Video Games Randomness - Prioritize specific game threads!

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Sat May 26, 2018 9:04 pm

Bargain bin hunting has its own pros and cons.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Sat May 26, 2018 9:21 pm

Playing "Final Station". It is a VERY interesting 2D way to play a zombie game.

You are like the last engineer and your train barely made it out of the "North" where a suspected "Second Visitation" had occurred. Due to security measures, you have to get a "code" at each station to unblock the next leg of the journey, and while initially the problem is just stupid mistakes or bureaucratic mixup, soon the stations you find are corrupted by some sort of alien evil, strange "capsules" dropped from the sky, and people are dying left and right. Some are turned into "black zombies" dripping "black goo" (can't tell as it's a pixel-y kind of game)

You, engineer of one of the last trains running, is a valuable commodity, but no one can be spared to escort you. You can also make money by taking some of the survivors or other people with missions to the next station. Some of them may be wounded and thus need medkits to stay alive, while others may be hungry and require food else their health will decrease as well. While the train is running, you run back and forth adjusted 3-4 systems on the train to minimize power usage (you only have 100V of power, but your load is at 90V, so if you are late reacting to something your motor will overheat) The reaction is simple, press some arrows to keep stuff in balance and so on. But this is in ADDITION to keepping your passengers alive (so you can get paid).

While you're OFF the station, the game turns into a platform-y kind of exploration / combat game. You can melee or wield one of the weapons, starting with pistol, but later you get shotgun (and possibly better stuff). Ammo is EXTREMELY limited and melee will be most of your kills, but you don't even have to kill any zeds. They don't climb stairs, so you can just run. Some enemies get tricker. Regular zeds move slowly, some move a lot faster. Later you get armored zeds (former soldiers?) you have to knock off their helmet with a melee strike, THEN shoot them in the head. yet later you find gas zeds where they are saturated with gas. One shot will ignite them, and another shot make them go kaboom. You need to explore the 2D level , taking you through plenty of locked doors, climb ladders and stairs, and so on. You will end up throwing boxes and chairs at zeds as weapons too, in addition to shooting them (ammo is VERY scarce) and you have to go to every station finding the blocking code to unlock the next leg, and many of them are infested by zeds.

The game has excellent little touches. Bodies are infested by "flies" (pixels) and ground has blood (pixel-y). There was even a case where two soldiers simply disappeared from the train, leaving two blood trails behind, and I was like WTF?

I just made it all the way to the southern end of the map, and they're telling me they need my train to ship some emergency device to the west, something about a special crystal to power "the guardian", presumably something that can defeat the alien threat. Interesting so far.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Sat May 26, 2018 10:40 pm

I'm making my third attempt in 12 years at Neverwinter Nights 2. I've never made it past arriving at Neverwinter.

Honestly, I'm thinking about ditching it again. It just feels clunky. The writing so far isn't great. The interface and controls are awful, and I find myself fighting the game way too often. It's still buggy. And, believe it or not, I can't maintain a decent framerate in it. This isn't a cutting edge PC, but it can play The Witcher 3 or GTA V just fine. There is no reason it should ever be in the 40s on a game this old.

So, give me an opinion: Does this thing get good enough to justify investing more time?

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sat May 26, 2018 10:55 pm

i DIDN'T CARE FOR THEM. i FINISHED THE FIRST TWO GAMES BUT DIDN'T REALLY LIKE THEM. tHEY NEVER IMPROVED ANM....f'n caps lock......anyways I didn't finish the 3rd one and never replayed any of them.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Sun May 27, 2018 4:32 am

I never got into the AD&D Gold Box games, even back then when they were dumped out by the dozen. The closest was I played Buck Rogers for a while, which is a Gold Box game in all but name, same combat system, same UI and everything. Didn't ever finish.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sun May 27, 2018 4:55 am

Really loved Buck Rogers Countdown Till Doomsday on the Sega Genesis. I rented and finished that game at least 12 times.Id love to have a new Buck Rogers game with overhead space portions and ground too.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Sun May 27, 2018 9:25 am

Daehawk wrote: ↑Sat May 26, 2018 10:55 pm i DIDN'T CARE FOR THEM. i FINISHED THE FIRST TWO GAMES BUT DIDN'T REALLY LIKE THEM. tHEY NEVER IMPROVED ANM....f'n caps lock......anyways I didn't finish the 3rd one and never replayed any of them.

