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April 26, 2024, 01:01:39 AM

we're back, baby

Quote from: Yegolev on August 08, 2008, 12:25:46 PM

I started Planescape again yesterday.

I found it loaded onto my old notebook, with the disc in the drive when I was moving some stuff. Also have Fallout 1 or 2 on there. Might have to do some retro gaming leading up to Spore's release, nothing else motivating me right now (and not much time or money).

Also considering a trip over to GS to grab Civ BtS for FfH2 fun. Or installing the Overlord demo again to convince myself to drop the $10 on it.

I'm nearly done my first time through Planescape. You all weren't kidding about how amazing it is. I prefer Fallout 2, but only just.

After that, I need something for the new computer; I'm thinking either Bioshock, the Orange Box, or Gears of War. Probably the Orange Box.

Yeah, fuck you.

I gave Killjoy a tour of the Wii titles that don't suck since he's going to buy one. This means Mario Galaxy, My Life as a King and Boom Blox. I showed him Metroid Prime 3 as well and he seems to like it, so I sent it off with him. He wasn't fascinated with No More Heroes for some inexplicable reason, possibly because driving the bike around town sucks balls and I didn't get RASPBERRY CHOCOLATE SUNDAE. Also, he's a douche.

Otherwise I have been wifeless for the weekend and managed to get some Dawn of War time. It's been so long since I've played a RTS (basically when WarCraft III was new) that it's just awesome now. Today the boy and I are playing Mario Galaxy. He's become a really great P2, stunning enemies and gathering star bits with wild abandon.

I need to get on Planescape and finish it before GameTap goes under, otherwise it's the pirate's life for meeeeeee.

Crysis, now that my machine can kick the shit out of it.

It's rather fun, but has it really come any way since farcry ?

I'm not sure.

I liked Far Cry, but I'm a cheap bastard and waiting for the price to drop on Crysis. Broke as hell since I bought the house (just bought bedroom and living room furniture, great deals but ouch). Mentioned in the FfH2 thread that I've ordered Civ BtS, so going to dig into that until Spore comes out.

Meanwhile, jumped into some Mount & Blade for the first time. Wanted to try it out before release. Fun game, killed some looters, got taken hostage by some bandits, found a castle with several clones of my character in it and was confused. Took a quest to find cows - can't find cows. Got a better quest to train some peasants that ended in a bandit attack and that was definitely the highpoint, riding down bandits was a lot of fun, listening to the cries of the dying peasants as I chopped up stragglers outside the general melee. Then the game crashed. Ah, well.

Fired up Disgaea 2 to get ready for 3, and the FF Tactics remake on the PSP for when I'm stuck away from home. The slowdown sucks a bit on Tactics, and seems a bit worse than it was in the original version, but overall, loving it.

Ripping the FFT disc to a memory stick is the only way I could tolerate that game. Even then I only made it halfway through before I said fuckit and started playing Disgaea 1 again.

Finding logging in to MMO's just not igniting any enthusiasm at all in me (young children in the house eat up the chance for an extended play).

Spending time on Mount and Blade again.
Previously I've played it through a number of times and with the newish build 9.6 maybe being the last Beta build I wanted to try it out again.

Some of the more noticeable newer features are:
More Hero characters for you to have in your party. 24 now instead of the original 2 and later 5.
Slightly better Sieges.
Pretenders to the thrones of each faction.

First run through was with an imported character, so it wasn't long before I'd joined a faction and conquered a few Castles. By the way you can't have all 24 Hero types in your group as they don't all get along, I ended up with 8 who could live with each other and my style of play. These Heroes are found in the place that you'd expect to find them, propping up some bar in the various towns.
This all went very smoothly as even the raiding of the Castles was changed to allow for a faster victory (you don't need to kill all the occupants now. If you can take out a significant number in the attack, then it will grant a win, but then it wants you win a Keep battle with 3 of you versus 5 of the defenders, or in the case of a Town siege, you have to win a street battle as well as the Keep). There is still some annoying reluctance on the part of some NPCs to not go up the ladders quickly but you can tell your team to advance ten paces and if you stand under the ladder, get them to follow, then advance it solves this problem mostly.

All was going fine until I conquered my first Town and then my Liege decided to piss me off and gave my hard won victory to some slacker who hadn't even helped in the campaigns that led to the capture, so I took the decision to be offended and renounced my allegiance. This causes your own properties that were gained under this fiefdom to be forfeit, and unfortunately I had many of my best troops stationed in my Castle, so I had to fight off some of my old friends with a fairly weak group. This is still not a big problem as this character is almost Godlike as he was leveled up in previous versions of the game. Still it's kinda frightening when you are being chased by six parties each with over a hundred troupes against my paltry thirty five that I had left after that last siege.

