Games Beaten 2015

[MrPopo]

Glad to see you enjoyed it. I'm quite excited about the expansion myself as well as some sequels that explore the world more. The nature of souls in the game's universe lends itself to some interesting storytelling possibilities. I also thought they developed a combat system that takes a lot of queues from the Infinity Engine games but takes advantage of the fact it's not hobbled by having to adhere to AD&D 2nd rules.

When you have a story that involves a pantheon of false gods (whether they are mortal constructs like in Pillars or "angels" taking on the role of gods) you have a few possibilities to go with that:

1. No real gods at all
2. Real gods that somehow have lost the ability to interact with mortals
3. Real gods who don't care that there's false gods taking all the worship

Version 2 is not too different from version 1 in the grand scheme of things. So you're left with either no gods or gods who don't give a shit.

"So as a religious person, the game's message in the end is obviously one I can't agree with. Yes, it's a fictional universe, but it's obviously trying to go for real-world parallels. And at the same time... eh, it's not worth getting worked up over, because I've seen this sort of story play out many, many times."

There's a better reason to not get worked up over it; you won't agree with every message in every game. You can enjoy a story without needing to agree with its message, and the general exposure to different viewpoints and ideas enriches us.

[Sarge]

When you have a story that involves a pantheon of false gods (whether they are mortal constructs like in Pillars or "angels" taking on the role of gods) you have a few possibilities to go with that:

1. No real gods at all
2. Real gods that somehow have lost the ability to interact with mortals
3. Real gods who don't care that there's false gods taking all the worship

Version 2 is not too different from version 1 in the grand scheme of things. So you're left with either no gods or gods who don't give a shit.

Or alternately, real gods that care, but choose to not intervene at that time. Which isn't much different from v2 (or v3), except that there's an implication that the current status quo is being used for a particular reason, and that the "proper" order will be restored at some point.

"So as a religious person, the game's message in the end is obviously one I can't agree with. Yes, it's a fictional universe, but it's obviously trying to go for real-world parallels. And at the same time... eh, it's not worth getting worked up over, because I've seen this sort of story play out many, many times."

There's a better reason to not get worked up over it; you won't agree with every message in every game. You can enjoy a story without needing to agree with its message, and the general exposure to different viewpoints and ideas enriches us.

Oh, yeah. I certainly wasn't implying that I was under the expectation that I would agree with every message. Indeed, my last sentence of what you quoted is more to reflect that I'm used to seeing worldviews in gaming and other media that conflict, often rather heavily, with my own. It still doesn't mean that I don't believe it to be wrong, or that I would enjoy a story more if it did align more closely with what I believe to be true. I believe this is true of most people, and there's nothing wrong with that instinct. At least this particular tale was told with aplomb, as opposed to something more ham-fisted like the Avatar movie.

I also agree that being exposed to different viewpoints can be enriching... but my overall point is, to me personally, it's not a new viewpoint, and thusly is not actually that enriching. At least from an actual introspection standpoint, not a general storytelling standpoint.

[noiseredux]

I read loading times increased with experience. Seriously.

[marurun]

Being exposed to long loading times broadens my horizons. Gives me time to think and reflect on the universe.

[Sarge]

Or wonder what you're going to fix for supper.

[MrPopo]

Or wonder what you're going to fix for supper.

The correct answer is that you're going to reheat that soup you made over the weekend.

[Sarge]

Or wonder what you're going to fix for supper.

The correct answer is that you're going to reheat that soup you made over the weekend.

At least it's not ramen!

[Gamerforlife]

X-Men Arcade - 100% Trophies



So I had given up on 100%-ing this game a very long time ago because of the silly 6-player trophies...then I recently learned about the controller re-assignment trick. Mission accomplished

So while playing this again, it seems the press forward on the joystick version of the jump attack is the game's most powerful move, still don't like this game as much as The Simpsons Arcade though. That game has a more balanced difficulty (having lots of food items in reliable locations and powerful weapons to pick up will do that). I've always considered this one of Konami's weaker arcade games but a lot of people love it.

[Sarge]

I agree with your assessment on X-Men. I mean, it's good, but I don't think it's as good as TMNT or The Simpsons. The real draw for the game was the six-player, dual-monitor setup. I remember encountering one when I was younger, and it was pretty amazing.

