The General Gaming Thread 2: Bundle ALL the Games!

[warty goblin]

Back to playing Sacred II. Where else can I play as an Anubis robot with a laser gun arm?

'Cides which, the game has the coolest looking items of just about any clickfest lootgrind RPG ever.

[Wookieetank]

So the Steam summer sale apparently starts today. I can hear my wallet weeping in a corner and I haven't even bought anything yet.

[warty goblin]

So the Steam summer sale apparently starts today. I can hear my wallet weeping in a corner and I haven't even bought anything yet.

I actually think I'll scrape through relatively unscathed this year. Since every other digital distributor has already had their sale, I've picked up most of the stuff I'm interested in already. Right now the only thing I'm vaguely considering is Viking: Battle for Asgerd, and only because I'm feeling rather Norse this week. Probably time to reread Beowulf again.

[Aidan305]

I feel that it's necessary to point out before it's lost in the news of the Steam Sale that there's a new Humble Weekly Sale, and it's all of Spiderweb Software's games bar the Exile series. I can't recommend more that you pick up these games as they're all very fun and amazingly written.

[Aotrs Commander]

So, apparently my D3 account has been hacked. Kinda tedious, really, since I haven't played D3 in nearly a year (not long after it came out). I booted it up like two weeks ago to show my sister, but by the time it had patched, she had to go, so I just shut it down.

I've not even been on Battlenet since I completed Starcraft 2. One has to query Blizz's security if things are so bad you're expected to have to have an authenticator (which one presumes you have to pay for) or something if you so much as have a battlenet account... Nevermind that you use it virtually never.

Annoying.

Well, sent them an email and done all I can from this end, can only wait to see what they say now...

[factotum]

So, apparently my D3 account has been hacked.

How do you know that? Hope it wasn't via one of those "Your D3 account has been hacked, please click the below link to fix the problem" e-mails...

[Sprinter]

I feel that it's necessary to point out before it's lost in the news of the Steam Sale that there's a new Humble Weekly Sale, and it's all of Spiderweb Software's games bar the Exile series. I can't recommend more that you pick up these games as they're all very fun and amazingly written.

Exile series is available for free on Spiderwebs Software Homepage in case you wondered why it isnt there.

[dannydobrev]

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[Aotrs Commander]

How do you know that? Hope it wasn't via one of those "Your D3 account has been hacked, please click the below link to fix the problem" e-mails...

No, it was a notice from Blizzard (which had all the indications of being official, and containing links to the official site and such; I'm not quite so daft as to click the sort of link you suggest...) that my D3 account had been closed/banned due to "unapproved third party software."

I haven't played on D3 for nearly a year.

I had had a notification from that my account had been locked a couple of weeks prior and to change my password (which I did right away); but I'd been rather busy that week and so thought no more of it (since you get those sort of warnings from places occasionally as a precautionary measure). (And that one was definitely from Blizzard.)

I finally managed to get hold of someone via their chat (since all the "I've been hacked!" links tended to circle around getting into your account or account recovery neitherof which worked, as the hacker had added an authenricator...) and they confirmed it did appear to have been compromised.

I mean, really, what can you do? Aside from, y'know, not playing on battlenet for months for starters, which I did do...

Anyhoo, Blizz is on it now, so we'll see what they say.

(Not that there was anything to nick, given there was precisiely one character in normal about halfway through act...3?, I think...)

Clearly might have to get an authenticator if the mere existance of having a battlenet account puts you at this sort of risk.

[Starwulf]

No, it was a notice from Blizzard (which had all the indications of being official, and containing links to the official site and such; I'm not quite so daft as to click the sort of link you suggest...) that my D3 account had been closed/banned due to "unapproved third party software."

I haven't played on D3 for nearly a year.

I had had a notification from that my account had been locked a couple of weeks prior and to change my password (which I did right away); but I'd been rather busy that week and so thought no more of it (since you get those sort of warnings from places occasionally as a precautionary measure). (And that one was definitely from Blizzard.)

