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Dalisclock

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I've started playing Command & Conquer: Rivals.

I'll give credit where it's due, there's more strategic depth than one would expect from a mobile game. Still, it IS a mobile game, so that means a grindfest (unless you do microtransactions), and limited strategic depth...yet somehow, more strategic depth than Tiberian Twilight. 0_0
I honestly don't remember anyone ever talking about it. I just remember it coming out and that being it. Also it was a mobile game so lost immediate interest after that.

I also didn't play Tiberian Twilight either, because everyone said it was awful. I liked Tiberian Wars though
 

Hawki

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I honestly don't remember anyone ever talking about it. I just remember it coming out and that being it. Also it was a mobile game so lost immediate interest after that.

I also didn't play Tiberian Twilight either, because everyone said it was awful. I liked Tiberian Wars though
I'm more sympathetic to Tiberian Twilight than most, but to be frank...yeah. It's pretty bad. Really can't recommend it.
 

happyninja42

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Been playing more of both Prey and Remnant: From the Ashes.

Starting with Remnant.

This game is really strange. It's like Souls meets Diablo 2. Randomly generated maps that have different zones tied to them, that may/may not spawn that iteration. Specific bosses tied to those subzones, with unique loot. So if you are trying to get a certain bit of gear, you will be rerolling the maps in Adventure mode, to try and get the right events to spawn. It's strange, to be feeling that D2 spawn churn while playing a souls game. Otherwise, it's fine I guess. I'll give it that it has an interesting cross section of NPCs to talk to, and interact with. I've got like 10 different npc's that I can talk to, compared to like zero in other games of a similar design. The plot feels more defined as well. Mechanically it's still a breadcrumb trail like most of the "Go to Location A and do Thing 1, there you will learn to go to Location B and do Thing 2" repeat. I found a sword/ring combination that makes melee combat really funny. The sword will inflict the burning effect on the enemy for 10 seconds, can stack 3 times, and the ring will inflict bleeding on the enemy for 30 seconds, stacks 3 times. Both effects are triggered by doing a heavy attack, which I usually do, so I'm just letting my enemies die from dots, and it's amusing. I also have a hammer that I sometimes use, that has an aoe smash effect on heavy attack....which will cause everyone in the blast to be inflicted with bleed...and it stacks 3 times so...yeah it's kind of hilarious.

Prey:
So that clipping on terrain bug I mentioned before, has literally killed me twice now. Snuck into an area through a vent, got spotted by the aliens as I tried to sneak around and explore, couldn't get through the gap to escape, got squished. That's REALLY fucking annoying. I rarely experience bugs that severe, where they are more than just graphical, or audio gliches of some kind that make for odd/funny moments. This...this makes being a sneaky bastard a less appealing strategy, simply because I can't reliably count on a safe mode of travel.

Also, the amount of switchbacking this game forces you to do, to try and learn about some of these side missions, is really starting to grate on my nerves. To open this door in Location A, you need a keycard from someone that works in Department X, however nobody from Dept. X is alive, and none of them are anywhere near this zone. They're all over in Location G, however to get into location G, you need to have a keycard from someone in Dept. 37, and the closest one of THOSE assholes is currently dead, and floating in space, in an area that you can access, because of a hull breach...that you need to have Hacking 4 to get to, or Repair 3...and you also need to have this other thing. It's just...this increasingly frustrating nesting doll of barricades in my way, to try and do the fucking missions they put in my face. I like the game on a lot of levels, but in others, it's a rather frustrating cluster of obstacles, for no reason that I can see, other than to just force you to wander all over.

Also, a feature that I find neat, but also kind of frustrating, is the fact that various aspects of the automation of the station, happen at fixed time stamps, determined by IRL time on your computer. Like how if you want to get into the morgue, you can just wait until the top of the hour for one of the Operator bots to go in there to do it's job, and follow it inside. Neat, that's really cool, and rewards the player for reading emails and learning that. I suspect there is something similar to an area that is currently blocking my entry, but the time stamp indicated is something of a problem...it's only ONE time. Basically, the area I need to get into, shows a sign clearly indicating "Official Stuff Happens at 7pm" So, given the precedent established by the morgue thing, I assume that at 7pm, some robots will come through, and I can sneak in with them or something. The problem is...I can't guarantee that I'll be playing at that time on any given day. So it's hard to try and literally schedule my Prey time around that one time stamp, when I have 2 cats that seem bred to demand my attention the SECOND I press "Start Game" on any video game, a wife, and other things that draw my attention. So yeah, it's a bit of an annoyance. The game is still really good, and I enjoy how much it reminds me of Thief and Deus Ex, but it's also got some janky funk as well.

