I've just begun Max Payne for the first time. Many years ago a neighbor gave me a demo, but I wasn't interested because my obsession was flight sims. This is the first third person shooter I've ever played, so the perspective's a bit odd. It runs nicely on my Soyo Dragon Plus system which I would expect as it's newer than the game.

Been playing BG3, but I’ve been using FR interactive atlas to accompany location info mentioned in the game on one if my retro computers.

Sombrero wrote on 2024-04-21, 07:31:

Diablo II rant incoming. […]
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Diablo II rant incoming.

I'm a simple guy, I just want to wear the heaviest armor and beat things with a sword. This means I've always went with a melee fighter types in RPG/ARPG's, ranged/wizardy types just don't do it for me. And I find this a bit of a problem in Diablo II.

"Ranged, sir? Come in, come in!"
"A summoner, sir! Please come in, pleased to have you here sir, have a seat sir!"
"Oi! You! Are you a fucking melee?! Get the hell out of here you damn degenerate!"

Enemies that run away. Not only do I find it disproportionately annoying, its also made worse by the fun fact running yourself drops your defense to 0 and blocking with your shield to 1/3. Have fun running after them! I nearly got a stroke in Act V with those fireballing little shits. Also a big fan of running after an enemy, swinging and missing because the enemy kept running, running after it again, missing again, rinse and repeat.

Enemies that blow at your face when you kill them or shoot charged bolts at every direction EVERY SINGLE TIME you hit them. Enjoy Act II post patch 1.10, there's only about a billion of lightning enhanced beetles there now.

Most dangerous enemy abilities are melee/close range things, while melee is getting roasted and slowed down ranged is laughing at a distance

Ranged have easier time picking off enemies that resurrect others while melee has to wade through a horde first to get to them. Or run past them. Remember what running did to defense and block chance?

Sigh. I know nothing stops you from using a ranged weapon as a side weapon, but like I said, simple guy, just want to beat things with a sword. And I really don't enjoy running away from things. So it's definitely also a me problem, not just the game designs fault. I suppose this is just an example of how your own preferences can change with time, I used to love the game but now it's turning into love/hate relationship. Oh well.

Very unpopular opinion: D2 is the worst game of the series, and this is coming from a bloke with Farnham the Drunk in his avatar. I haven't played D4 yet, but it still appears to be better than D2, at least to me. I don't like D2's overall look, the way inventory items are lame pre-rendered 3d objects rather than hand-drawn masterpieces. And don't get me started on the introduction of set items, where a set is nearly impossible to complete in a regular single-player game!

revolstar wrote on 2024-04-23, 08:30:

And don't get me started on the introduction of set items, where a set is nearly impossible to complete in a regular single-player game!

This is something we can agree on as a single player myself, the integration of battle.net and the seemingly multiplayer-oriented design has always led me just looking at guides and lists of gear and go "so I guess those exist in the game then?"

To make matters even worse I've always hated grinding, so peasant gear for me.

Sombrero wrote on 2024-04-23, 08:57:

the integration of battle.net and the seemingly multiplayer-oriented design has always led me just looking at guides and lists of gear and go "so I guess those exist in the game then?"

To make matters even worse I've always hated grinding, so peasant gear for me.

Haha, this! Things had gotten even worse with D3, where the main source of legendary/set items had been the Auction House, but then Blizzard closed it down and introduced the itemization patch that made things way easier. And I still liked it a lot more than D2!

I've been playing ToK, a very long JRPG, for over a year. I made it to the (final?) boss on the 256th floor a while ago. On my first attempt I got wiped out by the second form. I carefully reconfigured my party for another attempt, in which I slowly defeated the first and second forms only to be wiped out by the third form. Since then I've been grinding and grinding some more.

I should mention that this is one of many games I got from DLSite, which will no longer be possible as they've just been cut off by Visa and Mastercard, ostensibly because there is adult content on the site. I heard there was a similar complaint from Stripe against itch.io not too long ago, in which itch.io has capitulated and suddenly demonitized a bunch of adult content. Needless to say, there are still plenty of big-name sites with adult content that have no problem processing payments... so it's hard to discern the real reason behind these actions.

