Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[nenjin]

Can't remember, it's been literally 20+ years since I've played it.

[Robsoie]

Shadowrun Dragonfall, just ran into a mission that design i really disliked.
So far the missions were good, some had alternate way to do them, some had interesting events, and one was hilarious (knight kings )
But this one ( MKVI ) 2nd part was just plain bad

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The mission starts good, some regular inflitration, my decker hacking stuff to get some informations, codes and etc... then we found the mission target.
Bringing "him" back with us, i was suspecting things would end into big firefight considering what "him" was.
And indeed, no surprise, we move out of a corridor, big room with tons of cover everywhere and truckload of enemies throwing grenades.
Then we move to another corridor, new room with tons of cover everywhere and truckload of enemies throwing grenades.
*sigh* so much for having many abilities and hardware to hack stuff and inflitrating ...
The mission is in fact just designed as "shoot that big group of enemies dead, then shoot another big group of enemies dead, who care about alternate ways because there's 0 alternate ways in that mission".
Sure you have "him" to kill things faster, but it's incredibly boring due to the amount of cover making it so you always have low chance to hit anything (and then must waste each rounds an action point from several of your characters to trigger abilities that make your chance to hit higher) , while the opponent does not have that much problem (as their lives are expendable and they have truckloads of grenades AOE attacks that do not care about chances to hit) .

If you go into that mission, make absolutely sure to get lots of medkit and revival stuff (your character seems to be sometime the only target your enemies will shoot for some reason even when there are easier ones around). 
 
A tactic that worked for me in that mission, maybe the most boring one too was to just set a kill zone to ambush the AI :
An empty location without much cover (so the AI do not constantly run into them to lower my hit chances) with my guys on Overwatch (so when an enemy popup at least we get first shots) and one of my character running around to attract enemies into it (the most boring part as you'll have to run far to get to the various enemy groups on the area) and lots of waiting.


Was happy when this mission was finished, the only one i really didn't liked in the game so far

edit : now that i'm nearing the end part of the campaign, i can give that advice :

In Shadowrun Dragonfall, do not focus only on decker-type of skills for your character , because the game only -very rarely- offer alternative ways  to all the (unavoidable) pre-setup fights you will run into during mission (in fact nearly all the missions will have your team into lots and lots of firefights regardless of your character hacking things left and right) .
Meaning that if you focus more on deckers/esp programs skills because you hope to find other ways etc.., you're gimping your character seriously because missions are sadly a lot more linear than you would like them to be, so you must have a character able to contribute to your team actual firepower to get through the too many forced battles you're going to have in missions that you are supposed to stealth/infiltrate.

Unless you really like to only play the ambush way (in the game ambush mean getting your whole team waiting in overwatch around a corner while one of your guys run all the map, attracting people after him with long waiting boring time of nothing in between, so at least going with a gimped decker-only character will not hurt your gameplay as much (until you get into your teammates personal missions in which you are only 2 usually, with your character becoming then near useless if he can't fight with a good chance to hit anything).

I wish the missions were more open or with more alternatives depending on character skills.
Oh a tip for your local goth teammate that is always brooding about her sad dark past, Glory, she is a true beast with her fingers-razors , i found out that they're more usefull than her handgun (she is more accurate with the claws and there's additional bleeding by round damage with them, it seems it also deal more damage overall), so when getting her new skills , you should focus on the claws improvement instead of her guns one, i wish i did.

[Ulfarr]

I had a chance to play Hellpoint for a few hours.. I got to say that I'm not used to these kind of games although I suspect that playing with mouse and keyboard something that was definitely designed around a console controler is the culprit.

Anyway, I just killed the first boss which somehow turned out to be a much easier fight than the "knights" that you met in the corridor just before it. Having read the posts here, I decided to try my hand with the Column but I just couldn't make it work. It was too slow, too difficult to judge it's range and the damage was often worse to the much nimbler Victim's poke that I looted from some enemy.

