What Video Game Are You Currently Playing?

[InfernalMonsoon]

Yes I very muched enjoyed it a ton! It's such a wildly unique game and nothing really comes close to attempting its style. The combat was serviceable at best but the mechanics, lack of HUD and healing system makes it incredibly immersive and intense for me. Though for sure I do feel like the game is best when it focuses on point and click adventure game design, especially when the stealth is rubbish haha. Very much looking forward to replaying it next year :)

[Rudolph]

4 hours ago, Jasper Carmack said:

A solid chunk of the overall game was also cut to meet the release schedule (the current ending of the game was more of a halfway point originally, with the player traveling to the arctic afterwards).

Really? I did not know that.

 

I did play through most of the game, but kind of gave up on it after I got trapped in a temple room and started losing health for no reason. I guess at this point, I was getting a bit too frustrated with the game's jankiness, even if I was enjoying the story and the characters. As awkward as the gunplay was, it was incredibly cathartic to be able to turn the tables on the people and the things that had been stalking and hunting me up to that point.

[Arrowhead]

Currently obsessed w/ Quake Champions. Used to be alright at Quake Live, but this feels waaaay different.

 

Very fun, and I love the fact that they included nearly EVERY weapon from the entire Quake franchise as a weapon skin. You can buy them outright, or beat challenges to unlock them - although, that takes quite a long time. Love using the Quake 2 railgun in a modern game.

 

You also get XP for killing bots, which I found odd, but at least it gives me incentive to practice more.  :)

[Thelokk]

Got a Steam key through a sweepstake (I often participate in this kind of stuff 'cause, for some reason, I have uncanny luck in the random draws department only) for the recent release of Chasm: The Rift - one of the many boomer shooters I have only played a demo of, out of a free CD bundle with a computer magazine, like, twentysome years ago or even more. Really nothing special: the story makes no sense, some of the monsters are very goofy (rofl at the lizard clown) but the weapons are rather fun (hooray for the ripsaw launcher, and that shield that stuff just kills itself against). Will probably get to the end of it 'cause hey, it was for free. 

[Toastd]

Total War: Warhammer 3. It's got its issues for sure. The siege rework actually made the game less fun in my opinion, as almost every battle is now a minor settlement battle with stupid respawning towers and barricades that cause horrible pathfinding issues... Bleh. There's a lot of improvements from 2 though, and I'm enjoying the enormous map and faction diversity. The new human factions are really fun and the WoC rework is great. I've been having fun with the more unique campaigns (WoC) and some of the more challenging ones (Kislev).

[Lemonzest]

Split between doing another play through of Xenoblade 2 and playing the new DLC that got released for Xenoblade 3!

[Mr. Freeze]

Multiversus.

Don't mess with my Morty.

[Somniac]

I got The Master Chief Collection with a view to run through the original Halo trilogy. I was never a mega fan but I have strong memories of playing these games with friends many years ago and it was fun.

 

Currently 3 missions into Combat Evolved and I'm honestly not sure how well it holds up today. I'm on Heroic and the amount of cheap deaths so far has been borderline offputting. It's not like I'm trying to rush every area either. Normal felt like it would probably be too easy, but maybe it'll be more enjoyable on a lower skill level. Then again it's been like 15 years since I last played any Halo so maybe I just need to get used to it again. 

[Rudolph]

I feel you. I was looking forward to replay Halo 1 during the last free weekend event on Steam for MCC and I was so bored by it that I gave up on the game by the time I finally got out of the Pillar of Autumn. I remembered the indoor levels being boring, but nowhere near this level; I have fond memories of the Halo demo featuring the Silent Cartographer level, but I guess I just did not have the patience nor time to push further after that awful, awful opening level. Granted, Marathon 1's first level was rough too, but at least, it had the excuse of being a much smaller production.

 

This really makes me wonder how Halo was able to become this juggernaut of a franchise in the first place. It must have been one heck of a miracle...

Edited October 14, 2022 by Rudolph

[BGreener]

1 hour ago, VisionThing said:

I got The Master Chief Collection with a view to run through the original Halo trilogy. I was never a mega fan but I have strong memories of playing these games with friends many years ago and it was fun.

 

Currently 3 missions into Combat Evolved and I'm honestly not sure how well it holds up today. I'm on Heroic and the amount of cheap deaths so far has been borderline offputting. It's not like I'm trying to rush every area either. Normal felt like it would probably be too easy, but maybe it'll be more enjoyable on a lower skill level. Then again it's been like 15 years since I last played any Halo so maybe I just need to get used to it again. 

Some of the combat scenarios can be fun, especially compared to what else was out around the time, but I played through it with an old friend and we would’ve given up easily halfway through if weren't having fun messing around: The levels get very repetitive and the second half of the game is just going through them all again.

 

Halo 2 is where we did give up, the dualwielding is neat for a moment and there are some interesting setpieces but it was otherwise more of the same and we got bored. Those jackal snipers didn't help at all.

[NoXion]

I also got the MCC a while back and played through the first game. I honestly forgot about the painful areas where you went backtracking across cut-and-paste interior levels. They weren't so prominent in my memories of the game. But the outside areas are better and the gunplay was fun, after I once again got used to the idea of only carrying two weapons at once.

