... and speaking of tank controls and lots and lots of backtracking...

Resident Evil!

I'm giving it a go for the first time ever. I've just finished cd1 of RE2 on the Dreamcast and after playing cd2 for a bit I've decided to go back to PS1's RE1, as I gave up on it 'cause the zombies were giving me a hard time and I couldn't get past the first 15 minutes of the game 😖 buuut I've discovered the Director's Cut and its Training (a.k.a. wuss) Mode and now it plays like a pretty chill adventure game 😁

gerry wrote on 2026-03-09, 10:00:

I started Doom3 and have played a few stages - it is still and impressive looking game in my view and makes good use of lighting, shadows, sound and texture. The game itself is good too, a departure from Doom 1 and Doom 2 but in retrospect it works well as a sci-fi horror survival shooter. Its a game where the visuals overpromise though, lots that you do not interact with at all despite looking like you should be able to - still, i liked the PDA and voice recordings thing, that added story and background to it, the disorientation effect when hit feels more realistic. the base itself makes no sense at all 😀 some rooms have deadly exposed machinery! everything is essentially a path, like half life, giving the impression but not the actuality of a large complex. still a fun game, perhaps not as memorable as original Doom though

Also Return to Castle Wolfenstein , with this game i really like the environments - the mix of castle, compound, base and the heavy machinery of the period. the game play itself is fine, i much prefer the levels without supernatural stuff but its all entertaining fun

I've enjoyed both of these games. Somehow my memory of the specifics of RtCW environments is very vague, even though I've played it far more recently. It's a general blur of the mix you mentioned, and I remember the boss encounters had some challenge to them.

Doom 3 did a better job creating in-game suspense with the voice acting and ambient sounds. In RtCW you are mostly reading the history between missions, and there are some cutscenes. Not surprising, considering Doom 3 is newer.

badmojo wrote on 2026-03-09, 11:50:

I've always thought that F.E.A.R out DOOMed DOOM3.

Yes, in some sense. They have a different vibe altogether. Doom 3 is all about jumpscares in the dark. F.E.A.R. gives you a genuine feel of uneasiness at times.

Bloodborne

My trip to Byrgenwerth was very short, as there was little to do there besides fighting the boss. And boy, was that huge spider annoying. Not so much on its own, but mostly due to the gazillion smaller spiders that were protecting it. I summoned an NPC hoping he would distract the smaller ones, but that guy was practically useless. So I just had to tough it out on my own, dodging around the big spider and its minions, and dealing damage when it was reasonably safe. I even tried pulling out a torch, thinking it might scare the smaller spiders as in DS2, but nope. It took a fair bit of effort to bring that thing down, but I managed somehow.

I then got teleported to the Unseen Village. This area was very irksome due to the fact that most enemies would respawn indefinitely until their summoners were killed. And those were often hidden from view, so I could hear them, but had to actively search for them. Didn't like that at all. The area boss was kinda meh. I summoned an NPC for distraction, then sprinted upstairs to get rid of the "cheerleaders" who were healing it. After that, I just poked that thing until it dropped. Pretty underwhelming.

Since I got the key to the Upper Cathedral in the previous area, I decided to go there next. This was a relatively small place, but it surprisingly housed two bosses. The Celestial Emissary was another one with a bunch of regular enemies guarding it, but it was a pretty easy fight. The Daughter of Cosmos was tougher, but still not that difficult for my build. I will say that I don't enjoy these "beast" type fights in Bloodborne as much as the humanoid bosses from DS3 (e.g. Pontiff Sulyvahn, Ornstein, Nameless King). Mechanically, it's somehow less satisfying. But I guess DS3 is hard to top in terms of boss quality.

I decided to finally get a new (gaming) laptop after 5-6 years of sticking with my previous one. That laptop was truly a workhorse... it was top-of-the-line when I got it, and its 1050ti graphics card managed to run most games at 1080p with mostly high graphics settings without a hitch.

However, the system really started to show its age over the last year or so. I really don't care about AAA games, but it was really starting to struggle with some games I really wanted to play (Tainted Grail and Cyberpunk 2077 come to mind). It was also starting to have some trouble with some websites, and I noticed the fans kicking in more and more often. Finally, although I did extend support for Win10, I eventually will need to switch to Win11 for work due to customer requirements. And of course there are the crazy prices we've seen lately for RAM and storage, and these prices are likely to just continue to rise over the next year or two, so it seemed like it was the right time to upgrade.

