I tried to play Jagged Alliance 2 but was not running on my modern-day pc. I will give the game another try when my retro rig is finished.

I also started playing the good version of the System Schock Remake. I have never played a System Schock game before, so I was a bit overwhelmed by the gameplay in the beginning. Will take some time until I get used to the it. But I really like the setting and the atmosphere is top-notch.

Demetrio wrote on 2023-05-30, 12:16:

Continuing my journey through Opposing Force: encountered Black Ops, both male and female, and some more Race X aliens. […]
Show full quote

Continuing my journey through Opposing Force: encountered Black Ops, both male and female, and some more Race X aliens.

As I remembered, the game is really fun, with good story/atmosphere and a great variety of weapons, both new and from Half-Life.

I'm enjoying this playthrough, except for the ichthyosaur... that thing is a bullet sponge and, combined with its low-frame attack patterns and atrocious player's water movement, it becomes maybe the most OP HL enemy 😁

Moreover, I was surprised to hear that the CD version I have has the italian dub (really good for a 1999 PC game 🙂).
In fact, when I played the game on Steam years ago, it was english.

Also the music is great!

Completed and now playing the last of the expansions: Half-Life: Blue Shift.

It is really short (arrived to the final level in less than 3 hours 😁) but also fun, with great level design.

Blue Shift doesn't officially support the Voodoo 2 (don't know why cause the engine is still GoldSrc) so I had to do this workaround: Re: Half-Life : Blue Shift with voodoo 2 on 3dfx..

It worked until the last level, where it gave an OpenGL error...

Guess I have to complete the game with Direct3D or software render 320x200 😅

Having spent many hours over the last month or so completing Dragon Quest III (Famicom), I decided to take a break from living room gaming, and am back to playing PC games. I felt like playing a dungeon crawler and, having completed The Bard's Tale 1-3 a year or so ago, I was in the mood to try out a couple of games heavily inspired by them:

Gates of Integrity
https://tarjan.itch.io/gates-of-integrity
HEAVILY inspired by the The Bard's Tale (specifically the first game), this is a very simple RPG that starts out a lot of fun, bet gets very frustrating, very quickly. It doesn't take too long to fully explore the small town and complete the first dungeon, and there's no grinding required to get to this point. That leaves you at around level 5 for most of your characters, which is way too weak to progress to the next dungeon. The second dungeon begins throwing massive groups of spellcasters at you, each of which is capable of doing 10+ damage to your entire party, each round. If all 10 Master Mages decide to cast spells, that's 100 damage per character in just the first round, which is a total party kill two times over for a typical level 5 party.

Even worse, once you reach level 5 or so, it becomes ridiculously expensive to make progress (both in terms of EXP and gold). Reviving a dead character costs 20,000 gold, which is what you would earn from around eight very tough encounters, so even a single character dying puts your entire party into a death spiral that's nearly impossible to get out of.

The game seems very poorly balanced, and because it's so linear, I think the only solution is to grind easy encounters for hours and level up several times. Disappointing.

Devil Whiskey
Also heavily inspied by the The Bard's Tale series, this game adds a bit more stuff, making it feel a bit like an alternate The Bard's Tale IV that is closer to the original trilogy. It has a very basic 3D engine for environments (still grid-based though), adds some interesting new classes and races, and (most importantly) adds class-specific skills characters earn at certain levels (mostly starting at level 13). I was feeling pretty good about this game.

Well, that good feeling stopped soon enough. At that point I could either continue the main quest (in a dungeon) or take on a side quest (in a dungeon). Unfortunately, the dungeons in this game are absolutely brutal. Rogues don't even develop a basic ability to detect/disarm traps until level 13 (never mind if you went with a ranger instead... they don't learn those skills until level 25), and traps are otherwise unavoidable and always triggered when you step on them. Every single trap you step on (again, unavoidable since they are at fixed locations in corridors) does 12+ damage to your entire party; at level 6, my characters had max HPs ranging from 22-55.