[MrPopo]

1. Painkiller - PC
2. Front Mission 4 - PS2
3. Wasteland 2 - PC
4. Arcanum - PC
5. X-COM Terror from the Deep - PC
6. Military Madness - TurboGrafx-16
7. Unreal - PC
8. Shadowrun - SNES
9. Warcraft III - PC
10. Dungeon Keeper - PC
11. Final Fantasy X-2 HD - PS3
12. Descent - PC
13. Quake Mission Pack 2 - Dissolution of Eternity - PC
14. Quake 2 Mission Pack 2 - Ground Zero - PC
15. Sokobond - PC
16. Hybrid Heaven - N64
17. Sonic the Hedgehog - Genesis
18. Castlevania - NES
19. Super Castlevania IV - SNES
20. Castlevania III - NES
21. Castlevania II - NES
22. Castlevania Rondo of Blood - Turbo CD
23. Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders - PC
24. Fractal - PC
25. Kirby's Adventure - NES
26. Pillars of Eternity - PC
27. Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den - PC
28. Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour - PC
29. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves - NES
30. Punch-Out!! - NES
31. Doom 3 - PC
32. The Even More Incredible Machine - PC
33. Contra - NES
34. Dark Forces - PC
35. Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II - PC
36. X-Wing - PC
37. TIE Fighter - PC
38. Bloodborne - PS4
39. Gradius - NES
40. Marble Madness - NES
41. The Witcher 3 - PC
42. Mega Man X5 Zero Playthrough - PSX
43. Wolfenstein The Old Blood - PC
44. Might and Magic Book 1 - PC
45. Hexen: Beyond Heretic - PC

Yeah! I started playing this game a couple years ago but got stuck because of bugs in the Doomsday engine; when saves were written to disk they didn't store all the necessary state variables, which would lead to you getting stuck. I ended up giving up after having to beat the first three hubs by using the noclip cheat after I got stuck, and I was sick of it. I wanted to beat things for real.

Hexen is the sequel to Heretic, but it is a game that really stands on its own. Heretic was fantasy Doom with an inventory system, but Hexen does a lot of new stuff for itself and is a distinct game that happens to run on the Doom engine. This is a game that if I had it back in the day I could totally see myself playing at least three times through and probably more, since there's a lot of interesting stuff going on here.

The game starts by having you choose one of three classes. These affect your damage resistance, movement speed, and weapon set. All classes only get four weapons, but the weapons are quite different between the classes. The initial weapon takes no resources and is your standard fallback weapon, though it is still potent and the only reason you don't use it more is there are enough ammo drops to keep you in the other weapons. The next two weapons use either blue or green mana only (blue for weapon 2, green for weapon 3). These can't really be generalized across the three classes as they all have different uses. The constant is that the two combined give you an range of attack profiles, encouraging switching between the two as you face different enemies. The last weapon is essentially your BFG equivalent, and needs to be assembled from three pieces. You can gather them in the first three hubs, or in a secret level in the fourth hub (which requires tripping something in hubs 1 and 2), or in one of the areas of the fifth and last hub. The fourth weapon uses both blue and green mana, but it ends up being a little too good to use most of the time, but against the first couple bosses you can use it against it's quite bad, as those bosses can reflect your projectiles, which gives a bad cost ratio on them. In the final hub it is fantastic against those bosses. The game carries over the item system from Heretic.

Now, I've been talking about hubs, and that's the biggest thing Hexen does. The game is divided into five hubs, which consist of a group of maps that are interconnected using a series of portals. There's a lot of going into one map to flip switches to open paths in another map, and you slowly expand everything out. It makes for a great sense of exploration.

The environments are also quite varied and makes for a great experience. There's a lot of uses of open outdoor space and structures, and because of the way the maps connect they can split features across maps rather than keeping them in a single map like earlier games. And it goes beyond the medieval stuff and into things like ice and lava areas, swamps, and some sort of desolate battleground.

The only thing that's slightly negative is the game is definitely easier than Heretic, due to a combination of changed balance and the fact that all your items carry over from level to level and hub to hub. This lets you spam healing items and horde up the invulnerability and mana refill items. The slew of four bosses in the final hub were quite anticlimactic, as I just spammed my fourth weapon and chugged mana refills while invulnerable for the last boss (first three didn't need it). ALso, the Cleric's fourth weapon (which is the class I was using) is hilariously overpowered; it fires out three spirits that autoseek targets, deal damage, and keep it up for a while and will seek out new targets if they kill the original. You can also pump out a ton of spirits; you don't have to wait for the first set to go away. It was total easy mode, but at the same time it felt nice that my preparation was rewarded. That's something that tends to go away in the more modern FPS's that tend to give puzzle bosses or others of that nature that prevent you from dropping the heavy end of the hammer on them to cheese them out.