Author Topic: What are you playing right now?  (Read 613947 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Re: What are you playing right now?
Descent 2 via DXX-rebirth
My initial intentions were only to configure the sourceport (basically set up the HOTAS and the resolution to fullHD with 4x multisampling) to play it later but I ended up getting to the second world.
I liked the possibility to use the extra cannon energy to recharge shields just in case you wound up with enemies only dropping cannon energy and not shields, it has still to be above 100 to do so but I wish I had the possibility in some of the levels of the first game.
The thief bot is a nightmare but a rather adrenalinic one, chasing it for the whole level basically forces you to ignore everything else and just look for that tiny window that allows you to place a few hits on the goddamn bastard.

It's easier to kill the thief once you get the Gauss cannon in level 3. I try to chase him into a room with no other way out, and use it together with flash missiles and smart mines placed at the door.
Yeah, the Gauss cannon is awesome, I almost never used the Vulcan in the first game but I have to keep myself from using the Gauss too often otherwise I might run out of ammo.
The added ammo pool is awesome too.

So, I decided to plug the Gamecube controller in my Wii and try my chances at Super Castlevania IV for SNES.
Is it me or this game is much more difficult than Vampire Killer/Bloodlines for Mega Drive/Genesis?
The fourth level has a lot of platforming hell parts already and I dread the next levels if it gets worse from here.
Also the art style isn’t as pretty.
Granted, Vampire Killer is one of the best looking Mega Drive games I played and a late gen title but the SNES has a better colour palette yet the graphics compared to the former look rather plain even with the occasional fancy effects.

I was just going to try out Super Castlevania IV on my android phone... Hmmm. Maybe not then?
To be fair before level four it was an incredibly smooth ride.

I have only seen footage of the level that rotates :P
That is part of level 4 too, it's easy once you know what to do (hang off the hook, wait to rotate, land of the platform, fend off the medusa heads without falling and then hang again for the final rotation and the appearance of another platform to bring you to the next part of the level, it's a very short section) and if you are referring to the rotating corridor it's in the same level too, that part is easy but extremely plagued by slow down and one or two enemy placements are misleading enough they might kill you the first time you do it.
In general there are a lot of gimmicks that don't do much, Bloodlines/Vampire Killer felt more polished and had less millimetric platforming that I found much less frustrating even if the movement/whip options were more limited, hell, I have beaten that game in Expert mode with both the characters and it felt less bull**** than some parts of Super Castlevania IV.

Sounds like early Castlevania to me. Isn't Bloodlines/Vampire Killer the JP version of Castlevania?


Also I've been playing through Super Ghouls N' Ghosts on my emulator on my PC. I just beat the rotating boss. (Been abusing savestates allot recently, I know, I'm shameful). I'd really hate to go to the original. Since I've been told allot about how pourly that game is put together.

I dunno, why they even decided to male the series this tough. Niche maybe? Ignorance? Because **** it?

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

  • HLP is my mistress
  • 213
  • Aken Tigh Dekker- you've probably heard me
    • My old squad sub-domain
Re: What are you playing right now?
Contra / probotector (in the uk) is my favourite platform hell.  Also a personal all-time favourite.
« Last Edit: November 29, 2017, 01:52:57 am by Colonol Dekker »
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
http://badges.steamprofile.com/profile/default/steam/76561198011784807.png

 

Offline Det. Bullock

  • 29
  • Madman in a box.
Re: What are you playing right now?
Descent 2 via DXX-rebirth
My initial intentions were only to configure the sourceport (basically set up the HOTAS and the resolution to fullHD with 4x multisampling) to play it later but I ended up getting to the second world.
I liked the possibility to use the extra cannon energy to recharge shields just in case you wound up with enemies only dropping cannon energy and not shields, it has still to be above 100 to do so but I wish I had the possibility in some of the levels of the first game.
The thief bot is a nightmare but a rather adrenalinic one, chasing it for the whole level basically forces you to ignore everything else and just look for that tiny window that allows you to place a few hits on the goddamn bastard.

It's easier to kill the thief once you get the Gauss cannon in level 3. I try to chase him into a room with no other way out, and use it together with flash missiles and smart mines placed at the door.
Yeah, the Gauss cannon is awesome, I almost never used the Vulcan in the first game but I have to keep myself from using the Gauss too often otherwise I might run out of ammo.
The added ammo pool is awesome too.

