Namrok wrote on 2025-04-15, 02:40:

I also hated the lore. I disliked the lore from the base game, but the DLC I actually hated. It's actually so bad it makes me like Doom 2016 less.

While I haven't played Doom Eternal yet, I have been spoiled on (some of) the lore via YouTube videos by certain reviewers, which made me look up the rest as well.

Without going into details, I liked how it officially confirmed that the Doom Slayer is in fact the same Doomguy from Doom 1&2 and Doom 64. This was already hinted in Doom 2016, but it was made very clear in Eternal and its DLCs. From what I gather, it even canonizes parts of the old Doom comic from the 90s (huge guts, rip and tear etc).

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-04-15, 04:27:

Namrok wrote on 2025-04-15, 02:40:

I also hated the lore. I disliked the lore from the base game, but the DLC I actually hated. It's actually so bad it makes me like Doom 2016 less.

While I haven't played Doom Eternal yet, I have been spoiled on (some of) the lore via YouTube videos by certain reviewers, which made me look up the rest as well.

Without going into details, I liked how it officially confirmed that the Doom Slayer is in fact the same Doomguy from Doom 1&2 and Doom 64. This was already hinted in Doom 2016, but it was made very clear in Eternal and its DLCs. From what I gather, it even canonizes parts of the old Doom comic from the 90s (huge guts, rip and tear etc).

Yeah, all that I was ok with, although I liked how it was more hinted at in Doom 2016, rather than explicitly spelled out in painful detail for the slow kids in the back like it was in Eternal. No, what got under my skin was the DLC lore.

It was all just way, way too stupid for me, made even stupider by how laboriously they spell it all out for you without a hint of subtlety or ambiguity.

Also I hated the final boss fight.

Namrok wrote on 2025-04-15, 13:43:

Also I hated the final boss fight.

Heh, I haven't even played the game and I thought the final boss seemed really stupid even in the youtube longplay I watched. Honestly most of the other boss fights didn't seem all that fun either as I recall.

And the final boss himself... well he seemed like a joke someone quipped during design talks that may have sounded awesome and funny at the time but ended up coming across just embarrassing, at least that's how I felt about it. Not the only thing about the game where I thought their attempt at tongue in cheek humour failed miserably, IIRC there was some hologram lady or something like that giving humorous pro-demon speeches on some level that were painfully unfunny in my opinion.

Namrok wrote on 2025-04-15, 13:43:

No, what got under my skin was the DLC lore.

I see what you mean now. And yeah, I'm not a huge fan of that particular lore either.

As for the the final boss fight, it kinda reminded me of Risen, where you play a weird game of whac-a-mole with the big bad guy. And it wasn't so great in that game.

I don't know how many times I've tried to play Morrowind over the years but it's never quite stuck. I start off strong - interesting opening area, fun finding loot and equipping character, exploration somewhat rewarding and underwater caves are cool. But then I just hit a wall and I'm bored to tears. NPC interactions are dull and the characters are just so lifeless - they either stand in the one spot or march back and forth doing nothing interesting. Combat is painful no matter how hard I try to embrace it - I've read guides, watched YouTube clips, and even tried mods. I suspect the early Gothic games have ruined it for me - a living, breathing world vs Morrowind's contrived world simulator. Proper real time combat vs Morrowind's stat based click-fest. Memorable, hand crafted level design vs Morrowind's bland rolling hills. Totally voice acted vs wordy wiki dialog. Workable journal vs "now where was that quest?".

It's frustrating because I know it's generally considered a great game and I can almost see it, but not quite. It's not you Morrowind, it's me.

OpenMW is great though and I've really enjoyed messing around with it and trying out various quality of life mods. Shaders are implemented now too so I spent a few happy hours messing around with them.

badmojo wrote on 2025-04-16, 12:02:

I suspect the early Gothic games have ruined it for me - a living, breathing world vs Morrowind's contrived world simulator. Proper real time combat vs Morrowind's stat based click-fest. Memorable, hand crafted level design vs Morrowind's bland rolling hills. Totally voice acted vs wordy wiki dialog. Workable journal vs "now where was that quest?".

Yeah, it was the same for me back in the day. I could appreciate Morrowind's awesome visuals, particularly the pixel shaded water, but the world just felt so barren and lifeless compared to Gothic. The skill system was cool though, especially the custom spell and weapon crafting. I remember being particularly impressed with the levitation spell at the time.

