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[neotemplar]

Here to report that while Zafehouse diaries looks good and has a good premise, the execution is really poor. It is sheer luck with the odds stacked incredibly against you. Practically every action you take has negative reprecussions against you. Your survivors literally cannot stand in the same room for 1 hour without hating each other and breaking each other's limbs. Who on earth even does that?! What kind of horrible upbringing was the dev inflicted to if that's his idea of how people communicate. "I don't really like that guy. I know we've only just met 2 hours ago but I'm going to break his arm!". Doesn't matter what your character is. Frail grandmother? Throws an entire freaking medicine cabinet at a person. It's like you're controlling a party of 5 bipolar freakshows in a game where everything you do has a 50% chance of killing one of them for no reason.

It says it has a lot of replayability with randomly generated characters and random events, but so far I've only seen four events and all four makes you suffer regardless of whatever action you take. These merely repeat themselves constantly and have a chance of occurring in all your games.  So basically if you get a random event, you lose. There are some minor ones where the loss isn't too big, but rest assured, every random event fucks you. My favorite is the event where you catch someone hiding his pain pills away. Either you let him / her sate his addiction (and he'll consume all your pain pills from now on) or he will break your arm. There's no other option. Classy.

As for the randomly generated characters. It really says something when one of the dev recommendations to improve the game is to mod in your own characters so it isn't so unbelievably pathetic. There are only like 7 existing characters in the game, and two of them are literally useless. As in, they are 0% skilled at every task. Librarians and musicians. At least the musician is talented at being a distraction whereas the librarian can't even do that.

So yeah. The game is really sadistic. It's also very simple. All it's difficulty doesn't come from complexity, knowledge, or skill, but merely sheer luck.



tl;dr: Zafehouse Diaries isn't really good.

I totally agree with this.

[Wiles]

Torchlight 2 was a game I wanted to like, but really couldn't get into. Honestly I enjoyed Path of Exile more than Torchlight 2, and it's free to play.

[Sirus]

Well, I'm not super happy with my Halloween purchases. Zafehouse Diaries appears to be super hit-or-miss, Another World skips a lot of frames (strange for a remake of such an old game) and They Bleed Pixels doesn't work at all on my computer. Says that my graphics card can't run DirectX or some crap and refuses to start.

[Graknorke]

I got Poker Night 2 and the Deus Ex Collection. I have little to be disappointed about, since in total it was less than £7. And also are all good games.

[woosholay]

Atom zombie smasher is pretty great, esp for a buck

[Mephisto]

On an actual Steam Sale note:

Anyone tried Van Helsing? It's $7.50 right now. It's a diablo-clone, and that's ok. What I really want to know is.....

Does it share the pattern of EVERY NEOCORE GAME EVAR, where it randomly crashes, runs like shit and generally ruins your day? King Arthur the Roleplaying Wargame, an excellent game, crashed like SOB all the time, usually when it was most infuriating for it to happen. King's Crusade, basically the same game reskinned for historical battles, crashed even worse and in the most random, unintelligible way. Was never patched or addressed.

So yeah. I like some Neocore games, but I don't want to give money to them if Van Helsing is as crashy a piece of shit as other offerings.

Erm... I purchased it back during the summer sale. Can't tell you anything about it, as I haven't actually installed it yet.

_{I think I may have a problem. I've played maybe two thirds of my summer sale acquisitions.}

tl;dr: tentative recommendation

Spoiler: I accidentally all the words (click to show/hide)

This is one of the few games I've actually been meaning to play, so I installed it last night.

Steam says it takes 20 gigs to install and downloads ~9.8 gigs or so compressed, so it's pretty big for a Diablo clone.

The game went through a short process of finding what my machine could handle. The defaults were just fine for me. Ran pretty well and didn't look horrible. Always a plus.

The following might be relevant to my performance. I just recently got a new computer. It's a higher-mid-tier desktop, so it's not anything super special. You won't hear me going on and on about dual Titans like TB does, but it can handle any game out there.

