🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 01 Feb 2017 10:35:55 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallsh...@gmail.com> wrote:
<sigh> 
Yes, I know. It's JANUARY 2017, not December 2016.

Look, I'll just repost this under the proper subject and we'll ignore
this happened, okay?

On Wed, 01 Feb 2017 10:44:09 -0500, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote: 

>On Wed, 01 Feb 2017 10:35:55 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
><spallsh...@gmail.com> wrote:
><sigh> 
>Yes, I know. It's JANUARY 2017, not December 2016.
>
>Look, I'll just repost this under the proper subject and we'll ignore
>this happened, okay?
>

Archived.

-- 
Zag

No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had
spent more time alone with my computer.' ~Dan(i) Bunten

I have started Layers of Fear. I am normally not into horror games, but 
this game so far has been surprisingly good. It is along the lines of a 
psyhchological horror walking simulator/adventure game.

Werner



Am 01.02.17 um 16:35 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:
> Do you Usenet? I Usenet; I Usenet on a daily basis.  I sometimes even
> Usenet in public. Look, now I am even restarting our monthly thread in
> order to encourage others to Usenet. Yes, I have verbified Usenet.
> Because the holidays are over and I need /something/ entertaining to
> keep me going through the dark and dreary winter days, and what am I
> going to do if I can't verbify or Usenet?
>
> Oh wait, right, playing computer games; I can do that too. Let's talk
> about computer games instead. You all know the drill, I won't bother
> going into the usual spiel. To the games!
>
>
> --------------------
> Short and Sweet
> --------------------
> * Lost Eden (replay)
> * Warhammer End Times Vermintide (new)
> * Star Wars The Old Republic (new)
> * Abzu (new)
>
>
> TL; DR
> ----------
>
> * Lost Eden (replay)
> To understand "Lost Eden", you need to understand its origins. In
> 1984, David Lynch completed the unenviable task of translating Frank
> Herbert's sci-fi opus to the silver screen. Although critically
> panned, it became something of a cult classic. In 1992, Cryo
> Interactive - under the aegis of Virgin Games - released a game that
> owed as much to the movie as the original novel. The game - simply
> entitled Dune - was an odd mixture of adventure and strategy, but is
> probably better remembered - especially its later CD-ROM release - as
> being one of the earliest true multimedia experiences, with speech and
> video prominent parts of the game. Although only a moderate success,
> it was enough to keep the franchise alive until Westwood games took
> over the license and created Dune II, which set the template for all
> modern real-time strategy games and is far better remembered.
>
> Meanwhile, Cryo Interactive, having lost the Dune license, decided to
> create a game based on their own intellectual property, a strange
> pre-historic world where dinosaurs and humans co-existed. It was,
> essentially, a clone of the original Dune albeit one where they
> doubled-down on the multimedia aspects that won them so much praise.
> Thus was born "Lost Eden".
>
> Unfortunately, their efforts were largely for naught. While "Lost
> Eden's" production values still hold up well - if you take into
> account that there has been twenty years of technological advancement
> - this isn't enough to save the game. Yes, the computer-generated
> backgrounds, CGI animations and techno soundtrack are still appealing,
> the gameplay itself is completely lacking. The adventure-game
> sequences are totally linear, with "puzzles" that are little more than
> knowing to click the right thing in the right order (albeit with very
> little clues ever given as to what that order actually /is/).
> Nominally there is a strategy element as you strive to build up your
> armies to beat off the ravaging "Tyran" hordes, but this too is
> extremely superficial. It is entirely comprised of stumbling upon your
> allies by randomly clicking on a map and giving them the necessary
> items - also found by randomly clicking on the map - required for them
> to build citadels and armies strong enough to withstand the barbarian
> onslaught. Actual battles are all fought off-screen. The story is
> equally poor, with forgettable characters and goals and a dull deus-ex
> machina conclusion.
>
> "Lost Eden" is an interesting historical footnote and its visuals and
> music still have some appeal, but none even when it was new this was
> not enough to carry the game, much less two decades on.
>
>
> * Warhammer End Times Vermintide (new)
> It's obvious that the developers of Vermintide were big fans of the
> Left4Dead franchise; while it would be unfair to call Vermintide
> merely a re-skin of that co-op classic, it bears the influence of
> Valve's game quite proudly and it is nearly impossible to review - or
> play - without making comparisons. Like Left4Dead, Vermintide is a
> four-player co-op shooter and many of its rat-men monsters bear a
> close correspondence to the varied forms of Valve's zombies. But
> Vermintide plays with this formula, adding a Team Fortress-like
