Namrok wrote on 2023-08-04, 11:57:

By comparison, WarCraft II is far more forgiving. For starters catapults and ballistae don't one shot several infantry at once. And in the campaign at least, the AI seems far more docile, giving me ample time to scout and build my economy. So I'm finding this far more enjoyable than the first WarCraft. I may just stick with it.

I found the base WarCraft II campaigns to be fairly manageable. The Dark Portal expansion was much harder, at least from what I remember. Been a while since I played through those.

I've been playing Sports Car GT on my Retro rig as shown in my signature. One of my all time favorite racers.

Also been playing the DOS versions of XWing and Tie Fighter and just started an XWing Alliance campaign.

All fun stuff and I'm enjoying it even more playing it on real retro metal.

Best wishes,

Tony.

Namrok wrote on 2023-08-04, 11:57:

By comparison, WarCraft II is far more forgiving. For starters catapults and ballistae don't one shot several infantry at once. And in the campaign at least, the AI seems far more docile, giving me ample time to scout and build my economy. So I'm finding this far more enjoyable than the first WarCraft. I may just stick with it.

Funny, what I remember most vividly of WC2 is how those caster type units had really annoying habit of sneaking in and parking their ass behind forest or some other obstacle and cast an AOE spell that did massive damage to everything. But it's been ages, I've got no idea how often that happened in reality. Never played WarCraft II all that much, the thing I'm most nostalgic about it is the music test in the sound card setup 😁

Started playing Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition for the umpteenth time. I've never once had the endurance to play BG all the way to the finish but I keep trying, the content/lenght isn't exactly in perfect equilibrium here if you ask me.

At least the quality of life impovements of Enhanced Edition are smoothing out some of the sources of frustration but it also needed some work; I removed the new companion NPC's it adds to the game with a mod. My opinion of them is pretty much NO.

Sombrero wrote on 2023-08-04, 16:28:

Funny, what I remember most vividly of WC2 is how those caster type units had really annoying habit of sneaking in and parking t […]
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Namrok wrote on 2023-08-04, 11:57:

By comparison, WarCraft II is far more forgiving. For starters catapults and ballistae don't one shot several infantry at once. And in the campaign at least, the AI seems far more docile, giving me ample time to scout and build my economy. So I'm finding this far more enjoyable than the first WarCraft. I may just stick with it.

Funny, what I remember most vividly of WC2 is how those caster type units had really annoying habit of sneaking in and parking their ass behind forest or some other obstacle and cast an AOE spell that did massive damage to everything. But it's been ages, I've got no idea how often that happened in reality. Never played WarCraft II all that much, the thing I'm most nostalgic about it is the music test in the sound card setup 😁

Started playing Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition for the umpteenth time. I've never once had the endurance to play BG all the way to the finish but I keep trying, the content/lenght isn't exactly in perfect equilibrium here if you ask me.

At least the quality of life impovements of Enhanced Edition are smoothing out some of the sources of frustration but it also needed some work; I removed the new companion NPC's it adds to the game with a mod. My opinion of them is pretty much NO.

Yeah, I haven't gotten as far as casters yet. I'm sure it'll happen.

I'm curious what you mean by Baldur's Gate not having content/length in equilibrium. Do you think it's too long without enough to do? The areas are too sparsely populated? Or something else entirely?

I played Baldur's Gate not terribly long ago, and it seemed like a snack compared to more recent RPGs, or even other Infinity Engine games. Seemed like a fairly brisk RPG not unlike Pool of Radiance, or Legend of Grimrock. It was definitely a transitional game though, deeply inspired by the Gold Box games, perhaps under developed due to being a studio's first game and needing to ship, without fully capitalizing on it's technology the way latter Infinity Engine games would. And obviously under pressure from Diablo's release to try to ride it's coat tails.

Although, IMHO, I kind of love it for that. It had a lot of little attention to detail that's kind of overlooked in other games. Like the environmental sounds, the wildlife, the birds flying across the screen, the way every area's edges actually match up with it's adjoining area on the overworld. Even the unorganized journal gave the game a sense of verisimilitude I enjoyed. Likewise for it's lack of minimap markers yanking me around by the nose.

