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Went back a few years(1997 to be exact) and played a bit of Tomb Raider and Crash Bandicoot - Cortex Strikes Back. Damn those games are annoying, Tomb Raider more so because it doesn't give you any hints on what to do or where to go. Crash was just annoying trying to get the controls to work again.

6 Hours with Tomb Raider and not anywhere near finishing it. managed to complete Crash within a few hours, probably 3-5 i would say. Not sure what to play now.

I think my wife likes that crash bandicoot game... Not quite my style anymore but platformers *can* be fun sometimes.

I think I got lost in the original tomb raider too.... Eventually I get frustrated and search around for an appropriately tall rock such that I can initiate a dive maneuver without enough room to go into a roll... CRACK

So whats the story with the Star Wars Humble Bundle folks? Would I be a fool to miss it, or do most of those games come pretty cheap these days anyway? I've played some of the old republic and the first force unleashed... am I missing any gems that are found in the pack?

I never got past the Great Wall of China level...which was like level 1 or 2. Don't recall if it was TR 1 or 2.

Wouldn't it be (marginally) better to play Tomb Raider: Anniversary, than trying to play Tomb Raider 1? At least there's something marginally better to look at while you're tearing your hair out...

I've got to admit though, I kinda preferred Tomb Raider Legends and Underworld compared to the latest re-imagining. More, you know, well, raiding of tombs... Legends was probably my favourite one of the lot.

I think I have played the original and the anniversary, same thing

I've heard that Republic Commando and Battlefront II were both really good, and I know that the two Kotor games are cool (with the first being better since the second got truncated by stuff and was sorta rushed at the end). I think it'd be worth it right there for the 12 bucks or so.

Those were the days when you were not led by the hand, and didn't have the interwebs to look everything up.

Love the old TR games jump of the wall and keep shooting the tigers!

Kind of addicted to Warframe, plays like mass effect 3 online, but faster and somewhat grindy.

Just bought Wulvenstein the new order, playing it on highest difficult setting, and like that you can run and gun it or do the stealthy approach.

 Sigvatr wrote:

 sarpedons-right-hand wrote:
Picked up what I think is the last good CoD, Modern Warfare 2, yesterday on 360 for £1.99. It's nice to play something brainless after all the frustration caused by Warhammer Quest.

If you got it for PC...does it run fine? Sadly, I wanted to play it again after a while and I have weird sound problems (muffled voices), making the game unenjoyable :(

No. I have it on Steam, but no PC as I use an iMac And because I'm lazy and have yet to update to the latest OS, I can't play it on my iMac. So I went and bought it on the Xbox 360 for dirt cheap. Especially seeing as it's still £19.99 on Steam...

I am rediscovering the strange experience of single player mods for Half Life. I had forgotten just how many of these things people made! And how... mixed the quality is.

 Compel wrote:
Wouldn't it be (marginally) better to play Tomb Raider: Anniversary, than trying to play Tomb Raider 1? At least there's something marginally better to look at while you're tearing your hair out...

I've got to admit though, I kinda preferred Tomb Raider Legends and Underworld compared to the latest re-imagining. More, you know, well, raiding of tombs... Legends was probably my favourite one of the lot.

I loved TR 2013, but that was my main complaint. Not enough Tombs.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Those were the days when you were not led by the hand, and didn't have the interwebs to look everything up.

Well don't know about you but I had my Prima game guides.

I picked up Sunless Sea now that its out of early-access. The first time that I played it I thought it was fine, till I repeatedly died and had to re-read the same dialogue, which decent as it is, becomes dull after a couple of goes. Now my character's doing if not entirely well for themselves, at least they aren't being killed quite so often. So now that I've worked out the mechanics enough to actually make head with the game I'd say its interesting enough to warrant further playing, but it'll certainly take a while yet before I can actually grind my way anywhere. By the looks of it it'll take ages to buy something better than the starting ship, which is a shame, as that locks you out of buying a wider variety of guns and so I'm stuck with the crappy combat mechanics for a while yet. =/

I also decided to see what the browser game Sunless Sea is based on, Fallen London, is like. Playing it for a bit already shows me that that game borrows its narrative style quite a bit from it ...along with quite a few of its visual assets used in dialogue. I haven't played a browser game in years, but it seems the same mechanics are still there, and even if it still has the annoying set number of actions per day I'll say that at least there's some actual interesting text and choices set out rather than just a generic "you won, here's a stat boost". I'd like to see more options to link to your Sunless Sea character (early on there was an option to either take a payout, or instead give the items to a captain you know), though learning more about the setting is keeping my interest. I may. Its definitely a time sink, but a better written one than most.

You might want to have a look at Dragon Age: The Last Court too. - That's based on the same mechanics as Fallen London.

https://lastcourt.dragonagekeep.com/s

The game lasts a realtime week, so it's not a big investment in time, and kinda fun.