I finally managed to get hold of someone via their chat (since all the "I've been hacked!" links tended to circle around getting into your account or account recovery neitherof which worked, as the hacker had added an authenricator...) and they confirmed it did appear to have been compromised.

I mean, really, what can you do? Aside from, y'know, not playing on battlenet for months for starters, which I did do...

Anyhoo, Blizz is on it now, so we'll see what they say.

(Not that there was anything to nick, given there was precisiely one character in normal about halfway through act...3?, I think...)

Clearly might have to get an authenticator if the mere existance of having a battlenet account puts you at this sort of risk.

Hey, maybe if you're lucky, you'll now have one or two level 60's with decent starter gear on there ^^ I mean, they have to at least equip/level chars for them to be of any use in their gold-farming schemes, so you might profit from it all once you get the account safely back into your hands.

[Grinner]

So...I normally don't push bundles, but I think you all should know about this, the Spiderweb Software bundle (i.e. Avernum, Geneforge, Avadon, etc.).

[Morty]

Judging from the dev journals, it seems that in Age of Wonders III many creatures such as giants, fey or undead will become neutral rather than belonging to any race's army. I suppose it makes sense, but I admit that the races' armies each being a hodge-podge of fantasy creatures was a big part of the series' charm for me.

[Gnoman]

Picked up Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword on sale the other day. In Warband, I had a mod that (among other things) allowed you to take over one of your soldiers if the player was knocked out, which was quite handy since you would no longer lose to a lucky hit on the PC when you outnumbered the enemy 10 to 1. Is there a similar mod (with only that function, ideally) for Fire and Sword?

[warty goblin]

Looks like I'm going to get through the Steam sale this year having spent a grand total of $5. GamersGate has been a bit more expensive; just over $10 for Red Alert 3: Uprising.

Mind you, I'll be snowed under from the GoG sale for the next few years, so this is entirely a good thing.

[Zevox]

So, I've just started playing Sly 4 today. I definitely like what I see already. I know that it was actually developed by a different studio than the original three, but heck if you can tell the difference. Gameplay, writing style, art style, it's all very much intact. Heck, I think they even got the original voice actors for the main characters - or if not, the replacements do an amazingly good imitation. And the elements I was puzzled about them removing in the third game are back, so yay for that .

I really like how the visuals ended up in particular - it looks like a very natural evolution of the old style into a modern console's graphics. And honestly, I think it'll hold up much better over time than the original three, which seemed awfully blocky for PS2-era games.

Only problem I see so far is some long loading times, really. Well, and perhaps that I wish they'd changed up the combat to something a bit more involved, even if only for Murray, since that's supposed to be his specialty.

[warty goblin]

So, Shadowrun Returns seems pretty cool, based on twenty minutes. Writing's a decent noir sort of thing. Combat appears to hit the sweetspot of stuff to do without oodles of pointless, difficult to manage minutia. It's sort of a Fallout: Not Terrible in other words.

[matt321miller]

With Darksiders 1+2 on steam sale right now, I was wondering how people feel about it? I completed the first game when I owned an xbox and loved it, thought it handled very well, enjoyed the combat, art style, VA, thought the puzzles were good but not too difficult to disrupt play (though 1 room in the portals section had me stumped so much i stopped playing for a month)

However, how do they transfer to pc? I haven't played any similiar games on pc, all my action gaming was on console, DMC etc.

[factotum]

So, Shadowrun Returns seems pretty cool, based on twenty minutes. Writing's a decent noir sort of thing. Combat appears to hit the sweetspot of stuff to do without oodles of pointless, difficult to manage minutia. It's sort of a Fallout: Not Terrible in other words.

I think it's a fine game indeed, and I'm 2 hours in so have a little more handle on it. If I have any complaints, it's that the checkpoint save system is a pain in the butt and the text is really teeny tiny on my 1920x1080 monitor with no obvious option to make it bigger--those are fairly minor points, though, it's definitely lots of fun to play!

