What Video Game Are You Currently Playing?

40 minutes ago, Mayhem666 said:

Hahah, Doom 64 is so easy, even at "Watch me die" but this is probably due to the fact that I started playing that game more than 15 years ago. There's no secrets for me anymore, I liked it due to its dark and evil atmosphere that is unique to that particular game.

 

Same thing for Doom 2 I guess, but less dark. I found the game more hard on UV than D64.

I agree, it definitely is easier than the first games.

It's just that the Mother Demon can be a pain in the ass without the powerful weapons (what, I wasted those due to poor tactics during the wave of demons from the teleporters), so my last resort was the super shotgun :v . Many instant deaths came until I decided to just run into her in frustration, only to notice that she can't use the homing missiles at close range, so I just danced left and right and shot her continuously.

I do strongly consider that the decision to place the Demon keys in secret levels was shit. After all, what's the point of featuring a brand new weapon (or should I say brought back from the dead, since it was planned to the included in the original Doom along the Demon Claw) that can't be used at its full capacity during normal play? I just can't imagine many players finding the keys, so most would probably just keep it in the inventory and rarely use it. Like I did. Without the upgrades it's almost useless since the damage is random. It sometimes killed powerful enemies in a couple of shots, while other times it didn't kill zombie men and Imps in one shot -__- It's far too unpredictable in that state. But, coming back to locating secrets, that might also be due to inexperience on my part. Back when I was a kid I only ever played Doom 2 and never other similar titles, such as Duke Nukem 3D, so I never had a good eye for them. I also never finished any of the games at the time, therefore I never got used to their structure, or rather, the '90s FPS level design as a whole.

But I did enjoy it, and it's quite possibly still going to remain my favorite Doom game for now, with all its flaws. The atmosphere, levels and enemies all looked fantastic, and so did the guns. One thing I hate about the weapons would be the lack of a crucial animation of the super shotgun. It has no reload animation. Other minor "problems" would be the lack of actual music, and the existing tracks to make their presence more known in the levels, but maybe that was just me playing at lower volume which didn't do it justice.

On the technical side of things, don't know whether it's due to nowadays monitors, but the game, with the brightness left default (which, supposedly is how it's meant to be experienced), is unnaturally dark. Yes, it has to be dark, that much is not questioned, but it feels more like an over-darkening issue. I've seen various topics on the internet on the matter, but, either way, setting the brightness at higher values fixes this. I also suspect the latest build of EX might have some issue with music playback. I've previously said it's not very present in some levels, however I'm quite sure it's supposed to loop in all of them, which doesn't always happen. I think these would be all.

All things considered, still a top notch experience.

La-Mulana which was among several things I picked up on the current GOG sale.  Pleasantly surprised so far with how well it seems to "get it" as far as doing a pseudo-oldschool game right.

Recently been playing more Skyrim than anything else

1 hour ago, Mayhem666 said:

Hahah, Doom 64 is so easy, even at "Watch me die" but this is probably due to the fact that I started playing that game more than 15 years ago. There's no secrets for me anymore, I liked it due to its dark and evil atmosphere that is unique to that particular game.

 

Same thing for Doom 2 I guess, but less dark. I found the game more hard on UV than D64.

Doom 64 EX has nightmare and fast mode implemented, I have been trying to play it on fast mode and it can be really tough at certain points so far, the pinky trap for the first level is tough as nails and you have to take advantage of the soulsphere and other secrets before doing it.

41 minutes ago, Avoozl said:

Doom 64 EX has nightmare and fast mode implemented, I have been trying to play it on fast mode and it can be really tough at certain points so far, the pinky trap for the first level is tough as nails and you have to take advantage of the soulsphere and other secrets before doing it.

At least it would make the power-ups more useful at this point, Who needed a soulsphere and even a megaarmor in the first level of D64 for real?

1 hour ago, Agent6 said:

I agree, it definitely is easier than the first games.

 

It's just that the Mother Demon can be a pain in the ass without the powerful weapons (what, I wasted those due to poor tactics during the wave of demons from the teleporters), so my last resort was the super shotgun :v . Many instant deaths came until I decided to just run into her in frustration, only to notice that she can't use the homing missiles at close range, so I just danced left and right and shot her continuously.

