Finished Halo: Combat Evolved. The penultimate mission where you go after the captain (yet again) wasn't one of my favorites. There were too many instances where Flood enemies would spawn out of thin air all around you while traversing cramped corridors. I get it, we're approaching the endgame, and the devs wanted to amp things up, but it could have been done better. Thankfully, the mission wasn't that long, and I did enjoy some of the tougher fights, despite the cheesy enemy spawning.

The first part of the final mission was pretty good, with some cool fights while navigating the ship's interior. There were a few annoying platforming segments in the engine room, where you need to blast those exhaust vents or whatever, but it was still mostly fine. However, once that was done, the final section with driving the Warthog through the ship's corridors was just terrible. I guess I know why they call the ship Pillar of Autumn, because there were a million goddamn pillars in every single corridor that I had to drive through. That was definitively the worst part of the game for me, and it kinda soured the ending.

Anyway, with that done, the final cutscene played and the credits rolled. I think I'm sharing the sentiment that some of you guys expressed earlier. Halo was pretty good until the Library, and things kinda went downhill from there. Not that every level after that was bad, but some of their parts sure were. Overall, I did like the game and will be playing through the rest of the series. Hopefully, the developers improved upon some of the crappier level design elements, because the core gameplay of Halo is really fun.

Halo 2 is more of the same and I'd say it is a better story with some interesting new gameplay elements (dual wielding). Halo 3 is where the original Halo games peaked, so make sure to play that as well. Halo ODST and Halo Reach are the best games of the series, so play those after Halo 3. Reach is a prequel and ODST takes place during the events of Halo 3.

Halo 4 & 5 are garbage.

After the first couple of playthroughs I call it quits after I've set off the reactors, kinda like skipping the end of Half-Life at the end of Interloper.

I never played Halo on easy mode, I started with normal even though it was the first time I had played an FPS. I've done it on Heroic, but I think Legendary is beyond my ability; no doubt nearing sixty has slowed my reflexes a bit. Fun Hollywood movies aside, you do not see fighter pilots my age for good reasons.

So, I've been super into Unicorn Overlord the last few weeks. Unfortunately, I've hit the point I always hit in tactical rpgs, where some of my party members have fallen hopelessly behind the curve, but now I need them. And so I have to grind them back up to being competitive. This is usually around when I tap out. But I can tell I must be approaching the end of the game? Well, the 4/5 mark probably.

I mean, in some ways they've made grinding out levels somewhat convenient. There are repeatable battles in certain locations that make it easy to grind. They even grant you some XP boosting items too, to hasten the process. They don't even take that long. All the same, I have a distaste for it. I don't like the anxiety I get about "playing wrong" when I fail to keep my roster evenly levelled, and instead let a preferred crew rip on ahead. Which creates a feedback loop where I rely on the A-Team more and more and more, leaving the B and C Teams further and further behind. Then suddenly a mission comes along where the A-Team simply can't get it done on it's own anymore, but the other teams are all laughably useless.

That said, I'm still really enjoying it. I love that it's basically a real time tactical game with an open world full of battles you can pick and choose to conquer territory. I'm not sure if other games have done this before, but it's new to me and I'm all about it.

Moving on to Halo 2. I'm playing the original version of the game on my Xbox360 via back compat. The devs made some nice graphical improvements compared to the first game. For starters, Halo 2 runs in widescreen, and still looks decent when it gets upscaled to my 1080p TV. Environments became more detailed and characters are now using higher polygon models. However, I am noticing some texture pop-in as the level of detail gets bumped up when you move in closer.

In terms of sound, I'm hearing EAX-like reverb effects in certain areas like some of the ship's smaller hallways. The music is once again great and very atmospheric. They added subtitles to the cutscenes that play between missions, which is appreciated. Too bad Cortana's in-game voice overs weren't subtitled, as they are still sometimes hard to make out during combat.

Not entirely sold on the new weapons yet. In particular, I don't like that they removed the assault rifle. It was my favorite weapon in Halo CE, and the alternatives that Halo 2 provides are not proper replacements. The shotgun is still powerful, but your aim now becomes slower when you're using it. Meh, maybe the new stuff will grow on me eventually.