Halo is definitely more fun when played with friends in my experience.

[Rudolph]

Did Bungie ever figure out how to design good indoor levels? I understand Halo 1 and even 2 had to be rushed out of the door, so I am curious to know if there is at least one Halo game out there that is consistently good in terms of level design.

Edited October 14, 2022 by Rudolph

[Wyrmwood]

Only played the first 3 Halo games and Reach but all the indoor areas had very poor visual design. The actual combat scenarios were pretty enjoyable though, my favorite Halo stage is the one in the first game when you first encounter the flood and that's indoors, near pitch dark with lots of close encounters that require a shotgun in the face and scary moments when your battery runs out on your flashlight.

 

Later titles like Halo 3 have better designed indoor arenas but visually still pretty cut and paste.

 

Biggest problem I had playing Halo with my boys a few months back was that Master Chief walks reallllly slowly after you've been playing a lot of Doom.

[Rudolph]

I guess Halo must have greatly benefited from being the biggest first-person shooter franchise on Xbox at the time. I still do not understand how players - including myself, when I first played Halo: Combat Evolved on PC decades ago - were able to put up with those dreadful indoor levels: even fucking GoldenEye 007 had better level design than that. Maybe I am just getting old...

 

6 hours ago, Wyrmwood said:

Biggest problem I had playing Halo with my boys a few months back was that Master Chief walks reallllly slowly after you've been playing a lot of Doom.

I seem to remember the Doomslayer being rather slow too in Doom 2016, but in this case, it was to accommodate for the speed upgrade modules.

 

* * *

 

Anyway, I finally played through the Hell To Pay megawad.

 

I think it was ultimately for the best that it was not included in Final Doom, but it remains a fascinating mapset to play through; questionable visuals and level design aside, it is quite ambitious for its time and, dare I say, even ahead of it in certain areas.

Edited October 15, 2022 by Rudolph

[BGreener]

10 hours ago, Wyrmwood said:

Only played the first 3 Halo games and Reach but all the indoor areas had very poor visual design. The actual combat scenarios were pretty enjoyable though, my favorite Halo stage is the one in the first game when you first encounter the flood and that's indoors, near pitch dark with lots of close encounters that require a shotgun in the face and scary moments when your battery runs out on your flashlight.

 

Later titles like Halo 3 have better designed indoor arenas but visually still pretty cut and paste.

 

Biggest problem I had playing Halo with my boys a few months back was that Master Chief walks reallllly slowly after you've been playing a lot of Doom.

 

Monolith and IdSoft were better about good looking interiors but that came at a cost. I think FEAR and Doom 3 are much more impressive looking than something like Halo 2, but Halo 2 could afford to have larger shootouts and encounters with many more participants in larger areas.

 

Some of that interior lightning in Halo 1 was pretty neat, I will say.

[hybridial]

I have to say finishing Chasm makes me appreciate playing through Dimension of the Machine. Is that a fair comparison? Not at all? Did I feel the combat and level design were just, quite spectacular after playing a game that was constricted to having Doom-like levels without even the open spaces? Oh yes. Oh very yes. 

 

I've finished three of the five episodes so far. 

[Rudolph]

1 hour ago, hybridial said:

I have to say finishing Chasm makes me appreciate playing through Dimension of the Machine.

What about Dimension of the Machine? That is the new episode that came with the Enhanced release, right? Is it supposed to be badly designed or what?

[whybmonotacrab]

Bouncing between Cultic and Islets. Cultic is easily the best Boom-Shoot I've in a while. It's like if Blood took its horror elements a lot more seriously. It's actually really tense and creepy at times. Seems to take a lot of inspiration from Resident Evil 4 as well, which I am all about.

 

 Islets, on the other hand, is a very cute metroidvania that is very well crafted. The main thing that sets it apart is the world and characters - the game is just effortly charming and frequently hilarious. I am absolutely adoring it.

[Arwel]

Quote

What Video Game Are You Currently Playing?

 

Cultic of course! Not a demo, it was released few days ago.

[Wyrmwood]

37 minutes ago, Arwel said:

 

Cultic of course! Not a demo, it was released few days ago.

 

Oh, had that wishlisted for a while, looks like a spiritual sequel to Blood. Going to have to check it out.

 

Totally off topic but are you a Welshman by any chance, just going by your screen name.

[Arwel]

1 hour ago, Wyrmwood said:

 

Oh, had that wishlisted for a while, looks like a spiritual sequel to Blood. Going to have to check it out.

 

Totally off topic but are you a Welshman by any chance, just going by your screen name.

 

Nope, as far as I remember this nickname I got by using online random fantasy name generator for World of Warcraft character.

I got something like Arwen, but it was already taken so I randomly changed it to Arwel and that did work.

[Wyrmwood]

34 minutes ago, Arwel said:

 

Nope, as far as I remember this nickname I got by using online random fantasy name generator for World of Warcraft character.

I got something like Arwen, but it was already taken so I randomly changed it to Arwel and that did work.

