newtmonkey wrote on 2025-06-07, 17:58:

Tyranny I've had this one in my library for some time but never really spent much time with it. It's a party-based isometric RP […]
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Tyranny
I've had this one in my library for some time but never really spent much time with it. It's a party-based isometric RPG with real-time combat, and having now completed a bunch of similar games, I decided to give the game a shot. So far, it's pretty good. The most interesting thing about the game is the setting; basically, the evil empire has conquered the world and you are a high-ranking cog in the machine. Even so, you have a lot of leeway in how you approach each situation, as well as several factions to ally with, so you can roleplay everything from a loyal enforcer to a rebel.

I'm not sure what to think about the combat so far. I'm finding it more difficult than either of the Pillars games, but it might be because there's far less combat than those games, and nearly every battle is basically a boss battle. The game has a really cool spell crafting system that sort of brings Morrowind to mind, and even early on you have a lot of options to create cool spells.

It's very focused on story so far. You quickly pick up your first three party members just by following the story, and they are all definitely pretty unique. My favorite so far is a soldier who's had his suit of armor fused together around him. In some ways, it really feels like a better spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment than the cargo cult mediocrity Torment: Tides of Numenera.

So far, so good! I'll probably be focusing on this one for the time being.

Tyranny is one of my fondest modern RPG experiences, I had a blast with it. The companions are really interesting, the world is very immersive and you have quite a bit of agency. I am really curious as to what kind of a path you will carve in that world.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-06-10, 13:37:

DudeFace wrote on 2025-06-10, 13:13:

you got through that pretty quick considering its a massive 4 disc epic

My playthrough clocked at 56 hours, per the in-game time tracker.

That said, I likely missed most of the optional content, since I didn't find the gameplay particularly engaging. Meaning, I rarely bothered with exploring non-plot related areas. Also, I started playing Lost Odyssey a few days before first posting about it here, and I had almost completed disc 1 by that time.

50 odd hours is about normal for the average square enix game, being that lost odyssey is on 4 discs i expected it to be much longer, i guess the discs must be filled with side content and fmv's.🤣

xcomcmdr wrote on 2025-06-10, 18:02:

It pretty much is. It's the pretty much the same team as the old Final Fantasy titles (ie. FF6)

now that you mention it, i think ive heard that before.

appiah4 wrote on 2025-06-11, 08:22:

Tyranny is one of my fondest modern RPG experiences, I had a blast with it. The companions are really interesting, the world is very immersive and you have quite a bit of agency. I am really curious as to what kind of a path you will carve in that world.

I wasn't expecting much going in, but it's awesome so far. It's got the story/world hook I was looking for but never found in the PoE games (although I really did enjoy the first PoE, and the second game to a lesser extent), and of course it goes without saying that it's much more interesting than Torment: ToN! I'm playing as a Kyros loyalist siding with the Scarlet Chorus, but I'm already thinking of what kind of character I'd like to play as next time, which is surely testament to how good this game is. It's a shame it apparently didn't sell that well.

Tyranny
Wow, I just cannot stop playing this one. I'm partway through Act II, and I'm 17 hours into the game. At this point, on the default difficulty level, the game is unbelievably easy, but who knows? It might get more difficult later on. More importantly, who cares? I'm having a blast exploring the world and carving my way through it.

The spell making system is still great, and it's a ton of fun after gaining some levels and increasing my lore stat to go in and upgrade all my spells with better effects. It's a really clever solution to keep old spells useful throughout the game.

If I have to complain about anything, it's how juvenile some of the writing it. The absolute worst part so far was when you observe the two heads of the main factions arguing. These are "archons," who are humans or entities who originally had very "human" abilities that basically become magic as they gain followers who believe in their abilities. In other words, becoming a living legend actually gives you real magic. It's a very cool concept, but it's handled very poorly here. The two archons are written like edgy teens trading insults back and forth, and it diminishes both of them and the entire concept of the game (though with the recent development of two of the most powerful men in the world, both of whom have obtained amazing power through influence and belief, bickering back and forth on Twitter, the game might actually be quite prescient).