Like, ok so now that I think about it, there are a few other things that are definitely bugs that are detrimental, and one that is just weird. Several times I've encountered invisible flames. There is, based on the audio cues, a gout of flame burning away out of a nearby pipe....but the visual element didn't load in. This would be fine if it was just an audio glitch but it's not. The flame is real, and will cook your little butt. Also, I had a corrupted operator, who, based on his alertness bars, did NOT know where I was, somehow, magically zip across the map at full speed, to the spot I was hiding in, and instantly agro and become alerted. I have zero idea how he got to that state, but it was incredibly annoying.
 
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Chupathingy

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Finished Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice's story mode. A fun, solid game overall, but the sniper/gunner missions and sections really bring down the enjoyment whenever they pop up, and it felt like this game had way more of them than the first. Boss battles were also mixed. They were certainly bigger and crazier, but some of them just felt like a slightly more complex whack-a-mole, and one of them was basically a DPS race.
 

gorfias

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Probably got it with a Humble Bundle. The camera just makes the thing a mistake to play.

 

happyninja42

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Probably got it with a Humble Bundle. The camera just makes the thing a mistake to play.

It stole the title of one of the greatest early 80s animated films for a game that it seems has nothing to do with The Last Unicorn. 0/10

Beat Remnant: From the Ashes last night. It was meh. Got annoyed that the final boss is entirely ranged combat to fight...and I'd built myself for melee. I get it game, you like being Soulsy but with guns, but if you're going to also let people build for melee, you should allow for that method of combat when fighting bosses. I guess I could've theoretically used a single sword I had, that has a ranged component to it. but that amount of damage would be suuuuper slow, and the vulnerability of the boss is based on how long it takes you to pile on enough damage.

Ending was about what I expect from a Souls game, hours of play, ending cutscene that lasts maybe 60 seconds, credits.

*EDIT* Also, another thing I just remembered about Remnant, is that on at least 2 occasions (3 now that I think more closely), you run into NPC's who have some very specific things to say about the person in charge of their planet. It's the same premise. "Hey, the person in charge of this planet is an asshole, and they are subjugating us. It would be REALLY neat if someone got rid of them...wink wink." Ok so, I go do that, and indeed, they are assholes. But, upon committing regicide, and theoretically liberating these people from a tyrannical leader....they have NOTHING to say on the matter. At all. No items, no new area unlocked, hell not even a "holy shit! thank you so much hero!" comment. It's as if it didn't happen.
 
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BrawlMan

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Samurai Showdown (2019). God, I love this game. I tried Baiken (Guilty Gear) and Hibiki Takane (Last Blade 2). They are both fun, and the latter I did an arcade run. I love this game, because it's one of those fighting games that are not about high combos (they can exist), but knowing when strike or block properly. My only complaints are the online is terrible, and that the final boss has that SNK boss syndrome if you put it on any difficulty above 2. In my arcade runs, I usually put it at 1 or 2, just so I can enjoy myself Funny enough, regardless of difficulty, if you beat the final boss without losing, you get special artwork of the character. The first time I did this, I had my favorite character, Darli Dagger. I managed to beat the boss without losing any rounds and did it on Normal mode.

I wish other fighting games had the Iron Man feature: where you face 100 ghost players from everyone online. That is a cool feature that needs to be in more fighting games. Hibiki has a "good" route and an "evil/psychopath" route depending on how you play. Constantly doing Weapon Losing Specials or Super Special causes her to go down the psychopath option. This is a gameplay and story integration that was done in her home game, I did not know until after completing her good route. I'll be getting back in to swing and try some more story modes with different characters.

The only DLC character I don't have is Warden from For Honor. He looks okay, but I have little interest in purchasing him. If I do, it's just for the sake of completion.
 
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AnxietyProne

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Samurai Showdown (2019). God, I love this game. I tried Baiken (Guilty Gear) and Hibiki Takane (Last Blade 2). They are both fun, and the latter I did an arcade run. I love this game, because it's one of those fighting games that are not about high combos (they can exist), but knowing when strike or block properly. My only complaints are the online is terrible, and that the final boss has that SNK boss syndrome if you put it on any difficulty above 2. In my arcade runs, I usually put it at 1 or 2, just so I can enjoy myself Funny enough, regardless of difficulty, if you beat the final boss without losing, you get special artwork of the character. The first time I did this, I had my favorite character, Darli Dagger. I managed to beat the boss without losing any rounds and did it on Normal mode.

I wish other fighting games had the Iron Man feature: where you face 100 ghost players from everyone online. That is a cool feature that needs to be in more fighting games. Hibiki has a "good" route and an "evil/psychopath" route depending on how you play. Constantly doing Weapon Losing Specials or Super Special causes her to go down the psychopath option. This is a gameplay and story integration that was done in her home game, I did not know until after completing her good route. I'll be getting back in to swing and try some more story modes with different characters.