[Robsoie]

Having never played a "souls-like" before, i must say that Hellpoint really surprised me (positively i mean).
I'm playing on keyboard+mouse too myself, it took me a long time to get over the initial difficulty of me constantly miscalculating the when to dodge, when to attack, which type of attack to use (and its delay) , but once i finally figured things out, it was a lot of fun.

For the column, you'll be surprised while it's not really great against small enemies, how good it is against those "knights" , use only the heavy attack with it (yes it's even slower , so you'll have to train a bit to get the timing right on when to start it depending on the knight distance to you) , but a hit with the column will send a"knight" flying, allowing you to get close again and start another heavy hit that will strike just when the knight managed to stand up, sending him flying again. 

Too bad it does not do that against other tall enemies you'll encounter in the various areas.

[Kagus]

Just tried out Soulash, the graphical demo on Steam, and...

Well, it talks a big game. It talks a really big game, which is why I rushed to try out the demo as soon as I'd heard a couple details. "Evil godlike conquer-the-world roguelike" kinda has that effect on me.

Currently, it really doesn't deliver a whole lot. It's got the UnReal World sort of facing/movement system, but with considerably smaller sight range, and the combat is just "walk into stuff a lot until it dies". There's apparently some mechanism where when designing your character you can select a race that can "pass" as a normal, upstanding citizen. This involves washing the blood off of your person regularly, but I can't tell you how effective it all is because I haven't tried it yet and there don't seem to be any ways of interacting with people other than just bashing their heads in with a stick.

There's also some weirdness, like sleeping characters not only taking just normal damage from attacks, but actually being able to successfully parry blows with the usual success rate. Villagers in distress will call out to each other, and while the other may respond with "I'm coming! Just don't die on me!", they don't appear to actually do anything and will happily carry on chopping down that tree or staring contentedly off into the middle distance while their friends get horribly murdered.

The Cultist class is unfortunately just an edgy name for a bog standard cleric, with holy-based attacks and a heal later on (which is almost entirely pointless with how weak it is). However, their Smite ability is pretty funny in that it's a holy-damage spell with speed and range based on the stats of the weapon you're holding. Basically just hitting someone with your weapon, but using magic stats and damage. Thing is, it can be used with ranged weapons too. Including bows that you don't have any arrows for because you haven't learned that recipe yet.


Speaking of recipes, there are a bajillion craftable items and most of them are never going to be crafted thanks to either prohibitive cost/tool requirements or just general uselessness. You start off with a few generic recipes, plus one or two from your profession, and after that you can only learn new ones by either getting exceptionally lucky and finding a recipe scroll, or destroying items in the hopes of learning how they're put together (Roughly 5% chance to learn on your first try with base intelligence).

So if your map spawned with only two loose arrows lying around in it? Congratulations, you're probably not going to be able to use bows normally unless you roll a nat 20.


I really like the concept of stuff like this and KeeperRL. I just haven't been able to find one yet that was particularly compelling to carry on with.

[Jopax]

Posted in the WTF thread but I guess it's more appropriate here.

Company of Heroes 3 is a thing, takes place on the Italian front by the looks of it. Singleplayer seems to have a sort of strategic map that you move stuff around , not sure how that'll work out in the end. RTS gameplay seems pretty much the same as before, except there's a tactical pause now, doesn't really affect me much but it's a neat addition.

No idea when it properly releases, but the pre-alpha they put out looked like a pretty comprehensive vertical slice.

[Kagus]

Posted in the WTF thread but I guess it's more appropriate here.

Company of Heroes 3 is a thing, takes place on the Italian front by the looks of it. Singleplayer seems to have a sort of strategic map that you move stuff around , not sure how that'll work out in the end. RTS gameplay seems pretty much the same as before, except there's a tactical pause now, doesn't really affect me much but it's a neat addition.

No idea when it properly releases, but the pre-alpha they put out looked like a pretty comprehensive vertical slice.