That said, I haven't played Morrowind in 20+ years, aside from firing it up occasionally for testing purposes. Yet I feel the urge to replay one of the Gothic/Risen games every 3-4 years, and have done so repeatedly, without the experience ever getting stale.

badmojo wrote on 2025-04-16, 12:02:

I don't know how many times I've tried to play Morrowind over the years but it's never quite stuck. I start off strong - interesting opening area, fun finding loot and equipping character, exploration somewhat rewarding and underwater caves are cool. But then I just hit a wall and I'm bored to tears. NPC interactions are dull and the characters are just so lifeless - they either stand in the one spot or march back and forth doing nothing interesting. Combat is painful no matter how hard I try to embrace it - I've read guides, watched YouTube clips, and even tried mods.

I also tried morrowind a few times and I also marvelled at it for while, enjoyed the amazing open world and then either stumbled into an area i wasn't equipped for or just ran out of steam

I can imagine it was more amazing back at launch for those who had only played earlier versions or isometric rpg type games.

There is something that just slowly evaporates in the game, making it less and less interesting to play and I doubt i'll try again

Yet i thought Oblivion was mostly good, fun and so on -although eventually it does become a bit samey

I'm straying into grumpy old man territory now with my comparison of Gothic 1 / 2 and Morrowind but long sessions with keyboard / mouse are uncomfortable for me these days, and Gothic actually lends itself to being completely playable with a controller, where Morrowind doesn't. OpenMW supports a controller and it's not too bad, but it's a mouse driven UI, so trading, etc is pretty painful. Gothic however is keyboard driven, so thanks to the magic of JoyToKey it's possible to map just about everything you need. Combat is also perfect for a controller in Gothic - you automatically lock on to enemies, so no uncomfortable twiddling of sticks required for aiming. Even ranged combat works because again, you lock on, no fiddly aiming required.

I've configured it like so (note I use an xbox controller):

Camera: Right Stick Movement (WASD): D pad Movement (WS): Left stick Action / select / etc: A button Jump: B button Draw sword: […]
Show full quote

Camera: Right Stick
Movement (WASD): D pad
Movement (WS): Left stick
Action / select / etc: A button
Jump: B button
Draw sword: LB (top)
Draw bow: RB (top)
Walk: Y button
Sneak: Press left stick
Character: Keyboard B
Zoom camera: LT and RT
Escape (menu): 'Start'
Inventory: X button
Enter (save function Gothic 1): Press right stick

Trader dialog: You need to take ore from the trader to cover what you're selling. Button A takes 1 at a time, hold button A and use D pad left / right for 10 at a time

Attached is my JoyToKey config (Gothic.cfg), which covers both Gothic 1, 2, and Chronicles of Myrtana. You might need to mess around with the mouse speed in-game for your tastes - I've attached my Gothic.ini files for G1, G2, and Chronicles of Myrtana which includes mouse adjustments and keyboard mapping to match the JoyToKey config.

Unrelated, but to get EAX2 working with my X-Fi card in Windows 10 I've needed to do the following:

- use ALchemy and add the game, specifying the /system folder
- copy the file 'pre.load' into the /system folder
- in-game, select EAX2

pre.load is also included in the attachment.

I was replaying Doom (2016) on my PC, as I had previously only played it on my PS4, but I ran into a game breaking bug. I was in Mission 6 (Kadingir Sanctum) and had gotten to the very end of the map with the Barons of Hell fight. Somehow, during that fight, I dropped down from that area all the way to the beginning of the level. While backtracking, I noticed that I had missed a rune trial, since it showed up on my recently downloaded automap, so I did that first. Unfortunately, this saved the checkpoint at the location of the rune, and the wooden door which leads to the final area with the Barons was now permanently closed.

I checked online and this appears to be a known bug, which somehow remained unfixed to this day. Since there doesn't seem to be a "noclip" cheat equivalent for this game, the only "solution" is to restart the level while losing all previous progress. I spent an hour and a half going through that level, mastering two recently upgraded weapons and finding all the secrets and rune trials. There's no way I'm doing all that crap again because some underpaid and overworked developer messed up a scripting check. So I shrugged and uninstalled the game. Maybe I'll revisit this at a later point, but definitively not any time soon.