Namrok wrote on 2023-08-04, 17:59:

I'm curious what you mean by Baldur's Gate not having content/length in equilibrium. Do you think it's too long without enough to do? The areas are too sparsely populated? Or something else entirely?

It's partly of what I personally enjoy about CRPG's and Baldur's Gate not really gelling with that and partly BG stretching too far with what I do like about it. In a nutshell I think BG1 is really charming game where rummaging through the wilderness can be wonderfully atmospheric, which is why I keep coming back to it, but the game don't really have anything else to spice it up. I like well written NPC's and quests with some depth to them, not exactly BG1's strong points.

So as fun being the forest critter exterminator and fog of war clearer can be that just hasn't been enough for me to beat the game before fizzling out at some point. To make things worse I'm a hopeless completionist who just HAS TO clear every map completely, so what might be perfectly fine 30-40h turns into ~100h marathon I don't have the physique for.

Sombrero wrote on 2023-08-04, 18:59:

It's partly of what I personally enjoy about CRPG's and Baldur's Gate not really gelling with that and partly BG stretching too far with what I do like about it. In a nutshell I think BG1 is really charming game where rummaging through the wilderness can be wonderfully atmospheric, which is why I keep coming back to it, but the game don't really have anything else to spice it up. I like well written NPC's and quests with some depth to them, not exactly BG1's strong points.

Its sequel, Shadows of Amn, is a much better game IMO. It has a stronger story as well as better defined party members that come with their own agendas and make comments and suggestions on certain quests.

Back in the day, I played these games in the reverse order, and let me tell you, going back to the first Baldur's Gate after having experienced the sequel felt pretty underwhelming.

As I get older, I find myself having less patience for longer games. I don't spend a lot of time gaming, so even a 40 hour rpg would usually take 2 or 3 months to finish. I also take long breaks from gaming when things get busy. This makes it hard to come back to games, as I usually forget the storyline by the time I return to them. I've started a lot of games multiple times for this reason. Moreover, I find that a lot of games are made longer artificially. That was fine when I was a kid with only a handful of games, but my backlog is huge now, so I have no time for grinding.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2023-08-04, 19:26:

As I get older, I find myself having less patience for longer games. I don't spend a lot of time gaming, so even a 40 hour rpg would usually take 2 or 3 months to finish. I also take long breaks from gaming when things get busy. This makes it hard to come back to games, as I usually forget the storyline by the time I return to them. I've started a lot of games multiple times for this reason. Moreover, I find that a lot of games are made longer artificially. That was fine when I was a kid with only a handful of games, but my backlog is huge now, so I have no time for grinding.

I forget which game broke me of this, but eventually I just had to cave and pick up a game kind of clueless about where I was. I found skimming a walkthrough to jog my memory helped. After that I was able to successfully jump back in and finish the game.

I think it was one of the Shadowrun games now that I think about it. Not the longest affairs, but even so.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-08-04, 19:14:

Its sequel, Shadows of Amn, is a much better game IMO. It has a stronger story as well as better defined party members that come with their own agendas and make comments and suggestions on certain quests.

I agree, even though I think BG2 is also way too long for its own good I've still managed to beat it twice and Throne of Bhaal once just because it does have a lot more going for it. Though admittedly I did cheat myself through the end fight of ToB, I was so painfully ready to put the game down at that point that I didn't really even give it a real try to beat it legitimately, looked a bit too much like an endurance test than a fun fight so I just raised my hands and called it.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-08-04, 19:14:

Back in the day, I played these games in the reverse order, and let me tell you, going back to the first Baldur's Gate after having experienced the sequel felt pretty underwhelming.

I believe you for I did the exact same thing! Not the only time I played the sequel first back then, not sure how that happened.