 Compel wrote:
Wouldn't it be (marginally) better to play Tomb Raider: Anniversary, than trying to play Tomb Raider 1? At least there's something marginally better to look at while you're tearing your hair out...

Would be better to look at but graphics ain't everything. I remember playing Anniversary and from what I recall it was quite a bit different than the original Tomb Raider. still I think I have all the Tomb Raider games so will probably end up playing through the lot of them again.

Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: Well don't know about you but I had my Prima game guides.

Ah the Prima game guides were great, think I still have a few of them somewhere.

Star Wars KOTOR 1 & 2, Halo 2, Halo 3, and GTA V are the ones I still have.

@Grim: Looks like a great deal to me. Battlefront is one of the most fun games ever made, simple but endlessly playable, while KotOR is a little more complex and the graphics a tad dated, but once you get into it it's a very fun game. Republic Commando is a simple FPS, but the squad control mechanics add another element to it, and the design/style are a bit of a grittier take on SW. Force Unleashed is brilliant for mindless jedi-fuelled destruction; the plot of the second one is a bit iffy, but it's all non-cannon anyhow, and mechanically and graphically the game is one of the best.

@Para thanks for the overview. That's pushing me towards picking it up now.

 Compel wrote:
I'm back to playing Saints Row IV.

I've got to say, if it weren't for all the assorted 'gangsta' elements that still kick around in the game, I'd probably put it as one of the most simply fun games ever made. You start off with a Call of Duty / Zero Dark Thirty / Armaggedon mashup and it just gets more fun from there.

Right now I'm playing a mission that's a spoof of Metal Gear Solid. Including if/when you fail it, assorted cries of, "BOSS! BOSS! BOSS!"

Saints Row 4 is crazy fun. I've really taken to the franchise since it stopped taking itself so seriously (so around SR3 or so). It's funny that the GTA games have gotten progressively darker and darker, but the SR games have gotten lighter and lighter. I played a mission last week that was so funny I literally ran out of breath at one point. Plus, Laura Bailey is the default voice for a female Boss, and I never get tired of hearing her talk.

In other news, I started a new game of FF Tactics because.... nostalgia? I lost a bar bet? I dunno... But I'm playing a new game and currently grinding through the early missions to get access to all the job classes before the second chapter. I'm also naming all of my troops after adult film stars because... boredom? Head trauma? I dunno...

FFT ftw! I sunk quite a few hours into that not long ago. Hint: it's pretty deadly if you emulate the game on your phone, gets preeety hard to put it down =/

I have a problem with making heavily themed parties and starting over when I come up with a new theme...even though all of the characters can learn all of the classes =/

Gotten back in to Front Mission: Evolved.

If the multi wasn't deader than e Mitt Romney presidential bid, it'd be great. As it is, it's something fun to play with friends if you have at least four people playing.

 GrimDork wrote:
@Para thanks for the overview. That's pushing me towards picking it up now.

Pres 'A' or 'B' (yes or no) to make your life altering decision which doesn't actually impact the story very much.

Gone crawling back to New Vegas, and currently hunting down skill books.

One peeve I have with it is the sneak and stealth system. Skyrim's feels a lot better, but is also more abusable--enemies stop looking after a short time, and from then on walk over their friend's corpse until you shoot them, or walk up to and let you shove a dagger into their stomach after they trod on your foot and didn't notice because you were crouched.

NV's so far allows for about 1 stealth kill before you need to go loud, and I've been unable to get close enough to perform a stealth melee kill, even with high agility, reasonably high stealth, a light weapon, and light armour. If you shoot a guy dead from a mile away, with a silenced weapon, his friends notice his corpse, and will notice it every time they see it, no matter if it's the 10th time, or 100th time they've done so. You stay 'Hidden' for a split second after they turn around, but they tend to go back to 'Caution' a second later, and you get no bonus to attacks in that alert level--even if they don't know where you are--making it largely pointless to keep the stealth charade up. Once you hit them in that mode, unless you're packing an AM Rifle or extremely high damage, they know where you are, silencer or not, and you end up with a gang of whatevers running up to your hiding place.

On my current playthrough, I've taken to carrying my Ratslayer, Sniper Rifle (for when I don't want the Ratslayer's almost guaranteed dismemberment on a limb shot, like during the Fiend bounty quest), a scoped Hunting Rifle, and This Machine around with me. The first two get sneak kills, the hunting rifle is for going loud at range, and This Machine for when I'm being charged.

Having a 'Caution' alert level not remove the sneak bonuses, or at least do something like halve them or remove the guaranteed crit. In the latter case, Sniper Rifles have increased chances to crit anyway, so would still be able to function as sniper weapons, whereas other weapons would be relegated to doing normal damage outside of crits.

