the story bits and boss fights to get an idea of what happens there (lots of the nods are visual), and do the same with II and III if you want to catch everything.

alms 2017-11-04 22:38:42 UTC #61