At this point I decided to try and get revenge on the King by usurping his throne. You can now do this by finding and then helping out one of the pretenders to the throne (ask a Traveller in the Inn and they can provide the location of these for a small fee).
One of the things I'd recommend doing before you try this is to gain some favour with the Nobles in that faction that you want to usurp, that way gaining their loyalty during this next stage is going to be smoother and you won't have to buy their friendship with gold too (this service is provided by the new Lady NPCs found hanging around the Courts. You have to win their favour a little before they will help you, usually by duelling some Lord who's tarnishing her good name).
I became aligned with Lady Isolla of Suno and found it a bit strange that she actually became a member of my party and I was more or less given all the powers that the King/Queen usually has, including deciding who gets what Castle, Town and Village that we seized. Anyway, it was fun being basically the King and having this cute Noble in my party who was a strong fighter and only wanted one denar a week. We gathered up the Castles and some Nobles joined our cause without a fight. I tried using the argument that she was the rightful Queen to the throne, but some Nobles still sided with the King, so I ended up stealing their Castles as recompense.
All was fine until I took the last Castle and then Ta Daa... Nothing happened. Hrmm tried finding the last of the upset Nobles to persuade, but nope wasn't happening. Waited for a couple of weeks game time and still nothing. I must of bugged the quest by not getting their loyalty before taking all the property off them. Oh well I decided to renounce my help and Lady Isolla vanshed for a while and I became the Lord of the Rebels of Swadia.
Went on to Conquer some more but decided it was too easy and made a new character from scratch to see how it was from a complete new player point of view.

The training ground that you find when you first start is not very easy, but does introduce a few of the basics. Archery was the one part that I couldn't get very advanced at in the initial training and I don't recommend spending much time here anyway.
Character creation has changed a little from previous versions, with a few more choices to your past that affect your new characters starting position. Overall I like the changes but some might still find it a bit hard at first. Especially the first few actual fights outside the training zone.
I rolled a character that was gonna be a non mounted Monk, wielding nothing but a staff and some throwing knives. I later changed to a Bow because the sieges were going a little rough in basically a Habit with no shield and a bald head for protection, so I needed to take out a few at range or I was minced up real fast, and throwing knives don't come in very large packs like arrows. On a side note though, there's nothing more fun than slinging a dagger into the face of a charging Knight and catching him right in the throat

I thought it would be about the weakest group I could make with all my Heroes similarly armed and dressed.

First thing to do is gather up some gear and hopefully get a few companions. Small groups of Sea Raiders are the perfect solution to the gear and money problem.
They are tough to beat as a straight up new player, but once you get the better of them, they drop very good loot and give great exp.
Then once you have some cash you head to all the town's taverns looking for the Hero companions and gathering some recruits from the farms or as freed prisoners.
Some of the quests I'd avoid early on are the ones that Nobles give involving villages, because you will end up with a negative reputation with that village and then you need to do some tasks for them before you can recruit new ~~fodder~~ soldiers. Some of the quests they want doing are pretty horrible too, like the go get some Cattle quest that has you running to other villages and you have to enter the village and talk to the Elder and buy cattle, which then needs to be steered back to the village you are helping, which itself is not that bad, but these cattle can rob you of all your money very quickly.
The other Nobles quests are fine for now, like messenger runs and recovering forgotten loans etc. They will give you that nice bit of favour with the Lords that will be handy for getting their support in case you ever want to overthrow the said Kingdom, or expect them to fight along side you.

The game has a lot of options for how you want to play it, and I like the sandbox style after playing numerous quest line RPGs, but the thing that hooks me deep with Mount and Blade is the combat. It's addictive and if you don't overpower yourself too much, very challenging and fast paced.

I'm curious as to what changes will happen to the game before release, but even as it stands now I've had years of fun for my $7 and still want to play it some more. I consider it the best bargain I've ever had. (I'm not sure what the current cost of the license is, but I'd recommend it to anyone, even at full cost)

Fall from Heaven II, mod for CivIV:BtS. It's pretty complicated, and cool.

Izuna 2 on the DS.

Some Digital Devil Saga 2.

Started a new game of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and am doing much better this time around. I'm crediting my 120+ hours of experience with the SMT battle system from Digital Devil Saga 1/2.

Started a new game of Planescape: Torment.

Got a few more trophies in Uncharted.

Mostly just playing Super Mario Galaxy

Dabbling with Planescape: Torment and Digital Devil Saga.

Haven't been gaming as much lately, been reading a lot lately.

Quote from: Rasix on August 18, 2008, 10:22:49 AM

Haven't been gaming as much lately, been reading a lot lately.

Loser.

I'm still playing WoW after about a month. This is my longest stretch and I'm actually still enjoying it. I just made 66 last night and am hoping to make 70 before the expansion is released.

I've also been playing Eden, Bionic Commando, and SC4 on my ps3. All 3 are fun in short spurts. Eden is much better than I had imagined and has become my favored pre-sleep relaxation thingy.

