Tetris 99 is super fun.

clueless1 wrote:

Just started Thief: The Dark Project. Playing on my P3-933 with Voodoo2 SLI and Audigy EAX. 17" CRT monitor at 1024x768. 😎

Meh...I gave up on this game after about 2.5 hrs. I cleared the first level (stealing the sceptre from the throne room), and it wasn't as fun as I remembered. Then I started the next level and all the zombies in the mines were a complete turn off for me. Having to knock people out, carry them around, drop them to open doors, pick them back up, etc. just turned out to be tedium. As highly rated as it is, I was hoping I'd enjoy it more. I did own this when it came out and I remember having similar thoughts of it back then and gave up on it at about the same time. I was hoping 20 years and nostalgia glasses would've made it more entertaining.

So I started Realms of Arkania: Star Trail and really digging it. I beat the first RoA about a year and a half ago and this one improves on it incrementally. There's just something about this game that is so satisfying...the travel, camping, hunting, herb gathering, slow, tactical turn-based combat, quirky encounters and how it gets your imagination working. I really feel like I'm hiking through miles of wilderness despite the dated early 90s graphics. The MT-32 music is gorgeous and helps immerse your imagination too. I did need to slow my Pentium MMX down to 486 speeds to be able to see arrow flight paths of my boyers and to read the combat dialog, otherwise it scrolls by too fast. The rest of the game is playable at Pentium speeds.

edit: almost forgot to mention, this series lets you import your party from the previous game, so I'm playing with the party that beat Blade of Destiny. 😎

On the retro side, Quest for Glory 1 VGA , and Mechwarrior 3

not-so-retro, been playing a ton of Forza Horizon 4 and Anthem. When playing anthem i keep forgetting it's not Destiny.

DaveJustDave wrote:

...and Mechwarrior 3

Absolute favorite Mechwarrior game. Need to finish the original missions so I can move on to the Pirate's Moon expansion which has even better graphics options than the original game.

Mechwarrior 3 is one of those games that I bought when it came out but never finished. Will definitely go back sometime!

In other news, I finished Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games last night. It was a fun little romp for a kind of "afterthought" of a single-player campaign. There is decent variety among the mission types, maybe a couple to many "retrieve item x" ones.

Next up, I'll try to claw my way through 1990's (well, for DOS PC 1991's) The Immortal. A isometric puzzle/action-game that already had me stumped on the 1st level.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/immortal

Shantae: Risky's Revenge is a pretty fun platformer

oeuvre wrote:

Shantae: Risky's Revenge is a pretty fun platformer

I had this on the iPad 3, was pretty decent. Never got past the forest level, I think mostly because I stopped taking the train and then sold that iPad. Graphics were pretty good though, I particularly enjoyed the parallaxed background detail

Back to playing Dawn of War 2 multiplayer.. I guess this counts as retrogaming these days?

It's not really playing, but more like testing, but I've been playing around with RTW again and picked up a project I started last year, which is to extend the Munduz Magnus map north a bit to include more area of the Baltic and to add the Goths as a playable faction.

I've removed some of the excess factions and replaced one of the removed factions with the Frisians which is kinda playable right now.

After the Goths (which is still crashing, so I can't show the actual faction and loaded a slightly older version of my WIP campaign) I will continue work on the Arab Tribes, Persians and perhaps the Celts.

I will write more later this weekend as I'm short on time atm 😀

You can see the newly added territory on the minimap as the lighter band of land at the top as I haven't fixed that yet as I wanted to get the actual map to work first.

Dat aspect ratio...

Replaying Diablo 1 on Bnet 😀

appiah4 wrote:

Dat aspect ratio...

Yes, it's widescreen.

Iirc I had to jump through a couple hoops to get the image to not get distorted due to it getting stretched to fit my wider screen? I kinda like it this way.

I'm still working my way through Realms of Arkania: Star Trail in MS-DOS. What a gem. They improved some things over Blade of Destiny, such as diagonal attacks in turn-based combat and optional free movement (as opposed to discrete NSEW steps). Unlike Blade of Destiny it supports GM, so despite the great MT-32 support, I'm rather loving how it sounds over the DreamBlaster X2. It's been a bit slow going since I started because I took a two week hiatus to record a bunch of DOS game music tracks. I've played about 15 hrs in almost a month. It seems like it could be a rather short game if you don't do too much extra exploring in the wilderness, which is fine by me. Shortish RPGs are kind of a rare thing, and I wish more were in the 20-40 hour range. One of my favorites, Eschalon: Book 1, was about 25 hrs and that was perfect for a working adult schedule.

I started Wolfenstein: The New Order at about the same time but have only spent about an hour in it. It seems like it will be at least as fun as The Old Blood, so more to look forward to.

Just finished my first playthrough of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. I almost lost my sanity with the final boss, but it was so satisfying to beat him I almost feel as if I could just pick up a katana and become a ninja now 😁

This is hands down the best swordplay combat I have ever experienced in a game, even fighting the lowliest mobs feels really intense and cinematic, and you're always in full control, no quick time event garbage that makes your character do super powerful things. The boss fights can be grueling at times, but there's something I find so appealing at learning a bit more about their moveset each time I die, until it finally "clicks" and you give them a good beating.

Stuff like this is the reason almost all of the "modern" games I play are made by From Software, not because of the difficulty, but because their philosophy of game design makes it so enjoyable to learn the mechanics, which is something that I feel is missing in the current gaming scene.

I loathe all From Software games. I think they are poorly designed with poor controls based on rote memorization. I've never got an ounce of enjoyment from any even though I've tried 4 different releases.

Shagittarius wrote:

I loathe all From Software games. I think they are poorly designed with poor controls based on rote memorization. I've never got an ounce of enjoyment from any even though I've tried 4 different releases.

OK.

moving onto shantae: pirate's curse now!

TheMobRules wrote:

Just finished my first playthrough of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. I almost lost my sanity with the final boss, but it was so satisfying to beat him I almost feel as if I could just pick up a katana and become a ninja now 😁

This is hands down the best swordplay combat I have ever experienced in a game, even fighting the lowliest mobs feels really intense and cinematic, and you're always in full control, no quick time event garbage that makes your character do super powerful things. The boss fights can be grueling at times, but there's something I find so appealing at learning a bit more about their moveset each time I die, until it finally "clicks" and you give them a good beating.

Stuff like this is the reason almost all of the "modern" games I play are made by From Software, not because of the difficulty, but because their philosophy of game design makes it so enjoyable to learn the mechanics, which is something that I feel is missing in the current gaming scene.

Then you will probably like this:

https://www.nintendoenthusiast.com/2019/03/30 … uls-open-world/

liqmat wrote:

https://www.nintendoenthusiast.com/2019 ... pen-world/

😲

I'm playing Transport Giant currently on my Windows XP machine, it's a reasonable Transport Tycoon/Ralroad Tycoon style managerial game. I've finished the America campaign on medium without much issue, just starting Europe now.