Then there are the encounters in the dungeons. These are roughly 10x as hard as anything in the town, consisting of groups of status-inflicting monsters up front, and poweful spellcasters and deadly accurate archers in the rear. Monsters with missile attacks always hit, so you are basically doomed. This seemed absolutely nuts, so I did some research and it turns out that this last issue is actually a bug with the latest official (beta) patch. In fact, enemy missile attacks completely ignore your armor class, which means they do indeed automatically hit every time.

With that in mind, I reinstalled the game and didn't appy the patch. Of course, my savegame isn't compatible, so I went back and recreated a (hopefully better) party, and played just for a bit. I confirmed that enemy missiles don't automatically hit anymore, which is a good sign. I plan on playing enough to get back to where I was with my previous party, and see how things go. I suspect that this game, like Gates of Integrity, is just gonna require lots and lots of grinding. If that's the case, I'll find something else to play.

Devil Whiskey

As I mentioned previously, I started over with a new (better) party and didn't apply the latest official beta patch (v.2.1a), and I'm happy to report that the game is a lot better unpatched. If you play this game, do not apply any patches (it should already be patched to v2.0)!

Ranged attacks from enemies no longer ignore AC (a nearly game-breaking bug with the latest official beta patch), and the game just seems balanced better overall. The difficulty curve feels a lot closer to The Bard's Tale now, where it's a bit of a struggle to start out, but starts to get easier after getting some decent equipment and earning a couple of levels. I'm sure the game will get more difficult later, though.

I quickly caught up to where I stopped playing with my previous party, and was surprised to find that most of my characters had reached level 10 or so, compared with only level 6 with the v2.1a party. The latest patch must also screw around with other stuff, probably to make the game harder.

I started exploring the side-quest dungeon. This place was a frustrating death trap for my v2.1a party, where I was just getting endless total party kills against what seemed to be ridiculously powerful enemies, but with my v2.0 party it's very manageable so far, and I've explored most of the first level. My Rogue finally reached level 13, so she gained the ability to detect/disarm traps (sometimes), making dungeon exploration much less frustrating.

Combat is starting to get pretty interesting, since I have access to so many spells now. I'm close to reaching level 13 with my front line characters, which is when they start learning their combat skills. Should be interesting!

Recently bought Prey (2006) so I'll be playing it for the first time. For reference, this game is no longer available on digital storefronts due to licensing issues or some such. I got a physical copy, specifically the Sold Out budget re-release, which comes with the PDF manual and the latest official patch on the disc.

I'm only a couple of levels in, but I can see why this game might be a bit hard to get into. First, all the weapons that you use are alien in origin. There's no standard pistol/shotgun/chaingun etc. setup, though some equivalents do exist. Second, the level layout is weird to say the least. You regularly walk on walls due to some gravity shenanigans, go through portals and generally traverse odd looking environments. It can be a bit much for people used to more traditional FPS games.

On the plus side, the protagonist is likable and relatable. His reactions to the insane situations that he gets thrust into feel very genuine. Story wise, it was interesting to see him embrace his heritage and get more attuned to the spiritual world in order to survive. In particular, the Spirit Walk mechanic is very cool. Graphics are fairly good for that time, as expected of the Doom 3 engine which Prey also uses. The sound design is excellent, and makes full use of EAX 5. This game can also utilize the on-board RAM of X-Fi cards, for whatever that's worth. Back in the day, it was one of the featured games on Creative's EAX website.

The only thing that I'm not a huge fan of are the gravity based puzzles. It can feel a bit disorienting when you constantly switch the direction from which gravity affects you. But overall, Prey seems pretty cool so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-06-15, 11:01:

Recently bought Prey (2006) so I'll be playing it for the first time. For reference, this game is no longer available on digital […]
Show full quote

Recently bought Prey (2006) so I'll be playing it for the first time. For reference, this game is no longer available on digital storefronts due to licensing issues or some such. I got a physical copy, specifically the Sold Out budget re-release, which comes with the PDF manual and the latest official patch on the disc.