ANYWAY, I spent an enjoyable weekend getting everything set up (including debloating Win11; it actually runs quite nice with all the garbage turned off)... and of course playing lots of games!

AMID EVIL
This is my favorite of the "boomer shooter" renaissance games. It's most comparable to Heretic, though it has its own look and feel. The game had been updated to support ray tracing and is comparatively small, so this was my test game for the new system. To be honest, I don't think the ray tracing makes much of a difference in this one, though it does look good.

Cyberpunk 2077
I had played through the (lengthy) prologue on my previous system, but had been forced to use dynamic resolution at 30 fps just to make the game playable... so I decided to just restart from the beginning. This game sure does look good. There's a new "overdrive" ray tracing mode that everyone seems to love, but I couldn't stand it; it relies on both dynamic resolution and frame generation, and the latter just ruined the experience for me. I ended up switching to a mix of low/medium ray tracing, and thought the game looked much better.
I ended up getting through the entire prologue over a few days, and I'm not yet sure what to think about this one. I love the setting, and I like how you can hack stuff in real time during combat. I found the combat, however, to be somewhat annoying with bullet-sponge enemies all over the place (it's ridiculous to require 3-4 headshots to kill some random thug). I was also annoyed at the LONG barely interactive part at the end of the prologue, where you are basically just holding forward and watching the game playing itself.
Anyway, now I'm a the point where the game sort of opens up, so I'm looking forward to it!

Necromunda: Hired Gun
This is another game that my previous laptop really struggled with. It's a first-person shooter but has some RPG elements (leveling up, sidequests). It's a surprisingly frantic shooter that feels like the classic FPS games, but you have some really fun mobility options like running on walls and sliding. Likeable.

Wolfenstein: The New Order
This actually ran perfectly fine on my old laptop, but I never finished the game, and it was sitting there in my Steam library. This game is a lot better than I remember, with some great weapons and overall a nice feel. It's definitely a game of its time, with plenty of cinematic set pieces where you basically just hold forward and occasionally press E to interact with something to transition to the next set piece, but there is some fun combat in between. So far, so good.

newtmonkey wrote on 2026-03-09, 18:04:

Cyberpunk 2077 I had played through the (lengthy) prologue on my previous system, but had been forced to use dynamic resolution […]
Show full quote

Cyberpunk 2077
I had played through the (lengthy) prologue on my previous system, but had been forced to use dynamic resolution at 30 fps just to make the game playable... so I decided to just restart from the beginning. This game sure does look good. There's a new "overdrive" ray tracing mode that everyone seems to love, but I couldn't stand it; it relies on both dynamic resolution and frame generation, and the latter just ruined the experience for me. I ended up switching to a mix of low/medium ray tracing, and thought the game looked much better.
I ended up getting through the entire prologue over a few days, and I'm not yet sure what to think about this one. I love the setting, and I like how you can hack stuff in real time during combat. I found the combat, however, to be somewhat annoying with bullet-sponge enemies all over the place (it's ridiculous to require 3-4 headshots to kill some random thug). I was also annoyed at the LONG barely interactive part at the end of the prologue, where you are basically just holding forward and watching the game playing itself.
Anyway, now I'm a the point where the game sort of opens up, so I'm looking forward to it!

Ray Tracing is VERY much optional in CP2077. The game looks great with traditional lighting, reflections and shadows as well. Once there's anything happening, it's not really very noticeable.
As for the barely interactive parts of the prologue... It's supposed to function to a certain extent as a tutorial, and how jarring it is, will depend somewhat on which background you choose. Corpo is the background that makes BY FAR the most sense lore/story wise. Also, I've seen many people complain about the "gunplay" of the game. I personally don't like FPS games, so I play on easy difficulty and focus on the story, and RPG aspects of the game, and while they aren't always as good as one could've wished, the setting more than makes up for it. Also, there are some really great side quests throughout the game. I have 269 hours played so far, and the first 80 or so was the playthrough before Phantom Liberty came out. I will warn though, that depending on how you choose to progress through Phantom Liberty, you may run into the most annoying part of the entire game, as at a specific point it turns into a survival horror game for a while, with scripted death events if you are spotted by a certain enemy. It's so annoying and tedious I've actually never managed to force myself through that part. And since that enemy isn't possible to fight (i.e. it is immortal and if it spots you, there is not fighting, you just skip to a cutscene of you getting killed) I'm not really inclined to bother finishing that part.
Overall though, while the game is flawed in many ways, I still think it's one of the most impressive sci-fi games ever made. Then again, I'm biased, as I am a big fan of the cyberpunk genre since seeing movies like Blade Runner, Johnny Mnemonic and similar as well as reading books like Neuromancer and Snow Crash and so on when I was fairly young. It's just my kind of sci-fi hellscape 😜

