What game are you currently playing?

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dosgamer000
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Re: What game are you currently playing?

Post by dosgamer000 »

As mentioned before, I've been playing a lot of Shadow Warrior. Finished the original game and I'm currently working on finishing Wanton Destruction again. I had to restart my whole playthrough however because the source port I was using messed up on me and the saves got corrupted. This problem has (so far) been resolved after getting rid of it and installing an older version without this glitch. The restaurant and air plane levels are probably some of my least favorites in the expansion because they are so small and you often end up hurting yourself when using explosive weapons. You may think that using the grenade/rocket launcher in a small area is a bad idea but in this game, sometimes it's a better option than just running in and killing all the uzi wielding ninjas that chip away your health to nothing if you're not fast enough. Admittedly, I am not very good at Shadow Warrior and I have more experience in dealing with Blood's cultists. IMO, the best level in Wanton Destruction is probably Monastery and the second best is Military Base. The first secret level, Redwood Forest, is also nice although I wish it's "forest" was more like Dark Woods of the Serpent in appearance.
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Re: What game are you currently playing?

Post by Tchernobog »

I love the look of the restaurant level and the general idea of the airplane one, but you are right in saying that they are not very much fun to play, and for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Monastery is undeniably one of the best designed levels in the entire game.
Now that I own Classic Redux I should give the entire Shadow Warrior campaign another playthrough at some point again I think. At some point. :phantasm:

I have kind of stopped playing games lately as the weather has finally improved to the point I can start working outside improving the farm again, but I did get this video I captured out on how to beat a powerful necromancer with just one Improved Invisibility spell in Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition:


The reason I had so much trouble with the fight is that Lavok casts Improved Mantle on himself which makes him immune to all weapons bellow a +4 or better enchantment, which is beyond what I had available in my party. By casting Improved Invisibility on Valygar I was able to attack first and stay hidden until the Improved Mantle spell wore off, causing Lavok to be completely unable to target Valygar and in the end completely helpless to him since he was able to stay invisible throughout the entire course of the fight.

I literally went through just about every plausible scroll in my mage's scroll case before discovering this, so it really did seem like an accomplishment to me at the time. :banghead:
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Re: What game are you currently playing?

Post by VGames »

Been playing Warhammer Vermintide 2. Freaking awesome game. A must for anybody into coop games like Left 4 Dead.
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Re: What game are you currently playing?

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Yesterday I finished the last official Shadow Warrior expansion pack, Twin Dragon, that I am aware of. Unlike the last time I played it, I was able to actually find the location of the secret level, Prison Camp, which has it's entrance exit placed oddly in the second to last level. Although the level itself felt kind of strange and almost out of place compared to Hung Lo's Fortress, I thought it was still pretty cool. I don't have much to say about the final boss, Hung Lo, other than it's a Zilla reskin and he's fought in an area with less space compared to Zilla. If I had to compare the boss levels/fights of Wanton Destruction and Twin Dragon, maybe Wanton Destruction was better. Shadow Warrior had a lot of cool looking levels although I wish there were more supernatural/dark side based levels. Dark Woods of the Serpent had that kind of feeling and it felt almost like a descent into Hell itself. I'm not asking for Doom in Shadow Warrior but in the story, Zilla apparently used the dark side in his quest to take over Japan. I am assuming the dark side means demons and entities like the Rippers, Guardians, Coolie Ghosts, and Serpent Gods. Also, I would've liked it if Stone Rain's volcano base part was longer than just a hallway that lead up to Zilla. An underground cave with flowing lava and crystals would've been cool but either way, I like most of the levels in Shadow Warrior. Not sure what game I'm going to play next though. I haven't finished Doom's Plutonia and I don't really want to either. Maybe I'll play through Blood again.
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Re: What game are you currently playing?

Post by Tchernobog »

dosgamer000 wrote:Maybe I'll play through Blood again.
Vanilla or do you want to try BloodGDX just to shake things up a bit?

I built Reflection Keen the other day on my brother's new ThinkPad so that he can play the Catacomb Adventure Series natively on Linux without having to mess about with CPU cycles in DOSBox. Other than playing around with that a bit to test things out I still have not really had the time or energy to play any games as work on the farm progresses, although I have just gone through Kikoskia's original Ultimate Doom Let's Play since it required next to no effort from me. :-|

Oh, and my brother also just bought a new registration key for Bad Toys 3D from the original developer believe it or not. And people think my tastes are arcane. :bat:
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Re: What game are you currently playing?

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Tchernobog wrote:Vanilla or do you want to try BloodGDX just to shake things up a bit?
I actually downloaded the latest BloodGDX not too long ago but it didn't work with my outdated computer that I still haven't replaced yet. Maybe it's not my computer and just the possibility that I didn't update it with the latest Java. Then again, Java's website apparently isn't supporting Windows XP (or at least the Java program BloodGDX uses) anymore. Oh well. I've seen a few videos with BloodGDX online however and it looks pretty good. All this time we wanted a Blood source port or something similar and we kind of get it but now I just don't really care anymore. I'm not trying to be negative either because there is definitely too much of that in your average video game forum. I guess I'm just satisfied with DosBox. Wow, Bad Toys 3D? I remember playing that game a long time ago. It was very strange. Probably one of the more colorful Wolf3D clones.
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Re: What game are you currently playing?