Well I was replaying Sword of Vermillion, but its kinda meh. Amusing for 2-3 hours then you realize its more of the same for another 15 or so hours. Its not bad, but my backlog and games I want to replay seriously are high enough I might just leave it as is.

However I started playing this: http://www.actionsoft.com/midnightmansion.html

Its a Mac only title.

How to describe it? Remember the original Montezuma's Revenge? Imagine it with much better graphics and animation and level design. Give it an automap and secret rooms. Give it save points. Add in a level editor that you can add in your own graphics to.

It doesn't have gamepad support so I have to use a third party program that hopefully won't shareware out and make me pay for it, but its fun with keyboard controls too.

Soon as I get 20 bucks to spend on shareware I am buying it. Its really friggin fun, and the 2 demo dungeons are enormous. they give you about a third of each level to explore before the PAY NOW comes up. Its a good hour or so.

Jain, have you played Cave Story?

Yes.
Its another one that would have benefitted from Gamepad controls on the Mac.

But this Midnight Mansion IS Montezuma's Revenge for all intents and purposes. Sliding poles, height for safe jumping, creatures that kill you are removed from the screen, keys to open doors, one use items to block/defeat a monster you touch.

Its part of why I really like it. Its pretty much an homage to a game I really loved back in the day.

Hell a year or two ago I bought the original for the Sega Master System! (Along with the other SMS computer game remakes that all look and generally play better. Ghostbusters and Choplifter.)

But Cave Story is a pretty rad game. Even if the dog collecting part SUCKED A REPUBLICAN'S WANG.

Still getting together once or twice a week for Titan Questing with a minor side of Marvel UA on 360. Finally 100%ed Bully, so dabbling in Saints Row again for an hour or so every few days. WoW expired the other day. That's about it.

Trying to play a bit of FFH2, but always seem to get bothered while on the computer.

No meetings until late next week means Rock Band vocals and some Odin Sphere.

More than anything though I'm playing a rousing game of forming-a-multi-headed-beast-of-voter-registration-of-awesome at my campus for the next two months.

recently found a small gem called bootfighter. Some sort of 3D big robot fighter game. Pretty fun for a 100 mb download.
Would've been DRILLING AND MANLINESS

if the online lag wasn't so bad.

here's the link
http://mirrormoon.org/projects/windom

I've started playing the old Ultimas again to track the evolution of single-player RPGs. It's been pretty interesting -- and fun, because for me Ultima never got old. After working on Lazarus, I'm constantly thinking of how every 80's game could be remade, and I'm envisioning Ultima 2 with its time travel and planet hopping as a kind of evolutionary walk through history Diablo smash-and-grab loot fest. There's like a hundred different dungeons in Ultima 2 scattered throughout space and time, and NONE of them are used for anything.

Reloaded Oblivion on my new Rig.

Despite looking a thousand times better and being fast as hell, the game just blows. Really, really badly.

I couldn't even explain why ... It's missing a soul.

I agree completely Ironwood. I got a new sound card which addressed the sound issues I was having with my auzentech and oblivion. Loaded it onto my new pc with a beefy gpu and....bleh. And meh. Looks beautiful, especially with some mods to fix the console-itis.

Playing FFH2 now that I have BtS. Amazing mod.

I found the same thing when I got it going on this machine when the PC was new. It looks really nice, but feels too much like an empty MMOG, and needing tons of mods, and franky, the game doesn't have enough SP goodness to keep me interested. Not a lack of content, but as said, a lack of soul to make me give a flying sideways

Glad to hear that. I thought maybe it was just me being an arsehole.

An Empty Mmog. That's exactly what it felt like. There was no drive at all to do anything...

same thing with the whole danged series, if you ask me.

I can totally play dress-up and nobody will call me a queer.

Bought some PS3 component cables for the PS2 so I could move it back up to my room.

Finished Persona 3, clocking around 85 hours. Totally worth it. Best ending of any game I've played in....awhile.

Just got started with Shadow Hearts. Not terribly far in, but it's great. The Ring is a bit to get used to, but the writing is great, and the game also has a terrific contrast between its "serious" setting, and not-so-serious writing.

Too Human, mostly. Also dabbling with Tank Universal (Steam).

So. Too Human BiiF with Seed characters? I'm thinking that's a successful recipe for success.

Decided to go back and finish some damn games. I'm working my way through Company of Heroes right now.

You read my mind, schild. I already know what I am going to do but I don't have my Seed screenshots on my work laptop, so you'll have to wait a bit.

So anyone tried Loki? It's an interesting diablo clone I've played. Space Siege fell flat, but this game felt different to me. Four distinctive class, and different start locations intrigued me somewhat. Picked it up at a bargain bin today, not a bad time killer.

Loki is so terrible.

Sacred 2 is coming out soon.

Got to the end of Too Human, now going to make some new characters. It's still loads of fun.

Started Disgaea 3. It's humorous.

Also started Castle Crashers, which is both fun and delightful.