What games are you playing and why?

If I hadn't already gone back to Rift, I might have taken you up on the offer. As it is right now, I'm having a lot of fun with it. I actually think it's a better game, over all than TSW, with tons more stuff to do, so you never get bored, unless you force yourself to grind. It has enough of the familiar to make it easy to get into, while also having enough depth and twists to the traditional formula to keep it interesting. And the world is HUGE so if you don't likeone zone, you can do a different one (at least with the higher-level zones). When I left, there wasn't much else for me to do other than end-game stuff (expert dungeons, raiding, etc.) and that bores me because it gets too repetitive. But now, not only did they triple the size of the world, pretty much, but they've added so many new ways to spend/waste your time in the game. So I'm loving it.

Ask me again in several months, because I'm sure I'll reach the point again where I'll be bored with it. But now, I'm just having fun. And my guild is pretty inclusive so when they do level 60 stuff, they tend to bring anyone who wants to join them (admittedly, I died about a dozen or so times doing their hunt rifts with them, but still was a blast). Maybe had I found a decent guild in TSW (I did try) things would have been different.

 

Played the prologue for They Bleed Pixels just now.

Holy shizzlesticks that's some good fun, even if it is frustrating.

 

currently playing my copy of Legend of Grimrock with a vanilla party of 2 warrior/1 rogue/1 mage and ive reached floor 4 atm.

protip = dont frantically click on every wall randomly looking for secrets,it seems secret switches take the form of bricks with a small round crack in the corner,my OCD side still likes to check every wall for these things,its a fast way to injure your clicking finger.

kinda disturbed by the lack of ranged weapons,specially when most of the rogue skills are ranged skills LOL.

cant imagine what kind of a sadistic person would play "old school",some things should stay in the 80s like rewinding VHS tapes or the new coke,i say bring on the automapping! =)

 

Back to the subject of ToME, today there is RC3 released. (B46)
http://te4.org/download

Grab it and play. Try something stupid. Make a character that has zero chance and play on Nightmare Roguelike difficulty mode.

Yeek-Zerkers are surprisingly not so hard, once you manage to survive and gain a few levels. (That only takes about a decade to manage.)

And despite having stats pretty much opposite of what you need, Dwarven Archmages are pretty good.

However Ghoul and Skeleton Sun Paladins are tougher than anything else I have tried. (You can only use the racial heals rather than the class heals.)

 

I once aspired to a Ghoul Sun Paladin. Gave up after like a half-dozen tries. It really is near-impossible.

 

I just found a Higher Anorithil is easy as pie even on Nightmare difficulty. You just put points in Magic without any heed to any other stat until it is maxed. And your skills are pretty easy choices too. Prodigies are problematic unless you can find gear to get the stats you need. The few you will want are unlikely to use magic.

 

Argh, Chapter 2 or whatever is like stupid hard.

 

Playing Of Orcs and Men these days, and it's pretty darn awesome so far. Really loving the dialogue between the Orc and Goblin, and overall it's a really nice game.

I read up on some interviews beforehand and they talked about awkward controls, but I must say I have not noticed it.
Also they sometimes say the dialogue is bad and there's too much swearing but I think it adds to the atmosphere and fits the setting well.
Great fun and pretty awesome so far.

 

OK, I got to play Amalur this evening and I have a few questions:
1. Is it possible to change the game so that I cannot possibly attack behind me -- It's ridiculous but the direction of my attack is not the direction of what I see on the screen. How that is supposed to be 'good', I don't know. It's unnatural and awkward.
2. How do you aim a bow? If I just shoot, the arrows go into the ground, but there's no targetting. So how do I target someone?
3. What the hell was that thing with the X key and the F key and the fate crap that other thingy whatever it was called. I have no idea what any of that meant. I know the tutorial was trying to say something but it sounded like gibberish when it reached my brain.
4. Do they ever stop with the awkward pausing in the middle of stuff? It's really... disorienting when the game does that.
5. Is there a way to make the movment smoother? When I'm moving along, my character just sometimes just stop for no reason, and I have to take my finger off the key and put it back on again to make him start moving again. It's just painful. Is there an autorun?

Say what you want about Skyrim, it just feels natural to me. I love that I can switch to first person when I need to. In Amalur, the camera seems to be in an almost random position compared to where I'm facing. I just want to always face in the direction of the camera (and vice versa).

Fortunately, the combat hasn't gotten too difficult yet so it hasn't been an issue. But I'm finding the combat completely immersion-breaking.

 

No idea. I think the direction is based on the closest enemy.

I could be wrong, but you don't. It auto-targets.

Try slowing down. Anyway. When your fate bar (Middle; purple) is full, you can go into Reckoning mode by holding down the X key. In Reckoning mode you do more damage whilst your enemies are slowed down, but you cannot kill them. To kill an enemy (and you can only do this once per Reckoning) you have to get their health down then press 'F', which goes into QTE mode and after a short attack sequence (which you don't have a part of), you have to press one of about three keys repeatedly to fill a gauge to boost the XP given by that kill.