Honestly, I think it's perfectly appropriate in the WTF thread. Considering how poorly CoH2 ended up doing, and the death of the original studio, I...  One, I don't know who would've thought it would be a good idea to try another title in the series, and two, I have no idea who they think should take up the mantle (and if they'll do anything good with it)

[Jopax]

Relic didn't die tho :V

They're part of Sega now, and besides this they've been working on Age of Empires 4. No idea how many of the original folks are left working there, but the first impression of this isn't looking nearly as bad as DoW3 was.

[Robsoie]

Progressing on Shadowrun Hong Kong, i like it a lot. Still not as much as Dragonfall that is my prefered Shadowrun, but so far Hong Kong has been very good to me in its own ways.

While the characters are good, it seems to me that Gobbet is just stealing the show completely, she's much more fun than all the other characters that surround you. It's not that the other guys aren't as charismatic, as they are well defined and have their own quirks to make them interesting, but Gobbet just outshine them all.

In Shadowrun Dragonfall i found that all the characters were on equal footing in term of charisma and character development so i didn't found them to be in the shadows of another one. But still it's great that the characterisation and archetypes are not some copy/paste of the Dragonfall ones.

Or maybe i just like crazy for that refreshing change of scenery and characterisation that comes with Gobbet , after those "down to earth but with quirks" guys and gals from Dragonfall

Anyways, combat seems to be easier than in Dragonfall, oh fortunately not back to the "it's too easy" that it was in Shadowrun Returns, but i felt much less threatened overall, maybe because i am running with a character very combat oriented, while in Dragonfall i started with a "pure" Decker that i was forced later to improve a lot his combat oriented skills due to how useless he was at some point with the many battles i was running into. 

There also seems i have more options in Hong Kong than in Dragonfall, there is less battles, and many of the fights felt they could have been circumvented in some ways , unless it was wrote to make me feel i could have done otherwise .

The matrix run are -very- different from how they were in Dragonfall (or Shadowrun Returns) , there's this real time part that feels very involved, as you need to time your move and the enemy probes one to avoid triggering fights. It's actually quite good, though it feels a lot easier than the matrix system from Dragonfall/Returns.

[Iduno]

Progressing on Shadowrun Hong Kong, i like it a lot. Still not as much as Dragonfall that is my prefered Shadowrun, but so far Hong Kong has been very good to me in its own ways.

While the characters are good, it seems to me that Gobbet is just stealing the show completely, she's much more fun than all the other characters that surround you. It's not that the other guys aren't as charismatic, as they are well defined and have their own quirks to make them interesting, but Gobbet just outshine them all.

In Shadowrun Dragonfall i found that all the characters were on equal footing in term of charisma and character development so i didn't found them to be in the shadows of another one. But still it's great that the characterisation and archetypes are not some copy/paste of the Dragonfall ones.

Or maybe i just like crazy for that refreshing change of scenery and characterisation that comes with Gobbet , after those "down to earth but with quirks" guys and gals from Dragonfall

Anyways, combat seems to be easier than in Dragonfall, oh fortunately not back to the "it's too easy" that it was in Shadowrun Returns, but i felt much less threatened overall, maybe because i am running with a character very combat oriented, while in Dragonfall i started with a "pure" Decker that i was forced later to improve a lot his combat oriented skills due to how useless he was at some point with the many battles i was running into. 

There also seems i have more options in Hong Kong than in Dragonfall, there is less battles, and many of the fights felt they could have been circumvented in some ways , unless it was wrote to make me feel i could have done otherwise .

The matrix run are -very- different from how they were in Dragonfall (or Shadowrun Returns) , there's this real time part that feels very involved, as you need to time your move and the enemy probes one to avoid triggering fights. It's actually quite good, though it feels a lot easier than the matrix system from Dragonfall/Returns.