> class-system, some light role-playing elements and a stronger
> campaign, all of which - on the surface - seems like some great
> additions. And - generally - they are; fans of the Left4Dead series
> will find a lot to like. Nonetheless, all this added extra chaff does
> take away from some of the addictive simplicity of the older title.
>
> The worst offender were the maps, which are significantly larger than
> Left4Dead's levels but received far less iterative testing, as
> evidenced by the number of times I found myself inadvertently
> backtracking thanks to poor presentation of which direction I was
> supposed to head next. It didn't help that so much of the levels
> looked alike, an issue not assisted in the least by the gloomy grey
> graphics. The sheer size of the levels was problematic too; my
> interest waned long before the I got to the end of each map, and the
> lack of save-points meant that a total-party-kill required us to
> traverse the entire tedious map from the start. On the other hand, I
> did enjoy that the maps all had unique goals to them beyond merely
> surviving to the end.
>
> Nor was I particularly warm to the class system, mostly because there
> wasn't enough difference between the classes. Yes, the Witch-Hunter
> was mainly a ranged-class that relied on his flintlocks, the Dwarf a
> melee tank, or the Bright Wizard a finicky glass cannon prone to
> overheating, but in actual gameplay all the classes were all focused
> on killing; there were no support classes, or healers or stealth
> classes. The RPG elements - mostly consisting of weapon unlocks as you
> level up - seemed mostly added as an excuse to make the players
> grind-up, extending the length of a game which had a dubiously small
> number of maps to begin with.
>
> I mostly played in single-player and the AI was satisfactory, if
> lacking in the character and uniqueness that made Left4Dead's heroes
> so memorable. I did make a few excursions online and found the
> gameplay largely the same. While the community seemed largely
> friendly, Vermintide is more forgiving of soloing heroes, which
> reduced the need for co-operative play and a lot of the time the other
> players just seemed to run off and do their own thing. The game felt
> lonelier for that.
>
> Vermintide is an acceptable clone of Left4Dead, but it lacks the
> polish of its obvious inspiration. The developers seemed to believe
> that "more" equaled "better" as evidenced by how they tossed in new
> gameplay elements almost wily-nily, but in doing so ruined the careful
> balance introduced in Valve's game. The end result was a rather
> shallow and unmemorable title and while Left4Dead had retained a
> position on my hard-drive for close to 8 years, I've no regret
> uninstalling Vermintide after a single month.
>
>
> * Abzu (new)
> Apparently "Abzu" (which is Sumerian for "Ocean of Wisdom") was
> developed in part by the art-director behind the PS3-exclusive
> "Journey", which I played a few years back. Both games share a
> similarity in style and tone, but where Abzu fails is in its gameplay
> and character.
>
> Abzu has you take on the role of a nameless and faceless diver (as
> opposed to Journey's nameless and faceless wanderer) as s/he/it
> traverses the wilderness and ancient ruins of beneath the sea after
> some unmentioned apocalypse (Journey was similar, except its environ
> was the desert). Both games lacked any conventional storytelling,
> relying only on un-translated pictograms scribbled on the walls of the
> aforementioned ruins, leaving it to the player to decide what it all
> meant at the end. Environmental effects - fish and currents in Abzu,
> wind and sand in Journey - are major components of the game, although
> both are more about the, well, journey than any struggle against
> monsters or puzzles. But there the similarities end.
>
> Abzu lacks in direction and character. In Journey, it immediately
> becomes evident what your goal is; there's a giant mountain in front
> of you and it is clear that the point of the game is to reach the top
> of this peak and - by doing so - discover something of the history of
> the world. There's no such driving force in Abzu; you eventually
> stumble across some giant doors and game-logic dictates that's you are
> probably expected to open them (because that's what you do in games)
> but there is little pushing you forward beyond that. Similarly, your
> diver avatar emits none of the same charm - evidenced through its
> animation and sounds - as the robed wanderer of Journey, resulting in
> far less attachment to the character. Simply stated, I was given no
> reason to care whether or not my avatar succeeded at its goal, which
> made it hard to keep playing the game to the end.
>
> The developers obviously hoped that the wonder of the environment
> would replace this lack, and admittedly the giant schools of fish were
> impressive... but only briefly. There's only so long that you can
> watch virtual fish swarm around before the excitement dims; for me, it
> took about ten minutes. The variety of fish might have been more
> impressive except for the fact that most fish look like other fish,