So, I decided to plug the Gamecube controller in my Wii and try my chances at Super Castlevania IV for SNES.
Is it me or this game is much more difficult than Vampire Killer/Bloodlines for Mega Drive/Genesis?
The fourth level has a lot of platforming hell parts already and I dread the next levels if it gets worse from here.
Also the art style isn’t as pretty.
Granted, Vampire Killer is one of the best looking Mega Drive games I played and a late gen title but the SNES has a better colour palette yet the graphics compared to the former look rather plain even with the occasional fancy effects.

I was just going to try out Super Castlevania IV on my android phone... Hmmm. Maybe not then?
To be fair before level four it was an incredibly smooth ride.

I have only seen footage of the level that rotates :P
That is part of level 4 too, it's easy once you know what to do (hang off the hook, wait to rotate, land of the platform, fend off the medusa heads without falling and then hang again for the final rotation and the appearance of another platform to bring you to the next part of the level, it's a very short section) and if you are referring to the rotating corridor it's in the same level too, that part is easy but extremely plagued by slow down and one or two enemy placements are misleading enough they might kill you the first time you do it.
In general there are a lot of gimmicks that don't do much, Bloodlines/Vampire Killer felt more polished and had less millimetric platforming that I found much less frustrating even if the movement/whip options were more limited, hell, I have beaten that game in Expert mode with both the characters and it felt less bull**** than some parts of Super Castlevania IV.

Sounds like early Castlevania to me. Isn't Bloodlines/Vampire Killer the JP version of Castlevania?


Also I've been playing through Super Ghouls N' Ghosts on my emulator on my PC. I just beat the rotating boss. (Been abusing savestates allot recently, I know, I'm shameful). I'd really hate to go to the original. Since I've been told allot about how pourly that game is put together.

I dunno, why they even decided to male the series this tough. Niche maybe? Ignorance? Because **** it?

Vampire Killer is the Japanese version (though still in english) of the Mega Drive/Genesis Castlevania (Castlevania Bloodlines in the US, Castlevania New Generation in the EU) which is not a port but a separate game with different protagonists, there is also Vampire Killer for the MSX (or some other home computer I don't remember) which is basically a port of the NES game and was remade later for another more powerful home computer, remake that was ported with some added features and bundled with another remake as "Castlevania Chronicles" on the first Playstation.

The JP title of the series is usually Akumajo Dracula (or Akumajo something like Castlevania 3 for NES which is Akumajo Densetsu) with Akumajo meaning something like "demon castle" (hence the title "haunted castle" of the arcade version of the first Castlevania).

Also note that the aforementioned Mega Drive/Genesis game is the first game in the series with the music of Michiru Yamane and the first that used an art style akin to that of Rondo of Blood and Symphony of The Night, which makes it look better to me than the SNES game even if it's on a less advanced console.
« Last Edit: November 29, 2017, 05:01:16 am by Det. Bullock »
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor

 

Offline Det. Bullock

  • 29
  • Madman in a box.
Re: What are you playing right now?
Super Castlevania IV
OK, I’m done.
Whoever thinks this is easier than Bloodlines/New Generation/Vampire Killer (seriously though, this title changing by region is ridiculous) has either one hell of a nostalgia filter or is some platforming god compared to me.
"Come on, Det, it’s easy! you can guide your jumps and whip in every direction!"
A pity that giuided jumps serve nothing when the distance between some platforms is exactly the same as your maximum jump length down to a pixel, and the whip is good for the monsters, last I checked instant death spikes with ludicrous patterns cannot be skipped using the whip.
Stage 8 is so full of instant death moments I’m giving up, perhaps other people can appreciate it but I don’t find this kind of punishing design fun.
If I’ll ever go back to this I’ll probably abuse save states but for now I’m leaving it where it is.

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood
Richeter to Maria Renard: “leave it to the grown-ups!”

Maria Renard: proceeds to utterly destroy the alternative stage 2 boss and the standard stage 3 boss which tended to tear Richter to pieces repeatedly

The first classic platformer in which you jump into bottomless pits just to see if there is some alternative path and for the moment I’m loving it.
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

  • 211
  • The Cthulhu programmer himself!
    • Skype
    • Steam
    • Twitter
Re: What are you playing right now?
Castlevania: Rondo of Blood
Richeter to Maria Renard: “leave it to the grown-ups!”

