What Video Game Are You Currently Playing?

[seed]

Daikatana 1.3.

 

Without followers, infinite saves, and on the second difficulty. So, having finished Episode 1, it sure isn't as bad as the reputation discates, but it was quite repetitive and levels are fairly mediocre at times in terms of enemy placement, they're otherwise okay in terms of layout and flow. But seriously wtf is up with all the turrets everywhere in later maps, all the humans, and Deathspheres, they're used very badly sometimes - seriously turrets in vents... why... or Deathspheres under movable platforms you have to ride...

 

Apart from this, so far okay, but it is too easy to die to this bullshit sometimes, which was fairly irritating. The weapons are fine, although the grenades have ridiculous blast radius, they went too far with that one. But the atmosphere, and especialy the music is great. I wish they animated the lips of the characters though, kinda goofy to hear them speak but their lips aren't moving at all. Looking forward to what's coming up, as the game is getting only better from this point. Phew, no more bullshit.

[GamingMarine]

Just beat Gloom 3. Kinda sucked compared to Gloom and Gloom Deluxe. Not to mention that it went on, and on, and on...

[Doom_Dude]

Continuing on with Deus Ex Human Revolution. I did some side quests in the city and now I'm stuffing some mercs under some steps after shooting them with the electric darts. Fun.

 

Speaking of Daikatana. I did the same last Fall as what @seed mentioned. I made it as far as Greece and then completely stopped. I should pick it up again and finish that play through.

[Lila Feuer]

@seed Funny you mention that as I sorta abandoned my playthrough of Daikatana with the 1.3 patch, I too was trying to give it one last chance and wanted to judge it on its merits as a traditional SP FPS of the time so I used the exact same settings as you did. I'm still on the first episode but I believe it's late. Before in the past without the patch since it didn't exist yet I only got to episode 2 before bailing out of frustration with protecting Mikiko.

[Jello]

7 hours ago, Lila Feuer said:

@seed Funny you mention that as I sorta abandoned my playthrough of Daikatana with the 1.3 patch, I too was trying to give it one last chance and wanted to judge it on its merits as a traditional SP FPS of the time so I used the exact same settings as you did. I'm still on the first episode but I believe it's late. Before in the past without the patch since it didn't exist yet I only got to episode 2 before bailing out of frustration with protecting Mikiko.

I've been trying to play through it, even with the patch, and it just gets far more irritating. Wait until Episode 3 with the werewolves that pop up out of nowhere, behind you, constantly. And you have to kill them with either the silver claw melee weapon, or the ballista, which shatters on impact and can damage you. The Stave of Stavros is all but useless because all the enemies get right in your face, because werewolves, bats and rats, and does huge splash damage to the player. And the unavoidable damaging lightning traps and freezing water that drains your health. I still fully intend to complete the game before I die, but it has so many design flaws it's damn near unbearable. Which sucks, because there are so many ways that it could've been a great game. It just never materialized.

 

I think John Romero really needed someone like John Carmack to keep him in line when designing games, there's just way too many "ideas" that don't feel actually fleshed out. I think Romero just gets really excited about new ideas, and new things to try, and when they don't work quite right, he already has a new idea that he wants to try; so the old ideas don't get properly finished. And when you're on a budget, things have to get cut. I mean his original ideas for Quake were admirable, but outlandish, gived monetary constraints and time cycle. I think there is a really good game at the heart of Daikatana, but it would have to be remade from the ground up.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Jello

[Lila Feuer]

@Jello It's strange because Romero usually has great gameplay design. Wolf3D, Doom, Quake, Heretic and Hexen wouldn't be nearly as fun if it weren't for his direction in that department. Probably why Strife feels so lopsided with the balance of enemies and weapons, ditto for Quake II and eventually Doom 3. But undoubtedly, Daikatana having proper quality control and adequate testing wasn't really possible with the troubled development.

[ReaperAA]

@seed So you already started playing Daikatana (and already even completed E1). Nice 

 

Well I also started playing Daikatana yesterday and just completed E1 (coincidence?). However, I am playing on Shogun difficulty (3rd skill) and I had hell of a time on E1.

 

This is my 2nd walkthrough tho. I played it once about a couple of years ago on 2nd skill. I also played with companions back then (but not this time).

 

13 hours ago, seed said:

Deathspheres under movable platforms you have to ride...

 

I know which section you are talking about (the part towards the end of E1 where you have to move up and down on a lift with toxic at the bottom). I hated that section. Thankfully E1 is over.

