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A day late, but my thoughts on 2014 gaming: Games that were expected to be awesome, were awesome: * Wolfenstein: The New Order * Shadow of Mordor * Binding of Isaac: Rebirth * Defense Grid 2 * Dragon Age: Inquisition * Republique * MGR:Revengeance * Shovel Knight * The Wolf Among Us Games that I had low expectations for, and was pleasantly surprised: * Alien: Isolation. I'm generally not a fan of survival horror games, but holy poo poo, it's fantastic. Could have used fewer jumpscares, but it was excellent overall. * Divinity: Original Sin. Probably the best game I've backed on Kickstarter. * Shadowrun: Dragonfall. I'm a huge SR nerd, but I was a bit disappointed by Dead Man's Switch; Dragonfall more than made up for it. * Endless Legend. This has honestly supplanted the Civ series as my 4X of choice. * South Park: Stick of Truth. I honestly figured this would be an easy cash-in on a pop IP. But there's an actual game to this. * Xenonauts. I didn't expect an XCom ripoff to be able to compete while the XCom:UE expansion was still on shelves, but it's great. * Hand of Fate. Weird but good. * Octodad: Dadliest Catch. OCTODAD! Games that were surprisingly crap: * Planetary Annihilation. Such high hopes, and it was so damned buggy and unbalanced in beta, I gave up on it. Still haven't played it since it officially came out. * Warmachine Tactics. The beta was super rough, and it felt like they weren't sure whether they were building a singleplayer or a multiplayer game. * Watch_Dogs. It's not bad, but for being an open-world game, it was surprisingly linear -- and buggy as poo poo. Might go back and replay it in 2015 and see if I change my mind. * The Castle Doctrine. I tried to like this, but it ultimately fizzled -- and I think the pixel art approach worked against it. This poo poo is so weird, I can't decide if it's poo poo or genius, may be both: * Blade Symphony. Everyone seems to love it or hate it. * Drunken Robot Pornography. I enjoyed it, but it felt like there were too many levels that were too simple. Fewer levels with more complexity would have been better. * 7 Days to Die. It's like Minecraft meets DayZ, but 99% of servers are garbage. The only time I've enjoyed playing it was on the Goon private server, and even then, it felt like there was no point.
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Jan 3, 2015 01:03
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Sleeveless posted:On this note, Jazzpunk deserved to have been a much better game than it actually was. I enjoyed the hell out of Jazzpunk. But it was just silly randomness, and a lot of the humor came from expecting that gamers would intentionally run around trying everything and doing everything they could before actually doing the obviously-illustrated next step in the level. It would have probably been good in an episodic series, which is a rare thing for games.
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Jan 3, 2015 02:57
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This is why FYAD can't have nice things. NonzeroCircle posted:Metro Redux is really good, and very very pretty Does it change anything besides the graphics? 2033 was already a decent-looking game. There were basically only two parts I didn't like: 1) Hoarded military-grade ammo the whole time only for the game to end before I used it all 2) The acid trip minecart ride felt like a cliched rip from Stalker.
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Jan 3, 2015 20:49
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Problem Sleuth posted:if caring about artistic style in games means ive gotta suck a few dicks then i guess id better learn to suppress my gag reflex Ceci n'est pas une Piplup. Sometimes a game is just "press A to jump, press B to have fun." Games don't have to be novel or groundbreaking to be enjoyable.
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Jan 4, 2015 08:30
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Eye of Widesauron posted:We've hit 15 pages and I am going to convene the council of people who shall decide the fate of this thread. I invoke the ritual to summon the following people: Leave it open. (Or, maybe: gas this thread, open a new one, and leave that one open forever.) Gotta let the memes simmer a bit, and having a chat thread prevents the sperg from flying all over the other threads. Basically the only gas-worthy part of this thread is the constant suggestions that it be gassed. (Well, that, and Stux's posts.) Letting the thread go big isn't a problem because we don't expect/require anyone to read the entire thread -- and, in fact, you probably have a mental issue if you ever read more than a page or two of this thread at a time.
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Jan 4, 2015 21:00
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BTW, if you don't follow the Speedrunning thread, ADGQ 2015 is now live. http://www.twitch.tv/gamesdonequick Games Done Quick in a nutshell: someone picks a charity and location, hotel blocks and a conference room are rented out, couches and cameras are set up, and you end up with a hundred-ish people running a 24/7 stream of gaming for a week, almost all speedruns. This year's AGDQ is benefitting the Prevent Cancer Foundation. It's a decent choice for background noise, if nothing else, and there's usually some pretty fun stuff they do. (In particular, last year they had someone playing Mike Tyson's Punch-Out blindfolded, and he got all the way to Tyson on it.)