Anyway, I could definitely see myself replaying this years from now just to try a different character and choosing a different faction, probably on a higher difficulty level. I don't know if I like it more than PoE yet, but I'm definitely enjoying it more than PoE II!

Surprisingly for myself, I purchased and started playing the Windows re-release of Gates of Skeldal, and I think it's pretty good.

I've never been much of an RPG player, back in the 90s I wasn't aware of Daggerfall, and Might and Magic games were only a rumour and a bunch of screenshots in a gaming mag borrowed from a classmate. I believe people compare Skeldal to Lands of Lore, but anyway, it's the usual grind but it feels fun I guess. I have to say I'd be literally lost in the woods without the automap this game thankfully has, because the faux 3D perspective is drawn in such a way that confuses me a lot, even with the compass directions.

So I finally went back and wrapped up Final Fantasy XII: Zodiac Age. I wrapped up Pharos, did as much optional content as felt fun to do, bounced off a few especially odious espers and hunts, and then wrapped up with the final boss.

I still really love Final Fantasy XII. I think I loved the original more, with it's more open ended license boards. I know people complained that it makes every character feel samey, but I liked the control and freedom it gave me. And I still absolutely love the world they built. I'm also deeply impressed by how much value the localization adds. Every nation and tribe speaks with unique accents in English, where as the Japanese version had no accents. Also various tutorial texts are rewritten to not break the 4th wall in the English version. It's really impressive.

That said, it's still a beautiful mess of a game. You essentially chase McGuffin after McGuffin to no consequence what so ever. Most of the story happens in cutscenes countries away from where you currently are, involving characters you've never met. The game opens with this framing between each chapter where the memoirs of one of the side characters is read. It gives the story, such as it is, a bit more weight and context. This narrative device is dropped towards the end of the game. And the ending just feels so random, like they were out of time and just needed to wrap shit up. Fuck it, giant sky fortress! But also, it has basically 3 rooms and then a final boss fight. Whatever.

All in all, still absolutely love this game, it's weirdness from development hell aside. I think the world and the characters really make it work despite itself.

After a long time, decided to play X-Com UFO Defense again using the OpenXCom port. For the first time I’ve got the guts to try playing on Veteran difficulty (which is basically the normal one).
Im no expert in this game, but found some guidelines to beat the game more or less consistently (in Veteran difficulty, not sure if they are good for harder ones)
1- As soon as the game starts, go for laser weapons research
2- Manufacture laser rifles so your soldiers have a decent weapon as soon as possible
3- Research laser cannons and sell them for profit (openXcom allows you to do that automatically)
4- Build a separate base just for putting engineers and manufacture laser cannons, try to aim for 350 engineers making laser cannons for selling so money never becomes a problem ever again. Dont forget to add some soldiers (I usually go for ten) and arm them with laser rifles to defend the base. For manufacturing actual armor and weapons I use the enginners in the first base (around 70)
5- Research plasma cannons ASAP and arm your first two interceptors with them
6-Build another base somewhere else just for having another interceptor with plasma cannons (basic one with single hangar, living quarters, general stores and large radar). Dont forget to put soldiers and at least give them laser weapons to defend that base as well.
7- Keep shooting down UFOs, you can ignore most crash sites. The plasma cannons allow your interceptors to shot down all ufos except the very large ones (ignore those)
8- Once you have the money, build one or two more bases with interceptors and arm them with more plasma cannons, same as step 6.
9- From this point on you are pretty much set, money wont be a problem (should have around 40 million) and the council will be happy with the UFOs being shot down, there is no need to do any battlescape mission you are not well prepared to do, so you “take it slow” from here… Make some armor, replace laser rifles by heavy plasma, add more hangars and interceptors, etc. Eventually the aliens may invade some of the bases, but if you did the base layout right, it should be easy

And besides those steps, some general guidelines:
- Base layout is very important because when aliens invade your base they spawn on the access lift and hangars, so when building your base you must isolate them for the rest of the buildings so the aliens will all concentrate in a single point. OpenXCom allows you to customize your first base so you dont have to use that horrible default layout. If done right, the aliens will get massacred in such missions.
- Unless you really need the score, there is no point in doing terror missions. You just need to land there and take off on the first turn (you still lose score, but far less than if you just ignore the mission). Later in the game most of those will be prevented by your interceptors anyway.
- Avoid having to rely on Ellerium, no need to build upgraded crafts since interceptors are enough and dont require ellerium as fuel. For most missions personal armor and heavy plasma taken from the aliens is enough.