I've been playing (almost) nothing but the S.T.A.L.K.E.R -games for a year now. I got a bit tired of it and I wanted to play something totally different. A good old school point'n'click is something I wanted to do. Shadow of the Comet has been on my TO-PLAY list for a while and also it was good game to test my 386DX-40 build. You can find the CD-version on GOG and it's easy to get it working on an actual DOS machine. You just copy the CD folder from the GOG installation to C:\INFOGRAMES\SHADOW.CD and you're done.

I've been playing the game only for a week now, but I like it so far! And a week means playing the game like 30 minutes when the kids are asleep. I love Lovecraft, and I love good adventure games. The town seems a lot cleaner so far than the one in The Shadow Over Innsmouth story, but you definitely can see the influence. I really like the voice acting, the puzzles are decent so far. The overall atmosphere is good, so I think I'll enjoy this one.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-04-18, 14:25:

I was replaying Doom (2016) on my PC, as I had previously only played it on my PS4, but I ran into a game breaking bug.

The joys of checkpoint save systems, never liked them. This was just released on GOG with a big sale, checkpoint system or not I'll give it a go at some point since it's only under 4€.

Sombrero wrote on 2025-04-19, 10:21:

The joys of checkpoint save systems, never liked them. This was just released on GOG with a big sale, checkpoint system or not I'll give it a go at some point since it's only under 4€.

It's a pretty good game overall, but yeah, the checkpoint system sucks as always. Might as well post some of my impressions of the Doom (2016) gameplay I guess. The gun play is very satisfying, though the combat arenas with the gore nests and the timed/scripted demon spawning can get a bit stale after a while. The glory kill system is kinda neat, but I don't like how some of the challenges include performing it on certain enemies from a very specific direction. The rewards are worth it though.

I'm of two minds on the weapon upgrade system. While it does feel good to farm those upgrade points and eventually achieve mastery over a weapon, the changes to the weapon behavior that each upgrade provides take some getting used to. For example, reducing the reload time on the super shotgun is nice, but it takes a while to readjust your rhythm. Then, after you master the weapon, you need to readjust once again since it can now fire twice before needing a reload. This is very powerful and works great once you've adapted to it, but that's the thing, there is no consistency until you fully upgrade and master a weapon. And this is not even mentioning the different alternate fire modes of some other weapons, and switching between them as needed.

In the classic Doom games, weapons were simple. No alternative fire and no upgrades, so you always had consistent behavior. With time, you would learn the quirks of each weapon, the bullet spread (where applicable) and the optimal reload timing. Instead of upgrading the weapons, your reflexes got fine tuned the more you used them. Since weapon behavior constantly changes in the new Doom games, it just doesn't feel the same.

Also, the ammo and armor restrictions that you start with are pitiful. I mean, you can only carry 20 shotgun shells at the beginning (lol) and about 60 or so when you fully upgrade your ammo capacity. Similarly, you're restricted to 50 armor until you upgrade that stat. It does get better eventually, but that particular upgrade system just feels weird.

On the plus side, enemies generally behave intelligently and provide a decent challenge. The imps in particular can be deadly, since they lob those fireballs from some crazy angles with the accuracy of a top tier NBA player. They also move at insane speeds, and can close in for a melee hit in seconds, when they aren't clinging to walls or running around cover while lobbing fireballs at you. Imps in this game are surprisingly challenging for such an early enemy, especially on higher difficulty settings. And if it wasn't clear, I consider this to be a good thing.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-04-19, 10:35:

Also, the ammo and armor restrictions that you start with are pitiful. I mean, you can only carry 20 shotgun shells at the beginning (lol) and about 60 or so when you fully upgrade your ammo capacity. Similarly, you're restricted to 50 armor until you upgrade that stat. It does get better eventually, but that particular upgrade system just feels weird.

Yeah, noticed that when I checked out some gameplay. Not too stoked about it but at least it doesn't seem to be as bad as in Doom Eternal.

And I find the pre-backpack ammo limits in classic doom restrictive 😁

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-04-18, 14:25:

I was replaying Doom (2016) on my PC, as I had previously only played it on my PS4, but I ran into a game breaking bug. I was in Mission 6 (Kadingir Sanctum) and had gotten to the very end of the map with the Barons of Hell fight. Somehow, during that fight, I dropped down from that area all the way to the beginning of the level. While backtracking, I noticed that I had missed a rune trial, since it showed up on my recently downloaded automap, so I did that first. Unfortunately, this saved the checkpoint at the location of the rune, and the wooden door which leads to the final area with the Barons was now permanently closed.