Namrok wrote on 2023-08-04, 19:30:

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2023-08-04, 19:26:

As I get older, I find myself having less patience for longer games. I don't spend a lot of time gaming, so even a 40 hour rpg would usually take 2 or 3 months to finish. I also take long breaks from gaming when things get busy. This makes it hard to come back to games, as I usually forget the storyline by the time I return to them. I've started a lot of games multiple times for this reason. Moreover, I find that a lot of games are made longer artificially. That was fine when I was a kid with only a handful of games, but my backlog is huge now, so I have no time for grinding.

I forget which game broke me of this, but eventually I just had to cave and pick up a game kind of clueless about where I was. I found skimming a walkthrough to jog my memory helped. After that I was able to successfully jump back in and finish the game.

I think it was one of the Shadowrun games now that I think about it. Not the longest affairs, but even so.

If it's a new(ish) game, you can often find YouTube videos with just the cutscenes. That's good if the plot is told through cutscenes, but that's not the case for a lot of games. If the game is linear, you can also watch a few Let's Plays as a refresher.

I played BG1 and 2 to completion multiple times and while BG2 is a very replayablengame BG1 is not.. It really drags in points..

I'm in a Gothic mood yet again and am leaning towards the first one, but first I wanted to fix an issue (that I created) with the version of the DX11 renderer that I use. The world is quite small in Gothic 1, and generally speaking you can see right through a forest and out the other side because they're so small. To make them feel dark and ominous, the original engine draws a 'deep dark woods' texture around the entire forest, and it fades out as you approach. The DX11 render (which has been around for years but which is still evolving) didn't draw that texture, so forests often looked like friendly neighbourhood parkland.

So I added the 'forest portals' (as the engine calls them) back in, and wrote a shader for the fading. That all worked well but the renderer does some depthbuffer stuff to deal with fogging (which is well beyond my simple understanding of this renderer), and that didn't look right at times. So I've had another crack at it and am pleased with the result now - dark and threatening again:

Before:

After:

Wolfenstein: The New Order

Got it for free some time ago from Amazon Prime Gaming.

Fast-paced, challenging and in general really fun, just how FPS should be 😁

Also graphically and story-wise it is really good.

Rise of the Triad

After the Ludicrous Edition release, I've finally decided to try it.

I've bought the classic DOS release from GOG for 0,5€, so I could play it on my PMMX rig with the Roland SC-55.

I'm enjoying it: it's like a better Wolfenstein 3D, which makes sense because the game was intended to be a sequel of it.

Also the MIDI OST is freaking awesome 🙂

Only bad note the mouse sensitivity: as bad as Wolf3D 😐

Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition going surprisingly well so far. As expected roaming around the wilderness is still fun to me. Also as expected dialog and quests are still awful, the game can be so stupid it makes me feel like banging my head against a wall at times. One of those few games where, as someone who enjoys dialog in his RPG's, I'm actually glad there's very minimal amount of dialog here. Just a couple clicks and the horror is over, back to forest to burn the heretic, kill the mutant, purge the unclean.

I did consider installing BG1 NPC project mod that adds in BG2 style companion banter for a moment after a rather silly chain of events of Minsc joining the party to rescue Dynaheir, not reacting in any way to Edwin who wanted to kill her, and then not reacting in any way to Dynaheir once she was rescued, but I still decided to not install it. I've used it in the past and while it does what it says it's clearly written to be faithful to the original material. As in it's naive crap in my opinion. And I already feel like running Jaheira through a meat grinder every time she says "Yes, oh omnipresent authority figure", I don't need any more ammunition.

I normally prefer the original versions of games and would only consider playing any kind of later enhanced re-release if it actually brings something genuinely useful to the table and these Enhanced Editions of BG1&2 are among that very short list. The ability to switch from bow to sword'n board and back to bow again via quick weapons is extremely helpful. Couldn't do that in the original games, had to go through the inventory screen if you needed to put something in the off-hand. Can't remember could you even switch from bow to 2h melee weapon and back? Considering how useful (or outright necessary) bows are in BG1 are due to the get breathed on and die levels of health you have on early levels it saves a ton of time and nerves being able to switch them quickly and easily.

