clueless1 wrote on 2020-11-15, 22:17:

Inca

Man, I looked up so much on that game and everything about it is just, absolutely bizarre. Probably the craziest multimedia CD-ROM game I've ever laid eyes on.

clueless1 wrote on 2020-11-15, 14:12:

Well, after 31 hours I think I'm going to DNF Betrayal at Krondor. I'll keep my save and maybe return to it sometime, but proba […]
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Well, after 31 hours I think I'm going to DNF Betrayal at Krondor. I'll keep my save and maybe return to it sometime, but probably not for a long while. The pacing is too slow for me. I prefer a little more exploration and combat and a little less story. There's a lot of reading and a lot to remember from that reading, and even with hints and walkthroughs, it just feels like I'm following along in a book. The exploration is there, but because of the clunky UI, it makes it a little less immersive. It hasn't been a bad game at all, just too slow-paced for me. I find I'm not looking forward to spending every free gaming moment jumping back into it and in the end, that's what matters. Probably the biggest highlight of this game is the soundtrack. Now to decide what to play next. Some candidates:
CyberMage (not approaching it as an RPG, but rather a FPS)
Metro: Last Light
Avadon: The Black Fortress
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
Underworld Ascendant
Tomb Raider 2013
The Bard's Tale Trilogy #1

Sorry to hear about BaK. I keep trying to force myself to play that one, but have trouble getting into it, mostly due to the interface and lack of interest in the story.

Of the games you've listed here I've only played Avadon and The Bard's Tale Trilogy at length. I think I posed my thoughts on these earlier in this thread, but if not:
Avadon - I would seriously suggest considering Avernum over this, if you haven't already played it. Avadon is very linear and you only get to create a single character (all other party members are NPCs you recruit); in contrast, Avernum has full party creation, tons of side content to explore, some of the best exploration out there, and an interesting premise. The developer was heavily inspired by Mass Effect in creating Avadon, and it has a very similar structure, if you've played those.
The Bard's Tale - The very definition of style over substance back in the day. It looked great (especially compared to Wizardry), but the combat is almost mindless and the dungeon design is poor. Having said that, it doesn't take too long to finish and can be fun break in between more demanding RPGs. The Trilogy remake makes it much more convenient to play, also. Having said that, it's basically worse than Wizardry 1-5 in every regard other than graphics, imo.

If you are not into the Riftwar Saga books by Raymond E Feist the Krondor games will be a huge chore to play, there is no way around that..

newtmonkey wrote on 2020-11-16, 02:10:

Sorry to hear about BaK. I keep trying to force myself to play that one, but have trouble getting into it, mostly due to the in […]
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clueless1 wrote on 2020-11-15, 14:12:

Well, after 31 hours I think I'm going to DNF Betrayal at Krondor. I'll keep my save and maybe return to it sometime, but proba […]
Show full quote

Well, after 31 hours I think I'm going to DNF Betrayal at Krondor. I'll keep my save and maybe return to it sometime, but probably not for a long while. The pacing is too slow for me. I prefer a little more exploration and combat and a little less story. There's a lot of reading and a lot to remember from that reading, and even with hints and walkthroughs, it just feels like I'm following along in a book. The exploration is there, but because of the clunky UI, it makes it a little less immersive. It hasn't been a bad game at all, just too slow-paced for me. I find I'm not looking forward to spending every free gaming moment jumping back into it and in the end, that's what matters. Probably the biggest highlight of this game is the soundtrack. Now to decide what to play next. Some candidates:
CyberMage (not approaching it as an RPG, but rather a FPS)
Metro: Last Light
Avadon: The Black Fortress
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
Underworld Ascendant
Tomb Raider 2013
The Bard's Tale Trilogy #1

Sorry to hear about BaK. I keep trying to force myself to play that one, but have trouble getting into it, mostly due to the interface and lack of interest in the story.

Of the games you've listed here I've only played Avadon and The Bard's Tale Trilogy at length. I think I posed my thoughts on these earlier in this thread, but if not:
Avadon - I would seriously suggest considering Avernum over this, if you haven't already played it. Avadon is very linear and you only get to create a single character (all other party members are NPCs you recruit); in contrast, Avernum has full party creation, tons of side content to explore, some of the best exploration out there, and an interesting premise. The developer was heavily inspired by Mass Effect in creating Avadon, and it has a very similar structure, if you've played those.
The Bard's Tale - The very definition of style over substance back in the day. It looked great (especially compared to Wizardry), but the combat is almost mindless and the dungeon design is poor. Having said that, it doesn't take too long to finish and can be fun break in between more demanding RPGs. The Trilogy remake makes it much more convenient to play, also. Having said that, it's basically worse than Wizardry 1-5 in every regard other than graphics, imo.

I do recall your comments on Avadon and Avernum. I'd forgotten, but have since adjusted my playlist accordingly (moving Avernum a notch above Avadon). Thanks. 😀

Between yesterday and this morning I put about 45 minutes into CyberMage and so far so good. The controls aren't as bad as they could've been and I'm getting used to them. So yay. Hopefully the game continues to hold my interest.

I'm very interested in how CyberMage goes. I remember playing a demo included with PC Gamer magazine back in the day, and not understanding it at all 🤣. I do believe that it was designed by D.W. Bradley of Wizardry V-VII fame!

newtmonkey wrote on 2020-11-16, 14:11:

I'm very interested in how CyberMage goes. I remember playing a demo included with PC Gamer magazine back in the day, and not understanding it at all 🤣. I do believe that it was designed by D.W. Bradley of Wizardry V-VII fame!

Yep, it was! So far it's more FPS than anything and it's about on par with Dark Forces, Duke3D, Eradicator, with a little bit of System Shock thrown in. Controls are somewhat remappable but I'm just sticking with the default so far. Arrow keys for movement, Z/C for strafing, CTRL, SHIFT and INS for stuff like jumping, crouching, etc. You can also look up/down, but it's tied to keys (no mouse freelook). There's no way to map it to be a true WASD system, but the pace is slow enough (kind of similar to System Shock 1) to be forgiving of slower paced play. Decent General MIDI soundtrack, good sound fx and some NPC speech, so fairly high tech for 1995.

I wish I could discover it again for the first time. 😁

xcomcmdr wrote on 2020-11-16, 18:41:

I wish I could discover it again for the first time. 😁

Yeah, same here. 😀 I'm playing off my original CD that I bought in '95. I don't remember a lot about it from back in the day, I think this was a game I bought because it was from Origin and I was an Origin fanboy, then tried it for a day or two, didn't fall instantly in love with it, and moved on to the next game. I did a lot of that back then. I'd impulse buy a bunch of games, try them out for a night or three, then move on to the next one. Today I'm more deliberate. I pick a game, give it a solid try and more often than not play it to completion.

I hadn't used my Nintendo Wii in ages. I have been playing Abuse and Duke3d(EDuke32) with the dgguspat GUS patches via homebrew, and having a blast.

Well, not necessarily a "game" per-se, but I'm on and off playing with this mod my love has been working on for several years now.

Since basically, this work and GZDoom are currently the only thing I have that even comes close to stretching Vulkan around. I really like how Intel finally made a iGPU that isn't borderline useless. Don't even need to care about discrete GPU's ever again.

And of course, I'm also trying to get into practice with Hideous Destructor. If only such a thing existed for Doom 3, that'd be beautiful.

Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
The more I play this, the more I like it. It really does feel like the successor to Fallout 1 I wanted but never quite got even with Fallout 2 or Arcanum. Like Fallout 1, the game world is quite small with only a few locations, but they are decently detailed with plenty to do; more importantly, unlike Fallout 2 (which I do like otherwise) the world is thematically consistent.
The main difference from Fallout 1 (besides the setting of course) is that most of the content in Stygian appears to be mandatory. You do have some leeway in the order you tackle quests (and even in how you tackle them), but I don't think there is really much optional stuff to do.

Tales of Maj'Eyal
I've never really tried getting into roguelikes other than fooling around with Rogue and Nethack here and there, but this seemed like a good game to start with as it has traditional CRPG elements (an overworld, side quests) and by default gives you a few "lives" so that don't have to start over immediately if your character dies. It's also quite different from a typical roguelike in its heavy focus on cooldown-based combat abilities, giving even melee-focused classes something else to do other than just run into enemies!
Anyway, I'm enjoying it.

Bio Menace
I played this one on my DOS machine. I had trouble at first as it would freeze while loading, but a quick perusal of the help file indicated I needed to have a SET BLASTER line in my Autoexec.bat even if I wasn't using an actual Sound Blaster; adding that did the trick, and I suppose this was a good thing as there are probably other games that specifically look for this line.
This is one I played back in the day, so I've got a soft spot in my heart for it. 29 years later, how does it hold up? Well, it definitely looks and sounds nice; great EGA graphics imo and I'm still impressed with the level design. I also really am fond of the OPL music still, especially that first level theme. The controls are a bit stiff and I find it difficult to react rapidly when I need to, but overall it controls fine.

Crystal Caves
Another one I played back in the day. With the HD remake released somewhat recently, I decided to give this a look. I played a few levels and really enjoyed myself. There's something I've always liked about this and its close cousin Secret Agent, I dunno. Perhaps its how nearly everything in the game is made from single tiles, giving it a miniature look akin to Micro Machine and those tiny Star Wars playsets I had as a kid. I also enjoy how the game just drops you into a hub world with access to any of the levels right from the start. Frustrated with a particular level? Just try another one.

The Dark Heart of Uukrul
This was recently (finally) released on GOG, so I replaced my "abandonware" copy and decided to finally play this hidden gem of an CRPG. Very interesting so far. You do create a party of characters, but only get to choose their names, genders, and attributes (based on a somewhat Ultima-esque Q&A session); the classes are fixed to Fighter, Paladin, Cleric, and Wizard.
From there, it's off to the dungeon where you will spend the rest of the game. It's a great dungeon so far, with memorable layouts and lots to explore and find. The game even includes a builtin automap; although you can't take notes on it, you can assign letters (A-Z) to squares, so you could just keep a piece of paper handy to write your own notes corresponding to each letter. Combat is turn-based and uses an overhead view like the Gold Box games (more similar to Demon's Winter or Shard of Spring imo), but the combat area takes up only a single screen—as a nice touch, the layout of the combat area will match whatever tile you were on when combat occurred.
The graphics are simple, but colorful and charming. No music or sound effects at all (not even PC speaker!), so that's maybe a slight letdown. I've been putting the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack on in the background while playing. 😀

I've been playing HotRod American Street Drag for a few hours a day since I got it Friday and it's an absolute blast. I bought and fixed up a 1972 Pontiac Firebird and it's almost a 8 second car. My best 1/4 mile time is 9.4 seconds. I used to play this game back when it came out in 03 when I was in highschool but sadly my cd broke but I was able to find it for a great price last week on Amazon. If anyone wants a fun racing game this one is a good one.

Made it to the moon in Beyond Good&Evil. Damn getting those last two pears for the motor was hard!

Wasn't much in the mood to do anything that requires reading or thinking, so played...

Dungeon Siege
It was sitting in my Steam library and I had barely ever played it, so decided to give it a go. I'm really not sure what to think yet, a few hours in.

It's interesting that you have an entire party to control in a Diablo clone, and can even set up (very very) simple tactics for each character. You can select how each character will attack (melee, ranged, spell), and can set general party tactics like "attack nearest enemy" etc. You can also pause and give orders, so it sort of feels like a really really really simplified Baldur's Gate.

The area design is actually quite interesting with lots of multilevel structures to explore, and I like how the entire game appears to be one continuous, streaming world (no load screens even when entering dungeons). It's a cool engine for the day, for sure. However, it seems to come at a price in that the game is EXTREMELY linear. Most areas so far are glorified corridors, just with walls formed from trees or mountains. As an RPG this would be a game killer, but it's better I think to treat this like an action game.

I know there's a highly acclaimed recreated version of Ultima V in this engine, and I'd be interested in giving it a try... though I definitely will finish vanilla Ultima V first!

The Dark Heart of Uukrul
I played another hour of this, even though I didn't feel like reading or thinking 🤣. It's honestly quite accessible for a 1989/1990 CRPG, so it's almost ideal when you want to play something substantial but don't want to deal with logistics and mapping challenges. Modern technology makes games like these a LOT easier to play, since "everyone" has a mobile phone on hand capable of taking unlimited screenshots of in-game messages, or even providing instant access to walkthroughs just a google search away (if you really get stuck).

Hexen: Beyond Heretic
A game I never had back in the day, though I did own (and complete) Heretic. I've played it on and off over the years mostly through source ports, but have never finished the game and decided it would be the perfect game to play on real hardware tonight. It's a shame about the soundrack; it's fine and all, but I miss the much catchier soundtrack from Heretic (seriously fantastic on Sound Canvas or I suppose any decent General MIDI-compatible synth)! I completed the first area with a cleric character, and had had enough for the night.

SIGIL
A bit of a cheat to put this hear, as all I did was get it set up. The WAD won't run in vanilla DOOM due to exceeding some engine limitation, but I was able to find a modified executable that runs it in DOS as a fifth episode in Ultimate DOOM. I was pleased to hear that it has its own unique MIDI soundtrack, which is nice considering the game "shipped" with a digital Buckethead soundtrack meant to be played using an engine source port.

CyberMage

I'm 4.5 hours in and have made it to the 4th Scene. I'm really liking this game! And still, it reminds me of a combination of Duke3D and System Shock I. I've gotten pretty comfortable with the controls, but it's still clunky enough that I have to reposition my hands and glance at the keyboard occasionally. You can run around pretty quickly as long as you don't need to change weapons, take a health or armor regen, etc. That would require reaching for a Fn key, which kind of necessitates finding a place to hide (which there are plenty) so you can hunt and peck the right keys. I'm actually fairly impressed with how well the aircar mechanics work. <Enter> enters the car, <Tab> exits, arrows for horizontal movement, W to climb, and X to descend. There's a decent storyline in this game too, pretty stereotypical, but it's there. NPCs fill in the gaps, send you on missions and the storyline stays consistent in the process. There's an audio recorder built into your suit, so you can go back and replay NPCs speeches to you if you like. Like most keyboard-based FPS, aiming can be difficult. But the pace is slow enough for the most part that you can take your time.

I think I've finally settled on playing this in VGA 320x240, full screen. Yeah, SVGA looks so much better, but the performance is too inconsistent. The only way to get consistently high (20+ fps) framerates is to shrink the view window down all the way. This is on a P200MMX with a PCI ARK1000 video card. It really depends on the level. The more there is to draw, the more chuggy it gets.

Lastly, the MIDI soundtrack is classic. Very 90s and slap bass, synth and horns heavy. Looking forward to finishing this one up! Seems like it will be a fairly short game, maybe 15 hours or less?

Hello everybody, I stumbled across this site while searching for a Dragon Slayer game, I've been trying to gather a collection of them to play through the series, it's always been on my todo list. I'm currently playing through Faxanadu, I always wanted to beat that game. I grew up playing it here and there but never beating it that I recall, I also grew up playing Ys 3 Wanderers from Ys on the SNES, one of my favorite games.

I've also started playing Sorcerers Kingdom for Genesis, a neat little hidden gem for the Genesis.

newtmonkey wrote on 2020-11-20, 14:45:

Wasn't much in the mood to do anything that requires reading or thinking, so played...

Dungeon Siege

I played through Dungeon Siege 3 on the 360 and really liked it, never heard of Dungeon Siege until then so I was wanting to try out the originals too. Me and my cousin played through it and beat it, we ended up playing with a 3rd person online who was the girl, and when we got to the end boss me and my cousin went nuts on the final boss but kept wondering why we weren't damaging her until we realized we were attacking our team mate since they looked so much alike 🤣, whoever was playing that girl probably thought we were retarded 🤣

newtmonkey wrote on 2020-11-20, 14:45:

Dungeon Siege It was sitting in my Steam library and I had barely ever played it, so decided to give it a go. I'm really not su […]
Show full quote

Dungeon Siege
It was sitting in my Steam library and I had barely ever played it, so decided to give it a go. I'm really not sure what to think yet, a few hours in.

It's interesting that you have an entire party to control in a Diablo clone, and can even set up (very very) simple tactics for each character. You can select how each character will attack (melee, ranged, spell), and can set general party tactics like "attack nearest enemy" etc. You can also pause and give orders, so it sort of feels like a really really really simplified Baldur's Gate.

The area design is actually quite interesting with lots of multilevel structures to explore, and I like how the entire game appears to be one continuous, streaming world (no load screens even when entering dungeons). It's a cool engine for the day, for sure. However, it seems to come at a price in that the game is EXTREMELY linear. Most areas so far are glorified corridors, just with walls formed from trees or mountains. As an RPG this would be a game killer, but it's better I think to treat this like an action game.

I played Dungeon Siege back in the day and it's a good example for a game that is unpretentious and, most importantly, doesn't outstay its welcome. Yeah it's linear but it also doesn't go on and on, stretching itself far too thin, like Diablo II. Just a fun romp through just the right amount of setpieces with decent variety and then you get off the ride with no hard feelings.

Meanwhile, I've been playing some more adventure games:

Space Quest III
Honestly, I love the sound and graphics in this one. I think I just like the early SCI look and feel. However, nearly everything else I found a bit grating. The opening is fair enough, puzzling through a series of rooms to escape the garbage ship, but after that the "world opening up" stage never really delivers for me. For letting you poke around on your own the game is over far too soon. I thought there would be a whole sequence of rooms after you enter the pirate base but you find the two guys right away, play two mini-games and you're done. Somehow SQ2 had a tighter focus. It made me realise that dialogue was never my favorite part of adventure gaming and I fear the fourth installment of the Space Quest series will be the beginning of the excessive verbosity that is the mark of later Sierra games...

Demon's Tomb: The Awakening
This is a text adventure with some graphics published by Melbourne House. I think it's using a more advanced version of the parser from The Hobbit. Anyway I'm a couple of hours into the game and it's very solid. The plot has you explore an ancient tomb in the English countryside, complete with lurking ancient evil that some guy in a mansion is trying to summon. The game has a frenzied intro sequence where you play the protagonists father prefacing the actual game, your performance therein apparently having some impact on which puzzles you'll be facing later when you go looking for him. You explore the terrain around the tomb which has very evocative descriptions of it's woods, marshes, streams, vistas and so forth. Oh, and you're accompanied by Sam, your dog, who also features in some puzzle solving. Mike Lewis, who worked on this one, also was involved with another lovecraftian effort called The Hound of Shadow, so I'm going to have to check that one out too.

Dungeon Siege or Titan Quest? I have both in library and feel like playing one of them..

Well... if it's Titan Quest be prepared for a long experience with its expansions. Also, Titan Quest is amazingly still updated by its devs 14 years later. So a VERY polished experience. No to mention Titan Quest is a gorgeous game compared to the original Dungeon Siege. Both are good action RPG games in their own right though.