3rd one?

KDH · Post by **KDH** » Sun May 27, 2018 12:14 pm

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sun May 27, 2018 9:25 am
3rd one?

His NUM-LOK was probably stuck

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sun May 27, 2018 2:10 pm

I picked up Battle Chasers Nightwar Friday night, and promptly dumped nearly 8 hours into it yesterday. It's a turn-based JRPG at heart, but the battle system has some really cool mechanics that require significant strategy. It also looks and sounds amazing.

The difficulty is pretty high (which I don't typically enjoy), but it has been fun enough to keep me glued for quite a while. I'd highly recommend giving it a look.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Sun May 27, 2018 9:54 pm

Playing Furious Angels, one of those "infinite wave" twin stick shooters that's even simpler than Luftrausers. I didn't survive very long, but then, maybe I'm not supposed to. hahahaha.

The premise is simple. You're a fighter onboard a hovercarrier stuck in hostile territory. Enemies keep sending waves after you... fighters, bombers, corvettes, cruisers, even another carrier. You... have to shoot them ALL down and survive as long as you can. The catch is of course, you die if your carrier dies, and you die when, well, you die. You get periodic upgrades when you make X numbers of kills, and you repair yourself if you stop shooting. If you thrust and shoot your shots will be less frequent. There doesn't seem to be any ship busting torpedoes or such. Indeed, I'm too busy shooting. You can turn the graphics WAY down so it's playable even on very weak rigs. For a few bucks, it's a very nice mindless shooter.

-----

Trying to work through some of my backlog, and came upon "Confrontation".

The premise is four people in a land of magic AND tech, try to stem the tide of evil. The first faction you come up against is the Scorpions (it's a faction name) and they have "technomancers" that can create bad guys out of more common critters. You have four operatives, a warrior monk (with sword), a dual-wield assassin, a half-magic/half-melee guy, and a pyromancer. I just played through Act I, Part 1 where I went through the enemy base. I was stuck because the ROTATIONAL controls were Not obvious, and they hid the switches in an angle where I can't see. The camera is atrocious. There is no "follow the group" camera, not even a hotkey to jump back to the group. There are no hotkeys to ROTATE the camera either. This is inexcusable even for a game from 2012. The ONLY way to rotate camera is with the mouse. WTF?! Even on Easy mode the game can get kinda hard. The interface is also a bit clunky. The game is basically pausable realtime, where your heros have one or two sets of weapons, and they will attack, and you can invoke special actions after sufficient cooldown, and you have the prerequisite mana/faith/spell-points to use the special actions. The special actions includes buff, debuff, counter-debuff, attack spell, and so on.

The upgrade tree is really weird, Instead of just upgrade stuff, you end up running around the map looking for "weapons points" and "armor points" in caches. There are no loot, just chests containing "bandages" you need to heal comrades if they fell. When you level up, you can choose to put a point in 3-4 of your attributes (CON, STR, AGL, etc.) There are also "skill" points, and you can use them to upgrade something. I still haven't quite figured out what's the big deal about it. You can either upgrade armor against physical OR magical attacks? Okay...

The actual mission involves moving around, put the tank first, then buff him and send in other guys to flank. But lack of dedicated healers put a damper on things. You mainly use your four main guys, and they are pretty powerful, but even on easy things can get tricky. The difficulty somehow suddenly shot up in Part 2, where I went through the base, defeated the level boss, and was trying to escape. Then somehow, in running away, we ended up trapped against a river, and enemies started to rush in on all sides, after the pyromancer suddenly dropped unconscious after touching something with runes. So now we have three guys fighting enemies rushing in. It's a little hectic, but since it's only two at a time, we can do it. Then the game up the ante by making your tank run off to do something else, leaving two lesser fighters protecting the down pyromancer (apparently dragging her away is NOT an option!) I fought off like six waves, but I ran out of heal. When one guy went down, the other guy had to bring him back, but he can't do it while fighting. And there's not enough time between battles. I got overwhelmed by the 7th wave.