Dual wielding feels a bit awkward, because you have to hold down the left and right triggers to fire both weapons. Also, while dual wielding, you can't use grenades and melee attacks, both of which are kind of important for Halo's gameplay. I do like the faster charging shield and the smoother jump mechanics.

These are just my initial thoughts after completing the first mission and blowing up that Covenant ship with their own bomb. Maybe I'll get used to the changes as I play some more. It looks like we're heading down to Earth for the next mission, so that should be fun.

Might & Magic III

My level 25ish party has been working on clearing the Isle of Fire, working out of Blistering Heights (the one town on the island). We didn't have much trouble at all til we got to the southwest corner of the island, where the Great Hydras roam. Those guys have 5000 HP, AC of 60 and 12 attacks per round at 12D12 damage each. And because of their high speed, my melee fighters couldn't hit them at all. Only my magic users could damage them with high level cold spells. So we buffed our party by donating to the temple in town, increased our fire resistance at the statue in the center of town, and casting Protection from Elements - Fire on our party. That helped us last longer in combat, but we still could not kill a Hydra! Finally, I thought to cast Heroism on our party members, which increases %chance to hit by 1 per caster level. Because that spell uses so many spell points, I had to have my Paladin cast Heroism on half of my party and my Cleric take care of the rest of the party. That left my Cleric enough spell points to also get several Cold Ray spells in during battle. Finally, with Heroism our melee fighters were making contact and we killed our first Great Hydra. Good news is, each Hydra is worth 4 million XP, so killing one pretty much guarantees a level up for each party member. So now I'm in the process of killing one, sometimes two Hydras at a time, running back to town, healing and leveling up, then going out again.

We should be getting close to starting the end game process. I'm over 70 hours in on this gem and having a great time. My characters are now between levels 26 and 31 and each excursion to the southwest corner of the island is getting a little easier. I think there is a hut somewhere over there that if I destroy, will keep the hydras from respawning. Just haven't found it yet.

Looks great! That guy on the left is Maximus - who later became a hero in Heroes of Might & Magic I and II.
Funny that Hydras have a high speed rating in this game. In Heroes they are always among the slowest creatures. 😀

dr_st wrote on 2024-05-04, 15:38:

Looks great! That guy on the left is Maximus - who later became a hero in Heroes of Might & Magic I and II.
Funny that Hydras have a high speed rating in this game. In Heroes they are always among the slowest creatures. 😀

I think the graphics in this game are as good as about any DOS title from 1991. Great colors and monster animations and most of the outer world graphics are equally beautiful. Some dungeons not so great, but in the pyramids, gorgeous.

Haha, we also have a user here - @MMaximus whose avatar is that face. My character's name is Oto. He is a Male Good Half-Orc Knight. I think the original Maximus is a Barbarian?

Continuing on with Halo 2. Either this game improved the vehicle controls, or I got more used to them. In any case, I had a great time driving a Warthog and a Ghost during the Earth-based mission. The Ghost's new boost mode was a particularly nice addition, and it made zipping across the highway a blast. And best of all, there were no damn pillars in the way this time around! 😁

The next section featuring the Scorpion tank was epic, with its powerful cannon eradicating everything in sight. Also, the marines fighting alongside you behaved more intelligently than in the first game, and had better weapons like rocket launchers which made them quite useful. The final part where you singlehandedly take out that Scarab was pretty cool. I even got to use one of those energy swords for a bit, right before completing the mission.

For a while, I've been wondering why this game kept showing so many Covenant focused cutscenes. And then the next mission suddenly lets you play as one of them! Didn't really expect that, to be honest. Well, it should be interesting to see how the Arbiter handles himself.

clueless1 wrote on 2024-05-04, 18:41:

I think the graphics in this game are as good as about any DOS title from 1991. Great colors and monster animations and most of the outer world graphics are equally beautiful. Some dungeons not so great, but in the pyramids, gorgeous.

Looks great! I need to play through these games at some point. Got the entire series on a GOG sale a while ago.

As a kid, I was introduced to that world through Heroes of Might and Magic 2. Some time after that, I also played a bit of Might and Magic VI, but it was a borrowed disc so I didn't make much progress.

