xjas wrote:

sale now - Lara Croft: GO.

Have you tried getting the other "GO" games? There's a Hitman based one too. I think even the Deus Ex reboot series has one as well...?

Finished the main quest of Lara Croft: GO. Wasn't able to stream it because my internet has been completely hosed by an unrelated bandwidth-sucking project for the last little while, but I had fun. Apparently Lara was seeking one of the hypercubes from Fez.

Highly recommended! It's so rare that I just sit down and play a game until I beat it, this was pretty refreshing. There's probably less than 6 hours of gameplay here, but considering it was $2.50, I'd say that was pretty good value. There was even a boss "fight." I still have a couple of extra quests / "New Game+" type stuff I can go through and a few more things to unlock, which is good, because I want more.

DracoNihil wrote:

Have you tried getting the other "GO" games? There's a Hitman based one too. I think even the Deus Ex reboot series has one as well...?

Nope, but I didn't know this series even existed until now. Gonna have to check out the rest. I love this type of puzzle game & thought this one was really well done.

Lara has some swank Hitman & Deus Ex outfits you can unlock in this game. Makes sense now...

And yes, I will go update the streaming announcement thread! Have been meaning to get back to it, but I've had a lot going on.

Just finished Dangerous Dave's Risky Rescue after messing with it for a couple of days.

I think I might have played the first Dave game back in the day but I definitely didn't know about the sequels. Boy, these are fun, or, as someone wrote on their blog:

It’s a series of glorious victories separated by long stretches of blissful frustration and rage. I adore it, but if you can’t stand a lot of trial and error, you may want to stay away. If you don’t mind dying a lot and retrying the same level over and over, though, the triumphant glee you’ll get at the end is worth it.

There's something to say for a game that'll really make me jump up and shout "AWW C'MOONNN!!"

These death scenes are form the second game, but the third one has them too:

Daggerfall Unity

Fixes lots of bugs and (un)fortunately also removes the easy exploits (maybe those were bugs as well?) the original Daggerfall had.

henryVK wrote:

These death scenes are form the second game, but the third one has them too

Ha I love these!

Well, after a long search I seem to have found an open world RPG to obsess over during the Christmas holidays – I was starting to worry that my child-like sense of joy and wonder had finally been extinguished by the grinding, glacial pressure of modern life.

Too dramatic?

Anyway, Outward is ticking all the right boxes so far but I almost dismissed it based on the reviews. It’s a pedantic, slow moving affair with some eyebrow raising gameplay mechanics; the main one being that you can’t save / re-load - it auto saves as you go and if you die it takes some of your stuff and dumps you into various locations / situations. You have several survival mechanics to deal with (too hot, too cold, hungry, tired, wounded, upset tummy, etc), the nights are DARK, your character is weak as a kitten, etc, etc. Combat is challenging but enjoyable (so far). There is strategy to it and you have to manage your stamina – I suspect it will only get better as skills are learned and better weapons are gained. Exploration is rewarded and that's a great thing in my book.

It's the work of a small team who used the Unity engine, so it’s not a graphical powerhouse. In saying that I think it looks beautiful – great art direction, lighting, and a colourful, interesting world. Character models are serviceable and there are basic weather effects / day night cycle. There are several graphical options to mess with, notably an in-game FOV slider which is a big deal for me. My only complaint is that the AA option doesn’t do much, but combining it with reshade (LumaSharpen / SMAA) did the trick.

The music is the best I’ve heard in a long time – not your standard fantasy stuff and changes to match the environment / combat / etc. The lines that are voiced are good, or at least not bad. Strangely only parts of the dialog are acted, the rest you have to read and it’s not consistent - sometimes half the response will be voiced, sometimes the voice acting doesn’t match the written dialog word for word, and other times the voice actor will just grunt or give a generic response. This is the sort of oddity that will annoy some but which I can overlook because there’s so much else to like.

If you’re a fan of the Gothic games or similar then this might be for you, but I suspect it will be a love-it / hate-it type deal.

Playing one of my favorite late 90s fantasy games Magic & Mayhem from Mythos Games. Never came close to finishing it back in the day and it's a casual pick-up-and-play style game. Installed the v1.1 patch and it still runs great on Windows 7 64 (I don't use any OS newer than that). If you have never played the game you can still download the demo and try it out.

Mythos Games gave away some of their old ZX Spectrum games on their now defunct website and you can still grab them on the archived website @ archive.org.

https://web.archive.org/web/19980129011542/ht … om/download.htm

Currently playing StarCraft: Brood War on my Windows 98 SE vintage gaming PC.

I will admit that I'm not really into RTS games - FPS, platformers, arcade racers, that's more my thing. When StarCraft was released in early 1998 I was very reluctant to buy it at first, but since it was done by Blizzard (the creators of Warcraft and Warcraft 2 at the time) I decided to give it a chance - and was not disappointed. It was essentially warcraft 2 in a SciFi setting and with a significant storyline of its own behind it; reading the manual alone was like reading a mini Science Fiction Novel. I actually had a lot of fun playing it for the first time back then. When the Brood War expansion was released in late 1998 I went for it on the spot; once again I was not disappointed - the additional storylines made it even more intriguing and epic than before.

I've since replayed Brood War several times, mostly on Win9x based PCs, and continue to enjoy it greatly. It's one of those games that gives me both a complex SciFi story and believable characters with more twists and turns than you can shake a stick at. It was also one of Blizzard's last crowning glories IMHO; after Warcraft 3 they've been on a serious (and apparently unstoppable) downhill slide.

I'm having an absolute blast with Outward but still feel like I'm just getting to know it, despite having played it for many hours. It's an action RPG / survival hybrid but so far I've focused mainly on the survival side of it - understanding the crafting system, figuring out what equipment works best and when, managing my inventory, etc. That stuff usually leaves me cold but it's all so well done here and really is required to survive the wilds, so it's a big part of the experience.

The fighting system seems clunky at first but again, it takes time to get to know your weapon of choice and to work out how to prepare for fights - i.e. what items you need in your limited pocket space, what to apply to body / weapon before a battle, etc. I'm using a combination of pistol (one-shot musket type thing) and a 'Brutal Club' at the moment. Bows are also a good option for some enemies, and it's important to put your backpack down before a fight so that you can dodge more quickly. But don't forget to move your bullets into your pocket! You can't reload if you've left them in your dropped backpack.

And the seasons change too which was unexpected but very cool. Over the course of a day or so winter set in, which means you'll catch more colds and even freeze to death if you're not wearing the right attire / drinking the right potions. All of these mechanics annoy me historically, but somehow it's fun and satisfying here. The reviews made this game sound unfriendly but it's quite the opposite.

I just got done with Rayman Legends:

It is a modern 2d platformer, that in some ways is more similar to modern side scrolling mario games than to classic rayman games. It has really great move mechanics, time trial levels, and stuff to collect. Plus, I can play it with my kids, which is probably my biggest determinant for why a choose a game right now.

If you like the genre, I recommend it. I sunk probably 25-30 hours into it. A ton of fun.

I have also started playing the game that came before it, which is Rayman Origins. It is fun too, but they are a little too similar and I am a little burnt out on the formula right now. Probably come back to it later.

@badmojo - thanks largely to your posts here, I've at least added Outward to my GOG wishlist. Looks promising. But I've got likely many more months of Wizardry to play (transferring my party from 6-8). 😀 I'm knee-deep in Wizardry 7 (DOS), probably about 30-40% into the game and I've already put in 74 hrs! I have to say that Wizardry 6-8 is probably my all-time favorite RPG experience. A small recap: my first experience with Wizardry was Wizardry 1 on the Apple II. I never finished the game, but as a teenager it was pretty immersive and hard-core. I did play a little Wizardry 7 when it came out in '92 but it was too challenging without the internet and clue books. Then in 2001 I played Wizardry 8 and had the best experience of my life with an RPG. So back in September of this year, I started a game of Wiz6 with the idea of transferring my party all the way through to Wiz8 and replay it. With the help of the internet and cluebooks, I finished it in 111 hrs and transferred my party over. Wiz7 is even more fun, and I already know how good Wiz8 is, so looking forward to that experience! There is something about these games that feed a need in my OCD, and many others have had the same experience. Through my internet searches, I've found many people who have played and replayed these games for hundreds of hours, trying different combinations of parties and different strategies. It's one of those kinds of games. I just love building up my party, giving them diverse strengths to complement one another in combat. There's so much below the surface and it really is best played as a single party transferring through from 6 to 8. Looking forward to many more months. I'm guessing another 80 hrs in Wiz7, then another 80-100 hrs of Wiz8 before I move on to another game.