Since the game gave me NO clue on where did I go wrong, I guess I pretty much have to stop playing. I may download a trainer and give it another go, but when I fail, I want the game to give me at least SOME idea where I went wrong. EASY mode should at least be, well, easy.

EDIT: I downloaded a "Cheat table" for Cheat Engine (the game hack program) but it didn't work. The version didn't match exactly. However, this time, the hopeless fight was over much more quickly, not sure what happened. The two lesser fighters fought off like maybe ONE wave, then cutscene jumped in. The guy that ran off found a shrine or something, and he prayed and was given "divine fire" (he's somehow got constant heal) and he ran back, we killed ONE more wave together, and voila, that's it. We got some weapons "glyph"s we can apply (which just adds some passive buffs) and we're off the Chapter 3, where we're playing a solo "executioner" called "Nera" Fera. Guess it's more of a stealth segment? Hmmm...

EDIT: Fera is a stealth girl (executioner) who relies on sneak attacks. She can't win a stand-up fight, so the segment was her AVOIDING all fights. She runs into an ally (Praetorian guard, a tank), and together they fight through the dungeons of the prison, rescued yet another prisoner (darkness hunter, basically a pistol wielding priestess), and escaped.

Next chapter is these three meet up with the first four after a couple fights. Then you can pick and choose your party from these seven. By now on easy your characters should be like level 10. The class names are just weird, as if they are trying to make up something just for the heck of it.You start with Officer, Thallion, Pyromancer, and Inquisitor. Then you get Executioner, Praetorian Guard, and Darkness Hunter. In the next chapter, I'll get introduced to exorcist, fusilier, and magistrate. Guess that leaves Chaplain and Duellist last.

The game is growing on me a little. The interface is quirky, as you're queuing actions. But each action requires a bit of time to be executed. So you'll be hitting pause A LOT. Coordinating stuff isn't THAT hard. The trick is obviously knock out enemies as fast as you can by properly utilizing the "spells" each character has in the right combinations. It's tactical combat RPG.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Tue May 29, 2018 12:50 pm

And just like that, Bethesda makes me give a shit about E3.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Tue May 29, 2018 6:07 pm

There have been as many as 150k viewers sitting on Bethesda's Twitch channel this afternoon, spazzing out about the Please Stand By stream.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Tue May 29, 2018 6:40 pm

All my guys are excited:

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Wed May 30, 2018 1:10 am

Still playing Confrontation. I'm getting a little bored. The story is tolerable, but they give you text to read, apparently there was no budget to render some movies or make animations. I'm in chapter 2, which makes me at about 30% point, I think. The game encourages you to play with all twelve characters, but only 4 at a time, and they do make interesting combinations as some of the skills are complementary. Right now I have a style that works.

One tank -- heavy melee guy, with the "rush" attack, do a lot of damage in the first round. Right now, that's Darius the soldier.

One mage -- cast stun / cage / impede to slow the enemy down to give the other team members a chance to kill one guy dead quickly. Right now that's Zelia the pyromancer.

One sniper -- yes, there's a fusilier (shooter) in the game called Caan. He has three attacks: a sniper attack (massive damage), a knockdown attack (lays the guy out for couple seconds, not as damaging as sniper attack), and basic melee. I use this guy to get the initial shot off and try to take one out early on.

One utility/healer -- this guy heals, but can melee and cast some spells. He's sort of reserve / back-up .

The problem is the tactics are about the same. Tank buffs up, mage waits, sniper waits, utility casts "flaming weapons" on tank went Darius in, followed immediately by a shot from the sniper. Generally the target should be mostly dead. Soldier continues pounding, and utility charge in to finish the enemy off. Repeat on subsequent enemies. Generally, I encounter them in groups of three. So it's always a unfair fight (I have four guys). It's when I accidentally encountred more than one group at a time then it comes dicey.

My characters are generally up to LVL16-17 now. And they do quite a bit of damage with the upgrades so far. But the terrain is a PITA with horrible camera controls as mentioned earlier. I don't really see myself playing this to the bitter end, but who knows.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Wed May 30, 2018 9:06 am

I'm throwing in with the "It's a Fallout 3 and/or Fallout New Vegas remaster" crowd. Normally, the studio would be just about ready to announce a new Elder Scrolls title, but a couple of years ago Todd Howard said that there were two as-yet-unannounced projects that would come before Elder Scrolls 6. Producing remasters of the previous Fallout titles, a la Skyrim Special Edition, would allow them to be released on current gen consoles as well as refreshing the PC versions to run on Win10.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Wed May 30, 2018 10:03 am

If they wrote the tech to remaster FO3, it wouldn't be a huge stretch to get an Oblivion remaster, too.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Wed May 30, 2018 10:37 am

Welp, so much for that theory.

