I'm playing through Max Payne 1 on one of my pentium 3 machines. I have never beaten this game, so I hope to finish it and then move on to Max Payne 2.
For some reason, the text on the cutscenes is blurry.

dr_st wrote on 2023-10-17, 18:21:

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I played Bioshock many years ago, and realized that I don't remember a lot of the details. Like the final boss fight, for example. I do remember saving the little sisters, for the good ending.

Cheers! I'll be going straight into BioShock 2 next, since it's also set in Rapture. From what I gather, the third game takes place in a completely different setting, so I will leave that one for another time.

BTW, for a more in-depth BioShock review, I can recommend this video by the YouTuber GmanLives. It seems to be one of his favorite games, and he goes into much more detail than I did.

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2023-10-17, 15:16:

That's the older attempt. This is the new one and it apparently works pretty well.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/avp2-cooperative

Huh, interesting. I'll keep that in mind if I ever manage to get the game installed and working again, I have a friend or two that'd probably be interested in trying it out.

Also in keeping up with the topic I've been playing (and streaming) Sandwarriors, even though I have completed the game eight times already. Something about it is just genuinely fun and doesn't get old to me.

The last stream a week ago I came across some really dumb bugs.

I'm a little sceptical how well shoehorned co-op would work in AvP2, at least in the marine campaign. It isn't all that action packed shooter experience, it's more like trying to not soil your pants in between the fast and frantic occasions the xenomorphs do come to say hello and usually there's not that many of them coming at you. If that mod increases their amount by ALOT then it would be a completely different story and could be really fun with friends.

Played a bit of the Predator campaign and I'm not really feeling it. After the wonderfully oppressive marine campaign playing as the predator feels incredibly boring, not much reason to be afraid if you're the apex predator, pun intended. I mean you have from the start a cloaking device that makes you invisible to humans and basically infinite health and energy, you have a tool for both that brings them back to 100% within seconds. Your only weakness is the amount of damage you can take, direct fire kills you fast.

There you are then, picking soldiers one by one from a distance with very little to worry about.I guess they got the character right by making him incredibly powerful one man army from space, but after the butt clenching marine campaign playing as the predator feels like playing with cheats on.

I'll push on, maybe once the game starts throwing more Xenomorphs at you it gets a bit more fun, at least they can see you even when cloaked.

i'm currently playing PC_Redump

https://imgur.com/kb5rr5Q

Pillars of Eternity
After a short break I'm back to playing this. I've given this game a few tries over the years, but it never really hooked me until this last attempt. Anyway, I spent a couple of enjoyable hours progressing the main quest in Act II and completing a side quest that was surprisingly difficult (lighthouse banshee).

I do like the game quite a lot, but I'd still rank it below Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale so far. The hollowborn thing is a cool hook, but I find the cult stuff to just be so dull. It's also got a really tiny bestiary of creatures, which can make combat dull a few hours in. I do like how you can enchant your equipment with multiple types of bonuses as long as you have the right materials.

The hollow born thing really takes a whole new dimension when you learn what is going on with the souls..

PoE has one of the most evocative fantasy pantheons, one of the most philosophical existential story arcs in CRPGs. The problem is that it is mechanically less satisfying than BG2 and thematically less cool than Planescape: Torment due to taking place in a more cookie cutter kitchen sink fantasy world.

I so desperately wish a PoE 3 would happen 🙁

Started BioShock 2. It's very similar to the first game, except that you now play as one of those big daddy creatures. Due to that, your movement feels more sluggish, and your lumbering footsteps produce loud sounds whenever you walk. I'm not a fan of either. Thankfully, you can at least turn off the view-obstructing helmet animation from the options menu.

Combat appears to be slightly more difficult than in the first game. In particular, melee doesn't seem to be quite as effective, despite the fact that your character is supposed to be this huge, hulking behemoth. We'll see if that improves later on with additional upgrades. On the plus side, plasmids are the same as before, and feel instantly familiar. Hacking is also much faster, less tedious, and can even be done remotely.

The story feels a bit more personal this time around, with the protagonist searching for his bonded "daughter". It's also nice that they brought back some of the more prominent characters and their respective voice actors from BioShock 1.

I loved Bioshock 2. I played the heck out of the multiplayer when the game first came out becuase I knew it wouldnt last long.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-10-19, 10:42:

Started BioShock 2. It's very similar to the first game, except that you now play as one of those big daddy creatures. Due to that, your movement feels more sluggish, and your lumbering footsteps produce loud sounds whenever you walk. I'm not a fan of either. Thankfully, you can at least turn off the view-obstructing helmet animation from the options menu.

Combat appears to be slightly more difficult than in the first game. In particular, melee doesn't seem to be quite as effective, despite the fact that your character is supposed to be this huge, hulking behemoth. We'll see if that improves later on with additional upgrades. On the plus side, plasmids are the same as before, and feel instantly familiar. Hacking is also much faster, less tedious, and can even be done remotely.