Yeah, I feel like they let Hong Kong get weirder than Dragonfall usually did (the mission to steal a bunch of bioware guarded by a cartoon-obsessed decker notwithstanding). Deckcon and the Feng Shui mission were subtly weird, and some of the stuff with your ghoul teammate and the vampire lady was pretty wild.

[Robsoie]

Just learned about "Steam Deck" :
https://www.steamdeck.com/en/hardware
https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck

It's basically a PC running a linux distro named "SteamOS" in the shape of a portable gaming handled device with pads and buttons.
Apparently while it requires a steam account and is basically made to download and play games you purchase from steam, it is mentionned that you can still install non-steam games and even other OS.

As i'm out of the loop regarding PC hardware i have no idea how powefull or weak this thing is (as it's the most important stuff to know considering how very taxing and hardware demanding modern games are) .
the pad and buttons scheme seems a bit odd in comparison to established existing gaming handled or joypad i saw, but as i don't practice this type of gaming i don't know if it's ergonomical or going to be a disaster for the hands.

But if the price become reasonable and if the device is powerfull enough, and really allow you to install whatever you want without being bound to steam, it could become a very good alternative to invest into an expansive gaming pc laptop if you want to have your games "on the go".

[Folly]

Considering that Steam never managed to get their VR headset prices down to anywhere even remotely close to their competition, I'm not particularly optimistic that this Deck will be commonly affordable.

[Chiefwaffles]

Considering that Steam never managed to get their VR headset prices down to anywhere even remotely close to their competition, I'm not particularly optimistic that this Deck will be commonly affordable.

It's $400.

[Uristides]

Quick rundown of what I've played on the last three weeks:

Earth Defense Force 5 is quite a blast, as always. The last game of the series I'd played was 3 on the 360, back when everybody was what's now called a Ranger and mostly every gun in a given weapon class had the same model. Compared to that, things improved a lot and tons of variety and QoL introduced, but I also sometimes can't shake off the feeling that in many ways I'm playing more or less the same game I'd played some 8 years ago, and paid quite a bit for it too.


Now Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is probably one of the most whelming experiences I've had in the past few years. It feels like a Capcom higher up read a few articles about popular western RPGs, distilled it into a handful of bulletpoints  and shoved it into the development's team backlog without understanding how these pieces fit into a coherent experience. It just feels so mediocre and generic in trying so hard to be epic, and to top it off you have awful tutorial spam and NPC chatter all over your screen and what's probably the worst menus I'd ever seen in a PC port.
People do say that it's a game that really shines as you delve further into it, and I seriously hope it's not just sunken cost fallacy, because I had such high hopes for this one.

Just learned about "Steam Deck" :

I'm hyped. Nowadays I barely have time to sit and play something other than maybe around the weekends, so having a portable device seems like a nice opportunity to squeeze some higher quality gaming time than my phone can offer.

As for the specs, I heard some people compare the GPU to roughly equivalent in performance to a 1050Ti, which is mighty fine for what's essentially a 720p screen. It seems it will also support AMD's equivalent to DLSS, which means it will probably perform acceptably and not look like ass even when docked to a high-res screen.

[Zangi]

Now Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is probably one of the most whelming experiences I've had in the past few years. It feels like a Capcom higher up read a few articles about popular western RPGs, distilled it into a handful of bulletpoints  and shoved it into the development's team backlog without understanding how these pieces fit into a coherent experience. It just feels so mediocre and generic in trying so hard to be epic, and to top it off you have awful tutorial spam and NPC chatter all over your screen and what's probably the worst menus I'd ever seen in a PC port.
People do say that it's a game that really shines as you delve further into it, and I seriously hope it's not just sunken cost fallacy, because I had such high hopes for this one.

The story is arse (but nowhere near as bad as the anime) and the highlight of the game is essentially building your pawn and yourself up to fight the giant monsters. 
(And I guess for other people to rent out your pawn.  You can also pretty much ruin your experience/sense of progression by picking up pawns that are way too good for your level, in my opinion.)

Was definitely originally made for consoles.