A new game, but the branding (Fallout 76 rather than Fallout 5) implies something other than an RPG, perhaps? A full-on settlement management sim?

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Wed May 30, 2018 10:41 am

Fallout Wiki

Vault 76 is one of the Vault-Tec vaults shown on the computer in the Citadel.

The Vault-Tec terminal in the Citadel lists Vault 76 as a "control" vault, with 500 occupants. The vault was designed to open 20 years after a nuclear war, and was among the seventeen known control vaults, meaning that it was used as a baseline to compare to experimental vaults.

morlac · Post by **morlac** » Wed May 30, 2018 1:35 pm

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Sat May 26, 2018 9:04 pm Bargain bin hunting has its own pros and cons.

I'm about 99.9% sure you have clones. No way just one person has enough free time to play so many crappy games and read so many crappy romance novels. Just saying.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Wed May 30, 2018 4:07 pm

My son, 14, is in Washington DC this week on a school trip. He just sent me a picture from inside the Jefferson Memorial. The text was, "Where's the water tank?"

I told him he was standing in it.

KDH · Post by **KDH** » Wed May 30, 2018 9:24 pm

.
... Queen's Wish: The Conqueror ... Spiderweb Software (Avernum\Geneforge) .. Kickstarter

$31,860 pledged of $30,000 goal
570 backers
29 days to go

Spoiler:

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Wed May 30, 2018 9:54 pm

The price and looks remind me of the old days when games were great and prices were normal. I remember a game coming out that cost $100k to make then $1 million to make. Times have changed. I still dont see why they have to be 30 million bucks...or Star Citizen crazy.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Wed May 30, 2018 10:02 pm

I was really interested to try the new MMO Bless Online. While I never stick with them, I typically enjoy these Korean MMO's for a while. Then I saw this from TheLazyPeon (a guy I generally tend to agree with):

Yeah, I'll be skipping this one entirely unless it goes F2P.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Wed May 30, 2018 10:18 pm

Haven't watched the video yet but will. Ive wanted to play Bless and Albion since first info came out but I am not buying a 'founders' pack to play a free MMO.

Well that sucks. Watched it. I did laugh a little at the guy. "Cant get a steady 60 fps"..Why in my day we were lucky to get 30 fps and we liked it.

Also I used to play Counter Strike with 280 pings and came in first. Players today

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Wed May 30, 2018 11:27 pm

Framerate only bothers me when it really chugs. Anything above 30 and I really can't tell much difference. All the other crap (crashes, disaster of a UI, boring combat, etc.) were far more concerning.

Probably just revisit Blade & Soul if I need my Korean MMO grindfest fix.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Thu May 31, 2018 2:22 am

Still going in Confrontation. I've fought my way through the Orc Land (chapter 2) and the story was actually interesting. Basically, the Skorpoions have this technomancer who wanted to create some super-soldier via cloning, but the stuff he came up with based on the local critters, humans, and even orcs are not stable. The special squad so far, had fought through Skorpion territory, reached Orc land, where a Skorpion convoy had passed through. The different groups of temple forces have finally all merged or rescued or found each other. Trying to chase Skorpion convoy, the group stumbled into some sort of orc civil war. The faction that's actually level headed and practical can't damage the Skorpion convoy "much" and lost prestige, and apparently they were all imprisoned and were about to be executed by the Orc tribe leader for "treason" in a power struggle. The temple guys realized that if this happens, the Orcs will basically go berserker and attack everybody, not only wipe themselves out, but damage both light and dark sides. Temple guys basically ran all over the Orc map, fought its way up the mountain, and defeated the Orc tribal leader, and installed the prisoners in charge, who agree that they will stay out of the way, keep all the tribes under control. Who knows if that'd work though?