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Jan 4, 2015 21:04
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Alain Post posted:I completely forgot you could gay romance Kaiden, which pretty much shows how memorable a character he was. I didn't even know you could. Honestly, that was the weirdest part of ME3 for me -- the fact that you had a bunch of characters that showed up in ME1, were largely absent in ME2, and then showed up again in ME3 with significant personality changes.
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Jan 4, 2015 22:46
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Sleeveless posted:According to five minutes on Google The Prevent Cancer Foundation is a non-profit with revenues of just $5.5 million per year but the top two executives make over half a million a year combined and non-program expenses are nearly a quarter of their budget. That's actually not terrible by charity standards. That's enough to get them a B+ on AIP/CharityWatch (used to be an A), and 3 out of 4 stars on Charity Navigator. Hell, most charities don't even officially list their CEO and salary, nor the process by which salaries are determined; PCF does both. They aren't a perfect charity, but they're not likely to waste donations either.
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Jan 4, 2015 23:22
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ArfJason posted:shut the gently caress up stupid hydrocephalic human being But there's way too much information to decode the Imp Zone. You get used to it, I... I don't even see the posts anymore, all i see is "4chan copypaste," "image macro," "edgy racism." (Also, keep posting, I'm almost there  )
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Jan 5, 2015 23:25
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I actually do like imp zone, despite never posting there  Not every game thread needs to be serious. But that doesn't change the fact that it is a very ... special place.
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Jan 6, 2015 00:22
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A Steampunk Gent posted:I cleared Dungeon of the Endless for the first time on Too Easy today which was really fun It's been sitting in my Steam unplayed folder, daring me to play it. Is it a good "learn the mechanics and it's not so bad" kind of difficulty, or is it more of a "you have a random chance per run to get cornholed by big burly men and there's nothing you can do to anticipate it or prevent it" type?
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Jan 6, 2015 01:26
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iamnotcreative posted:What's a good 28 to 32 inch TV that has separate component and composite inputs? I want a TV for my bedroom that I'm going to hook an older 360, a Wii, and possibly a Dreamcast and SNES to and everything I'm finding in that size range usually has one shared component/composite input along with a few HDMI ports. Nope, sadly, the inputs aren't the same. If you plug composite into the component green, you're likely to get a slightly messed up black-and-white image. Your best bet, honestly, might be just finding an upscaler that can convert the composite signal to HDMI or component. (This can actually be done pretty cheaply for the SNES; the early models of SNES could actually do RGB out, so you can get an RGB SCART cable for your SNES and then plug that into a SCART->HDMI converter.)
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Jan 8, 2015 20:56
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I saw Steam's "Anime Weekend Sale" and immediately thought of this thread.  Does anyone have tips for Dungeon of the Endless? A few games in a row now, I've had what felt like a winning combination, only to get to Floor 12 or so and suddenly get no Dust. Like, I've explored half this damned floor, and can only power two rooms, and I get wrecked by the massive floods of enemies that spawn. Is this normal, or am I just getting RNG-hosed? (And if it's normal to be that Dust-starved, what type of characters/equipment should I be looking for that can survive the encounters at that level.)
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Jan 9, 2015 19:23
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Eye of Widesauron posted:I'm going to have to give Hatoful Boyfriend a playthrough soon. Finished Recettear so that was fun. I wish the sale had Valkyria Chronicles in it since it's a good game that more people should play. I had a bunch of people tell me to play Hatoful, and I grabbed it during the Steam sale... but I can't help but think I've been trolled into buying a terrible game. Please post if it's actually interesting. The funny thing is, I loving loved A Hate Story, despite hating every single character interaction in it. I was basically just reading it for the diary entries, drawing out family trees and poo poo on a notepad and playing armchair anthropologist, trying to figure out what the gently caress had happened on that ship. "Yes, yes, let me skip this anime garbage so I can go back to unearthing how your crazy little society ended in a mass genocide."
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Jan 9, 2015 19:33
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Excels posted:should i play sleeping dogs or dead rising 2 Sleeping Dogs is basically GTA4 except that it's set in Hong Kong and you play a psychotic undercover cop. Dead Rising 2 is basically Dead Rising 1 meets Madworld. They're both pretty good, in my book; Sleeping Dogs has a good story but the gameplay drags on a bit, while DR2's story is complete inexplicable garbage but the gameplay is pretty fun. Play them both, but if you only have time for one, play Sleeping Dogs first.
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Jan 9, 2015 19:37
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Eonwe posted:What kind of gamer fuel you guys running on tonight Steak and spicy thai noodles.
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Jan 10, 2015 05:36
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I'm still of the stance that this is a big troll. And that even if it's real, he's just driving up demand for the Rosalina figs that he'll then sell at a ridiculous price on eBay.