[warty goblin]

With Darksiders 1+2 on steam sale right now, I was wondering how people feel about it? I completed the first game when I owned an xbox and loved it, thought it handled very well, enjoyed the combat, art style, VA, thought the puzzles were good but not too difficult to disrupt play (though 1 room in the portals section had me stumped so much i stopped playing for a month)

However, how do they transfer to pc? I haven't played any similiar games on pc, all my action gaming was on console, DMC etc.

Just hook up a wired XBox controller to your PC, the only difference is that the graphics may be slightly shinier and the screen will be smaller. You can use a wireless 360 controller as well, but you need some intermediate software that costs like $10, last time I checked. Worth a Google on your part, if you don't have a wired controller.

I think it's a fine game indeed, and I'm 2 hours in so have a little more handle on it. If I have any complaints, it's that the checkpoint save system is a pain in the butt and the text is really teeny tiny on my 1920x1080 monitor with no obvious option to make it bigger--those are fairly minor points, though, it's definitely lots of fun to play!

I played a bit more as well. Seems to flow along well, with a nice amount of combat. Also it's an enormous relief to play an RPG where I'm not saving the entire goddamn world, or partaking in international intrigues or anything else. Freeing really. It also helps mitigate that annoying bit where so many RPGs treat the player character like another class of being entirely. Being merely competent is pleasant.

[warty goblin]

Feeling adventurous, I decided to spring for something called Legends of Aethereus.

Surprisingly it appears like it could be quite good, albeit more than a bit rough 'round the edges. The combat feels a bit Mount & Blade, but with physics applied to strikes, so getting knocked down - or knocking dudes down - is fairly common. At least I think it is. I keep dying during the tutorial. The last dude is quite tough, and the game is not particularly forgiving of mistakes in timing.

[Aotrs Commander]

Well, I think SotS 2 may have come to the end of it's £3's worth of entertainment, after what, a month plus of Sundays or something?

I'm about 490-odd turns in to my Hiver game, the enemy is reduced to two Zuul powers and I'm starting to get bored. Turns are very slow loading (on Win 7, with 6 gig of ram and an I7 processor on a brand-new HDD. What in the heck Paradox?) I ended up doing more painting than playing today (as I did a bit between every turn and drag between combat and the start of the new turn. It's reached that stage where the enemy hasn't really got anything to fight with - my Gate fleets are pretty much levelling everything on their own, and they're not even fully kitted out. It's just the long drag to the inevitable, with I frack about picking up odds and end on my research that it's probably not worth bothering with now...

Trouble is, I'm finding a bit of GalCiv II syndrome - I spend more time faffing around putting stations up than doing the interesting bits. (I mean, you get that with Civ IC/V towards the end of the game, but at least there you can fully automate the workers and not worry about it.) And because of the drag (it takes a couple of seconds to bring the menus and selection screens up at this point), it's not a quick job anymore, not too mention trying to find the stations to upgrade (why wasn't "stations ready for upgrade" an sort option, Paradox; given as there's a number telling you the number of stations on the master station manager button, it's a variable...)

Maybe after my holiday I'll feel like having another crack.

Otherwise, I might buy the quest pack DLC for E:WoM:FE:LH at have a crack at that. Since it cost me about ten times as much and I haven't touched it yet...!

[Zevox]

So, I've just completed Sly 4. Pretty darn good game. I'm almost inclined to call it clearly the best game of the series, except for a couple of things.

One being the length. It's only five stages plus a prologue and epilogue, which I believe about ties it with Sly 3 for length. It does feel longer than Sly 3 thankfully, in part due to the return of collectables like the clue bottles, and I think it actually has more missions per stage than 3 did. But still, it feels like there could've been more. Heck, I could go for double the length easily - time traveling to colorful locales and meeting all of Sly's ancestors is just that much fun.

Another being the lame final boss fight. Though that is something of a tradition for the series, sadly, as the only one I much liked was Sly 3's. This one takes the cake though, because it's just one long quick-time event. Kinda fun to watch, but not so much to play. I did really like Sly verbally dismantling everything the villain thought he had accomplished midway through it, though, that was actually a really good bit of writing.