The orc scouts report that the Skorpion convoy is entered Wolfen territory. It appears that the technomancer wants to capture Wolfen DNA to be merged with his unholy creations. That can be quite bad. With no choice, the group chases after the convoy, and had to fight Wolfen every step fo the way...

The game is growing on me a little, but the extra characters just didn't appeal to me much. My default tactics of two tanks (each with charge attack) one shooter, and one pyromancer with stun/meteor works great. And they are already at level 23-24. They're getting pretty maxed and I've tried other combos and they are NOT as efficient in dealing with enemies as this group. This group easily handles 3-6 orcs at a time. The only time things got dicey was when it goes up against multiple casters who cast fear or immobilize before I can target them. I usually target them first for priority termination.

raydude · Post by **raydude** » Thu May 31, 2018 7:42 am

Is anyone else following Post Scriptum? It's a WW2 shooter centered on Operation Market Garden. Skews toward the realistic side and has three types of 'sections': Infantry, Armored, or Logistics.

Infantry sections consist of squad leaders and their infantry squad
Armored sections are the tanks with their tank crews - looks like at least a gunner, driver, and tank commander per tank
Logistics sections are the combat engineers. They drive logistics trucks which contain a fixed number of "construction points". With these points they can build forward operating bases (FOB) which are basically spawn points and mortar pits - from which they can fire mortar rounds.

Quick note on spawn points: unlike Battlefield type games players do NOT spawn on their squad leader. They can only spawn at the starting base, a FOB, or on a Mobile Spawn Point (MSP). Currently the MSP looks like just another truck so there have been instances of trolling when a player uses the MSP as his personal jeep then drives it into enemy territory.

Oh, and one person on each side can opt to be the Commander. The commander can issue airstrikes, coordinate the squads using the in-game voice chat, and probably do other things. I'm still watching gameplay videos and haven't read up on all the intricacies of the game yet.

I believe they are still in alpha, but they had an open testing weekend this past Memorial Day weekend. Folks who pre-purchased could play in the test. I myself have not pre-purchased because I already have a big backlog and there are some bugs that I'd like to see them fix first. So far they have British (looks like elements of XXX Corps and British airborne) and German units and are planning to add American units (82nd/101st) soon.

The tank combat looks pretty cool. I like the slower pacing of the game, especially in the current game mode. Current game mode is objective based. Attackers have 50 minutes to capture first objective. If they do then 30 minutes gets added to the timer for them to capture a second objective, and so on. Both sides also have tickets, where tickets go down as players get killed. So one can win by reducing the other team's tickets to zero or by capturing/denying the objectives when time runs out.

As far as bugs the one I'd like to see them fixed is the bug where vehicles get stuck next to trees and fences. Right now the gameplay videos I see show the tank crews deciding to stick to the roads because they don't want to be caught up on a wire fence. Got my eye on this one. This could be the game I get instead of Battlefield V.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Thu May 31, 2018 8:19 am

Dont know anything about it. Looks a lot like Red Orchestra.

Fitzy · Post by **Fitzy** » Thu May 31, 2018 9:02 am

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sat May 26, 2018 10:40 pm I'm making my third attempt in 12 years at Neverwinter Nights 2. I've never made it past arriving at Neverwinter.

Honestly, I'm thinking about ditching it again. It just feels clunky. The writing so far isn't great. The interface and controls are awful, and I find myself fighting the game way too often. It's still buggy. And, believe it or not, I can't maintain a decent framerate in it. This isn't a cutting edge PC, but it can play The Witcher 3 or GTA V just fine. There is no reason it should ever be in the 40s on a game this old.

So, give me an opinion: Does this thing get good enough to justify investing more time?

I'm late to the party, but I loved NWN 2 as a game, the modding scene fell well short of my hopes, NWN 1 is probably my favorite "game" due to mods. That said, I think NWN 2 is slow paced and if you can't get past the interface I suspect you won't like continuing. The first expansion, Mask of the Betrayer, was a great experience, faster paced and better story than the main campaign. The second expansion changed the gameplay and is more hack and slash, less story and I could never get into it.