I'm only a couple of levels in, but I can see why this game might be a bit hard to get into. First, all the weapons that you use are alien in origin. There's no standard pistol/shotgun/chaingun etc. setup, though some equivalents do exist. Second, the level layout is weird to say the least. You regularly walk on walls due to some gravity shenanigans, go through portals and generally traverse odd looking environments. It can be a bit much for people used to more traditional FPS games.

On the plus side, the protagonist is likable and relatable. His reactions to the insane situations that he gets thrust into feel very genuine. Story wise, it was interesting to see him embrace his heritage and get more attuned to the spiritual world in order to survive. In particular, the Spirit Walk mechanic is very cool. Graphics are fairly good for that time, as expected of the Doom 3 engine which Prey also uses. The sound design is excellent, and makes full use of EAX 5. This game can also utilize the on-board RAM of X-Fi cards, for whatever that's worth. Back in the day, it was one of the featured games on Creative's EAX website.

The only thing that I'm not a huge fan of are the gravity based puzzles. It can feel a bit disorienting when you constantly switch the direction from which gravity affects you. But overall, Prey seems pretty cool so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.

Looking into getting this too. GOG has it on sale but leaning towards a physical copy like you.

buckeye wrote on 2023-06-15, 15:36:

Looking into getting this too. GOG has it on sale but leaning towards a physical copy like you.

Note that there are two different games named "Prey". The original one from 2006 (which is what I'm playing) and a completely unrelated game from 2017.

What GOG and Steam offer is the 2017 version. The original 2006 release is no longer available digitally.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-06-15, 15:41:

buckeye wrote on 2023-06-15, 15:36:

Looking into getting this too. GOG has it on sale but leaning towards a physical copy like you.

Note that there are two different games named "Prey". The original one from 2006 (which is what I'm playing) and a completely unrelated game from 2017.

What GOG and Steam offer is the 2017 version. The original 2006 release is no longer available digitally.

Thanks for pointing that out! Rather have the physical 2006 version anyways for my XP system.

buckeye wrote on 2023-06-15, 18:03:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-06-15, 15:41:

buckeye wrote on 2023-06-15, 15:36:

Looking into getting this too. GOG has it on sale but leaning towards a physical copy like you.

Note that there are two different games named "Prey". The original one from 2006 (which is what I'm playing) and a completely unrelated game from 2017.

What GOG and Steam offer is the 2017 version. The original 2006 release is no longer available digitally.

Thanks for pointing that out! Rather have the physical 2006 version anyways for my XP system.

You have chance the get digital version on steam as well when you have physical copy of the game. You can use the CD key to get the digital version in your library.

Devil Whiskey
I cleared the sidequest dungeon I was exploring, without any trouble at all. It was a pretty cool dungeon with fun puzzle that required some minor note-taking. My characters gained something like seven levels completing this side-quest, so at level 17 or so I think I'm ready to continue the main quest.

Although v2.0 is definitely less frustrating, it's also perhaps a bit too easy after the first hour or so. I can see why they attempted to make the game more difficult in the last couple of official beta patches (v2.01 and v2.01a), though they unfortunately went too far and ended up completely breaking the game (probably why these were released only as beta patches).

Anyway, I'm liking this so far. It's a bit clunky for a game released in 2003, but you soon get used to its quirks (especially if you've played The Bard's Tale).

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-06-15, 11:01:

Recently bought Prey (2006) so I'll be playing it for the first time. For reference, this game is no longer available on digital […]
Show full quote

Recently bought Prey (2006) so I'll be playing it for the first time. For reference, this game is no longer available on digital storefronts due to licensing issues or some such. I got a physical copy, specifically the Sold Out budget re-release, which comes with the PDF manual and the latest official patch on the disc.

I'm only a couple of levels in, but I can see why this game might be a bit hard to get into. First, all the weapons that you use are alien in origin. There's no standard pistol/shotgun/chaingun etc. setup, though some equivalents do exist. Second, the level layout is weird to say the least. You regularly walk on walls due to some gravity shenanigans, go through portals and generally traverse odd looking environments. It can be a bit much for people used to more traditional FPS games.