Having 4 levels of alertness might also help, with hidden providing full bonuses, caution providing the bonus damage on a sneak critical hit, but removing the guaranteed crit chance, a 3rd level, perhaps 'Alert' removing all bonuses and causing enemies to actively seek you out, and finally Danger acting as normal.

Just a minor annoyance, really. As a sniper, I spend most of my time shooting stuff that's running at me, even if they haven't seen me yet, and doing comparatively minor damage as a result, often ditching my silenced stuff for my aforementioned 'go loud' guns, simply because they deal more base damage, and have a greater DPS. I don't feel like I'm playing a sniper at all.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Gone crawling back to New Vegas, and currently hunting down skill books.

One peeve I have with it is the sneak and stealth system. Skyrim's feels a lot better, but is also more abusable--enemies stop looking after a short time, and from then on walk over their friend's corpse until you shoot them, or walk up to and let you shove a dagger into their stomach after they trod on your foot and didn't notice because you were crouched.

NV's so far allows for about 1 stealth kill before you need to go loud, and I've been unable to get close enough to perform a stealth melee kill, even with high agility, reasonably high stealth, a light weapon, and light armour. If you shoot a guy dead from a mile away, with a silenced weapon, his friends notice his corpse, and will notice it every time they see it, no matter if it's the 10th time, or 100th time they've done so. You stay 'Hidden' for a split second after they turn around, but they tend to go back to 'Caution' a second later, and you get no bonus to attacks in that alert level--even if you don't know where you are--making it largely pointless to keep the stealth charade up. Once you hit them in that mode, unless you're packing an AM Rifle or extremely high damage, they know where you are, silencer or not, and you end up with a gang of whatevers running up to your hiding place.

On my current playthrough, I've taken to carrying my Ratslayer, Sniper Rifle (for when I don't want the Ratslayer's almost guaranteed dismemberment on a limb shot, like during the Fiend bounty quest), a scoped Hunting Rifle, and This Machine around with me. The first two get sneak kills, the hunting rifle is for going loud at range, and This Machine for when I'm being charged.

Having a 'Caution' alert level not remove the sneak bonuses, or at least do something like halve them or remove the guaranteed crit. In the latter case, Sniper Rifles have increased chances to crit anyway, so would still be able to function as sniper weapons, whereas other weapons would be relegated to doing normal damage outside of crits.

Having 4 levels of alertness might also help, with hidden providing full bonuses, caution providing the bonus damage on a sneak critical hit, but removing the guaranteed crit chance, a 3rd level, perhaps 'Alert' removing all bonuses and causing enemies to actively seek you out, and finally Danger acting as normal.

Just a minor annoyance, really. As a sniper, I spend most of my time shooting stuff that's running at me, even if they haven't seen me yet, and doing comparatively minor damage as a result, often ditching my silenced stuff for my aforementioned 'go loud' guns, simply because they deal more base damage, and have a greater DPS. I don't feel like I'm playing a sniper at all.

Are you on PC? Because I'd be surprised if there isn't a mod to affect stealth or something to fix sniping for you. Off the top of my head, I don't know if there is one because i rarely do anything stealthy in that game. The BAR from Dead Money isn't really a stealth weapon, y'know?

I am, but the mods out there also change other things in addition, and I'm not well-versed enough in modding to do anything myself.

I foolishly started the Old World Blues DLC today, too, hoping to rush through it all, grab the unique Sniper Rifle variant, and be out. The expansion had other ideas. From my own experience, and from Googling, it seems that the Sneak skill, and stealth in general, rarely actually works in the OWB DLC, with some people reporting that even with Sneak at 100, and most enemies having Perception 5, that they're spotted from miles off, and with Stealth Boys flat-out not working numerous times.

I spend most of my time in Big MT in an almost permanent state of 'Caution', even with no enemies around, and that quickly switches to 'Danger' on a whim. I've sat in Danger for 5 minutes, with no red blips on my compass, and no enemies coming for me. I levelled to 15 whilst in Caution, and managed to get halfway to 16 before the game actually brought up the skill menu, since it doesn't come up if you're in combat (which Caution is counted as). I immediately went back into Caution mode afterwards. I think I've spent 90% of my time in Caution mode, which has made my sniper build all but useless.

Factor in, too, that enemies can and will respawn at any point, and you get an otherwise comedic, fun expansion pack that underestimates its difficulty (it recommends level 15+, whilst the other 3 recommend 25+), and makes it a ball-ache to go from A to B if you aren't playing a Rambo-style gunslinger character who doesn't care if they're seen or not.

All I wanted was the damn unique sniper rifle.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Gone crawling back to New Vegas, and currently hunting down skill books.

One peeve I have with it is the sneak and stealth system. Skyrim's feels a lot better, but is also more abusable--enemies stop looking after a short time, and from then on walk over their friend's corpse until you shoot them, or walk up to and let you shove a dagger into their stomach after they trod on your foot and didn't notice because you were crouched.

