currently playing Expedition 33 , this is one of the surprising games so far as it is VERY well made
at times the music/art/world reminds me of Nier games which is always a plus
this will certainly be one of the GOTY contenders

Sombrero wrote on 2025-05-03, 19:38:

This was also my second time playing episode 4. It has some irksome level design occasionally and it's my least favorite episode, but I still I enjoy the gloves off mayhem it offers. Plenty to kill that's for sure, I think there were three Cyberdemons in total. Hats off for those who have completed it on DOS with ultra-violence and keyboard controls!

I did complete it in DOS with keyboard and UV, but I used gratuitous save-scumming for that, I believe. E4M1 is notoriously hard with very low ammo to monster hitpoints ratio. E4M2 is nice, though, especially

Sombrero wrote on 2025-05-03, 19:38:

Also ought to finally play the PC versions of Final Doom and Master Levels at some point, only played the PS1 version of Final Doom which doesn't have every map from those.

Final Doom is not only hard(er than the original levels), it is also very long. 64 levels in total. It took me ~13 years to beat Plutonia - I simply got tired and left in the middle, more than once.

Sombrero wrote on 2025-05-03, 19:38:

Also ought to finally play the PC versions of Final Doom and Master Levels at some point, only played the PS1 version of Final Doom which doesn't have every map from those.

I'd skip both of those and go straight to "No Rest For The Living" after completing Doom 2. IMO, the design quality of that expansion is leagues above Final Doom and especially the Master Levels.

You can try Doom 64 after that, as it canonically takes place between Doom 2 and Doom (2016).

dr_st wrote on 2025-05-04, 06:23:

E4M1 is notoriously hard with very low ammo to monster hitpoints ratio. E4M2 is nice, though, especially

Spoiler

telefragging the Cyberdemon en route to the secret level.

I didn't think E4M1 was particularly difficult even though there aren't much ammo and I don't think there was a single medkit in there on ultra-violence. On the first time I played it the Baron did make me go running around wondering what the hell am I supposed to do with him but after some desperate wall humping I found the hidden rocket launcher. Pretty dick move to hide it really.

E4M2 on the other hand makes me reload more times than the original three episodes in their entirety, though I do welcome the challenge and quite like the level even though it can be a bit frustrating too.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-05-04, 08:08:

I'd skip both of those and go straight to "No Rest For The Living" after completing Doom 2. IMO, the design quality of that expansion is leagues above Final Doom and especially the Master Levels.

You can try Doom 64 after that, as it canonically takes place between Doom 2 and Doom (2016).

No Rest For The Living is on my to-do list, I'll get to it at some point. I'm just generally bad with extra content, I tend to have difficulty mustering the motivation to start them up and I'd like to give the PC versions of Final Doom and Master Levels a go first to experience them with proper keyboard/mouse controls and wallow in nostalgia as I haven't seen most of those maps in two decades.

Doom 64 might be a bit of a doozy though, I still struggle with the uncanny valley effect it's giving me.

marxveix wrote on 2025-05-03, 09:19:

Demetrio wrote on 2024-09-10, 12:41:

Started playing Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. […]
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Started playing Turok: Dinosaur Hunter.

Collected all the keys in level 1; now I'm going crazy trying to find the 2nd key in level 2 🤕

Game for now is ok: graphically is really good, considering it's from 1997.
Gameplay is good, but I'm not liking the platforming sections and the confusing level design (low rendering distance doesn't help in this case).

Sometimes there are frame drops, but I think it's normal cause I'm maxing it at 640x480.

Playing it on my Pentium MMX 233 build, paired with a Voodoo 1.

Today i was bencmarking and playing Turok: Dinosaur Hunter with ATi Rage Pro 8MB@3DCIF it gets ~30fps and at D3D it was ~58, why so big speed difference with cif vs d3d api? Strange that there is no resolution options in Turok1 game if Rage Pro card and 3DCIF is used but its probably 640x480 and at 3DCIF the fog is working and at D3D its not working. There are only +0.7fps difference if i turn off the 3dcif fog and no other option to choose from. Its Rage XL AGP to be 100% correct, its the same with real Rage Pro.

Also i am at Turok2 and its BencMark is @40fps with Rage XL and fog is working @D3D, what Turok1 D3D needs to get it going with ATi Rage and fog (3dcif works well with fog).

Kingdom Come Deliverance II

Do you remember the book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? Every time I launch KCD2, I feel like I'm entering the wardrobe. The level of immersion is unparalleled for me. I love how they use the skills and the perk system. For example, there is a perk you can gain called Balanced Diet that makes the eating system more interesting. If you go three days without going hungry, overeating, or getting drunk, your stamina regains more quickly while your Vitality improves more quickly. As long as you can keep your hunger from dipping below 50 or above 100, and don't get drunk, this perk remains active. There are numerous ways to get food in the game. Wherever you have paid to stay, you are welcome to eat from the pot at that inn. You can buy/find/make food. I've been carrying walnuts around with me. They don't spoil and offer good nutrition. You can buy raw, cooked, smoke, or dehydrated meats, which last progressively longer without spoiling. Meat is what you feed Mutt too. If you feed him when you feed yourself, as well as give him praise every once in awhile, his behavior will remain high and he'll be more willing to help you in battles. Speaking of meat, you can either hunt, or train Mutt to hunt, skin your own meat, sell the hide, give Mutt raw meat, or cook it wherever there is a campfire. There are also meat smoking stations in a lot of towns that you can use with your raw meat.

Oh, and I trained Mutt to look into locked rooms for treasure. 🤣.

Torment: Tides of Numenera
I finished this last night, and I'm really not sure if I liked it or not. The biggest problem with this game is that it's heavily focused on the story, but the writing is almost always awful. What is most frustrating is that game ends up sidelining you toward the end, so that you mostly end up watching other characters progressing the plot. The game then bizarrely ends with you basically selecting whatever ending you want from a list of dialogue choices.

I must admit that I had little patience for much of the dialogue in this game. Every single line of dialogue is surrounded by awful "narration" text. You know the stuff:

"You see a woman who has the look of a woman who is being looked at by you. She looks neither distressed nor uncomfortable. She is not holding an umbrella, nor is she holding a cane. She strains to smile at you, and her smile fills her face like a crack that has formed in a wall over many years. 'I sell healing potions,' she states with a mischievous but sad and knowing look, with tears in her eyes and poison in her tongue."

However, the way that you interact with stuff is actually pretty interesting, though simple. You have three attributes (might, speed, intelligence), and every challenge has some target value you need to meet. You can spend extra points to guarantee success, but those points are taken from your attribute, which means future challenges will be more difficult. You can of course regenerate your attribute with consumable or by resting, though resting is not free. More interestingly, resting can actually cause you to fail quests because time advances when you sleep.

This even extends to combat. You can actually avoid most combat if you want, but if you do fight, it basically uses the same mechanics. Even attacking an enemy is basically an attribute challenge, and you can spend extra points on your attacks. That makes it very unfortunate that such an interesting system is wasted on a game where you become invincible after the first few hours. Within a few hours of playing the game, you will get to the point where you simply don't fail anything ever.

As a "spiritual successor" to Planescape: Torment, it is laughable. However, as a heavily story-focused adventure/RPG, it's not bad, as long as you skim through all the creative writing exercises that make up much of the writing. There are some cool ideas and concepts, and even some exceptional parts (the middle 10 hours of the game), so it's worth getting through the awful first couple of hours.

newtmonkey wrote on 2025-05-04, 18:16:

You see a woman who has the look of a woman who is being looked at by you.

Ok, that sentence legit made me chuckle. 😁

As much as I like RPGs, I just couldn't get into those that kept throwing walls of text at me. A while ago, I tried Disco Elysium and that game is nothing but dialogue, with an occasional dice roll for some skill checks. I played it for about 15 hours, and then realized that it kinda started to feel like a job. It just wasn't ticking the right boxes for me, so I put it on hold, despite its excellent reviews.

For the last couple of months I went through Sierra's AGI adventure games on my TurboXT. The machine has no HDD. It has two 5.25" drives. So it was quite an experience 😅

Started with SQ1, SQ2, then KQ1-4 and finally Police Quest and Black Cauldron. I ran them from their original media, and a save disk is always in drive B:

At the beginning it was fine. SQ1 disk switching is very reasonable and well-paced. You only do it half-game. The worst was KQ4 AGI, which came on 6 disks and had me swap like crazy. The data is stored per-location rather than per the game's natural story progression. PQ1 also is guilty of the same issue eventhough it came on 3 disks only.