 

I do strongly consider that the decision to place the Demon keys in secret levels was shit. After all, what's the point of featuring a brand new weapon (or should I say brought back from the dead, since it was planned to the included in the original Doom along the Demon Claw) that can't be used at its full capacity during normal play? I just can't imagine many players finding the keys, so most would probably just keep it in the inventory and rarely use it. Like I did. Without the upgrades it's almost useless since the damage is random. It sometimes killed powerful enemies in a couple of shots, while other times it didn't kill zombie men and Imps in one shot -__- It's far too unpredictable in that state. But, coming back to locating secrets, that might also be due to inexperience on my part. Back when I was a kid I only ever played Doom 2 and never other similar titles, such as Duke Nukem 3D, so I never had a good eye for them. I also never finished any of the games at the time, therefore I never got used to their structure, or rather, the '90s FPS level design as a whole.

 

But I did enjoy it, and it's quite possibly still going to remain my favorite Doom game for now, with all its flaws. The atmosphere, levels and enemies all looked fantastic, and so did the guns. One thing I hate about the weapons would be the lack of a crucial animation of the super shotgun. It has no reload animation. Other minor "problems" would be the lack of actual music, and the existing tracks to make their presence more known in the levels, but maybe that was just me playing at lower volume which didn't do it justice.

 

On the technical side of things, don't know whether it's due to nowadays monitors, but the game, with the brightness left default (which, supposedly is how it's meant to be experienced), is unnaturally dark. Yes, it has to be dark, that much is not questioned, but it feels more like an over-darkening issue. I've seen various topics on the internet on the matter, but, either way, setting the brightness at higher values fixes this. I also suspect the latest build of EX might have some issue with music playback. I've previously said it's not very present in some levels, however I'm quite sure it's supposed to loop in all of them, which doesn't always happen. I think these would be all.

 

All things considered, still a top notch experience.

At a young age, I didn't know where to find the demon keys, and even didn't know they existed, but still managed to beat the game by the classic use of the BFG. The key thing is the use the weapon at its full potential. 2 Well-placed shot to the Motherdemon and hes dead. I had fun on my N64 as a kid calculating how much ammos of a gun it's possible to kill every monsters in the game hahah. Was fun lol. But once you get to know the real potential of the Unmaker, the game becomes a joke (in sense of easiness). The gun was really op, basically a faster and more powerful chaingun with multiple tracers that use cell as ammo.

Well, the OST of Doom 64 is actually very nice and pretty cool element of the atmosphere. Sure, it's very different from the first games but still great to fit this game. Yes, the fact that the weapons had no reload animation is quite sad, and i'm pretty sure it's because of the N64 cartridge lack of space to add more details and content for the game. Thankfully this issue has been fixed on PC.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition

For me, modding the shit out of Skyrim is around 60% of the fun of Skyrim, and so I've held out on playing the Special Edition now that SKSE64 is out and there are ports of most of the popular SKSE mods (though no PerMa...). And, while it's still full of bizarre and hilarious bugs (I've seen cows levitating in the air, General Tullius naked, everyone in Solitude standing transfixed by Roggvir's corpse, Irileth walking into a tree, and a Khajiit merchant saying two different lines at once), it's as a whole vastly more robust than "Oldrim". It just doesn't crash. I've been playing for around 16 hours with a huge and gradually expanding mod set and there have been no CTDs or bugs that couldn't be dealt with using the console or just leaving the area and coming back. It's not as smooth as modding Fallout 4 but it's very good.

It also makes me wish that Bethesda had let Obsidian do a TES game, preferably one set in Morrowind. Chris Avellone and Josh Sawyer could do some amazing stuff with Morrowind's setting and spiritual themes, especially all the crazy shit Michael Kirkbride came up with. A New Vegas-style structure with a world fundamentally reshaped by your decisions and quests that all feed into the main questline would allow for the Dunmer society to be depicted in much greater detail. And a more intimate, character-driven story would mean the game wouldn't have to do giant retcons (fuck that dragonborn shit) to TES lore to pull an apocalyptic supervillain out of its ass like Skyrim did.