Maria Renard: proceeds to utterly destroy the alternative stage 2 boss and the standard stage 3 boss which tended to tear Richter to pieces repeatedly

The first classic platformer in which you jump into bottomless pits just to see if there is some alternative path and for the moment I’m loving it.
Rondo of Blood is my absolute favourite pre-SotN Castlevania game... and yes, Maria is definitely the Easy Mode for that game.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 

Offline 0rph3u5

  • 211
  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: What are you playing right now?
Divinity: Original Sin 2, insta-killed a shark with the Teleport-spell. 10/10
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline HLD_Prophecy

  • PVD_Hope in a former life
  • 29
Re: What are you playing right now?
Hexcells! Awesome ambient chill minimal soothing puzzle goodness!  :D

 

Offline HLD_Prophecy

  • PVD_Hope in a former life
  • 29
Re: What are you playing right now?
Halo Wars Definitive Edition and Halo: Spartan Strike.

Awesome Halo PC action! :) Great music too, for both games.

 

Offline deathspeed

  • 29
  • i can't think of a good avatar
    • Steam
Re: What are you playing right now?
I picked up Mad Max for Windows on Steam during the winter sale.  I hadn't even known this existed until a couple of months ago, and I saw surprisingly good reviews for a game tied to a movie.  I haven't progressed much, but it's been fun so far.  I haven't played a lot of 3rd person combat games, but the on-foot sequences are accessible and fun.  I'm hoping that driving will be more of a focus as the game progresses; so far the car is mainly used to get around the map.  Although I was able to run over a couple of baddies at one camp to help even the odds before I got out to kick ass.
Maybe someday God will give you a little pink toaster of your own.

 

Offline Mongoose

  • Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
  • Global Moderator
  • 212
  • This brain for rent.
    • Minecraft
    • Steam
    • Something
Re: What are you playing right now?
Titanic: Adventure out of Time just got released on GOG.  I haven't even thought about that game for almost 20 years.  Instabuy for mad nostalgia.

 

Offline Wet Orange Ostrich Toilet

  • 26
  • Worst Modder HLP has ever seen
    • Skype
    • Steam
Re: What are you playing right now?
Finally got ahold of an Oculus Rift and tried playing Superhot VR on it. It's very fun and really gets you moving, but a large playing area is mandatory (I am pretty much cramped between a wall and my oversized desk) or else you'll suffer a fate similar to mine, where I tried punching a virtual enemy and ended punching a very real wall instead.
"I thought the Medal Display thingy was a baking tray!"

 

Offline 0rph3u5

  • 211
  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: What are you playing right now?
Spellforce 3... I am a bit of fanboy when it comes to the first 5 entries in the series (Order of Dawn, Breath of Winter, Heart of the Pheonix - aka Spellforce - as well as Shadow Wars and Dragon Storm - aka Spellforce 2 + 1st Addon), so I am overlooking a quite a few flaws here but it seems to be a solid single-player RPG-RTS blend.

The RTS'ing has not been that taxing because my in small part because the right combination heroes can break entire AI armies; and its RPG'ing needs an infusion of better story telling tools.
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline Torchwood

  • 27
  • Mechanical Templar
Re: What are you playing right now?
Recently got hooked on the roguelike-adventure game ElonaPlus. Elona is what you get when Dwarf Fortress' adventure mode has a drug-fuelled baby with Morrowind and tried to raise it to resemble its ancestor ADOM, but got something uniquely different. Much like DF, it can be tircky to get into it, but discovery is part of the Fun. Original Elona used to be grindy, but ElonaPlus has been getting better in the recent updates. And like Morrowind, the game has its own weirdness and unique charm - for example, during the beginning of the game, you can choose between one of four "pets" (follower/ally/party member): A dog, a cat, a bear or a little girl.

It is rather telling of Elona's character that the little girl is widely considered to be the best option.

Also, dead lions double as nuclear bombs and parties often involve multiple fatalities when someone tries to drink a molotov cocktail or a bottle of sulfuric acid on a dare.

 

Offline Rhymes

  • Galactic Mediator
  • 29
  • Fatum Iustum Stultorum
Re: What are you playing right now?
Titanic: Adventure out of Time just got released on GOG.  I haven't even thought about that game for almost 20 years.  Instabuy for mad nostalgia.

This
If you don't have Knossos, you need it.

“There was a button," Holden said. "I pushed it."
"Jesus Christ. That really is how you go through life, isn't it?”

 

Offline Novachen

  • 29
  • The one and only capella supernova
    • Twitter
Re: What are you playing right now?
I finished my first campaign in Critical Depth finally. The last boss was... hard. Actually in my opinion you need some luck to get through that game... it depends solely on how much enemies want to see you dead at once. The last battle is against seven enemies that do not attack each other and have only one objective: To sink your U-Boat. And their weapons were able to bring down my ship in no time.