I finished MM3 back in the days and wanted to play it again. I am struggling a bit: could not beat the Rat Overlord and then decided to try the first cave at the exit of Fountain Head and here again I can't quite beat the zombies 🙁

That game is harder than what I remembered!

mtest001 wrote on 2024-05-05, 09:24:

I finished MM3 back in the days and wanted to play it again. I am struggling a bit: could not beat the Rat Overlord and then decided to try the first cave at the exit of Fountain Head and here again I can't quite beat the zombies 🙁

That game is harder than what I remembered!

There's a couple of tricks. First, if a section is too hard, explore somewhere else until you gain a few levels, then go back. Second, there are lots of wells scattered around the area outside of Fountain Head that give temporary stat boosts. Figure out where they are, then run around and drink from each of them before you try the areas you were struggling to complete.

After venting about Diablo II earlier I went right back to it. What, I don't have a problem, I can stop any time I want!

I've been scratching my head with an issue that has plagued me the last 15 years or so; hirelings randomly freeze in place. They stop following and attacking enemies, they just go in full statue mode and the only way to unfreeze them is to use a waypoint/town portal or enter some cave or something. One user here had the same problem some time ago and apparently fixed it by limiting framerate to 25 (IIRC) with RTSS, but this doesn't work for me.

I've tested all the renderers the game supports, DirectDraw, Direct3D and Glide. DirectDraw I've tested with the original renderer and cnc-ddraw, no difference. Glide I've tested with Sven's Glide wrapper and nGlide, same problem. Also nGlide was much heavier to run than Sven's. D3D interestingly is different, hirelings don't freeze in place, instead they disappear completely but it seems to happen much less often than the spontanious statueing. Too bad D3D looks much worse than the other two renderers for some reason.

I've tried to google this problem in the past finding nothing. Except now. Why? Because Diablo II Resurrected got released and apparently it still has the same issue! Which is kinda hilarious. But the good news is someone came up with a fix: Run everywhere.

Yeah, the issue happens when the hireling lags too far behind, which they do constantly if you walk. If you run though, then they keep up just fine and the issue doesn't happen.

No wonder I couldn't find anyone complaining about it online, all the people who were still playing the game after 10+ years were running/teleporting everywhere to fit as many baal runs in an hour as they could, meanwhile the single player ARPG peasant that I am mostly walks unless needed.

So now I need to run all the time or deal with the random hireling statues. I'm not sure will I get used to running, feels a bit too ADHD for my liking. I don't remember having this issue back in the day with my Athlon XP system, but I'm starting to suspect I used the D3D renderer. I wonder would my Pentium III / Voodoo3 system have this issue..

Edit: Still same issue with the Pentium III system. Either it's been around from the start or was introduced by some patch along the way. Also 866MHz pentium 3 isn't apparently enough for stable framerate even with Glide.

clueless1 wrote on 2024-05-05, 11:03:

There's a couple of tricks. First, if a section is too hard, explore somewhere else until you gain a few levels, then go back. Second, there are lots of wells scattered around the area outside of Fountain Head that give temporary stat boosts. Figure out where they are, then run around and drink from each of them before you try the areas you were struggling to complete.

Thanks, your advice helped me unlock the situation 😀

Still on Halo 2. The Arbiter mission dragged on a bit too long, and I wasn't exactly thrilled by the dark, similar looking corridors. They were kinda difficult to navigate because the Arbiter doesn't have a flashlight. On the plus side, cutting down dozens of Flood enemies with the energy sword was fun. But I didn't expect that swinging it would actually use ammo. 😁 The fight with the heretic guy was also pretty cool, with the holograms and all. And I had a feeling that the creepy robot from the first game would be back.

Then, we go back to the Master Chief, and he somehow found another Halo. I liked this mission a lot more than the previous one with the Arbiter. There was a good variety of enemies and environments, a bit of vehicle combat and some very nice visuals. For that reason, the mission didn't feel boring, despite its length. After the Prophet bit the dust, more Covenant cutscenes played. It looks like another Arbiter level is next, but wait, did they just mention a Library? Sigh, I hope this won't be as tedious as in the first game.

clueless1 wrote on 2024-05-04, 15:01:

Might & Magic III

Speaking of MM3, I am curious to know your opinion on the following games of the series.

Personally I've tried MM4 and 5, but never went very far in those games. I even bought the very modern MMX Legacy (2014) but I found it disappointing.

There is something special about MM3 that I cannot really pinpoint. Maybe the simpler game-play that makes it more casual game than the rest of the series, I don't know.

mtest001 wrote on 2024-05-08, 12:23:

Speaking of MM3, I am curious to know your opinion on the following games of the series. […]
Show full quote

clueless1 wrote on 2024-05-04, 15:01:

Might & Magic III

Speaking of MM3, I am curious to know your opinion on the following games of the series.

Personally I've tried MM4 and 5, but never went very far in those games. I even bought the very modern MMX Legacy (2014) but I found it disappointing.

There is something special about MM3 that I cannot really pinpoint. Maybe the simpler game-play that makes it more casual game than the rest of the series, I don't know.

At initial release, I played MM3, MM4/5, and MM6. Recently, I replayed MM4/5 and now working on MM3. I will eventually get to MM6 and probably 7-10 (Legacy).

More about MM4/5: I replayed the game in 2017 and completed MM4. At the time, it took me 31 days and by the time I finished 4, I was done. I didn't feel like starting on the MM5 quests. But, I remember (it's been over 6 years now) MM4 being better than MM3. It was almost exactly the same format, but better graphics and slightly more QoL features. I think it's definitely worth your time at some point when you are done with MM3.

Here is the beginning of my posts on MM4 in this thread if you'd like to read my thoughts as I was playing the game:
Re: What game are you playing now?

mtest001 wrote on 2024-05-08, 12:23:

Speaking of MM3, I am curious to know your opinion on the following games of the series. […]
Show full quote

clueless1 wrote on 2024-05-04, 15:01:

Might & Magic III

Speaking of MM3, I am curious to know your opinion on the following games of the series.

Personally I've tried MM4 and 5, but never went very far in those games. I even bought the very modern MMX Legacy (2014) but I found it disappointing.

There is something special about MM3 that I cannot really pinpoint. Maybe the simpler game-play that makes it more casual game than the rest of the series, I don't know.

I'm the opposite.. I found MM4 and 5 to have more focused stories and more immersive worlds. MM3 felt like a kitchen sink setting without a story you can hook yourself onto. The feels I got from the games was kind of like Daggerfall vs Morrowind, where Morrowind was a very immersive experiense but Daggerfall felt frustratingly unfocused. I don't know. I used to own MM3 boxed, with the map and all, but I seem to have lost it in time. I probably sold it off at some point. Shame..

Made some more progress in Halo 2. Unsurprisingly, the Library mission was almost as tedious as the one in Halo CE. The first part of the level consisted of similar looking corridors where Flood enemies appear all around you seemingly out of thin air. There were also several areas where Sentinel drones infinitely respawn until you destroy all stations that manufacture them. I'm not a fan of these gameplay mechanics.

The second part was better. You get a few allies to help out, and some vehicle combat gets thrown into the mix as well. It felt weird to be on the receiving end of a Scorpion tank, but I did like that you could forcibly take over enemy vehicles. Anyway, after trudging through some more Flood infested areas, the Library mission came to a close, and some interesting cutscenes played. Based on what was shown, I'm guessing the end of the game isn't too far off.

Well, I finished Unicorn Overlord. The final mission, really only the final boss of the final mission, felt nearly impossible. I was running around kicking the shit out of literally everything else that existed, but this dude was nearly one shotting every unit I had, taking almost no damage, and regenerating significant amounts of HP after every battle. I managed it, burning through a ton of items and abilities to get a narrow leg up though. Then there was a second boss fight with my exhausted units that was actually even worse! I got lucky in that he regenerated health slightly slower, and I had one single unit that didn't immediately die and could gradually whittle away at him until my other units could be more effective.

All in all, I enjoyed it. I think that was the first game I've finished in a long while. Was a good length, not too long, not too short, had a good story, and the gameplay loop of exploring an overworld, and then jumping into real time tactical battles was fantastic. Doesn't hurt that the art style was gorgeous too. Highly recommend it.