The only DLC character I don't have is Warden from For Honor. He looks okay, but I have little interest in purchasing him. If I do, it's just for the sake of completion.
Only played the first one. Is Charlotte still part of the roster?
 

BrawlMan

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Only played the first one. Is Charlotte still part of the roster?
Yes.

Compared to the other characters, he looks bland as hell. Like, if you bought a "make your own fighting game" program, he'd be the included default.
Waste space. Him, and that white haired fox girl look totally out of place. They should have just gotten another character from SS64, one the other 3D titles, or a guess character from Soul Calibur.
 

Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)

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I have been playing Pokemon Shield and it is pretty fun. Considering some of the negative stuff I've heard about the game I'm surprised how much I've been enjoying it. Although I have not cleared the store yet although...
I find it weird the plot technically begins in act 3, like there's some minor stuff relating to it but doesn't pick up until the end
 

Hawki

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Started playing TF2.

It's a bunch of screaming maniacs played by screaming maniacs engaging in wholesale slaughter without rhyme or reason. Which, as far as I can tell, is true to the setting.

I'll stick with it for awhile, but not a fan so far. I'm inclined to say I like Overwatch more, but the games feel so different, I don't think it's even a good comparison, even if OW did take inspiration from TF2.
 

laggyteabag

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I think it sticks out more with Hawke. (S)he is supposed to be this big prominent figure, and swing in all the major political circles. The Champion of Kirkwall! And nobody can see that they are plainly an apostate mage. Plus the fact that Hawke is the character that everybody speaks to makes it really egregious when characters go "Grr, them mages amirite Hawke?"

Also Anders is a Grey Warden, and so is governed by another authority rather than the Chantry.
Okay, yeah, after playing this game more, it really does stick out like a sore thumb.

Again, whilst im not convinced the game would be much different even if Hawke was a Warrior or a Rogue (Bethany is also an apostate in Act 1, Templars try to go after Dalish mages like Merrill, and Anders left the Grey Wardens - not that many Templars ever really cared in the first place), it is really bizarre how much you interact with friendly Templars (even in combat) who appear none the wiser that you have just been shooting flames from your fingers, and lasers out of your eyes, or whatever.

I just helped Knight-Captain Cullen fight some demons, and afterwards he starts talking about how mages cannot be trusted, and all of them should be watched - especially after the events of DA:O, where he advocated for the entire Circle of Magi to be destroyed - and yet here he is, being all friendly to you, despite the aforementioned laser eyes that he conveniently did not see.

I love the concept of the distrust between the mages and the templars, and I love how the conflict escalates throughout DA2's story, but from a gameplay perspective, Hawke's party's actions in combat completely undermines the story, and many of its characters, especially because this plotline is so central to the game's story.
 

Drathnoxis

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Okay, yeah, after playing this game more, it really does stick out like a sore thumb.

Again, whilst im not convinced the game would be much different even if Hawke was a Warrior or a Rogue (Bethany is also an apostate in Act 1, Templars try to go after Dalish mages like Merrill, and Anders left the Grey Wardens - not that many Templars ever really cared in the first place), it is really bizarre how much you interact with friendly Templars (even in combat) who appear none the wiser that you have just been shooting flames from your fingers, and lasers out of your eyes, or whatever.

I just helped Knight-Captain Cullen fight some demons, and afterwards he starts talking about how mages cannot be trusted, and all of them should be watched - especially after the events of DA:O, where he advocated for the entire Circle of Magi to be destroyed - and yet here he is, being all friendly to you, despite the aforementioned laser eyes that he conveniently did not see.

I love the concept of the distrust between the mages and the templars, and I love how the conflict escalates throughout DA2's story, but from a gameplay perspective, Hawke's party's actions in combat completely undermines the story, and many of its characters, especially because this plotline is so central to the game's story.
Dragon Age 2 is a game full of concepts and ideas that could have potentially been good if the game had been given a decent development time. Setting the game in a single city that we see develop over the course of 10 years.? Great, except the city doesn't change at all, nobody ages, and everybody stands in the exact same place for a decade waiting for you to turn in quests. Having a protagonist of humble origins that works their way up to being the Champion of the city? Great, except the progression is extremely clunky and unsatisfying, and in the end nobody listens to you and you don't really do anything to influence the main conflict. Having a conflict between the oppressive Chantry and the downtrodden mages? Great, except the Templars are 100% right and both sides are complete morons. Every mage you meet will transform themselves into an abomination at the slightest provocation, even when doing so runs exactly contrary to their goals. Also what's with those sections where Hawke pick up a random object out of a junk pile and omnisciently knows who it belongs to, then delivers it with only a single line of thanks from the recipient and receives a little bit of pocket change. So bizarre.