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Jan 10, 2015 23:26
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Wamdoodle posted:Hey! Dick Cartography is a valid and very prestigious career choice! I'm totally adding "Genital Cartographer" as a profession in my GBS-themed FFT romhack now. 
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Jan 13, 2015 00:52
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Stux posted:someone made a COYA game on twitter it's a cool and weird idea I enjoyed it You see, this is why Stux can stay. He may be retarded and objectively wrong in his opinions, but he doesn't post vindictively. He just genuinely posts what he thinks about gaming, and 90% of the time we can tell him how wrong he is, and 10% of the time we nod and agree. It's a refreshing alternative to most of this thread, which is just static for the sake of static.
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Jan 13, 2015 04:36
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Eonwe posted:nuclear throne owns and you guys should all buy it What is it? Seems like it's sorta roguelike, sorta shooter, RNG. And something about mutations? Sell me on it.
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Jan 14, 2015 00:49
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Eonwe posted:it is those things, and its pretty tough and there are lots of weapons and you can take mutations by gathering rads Okay, I'll look at it I still think one of my best gaming experiences ever was with the old Final Fantasy Legend for the Game Boy, and making a gigantic grid to try and figure out how the mutation system for monster PCs. Sadly, it also screwed me; my first playthrough had an all-mutant party, and I got stuck on the fourth world -- too weak to survive the random encounters there, even with powerleveling. I put it aside and never came back to it, and it got stolen out of my car a few years later. Never beat the game until decades later, on an emulator.
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Jan 14, 2015 01:12
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MockingQuantum posted:Anybody played the Space Hulk game? Is it any good? It is terrible. Skip it. (And this is from someone who used to be a 40K nut and has a copy of the Space Hulk reprint with all the miniatures painted.  )
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Jan 14, 2015 21:46
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MockingQuantum posted:drat. I'm figuring Mordheim: City of the Damned will be the same, which makes me super sad. I figure I should rant longer on this. So, the issue with Space Hulk: The Video Game is that it is fairly strictly adherent to the board game. Same tiles as the board game, same action points, it's showing you the *d6 rolls for every action, and so on. On one hand, this makes it faithful to the source content. On the other hand, it means that gameplay is GOD AWFUL SLOW -- and you have to sit through every animation on the result of an attack. It'll take you half an hour just to get through the tutorial level, to say nothing of the standard campaign. It took me four hours to clear the first three missions of the single player campaign, and that was without the usual save-scumming that I tend to do for turn based strategy games. The other issue is that they're almost too faithful to the board game -- by the time you reach the third or fourth mission, you have basically seen everything that the game has to offer you. The tile sets aren't that varied (because they're just 3D translations of the board game), and there's not a ton of tactical variety: put Marines in choke points, flick on Overwatch, and then watch them gun down genos without care. The only time you even remotely get worried is when your guns jam. Visually, it's pretty fugly. Low resolution textures and chunky polygonal models, tons of visual bugs. Lots of bugs in gameplay too. (Some of which benefit you a lot, such as being able to undo and reroll melee attacks.) They nailed the 40K atmosphere dead on, which makes the lack of polish so aggravating. If they had just sat six months on it, done some more play testing, and actually made it "a video game that plays like Space Hulk" instead of "a strict, original vision, precise translation of the Space Hulk Board Game to a computer" then it would have been a loving amazing game. As it is, I can't recommend it. Also, the company responded to the poor critical feedback by abandoning the original game, and then doing about half of the above in a new game called "Space Hulk: Ascension" that they charged more for. The reviews for SH:Ascension are much better than the original Space Hulk, but I haven't bought it, because gently caress companies that do that.
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Jan 14, 2015 23:12
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A Steampunk Gent posted:Without modding/cheating Morrowind very quickly becomes a selling things to Creeper simulator which isn't terribly fun. Morrowind is still probably the best at what it does in the whole medium but that's almost entirely in spite of its gameplay That's kinda my issue -- Morrowwind easily has the best plot line / setting of TES, but the gameplay mechanics are unpolished. In comparison, Oblivion had better mechanics but a garbage plot (and garbage enemy scaling in order to support the plot). Skyrim was halfway between the two and tolerable without being stellar.