I checked online and this appears to be a known bug, which somehow remained unfixed to this day. Since there doesn't seem to be a "noclip" cheat equivalent for this game, the only "solution" is to restart the level while losing all previous progress. I spent an hour and a half going through that level, mastering two recently upgraded weapons and finding all the secrets and rune trials. There's no way I'm doing all that crap again because some underpaid and overworked developer messed up a scripting check. So I shrugged and uninstalled the game. Maybe I'll revisit this at a later point, but definitively not any time soon.

My condolences, nothing kills a playthrough faster than losing 2 hours of laborious progress. I don't blame you at all for walking away from Doom 2016 after that, even though it's one of my favorite games.

Namrok wrote on 2025-04-19, 11:49:

My condolences, nothing kills a playthrough faster than losing 2 hours of laborious progress. I don't blame you at all for walking away from Doom 2016 after that, even though it's one of my favorite games.

I do intend to revisit it at some point, but yeah, losing that much progress due to a bug left a sour taste in my mouth.

In case it wasn't clear from my previous post, I did finish Doom (2016) on my PlayStation 4 several years ago, so I'm familiar with the story and gameplay. But I didn't know about this particular bug until it hit me. Judging from the Steam and Gamefaqs forums, I'm definitively not the only one who was affected.

Kingdom Come Deliverance II

23 hours in and loving it. I've mostly worked on side quests and explored. In the past few sessions, I made a little dent in the main questline. I do love how you can jump in and out of the main quest as you wish. For whatever reason, this game (and its predecessor) sucks me in on almost any level. I spent a full 30 minute session just going through my inventory, repairing items, trading them, and deciding how to apply perk points to my skills. And it was so satisfying. I then sharpened my blades (which improves that skill), apologized to an innkeeper for a brawl I was involved in to restore some reputation, and used a shepherd's ram as bait to take out some wolves that were harassing his flock. I even had a conversation with the ram on the way, while leading him with carrots. And I was able to keep him alive and return him afterward.

Things like competing in archery competitions are fun, increase your skills, and earn you money if you win. Combat can be avoided in most cases, with alternate solutions. I've been focusing my character on speech, stealth, and archery. There are often peaceful resolutions if your speech is developed enough. I'm currently visiting a scribe where I'm about to buy some skill books.

There is fast travel between main towns, but for me it's more fun to do it "live" on horseback. Oftentimes I'll spot something that piques my interest. Such as a tiny stick structure that appeared to be pointing in a specific direction. It looks like something someone made to remind them how to get to a point of interest. I followed it into some woods and came across some massive boulders that give you a good view of wildlife in the area. I think it's someone's secret hunting place, but maybe there's a bigger secret there that I overlooked.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire
It feels like its been ages since I've last played this one. I played through the first game back in 2023, and although it took many attempts over the years, it finally clicked and I became hopelessly addicted, and did nearly everything I could find in the game. I ended up absolutely loving the game, and it was with high expectations that I started up Deadfire back in 2024.

At first, I was overjoyed. It felt like PoE taken to the next level. Much better visuals. A fun pirate theme instead of the weird "Dungeons and Dragons with the serial numbers filed off" vibe of the first game, including a vast ocean full of islands to explore and a simple but fun sailing resource management mechanic. And while it was a joy for the first 40 hours, it's at around that point where you're basically forced to interact with the boring factions. You have the imperials that only care taking control. You have what are basically depicted at first as "noble savages" but the crazy twist is that their society is totally messed up and awful. You have the profiteers just trying to make as much money as possible out of everyone. And you have the pirates. These are all awful groups of people, and it killed my motivation to continue playing the game for a long time.

To the game's credit, it seems that you can actually just ignore all of them and do something to upgrade your ship or whatever to get to the endgame, but that seemed like a lot of extra work that didn't seem fun (building up your ship is a whole separate thing that I've completely ignored), so I just got to the final quest for each faction, and then started killing off any faction that seemed arrogant or even annoying, rather than choosing which faction I actually liked. I dunno, maybe that was what the writers intended.

I do believe that I could go and finish this game now, but I will probably play through the DLC content just to see what it's like; after all, The White March DLC for the first game was really good.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire
Finished!

Although I gave the DLC stuff a shot, I didn't like any of it. One is a combat arena, which besides Oblivion horse armor is the lowest form of DLC, and the other was some town the game ranked as "normal" difficulty for me but included a sudden appearance by a dragon that was easily the most difficult enemy I faced in the game. I didn't feel like figuring it out, so I gave up and went back to the main quest.

