Completed The Ultimate Doom using Doomsday source port with Andrew Hulshult's remixed soundtrack.

Good ol' Doom. I don't think I need to write a wall of text about this one. Though this time I did start feeling a little fatigued during Inferno, the amount of Demons, Cacodemons and Barons on ultra-violence and the lack of super shotgun means it can take a bit to mow down the hordes at times. I might drop to hurt me plenty for Inferno and Thy Flesh Consumed next time to see how that goes, haven't played Doom on anything else than ultra-violence for two decades. Playing Knee-deep on anything else than UV would be straight up criminal though.

This was also my second time playing episode 4. It has some irksome level design occasionally and it's my least favorite episode, but I still I enjoy the gloves off mayhem it offers. Plenty to kill that's for sure, I think there were three Cyberdemons in total. Hats off for those who have completed it on DOS with ultra-violence and keyboard controls!

Going to have to give it a bit before moving on to Doom II, I think I got my Doom fix for the moment. Also ought to finally play the PC versions of Final Doom and Master Levels at some point, only played the PS1 version of Final Doom which doesn't have every map from those.

currently playing Expedition 33 , this is one of the surprising games so far as it is VERY well made
at times the music/art/world reminds me of Nier games which is always a plus
this will certainly be one of the GOTY contenders

Sombrero wrote on Yesterday, 19:38:

This was also my second time playing episode 4. It has some irksome level design occasionally and it's my least favorite episode, but I still I enjoy the gloves off mayhem it offers. Plenty to kill that's for sure, I think there were three Cyberdemons in total. Hats off for those who have completed it on DOS with ultra-violence and keyboard controls!

I did complete it in DOS with keyboard and UV, but I used gratuitous save-scumming for that, I believe. E4M1 is notoriously hard with very low ammo to monster hitpoints ratio. E4M2 is nice, though, especially

Sombrero wrote on Yesterday, 19:38:

Also ought to finally play the PC versions of Final Doom and Master Levels at some point, only played the PS1 version of Final Doom which doesn't have every map from those.

Final Doom is not only hard(er than the original levels), it is also very long. 64 levels in total. It took me ~13 years to beat Plutonia - I simply got tired and left in the middle, more than once.

Sombrero wrote on Yesterday, 19:38:

Also ought to finally play the PC versions of Final Doom and Master Levels at some point, only played the PS1 version of Final Doom which doesn't have every map from those.

I'd skip both of those and go straight to "No Rest For The Living" after completing Doom 2. IMO, the design quality of that expansion is leagues above Final Doom and especially the Master Levels.

You can try Doom 64 after that, as it canonically takes place between Doom 2 and Doom (2016).

dr_st wrote on Today, 06:23:

E4M1 is notoriously hard with very low ammo to monster hitpoints ratio. E4M2 is nice, though, especially

Spoiler

telefragging the Cyberdemon en route to the secret level.

I didn't think E4M1 was particularly difficult even though there aren't much ammo and I don't think there was a single medkit in there on ultra-violence. On the first time I played it the Baron did make me go running around wondering what the hell am I supposed to do with him but after some desperate wall humping I found the hidden rocket launcher. Pretty dick move to hide it really.

E4M2 on the other hand makes me reload more times than the original three episodes in their entirety, though I do welcome the challenge and quite like the level even though it can be a bit frustrating too.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on Today, 08:08:

I'd skip both of those and go straight to "No Rest For The Living" after completing Doom 2. IMO, the design quality of that expansion is leagues above Final Doom and especially the Master Levels.

You can try Doom 64 after that, as it canonically takes place between Doom 2 and Doom (2016).

No Rest For The Living is on my to-do list, I'll get to it at some point. I'm just generally bad with extra content, I tend to have difficulty mustering the motivation to start them up and I'd like to give the PC versions of Final Doom and Master Levels a go first to experience them with proper keyboard/mouse controls and wallow in nostalgia as I haven't seen most of those maps in two decades.

Doom 64 might be a bit of a doozy though, I still struggle with the uncanny valley effect it's giving me.

marxveix wrote on Yesterday, 09:19:

Demetrio wrote on 2024-09-10, 12:41:

Started playing Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. […]
Show full quote

Started playing Turok: Dinosaur Hunter.

Collected all the keys in level 1; now I'm going crazy trying to find the 2nd key in level 2 🤕

Game for now is ok: graphically is really good, considering it's from 1997.
Gameplay is good, but I'm not liking the platforming sections and the confusing level design (low rendering distance doesn't help in this case).

Sometimes there are frame drops, but I think it's normal cause I'm maxing it at 640x480.

Playing it on my Pentium MMX 233 build, paired with a Voodoo 1.