It was fun though overall, as I never played most of these games before. I arrived later to the Sierra party when SCI and icon-based games became the standard.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-05-04, 18:30:

As much as I like RPGs, I just couldn't get into those that kept throwing walls of text at me. A while ago, I tried Disco Elysium and that game is nothing but dialogue, with an occasional dice roll for some skill checks. I played it for about 15 hours, and then realized that it kinda started to feel like a job. It just wasn't ticking the right boxes for me, so I put it on hold, despite its excellent reviews.

I've had the same reaction to these wordy RPGs. They do tend to take place in interesting worlds with fascinating characters, but the dialogue and text could almost always be edited down at least a good 25% without sacrificing anything, so it makes you feel like you spend a good portion of the game wasting your time. I do like DE (after that terrible intro) and want to play it some more, but I got burnt out from the endless reading.

This will come across as an odd recommendation to most, but I have been having SUCH a blast playing Bang on Balls: Chronicles with my daughter, it is an incredibly fun 3D platformer/open world indie game! Definitely my GOTY so far.

newtmonkey wrote on 2025-05-04, 18:16:

Torment: Tides of Numenera I finished this last night, and I'm really not sure if I liked it or not. The biggest problem with t […]
Show full quote

Torment: Tides of Numenera
I finished this last night, and I'm really not sure if I liked it or not. The biggest problem with this game is that it's heavily focused on the story, but the writing is almost always awful. What is most frustrating is that game ends up sidelining you toward the end, so that you mostly end up watching other characters progressing the plot. The game then bizarrely ends with you basically selecting whatever ending you want from a list of dialogue choices.

I must admit that I had little patience for much of the dialogue in this game. Every single line of dialogue is surrounded by awful "narration" text. You know the stuff:

"You see a woman who has the look of a woman who is being looked at by you. She looks neither distressed nor uncomfortable. She is not holding an umbrella, nor is she holding a cane. She strains to smile at you, and her smile fills her face like a crack that has formed in a wall over many years. 'I sell healing potions,' she states with a mischievous but sad and knowing look, with tears in her eyes and poison in her tongue."

However, the way that you interact with stuff is actually pretty interesting, though simple. You have three attributes (might, speed, intelligence), and every challenge has some target value you need to meet. You can spend extra points to guarantee success, but those points are taken from your attribute, which means future challenges will be more difficult. You can of course regenerate your attribute with consumable or by resting, though resting is not free. More interestingly, resting can actually cause you to fail quests because time advances when you sleep.

This even extends to combat. You can actually avoid most combat if you want, but if you do fight, it basically uses the same mechanics. Even attacking an enemy is basically an attribute challenge, and you can spend extra points on your attacks. That makes it very unfortunate that such an interesting system is wasted on a game where you become invincible after the first few hours. Within a few hours of playing the game, you will get to the point where you simply don't fail anything ever.

As a "spiritual successor" to Planescape: Torment, it is laughable. However, as a heavily story-focused adventure/RPG, it's not bad, as long as you skim through all the creative writing exercises that make up much of the writing. There are some cool ideas and concepts, and even some exceptional parts (the middle 10 hours of the game), so it's worth getting through the awful first couple of hours.

I have started this game once and stopped at around the 5hr mark. I want to go back and replay it, to be honest, but your review basically sums up my feelings and sours me from the attempt. This game tried way too hard to be another Planescape: Torment, and could have been so much more if it tried to be its own thing instead..

Added some Turok1 screenshots from bencmark and game with ATi Rage3.

Red Alert Remastered. I finished Tiberian Dawn with Dino missions back in 2020 after it's release. The last 3 weeks I'm playing Red Alert. Only the Aftermath missions remaining with Soviets. Ants missions already done. Last time I played Red Alert was in 2011 when final versions of the patch that TSHyper created for higher resolutions arrived (for Tiberian Dawn also).

Next I will start the remastered versions of Warcraft I and II.

I discovered WIN16 stuff still somehow manages to run even under 64-bit Linux so I've been playing Warpath Classic again.

I have to run it within a nested X server (using Xephyr) because the Wine devs thoroughly broke Virtual Desktop to the point of it being useless otherwise. Still waiting on someone on the dev team to realize the glaring regression because I can't otherwise report it myself unfortunately.