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dosgamer000 wrote:All this time we wanted a Blood source port or something similar and we kind of get it but now I just don't really care anymore. I'm not trying to be negative either because there is definitely too much of that in your average video game forum. I guess I'm just satisfied with DosBox.
I am in kind of the same boat to be honest. I have a huge amount of respect for the work M210 has done, and having BloodGDX around is a huge boon for our community in so many ways, but the conservative in me still feels comfortable enough with DOSBox. But then I am quite happy playing the game at a dinky resolution on my CRT.
dosgamer000 wrote:Wow, Bad Toys 3D? I remember playing that game a long time ago. It was very strange. Probably one of the more colorful Wolf3D clones.
Actually the original Bad Toys, the black and white trial version for Windows 3.1x, was the first FPS game I ever played. The Doom shareware episode followed soon after.
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Re: What game are you currently playing?

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@Tchernobog I've played both versions of Bad Toys 3D. Kind of strange there are two versions with different colors.

I've stopped playing Shadow Warrior and started a new playthrough of Blood. The way I usually play the game is original levels > Cryptic Passage > Plasma Pak because unlike Plasma Pak, Cryptic Passage uses the original base and has no new enemies. I like to think Caleb's journey in get the scroll is after Blood but before Plasma Pak. But I got tired of playing the Way of All Flesh and I eventually started playing Doom WADs I never really got around to. Base Ganymede Complete and No End in Sight, specifically. The first one is okay but the levels are large whilst feeling kind of lifeless IMO. Finished the first episode but I had to cheat through the final level because the boss fight was just an another race/puzzle map that required you to constantly be moving in order to not get shot by the Spider Mastermind. After that, I had little interest in the other episodes although I will probably get back to Base Ganymede again. The second WAD, No End in Sight, is much better although there are a lot of secrets in most of the maps and they have obscure means of hinting their existence to the player. Or at least to me. The first secret level requires you to not kill some imps or else you can't get the red key that opens the door to the secret level and, not knowing this, I killed them. I had to actually jump to get the red key. Started playing the second episode and the level design in NEIS is pretty good and probably one of the better looking Ultimate Doom wads (2002: A Doom Odyssey is probably my favorite though).
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Re: What game are you currently playing?

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I was finally able to come back to Baldur's Gate II for a bit over the Victoria day long weekend.

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Considering that the only way inside Watcher's Keep is by being in possession of the Vigil Stone, how Jaheira was able to somehow catch up with me to harangue me about Harper business is a complete mystery. Regardless, I need her slot in the party for Yoshimo right now thank you very much... a dungeon needs a rogue.

Also, Unreal Gold is currently free from both GOG.com and Steam for the game's 20th anniversary.

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Re: What game are you currently playing?

Post by VGames »

I was gonna get Unreal Gold from gog but I figured if I didn't want to play it then then I probably would lose interest in it now. I got many games to play.

By the way God of War on PS4Pro is amazing. Probably one of the best games I've ever played. I'm not quite done with it yet but it never stops impressing me. I think it could definitely win GOTY in general. Play it if you can.
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Re: What game are you currently playing?

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Not exactly pleased with this puzzle; as someone who is red-green colour blind I found it quite difficult to differentiate between the blue and the purple:

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Then I went and killed my first dragon:

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Re: What game are you currently playing?

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A couple of weeks late but Unreal Gold is amazing. One of the best single player modes in an FPS IMO.
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Re: What game are you currently playing?

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dosgamer000 wrote:A couple of weeks late but Unreal Gold is amazing. One of the best single player modes in an FPS IMO.
I don't know, I am just finding myself unable to love Unreal the way everyone else says I should. The environmental story telling is neat and probably seemed really novel at the time, and while I can understand why the huge outdoor environments were such a draw in early 1998, they just don't work their magic on me the way they apparently do on everyone else. Granted I have never quite understood the appeal that mountains and canyons hold for people in real life; the fuss that is made over the mountain parks here in Alberta to the exclusion of everything else just demeans good honest farm land as far as I am concerned.

That off kilter rant over, the main thing that turns me off is the combat. Almost none of the weapons gel that well with me, a problem which also extends over to Unreal Tournament, which is one of the reasons why I have always vastly preferred Quake III Arena. Again, the way the enemies hop about the screen was very advanced at the time of the game's release, but for me playing the game now it is just a massive pain in the ass. Sure it is challenging, but it also makes the experience floaty and unsatisfying, more of a test of patience than skill not helped by the fact that every single enemy is a bullet sponge.