But actually i found out, that my Playthrough of this first campaign was not good enough, had 980.000 points in the end. You need 1.000.000 to get another boss fight after that where you have only to fight one enemy. But you can unlock him, if you beat him. Also i have to do one of the earlier boss fights better to also unlock that one. But well... there are still enough playthroughs ahead to do this :).
But i liked the end sequence of the CIA campaign somewhat.

But before i begin with the next one, one of my few followers on YouTube ask about a playthrough of "Inferno - The Odyssey Continues" an older space combat game by DID that used prozendural generated missions, but with cutscenes and story. So there is a campaign, but their missions are totally different each time.
But i like to play whole series and look into it's predecessor called Epic. Well, that looks interesting graphics wise for 1992 well ahead of Wing Commander II and also with Planet based missions and the ship designs and even the mission briefings have a BSG1978 vibe, even i do not like BSG :D.

But actually i still need some configuration in DosBox... my joystick does not work as it seems, but i can skip cutscenes if i press the fire button, even i am using the same configuration as in my Absolute Zero playthrough. Also the sound is strange... there is no music during the missions and also very few sound effects like laser fire and explosions... but in another gameplay video on YouTube there were also engine sounds. No idea why i do not have them, because i can not change much in the sound configuration. Roland LAPC, Soundblaster, Adlib or PC-Digitalized Audio.
But only with Soundblaster i have in-game soundeffects at all... what a shame, because the Music is much better with the Roland LAPC setting, because that uses my installed MIDI SoundFont -.-.

So i test it only with the first mission, afaik there are only 10 of them and the game is not very long (~1 hour for a longplay as it seems) but this game has no save feature, so i should use a DosBox branch that supports Savestates, because they make recordings much easier.
The first mission takes only two minutes  :lol: ... but at least the intro before that mission takes like nearly 10 minutes, which is quite impressive for an old game.
« Last Edit: January 07, 2018, 07:03:52 am by Novachen »
Female FreeSpace 2 pilot since 1999.
Former Global moderator in the German FreeSpace Galaxy Forum.
Developer of NTP - A Multi-Language Translation Library Interface, which allows to play FreeSpace in YOUR Language.

Is one of my releases broken or not working? Please send a PM here, on Discord at @novachen or on Twitter @NovachenFS2, a public tweet or write a reply in my own release threads here on HLP, because these are the only threads i am still participating in.

 

Offline 0rph3u5

  • 211
  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: What are you playing right now?
When I got Spellforce 3 and Stellaris for the Chrismas, I did got it wrong: Not Spellforce but Stellaris drowned by productivity ... but in a cool way.

Right now I am trying to assimilate a 1000-stars galaxy with bird-ish robots and their moth-cyborgs. :)
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline crizza

  • 210
Re: What are you playing right now?
When I got Spellforce 3 and Stellaris for the Chrismas, I did got it wrong: Not Spellforce but Stellaris drowned by productivity ... but in a cool way.

Right now I am trying to assimilate a 1000-stars galaxy with bird-ish robots and their moth-cyborgs. :)
I feel you :D
The descendants of Khonsu II are currently repairing Halos :)

 

Offline Wet Orange Ostrich Toilet

  • 26
  • Worst Modder HLP has ever seen
    • Skype
    • Steam
Re: What are you playing right now?
Getting over it, with Bennett Foddy

A surprisingly relaxing game, good for cooling down after a stressful day at work, a particularly frustrating argument with someone or just for playing something calm  :P



Spoiler:
I swear to god, this game has made me scream profanities that would even put a drunken Russian sailor who recently stubbed his toe on a Lego brick to shame
"I thought the Medal Display thingy was a baking tray!"

  

Offline karajorma

  • King Louie - Jungle VIP
  • Administrator
  • 214
    • Karajorma's Freespace FAQ
Re: What are you playing right now?
Doki Doki Literature Club

It's interesting and cute and good and free and you should probably play it unless you're a little kid.

Finally gave this a try after hearing lots of recommendations. (and finding out I don't need Steam) For the first two hours it's not that interesting. Then it's complete WTF for the rest of the game.
Karajorma's Freespace FAQ. It's almost like asking me yourself.

[ Diaspora ] - [ Seeds Of Rebellion ] - [ Mind Games ]

 
Re: What are you playing right now?
Just thinking about trying the SEGA Genesis Shadowrun game, as well as Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions.