Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-10-06, 16:44:

Namrok wrote on 2021-10-06, 16:35:

It's also amazing for a single game to achieve the unambiguous pinnacle of it's genre and squat on it so long. I'm hard pressed to think of a single other example of it.

Same here. I've been searching for a "spiritual successor" of MOO2, but nothing that I tried came close. It was just that good.

That said, I haven't really checked the 4x games market during the last 5 years or so. Maybe something new and good came out and I'm simply not aware of it.

I mean, games have come out. Galactic Civilizations 2 was the anointed MOO2 successor for a good number of years. Then Endless Space for a time. Some people really love Stellaris, but that's more of a grand strategy game than a MOO2 successor.

I recall really appreciating that GalCiv2 has an interface and mechanisms that felt uniquely well suited to handling the massive logistical clusterfuck that end game on a massive map could become.

Namrok wrote on 2021-10-06, 16:52:

I mean, games have come out. Galactic Civilizations 2 was the anointed MOO2 successor for a good number of years.

I heard good things about that one, but somehow never got around to playing it.

Is the ship combat turn-based there? The majority of newer 4x games that I tried had real-time ship combat, which just wasn't my cup of tea.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-10-06, 16:25:

Master of Orion 2 is an absolute masterpiece. I just used up the better part of my afternoon playing as the Mrrshans. Their combat bonuses allow them to engage enemies early on before they get a chance to expand their empires. I got rid of 4 out of 5 opponents in less than an hour, leaving the last one with a single colony on some backwater planet while I built up my fleet and researched powerful technologies in order to attack the Antarans. And that's just one of the many ways to play this exceptional game.

I spent hours upon hours on MOO2 as a kid. Glad to see it still holds up so well. Playing it on period-correct hardware was a treat too. No more ultra-fast scrolling during combat, just a nice smooth experience.

I played the hell out of original MOO but never the sequel.. (Same for Civilization II actually..)

I should fix that 😁

Jedi Knight Dark Forces 2. Haven't played this for years. Had some stability problems on level 2, but game hasn't crashed for a while now after trying some settings in the hidden hardware menu.

Level design is quite interesting and I like the space station graphics. Too many enemies, it is silly sometimes and they all die with 2-3 hits haha.

I just completed Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault. This has not aged well!

The main problem being the AI that can see me through several layers of vegetation (but it is at least very good looking vegetation, for 2004/5) before I will ever get any idea where they are. Their rifles are as accurate as my sniper and they need zero seconds to spot me, line up their sites and shoot. It's like Allied Assault Sniper Alley but even less fair. It becomes a bit stupid when the AI are tracking me from their enclosed turrets that they can't me see out of, off to the side to the extent that I can't see them at all! They're great blind firers!

Then there are your team mates who are constantly in your way; even whilst firing they'll run across in front of you. They'll block doors and narrow gaps trapping me out of cover or next to a grenade.

But hey it's done now so I can move onto either Far Cry or Return to Castle Wolfenstein

After what-must-be over 100 hours gaming, I think I'm getting towards the end of my Zelda BOTW experience.

I am not a completionist by any means, but I have fairly good gear, handle virtually all the standard foes with relative ease, done the main quests (minus the final boss) and some of the side ones, and have been all over the map in a basic way. 4 beasts, 100+ shrines done, level 3 ancient armor, master sword, etc.

While I still get enjoyment from the game, I find now that I've beaten the main challenges and gotten to a level where everything is manageable, that my last couple of sessions with it have felt quite rote (albeit still fun!). Going through the motions of harvesting guardians to buy more ancient arrows, and realising that, while there are still a lot of side-quests and another 850 Korok Seeds (lol), at a basic level I've now "had the experience", and am continuing to play it as much from habit and comfort zone as from genuine drive to continue playing.

So I think soon it will be time to give Ganon his traditional customary beatdown, and put this amazing game back onto the virtual shelf as one of the greats, one destined to be talked about and included on retrospective best lists for literally decades+. Just wow - I doff my cap to Nintendo and the Zelda team.

There were times while playing when I could not help but simply stare wonderstruck, standing on a mountainside while the setting sun's oranging rays shone through trees gently swaying in the breeze and distant birds drifted across the hazy sky, the vista of an entire miniature world spread out below me in incredible detail... and muse that, while the 1980's childhood promises of Moon colonies and Jetsons flying cars did not eventuate for our generations, there are some things in our lives today about which our 12-year-old selves from those days would be absolutely, completely, and entirely satisfied.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is one of those things.

Almoststew1990 wrote on 2021-10-11, 20:39:

I just completed Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault. This has not aged well! […]
Show full quote

I just completed Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault. This has not aged well!

The main problem being the AI that can see me through several layers of vegetation (but it is at least very good looking vegetation, for 2004/5) before I will ever get any idea where they are. Their rifles are as accurate as my sniper and they need zero seconds to spot me, line up their sites and shoot. It's like Allied Assault Sniper Alley but even less fair. It becomes a bit stupid when the AI are tracking me from their enclosed turrets that they can't me see out of, off to the side to the extent that I can't see them at all! They're great blind firers!

Then there are your team mates who are constantly in your way; even whilst firing they'll run across in front of you. They'll block doors and narrow gaps trapping me out of cover or next to a grenade.

But hey it's done now so I can move onto either Far Cry or Return to Castle Wolfenstein

I played through Medal of Honor: Allied Assault at the end of 2018 and felt similarly about it. It was short (13 hours) but entertaining, with some frustrating parts where enemy AI knew too much. 😀 I've heard it is the better of the two, so I haven't bothered with Pacific Assault yet.

Regarding your next game, my vote goes for RtCW. One of my favorites of all time. I couldn't finish Far Cry. I got late into the game and there was a section I couldn't get past. I quit the game in frustration after days of trying. But I'm not the best at hand-eye-coordination in games, I'm in it more for the story and experience.

Deus Ex Mankind Divided
Started playing it back when it came out but didn't get very far for some reason.
Playing it now after 5yrs.
Tried in DX12 but the game constantly crashes with errors in the event log with the display driver crashing, works fine in DX11 with no issues.
Plays like a Deus Ex game so I'm happy.

clueless1 wrote on 2021-10-11, 22:41:

I played through Medal of Honor: Allied Assault at the end of 2018 and felt similarly about it. It was short (13 hours) but entertaining, with some frustrating parts where enemy AI knew too much. 😀 I've heard it is the better of the two, so I haven't bothered with Pacific Assault yet.

Regarding your next game, my vote goes for RtCW. One of my favorites of all time. I couldn't finish Far Cry. I got late into the game and there was a section I couldn't get past. I quit the game in frustration after days of trying. But I'm not the best at hand-eye-coordination in games, I'm in it more for the story and experience.

Allied Assault is a much better game, in terms of controls and how it feels to play, atmosphere and 'soundscape', and it is more fun to play. You're not missing out on much if you're not a huge MoH fan!

I think RtcW will be my next game but I accidently started morrowind so it'll have to wait...

MOHAA is an excellent game IMO. It's not just a shooter, it's very mission based and I think an equal to it's peers of the time -- BF1942 and COD.

Man those were the days...reminds me of my old Ti4600.

Reminds me of when I attempted to run the game on a PCI/ISA only Socket 7 board with an MX4000 PCI GeForce4 card.

Haven't played the game in ages and it's currently on my Apple Tualatin PIII-S 1.4 build with a Radeon 9700 Pro AIW + V2 1000.

clueless1 wrote on 2021-10-11, 22:41:

I played through Medal of Honor: Allied Assault at the end of 2018 and felt similarly about it. It was short (13 hours) but entertaining, with some frustrating parts where enemy AI knew too much. 😀 I've heard it is the better of the two, so I haven't bothered with Pacific Assault yet.

Regarding your next game, my vote goes for RtCW. One of my favorites of all time. I couldn't finish Far Cry. I got late into the game and there was a section I couldn't get past. I quit the game in frustration after days of trying. But I'm not the best at hand-eye-coordination in games, I'm in it more for the story and experience.

As many times as I started MOH:AA, I've actually never get to beat it. I don't remember the order of missions, but I think the furthest I got was 3 or 4 missions after D-Day. I've beaten the sniper town mission, I vaguely remember another stealth mission and another in a rural area around a farmhouse. Somehow I always fell out around halfway through the game.

Somewhat similar with Far Cry. Back then I think My PC failed close to the end. I've remember it was an all-out war against the mutants. I've started replaying it last year, but got annoyed with it after the game shifted focus onto the mutants.

I've beaten RtCWW maybe 2 or 3 times. Good game, but never became a favorit. I really hated those bullet sponge melee enemies in the catacombs. Especially first time they devoured all my ammo.

Dark Seed 2 on my Macintosh Performa 6116 and then tested it on my PowerBook 540c.

After many years, I decided to replay Thief: The Dark Project. I'm using the original, retail release since that's what I had as a kid. I did get the Gold version from GOG as well, but I'll leave that for another time.

I chose to play this on my Celeron rig. Thanks to the Sensaura support of my YMF744 card, I can use both A3D and EAX, and it sounds magnificent. I think I'm experiencing some environmental sounds for the very first time, such as hearing crowd noises when I approach certain buildings in the first mission. Headphones are a must for Thief, as being able to discern sounds precisely is an integral part of the gameplay. Positional audio is excellent, especially since I installed the Sensaura update which unlocked some extra features on this card:

So I've been playing Blood 2 more. I'm just running it on a relatively balls to the wall Athlon 64 rig. I was playing it on the default difficulty setting, but it was just too much for me. It was just too frustrating having enemies instantly mortally wound me from hiding placing every step I take in the airship level. Cheating through that I got back on my feet, only to face a boss that effortlessly one shot me almost no matter what I did.

So I dialed the difficulty back on setting and started over. And now the game is so trivially easy, it's nuts. One difficulty setting higher, every enemy was such a bullet sponge, I was almost always entirely out of ammo. One setting lower, and almost every enemy gibs in a few hits. One setting higher and every encounter leaves me mortally wounded from an ambush. One setting lower, I can tank a whole room full of enemies with assault rifles and not even lose half my health.

It's all pretty goofy. And I suspect this will be a much shorter game on the easier setting. Took me a single evening to beat the first 10 levels again, versus almost a week on the harder setting. I regret nothing. I'm also having all sorts of flashbacks to the young, teenage giggles all the "your gonna cut yourself on that edge" try hard dark humor gave me. You definitely get the sense that while this is a sloppy game, it's sometimes sloppy in a fun way.

Namrok wrote on 2021-10-15, 12:16:

So I've been playing Blood 2 more. I'm just running it on a relatively balls to the wall Athlon 64 rig. I was playing it on the default difficulty setting, but it was just too much for me. It was just too frustrating having enemies instantly mortally wound me from hiding placing every step I take in the airship level. Cheating through that I got back on my feet, only to face a boss that effortlessly one shot me almost no matter what I did.

So I dialed the difficulty back on setting and started over. And now the game is so trivially easy, it's nuts. One difficulty setting higher, every enemy was such a bullet sponge, I was almost always entirely out of ammo. One setting lower, and almost every enemy gibs in a few hits. One setting higher and every encounter leaves me mortally wounded from an ambush. One setting lower, I can tank a whole room full of enemies with assault rifles and not even lose half my health.

It's all pretty goofy. And I suspect this will be a much shorter game on the easier setting. Took me a single evening to beat the first 10 levels again, versus almost a week on the harder setting. I regret nothing. I'm also having all sorts of flashbacks to the young, teenage giggles all the "your gonna cut yourself on that edge" try hard dark humor gave me. You definitely get the sense that while this is a sloppy game, it's sometimes sloppy in a fun way.

blood 2 is such an oddity in many ways, and also disappointingly bland compared to Blood. It also tends to be quirky in getting it to run on anything other than a period machine

I'm still playing Kingdom Come Deliverance 30 hours after beating the main game. I've completed a couple of DLCs (Band of Bastards and The Madonna of Sassau), the side quest 'The King's Silver', and did a lot of exploring, treasure hunting and lock picking. There's one more DLC I'd like to play (From the Ashes) which appears to be a town-building simulator. Sounds interesting! And in between, I'm apt to head off into an unexplored forest, hoping to stumble upon abandoned camps, caves, accidents/murders, etc. I've had Mutt, my canine companion since early in the game when I did the 'A Woman's Lot' DLC. I've trained the dog to 'seek' which means when we get close to secrets, he sniffs them out, barks to let you know, and you follow him til he gets close. Kind of like a form of geocaching. 😉 This game has turned into a favorite pair of old jeans that I just can't stop wearing every week!

clueless1 wrote on 2021-10-15, 20:19:

I'm still playing Kingdom Come Deliverance 30 hours after beating the main game.

The more I hear about this game, the more interested I get.

Unfortunately, my current PC is not powerful enough to run it comfortably. And from what I understand, performance on the PS4 isn't so great either, so I'll have to wait a bit more to play it.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-10-15, 20:27:

clueless1 wrote on 2021-10-15, 20:19:

I'm still playing Kingdom Come Deliverance 30 hours after beating the main game.

The more I hear about this game, the more interested I get.

Unfortunately, my current PC is not powerful enough to run it comfortably. And from what I understand, performance on the PS4 isn't so great either, so I'll have to wait a bit more to play it.

What are your PC specs? I've got what would be considered on the lower end of midrange and it plays mostly 60 fps with some dips between 30-50 on occasion. You can really do a lot with the settings to tune performance without making it look horrible. My specs:
i7-4770
12GB DDR3
GTX 1650 Super

edit: this page helped me tune my settings a lot:
https://www.game-debate.com/news/24532/kingdo … ing-benchmarked

I put the most demanding settings to Medium or High, and the least demanding settings I put to Very High or Ultra.

Got a rush of renewed enthusiasm for my Sanwa-equipped Lakka machine, enthusiasm partly driven by the past few years' improvements in things like latency and Vulkan. So, here of late it has been regular 8 and 16 bit console emulation with the latest bells and whistles.

Explored some of the PC Engine catalog for the first time, some real gems and weird stuff in there. The Dragon's Trap psuedo-port is fascinating, like going to a parallel dimension where a really familiar thing is just slightly different, with the 16 bit capabilities engaged to some degree. I'd like to also check out the FM Towns Marty catalog at some stage, but I'm not sure where the emulation scene is up to with that system, more reading needed.

One of the 16 bit titles I settled upon for a quick blast was the SNES version of Lost Vikings 2. Most of us are very familiar with the first game of the series, on DOS. I had previously noticed that, of all the sequel's ports, only the SNES version has the 2d pixel art style of the original game. The DOS, Playstation and other ports have changed to a very different 90's-3d-Studio/Claymation style, pre-rendered "3d" (in a 2d world).

Playing the SNES version feels just like playing a continuation of the original. There are some slightly new elements introduced in the form of side characters who sometimes take the place of the main 3 protagonists, but the basic formula of navigating increasingly-complex levels by combining the unique abilities of your 3 characters remains, with the usual backdrop of viking Dad Jokes and token storyline of bumbling witches continually teleporting our lads around various unforeseen locations. A familiar formula, but a good one to while away several hours.