I have started an other game of Lands of Lore... I love that game, pretty casual dungeon crawler with some really nice cinematics.

I've installed Fallout 4 + the latest update for another playthrough, first time since 2018. I'm playing it in survival mode, the increase in immersion compared to other difficulty levels is huge! There's no fast travel and manual saving, you have to rest, eat and stay hydrated, constantly monitor your irradiation level and cure any infections you may contract. There's a similar mode in New Vegas, but sadly not in Fallout 3, where they basically introduced beds, water and food without any game mechanics that would prompt the player to ever use them.

Max Payne is tough! I'm most of the way through, and I don't know that I'll ever play this game on anything but the easiest difficulty. This game is a good candidate for vintage PCs - I've watched review videos that stated that it takes some dedication to get the Steam version working on modern PCs with 60+ FPS causing issues, but it runs well on my Soyo system. Out of curiosity, I installed it on my M930 (2.8 P4, 512 megs DDR, 9800 SE unlocked with Omega drivers Win98 SE) and it revealed that the system was unstable! I've played Half-Life, Opposing Force, Blue Shift all to completion on this machine, but Max Payne locked up a number of times, and I had to reduce the video card overclock and relax the memory settings to get it to behave with this game.

No doubt about it, the F5 key is your friend in this game. But then you get into it and forget to save, and oh no you're dead again and now you have to watch that cut scene again!

Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-04-27, 15:19:

Max Payne is tough! I'm most of the way through, and I don't know that I'll ever play this game on anything but the easiest difficulty.

According to the manual, Max Payne uses an adaptive difficulty system. The better you are, the harder the fights get. Conversely, the more you die, the easier the game becomes when you load your last save.

In practice, I found that this encourages save scumming and doesn't really make things more interesting for the player. The developers probably felt the same way, since they didn't reuse that system for the sequel.

While I do like Max Payne I've always found the latter two thirds or so rather annoying.

I mean, come across enemies who haven't yet noticed you, start a shootdodge behind a wall in perfect cover which immediately alerts the enemies to your presence even though they still can't see you, fly into line of sight from behind the wall and get a bullet directly between your eyes from a shot that was fired while you were still behind the wall.

That doesn't happen all the time, but does illustrate how silly it can get.

Want silly? Do the high jump glitch (jump when cycling a weapon as soon as the ammo numbers are set). That'll open new opportunities of fun

mtest001 wrote on 2024-04-27, 13:10:

I have started an other game of Lands of Lore... I love that game, pretty casual dungeon crawler with some really nice cinematic […]
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I have started an other game of Lands of Lore... I love that game, pretty casual dungeon crawler with some really nice cinematics.

Still one of my favorite games of all time. I played it back in 2016 on a Pentium 200MMX with General MIDI music. Such a fun experience. Enjoy!

I'm still trickle-playing Might & Magic 3. I've been playing it for 4 months, with 58 hours of gameplay. I feel like I'm getting close. I've been exploring the Isle of Fire and the surrounding islands of ice and desert. I occasionally hit a section that my level 21-26 characters can't handle, and have to backtrack and hit easier dungeons or areas to build up XP to gain more levels. I've got tons of gold and gems accumulating compound interest in the bank, so I'm confident I can continue leveling up for the time being. This game doesn't have a lot of QoL features, so I've been keeping a spreadsheet of my characters' items, levels, and progress to help. I'm only playing 2-5 hours per week right now, so who knows when I'll get this finished?

I finished it, and I only cheated once; after having to watch the cut scene of the helicopter taking off and gunning me down a few times, I ran out of patience. I like to watch walkthrough videos on games I'm playing, but only up to where I'm at in the game. I'm interested in seeing different tactics, and also what secret rooms/stashes I missed. So I skipped to the end of the video I had been watching, and I'm glad I did. The bit with the radio tower wasn't at all intuitive to me, and I would have had to have watched that cut scene many, many times to figure that out. For me, that's up there with having to move the metal barrel to complete the circuit to blow open the door in Blue Shift in things I might never have figured out on my own. I would rate it as a good game, and a very good game for a 2002 era PC.