Unpopular opinion: I liked the base CP2077 more than Phantom Liberty, mostly cuz the add-on broke my Malorian Arms 3516-based "RoboCop" build that allowed me to see & hit enemies behind walls. It also reduced the role of clothing to pure aesthetics - before the update some clothing items boosted your base stats. So yeah, CDPR dumbed it down a bit more, pushing the balance from 'action RPG' towards 'dumb shooter' a bit further. But hey, it's still one of my favorite games ever!

Bloodborne

The Nightmare of Mensis was a somewhat annoying area, with more giants hurling boulders from across the map, and a bunch of those brainy enemies that cause frenzy buildup when approached. On top of that, it had a very disappointing boss fight. In my view, Micolash is comparable to DS1's Bed of Chaos in terms of gimmicky design. You basically chase this guy through a labyrinth of corridors while skeletons keep respawning all around you. He didn't even attack 95% of the time, and just kept running away. The Benny Hill theme would have been an appropriate song for this boss. 😁 Anyhow, since I'm pretty close to the finale now, I went to do the DLC stuff before finishing the game.

The Hunter's Nightmare was an alternate version of the Cathedral Ward. I liked this, since the area layout was somewhat familiar, but still quite different due to the changes in architecture and the different enemies. Ludwig was a really good boss, and had an epic music track too. I summoned an NPC for backup, but she died half way into the fight. Still, she helped me get through the first phase, which I found more difficult due to his flurry of fast attacks. But once Ludwig pulled out the Moonlight Greatsword, dodging became much easier for me. And while he dealt a lot more damage now, I could avoid his strikes more reliably. After a while, I got him staggered, and then finished him off with one last critical hit. Pretty awesome fight, definitively one of the best so far.

Can't really say the same for Laurence. He was basically a reskin of the Cleric Beast, with some lava spam moves added in the second phase. No summons here, so I soloed him while trying to avoid the lava as best I could. His constant screeching during the entire fight was getting on my nerves, so I was very glad when he finally kicked the bucket. Also, the runback to his arena was awful, mostly because of the huge guy with the axe. And with that, I think I'm about half way through the DLC.

revolstar wrote on 2026-03-09, 12:07:

... and speaking of tank controls and lots and lots of backtracking...

Resident Evil!

I'm giving it a go for the first time ever. I've just finished cd1 of RE2 on the Dreamcast and after playing cd2 for a bit I've decided to go back to PS1's RE1, as I gave up on it 'cause the zombies were giving me a hard time and I couldn't get past the first 15 minutes of the game 😖 buuut I've discovered the Director's Cut and its Training (a.k.a. wuss) Mode and now it plays like a pretty chill adventure game 😁

Congrats, the original is amazing!

If you have a gamecube or a PC, the Resident Evil REmake makes the original pale in comparison.

My favorite is still RE 3. Hope you'll play the entire OG trilogy eventually. They still hold up.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-03-11, 19:30:

Bloodborne

Laurence is probably the toughest boss in NG+. I had to generate and clean some crazy chalice dungeons just to get the best gems and get a damage boost. Even after that he killed me some 20 more times.

Wolfus wrote on 2026-03-12, 07:21:

Laurence is probably the toughest boss in NG+. I had to generate and clean some crazy chalice dungeons just to get the best gems and get a damage boost. Even after that he killed me some 20 more times.

Interesting. I imagine both his damage output and health get upped in NG+ and I can definitively see how that would increase the challenge even further.