As far as performance, if you haven't tried it already, lower or kill the shadows, there is something wonky about the way shadows perform in NWN2, that's the only performance issue I remember, but I haven't played in a few years.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Thu May 31, 2018 2:33 pm

Decided to also try "Of Orcs and Men", where instead of playing humans, you play an Orc and a goblin. If you've played the stealth game "Styx", this is the same goblin set in the same universe. You can jump between the two characters. Styx is a ninja backstabber, while Arkhail is the brute. And their assignment is to kill the human emperor, who had subjugated most of the orc population into slavery. The combat system is a little wonky. For Arkhail, you queue commands either offensive or defensive. Defensive commands do a lot less damage, but does not raise the rage gauge. Offensive commands bring up rage, but do more damage. If you get hit your rage goes up. If you got too much rage, you lose control as your character goes berzerk and will likely be overwhelmed by charging into places he shouldn't. So far, the graphics are quite good even with every detailed turned to low or off. And the story is definitely novel. Like it so far.

Rumpy · Post by **Rumpy** » Thu May 31, 2018 8:14 pm

Fitzy wrote: ↑Thu May 31, 2018 9:02 am I'm late to the party, but I loved NWN 2 as a game, the modding scene fell well short of my hopes, NWN 1 is probably my favorite "game" due to mods.

I played the two games a few years ago and loved them both. Yes, NWN2's interface is peculiar, but that's more due to the era in which the game was made, where 3D was still very much experimented on. While quirky, I eventually found myself getting used to the controls. It's not perfect by any means, and the camera sensitivity is way too sensitive even while tweaked to the minimum, but it's not a bad game at its core.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Thu May 31, 2018 8:34 pm

raydude wrote: ↑Thu May 31, 2018 7:42 am Is anyone else following Post Scriptum? It's a WW2 shooter centered on Operation Market Garden. Skews toward the realistic side and has three types of 'sections': Infantry, Armored, or Logistics.

[...]

Realistic WW2 shooters are my Holy Grail for FPS games. I've been interested in this one but haven't bought yet.

It looks good, and if it gets a discount in the summer sale next month I'll probably take the plunge.

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Thu May 31, 2018 8:46 pm

Hadn't seen that game - thanks for promoting!

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Fri Jun 01, 2018 6:36 am

Had to download a trainer to finish Confrontation, and that's on EASY. WTF. It's basically tactical puzzles.

(The one on Gamepressure.com works. It says it's for 18995, but It works for the Steam's latest, which is 19003. )

The idea is to divide and conquer, nibble off one small group of enemies at a time. If you manage to attract a large group, you're toast.

The ending has TWO bosses. The UBG's assistant, and a mechsomething. The assistant keeps healing the mecha so you can't kill it. He heals faster than you can whack it, 1500 hp at a time out of 4000 total. You can't shoot him as he has a "shield" too. Then you realize there's a console that turns off his shield for X seconds. So what happens is my fusilier use the knockdown shot on the mecha, to keep it out of the way, my melee guy runs to the console and turns it off and my other shooter AND the main shooter shoot the assistant while the shields are down. When the mecha gets back up, knock him down again, repeat until assistant is dead, then we repeat knockdown except the mecha can't be healed so we just keep whacking it until it croaks. (for comparison, my characters are 1200-2000 hps, but each whack generally do like 70-120 damage, with special attacks can go to 200-300 damage when fully upgraded)

For the end-game, the UBG didn't show up, Instead, she sent in mecha(something) prime, 10000 hp. ARGH. I turned on god mode, instant cooldown, and almost unlimited mana (didn't quite work) and still took a few minutes to kill it.

Some of the earlier levels are just PITA. There are like fire spewing corridors (run in the gaps), poison level (enemy's immune, you're not), and even a "there are too many enemies to brute force" place. Levels are tolerable, but there are no alternate paths, just "criss-cross" paths that merge soon, or deadends. If you explore every deadend, you may find a bit more upgrades for your characters, but it's messy. There is not enough to upgrade everybody, so you have to pick and choose. And the upgrade system is complicated as heck.

You got attributes, skills, armor, weapon, and if applicable, weapon 2.

Attributes are your typical STR, CON, AGL, etc. But when you hit a certain limit (16-20) it changes to 2 to 1 instead of just 1 to 1.

Skills are the "special actions" that mana or faith to "cast" and has a cooldown time. It can be damage, buff, debuff, heal, other (like fear, provoke, etc.) A character can have 4 to 6 skills. Each skill can be upgraded, up to 5 times, but the last upgrade requires 2 upgrade points, not just 1.