> and the few exceptions - the blue whales, the ichthyosaurus - just
> didn't offer enough in the way of interaction to keep up the required
> level of interest.
>
> The end result was another fairly dull "walking sim" that once again
> hoped that its environment could make up for its lack of story or
> gameplay. Once again, it could not. It's a game that - beyond its
> momentary and initial moment of colorful wonder - was a dull and
> purposeless trek through an unimaginative world.
>
>
> * Star Wars The Old Republic (new)
> So I hereby name Star Wars The Old Republic the best MMORPG I've ever
> played.
>
> Which, grandiose as it sounds is nonetheless damning it with faint
> praise, because in the end SW:TOR is still an MMORPG, and I've yet to
> find one that's ever been worth the price of admission (well, maybe
> the late and lamented Ultima Online, and only because it was so novel
> at the time). Of course, I also say this as somebody who is far more
> interested in a strong single-player game than somebody who has much
> interest in a multiplayer game, which is a facet most MMORPGs sadly
> lack. SW:TOR, however, has a surprisingly strong single-player
> component... for an MMORPG.
>
> I played the game as freeloading non-paying customer and spent a good
> chunk of the month doing so. The free-to-play game has three campaigns
> for each of its eight different characters (although there is some
> overlap between the 24-total campaigns, this is still a huge amount of
> content. While the game obviously pushed its premium features, it was
> never so onerous to be annoying, or even a requirement; I played and
> completed the whole first campaign without paying a dime or ever
> feeling that coughing up the cash would significantly change my
> experience. For a free-to-play game, that's not only unheard of,
> that's amazingly generous.
>
> The back-story was suitably developed and overwrought - it is Star
> Wars, after all - and the questline was sufficiently full even in
> comparison to a "proper" single-player CRPG. The various quests and
> missions were well-integrated into the storyline; it never resorted to
> anything so cliche as "kill 10 monsters to advance" missions common to
> other MMORPGs. Nonetheless, all the missions still ultimately relied
> on monster killing to advance the plot; while some of the missions
> featured dialog choices at the end to sway the karma meter one way or
> the other, none of the quests could be solved by puzzle-solving,
> dialogue or stealth. It was a non-stop slaughter from one side of the
> galaxy to the other. Fortunately, the combat itself was flashy enough
> to distract from this deficiency, although - like other MMORPGs - too
> focused on the mechanical aspects that resulted in a screen covered
> with quickbars. I did found that the colorful combat effects too often
> made me lose track of my mouse-cursor; a serious flaw in a game that
> required me to constantly click the enemy to ensure my character keeps
> attacking.
>
> Although the game lacks in traditional methods of grind, it does find
> another way of artificially padding out the game's length: it couples
> its huge maps with an extremely slow movement rate. 95% of my time was
> spent walking slowly from one quest point to the next, something not
> helped by the tremendous number of monsters scattered across the level
> (the game does have quick travel points, but they are too far apart to
> make much difference) . Traversing the levels was tedious and boring.
> Had the game cut its maps down to 1/4 the size I would have enjoyed
> the experience far more.
>
> The game also featured guilds, crafting, strongholds and all the usual
> MMORPG nonsense. These are all available to F2P players, although the
> best parts of those features are reserved to paying customers. The
> only one I found marginally interesting were the "Space Missions",
> which were an extremely simplistic space-shooter that nonetheless
> offered a fun alternative to the usual on-foot questing; alas,
> non-paying customers like myself were limited to only three battles
> per week. It still wasn't enough to make me want to shell out any
> cash. Actually, none of the premium features seemed worth the price of
> admission; none of them really added or improved the core gameplay,
> they just made them slightly less annoying.
>
> Still, I did stay with the game for a full month, even though it was
> sometimes only by sheer strength of will that I returned. That's more
> time than I ever spent with World of Warcraft, or Guild Wars, or D&D
> Online, or Conan, or Elder Scrolls or any of the other MMORPGs. That
> might be partly due to the fact that it was a Star Wars game, but as
> much because it was the most single-player friendly MMORPG I've
> played, so kudos to Bioware for their effort. It still isn't enough to
> make me want to keep playing, much less pay for the damn thing.
>
> --------------------
>
> And that's my gameplay list for this month. So, aside from Usenetting,
> what's been occupying your time? That is to say -
>
> What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2016?
>