And finally, a couple of things they did in the fourth and fifth stages that I'm not entirely comfortable with:

Spoiler

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In the fourth, Penelope turning out to have gone villain. Very uncertain about that. I mean, she didn't get a ton of characterization in Sly 3, so I guess I can't say it's entirely out of character, but it feels too sudden at least. If they wanted to go this route, they needed to build it up first. Though given her actions were necessary for the story to get off the ground in the first place, I'll grant that I can't figure out how they could've done that without making an entire other game before this one first. And it does seem from the ending that they intend to bring her back in the future, so maybe they'll do better with her then.

And in the fifth, Carmelita. Primarily, the dance sequence where she distracts the guards. Kinda uncomfortable, especially when they have you shake the controller to make her shake her rear. And then having her immediately afterward get captured and turned into the damsel in distress for the final stage sucked too. Hell, despite her basically joining the team and being selectable at the hideout, I don't think she ever had a mission of her own, she just popped up in other characters' missions. So yeah, they could've done more with her overall, too.

But yeah, other than that, I enjoyed it greatly. The levels were very well-designed and fun, the costumes and the new abilities they gave you were great additions, the story was fun, the humor pretty good, meeting Sly's ancestors and using their unique abilities was good - just an all-around solid title. I really hope it did well enough that we'll see the series continue, especially with how rare 3D platformers are these days.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Been playing this today.

Do you hate masterfully done 16-bit pixel art? Do you hate dubstep? Do you hate 2D shmups with silky smooth controls?

Well, you probably won't like this then. But I'm loving it.

[warty goblin]

Otherwise, I might buy the quest pack DLC for E:WoM:FE:LH at have a crack at that. Since it cost me about ten times as much and I haven't touched it yet...!

If you haven't touched it yet, I'd suggest playing a game first before dropping for the DLC. I think you'll like it - it's probably my favorite TBS-like-that of the last couple years - but there's no reason to throw more money at it until you're sure. It's not like the DLC reinvents the game either, it just adds more of what makes the game good, so playing a bit without it should give a reasonable picture of whether that's something you want more of.

[Zevox]

So, to fill a little time until Tales of Xillia comes out, I recently rented Playstation All-Stars, to give it a try. And well, it's pretty much what I expected. Aside from the fact that I wasn't able to test it out online, because it's an online pass game . Thanks for that, Sony.

But yeah, I don't think it's very good. As expected, the "only supers kill" part is the biggest misstep for me. I understand they wanted something to set the game apart from Smash Brothers despite it being blatantly a Sony version of Smash Brothers, but this was one of the worst ways to do that. Smash's damage and kill system is probably the most integral feature of its combat, the most important aspect for seamlessly blending the two genres it is based on (fighting games and platformers), and it results in some of the most interesting parts of the gameplay, when players try to stop each other from recovering after being knocked off-stage. In contrast, the PS All-Stars' system is dull, making most of the gameplay less satisfying than it should be because most of your fighting does nothing but build meter, and even landing the supers themselves is unsatisfying.

Plus there's some blatant balance problems. Playing Kratos is like playing on an easy mode - his attacks have great range, combo easily, and he has very good supers. In contrast, Sir Daniel and Jack & Daxter are so blatantly bad that I have to wonder if the developers put any real effort into them. Sir Daniel especially has slow moves, can barely combo, a terrible level 1 super, and a level 2 super that works well on computers, but is probably awful against human opponents. Oh, and apparently they thought it was a good idea to make Sly Cooper unable to block or dodge in exchange for an invisibility move. I hated discovering that the character I wanted to use most was gimped like that.

Though honestly, I get the impression that the game was rushed in general. I thought it was odd that it came out only a few months after being announced at E3 last year, and yeah, between the very bland menu design, reused moves (most characters' jumping moves are just copies of their ground moves; and a fair few even have moves that are pretty close to another, unrelated character's - including a lot of characters with "parry" moves), dull modes that seem to be there just because Smash has something similar (some of which are even redundant with each other), and above-mentioned blatant balance issues, it's hard to avoid that suspicion.