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Jan 16, 2015 19:54
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It looked like it had promise at one point, but H1Z1 now looks like it's going to be poo poo. (If you haven't heard of it, it's SOE's attempt to make a better DayZ.) H1Z1 appeared to have a real-money store built into it; for months, SOE's been promising to the press and player forums that the store would be cosmetic items only, and that they would not implement pay-to-win mechanics in the game, since that defeats the entire purpose of a game about scavenging and survival. In a recent devblog, they quietly announced the addition of "airdrops" -- pay money to parachute in a backpack at your location with a randomly selected weapon, ammo, and survival gear in it. Bam, people can be lethal right from spawning if they want to pay for it. Of course, this is being used like mad by rich people, and completely defeats the theme of the game. There's a huge uproar about it; the Steam reviews have turned pure negative overnight, and Smedley went on twitter to offer refunds to anyone who's offended by the addition. It is pretty funny, though, to watch people try to use an airdrop at their spawn point and promptly get rushed by 3-4 other newly spawned players hoping to steal the airdrop's contents.
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Jan 16, 2015 22:08
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My only complaint about the Morrowind combat was that melee felt like rear end; there wasn't a good matchup between the swing/stab animations and where the actual "hit" point was. Magic and ranged weapons were ace, though, as long as you have a mod to automatically add arrows to bound bows.
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Jan 16, 2015 22:19
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hubris.height posted:i skipped the wii entirely as well and of the wii games i've played the following appear worth it If you like JRPGs, you should also grab The Last Story. It's basically a lost Final Fantasy. Some other Wii stuff that's worth playing: * Sin and Punishment: Star Successor * Metal Slug Anthology * Madworld * No More Heroes 1/2 ullerrm fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Jan 26, 2015 |
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Jan 26, 2015 19:18
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When I was a kid, my dad and I were both into RPGs; we played the few NES RPGs that came out in America together, taking turns with the controller. Beat Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, and a few others that way. We had been working on Zelda 2 for a few months, and were on the final palace; we were stuck, because we hadn't figured out that you needed Thunder to beat Thunderbird. One afternoon, my dad was late coming home from work, and I was playing it solo with a friend watching. He wasn't familiar with NES carts that saved games, and thought it'd be funny to hit Reset a few times. The save file ended up becoming corrupted. Dad was sad enough about the lost progress that he didn't play video games for years afterward. gently caress that guy. One of these days I'll go back and beat Zelda 2.
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Jan 26, 2015 22:31
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MisterBibs posted:I'm playing it for the first time, and I don't think I can bring myself to call Duke Nukem Forever a horrible game. It's simple as gently caress and the "Duke Is Totally Awesome In Every Way!" poo poo is tiresome from minute one, but the weapons are designed so similarly to DN3D that the nostalgia is smoothing over the varied annoyances I've had so far. Are you playing the Steam version? FWIW, it was patched to remove some of the biggest garbage irritations from the game. Namely: * If you can carry more than two weapons at once, you're playing the patched version. * If you aren't having textures randomly change to their 64x64 LOD versions, you're playing the patched version. * If your save games aren't randomly corrupting themselves, you're playing the patched version. * If steam.exe isn't pegging one of your CPU's cores at 100%, you're playing the patched version.
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Jan 27, 2015 00:15
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I really love video games that don't fit in my front pocket. Actually, more precisely, I want to play the hell out of Dreadnought. Did anyone see or hear a beta date / release date for it at PAX South?
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Jan 27, 2015 02:17
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I could see the argument in someone who's trying to dress sharp but sticking a huge phone and a fat wallet in his front pockets, and it fucks up their silhouette. The catch is, unless you're a model, or work in PR in New York, nobody gives a poo poo. I'll put poo poo in my back pockets if I'm wearing a suit and facing members of the press, which is basically once in a blue moon. 99% of the time tho I'm wearing plain pants and a short sleeved shirt and do not give two shits and prefer to be able to sit comfortably.
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Jan 27, 2015 02:35
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But do you prefer silent or deadly? Actually, this is a good thread to ask this. I'm gonna be disappearing for a week on a cruise ship, in about 24 hours. I'm gonna be social and not a sperg for most of the days, but there's two or three days of cruising where there's not going to be a ton going on. I'll have my tablet with me, which is an i5 with a low-end Nvidia chipset running Windows. Does anyone have a suggestion for something DRM-free (I will have almost no internet) worth playing during bored times?
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Jan 30, 2015 10:46
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Trust me, I plan to spend plenty of time getting shitfaced and watching the waves -- I've got an unlimited beverage plan, and someone else is paying for it ;p But there will inevitably be some downtime, and I usually devour a paperback novel in 2 days tops, so some electronic distraction isn't unwarranted. (Plus, the six hour flights each way between home and the port.) Ended up grabbing a few Steam RPGs, as well as some emulator stuff. Thanks for the suggestions
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Jan 30, 2015 18:20
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A Spider Covets posted:its really innovative We don't just discuss any old farts in this thread. It has to be lovingly crafted. Bespoke farts. Individualized olfactory experiences, for sniffers of true wit and distinction.
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Jan 30, 2015 19:11
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