The armor, weapon or weapon 2 is hard to explain. Periodically, you find a "weapons and/or armor upgrade points" container. That gives you X number of weapon points and Y number of armor points. The armor, weapon or secondary weapon can be assigned bonus at level 1, 5, 10, 15, and 20. At each level, you can choose between two bonuses, could be extra accuracy, physical armor, magic armor, critical hit chance, etc. It can even be extra attributes like CON+2, AGL+3, and so on. To actually assign the bonus, you need to use the armor or weapon points, 1 each, except the one at level 20, which requires 2 points.

But there's another thing: sometimes, you find "glyphs", which can be fitted to the armor or weapons for extra enchantments. There are three "colors" of glyphs, red for damage, yellow for buff, and green for other. Each character has different color glyph "slots" for weapons and armor. The glyphs, however, are still just almost random stuff, like buffs, extra attributes, extra accuracy, extra critical chance, and so on.

There are just too many characters and they don't feel that different. Some of them have unique skills, like Fera for her ninja stealth kills, but the starter team works well enough, and my preferred team (2 tanks, 1 shooter, 1 magic) works better for my play style.

All in all, after completing the game, my reactions are

* Way too hard, requires a trainer even on EASY
* 12 different characters/classes, but they don't feel that different
* Levels are actually not bad, but camera controls are CRAP!
* Bonus stuff like art unlock and "paint the miniatures" is cool

All in all, it's just not that much FUN to play. Feels more like a chore.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Fri Jun 01, 2018 1:19 pm

Unreal Engine 4 demo

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Sat Jun 02, 2018 12:56 am

Just downloaded and played a couple of hours of the Football, Tactics & Glory demo, the full game just coming out of Early Access today. Now I know practically nothing about football (aka soccer on this side of the pond). However, I'm always on the lookout for an interesting sports management sim and this one has an appeal to me since the play on the pitch (field) is turn-based and while rather simplified it still makes for a fun time. In some ways it reminds me of Frozen Cortex which I found oddly appealing.

confab · Post by **confab** » Sat Jun 02, 2018 12:39 pm

I liked Football, Tactics & Glory a lot, instabuy for me after playing through the demo. So far it's a very nicely done sim management/rpg/turn-based tactics hybrid. All the basics are taken care of: nice interface, forgiving learning curve, solid player build and visual customization options. I'm currently training up my youth prospects in the lower leagues but I can see how the game will open up strategically with better facilities and higher quality players.

My main concern is that it's going to be quite a grindy timesink to get a top tier team, but I guess that goes with the territory for dynastic sports sims.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Sat Jun 02, 2018 5:07 pm

I was youtubing an article about the Fallout series yesterday (the author only seemed to like 1 & 2) and it got me interested in playing #2. So I added that to my Steam collection. Haven't played it in I don't know how many years.
I already own it but I want everything on Steam now. I had such a hard time accepting Steam when it first came out and now I can't live without it.
Well, at least I'm senile. Good an excuse as any.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Sun Jun 03, 2018 10:33 pm

Playing "Project Freedom", one of those games that tried to clone Wing Commander, though this one is closer in spirit to Star Wars: Starfighter or Rebel Strike. It even has canyon runs and walkers. The ground portions are PITA because they arbitrarily set a ceiling. On some missions you can fly above the canyons, when you got incoming air threats from all directions, but for some missions you can only shoot ground stuff so they don't want you to fly over the walls. Argh. Graphics is nice for its days, but high res support is minimal. No widescreen support (without hacking config files). Still, it's some pretty mindless fun.

Paingod · Post by **Paingod** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 8:14 am

dbt1949 wrote: ↑Sat Jun 02, 2018 5:07 pmI want everything on Steam now. I had such a hard time accepting Steam when it first came out and now I can't live without it.

For me, I rationalize it as not wanting to try and dig out a disc and fiddle with it to make it work again. On a lot of these older games, they've made some minor adjustments so they'll work on newer PC's and OS's. I've got a huge binder full of game discs that I haven't cracked open in years - thanks to Steam and GoG.

I prefer to buy games on GoG, just because I like knowing I can DL an executable that will work anytime, anywhere, with or without an internet connection or license server.