Dragon Age: Origins was in development for like 7 years and Dragon Age 2 got 16 months. Maybe with a decent development time the game might have been able to do something with all its big ideas. There's a reason this game was the last game I've every played published by EA.
 

meiam

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Great, except the Templars are 100% right and both sides are complete morons. Every mage you meet will transform themselves into an abomination at the slightest provocation, even when doing so runs exactly contrary to their goals.
I always liked how humorously silly this was. Like you'd have a mission where you're trying to save these mage so you leave them saying you'll fix everything, bullshit the Templar to leave and just turn around to see they're all using blood magic without a second though.

The game was relying on two tropes hardcore without bothering to establish them, 1) oppressed people are always in the right and 2) the sin of the oppressed people all belong to the oppressor. Bioware changed their writing style (possibly due to EA acquisition), before they'd establish storyline that would naturally comfort to tropes, if DA2 was built like that then mage would rely on blood magic/demon when they'd literally have no other choice, rather than it being their first option in every cases and some of the mages you'd meet would never use blood magic even in the worse cases. But instead new bioware writing just assume the audience is not really paying attention and will just accept the tropes without thinking about the event happening, to really drive this home they make the Templar cartoonish evil. I think the most obvious example of that is the kid in ME3, they don't establish him at all and yet expect him to carry emotional weight in the dream sequence and the ending, because kid = pure is the usual trope.

Anyway, I'd like to chide the mage for they're behaviour in the game... but at some point in the game a demon offer you some free skill/talent point in exchange for sacrificing a kid and my mage Hawke totally did that, so you know...
 

Dalisclock

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I think the most obvious example of that is the kid in ME3, they don't establish him at all and yet expect him to carry emotional weight in the dream sequence and the ending, because kid = pure is the usual trope.
Yeah, I still wonder WTF was up with that. Not anyone Shepherd knows or cares about, just some random kid Shepherd met once for less then a minute. But man, I'm supposed to care about this one random kid in a war where billions are dying. And Look, I have a kid, I don't like seeing kids suffer at all, but this felt like a cheap play for sympathy or something on Biowares part.

I shot that little punk in the head the first time I met him, mostly because I didn't like the 3 options, felt this whole setup was fucking dumb and wanted to vent my frustration. I got the "Everyone Dies" ending.

Worth it.

And I still maintain it's a better ending then "RED/GREEN/BLUE", as in more fitting, not happier.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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Played the first couple levels of the Quake Remaster. I’ve only ever played about as much of the series in general years ago, but in hindsight the more recent session gave me a greater appreciation of what the IP did for the shooter genre. It established fully 3D polygonal “mouse look” environments with light maps, netcode for multiplayer, where clever use of the physics engine led to an incredibly high skill ceiling with things like strafe jumping and rocket jumps. It also used an engine that supported mods which ultimately led to other ground breaking games like Team Fortress and Half-Life.

While it unfortunately had a turbulent development cycle due to creative differences, leading to most of the team at id resigning after release, it does nothing to tarnish its legacy.
 
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Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
Ended up playing Paladins again, pretty fun.

Also playing Quake remaster on Nightmare.
 

happyninja42

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Just beat the base game of Prey (2017). Really enjoyed it. I liked that it took into consideration a lot of the choices I made, even fairly small ones, in the resolution. It's got some serious fucking jank to a lot of the mechanics, more than I'm personally used to, that at times, would seriously impact gameplay. But it wasn't regular enough to be a huge issue, and it wasn't frustrating enough to outweigh the overall fun I had playing it. I got a few achievements that I was hoping to get, that are fairly rare according to steam's metrics, and one that I wasn't sure about when I saw it come up, but made sense considering. I'm seriously debating starting it up again and playing a different playstyle, at least as far as skill progression goes. It was strange, I made a choice with the skills that the game acknowledged with some lines of dialogue, but there was no achievement tied to it. Which felt a tad odd to me. Not a big problem or anything, frankly I prefer it being in the game as an observed behavioral choice than an achievement, but it is the kind of thing that usually IS an achievement. Solid fun game for anyone that loves Deus Ex, or System Shock or Thief, more the first 2 than the last though.

By the end though, I felt kind of amused at how I would do combat. You can basically get food and use that to heal injuries, slowly, over time. Well, because I played as stealth, I rarely was injured , so I basically never used medkits, and subsisted entirely on food healing. But, you get SO much food if you are being a diligent gatherer, so much so, that by the end, I think half my inventory was filled with GIANT stacks of food. And when I knew I was going into open combat, I'd scarf down a huge stack of them to bring by my health, get the health regen going, and then pop my combat senses (bullet time), and charge into battle. And every time I felt like this first 30 seconds or so.

 
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