Not to mention the slow ass walking of original BG1, that's brought up to BG2 speed in the Enhanced Edition. The game is long enough as is, no need to make it even longer with snail speed.

Eye of the beholder part 1

wierd_w wrote on 2023-08-09, 18:22:

Eye of the beholder part 1

This game holds up AMAZINGLY well..

Caves of Lore
This is like Ultima VII (exploration, interface) and the SSI Gold Box games (combat) stuck together. In other words, the best of both worlds.

The game starts with your character (which you create) wandering into a fog and ending up in a cave with no memory of where he's from or what he was doing. As you explore, you pick up some more characters (up to six in your party), and try to figure out what has created the fog that is stealing everyone's memories.
It's split up into acts, like Baldur's Gate, but has lots to explore and a ton of optional stuff to do. The combat is turn-based and tactical with lots of options, and the game also has some of the best exploration I've seen in an RPG. You get a lot of use out of exploration abilities, like noticing hidden things or finding traps, and it's always worth it to go out of your way to find stuff.

For an indie game developed by just a single person, it's quite impressive. It's got a quest log to track your progress, an excellent automap, and even a function that allows you to pick a spot on your automap and automatically have the game walk your party there. However, it definitely doesn't hold your hand, and you need to do all the exploration and investigation yourself. It reminds me of Morrowind, in how the game would give you all the information you need to find stuff, but never just pointed you right at where to go.

Dark Souls 1 Remastered

I've played this game many times before but now I feel like I finally am getting into it and not only feel frustrated. It's hard but it's not unfair, mostly. I like that the story is what someone called archeological, that you have to dig for it if you are interested or you can just don't care and play it for the gameplay. I don't care too much about how many polygons you have and such but the the art style is extremely appealing to me, the artists usage of colour, lights and shadows is absolutely incredible.

There are some downsides and I feel like the game sometimes requires you to read a walkthrough to finish some of the story lines, if you happen to miss to press a button at some point in the game, a story line can become broken and there is nothing you can do about it. Demon's Souls was even worse in this way but I loved it anyway on my PS3.

Oh, and of course after I played 30 hours and rerolled into a new character because I realized I could not get some miracle because of a broken story line. But I still enjoy to replay it again, which is not something I usually do.

newtmonkey wrote on 2023-08-13, 13:59:

Caves of Lore This is like Ultima VII (exploration, interface) and the SSI Gold Box games (combat) stuck together. In other wor […]
Show full quote

Caves of Lore
This is like Ultima VII (exploration, interface) and the SSI Gold Box games (combat) stuck together. In other words, the best of both worlds.

The game starts with your character (which you create) wandering into a fog and ending up in a cave with no memory of where he's from or what he was doing. As you explore, you pick up some more characters (up to six in your party), and try to figure out what has created the fog that is stealing everyone's memories.
It's split up into acts, like Baldur's Gate, but has lots to explore and a ton of optional stuff to do. The combat is turn-based and tactical with lots of options, and the game also has some of the best exploration I've seen in an RPG. You get a lot of use out of exploration abilities, like noticing hidden things or finding traps, and it's always worth it to go out of your way to find stuff.

For an indie game developed by just a single person, it's quite impressive. It's got a quest log to track your progress, an excellent automap, and even a function that allows you to pick a spot on your automap and automatically have the game walk your party there. However, it definitely doesn't hold your hand, and you need to do all the exploration and investigation yourself. It reminds me of Morrowind, in how the game would give you all the information you need to find stuff, but never just pointed you right at where to go.

This is now on my wishlist..

Playing through Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers - 20th Anniversary Edition. It's a Sierra adventure game, which plays a bit different than the LucasArts/AdventureSoft titles I'm used to. There's way too much stuff around that you can examine but not use, and most of the dialogue is useless for progression, and exists merely for exposition. With that said, it creates a nice atmosphere. I like it. I'm on Day 6 so far. Got stuck twice and had to resort to hints.