The game is a fairly standard left-click-to-attack-or-move, right-click-to-special action rpg. There are... 3-4 classes. With the base game, you get the default monster hunter class whose name escapes me. The rest come as DLC. That doesn't stop the game from giving you items for those classes, though, even if you don't have said DLC.

You have two weapons, a gun (so far, I've seen a few types of pistols and rifles) and a sword. I've only made it to the first town so far, but I'm assuming that's all you'll ever have. You can get new guns/swords, though. I think the other classes might get different weapons.

Equipment is weird. I picked up several items with red backgrounds. Standard arpg experience tells me that these are unequippable at the moment. Hovering over the items tells me nothing of the requirements. They also could not be equipped to my companion who, despite being a ghost, can equip physical items. Said items were not class-specific, as class-specific items do inform you that they're for a specific class.

You also have two types of skill-ability-things. One is activated via right-click (and asdf, apparently) and is the standard Diablo-style skill. The other, activated with 1234, is kind of similar to spells in Torchlight 2. The first one I purchased at level up heals all allies within a radius of ~1 screen (1280x1024).

Various actions fill up something called rage. I'm a little fuzzy on what - presumably attacking and being attacked. You can also drain rage by pressing a button which I found quite by accident. Each press apparently powers up your next attack, though it was never explained by how much.

There is also a perk system. Gain reputation by killing things and completing quests and you level up your... secondary experience bar thing. Gain a level in that, gain a new perk. At first level up, I could choose between one that gave my ghost buddy more health and lowered her cooldown (I suppose the cooldown between "dying" and coming back), one that gave me a higher crit chance when at full rage, and a few others.

The ghost companion I've mentioned is more like the pet from Torchlight 2. You can load her down with excess loot, though I'm not sure if she ferries it back to town or not. When fighting, she transforms into a... thing. That fights. She also has a health bar. She's not died yet, but I assume she disappears for a while like the aforementioned pet when her bar is emptied.

I've played for half an hour or so. The gameplay is okay. There's nothing revolutionary here. Voice acting varies wildly. Everyone is generally decent, but the priest at the first town is terribad.

All in all, a tentative recommendation. If it's still on sale and you've got a few bucks burning a hole in your pocket, might as well. I've definitely played worse.

[Toaster]

The game is a fairly standard left-click-to-attack-or-move, right-click-to-special action rpg. There are... 3-4 classes. With the base game, you get the default monster hunter class whose name escapes me. The rest come as DLC. That doesn't stop the game from giving you items for those classes, though, even if you don't have said DLC.

All I needed to hear to destroy any interest I had in it.

[nenjin]

Thanks for the input. Not quite sure I want to spend on it yet, it sounds like there's some wonky mechanical choices being made.

[Chaoswizkid]

@Hellsing,

A friend of mine complained that, while playing, he experienced "rubberbanding". You know, that thing where you lag and the netcode freaks out and you aren't where your client said you were but back over at this other place and your guy just kind of teleports back. This was experienced in single-player.
I just think that the alternatives (Path of Exile, Torchlight II, etc.) are likely leagues better than Hellsing.

[Graknorke]

@Hellsing,

A friend of mine complained that, while playing, he experienced "rubberbanding". You know, that thing where you lag and the netcode freaks out and you aren't where your client said you were but back over at this other place and your guy just kind of teleports back. This was experienced in single-player.
I just think that the alternatives (Path of Exile, Torchlight II, etc.) are likely leagues better than Hellsing.

Rubberbanding is a different thing, where players are artificially made equal by the game to try and make it seem closer/more competitive or whatever. Mariokart is notorious for this.

[lordcooper]

@Hellsing,

A friend of mine complained that, while playing, he experienced "rubberbanding". You know, that thing where you lag and the netcode freaks out and you aren't where your client said you were but back over at this other place and your guy just kind of teleports back. This was experienced in single-player.
I just think that the alternatives (Path of Exile, Torchlight II, etc.) are likely leagues better than Hellsing.

Rubberbanding is a different thing, where players are artificially made equal by the game to try and make it seem closer/more competitive or whatever. Mariokart is notorious for this.

It's more than one thing.

[Sensei]

@Hellsing,

A friend of mine complained that, while playing, he experienced "rubberbanding". You know, that thing where you lag and the netcode freaks out and you aren't where your client said you were but back over at this other place and your guy just kind of teleports back. This was experienced in single-player.
I just think that the alternatives (Path of Exile, Torchlight II, etc.) are likely leagues better than Hellsing.

Rubberbanding is a different thing, where players are artificially made equal by the game to try and make it seem closer/more competitive or whatever. Mariokart is notorious for this.

That's "rubber band AI". "Rubberbanding" is the lag thing, where you think you're moving somewhere but then the server says "I didn't get your packet so you didn't move" and you pop back to where you were.

E: Ninja.

[Graknorke]

@Hellsing,

A friend of mine complained that, while playing, he experienced "rubberbanding". You know, that thing where you lag and the netcode freaks out and you aren't where your client said you were but back over at this other place and your guy just kind of teleports back. This was experienced in single-player.
I just think that the alternatives (Path of Exile, Torchlight II, etc.) are likely leagues better than Hellsing.

Rubberbanding is a different thing, where players are artificially made equal by the game to try and make it seem closer/more competitive or whatever. Mariokart is notorious for this.

That's "rubber band AI". "Rubberbanding" is the lag thing, where you think you're moving somewhere but then the server says "I didn't get your packet so you didn't move" and you pop back to where you were.

E: Ninja.

I've... never heard that referred to as rubberbanding. That's new. Normally I hear it heard as more like "fucking shit this connection is bullshit fuckfuckfuck".

[Mech#4]

@Hellsing,

A friend of mine complained that, while playing, he experienced "rubberbanding". You know, that thing where you lag and the netcode freaks out and you aren't where your client said you were but back over at this other place and your guy just kind of teleports back. This was experienced in single-player.
I just think that the alternatives (Path of Exile, Torchlight II, etc.) are likely leagues better than Hellsing.

Rubberbanding is a different thing, where players are artificially made equal by the game to try and make it seem closer/more competitive or whatever. Mariokart is notorious for this.

That's "rubber band AI". "Rubberbanding" is the lag thing, where you think you're moving somewhere but then the server says "I didn't get your packet so you didn't move" and you pop back to where you were.

E: Ninja.

I've... never heard that referred to as rubberbanding. That's new. Normally I hear it heard as more like "fucking shit this connection is bullshit fuckfuckfuck".

Ah, the technical term.

For ARPG's I can recommend Sacred 1 and 2. They're games that take place in a wide open world with side quests and hidden areas to explore along with a main quest. The character skill system is quite flexible with a lot of different ways to build a character (though I'd recommend reading levelling guides, that stuffs complicated for me).

Negatives I can think of are, in Sacred 1 the item affixes make no sense (due to an error in a translation file I believe, like all entries got moved up one or something) and in Sacred 2 the one boss I've fought so far is/was damn hard for my character build. It's a game where if you don't build your character right it can make things a lot more difficult later on.

The main reason I got them was because of the wide variation of character classes. In the first one there's Battlemage, Daemon, Dark Elf, Dwarf, Gladiator, Seraphim, Vampiress and Wood Elf. Sacred 2 has Seraphim, Dryad, Dragon Mage, High Elf, Shadow Warrior, Inquisitor and Temple Guardian. 

Though, I just looked at Steam and neither of them are on sale at the moment.

[Chaoswizkid]

I've... never heard that referred to as rubberbanding. That's new. Normally I hear it heard as more like "fucking shit this connection is bullshit fuckfuckfuck".

The More You Know, and Knowing is Half the Battle!