9 hours ago, Mayhem666 said:

At a young age, I didn't know where to find the demon keys, and even didn't know they existed, but still managed to beat the game by the classic use of the BFG. The key thing is the use the weapon at its full potential. 2 Well-placed shot to the Motherdemon and hes dead. I had fun on my N64 as a kid calculating how much ammos of a gun it's possible to kill every monsters in the game hahah. Was fun lol. But once you get to know the real potential of the Unmaker, the game becomes a joke (in sense of easiness). The gun was really op, basically a faster and more powerful chaingun with multiple tracers that use cell as ammo.

 

Well, the OST of Doom 64 is actually very nice and pretty cool element of the atmosphere. Sure, it's very different from the first games but still great to fit this game. Yes, the fact that the weapons had no reload animation is quite sad, and i'm pretty sure it's because of the N64 cartridge lack of space to add more details and content for the game. Thankfully this issue has been fixed on PC.

Some limitations perhaps, but EX is pretty much identical since it also uses the original content, so no, the super shotgun doesn't have a reload animation there either.

What I realized last night after starting another playthrough of Doom 2 is that the weapons in Doom64 are more powerful than how they are in the first games. Playing on the same difficulty and the super shotgun is one of the more noticeable differences, it really is weaker here than in Doom64. Talking about the power ups, yeah I agree with what you said in another reply above, lots of powerful items in the first levels which don't server much purpose. But then, Megaspheres or Soulspheres come in handy only during a couple of levels towards the end of the game when more powerful and annoying enemies are present. Lost Souls in this game actually are a threat, they're so much more aggressive than their Doom 1-2 counterparts. I was killed by waves of Lost Souls many times, especially later in the game where the Pain Elementals are very present.

Doom64 took a darker and more horror oriented approach, as seen in its level design and overall tone and atmosphere, which I really enjoyed. The emphasis on the blasphemous, violent, macabre and even medieval imagery rather than the sci fi theme of the first games is welcome for me. My favorite levels include Unholy Temple, Dark Citadel, Altar of Pain, Blood Keep, Even Simpler, The Bleeding and The Spiral. Not all of them are complex, but then they don't have to. Due to this change in style I also believe fans who disliked or hated Doom 3 due to the dramatic shift in tone will prefer Doom64.

I enjoyed the soundtrack. My only problem with it is that lower volume really doesn't do it justice, and possibly due to a bug it doesn't loop in all levels, making you run across the levels in total silence sometimes when no enemies are around. At least I can admire the grotesque beauty of the levels more eh :v .

But still, the fact that the Demon Keys are located in secret levels is bs. Without them there's no point in using the Unmaker since it's too random a weapon. Great potential for a devastating weapon which uses far less ammo than the BFG, but near useless without the upgrades. Overpowered? At its fullest perhaps, but then it will be used only on powerful enemies just like the BFG, killing everything in sight with it is 0 fun otherwise. I'm definitely up for a sequel in the vein of this game, which makes me wonder what's going to happen and what tone with take the follow up to Doom 2016, whenever that might be.

I finally decided to play the DLC for Deus Ex Mankind Divided starting with Criminal Past since it's supposed to be a set before the main game which I already completed weeks ago.

Currently hooked to Hitman (2016), game is so replayable.

On 12/15/2017 at 4:23 PM, Mayhem666 said:

At least it would make the power-ups more useful at this point, Who needed a soulsphere and even a megaarmor in the first level of D64 for real?

Those trying to overcome the real demon: the N64 controller.

21 minutes ago, cyan0s1s said:

Those trying to overcome the real demon: the N64 controller.

lol, it wasn't that hard to play with, the only problem I had with it is the main joy-stick, my thumb suffered from that hehe.

Doom 64 does benefit from the fact that you have auto-aiming, a part that makes Quake 1 and 2 on the console close to being unplayable, because how am i expected to hit anything ever?