The story feels a bit more personal this time around, with the protagonist searching for his bonded "daughter". It's also nice that they brought back some of the more prominent characters and their respective voice actors from BioShock 1.

I just finished Bioshock 2 in May of this year. Unfortunately, it was 3 years after I played Bioshock 1, so much of my memories were lost when comparing the two. But looking at my game ratings, I rated Bioshock 1 82/100 and Bioshock 2 76/100. I enjoyed both, but I already shared my thoughts on how unbelievable it was to me that an underwater city could be built with 1950's technology. I'm curious how Bioshock 3 will play out when I eventually get to it.

Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession

I'm now in the Lesser Catacombs Beneath Barovia, working on the Paladin Quest. Roughly 8 hours of gameplay.

Graphics: Reminds me a lot of Shadowcaster or Ultima Underworld. With the exception not being able to look up or down (or float/fly), the graphics are very similar, and nicely done for their time. There are some nice touches, such as when you click on signs and get a SVGA-esque static zoom-in of the sign, or some cutscenes or the character portraits (which are very stylized). The portraits are reminiscent of Anvil of Dawn and of course, Menzoberranzan. To me, they look like a Middle Eastern style of artwork.
Music: using the Dreamblaster X2, so the GM sounds very close to how it was intended. It's not the best music I've ever heard in a DOS game, but for this era, just about anything GM sounds worlds better than FM and brings on that feeling of elitest nostalgia. Thumbs up.
Sound Effects: for the most party, really good. There's ambient sounds as you explore towns, such as cats meowing, monster growls if they are on the other side of a wall, etc.
Speech: The voice acting is pretty bad. Sometimes it's good, but the sound quality is pretty bad too. I've had to play with the sound/music volume balance a lot. Often the music is too soft, but when I turn it up, then I can't understand the voice acting. The speech is pretty muffled, and if the voice actor isn't that good, then he or she is hard to understand anyway. There's no in-game volume control, so it has to be handled at the soundcard level.
Controls: I'm making it work. 🤣. I'm using my left hand on the numpad to control movement, and my right hand on the mouse for navigating the interface. It's kinda weird having the whole keyboard off to my left, but it seems to be the best solution for me. I do like the quicksave feature. Just hit 'S' to save, and 'SHIFT-R' to load the quicksave. I use that most of the time, then do a real save at major points on each level/section. You could use the mouse for movement (like Ultima Underworld) but I prefer this method.
Combat: I'm not a fan of real-time combat and this game reinforces that. Just a clickfest. When you get overwhelmed and die, just reload, find a chokepoint, and maneuver yourself so they are (for example) forced to come through a doorway and you can pick them off one by one. Spells in particular are hard to cast effectively because of how quickly things happen. I did find a spell bug: Bless is supposed to affect the whole party, but whenever I cast it, it asks me to select a party member to cast it in. There have been times I've cast it twice, once for each frontliner, but there's a higher level spell, Pray, that does cover the entire party at once. Also, there are these wall monsters (Living Walls) that can only attack from melee distance, so if you just back up a bit and throw all your combat spells at it, it will eventually die. They seem absurdly powerful, though! I've unloaded all my spells at them (Fireball x1, Agannazer's Scorcher x4, Magic Missile x7) and still had to dip in for a few sword hits to kill them. When they die, an opening in the wall is revealed, letting you into a room which often has decent items for pick up. Spells must be recouped by resting. Fortunately, it's easy to find places to rest and you don't ever seem to be interrupted during rest, so recharging your spells isn't such a big deal.
Story: I'm still early in the game, but I'm enjoying the story so far. There's some pretty decent NPC interaction, most of it is voiced, some of it is just text to read, but it's all decent.
Character Progression: I've only had one character level up so far (my Cleric/Mage leveled up her Cleric aspect) and there wasn't any player input. HP are increased and spell qtys are increased. It's probably random and reloading might help, but I didn't bother. Weak.
Inventory Management: somewhat weak. To read scrolls, you have to equip them in a character's hand, go out of Inventory, then click on the item in their hand to read it. There are bags, chests and scroll cases you can pick up and use to store items in, but it's cumbersome to get items in and out. At least it does expand your characters' inventory slots. I eventually learned that if you don't need/can't use an item, it's best to just drop the item and move on. There is zero economy in the game, so no point in carrying an item you can't use.
Economy: zero. No shops. You can't buy or sell items. You find things, if they're useful you keep them, if not, you drop them.

It's been entertaining enough so far and I plan on sticking with it. But definitely not the best DOS RPG I've played. 😉

Made some progress in BioShock 2. I'm not sold on the new little sister adoption mechanic. It reminds me too much of that awful escort mission from the first game. Basically, you need to protect each little sister from several waves of enemies while she's gathering resources, and this gets tedious after a while. Also, the new weapons aren't as satisfying to use as the ones from the previous game, and the level design feels less interesting overall.