Hope that helps whoever feels like playing the game, must say that the mind control thing gets really annoying and the huge amount of UFOs in late game makes the game drag too much, each month takes an eternity to pass due to having to intercept almost 5 UFOs per day.

I'm up to my usual summer shenanigans, nothing heavy or hard to get into, just easy to pick up and play games.

- Completed or what I call completing Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit. I don't like the police chases so I always skip them and stick with the Tournament/Knockout modes. Fun as always, my favorite NFS.

- Completed the career in Need For Speed 4: High Stakes, or Road Challenge as it is called here in euroland. What a stupid name, High Stakes is the name for a race event in career so why on earth they wanted to change the name of the game to something else?? Idiot marketing people. Anyway, as always, I enjoy the career right up until I reach the last two cups, especially the North American Tour starts getting pretty far from fun with their night/backwards/mirrored/weather on messes with AA/AAA class car. My personal favorite is the one with two 8-lap winter themed tracks with weather on, what a pain in the butt.

- Currently playing FlatOut 2 for the first time. Seems pretty fun, though as someone who prefers clean races I need to be in the right mood for it or else I might blow a fuse playing it, the game clearly embraces the chaos. I just wish it had a way to choose what music track it plays, Megadeth/Audioslave/Rob Zombie are all very much my jam but Papa Roach/Nickelback/Fall Out Boy and such are definitely not.

I'll hop on adventure games at some point soon too, next in line there is Day of the Tentacle.

Revisited the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare campaign, but this time on my Xbox 360. As someone who had only played this on PC before, I was pleasantly surprised with how well the controller works in the 360 version. Aiming is easy and intuitive, with just enough assistance to make it non-frustrating, while leaving plenty of freedom for the player to manually go for headshots and such. Awesome implementation, and I understand now why the game sold millions of copies on this console.

Graphics still hold up nicely, considering when this game was released and its target platform. Best of all, I haven't noticed any major frame rate drops during the entire campaign. In comparison, CoD4 was fairly taxing on contemporary PC hardware, as can be seen in this video where it struggles to maintain 60 FPS on a Q6600 + 8800 GT even at 720p, unless you turn down some graphical options.

Anyway, I had a blast going through the campaign again. I think it actually works better when played on a big screen TV instead of a PC monitor. Feels more cinematic and immersive that way.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-06-17, 11:00:

Revisited the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare campaign, but this time on my Xbox 360. As someone who had only played this on PC before, I was pleasantly surprised with how well the controller works in the 360 version. Aiming is easy and intuitive, with just enough assistance to make it non-frustrating, while leaving plenty of freedom for the player to manually go for headshots and such. Awesome implementation, and I understand now why the game sold millions of copies on this console.

Graphics still hold up nicely, considering when this game was released and its target platform. Best of all, I haven't noticed any major frame rate drops during the entire campaign. In comparison, CoD4 was fairly taxing on contemporary PC hardware, as can be seen in this video where it struggles to maintain 60 FPS on a Q6600 + 8800 GT even at 720p, unless you turn down some graphical options.

Anyway, I had a blast going through the campaign again. I think it actually works better when played on a big screen TV instead of a PC monitor. Feels more cinematic and immersive that way.

I tried to play this game for the first time two years ago, on the PC. Not the Remastered version, but the original.

I found the gunplay pretty boring and quit after the amusement park flashback level.

appiah4 wrote on 2025-06-17, 14:34:

I tried to play this game for the first time two years ago, on the PC. Not the Remastered version, but the original.

I found the gunplay pretty boring and quit after the amusement park flashback level.

That's arguably the best level in the game.

So if you didn't like that one, the rest of the campaign likely wouldn't have been much of an improvement.

Sombrero wrote on 2025-06-17, 08:13:

I'm up to my usual summer shenanigans, nothing heavy or hard to get into, just easy to pick up and play games. […]
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I'm up to my usual summer shenanigans, nothing heavy or hard to get into, just easy to pick up and play games.

- Completed or what I call completing Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit. I don't like the police chases so I always skip them and stick with the Tournament/Knockout modes. Fun as always, my favorite NFS.

- Completed the career in Need For Speed 4: High Stakes, or Road Challenge as it is called here in euroland. What a stupid name, High Stakes is the name for a race event in career so why on earth they wanted to change the name of the game to something else?? Idiot marketing people. Anyway, as always, I enjoy the career right up until I reach the last two cups, especially the North American Tour starts getting pretty far from fun with their night/backwards/mirrored/weather on messes with AA/AAA class car. My personal favorite is the one with two 8-lap winter themed tracks with weather on, what a pain in the butt.

- Currently playing FlatOut 2 for the first time. Seems pretty fun, though as someone who prefers clean races I need to be in the right mood for it or else I might blow a fuse playing it, the game clearly embraces the chaos. I just wish it had a way to choose what music track it plays, Megadeth/Audioslave/Rob Zombie are all very much my jam but Papa Roach/Nickelback/Fall Out Boy and such are definitely not.

I'll hop on adventure games at some point soon too, next in line there is Day of the Tentacle.

nice choices, i liked both flatout games for their rough arcade feel - but sometimes there is a bit too little in the way of grip in the handling! fun. While i enjoy most NFS games i have been enjoying the 2003 NFS Underground on PC lately - sure it gets samey in terms of tracks and i guess its fairly compromised playing with keyboard controls yet somehow it seems balanced in difficulty, handling and so on

gerry wrote on 2025-06-17, 14:59:

nice choices, i liked both flatout games for their rough arcade feel - but sometimes there is a bit too little in the way of grip in the handling! fun. While i enjoy most NFS games i have been enjoying the 2003 NFS Underground on PC lately - sure it gets samey in terms of tracks and i guess its fairly compromised playing with keyboard controls yet somehow it seems balanced in difficulty, handling and so on

I revisited FlatOut 1 during winter and soon came to the conclusion there is something wrong with the car upgrade system, the more I upgraded the harder the game got. The car got harder to drive and the opponents got unproportionally faster. And because it won't let you take out the parts you've bought I couldn't pinpoint what upgrades caused it.

After a while I just gave up, started a new game from scratch and basically flew into easy victories the entire game with none or very few upgrades. No idea what is up with that, it's otherwise a fun game. Thankfully the sequel doesn't seem to suffer from the same problem.

I completed NFS: Underground once back in the day. I don't think it blew my mind or anything back then but I do remember having fun with it. It's on my list of games to revisit at some point, been sitting on it for years already.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-06-17, 11:00:

Revisited the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare campaign, but this time on my Xbox 360. As someone who had only played this on PC before, I was pleasantly surprised with how well the controller works in the 360 version. Aiming is easy and intuitive, with just enough assistance to make it non-frustrating, while leaving plenty of freedom for the player to manually go for headshots and such. Awesome implementation, and I understand now why the game sold millions of copies on this console.

Interesting perspective, I could never get used to the controller, felt very disconnected and awkward. Any time I played any shooter at friends / relatives (Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3 + TV), I had trouble seeing things as well as on PC monitor, split screen mode was especially awful.

Currently playing Operation Flashpoint: Resistance. My favourite game of all time, played it since release. ENDLESS amount of things to do & so so many mods.

I just finished *twice* the Early Access of Psycho Patrol R which has a surprising amount of content in it already. Looking forward to seeing the rest of the game get finished.