I've been playing Hard West, and finished two of the scenarios so far. I think the turn-based battle system is great, the wild west theme is well done, but I'm not too sure about everything else. The game doesn't seem to be as strong on story or RPG elements as the usual SRPG, which would be something of a missed opportunity considering how much time I've spent on different SRPGs with worse battle systems that are basically carried by the story and RPG elements.

Minor complaints: Some of the fonts are unnecessarily small to the point of being unreadable. The title screen causes 100% GPU load.

Apsulov: End of gods. Quite scary at times! You can see this was not a triple-A game budget but they did very well i must say.

Next up is Doom The dark ages.

(i realise these are new games but that's what i'm playing recently)

Eviternity II. With such a glut of good stuff still coming from the DOOM modding scene, maintaining net-zero interest in The Industry is easier than ever.

Darklands , its uh intresting to say the least playing this classic rpg, I've gone with the preset characters for now to get my bearings. It takes place around the Germanic states in Europe in the 15th century.

You start out in a city where you can attempt to take on various jobs or talk to people of political influence or buy various goods and equipment or go to the inn to eat and rest. There also seems to be a reputation system. Some of it reminds me a bit of Daggerfall.

So far the experience has involved alot of my guys being robbed by bandits , murdered by witches , and kidnapped by demons , the games pretty brutal.

I've still got a long way to go to figure out how the entire game jives and how to equip my guys with better gear.

It does seem very going from zero to hero type of an affair , or at least id hope so since getting mauled by wolves every trip or chopped to death by angry noblemen demanding tribute is not fun.

Also the mt32 music is pretty nice so there's that.

AppleSauce wrote on 2025-05-11, 04:56:

Darklands , its uh intresting to say the least playing this classic rpg, I've gone with the preset characters for now to get my […]
Show full quote

Darklands , its uh intresting to say the least playing this classic rpg, I've gone with the preset characters for now to get my bearings. It takes place around the Germanic states in Europe in the 15th century.

You start out in a city where you can attempt to take on various jobs or talk to people of political influence or buy various goods and equipment or go to the inn to eat and rest. There also seems to be a reputation system. Some of it reminds me a bit of Daggerfall.

So far the experience has involved alot of my guys being robbed by bandits , murdered by witches , and kidnapped by demons , the games pretty brutal.

I've still got a long way to go to figure out how the entire game jives and how to equip my guys with better gear.

It does seem very going from zero to hero type of an affair , or at least id hope so since getting mauled by wolves every trip or chopped to death by angry noblemen demanding tribute is not fun.

Also the mt32 music is pretty nice so there's that.

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This has been on my "to play" list for a long time! I've messed around briefly with it and it does seem pretty intimidating. And I've completed all three Arkania games, so I'm used to intimidating. I hope you get into it and keep posting about your experiences. It may motivate me to take the plunge...

Kingdom Come Deliverance II
I continue to develop Henry to favor archery and bludgeoning tools for combat. I hope it doesn't end up biting me during required heavy combat scenes down the road. Yesterday, I came across some bandits that were waiting in ambush. I happened to save the game just before that point, and it took several tries to get through the combat. (Of course, avoiding combat is always an option in these situations, but I wanted to defeat these guys because they were picking on a poor wayfarer). What was doing me in was, arrows were hitting their mark, but not killing them instantly (they almost never do), so they'd crowd in on me with melee attacks before I could switch to my war hammer. Yes, switching weapons is realistically slow. In the end, how I got them was to figure out the furthest away I could be while hitting them with arrows, which not only gave me more time to impale them all with at least one arrow, but also gave me time to sic Mutt on them. He is fast, distracting, and can do some decent damage. When Mutt attacks, the most useful aspect is I can get some solid melee hits in when close up, and I can get some arrows into their backs from further away. It was quite a satisfying victory, and I was sure to give Mutt lots of praise as well as some dried deer rump.

In a more exploratory moment, Mutt and I found a pond that had some hidden features, like a secret path to a lookout point, and a clay pot with some coin in it that was hidden in the muddy shoreline. In the screenshot below, you can see Mutt wading in the pond, while in the foreground is the pot in the mud.

Lastly, I'm so far 50 hours in. The in-game Stats page tracks more information than you can shake a stick at!