I was stuck on the "Bluff Eversmoking" map for two weeks before I finally unclogged it tonight. It is not that the puzzle itself is that difficult, I am just finding the game to be such a slog to get through that I did not have the motivation to get myself unstuck until now. As most tirades do this probably makes the game sound worse than it really is; by and large it is fine and even above average in parts, I just don't understand all of the superlatives it gets. I would much rather play Quake II, Shogo, or Blood II again than Unreal, and that makes me think I must be missing something.
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Re: What game are you currently playing?

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Tchernobog wrote:
dosgamer000 wrote:A couple of weeks late but Unreal Gold is amazing. One of the best single player modes in an FPS IMO.
I don't know, I am just finding myself unable to love Unreal the way everyone else says I should. The environmental story telling is neat and probably seemed really novel at the time, and while I can understand why the huge outdoor environments were such a draw in early 1998, they just don't work their magic on me the way they apparently do on everyone else. Granted I have never quite understood the appeal that mountains and canyons hold for people in real life; the fuss that is made over the mountain parks here in Alberta to the exclusion of everything else just demeans good honest farm land as far as I am concerned.

That off kilter rant over, the main thing that turns me off is the combat. Almost none of the weapons gel that well with me, a problem which also extends over to Unreal Tournament, which is one of the reasons why I have always vastly preferred Quake III Arena. Again, the way the enemies hop about the screen was very advanced at the time of the game's release, but for me playing the game now it is just a massive pain in the ass. Sure it is challenging, but it also makes the experience floaty and unsatisfying, more of a test of patience than skill not helped by the fact that every single enemy is a bullet sponge.

I was stuck on the "Bluff Eversmoking" map for two weeks before I finally unclogged it tonight. It is not that the puzzle itself is that difficult, I am just finding the game to be such a slog to get through that I did not have the motivation to get myself unstuck until now. As most tirades do this probably makes the game sound worse than it really is; by and large it is fine and even above average in parts, I just don't understand all of the superlatives it gets. I would much rather play Quake II, Shogo, or Blood II again than Unreal, and that makes me think I must be missing something.
I agree with some of what you say. The levels are large and epic but sometimes they can feel barren. One of the reasons I love Unreal Gold is because IMO it feels like a legit adventure. From the beginnings of the crashed prison ship all the way across Na Pali to the end of the game, it really feels like I'm right there in the game, if that makes sense. Maybe it's just me though. The music and ambiance was very important to this game and without Alexander Brandon/Michiel van den Bos' sound influence, it would've been worse. On the topic of mountain/canyon environments, although I like Unreal in this regard, my favorite maps are Terraniux Underground/Terraniux, which are sci-fi tech-base maps. I do wish more levels in Unreal were like that personally.

Yeah, some of the weapons don't feel all that strong. Aside from things like the Flak Cannon and Rifle, there is a sense of underwhelming power. The ASMD is absolutely broken with the amplifier but it doesn't do a whole lot of damage unless you do the alt fire/primary fire combo by shooting the ASMD projectile with the standard ASMD beam. The AutoMag, MiniGun, and GES BioRifle could've used a power buff. The enemy AI (specifically Skaarj) are annoying but thankfully they are mostly regulated to melee attacks as the projectile bolts are usually easy to dodge. IMO, most of the enemies in Unreal are easy to defeat except for the Skaarj. I agree with you about bullet sponge enemies, this goes back to our point about the weapons being underpowered.

No, I don't blame you for getting lost. I've gotten lost many times in Unreal and similarly in Hexen. The game doesn't flow as well as games like Doom, Quake 1/2, and even Blood 2. There is some linearity but it's not a straight path in most cases. Unreal's map design tends to be all over the place and attention to detail and use of the Translator Device is important. The temple maps in particular are annoying but the tech base levels usually are easier to navigate. IMO, the best thing Unreal does is give the sense of a grand FPS adventure in an alien world with great music, good ambiance, and flawed but mostly decent gameplay. Although the game would've been better if it's arsenal was more devastating and rewarding like how Quake 2's arsenal was. The closest thing Unreal Gold has to the Super Shotgun is the Flak Cannon and it feels good to use but not as good as the Super Shotgun. In fact, Unreal was supposed to have a four-barreled shotgun weapon (called the Quad Shot) but it was never included in the main game and despite being able to summon it in-game along with it's shotgun shells ammo, it isn't programmed properly.
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Re: What game are you currently playing?

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It is certainly not just you that feels Unreal is a grand adventure, and I can certainly see how someone could become engrossed with it if they were won over by the art and music design and by the exploration of the world. It is certainly the aspect of Unreal's presentation that is the most polished and distinct.

I should clarify though that I have only gotten really stuck two times so far while playing the game, and in both cases it was because I missed an underwater passageway I needed to go through in order to progress. By and large I have not been finding the level design that hard to navigate, it is just that when I do get stuck it helps hammer home the fact that I have not been having all that much fun. It is the same thing with the enemies, most are not all that hard to defeat but when I do get one that I have to slowly chip away at or pin down it just feels like the game is wasting my time.

I do also have to ask why when Unreal sent players into swamps filled with giant buzzing insects it was celebrated but when Daikatana did it the game was reviled, but I am just asking for trouble now. :P
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