 

31 minutes ago, Lila Feuer said:

Probably why Strife feels so lopsided with the balance of enemies and weapons

 

Shameless promotion, but I am working on a balancing mod for Strife to make the gameplay feel less clunky. Go down to find the WIP mod.

Edited May 25, 2020 by ReaperAA

[seed]

9 hours ago, Lila Feuer said:

@seed Funny you mention that as I sorta abandoned my playthrough of Daikatana with the 1.3 patch, I too was trying to give it one last chance and wanted to judge it on its merits as a traditional SP FPS of the time so I used the exact same settings as you did. I'm still on the first episode but I believe it's late. Before in the past without the patch since it didn't exist yet I only got to episode 2 before bailing out of frustration with protecting Mikiko.

 

Nah, don't, tbh stopping after episode 1 is basically stopping before the real fun even begins. It should be much better from this point onward, and from what I've seen so far episode 2 is already a vast improvement.

 

56 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

@seed So you already started playing Daikatana (and already even completed E1). Nice 

 

Well I also started playing Daikatana yesterday and just completed E1 (coincidence?). However, I am playing on Shogun difficulty (3rd skill) and I had hell of a time on E1.

 

This is my 2nd walkthrough tho. I played it once about a couple of years ago on 2nd skill. I also played with companions back then (but not this time).

 

Ye. Unfortunately didn't manage to turn it into a let's play as the game seems to be badly programmed and alt-tabbing is just a nightmare. Managed to even crash the game a couple of times this way.

 

I initially wanted to play on Shogun but no thanks, the game is just brutal on that skill level, it's even worse than Quake 2 on the highest skill level... Second difficulty seems reasonable enough, considering the bullshit you have to deal with in episode 1 I'd say it's far more than enough.

 

59 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

I know which section you are talking about (the part towards the end of E1 where you have to move up and down on a lift with toxic at the bottom). I hated that section. Thankfully E1 is over.

 

Yes, exactly that one. It seemed like a typical Romero move but usually when Romero wants to be a dick he does it much smarter. This right here was objectively bad design, in a way it caused even the platform to glitch out...

 

2 hours ago, Jello said:

I mean his original ideas for Quake were admirable, but outlandish, gived monetary constraints and time cycle

 

What were some of those ideas? I'm not too familiar with Quake's history.

[Avoozl]

I never found Quake 2 brutal on the highest skill level.

[seed]

1 hour ago, Avoozl said:

I never found Quake 2 brutal on the highest skill level.

 

Not brutally difficult, that wasn't what I meant, but brutally tedious thanks to its bullet sponges.

 

Also the laser dogs, as I call them, should just jump into a river...

[Mayomancer]

Just finished helltaker, good game, good art, had fun. Now that i think about it, it's the exact opposite of DooM, instead of a first person shooter where demons come to mars and you have to kill them all, Helltaker is a puzzle game where you go to hell to build a demon harem.

 

Although i guess the demons get f*cked in both

[NonniR]

DOOM ! ALL THE DOOMS. FOREVER.

 

I'm not actually lying about that. Currently playing Rush (D2 wad), managed to get to map 9 before I had to take a break. My first time playing a slaughter map which was recommended as a beginners slaughter map. I am liking it and I am starting to see why people play slaughtermaps in general. Finally pushing through and finishing that level that has been kicking your ass feels great.

 

Was also doing my UV run through Doom Eternal when the anti-cheat thing happened so I un-installed it and now just waiting for the patch to drop that removes it. So to fill up that blank I started playing Doom 2016 on UV. I had finished it once before (on the PS4(yeahIknowshameful) and I had loved it but Jesus, it's so much better on the PC. Also exploring the levels properly and getting all the secrets and collectibles as well. Such a fantastic game and deserves all the praise it got. I'll be honest man. Going from Doom Eternal to Doom 2016 and you can see the differences. Doom 2016 is a far better, more cohesive game in my opinion. Not that Doom Eternal is a bad game but it feels quite ... inconsistent in comparison to Doom 2016.

 

Also checking out some Doom 3 mods (Perfected, Overthinked3) and experimenting with that. Been over 10 years since I played that game by now so it's quite fresh to me. Bland game design though with literal monster closets everywhere. Even so, the atmosphere is pretty good and I love the sound design of it. 