All that said, I do hope that they try this again. There really should be more Smash Brothers-style games around. They just need to not half-ass it. And ditch the whole "only supers kill" thing - even if they're still unwilling to just use Smash's damage and death system, just about anything else, including a simple hp system, would be preferable to that.

[warty goblin]

Happy Divinity: Dragon Commander Day!

Seems good so far, though the RTS portion is kicking my ass at the moment. The command ship stuff is really quite cool though.

And tomorrow I'm getting on a plane and leaving my gaming PC for a week. Ah well.

[Cogwheel]

Happy Divinity: Dragon Commander Day!

Seems good so far, though the RTS portion is kicking my ass at the moment. The command ship stuff is really quite cool though.

And tomorrow I'm getting on a plane and leaving my gaming PC for a week. Ah well.

What I heard of it from a friend consists of this: 'Three messages in quick succession: "New tutorial available: dragon morphing." "Press R to spawn the dragon." "Press Space to use your jetpack." I like this game already.'

I didn't know I needed this game until now.

Anyway! Take care, and enjoy your trip, wherever you're headed.

[warty goblin]

What I heard of it from a friend consists of this: 'Three messages in quick succession: "New tutorial available: dragon morphing." "Press R to spawn the dragon." "Press Space to use your jetpack." I like this game already.'

I didn't know I needed this game until now.

Anyway! Take care, and enjoy your trip, wherever you're headed.

Larien can generally be counted on for the goofily excellent. Their last game after all had a bit where you seduced - or were seduced by - a treasure chest. Their intro for this game is literally a super-fast slideshow giving you all the backstory you need in one sepia toned swoop.

From my extremely brief time with the game, it feels like the conversation bits of an RPG on top of a TBS on top of Supreme Commander 2. The RPG bit by the way features a posh lizardman. It's like Christmas come early.

edit: Played a couple turns all the way through. This is amazing. After a masterful bit of planning on the world map got me multiple new provinces and strengthened my borders without fighting a single battle, I was accosted by the freakishly religious undead ambassador, who felt I should institute conscription. His argument was that doing so would force those not fighting for the godly cause to do so, and therefore be holy. I demurred, so now the elves and the lizards like me more, my people like me more, and the gods have cursed me. All of this has consequences at all three levels of the game, right down to the tactical.

Also, have you ever seen a skeleton with lip syncing? Bloody terrifying.



edit edit: Thanks for the well wishes. I'm visiting my sister for a week, it's gonna be awesome.

fake edit edit edit: Do two edits make an OP?

[Cristo Meyers]

Finally got a chance to sit down and actually play Ducktales Remastered for a while.

If you're like me and played it as a child back in '89, then you'll probably find that it's a lot like riding a bike. You'll pick it back up in no time. If not, well, you'll still pick up the controls in no time.

The new graphics are very much like the old cartoon: very bright, cel-shaded, and, well, cartoony. I've only finished one level, but they've sprinkled small additions all around including voice-acting (which is outstanding). There's a whole new starter level that acts as a tutorial.

One thing I'm finding, much to my chagrin, is that this game is much harder than I remember. Yes, a game that I beat as an 8 year-old is too hardcore for me! There's still the old-school Nintendo Hard going on, but it's manageable.

The real problem (and what's contributing to a lot of the difficulty) is that the pogo-jump isn't as responsive as it could be, even with Hard Pogo (the classic "down + button" scheme") off. Sometimes I swear I've pushed the button but no pogo. Since that's your primary attack, and since touching an enemy without pogoing off their head is a heart off the meter, it leads to a depleted life meter real quick.

But, even then, it's been a great trip down memory lane that I'd recommend for anyone looking for a good, old-school platformer.

[Zevox]

I bought the game yesterday, but have yet to play it myself. It'll probably sit in my backlog for a few weeks actually, since I'm presently playing Tales of Xillia and Shin Megami Tensei 4, and am probably still in the first quarter or so of each.

I'm looking forward to it though. I don't know for sure whether I played the original, but if I did, it was only once or twice as a rental, not a lot. For all intents and purposes, it'll be an entirely new experience for me. Which is not something you get a lot of with platformers these days.