On the plus side, the protagonist is likable and relatable. His reactions to the insane situations that he gets thrust into feel very genuine. Story wise, it was interesting to see him embrace his heritage and get more attuned to the spiritual world in order to survive. In particular, the Spirit Walk mechanic is very cool. Graphics are fairly good for that time, as expected of the Doom 3 engine which Prey also uses. The sound design is excellent, and makes full use of EAX 5. This game can also utilize the on-board RAM of X-Fi cards, for whatever that's worth. Back in the day, it was one of the featured games on Creative's EAX website.

The only thing that I'm not a huge fan of are the gravity based puzzles. It can feel a bit disorienting when you constantly switch the direction from which gravity affects you. But overall, Prey seems pretty cool so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.

I played Prey when it came out, and bounced off it at the time. I think my biggest problem with it back in 2006 was the death/respawn mechanic. FPS games were just expected to be harder back then, and a mechanic like that was for console peasants. Like my obnoxious college roommates who kept me up at all hours yelling over Halo 2. I also recall reviewers and communities complained about how short it was for what you paid for it.

I actually beat it not terribly long ago. Whatever hangups I had about the respawn system in 2006 were gone now. Same goes for it's length. As for EAX, on my latest playthrough with an Audigy 2, all the patches and latest drivers, the reverb was out of control. Made EAX almost unplayable. Wasn't feeling up for troubleshooting it so I just turned it off. Makes me feel like I must have missed out to hear you tell it.

Namrok wrote on 2023-06-16, 12:49:

a mechanic like that was for console peasants

That's kind of how I felt paying Call of Duty 2 for the first time - regenerating health was like cheating to me.

Namrok wrote on 2023-06-16, 12:49:

I played Prey when it came out, and bounced off it at the time. I think my biggest problem with it back in 2006 was the death/respawn mechanic.

Yeah, it does make the game pretty easy. I don't mind it that much, since this makes sense within the mythology of the world, and the mechanic gets explained in-game.

I actually beat it not terribly long ago. Whatever hangups I had about the respawn system in 2006 were gone now. Same goes for it's length. As for EAX, on my latest playthrough with an Audigy 2, all the patches and latest drivers, the reverb was out of control. Made EAX almost unplayable. Wasn't feeling up for troubleshooting it so I just turned it off. Makes me feel like I must have missed out to hear you tell it.

I had no issues with EAX in Prey on my X-Fi Titanium. I guess it might need some extra driver tweaks/updates on older hardware. Based on what I read on Creative's website, I get the feeling that this game may have been designed with EAX 5 and X-Fi cards in mind.

Made some more progress in Prey. So far, it's been interesting, except for the sections which involve lots of gravity weirdness. Some of those walkways twist and turn so much, it almost made me physically uncomfortable. The recent introduction of flying vehicles made the map design even weirder. Flying, portals and walking on walls, all that together can make navigating the levels overly convoluted at times.

Enemy variety leaves something to be desired, at least so far. I've been mostly fighting the same 3-4 alien types since the beginning, and a single boss character. We'll see if this improves later on. There are also too many puzzles and not enough action for my liking, but that's just my personal preference.

The soundstage continues to be excellent. While I generally prefer using surround speakers with my WinXP rig, I think headphones with CMSS-3D activated may have a slight advantage in Prey. Mostly due to more precise sound positioning, especially when it comes to elevation. Because of the unique gravity effects in this game, enemies often attack from directly above or below you, so being able to determine their position by sound alone can be very helpful.

Demetrio wrote on 2023-06-06, 05:08:

Completed and now playing the last of the expansions: Half-Life: Blue Shift. […]
Show full quote

Demetrio wrote on 2023-05-30, 12:16:

Continuing my journey through Opposing Force: encountered Black Ops, both male and female, and some more Race X aliens. […]
Show full quote

Continuing my journey through Opposing Force: encountered Black Ops, both male and female, and some more Race X aliens.