SWZSSR wrote on 2025-06-18, 03:52:

Currently playing Operation Flashpoint: Resistance. My favourite game of all time, played it since release. ENDLESS amount of things to do & so so many mods.

i played the original operation flashpoint a lot, i used to like setting up scenarios as challenges, sometimes just survival challenges - ai and aiming are pretty good, it's not easy to survive! i did that with the first two arma games too.

I can't stop playing Heroes of Might and Magic III on my Android tablet, thanks to VCMI. It's like I've fallen in love all over again.

Completed the career mode of FlatOut 2.

I expected and hoped for a decently fun little racer when I got it from GOG during a sale, but turned out that <2€ I paid for it got me one of the most fun racing games I've ever played! Or "racing" in quotes really, this one is just about the polar opposite of typical butt clenching clean tryhard racing, it's all about embracing the fun of it and the spectacle of what happens when you drop eight lunatics on to a track filled with obstacles, jumps and A LOT of random loose crap and let them go nuts. Hint: for two thirds of the game it awards you with way more money for bullying other cars than for fastest lap.

I've never seen AI opponents anywhere near this bonkers, not only do they give the same homicidal treatment to everyone on the track equally, not just piling on the player, but they are also highly prone to have accidents on their own. Opponents flying into trees, houses, walls and everything else you can see on the track. It's complete chaos!

And you are very much part of that chaos, slamming into obstacles that are clearly meant as traps, opponents nitro boosting right at you from behind, getting randomly flipped by loose crap that are everywhere. You are going to pop a vein if you go in wanting clean racing, this is anything but that. Expect "accidents".

Such chaotic randomness could get extremely annoying, but that has clearly been taken into account. Majority of the game is easy, I think you only need to be on top three in total points to unlock the next batch of cups/cars and opponents basically never go through a full cup without having a bad race or two in the mix. Also as mentioned they are accident prone, numerous times I saw the leading car ahead of me having a spectacular crash during the final stretches of the race basically gifting the win to me. Saw it happen a little too often really, I started to smell deliberate theatrics occasionally.

And to add to the theatrics the game does also have one of the most, if not the most obvious rubber banding I've seen. I normally hate that in racers, but this game is so chaotic and random it kinda needs to be there. Driving on the first place and then suddenly getting flown into a pizzeria with a sofa on top of your hood just because you drove over some tiny junk the street was littered with could get a tad annoying if that would be race ruining. It works both ways though, the speed the opponents can catch up with you is pretty shenanigans.

The soundtrack sucks for the most part though. Majority of them I begrudgingly tolerated but I started to hate two songs in particular with such passion I looked into ways to fix that. I made a mod that replaces almost the entire soundtrack with the good stuff™, improved the game massively. No more some incredibly annoying emo screaming into my ears. Only left the songs from Audioslave, Megadeth and one from Rob Zombie from the original soundtrack, those are great. Racers really ought to have a mandatory feature to add your own music in if you ask me.

Highly recommended to everyone who are looking for a fun casual racer and aren't afraid a fender bender or two. Or two thousand. Taking the time to replace the OST also very recommended unless your taste in music is awful. The current GOG version also still works on WinXP, it doesn't have EAX effects but it does have DirectSound HW accelerated positional audio.

Decided to try Max Payne 3 on my Xbox 360. For some reason, I never played this game before, despite being a fan of the first two. Time to rectify that.

First impressions are kinda mixed. Taking Max Payne out of New York and putting him in South American night clubs just doesn't feel right. They also ditched the noir aesthetic and replaced the stylish visual novels with in-engine cutscenes. On that note, there's one of those after practically every fight, which feels a bit disruptive. In terms of gameplay, it looks like the devs couldn't decide if they were making a cover based shooter or a bullet time run and gun. So you have to mix and match between both approaches, which sometimes feels clunky. On the plus side, the controls are pretty smooth and kinda remind me of CoD, albeit with a slightly different button layout.

I like that they got Max Payne's original voice actor to reprise his iconic role. Also, it's nice how they occasionally reuse the main theme from the first two games. But the writing and atmosphere are very different here. So far, the plot feels more like GTA and less like Max Payne, though I'm still not very far into the game. We'll see how it goes, I guess.