Today i was bencmarking and playing Turok: Dinosaur Hunter with ATi Rage Pro 8MB@3DCIF it gets ~30fps and at D3D it was ~58, why so big speed difference with cif vs d3d api? Strange that there is no resolution options in Turok1 game if Rage Pro card and 3DCIF is used but its probably 640x480 and at 3DCIF the fog is working and at D3D its not working. There are only +0.7fps difference if i turn off the 3dcif fog and no other option to choose from. Its Rage XL AGP to be 100% correct, its the same with real Rage Pro.

Also i am at Turok2 and its BencMark is @40fps with Rage XL and fog is working @D3D, what Turok1 D3D needs to get it going with ATi Rage and fog (3dcif works well with fog).

Kingdom Come Deliverance II

Do you remember the book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? Every time I launch KCD2, I feel like I'm entering the wardrobe. The level of immersion is unparalleled for me. I love how they use the skills and the perk system. For example, there is a perk you can gain called Balanced Diet that makes the eating system more interesting. If you go three days without going hungry, overeating, or getting drunk, your stamina regains more quickly while your Vitality improves more quickly. As long as you can keep your hunger from dipping below 50 or above 100, and don't get drunk, this perk remains active. There are numerous ways to get food in the game. Wherever you have paid to stay, you are welcome to eat from the pot at that inn. You can buy/find/make food. I've been carrying walnuts around with me. They don't spoil and offer good nutrition. You can buy raw, cooked, smoke, or dehydrated meats, which last progressively longer without spoiling. Meat is what you feed Mutt too. If you feed him when you feed yourself, as well as give him praise every once in awhile, his behavior will remain high and he'll be more willing to help you in battles. Speaking of meat, you can either hunt, or train Mutt to hunt, skin your own meat, sell the hide, give Mutt raw meat, or cook it wherever there is a campfire. There are also meat smoking stations in a lot of towns that you can use with your raw meat.

Oh, and I trained Mutt to look into locked rooms for treasure. 🤣.

Torment: Tides of Numenera
I finished this last night, and I'm really not sure if I liked it or not. The biggest problem with this game is that it's heavily focused on the story, but the writing is almost always awful. What is most frustrating is that game ends up sidelining you toward the end, so that you mostly end up watching other characters progressing the plot. The game then bizarrely ends with you basically selecting whatever ending you want from a list of dialogue choices.

I must admit that I had little patience for much of the dialogue in this game. Every single line of dialogue is surrounded by awful "narration" text. You know the stuff:

"You see a woman who has the look of a woman who is being looked at by you. She looks neither distressed nor uncomfortable. She is not holding an umbrella, nor is she holding a cane. She strains to smile at you, and her smile fills her face like a crack that has formed in a wall over many years. 'I sell healing potions,' she states with a mischievous but sad and knowing look, with tears in her eyes and poison in her tongue."

However, the way that you interact with stuff is actually pretty interesting, though simple. You have three attributes (might, speed, intelligence), and every challenge has some target value you need to meet. You can spend extra points to guarantee success, but those points are taken from your attribute, which means future challenges will be more difficult. You can of course regenerate your attribute with consumable or by resting, though resting is not free. More interestingly, resting can actually cause you to fail quests because time advances when you sleep.

This even extends to combat. You can actually avoid most combat if you want, but if you do fight, it basically uses the same mechanics. Even attacking an enemy is basically an attribute challenge, and you can spend extra points on your attacks. That makes it very unfortunate that such an interesting system is wasted on a game where you become invincible after the first few hours. Within a few hours of playing the game, you will get to the point where you simply don't fail anything ever.

As a "spiritual successor" to Planescape: Torment, it is laughable. However, as a heavily story-focused adventure/RPG, it's not bad, as long as you skim through all the creative writing exercises that make up much of the writing. There are some cool ideas and concepts, and even some exceptional parts (the middle 10 hours of the game), so it's worth getting through the awful first couple of hours.

newtmonkey wrote on Today, 18:16:

You see a woman who has the look of a woman who is being looked at by you.

Ok, that sentence legit made me chuckle. 😁

As much as I like RPGs, I just couldn't get into those that kept throwing walls of text at me. A while ago, I tried Disco Elysium and that game is nothing but dialogue, with an occasional dice roll for some skill checks. I played it for about 15 hours, and then realized that it kinda started to feel like a job. It just wasn't ticking the right boxes for me, so I put it on hold, despite its excellent reviews.

For the last couple of months I went through Sierra's AGI adventure games on my TurboXT. The machine has no HDD. It has two 5.25" drives. So it was quite an experience 😅

Started with SQ1, SQ2, then KQ1-4 and finally Police Quest and Black Cauldron. I ran them from their original media, and a save disk is always in drive B:

At the beginning it was fine. SQ1 disk switching is very reasonable and well-paced. You only do it half-game. The worst was KQ4 AGI, which came on 6 disks and had me swap like crazy. The data is stored per-location rather than per the game's natural story progression. PQ1 also is guilty of the same issue eventhough it came on 3 disks only.

It was fun though overall, as I never played most of these games before. I arrived later to the Sierra party when SCI and icon-based games became the standard.