In addition to saving the little sisters, you are also given a choice whether to eliminate or spare certain NPCs. Besides having some immediate consequences, these choices also seem to stay relevant in the long term, which was a welcome surprise. I like this mechanic as it gives more weight to your decisions.

Anyway, I think I'm about half way through. Not having as much fun with this one compared to the original BioShock, but I'm still hoping that it might improve.

Finished the Predator campaign in Aliens vs. Predator 2 last night.

Didn't much care for it to be honest, I don't think they got the gameplay dialed in very well. Half the time I was a bit bored and the other half a bit annoyed, unsatisfying combat with unsatisfying weapons mixed with a bit of unwieldy platforming.

Even the neat vision modes turned into a slight burden near the end. Normal vision has no limit how far you can see but requires lights, thermal highlights humans but limits visual range and makes Xenoforms hard to see, electromagnetic highlights Xeno's but limits visual range and makes humans hard to see and PredTech highlights Predators (basically useless in single player) while also having better and longer vision in dark areas than thermal/EM but makes both humans and xeno's nearly invisible. Also the weapons with lock-on feature require to have the right vision mode for the target, thermal for humans, EM for Xeno's. Meaning you'll be switching between the vision modes constantly at the end when you are running into both xenos and humans.

All in all I didn't hate it, but after the Marine campaign which I really enjoyed I didn't find the Predator campaign all that fun.

Next and last is the Alien campaign.

Finished BioShock 2, though just barely. The reason being that the game started crashing very frequently during the later stages. I googled this and found a Steam guide which provides several solutions for this issue. In my case, it was enough to increase the accessible VRAM amount in the game's INI file. The default value was just 256 MB for some reason. I also had to turn down the graphical settings to "Low" during one brief segment, as the game would crash on anything higher than that.

With the crashes sorted out, I was able to blaze through the last couple of levels. Melee combat did eventually get better, thanks to some additional upgrades. The drill attack still feels more clunky than the wrench from the first game, but it was serviceable. Also, there's a plasmid which allows you to regenerate health and "mana" when standing in water, which makes the entire game easier, regardless of your play style.

Those choices that you make do have an impact, and I managed to get the good ending by showing mercy on the special NPCs and saving every little sister. All in all, it's a decent game, but not quite as good as the first one. I'll skip the DLC content, since the game is too crash happy on my system, and I've had my fill of this kind of gameplay for now. I might still revisit it at some point in the future.

Now that you mention it, I seem to recall having random crashes in the first Bioshock as well. Don't remember what I did for it.

And recently I experienced them in Doom Eternal. Disabling "Present from Compute" in the game settings eliminated what feels like 99% of them.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

I've completed 'Half-Life,' plowed through 'Opposing Force,' and I'm about 30% through 'Blue Shift.' I initially started 'Half-Life 2' because I planned to skip the expansions. However, as soon as I ran into Barney and his cheerful/peppy demeanor, I had to go back and play the expansions. I wasn't looking forward to playing 'Opposing Force' because I avoid, with few exceptions where the bad guy is more of an anti-hero, playing as bad guys. However, it seems Shephard didn't get a chance to be evil, being screwed over as fast as the expansion began, so that was a nice surprise. Of course, everyone in 'Half-Life' thinks their team are the good guys (and everyone seems to be a pawn of someone else), which makes the G-man even more of an interesting figure. It was certainly something the first time I saw him on the opposing tram and then later noticed further in the game... "Hey... that's the guy I saw at the beginning of the game!" I also thought it was a nice touch when Gordon passes by Barney via tram while he's waiting to be let in through a security door. I didn't realize it was Gordon (I didn't recognize him in the lab coat) until Barney was reviewing security camera footage and commented about Gordon.

Great games, indeed...

I managed to set another "high score" in Sandwarriors yesterday somehow getting 178 fighter kills in Mission 23 before exhausting all possible weapon ammo.

This was streamed yesterday too.

I've been having some fun with Two Worlds, the "Oblivion killer" from 2007. I did enjoy this game back in the day but it took some effort to remember why - it makes a terrible first impression. It looks great but the engine is awful - masses of pop-in and it still grinds along at under 60FPS in towns with turned shadows on.

It also does itself a disservice with the terrible dialog and voice acting - I can't decide whether this silliness is intentional or not but it's actually quite endearing after a while. "Say hello to death", etc.

Anyway, all of that aside there's a lot to like. Exploration is fun, combat is OK, loot is great, and some of the quests are vaguely interesting. I'm playing the PC version which has native 360 controller support (after a registry hack to enable it), and that works really well.

It tries to do a lot of things and sometimes it succeeds, sometimes not, but overall it errs on the side of lightweight fun over in-depth RPG.