Doom (2016). It is the most fun I had with a shooter since Doom (1993). It is also dirt cheap on the Steam sale you should all buy and play it.

@clueless - I've been looking for an RPG to play on my Win98 machine and Wizardry 8 looks pretty awesome; they're all 80% off on GOG ATM too as it happens.

badmojo wrote:

@clueless - I've been looking for an RPG to play on my Win98 machine and Wizardry 8 looks pretty awesome; they're all 80% off on GOG ATM too as it happens.

You may want to start at Wizardry 6 and 7, although they are clunkier games for DOS.. For Windows 98 I would also suggest Might & Magic VI and VII.

Ta yes I did look at 6 and 7 but I don't think I'll have the patience for them to be honest - I don't usually do squad / turn based games and by the sounds of it pouring over hint guides, etc is required for the older ones. Not a bad thing in general, just not something I have time for ATM.

badmojo wrote:

@clueless - I've been looking for an RPG to play on my Win98 machine and Wizardry 8 looks pretty awesome; they're all 80% off on GOG ATM too as it happens.

badmojo wrote:

Ta yes I did look at 6 and 7 but I don't think I'll have the patience for them to be honest - I don't usually do squad / turn based games and by the sounds of it pouring over hint guides, etc is required for the older ones. Not a bad thing in general, just not something I have time for ATM.

Yeah, Wiz8 is the best of the lot by far. Graphics are good enough to almost be considered modern, the soundtrack is incredible, love the voice acting banter of the player characters (though some may find them annoying - you can turn them off), great auto-map and pretty much every other modern CRPG convenience. There's a great pair of Matt Chat interviews with Brenda Romero where she talks a lot about Wizardry 8, its development and the atmosphere at Sir Tech at the time. They're about 25 minutes each, so not a huge time investment.
Matt Chat 233: Brenda Romero on Sir-Tech
Matt Chat 234: Brenda Romero on Jagged Alliance and Wizardry

Bodacious - what sort of PC requirements are we talking for Wiz8? I had a google around a 233Mhz Windows 9X machine seems to be minimum but what of a 3D accelerator? Required?

Thanks again.

I've been back to playing Unreal 1 again and hard at work with all the mods and maps I have planned to make.

I'm vastly improving the custom console I made for myself in Unreal 1 with features I didn't originally think would work correctly.

One of which is a "quick zoom" that overlays a zoomed in window in the centre of the screen:

Getting Battlezone II(TM)(C)ACTIVISION(R)1999(TM)(TM)(ATARI(R) vibes from that and the zoom rect (could use some kind of curvy bar to the side of the weapon graphic as ammo)

leileilol wrote on 2019-12-28, 08:03:

Getting Battlezone II(TM)(C)ACTIVISION(R)1999(TM)(TM)(ATARI(R) vibes from that and the zoom rect (could use some kind of curvy bar to the side of the weapon graphic as ammo)

This is still just my Console's PostRender overlaying ontop of whatever HUD being used, in this case the standard UnrealShare.UnrealHUD class.

The "quick zoom" is more inspired from Mechwarrior 3 and 4 though. Both of those games used a "Picture-In-Picture" approach to zooming your view rather than zooming the entire view like Mechwarrior 2 did.

badmojo wrote on 2019-12-28, 06:36:

Bodacious - what sort of PC requirements are we talking for Wiz8? I had a google around a 233Mhz Windows 9X machine seems to be minimum but what of a 3D accelerator? Required?

I believe 3D acceleration is required. Recommended minimums are Win95, 233MMX, DX6 with D3D, Glide or OGL, and 8MB graphics memory. I've never played it on less than 1Ghz though, with either GF3 or Voodoo, so I have no idea how it will run at 233Mhz. I'm curious, let me know how it goes. 😀