Been running through Quake 2 in celebration of its 20th anninversary. The music definitely brings me joy and the gameplay is solid, it also runs really well on modern machines as long as you have the latest patch. The game's level design leaves a lot to be desired, being incredibly drab, boring, repetitive and every inch covered in the same tone of brown, and everyone is the same scowling bald guy, except for the ones wearing helmets. With all that said, it's a nice experience to come back to as I've picked up this game only a select few times in the past and not gotten all the way through, but doing a serious playthrough of the game, it becomes quite immersive.

Played EVIL. It was dull as dishwater and I didn't finish it. Moved on to Batman: Arkham Origins and its DLC instead. It's still probably my 2nd favorite of the Arkhamverse games after Knight.

Not sure what's next. Probably the last two of the popular Marathon scenarios, I don't know.

The first time I played through Undertale, I thought it was pretty good, but kind of overrated. Second time through and I'm now thinking it's one of the best RPGs I've ever played. I'm amazed as just how attached I've become to the characters and the world that they inhabit. No other Japanese-style RPG has ever really made me feel this personally connected to my decisions. I don't think I'd ever feel comfortable playing through the genocide route. The thought of murdering all of the characters I've grown so fond of feels kind of monstrous to me.

Final Fantasy 4 for PSP.

Play ARK Survival Evolved these days. 

Doom 3: BFG Edition, beat Doom 1 and doing Doom II, as well as started on Doom 3 having not played it in 7 years. Oh yeah, and I'm doing it all with an Xbox controller for added challenge.

Two words.

FUCK. CUPHEAD.

After I finally made myself beat American McGee's Alice for the first time with a playthrough which lasted over two years with a fairly big hiatus in between, I have moved on to play the sequel Alice Madness Returns.

I have actually beaten the sequel once well before the first game which was probably dumb of me to do, but I am okay with a new playthrough since I haven't played it since finishing it 2 years ago.

@Avoozl I'd love to play those, if only they were still sold on Steam or showed up on GOG. I swear anything with a license is damned to go extinct someday, because copyright laws didn't take into account the future at the time they were written.

Picked up Half-Life. Even after all these years, it's bliss. I managed to figure out how to turn off texture filtering and I don't know how I lived before.

Project Einherjar, the story is actually really good, to me. And the gameplay is also very fun, seems mostly quite balanced by hard on UV. I love total conversion megawads. Before this was winter's fury which I found also quite good.

Did Blue Shift and Decay, both of which are great but Opposing Force is clearly the best of the HL1 era. It's really hitting me how different it is in tone to the main game; it feels much more desperate, almost apocalyptic. Like something terrible is about to happen and all that you can do is wait. 

9 minutes ago, dethtoll said:

Opposing Force is clearly the best of the HL1 era. It's really hitting me how different it is in tone to the main game; it feels much more desperate, almost apocalyptic. Like something terrible is about to happen and all that you can do is wait. 

OpFo is amazing, and improved upon HL1. It might feel apocalyptic because 

See what happens when someone else like Gearbox is the dev? Almost wish they'd do that for the series currently, just pass the torch so we can have closure but hahaha that's a rabbit hole we're not gonna go down right now.

7 minutes ago, Neurosis said:

 

OpFo is amazing, and improved upon HL1. It might feel apocalyptic because 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Shepherd is forever stuck in stasis, though I guess Gordon has been stuck in stasis again for awhile too lol

 

See what happens when someone else like Gearbox is the dev? Almost wish they'd do that for the series currently, just pass the torch so we can have closure but hahaha that's a rabbit hole we're not gonna go down right now.

I agree that out of all HL expansions OP4 is the best, but just because they managed to pull off such a feat back then doesn't mean they can do it once again.

Rather than having a game that is not HL in essence or outright shit I'd rather have nothing. Beside, who still needs a new HL since Laidlaw posted an (encoded) pastebin document with Episode 3 original plot a while ago? I got my conclusion, I don't need anything else, especially since I moved from HL as a whole since 2011-2012 since Valve can't count to 3, and never will.

Opposing Force was the one part of Half Life I truly enjoyed, don't get me wrong I liked HL for what it was but it's just not amazing to me as it is to others.

Path of Exile.

Playing through Panzer General (the original) for the millionth time. Best rock, scissors, paper turn-based game ever.