I did find Laurence harder than Ludwig in the regular game, mostly due to the lava pools which made dodging more difficult and could disrupt my strikes if I accidentally moved into them during the weapon swinging animation. Also, some of his attacks had a deceptively long range, and would sometimes hit me from a distance that I didn't expect. His big charge paired with the lava pools also cornered me a few times, and I had to scramble to get away from the wall. In terms of gameplay mechanics, I enjoyed the Ludwig fight a bit more, despite it being easier.

i've been trying to 1cc Shock Troopers 2nd Squad with Lulu, one of the characters that don't clear the screen. almost there

xcomcmdr wrote on 2026-03-11, 21:02:

My favorite is still RE 3. Hope you'll play the entire OG trilogy eventually. They still hold up.

Aye! My plan is to hopefully also play RE3, Code Veronica, and RE4 sometime soon.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-03-12, 07:39:

I killed Ludwig on first try in both NG and NG+. Same with Maria. But Laurence... I hate that guy 😅 I am too weak for bosses like Gael, Midir or Orphan. Never soloed them. My solo skill peaks are Malenia, Artorias or... Laurence 😆

Wolfus wrote on 2026-03-12, 23:52:

I killed Ludwig on first try in both NG and NG+. Same with Maria. But Laurence... I hate that guy 😅 I am too weak for bosses like Gael, Midir or Orphan.

I didn't find Gael to be that difficult, though he was mechanically a very interesting boss, and the one that I enjoyed fighting the most. But as always, it might depend on one's build, gear and play style. Midir was the hardest for me by far, due to his insane amount of health and highly damaging attacks. But he's beatable if you learn his moveset and don't use lock on too much, as the camera can get messed up due to his size.

In my view, using a fast weapon like a straight sword helps a lot with the optional/DLC fights. I beat every boss in the main game up to Nameless King with the Claymore, but it was just too slow for him. Switching to the Lothric Knight Sword made all the difference for me.

P.S.

After getting stuck on Nameless King, one of the things that motivated me was watching this girl beat him using a dance pad. 😲 To be fair, she's probably one of the best Soulsborne players out there. So I figured, if she can do it like that, I should be able to beat him with a normal controller. And after a few more attempts, I did. 😄 BTW, she beat Midir and Gael on a dance pad too.

dr_st wrote on 2026-01-23, 19:32:

Finally finished The Witcher, after playing it off and on for about a year.
Debating whether to move on to the sequel, or finish the extra modules of the Enhanced Edition first, while the mechanics are fresh in my memory.

Playing off and on, I've now completed the two "premium modules" of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition as well as 3 of the 5 community adventures in the Platinum Edition. The other two have some crash / lockup issues on my PC, I don't feel like debugging them, and in any case have had enough of the game at this point. Time to move on.

I've shared my overall opinion on the game here. The premium modules are quite similar in quality, although obviously shorter - each basically consisting of a single quest in a single location + optional side quests. The voice acting added in 1.4 makes them feel no different that the main game. Unfortunately, the community adventures never got the voiceover, so their immersion effect is lower, even though the adventures are of comparable complexity - with branching decision paths, and different endings. Of all the side quests - I prefer "The Price of Neutrality" most of all as it is the only one to introduce a new location and a new major character absent from the main game.

I'm putting my playthrough of Unreal on hold, about 40% into the game, and have returned to GTA: San Andreas. 7 years ago I put that game on pause for God-kn0ws-which-time, having gotten stuck on the "Learning to Fly" mission, specifically where you have to circle the airstrip flying through coronas. No matter what I did - I just couldn't control the plane properly. Now, thanks to a couple of tips found online, I've learned how to do it, and it didn't take me too long to master it enough to pass the challenge. The rest of them took considerably less time to figure out - and in the end I got 100% in all of them. 😎 Now I can continue the game, and, hopefully, finish the story missions this time.

Bloodborne

Lecture Hall had some annoying enemies that could stunlock me with their flurry of attacks or two shot me with their thrown projectiles. Not to mention cupboards randomly exploding as I passed by them and a myriad of ledges that I could fall from. Yeah, I wasn't exactly a fan of this place. Living Failures was a fairly difficult fight for my build, mostly due to their magic spam, which sometimes came from off screen. Also, I didn't like how the whole area darkened just before the meteors would hit, as that made it harder to see and dodge them. No NPCs to summon here either, so I had to deal with all these things solo. I managed to beat them by constantly buffing my weapons with lightning damage, and trying to mostly attack the magic users. Can't say I particularly enjoyed this fight.