As I remembered, the game is really fun, with good story/atmosphere and a great variety of weapons, both new and from Half-Life.

I'm enjoying this playthrough, except for the ichthyosaur... that thing is a bullet sponge and, combined with its low-frame attack patterns and atrocious player's water movement, it becomes maybe the most OP HL enemy 😁

Moreover, I was surprised to hear that the CD version I have has the italian dub (really good for a 1999 PC game 🙂).
In fact, when I played the game on Steam years ago, it was english.

Also the music is great!

Completed and now playing the last of the expansions: Half-Life: Blue Shift.

It is really short (arrived to the final level in less than 3 hours 😁) but also fun, with great level design.

Blue Shift doesn't officially support the Voodoo 2 (don't know why cause the engine is still GoldSrc) so I had to do this workaround: Re: Half-Life : Blue Shift with voodoo 2 on 3dfx..

It worked until the last level, where it gave an OpenGL error...

IMG_20230605_192537.jpg

Guess I have to complete the game with Direct3D or software render 320x200 😅

I played through the old version of Blue Shift, and I decided to do it again on Difficult. I ended up on a level where I ran out of ammunition, and I couldn't get past it (it was like the film Groundhog Day). I was frustrated because over and over again there were times when I felt that I had hit the Vortigaunt or head crab, but the game didn't agree. Since no further patches were available for the old version, I decided to try the Steam version. It's still hard, but I guess the hit boxes/damage models have been adjusted, and I'm no longer experiencing the frustration of thinking "Hey, I shot you, but the game didn't register the hit!"

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-06-16, 15:02:

Demetrio wrote on 2023-06-06, 05:08:

Completed and now playing the last of the expansions: Half-Life: Blue Shift. […]
Show full quote

Demetrio wrote on 2023-05-30, 12:16:

Continuing my journey through Opposing Force: encountered Black Ops, both male and female, and some more Race X aliens. […]
Show full quote

Continuing my journey through Opposing Force: encountered Black Ops, both male and female, and some more Race X aliens.

As I remembered, the game is really fun, with good story/atmosphere and a great variety of weapons, both new and from Half-Life.

I'm enjoying this playthrough, except for the ichthyosaur... that thing is a bullet sponge and, combined with its low-frame attack patterns and atrocious player's water movement, it becomes maybe the most OP HL enemy 😁

Moreover, I was surprised to hear that the CD version I have has the italian dub (really good for a 1999 PC game 🙂).
In fact, when I played the game on Steam years ago, it was english.

Also the music is great!

Completed and now playing the last of the expansions: Half-Life: Blue Shift.

It is really short (arrived to the final level in less than 3 hours 😁) but also fun, with great level design.

Blue Shift doesn't officially support the Voodoo 2 (don't know why cause the engine is still GoldSrc) so I had to do this workaround: Re: Half-Life : Blue Shift with voodoo 2 on 3dfx..

It worked until the last level, where it gave an OpenGL error...

IMG_20230605_192537.jpg

Guess I have to complete the game with Direct3D or software render 320x200 😅

I played through the old version of Blue Shift, and I decided to do it again on Difficult. I ended up on a level where I ran out of ammunition, and I couldn't get past it (it was like the film Groundhog Day). I was frustrated because over and over again there were times when I felt that I had hit the Vortigaunt or head crab, but the game didn't agree. Since no further patches were available for the old version, I decided to try the Steam version. It's still hard, but I guess the hit boxes/damage models have been adjusted, and I'm no longer experiencing the frustration of thinking "Hey, I shot you, but the game didn't register the hit!"

Actually I didn't notice this hit box problem during my playthrough 🤔

I had most troubles with the last level, where I had to switch to low-quality software render.

In general, I find the HL games easier on Hard than other FPS of the same era.

Finished Prey. It was a short game (less than 10 hours total) but still interesting to experience. I wouldn't exactly count it among my favorites, but it's worth playing for the excellent sound design and the unique gameplay mechanics.

Enemy variety did improve in the second half of the game. And the action really ramped up during the last couple of levels. But the majority of Prey consists of solving puzzles, walking on walls, shifting gravity, using portals and slowly making your way through environments that get progressively weirder. Some people may like this kind of gameplay, but it's not really my cup of tea.

While performance was smooth 90% of the time, I noticed that in areas with lots of transparency effects (fire, smoke, fog etc.) my GTX 650 Ti couldn't hold a steady 60 FPS at 1600x1200 with 2xAA and 8xAF. Interestingly, I had no such issues with Doom 3, at those same settings. Considering that Prey is a 2006 game which uses the Doom 3 engine, I found this a bit surprising. Nonetheless, I was able to keep the frame rate close to 60 by using adaptive V-Sync and turning off AA entirely.

The way the story ultimately played put took me by surprise. I won't spoil it here, but I'll just say that there were some plot twists that I didn't expect. Also, be sure to stay until the credits finish, since there's a bonus scene afterwards. It's too bad this game never got a proper sequel, the ending certainly sets things up for that.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-06-17, 16:23:

Finished Prey. It was a short game (less than 10 hours total) but still interesting to experience. I wouldn't exactly count it a […]
Show full quote

Finished Prey. It was a short game (less than 10 hours total) but still interesting to experience. I wouldn't exactly count it among my favorites, but it's worth playing for the excellent sound design and the unique gameplay mechanics.

Enemy variety did improve in the second half of the game. And the action really ramped up during the last couple of levels. But the majority of Prey consists of solving puzzles, walking on walls, shifting gravity, using portals and slowly making your way through environments that get progressively weirder. Some people may like this kind of gameplay, but it's not really my cup of tea.

While performance was smooth 90% of the time, I noticed that in areas with lots of transparency effects (fire, smoke, fog etc.) my GTX 650 Ti couldn't hold a steady 60 FPS at 1600x1200 with 2xAA and 8xAF. Interestingly, I had no such issues with Doom 3, at those same settings. Considering that Prey is a 2006 game which uses the Doom 3 engine, I found this a bit surprising. Nonetheless, I was able to keep the frame rate close to 60 by using adaptive V-Sync and turning off AA entirely.

The way the story ultimately played put took me by surprise. I won't spoil it here, but I'll just say that there were some plot twists that I didn't expect. Also, be sure to stay until the credits finish, since there's a bonus scene afterwards. It's too bad this game never got a proper sequel, the ending certainly sets things up for that.

That puzzle stuff actually is my bag of potatoes. How was the level variety, all the time in seemingly identical spaceship metal corridors or was there actually change of scenery?

Asking because I was extremely surprised when someone earlier said Doom 3 was about 10h long and I was dead certain it was more like 20h, the lack of variety in level design bored me to death.

Sombrero wrote on 2023-06-17, 17:31:

That puzzle stuff actually is my bag of potatoes. How was the level variety, all the time in seemingly identical spaceship metal corridors or was there actually change of scenery?

There is a decent amount of variety, despite the game taking place in a single location.

For example, the first couple of levels have a biological feel to them with fleshy walls and organic doors. Then, you get into more industrialized areas with metallic corridors and Doom-style automatic doors. There are also windows showing outer space, asteroids, force fields and such, which foreshadows the environments that you will explore later on.

Eventually, you get to fly between asteroids (in a mini ship of sorts) which are being harvested for raw materials by machines firing energy beams. It's pretty neat, and gives you a good sense of scale of the alien mothership. Also, some of the larger asteroids have their own micro-gravity which can help or hinder you, as you walk on their surface. Personally, I found it a lot more varied than Doom 3.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-06-17, 18:23:

There is a decent amount of variety, despite the game taking place in a single location.

Alright, thanks!

I'll grab a copy when I run into one for cheaps and check it out myself, I doubt it will blow my mind or anything but sounds like something I might have a good time with. Also Don't Fear the Reaper is always a plus.