I guess I'll play Return to Castle Wolfenstein next.

clueless1 wrote on 2024-04-27, 19:02:

I'm still trickle-playing Might & Magic 3.

That's funny I also playing MM3 on the side. I find the beginning is a bit too challenging, but I did finish it once back then and I know it is a very nice experience so it is worth the efforts !

I agree that it's difficult to keep track of the differences of the various artifacts and weapons etc.

I've been playing Duke Nukem Forever on and off during the last week. The game isn't very long, but I kept putting it on hold because it didn't really draw me in during the first dozen levels or so. Today, I finally managed to finish it, so I guess I'll post some of my impressions.

The good:

I liked the flashback intro sequence which recaps the events of Duke3D, while an awesome remix of Grabbag plays in the background. Duke looks badass on the title screen, and it was great to hear his original voice actor return. You can clearly tell that the guy was having fun with some of the lines. Also, being able to use the Balls of Steel pinball machine in-game was pretty cool.

The bad:

This game plays like a generic cover based FPS with regenerating health and arena combat. Not quite what I expected from a sequel to Duke3D. Aside from that, I guess my biggest gripe is that the levels are very linear. Not much freedom there. You follow a set path while platforming, solving puzzles, and getting into scripted arena fights where enemies keep spawning until the sequence ends. And while the graphics are generally decent, the devs sometimes went overboard with post processing effects, creating a flickering, blurry mess.

The ugly:

There are too many platforming sections where a single misstep means game over. Coupled with a checkpoint system (no manual saves allowed) this can lead to some very annoying situations. Also, forcing the player to rapidly mash a key for any reason (and especially for opening stuck doors) was an idiotic design decision.

The bottom line:

Overall, I didn't find Duke Nukem Forever to be as enjoyable as its predecessor. While not exactly a terrible game, it just didn't click with me. The gameplay was too different from Duke3D, and it simply wasn't as fun. Kinda made me wonder what could have been if DNF didn't have such a troubled development history.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-04-28, 17:37:

I've been playing Duke Nukem Forever on and off during the last week. The game isn't very long, but I kept putting it on hold be […]
Show full quote

I've been playing Duke Nukem Forever on and off during the last week. The game isn't very long, but I kept putting it on hold because it didn't really draw me in during the first dozen levels or so. Today, I finally managed to finish it, so I guess I'll post some of my impressions.

The good:

I liked the flashback intro sequence which recaps the events of Duke3D, while an awesome remix of Grabbag plays in the background. Duke looks badass on the title screen, and it was great to hear his original voice actor return. You can clearly tell that the guy was having fun with some of the lines. Also, being able to use the Balls of Steel pinball machine in-game was pretty cool.

The bad:

This game plays like a generic cover based FPS with regenerating health and arena combat. Not quite what I expected from a sequel to Duke3D. Aside from that, I guess my biggest gripe is that the levels are very linear. Not much freedom there. You follow a set path while platforming, solving puzzles, and getting into scripted arena fights where enemies keep spawning until the sequence ends. And while the graphics are generally decent, the devs sometimes went overboard with post processing effects, creating a flickering, blurry mess.

The ugly:

There are too many platforming sections where a single misstep means game over. Coupled with a checkpoint system (no manual saves allowed) this can lead to some very annoying situations. Also, forcing the player to rapidly mash a key for any reason (and especially for opening stuck doors) was an idiotic design decision.

The bottom line:

Overall, I didn't find Duke Nukem Forever to be as enjoyable as its predecessor. While not exactly a terrible game, it just didn't click with me. The gameplay was too different from Duke3D, and it simply wasn't as fun. Kinda made me wonder what could have been if DNF didn't have such a troubled development history.

interesting, i heard much about it being in a playable form now and tried it briefly - but got stuck in some news room right at the start and kind of didnt feel that motivated to find out what to do next - it just didnt seem to capture me the way duke3 did, your review suggests it isn't all that good anyway.

gerry wrote on 2024-04-28, 20:08:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-04-28, 17:37:

I've been playing Duke Nukem Forever on and off during the last week. The game isn't very long, but I kept putting it on hold be […]
Show full quote

I've been playing Duke Nukem Forever on and off during the last week. The game isn't very long, but I kept putting it on hold because it didn't really draw me in during the first dozen levels or so. Today, I finally managed to finish it, so I guess I'll post some of my impressions.

The good:

I liked the flashback intro sequence which recaps the events of Duke3D, while an awesome remix of Grabbag plays in the background. Duke looks badass on the title screen, and it was great to hear his original voice actor return. You can clearly tell that the guy was having fun with some of the lines. Also, being able to use the Balls of Steel pinball machine in-game was pretty cool.

The bad:

This game plays like a generic cover based FPS with regenerating health and arena combat. Not quite what I expected from a sequel to Duke3D. Aside from that, I guess my biggest gripe is that the levels are very linear. Not much freedom there. You follow a set path while platforming, solving puzzles, and getting into scripted arena fights where enemies keep spawning until the sequence ends. And while the graphics are generally decent, the devs sometimes went overboard with post processing effects, creating a flickering, blurry mess.

The ugly:

There are too many platforming sections where a single misstep means game over. Coupled with a checkpoint system (no manual saves allowed) this can lead to some very annoying situations. Also, forcing the player to rapidly mash a key for any reason (and especially for opening stuck doors) was an idiotic design decision.

The bottom line:

Overall, I didn't find Duke Nukem Forever to be as enjoyable as its predecessor. While not exactly a terrible game, it just didn't click with me. The gameplay was too different from Duke3D, and it simply wasn't as fun. Kinda made me wonder what could have been if DNF didn't have such a troubled development history.

interesting, i heard much about it being in a playable form now and tried it briefly - but got stuck in some news room right at the start and kind of didnt feel that motivated to find out what to do next - it just didnt seem to capture me the way duke3 did, your review suggests it isn't all that good anyway.

It's a textbook case of a middling game. It's not broken and it looks decent. However, it's just so bland and unremarkable. It felt like a chore to get through.

gerry wrote on 2024-04-28, 20:08:

interesting, i heard much about it being in a playable form now and tried it briefly - but got stuck in some news room right at the start and kind of didnt feel that motivated to find out what to do next - it just didnt seem to capture me the way duke3 did, your review suggests it isn't all that good anyway.

The beginning of DNF is very slow. I think it took me almost an hour of playing before I got the first decent weapon, that being the shotgun. Meanwhile, you're doing boring stuff like crawling through dark air vents, platforming over broken pipes/statues and driving a toy car. Things get a bit better after you leave the casino, but the gameplay never reaches the greatness of its predecessor.

BTW, the fully updated Steam version of the game has an optional setting called "expanded inventory" or something. This allows you to carry up to four weapons at the same time. In contrast, the console versions have a two weapon limit (which is how the game originally shipped) and it makes things even more tedious.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-04-28, 20:39:

The beginning of DNF is very slow. I think it took me almost an hour of playing before I got the first decent weapon, that being the shotgun. Meanwhile, you're doing boring stuff like crawling through dark air vents, platforming over broken pipes/statues and driving a toy car. Things get a bit better after you leave the casino, but the gameplay never reaches the greatness of its predecessor.

BTW, the fully updated Steam version of the game has an optional setting called "expanded inventory" or something. This allows you to carry up to four weapons at the same time. In contrast, the console versions have a two weapon limit (which is how the game originally shipped) and it makes things even more tedious.

oh well, maybe something i'll play at some point but it seems not really worthy of being 'duke'. If it had been released at the time it would have also seemed mediocre i think. Had it come out in the early 2000's it would have been set again halo, return to castle wolfenstein, serious same and more - but by 2011 it could not have stood a chance even accepting the compromises in its present release