 

Ah, nevermind then, Arwel is a traditional Welsh male forename. Welsh is a bit elven sounding so I guess it makes sense it came from a fantasy name generator.

[hybridial]

12 hours ago, Rudolph said:

What about Dimension of the Machine? That is the new episode that came with the Enhanced release, right? Is it supposed to be badly designed or what?

 

Oh no, it's very good, very impressive. I'd say the levels are on par with the kind of quality in Arcane Dimensions. 

[Rudolph]

That reminds me that I need to give that one a shot, especially now that Quake: Enhanced has made it much easier to run on modern OS and load maps.

[Wyrmwood]

14 hours ago, Rudolph said:

That reminds me that I need to give that one a shot, especially now that Quake: Enhanced has made it much easier to run on modern OS and load maps.

 

I think Dimension of the Machine is exclusive to remaster, but loading Quake maps these days is easy. From the Quaddicted site download Quake injector. It does all the work for you, even checks dependencies and auto installs them, it's probably even easier than Doom now.

[heliumlamb]

20 hours ago, Rudolph said:

That reminds me that I need to give that one a shot, especially now that Quake: Enhanced has made it much easier to run on modern OS and load maps.

 

5 hours ago, Wyrmwood said:

 

I think Dimension of the Machine is exclusive to remaster, but loading Quake maps these days is easy. From the Quaddicted site download Quake injector. It does all the work for you, even checks dependencies and auto installs them, it's probably even easier than Doom now.

 

i honestly think loading maps and mods in quake has always been easy, definitely easier than than doom from the start. bring down the console (the "~" or " ` " key) and type "game [modfolder]" or/then "map [mapname]". anything that makes it easier is welcome, but not as necessary as when launching doom outside of a command line.

IMPROMPTU QUAKE FILESYSTEM RUNDOWN NOBODY ASKED FOR (for any who might need it):
quake has its own "filesystem" and seems to be built with modularity in mind, rather than relying on hardcoded everything like in doom. every "mod", including ID1, has its own folder, and every "mod" has its own structure, either in a .pak or loose.

for example, here is the folder structure of ID1 (the base game) when unpak'd


if a quake mod/mapset comes as a single folder that isn't named something like "gfx", "maps", "mapsrc", "music", "progs" or "sound", that folder goes in the root (.../QUAKE/), where your EXEs should be.

if a map comes as loose .bsps with a txt, it usually states what "game" it's for in the .txt.

if the .txt says nothing, it's probably for ID1, so it would end up in (.../QUAKE/ID1/MAPS/).

 

if it's a single map that but comes in a mod folder that you might already have, that goes in the root as well.
most things that add things to multiple folders (new sound, music, gfx, etc as well as map) come this way, as a folder with the same name as what it's dependent on.

unless specified, any quake executable will load ID1 upon launch. you can set shortcuts with launch parameters, but they're the same as the console commands. typing like "game ad" in the console any time i want to play arcane dimensions is better than having a bunch of icons around for each mod.

you can run dimension of the machine (mg1) in most quakespasm forks, the messages don't display correctly but it still displays what the message is sorta? i too am getting around to playing it, and it looks great with ironwail's "r_softemu" settings. it's great.

my experience with kexquake is as follows (no shade to n d <3)

Spoiler

i ended up buying quake for a 5th time a few months to find out that kexquake on my rig yields like 30fps any time there's more than like 5 models on screen and that the sounds are incredibly inconsistent in their frequency ranges to the point of clashing with one another and sometimes themselves! (lowpassed ogre with crisp grenade thunk and saw, that crispy chain layered on top of one of the door sounds that 100% had no crisp chain before initial bit reduction). sounding inconsistently crisp in the highs is unpleasant, rather than being crusty and noisy but consistently so. a lot of the sound in quake feels tuned together, and trying to add frequency content that may or may not have been there from the source(s) prior to reducing bit depth for release still doesn't quite sit well. quake's sfx "mix", both in volume levels and frequency content was perfect. but it's been worth it for mg1, and i don't have to play that in kexquake.

 

it's good for consoles and shitty tv/switch speakers probably. still quake!

probably more words than necessary (classic This Forum User)
i hope this alleviates confusion, rather than causes it. i have been playing a bit of quake sp again, so this is all fresh on my mind.

i have been trying to single segment leptis magna from AD

[Wyrmwood]

5 minutes ago, heliumlamb said:

it's good for consoles and shitty tv/switch speakers probably. still quake!

 

Oh it is good on Switch, especially with gyro controls, Night Dive did a top notch job and it's only getting better as more add-ons arrive.

 

Still I prefer Quakespasm spiked on PC but the console ports of Doom and Quake are far better than I would ever have hoped for.

[MemeMind]

I finished a playthrough of Terraria with some friends, the game is pretty fun and chaotic with other people.  We decided to also start a modded playthough. 

[Thelokk]

Finished Chasm: The Rift and... it kinda sucked. Had to cleanse my palate with something cute, short and unpretentious: Voices from the Sea (base version is free on Steam iirc). Good stuff. 

[Sokoro]

I am playing... right now... ehm.. Doom >.<

I know, but it is really good game.

I preparing my ZDL to start:

DBP: Funnelcake Apparitions wad.