 

For non-Doom-games, I have been playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Subnautica a bit). Assassin's Creed Odyssey is a fun game to kill some time and is massive beyond belief (don't think I'll ever finish it though considering the size) and Subnautica is one of the most terrifying games in existence. That game is pure nightmare-fuel of the highest order.  Interestingly, that's why it's so damn intoxicating. You feel like you are genuinely exploring a alien world and slowly starting to understand it, pushing just a bit deeper into the depths of that terrifying darkness. It's glorious. And terrifying.

 

TLDR: Doom 2016, Doom Eternal UV-run, Doom 3 (mods), Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Subnautica. Subnautica is nightmare-fuel inc.

[Avoozl]

The bullet sponge enemies don't seem much worse than the Doom 2 ones honestly.

[maxmanium]

Morrowind. Takes some getting used to, but an absolutely fantastic game.

[hybridial]

6 hours ago, maxmanium said:

Morrowind. Takes some getting used to, but an absolutely fantastic game.

 

I tried to a few days ago on OpenMW, but as a game it falls apart for me the moment you try to... fight anything really. And that was true for me back when I tried it for the first time on the Xbox not long after that port came out, and every other attempt I've made to get into it.

 

But I am playing Icewind Dale and Infinity engine = my jam. 

[loveless]

6 hours ago, maxmanium said:

Morrowind. Takes some getting used to, but an absolutely fantastic game.

 

Put around 2000 hours into that game and I'd do it all over again.  Have you played any of Tamriel Rebuilt?  I'm strongly considering it but don't want to neglect my backlog.

[maxmanium]

5 minutes ago, loveless said:

 

Put around 2000 hours into that game and I'd do it all over again.  Have you played any of Tamriel Rebuilt?  I'm strongly considering it but don't want to neglect my backlog.

 

I haven't played Tamriel Rebuilt. I keep restarting my characters, lol. Although I did finish off Dagoth Ur as an Imperial.

[seed]

6 hours ago, Avoozl said:

The bullet sponge enemies don't seem much worse than the Doom 2 ones honestly.

 

To me they are, horrible in fact, combined with the fact that the weapons don't fell that satisfying to use - also I can never get over the absence of muzzle flashes, it's so dumb to see the rooms light up but no actual fire is seen coming from the weapon's barrels...

 

10 hours ago, seed said:

Nah, don't, tbh stopping after episode 1 is basically stopping before the real fun even begins. It should be much better from this point onward, and from what I've seen so far episode 2 is already a vast improvement.

 

Can confirm, and oh man just how much better it gets. I'm near the end of episode 3 now, and the Greek episode was amazing, very well designed with amazing architecture and actually fun enemies and weapons now. Some of the enemies, particularly some of the flying little ones, do seem recycled from E1, but that's fine, they do their job.

 

Medusa was interesting to fight, but it sucks a bit that she had no proper introduction sequence. First time I died to her I had no idea she was even there, you just casually stumble upon her on your way and kill her, lol. I like the fact that apparently each episode had its own arsenal, and the best part of it is that it has its own personality, so far none of the weapons from E2 or E3 feel like they're just simple replacements from those available in E1, like it tends to happen with some games, but I am not getting that impression here at all, almost - yeah the staff you get in E3 does very much feel as if it's a recycled grenade launcher from E1, but oh man this staff is so crazy who even cares about this really. It has personality and its own signature, and that's all that matters.

 

The atmosphere is even better, and the music is also getting better and better. I now finally know where some of the songs I've heard in some Doom wads and other places come from, they came from Daikatana, heh. I've so far maxed out my Daikatana, invvested 4 points into Speed, 2 in Vitality, and 2 in Power. I want to max out Speed first as I have found it the most useful when it comes to weapons, more so than raw power.

 

The plague village is quite interesting too, and slowly transitions to dungeons as far as I can tell. The boss I took the staff from was fairly weak honestly, posed no threat at all. As about the enemies in this chapter, so far they're all fine. I can see why Jello above said that the zombies are cheap with all the constant spawning, but honestly, they aren't that bad, they do their job of sacrificial lambs that go to slaughter just fine, once you run into your first random zombie you start seeing the pattern instantly.

 

Werewolves aren't bad at all either, yeah you can't kill them with most weapons, but they go down easy, and stay down for quite a while, which gives the player plenty of opportunity to gib them with the steel gloves - whatever they're called, I don't know the actual name of any weapon. They're a non-issue as well. So far the puzzles were fine too, though it might be a bit easy to miss one of the 5 Aegis fragments, I easily found 4 but I accidentally missed the one in the room with the spider carved on the floor, which took a while to figure out.

