Print

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

[PrimusRibbus]

Any one have any thoughts on Magica?  I'm only rarely interested in Paradox games, but this one looks interesting.

Negative reviews say things like glitched, optimized, too buggy to play, pay-to-win multiplayer, and hard to use combo system if you're not an action gamer.

Also, it is a crazy DLC-fest which is usually a warning sign.

But most people have positive opinions of it.  Any first hand experience here?

Magicka is a single-player/co-op game, so pay-to-win isn't an issue. The vast majority of the DLC is costumes with pop culture references. They do affect gameplay, but not in a big or noticeable way.

The game was pretty buggy on release from what I understand, but I picked it up about a year ago and didn't have any major problems with bugs.

Yes, the magic combination system is hard to get used to. It's not so much that it favors action gamers, but more that it's wildly different than any other game out there. It will feel very weird for your first hour or two of gameplay, and it's fairly likely that you will die a few times because you get too distracted by what's going on on the screen to do a combo properly.

That said, I bought it for $2.50 back in the day and have gotten a lot of fun out of it. Particularly fun with a group of friends who will laugh about getting a game over because someone cast the wrong thing and killed the whole party.

[Frumple]

Re: Magicka, just... definitely try the demo first, to make sure it'll run on your computer. That'd be my only suggestion. It seems pretty fun, especially if you can get it on the cheap, if it'll work for you.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I've nothing but good things to say about Torchlight II, personally. And I played it solo, too. Yes, some skills are unbalanced, underpowered, or way too niche, plus the whole game is very much intended to be a cooperative thing, but I'd say that it's a modernized take on a Diablo 2, with some series-specific quirks, some of which make for a rather smoother gameplay. The companion especially. Overall, being able to compare experiences from Diablo 2 and Torchlight II directly, I'd say that Torchlight II is more enjoyable of the two. Diablo has essentially been copied from by everyone and their grandmother, and the story is generic enough that the only reason to keep playing is to keep levelling up that character. In TL2, enough is different, both story- and design-wise, that I can actually keep at it out of some interest for both the story and the less standard progression. There is less "different" stuff in it than in, say, Dungeon Siege, but it works just as well.

At that discount, if you like these sort of games, I don't think you can go wrong with buying it.

[Levi]

I found Torchlight II visually confusing.     I'm not sure why, but I had a hard time telling what was an enemy, what was a pet, and what was a wall.

[i2amroy]

Magica is really fun to play when it works (though my friends and I ended up spending more time "accidentally" shooting each other in the back then actually progressing in the story ). The DLC's are mainly nice because they add extra story chapters to play at the end, but other than that they aren't exactly required. Generally for multiplayer if you find it not working at the beginning try having a different person host the game. Generally once everyone managed to get connected and start the game it worked fine for us, but sometimes it took several tries to get that to work.

[Darkmere]

The major downfall of Magicka is it made an entire mix-n-match finger wiggling magic system that had a ton of spell combo potential and customization...


and then gave you pre-defined spells that beat out every randomly generated combo you could come up with. Apart form that, it was fun, if a bit tedious later. Group games devolve quickly into spamming autokill spells on teammates and then rezzing them so they can autokill and rez you back. These things happen.

[Rolan7]

It's interesting how much depth it managed to have, despite the inbalances.  I looked up the details on each element once, how they effect the spell they're in (without looking up specific combos).  Then when I went through the game, I didn't use just one or two spells all the time.

The earth-armor enchantment is good, but I didn't always use it... sometimes it was faster or simpler to set up pure force shields.
For attack, my favorite was spraying water - spraying cold to freeze - shocking with electric beams (electricity+arcane).  But sometimes things got hectic and I just spammed some fire before running.  Or if a thing was far enough away, I'd summon a earthy rock to snipe with.
When I felt really fancy, I'd experiment with mines and walls...  They can do a lot of damage, but mainly mines can really shove enemies around.

(and in co-op I didn't get to use my freeze combo, since my friends liked to spam fire, but the crowd control was also less necessary since they were around).  Really what it boiled down to was:
1) Pick what element you want to attack with - no not electricity, you're currently wet you dummy!
2) Pick the delivery method - ooh, maybe combine water and cold to get shards - wait crap those don't work with fire...
3) Die
4) Be resurrected almost instantly by a friend
5) Try again

I dunno.  In the end I only got 35 hours out of Magicka, but they were good.  It's really great for screwing around with friends.  It's got a pretty good sense of humor, too, from the weird almost-understandable spoken language (Is that a real Scandinavian language or what?) to all the silly references.  Playing it multiplayer reminds me a lot of good DND sessions.

I got a few DLCs somehow.  I guess some of them are overpowered, usually in a min-max way.  Pay to win can definitely be a problem for co-op games, but only if they're competitive...  Magicka is not competitive.  It's difficult, but there's no mechanic or fluff encouraging you to outperform your allies.  It's also not terribly difficult, particularly multiplayer, though a lot of areas might require a lot of restarting due to enemy spellcasters in certain areas (mostly due to avoidable but overwhelming spells which fling you off cliffs).

[IronyOwl]

Any thoughts on Democracy 3?

[scrdest]

Any thoughts on Democracy 3?

It's quite similar to the first one (the last one I played before), it's very much a more of a... spreadsheet simulator, kinda. You're basically monitoring graphs go up and down to make things happen, so if you expect something more graphically involved, well...

And once you get past that, it's pretty !!FUN!!. It's arguably the DF of political simulators - it's daunting, more likely than not you ARE gonna lose the first couple of games, and you are gonna be forced to make decisions you wouldn't terribly like, or something is going to bite you on your ass for not doing so.

[Vanel]

Project zomboid is on sale on steam for 8 usd

[Delta Foxtrot]

GOG is doing a sale. Thief series, Long Live the Queen, some other namely titles I haven't played:
http://www.gog.com/mutator

Oh and if you buy at least three, you get to buy up to three extra games from GOG catalogue for super cheap. Thing is, those extra games can be pretty much anything. As much as I like GOG, I can't say I'm a fan of incentivizing blind purchases.

[BigD145]

Humble Nordic Bundle has SupCom and Titan Quest Gold for under $5. If you don't have these BUY NOW.
also Aquanox 1+2 plus Summoner
They are Steam only.

[BurnedToast]

GOG is doing a sale. Thief series, Long Live the Queen, some other namely titles I haven't played:
http://www.gog.com/mutator

Oh and if you buy at least three, you get to buy up to three extra games from GOG catalogue for super cheap. Thing is, those extra games can be pretty much anything. As much as I like GOG, I can't say I'm a fan of incentivizing blind purchases.

I saw that, and I had to re-read it to make sure I understood correctly because it seemed so stupid.

I have to buy 3 games so that I'm allowed to pay $2 for a random game?  The chance of me getting something I want is minimal, especially since I've already bought most of the games I'm interested in.

Yeah, I'll pass. I like GoG, but sometimes they have some bad ideas for sales.

[aristabulus]

...

I saw that, and I had to re-read it to make sure I understood correctly because it seemed so stupid.

I have to buy 3 games so that I'm allowed to pay $2 for a random game?  The chance of me getting something I want is minimal, especially since I've already bought most of the games I'm interested in.

Yeah, I'll pass. I like GoG, but sometimes they have some bad ideas for sales.

Normally this GOG sale format is used around March, with "Luck O' The Irish" window dressing...  But yeah, right there with ya; not gonna buy three games to roll blind dice on a $2 title, regardless of what's in the pool.

[Delta Foxtrot]

I would totally buy three non-blind games though, but I already have the Thief series.

Well, at least there's the chopper sim.