Lady Maria was pretty challenging for me, but at least her fight was a fair one on one. No NPCs for me and no minions for her. I could parry her attacks well enough during the first phase, but not so much after that. She was very fast, and while I could temporarily stunlock her with a bunch of quick strikes, she would punish any mistake severely, and could kill me in just a few hits if I mistimed my dodges. After about 6-7 failed attempts, I finally managed to beat her. Really good fight. She kinda reminded me of Friede from DS3, or should I say vice versa, since Bloodborne came out first. In any case, it felt immensely satisfying to get the win here.

Fishing Hamlet dragged on a bit too long, and had some very nasty enemies. In particular, those shark giants with fishhooks were ridiculously strong. And the Orphan of Kos was an extremely hard boss battle. On par with DS3's Midir in terms of difficulty, at least for me. I died over a dozen times here before beating him. Had to look up some guides for that. During phase one, I baited his jump attack and then went for a backstab, as shown in this video.

Phase two was even harder. I popped a beast blood pellet and then tried to stay very close to him while dodging and countering when I saw an opening. If he jumped away, I ran toward him since those wide area explosions that he fires off at range were much more deadly. The key during this phase was to play locked off as much as possible. What ultimately did him in was my "strategy" to strike relentlessly while he was charging the lightning attack. I didn't bother dodging the lightning and just took the hit to maximize my damage output, then healed up right after. That silly approach somehow worked, and I finally beat him! 😄 Well, I guess that's it for the DLC. Time to finish up the main game.

I've been testing out my new PC so I played a ton of games this week, some to enjoy finally being able to play them maxed out at >60fps, others just to see if they were broken on Win11. Here are my brief thoughts on some of what I played:

Alaloth: Champions of the Four Kingdoms
Intriguing! This is a new one I bought this week. It's basically an open-world action RPG from an isometric/overhead perspective, with combat sort of similar to the Dark Souls games. You start out alone, but can find companions throughout the world. You have the basic campaign mode, but there's also a somewhat experimental mode where you compete with other heroes (controlled by the computer)... sort of similar to the adversary parties in Wizardry VII. I haven't tried that mode, since it's meant as an added challenge for people who have already played the game, but it's very interesting. I've only given the game a brief play, but I'm intrigued and will keep it on my HD. I really need to sit down and put some time into it.

Space Hulk: Deathwing
I remember this game getting savaged back in the day, but it seems really cool so far. I'm a sucker for quirky, convoluted FPS games, and that describes this perfectly. You're stomping around in heavy battle armor giving commands to your teammates, equipped with unbelievable firepower... but your enemies are extremely fast and deadly. It's not the kind of game where you rush in and slaughter things, but instead have to take things slowly and get used to the interface. It sort of reminds me of System Shock, though the games really are not much alike. The atmosphere is also impeccable.

System Shock
I have the Nightdive remaster, but read conflicting things about how accurate it is. I know these guys are quite beloved for their remasters... but I also know that they've gone in and changed stuff like level designs, so I just don't trust them, at least not for a first playthrough of a game. So, it's back to the DOS version ("Classic" on Steam). I dropped in DOSBOX Staging, as it's a really nice fork with some great options. Unlike the bundled version of DOSBOX, it worked without any fiddling.
I've never got very far into this game for some reason. This goes back to playing it back when it was first released. I don't know why, every time I play it I absolutely love it, but then I get sidetracked at some point and stop playing it. Hopefully 2026 will be the year of System Shock for me!
I must say that I love how this game controls. It's quirky and very complicated at first, but once you put a bit of time into it, it just makes sense. It's basically WASD (just on different keys) with a bunch of additional movement options, but the game is complex enough that it deserves such an interface, considering it's a combination of a shooter and adventure game.

It makes me think of how sometimes a game today comes out and it doesn't control or feel like what people expect, and they just assume the game is garbage. I've always felt that one of the things we've lost with modern games is having to figure out a game's quirks, because every single game now plays exactly the same. I get a lot of enjoyment out of figuring games out, and I like how System Shock controls and plays nothing like Doom, even though they are both "FPS" games. I suspect this is also why Space Hulk: Deathwing may have been so heavily criticized; it kind of looks like some kind of Call of Duty game or whatever, but it sure doesn't play like one, and you need to sit there and put some time into figuring out its quirks and how the game is meant to be played.

LunarG wrote on 2026-03-10, 09:06:

Ray Tracing is VERY much optional in CP2077. The game looks great with traditional lighting, reflections and shadows as well. Once there's anything happening, it's not really very noticeable....

It definitely does look good even without ray tracing, but damn does it look good with ray tracing enabled... it's like the technology was made for this game, with its rain-slicked streets lit by neon lights. My "complaint" is more with the "overdrive" path tracing mode, which basically requires frame generation just to function. I just don't see the appeal; maybe it looks amazing on a supercomputer.

Anyway, enough of ray tracing! I actually do like FPS games, and I think the gunplay in Cyberpunk is fine. It's stat-based, of course, since it's an RPG, but it feels more skill-based and satisfying than, for example, the Borderlands games. Enemies do tend to take more bullets than they should, but I don't think it's a big deal, especially since you have other options (hacking, etc.).

I'm also a big fan of the genre (love Neuromancer and Snow Crash, too), and so far this game just nails the feel of cyberpunk. I tend to get annoyed with modern open-world games, but now that I've finished the prologue I'm really having a blast. I even often choose not to fast travel, but instead just walk or drive around, soaking in the atmosphere and exploring the city.

Bloodborne

Finished! Mergo's Wet Nurse reminded me of Pontiff Sulyvahn from DS3, due to the shadow/clone mechanic. But with the powerful gems from the DLC slotted into my weapons, she went down relatively easy. Gehrman was very strong, and I struggled against him quite a bit. I tried a few different things here, including a combination of parrying and quick strikes. In the end, I beat him similarly to how I tackled Maria from the DLC. If you get Gehrman close to a wall, he is unable to dodge backwards, and becomes susceptible to stunlock, which ultimately sealed his fate. The Moon Presence was a bit of a pushover after that. I just circled around it and hammered away when I saw an opening. Got it on the first try.

Final thoughts: Bloodborne is an amazing game, and I can definitively see why it's the favorite FromSoft title for many people. Personally, I would rank it just slightly below DS3, because the bosses in that game were a bit more to my liking. That said, Bloodborne's combat is really good, the dodging mechanics are superb, and the area design with all the shortcuts is excellent and very reminiscent of DS1. In summary, this game is well deserving of the praise that it gets, and I really enjoyed it.

newtmonkey wrote on 2026-03-13, 19:10:

System Shock
I have the Nightdive remaster, but read conflicting things about how accurate it is. I know these guys are quite beloved for their remasters... but I also know that they've gone in and changed stuff like level designs, so I just don't trust them, at least not for a first playthrough of a game. So, it's back to the DOS version ("Classic" on Steam). I dropped in DOSBOX Staging, as it's a really nice fork with some great options. Unlike the bundled version of DOSBOX, it worked without any fiddling.
I've never got very far into this game for some reason. This goes back to playing it back when it was first released. I don't know why, every time I play it I absolutely love it, but then I get sidetracked at some point and stop playing it. Hopefully 2026 will be the year of System Shock for me!

I am a huge fan of the remake. Keep in mind I've beaten the original DOS version twice, and it is one of my favorite games of all-time. I am seriously considering a second playthrough of the remake whenever I'm done with KCD2.

Here is my quick take on the differences between the original and the remake: Nightdive definitely captured the look, feel, and sounds despite the level design differences and creative differences they have. At first, I was pissed that they abandoned the original soundtrack and moved away from the General MIDI sounds. But the new soundtrack grew on me. It definitely is more subtle, but keeps the original flavor, just refines it. Same can be said of the map layouts. In some areas, it seems identical, but in other areas, not. But in all cases, the flavor remains. You are reminded of the same level in the original game.

So I'm hoping you can make it through the DOS version, then make it through the remake. I'd love to hear your thoughts comparing the two.

BTW, I completely agree with your thoughts on the controls of the DOS version. Once you get it down, you feel "one with the machine". 😉