 

As for bosses, the only one I dislike so far is Cerberus, naturally. He holds no candle to Cerberus from Blood, very small, and very weak. I initially thought he was way tougher seems he resist most weapons, but dies almost immediately to the trident. Not a good boss but whatever, he serves his purpose, laughable as he his. "Good doggy... play dead."

 

This game is extremely creative and ambitious I daresay, it really is too bad that Romero didn't have a more experienced team and funds, if he had, I think we'd all be singing a very different tune now. It really gets a lot better after E1. And frankly, like I said, E1 in itself is not that bad, what makes it bad is the excessive use of turrets everywhere, random armed humans, and tough enemies blocking ways or waiting to ambush the player right after opening a door. The levels were otherwise fine by themselves.

 

I can see why this can make the game look like it's lacking focus since it can feel like a playground for ideas sometimes, but considering the very basic story - and one involving time travelling, no less - I it gives a lot of creative freedom to play with ideas without feeling too out of place. Hexen 2 did this too with all its very different locations. But hey, it worked in its favor ultimately, so who cares - I don't.

 

Looking forward to what's coming up in Daikatana 👌.

 

34 minutes ago, hybridial said:

I tried to a few days ago on OpenMW, but as a game it falls apart for me the moment you try to... fight anything really. And that was true for me back when I tried it for the first time on the Xbox not long after that port came out, and every other attempt I've made to get into it.

 

If OpenMW has a mod or something that removes the RNG from the combat, I'd certainly go for that. The RNG makes the combat really bad early on. And frankly, it took Bethesda 5 games to make combat not suck, although they simulatenously oversimplified some aspects of the gameplay as well. Can't eat the cake and have it too I guess *shrugs*.

 

Man I'd love to go back to ES honestly, but I am completely tired of sorting out load orders and mod conflicts :(.

[hybridial]

1 hour ago, seed said:

Man I'd love to go back to ES honestly, but I am completely tired of sorting out load orders and mod conflicts :(.

 

I have 485 hours on Skyrim. 70 of those were playing it, the other 400+ was basically that :P

 

I keep telling myself, just don't. Never go back. Never. 

[yakfak]

playing vaporum
i had an earlier save where i got to a fairly big arena but had kinda messed up my character
this time I took the lazy defensive armor and then bought shield braces and combat doesn't have to be anywhere near as intense now
those guards who kick you back a square and then shoot you with the rifle can sorta be face tanked with a decent shield, i was scared of them on the older playthrough
it's a good game although I could say the story isn't that interesting, reminds me of bioshock and all that
it shares that old school dungeon master frustration where every wall texture is more effective than the last in convincing you that yr missing endless piles of secrets
even though a lot of the actual secrets are logical and if there's a trial and error section, it'll be in its own obvious room instead of being a Click every region of every wall type deal
i like this resurgence of tile based dungeons, one of the best types of game

[FractalBeast]

Back at it again playing Minecraft.

 

The slow, repetitive gameplay is just perfect to listen music to. I just pop in a new album, or put on a Spotify playlist full of unknown music and go explore.

[DRM-MAN]

Playing fallout 4, it's jarring to come back to after 3&NV.

[Lila Feuer]

14 hours ago, seed said:

 

Not brutally difficult, that wasn't what I meant, but brutally tedious thanks to its bullet sponges.

 

Also the laser dogs, as I call them, should just jump into a river...

Yeah the moment I learned they removed the pain chances from monsters in addition to buffing them made me wish I didn't slog until the last unit of the game to find how why this game felt harder but in a stupid way. Just don't use the power armor (maybe ignore the quad damage and invul since they really shouldn't be there) and the game is still decently challenging on hard.

Parasite is a shit enemy for real, but the Gunner is probably the most deceivingly dangerous for being so common. I guess it's like Q2's Ogre, but the fucker is maniacal on Nightmare and is VERY good at leading you into his volleys of grenades.

[ReaperAA]

I am on early/mid part of E3 of Daikatana and I agree with Seed with almost all points.

 

E2 is awesome and has fantastic architecture. Even finding the 5 AEGIS keys was not so hard. The only flaw with E2 is that it felt too easy, even on Shogun difficulty (which is a stark contrast to E1's difficulty) as I didn't even die once on E2 up until meeting Medusa. But I guess this "flaw" actually works well to make the player relaxed after E1.

 

E3 probably has the best weapons/monster roster. I actually like the monsters having unique abilities. The zombies with their teleport ability are good ambushes and the werewolves create combat urgency as they need to be "gibbed" quickly before reviving. However, I did got lost for some time in E3 because I couldn't find the area where the 3-keystones needed to be placed (I didn't notice the crack on the wall hidden behind the cart).