I figured I was close to finishing the game and thought I'd play for a couple of minutes before going to bed and finish the game sometime later this week. Instead, 15 minutes later, I was watching the ending slides. These really threw me for a loop. You get page after page telling you about this or that minor character, but after 50 hours of playing this game, I had little to recollection of most of them.

---

Although this game looks and feels much better than Pillars of Eternity, in the end I think I preferred the first game. The combination of a pirate world with standard fantasy dungeon delving and random gods bickering felt tonally inconsistent, and completely divorced from the atmosphere, feel, and even story of the first game. I can overlook that stuff in an RPG if there's lots to explore, or if the combat is satisfying, or if character or party building is fun or interesting. However, combat is pretty easy (outside of some optional fights), and leveling up is only interesting for the first two-thirds of the game. After that, you start putting points into skills you'll never use, just because you have to spend them to complete the level-up process, not because you actually want to use the skills. That also sort of makes exploration pointless, because you're basically just steamrolling over encounters by then and leveling up is no longer exciting.

Still, it's a fine game and worth playing, especially for fans of the first game (or Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, etc.). Although leveling and itemization become increasing dull during the final one-third of the game, the game is still full of interesting areas to explore and most quests have at least one alternate solution for good replayability. The world is also massive and open nearly from the start, and I had a blast sailing around and exploring mysterious islands. The game took me just under 50 hours to complete (doing nearly every quest I could find), but I left a LOT of the world unexplored, so I could see myself going back to this to explore and get my party up to max level (and maybe even take care of that pesky dragon in the DLC I never completed).

Got bored over the holidays so I reinstalled Doom (2016) and finished the campaign. I'm still pissed at losing progress on the 6th level during my last attempt, but I powered through that map and beat it again. This time, I didn't care about finding every single secret, but I did get most of the rune trials. That goes for the remaining levels too.

Gotta say, with some of these runes and the weapon upgrades, you can become pretty much unstoppable. For example, pair the fully upgraded and mastered super shotgun with the maxed "Rich Get Richer" and "Armored Offensive" runes, and you have infinite ammo for a weapon which erases most demons from existence with a double click. Similar results can be achieved with the mastered siege mode for the chaingun and the mastered micro missiles for the heavy rifle. Farming those masteries took a while, but fortunately, you can revisit any of the previously completed levels for that. This is nice as some of the early maps contain hordes of weak opponents (like zombies) which are perfect fodder for this.

All those upgrades, masteries and runes definitively helped during the big arena fights in the last two levels. These might drag on a bit too long, depending on one's tastes, but the atmosphere is great. Mick Gordon's awesome soundtrack (especially BFG Division) pumps you up while you're annihilating literal swarms of demons which keep spawning all around you.

On that note, my only (minor) gripe with the enemy behavior was regarding their spawn mechanics. Sometimes, while you're circling around the arena and avoiding enemy fire, a powerful demon would spawn right next to you, and could take a big chunk of your health before you even realize what's happening. Probably the worst case scenario here is when two pinkies (or specters) suddenly appear behind you and perform a bull rush before you have a chance to react. This is somewhat random and not very common, but it can put a blemish on an otherwise perfect arena run. The final boss was kinda meh, and I enjoyed the Cyberdemon and the Hell Guard fights a lot more. To be fair, the Spider Mastermind wasn't all that great in the classic Doom games either. I did like the "fatality" that Doomguy performs on that thing in the end though.

All in all, I'd say that Doom (2016) is a very good game. It was definitively much more satisfying to replay this on my PC using keyboard and mouse instead of the controller, which I of course had to use on my PlayStation 4. Beware of that bug in the 6th level though. The best way to avoid it is to do both rune trials as early as possible, and to never backtrack after encountering the Barons of Hell for the first time. Aside from that single game breaking bug, and one or two random crashes during my 20 hours of playtime, I didn't encounter any other major issues.

P.S.

On my 5.1 speakers, positional audio in Doom (2016) was subpar compared to Doom 3 + EAX 4.0. I could barely tell from which direction a sound was coming from, as everything was sort of jumbled together. Don't get me wrong, the actual sound effects were awesome, just their positioning in 3D space sucked.

i found a previous save of Need for Speed: Underground (the 2003 pc game) and carried right on! Surely there can be no better racing game! well, ok there are plenty - but still, i do enjoy that one. Maybe i am starting to become nostalgic for some of the styles of cars back then!