What do you mean?

No auto run, I think.

The combat is very HACK HACK HACK at times, yes. But as for the camera? I don't know what you're on about. It works like pretty much every other game of its type. The camera influences the direction of your character to some degree, but not as much as WASD. You get more control if you hold the camera behind your character. Not to the side or anything like that, but behind.

 

1. Sometimes I don't have a target (or do I???) So I'm not sure if that is always true. For example, if I want to destroy a barrel, it doesn't target the barrel -- I know that because sometimes I seem to swing at nothing even if there's a barrel in the center of the calendar.

2. OK that sucks lol. I do remember seeing a blinking glowy thing when I hold down the left mouse button, but useually I can't see it because my characters head or body is in the way.

3. What/where is the fate bar? I don't remember seeing a bar.

How do you keep the camera behind your character? That's what I've been asking all along. IT doesn't want to stay there. IT seems to wander independently of my character, sometimes based on the position of other objects, walls, etc.

As far as it working like 'every other game of it's type', it certainly doesn't work like ANY game I've ever played. /edit Are you talking about RPGs. Because I've played a LOT of RPGs, and NONE have ever played like this. NOT ONE.

I'm just about ready to give up on this because I'm finding it too irritating.

 

The fact that the camera changes based on being in and out of combat may exactly be what's causing me headaches. I'll have to verify that the next time I play. I've never played a game where the camera changes like that. As I said, it's disorienting. IT actually is worse in short combats so I think that may be what's bothering me.

I'll look for the fate bar again next time I play. If I play again...

I couldn't see a cursor -- probably it's in front of my character or off the screen (if it's pointing to someone not in front of me) The only time I used a bow was in the tutorial and I immediately stopped because It really wasn't working for me. I just don't like not being able to aim.

Some of the combat itself is too... fiddly for me. I keep having the wrong weapon out because the mouse wheel (which I'm so used using for zooming in and out) simply just cycles through the weapons at light-speed. When I attack, too often it's with the wrong weapon. Maybe I can disable that? Also, all the other weird buttons... I have such bad hand-eye coordination that if I'm trying to use a mouse while also using a keyboard, it's impossible for me. I almost always am pressing the wrong button at the wrong time. I wanted to block and instead I cast a spell or something like that.

It reminds me of when I was a younger guy. A couple of coworkers and I would go out to lunch, and one of them was this real arcade hound. We'd go to this old arcade and he tried to get me to play some fighting game. I hated those games. It was all fiddly stuff you had to learn how to do -- not brain learning, but muscle learning and reflex learning, all the special moves (and of course he knew them all). And I don't do that. It was kind of humiliating. (and of course he refused to play chess against me where I could probably have gotten my revenge lol).

 

You can only target hostile creatures, and even then the game will auto-target for you. The camera zooms out when it has targeted/entered combat mode, and is closer when outside of combat. With barrels, etc., it's a case of standing in front of them and just hitting them with your melee weapon.

It shouldn't be wandering of its own accord. However, you do have to keep it behind your character. I don't know if there's a setting in the options to stop it, I've not really looked.

Plays like a lot of action RPGs I've played, although it is a lot looser.

And there isn't a cursor aside from in menus. The game runs off the keyboard more than it does the mouse (mouse is used for attacking and camera control - all other functions are on the keyboard).

Also, don't even think about using the mouse wheel. Swap weapons with 'Q'. It's MUCH easier.

 

Right, I've worked out how the camera works.

It functions as direction as well as a way to look around. If you move forward in the direction the camera is pointing, your character will turn to follow it. Your WASD movement allows you to go in eight directions, the camera/mouse allows you to have 360 degrees. Your character doesn't follow the mouse if you turn with A or D, though. ASD do not change the way the camera faces, W does. If you stand still, turn the camera and then press W, your character will orient themselves in that direction. But if you use A or D when pressing W, the camera won't shift. So you can run at an angle - e.g. -45 degrees (which is a diagonal left) or +45 degrees (diagonal right) without the camera turning behind your character.

It's much easier to hold W down and use the camera to direct yourself, it's pretty responsive.

 

Played through On the rain slick precipice of darkness 3 and portal 2... both short games, neither particularly hard(though portal 2 did have a few really clever puzzles).

 

RSPD3 is great fun. The bonus boss/alt. final noss is fairly difficult, if you didn't knock it out before winning.

 

Didn't bother, though from the gamefaqs forum for it, the only thing hard about them is figuring out the tactic to use. (Specifically one of them requires stun/interupt spam so it never gets its prophecy off, since that would insta-kill you when it activates). Preventing the boss from ever taking an action by abusing the system is required to beat it, oh how nice and difficult.

 

Well, not to be contrarian but figuring out how which tactics to use and abusing the system is the only difficulty present in JRPGs to begin with.

 

True to some extent, but something is wrong when not only can you completely stop the boss from acting, it's required. In my book that amounts to: the only way to win is to abuse a bug.