[seed]

5 hours ago, hybridial said:

I have 485 hours on Skyrim. 70 of those were playing it, the other 400+ was basically that :P

 

I keep telling myself, just don't. Never go back. Never. 

 

Got almost 800 here, of which some 600 are spent randomly CTDing due to mod conflicts I never figured out. Annoying, but what can you do... nowadays I don't have the patience for it anymore...

 

2 hours ago, Lila Feuer said:

Yeah the moment I learned they removed the pain chances from monsters in addition to buffing them made me wish I didn't slog until the last unit of the game to find how why this game felt harder but in a stupid way. Just don't use the power armor (maybe ignore the quad damage and invul since they really shouldn't be there) and the game is still decently challenging on hard.

Parasite is a shit enemy for real, but the Gunner is probably the most deceivingly dangerous for being so common. I guess it's like Q2's Ogre, but the fucker is maniacal on Nightmare and is VERY good at leading you into his volleys of grenades.

 

Pretty sure the pain chances are still there, enemies do get stunned, but they go down just so darn hard sometimes killing is a challenge in itself, which makes the game exceptionally frustrating early one, hence I always play it on Medium, less madness to swim through early on and generally much more enjoyable.

 

37 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

I am on early/mid part of E3 of Daikatana and I agree with Seed with almost all points.

 

E2 is awesome and has fantastic architecture. Even finding the 5 AEGIS keys was not so hard. The only flaw with E2 is that it felt too easy, even on Shogun difficulty (which is a stark contrast to E1's difficulty) as I didn't even die once on E2 up until meeting Medusa. But I guess this "flaw" actually works well to make the player relaxed after E1.

 

E3 probably has the best weapons/monster roster. I actually like the monsters having unique abilities. The zombies with their teleport ability are good ambushes and the werewolves create combat urgency as they need to be "gibbed" quickly before reviving. However, I did got lost for some time in E3 because I couldn't find the area where the 3-keystones needed to be placed (I didn't notice the crack on the wall hidden behind the cart).

 

Ya, it definitely is a highly welcome change of pace. I did die a few times early on, mostly because I played with the Daikatana exclusively to max it out so that I know that's out of the way, and also because I finished E1 with 30hp so I had to crawl on my way to a fountain.

 

Agreed about the werewolves, which is what I like about them as well, but the zombies nah, they're pretty meh since all they ever do is spawn everywhere, making them predictable and uninteresting. But they help selling the theme of the chapter though, and do that quite well, with all the sickness and everything plaguing the region.

[Lila Feuer]

@seed From the "Quake Wiki":
 

Quote

Differences introduced in Hard+ include faster enemy attacks and enemies with more health (one example of this is the Carrier, who has 3,000hp in Hard but 4,000hp in Hard+). But the main difference is that monsters will never go into pain (unlike in Quake 1 where enemies went into pain the first time you hit them). All if not most enemy data on this wiki is taken from the Hard difficulty.

 

[Jello]

20 hours ago, Lila Feuer said:

@Jello It's strange because Romero usually has great gameplay design. Wolf3D, Doom, Quake, Heretic and Hexen wouldn't be nearly as fun if it weren't for his direction in that department. Probably why Strife feels so lopsided with the balance of enemies and weapons, ditto for Quake II and eventually Doom 3. But undoubtedly, Daikatana having proper quality control and adequate testing wasn't really possible with the troubled development.

And I think that's the problem. He didn't have completely free reign over how those games were designed. With Daikatana it was his project. There was nobody to say no to him. He knows how to make good games, and he knows good design. But Daikatana seems to show that he needs people to tell him no once in awhile. 

[seed]

2 hours ago, Lila Feuer said:

@seed From the "Quake Wiki":

 

...

 

Everything is clear now. Screw hard difficulty in this game.

[Lila Feuer]

@seed You think that's bad? Try Ground Zero. It's ruined by the overpowered turret enemies that Rogue seem to have a fetish for (looking at you Strife). Total pacing killer.

[ReaperAA]

I am on E4 of Daikatana (reached "Mishima Labs" to be precise). Although the aesthetics and level design of E4 are not as great as E2 and E3, I am still enjoying it due to my weapons being so powerful (I have maxed out both power and attack speed) that I am mowing down enemies pretty quickly. However, this isn't gonna last forever as hitscanners are returning in full force from Mishima Labs onwards.