NV's so far allows for about 1 stealth kill before you need to go loud, and I've been unable to get close enough to perform a stealth melee kill, even with high agility, reasonably high stealth, a light weapon, and light armour. If you shoot a guy dead from a mile away, with a silenced weapon, his friends notice his corpse, and will notice it every time they see it, no matter if it's the 10th time, or 100th time they've done so. You stay 'Hidden' for a split second after they turn around, but they tend to go back to 'Caution' a second later, and you get no bonus to attacks in that alert level--even if they don't know where you are--making it largely pointless to keep the stealth charade up. Once you hit them in that mode, unless you're packing an AM Rifle or extremely high damage, they know where you are, silencer or not, and you end up with a gang of whatevers running up to your hiding place.

On my current playthrough, I've taken to carrying my Ratslayer, Sniper Rifle (for when I don't want the Ratslayer's almost guaranteed dismemberment on a limb shot, like during the Fiend bounty quest), a scoped Hunting Rifle, and This Machine around with me. The first two get sneak kills, the hunting rifle is for going loud at range, and This Machine for when I'm being charged.

Having a 'Caution' alert level not remove the sneak bonuses, or at least do something like halve them or remove the guaranteed crit. In the latter case, Sniper Rifles have increased chances to crit anyway, so would still be able to function as sniper weapons, whereas other weapons would be relegated to doing normal damage outside of crits.

Having 4 levels of alertness might also help, with hidden providing full bonuses, caution providing the bonus damage on a sneak critical hit, but removing the guaranteed crit chance, a 3rd level, perhaps 'Alert' removing all bonuses and causing enemies to actively seek you out, and finally Danger acting as normal.

Just a minor annoyance, really. As a sniper, I spend most of my time shooting stuff that's running at me, even if they haven't seen me yet, and doing comparatively minor damage as a result, often ditching my silenced stuff for my aforementioned 'go loud' guns, simply because they deal more base damage, and have a greater DPS. I don't feel like I'm playing a sniper at all.

That's funny - I played a stealth sniper in Fallout 3 and once you get the stealth armor from the armory after the Chinese hologram mission it just got too easy and I never bothered to finish the game. Hide - silenced headshot - hide repeat. I never tried a stealth person in New Vegas... that's a game I should revisit soon.

I had the same problem you described when I played Crysis 3. You'd be invisible, hiding behind a bunker, and half a block away and the second you snipe one person everyone in the level comes running right for you while opening fire immediately. I soon ditched the sniper rifle in favor of pure dakka power. You would uncloak, step out, chaingun a guy into ribbons while everyone panics and starts screaming. Re-cloak and step aside and watch all the guards shrug, "Huh... I guess his body just did that."

 Avatar 720 wrote:
I am, but the mods out there also change other things in addition, and I'm not well-versed enough in modding to do anything myself.

I foolishly started the Old World Blues DLC today, too, hoping to rush through it all, grab the unique Sniper Rifle variant, and be out. The expansion had other ideas. From my own experience, and from Googling, it seems that the Sneak skill, and stealth in general, rarely actually works in the OWB DLC, with some people reporting that even with Sneak at 100, and most enemies having Perception 5, that they're spotted from miles off, and with Stealth Boys flat-out not working numerous times.

I spend most of my time in Big MT in an almost permanent state of 'Caution', even with no enemies around, and that quickly switches to 'Danger' on a whim. I've sat in Danger for 5 minutes, with no red blips on my compass, and no enemies coming for me. I levelled to 15 whilst in Caution, and managed to get halfway to 16 before the game actually brought up the skill menu, since it doesn't come up if you're in combat (which Caution is counted as). I immediately went back into Caution mode afterwards. I think I've spent 90% of my time in Caution mode, which has made my sniper build all but useless.

Factor in, too, that enemies can and will respawn at any point, and you get an otherwise comedic, fun expansion pack that underestimates its difficulty (it recommends level 15+, whilst the other 3 recommend 25+), and makes it a ball-ache to go from A to B if you aren't playing a Rambo-style gunslinger character who doesn't care if they're seen or not.

All I wanted was the damn unique sniper rifle.

I hadn't noticed that problem when I played OWB, but like I said: Browning Automatic Rifle. Only time I crouched was to steady my aim.

That being said, if the Stealth issue is a bug, there may be a patch (official or unofficial) for it. The Nexus mods site will often have patch mods to fix bugs the developers missed. I'm not referring to mods that tweak Stealth or any of the other skills; I'm talking straight-up patches. I don't know about ones for FNV (I may be running one or two... I have so many mods installed it's hard to remember them all) but I know I'm running four in Skyrim right now (one for core game, and one for each DLC) and all of them are unofficial patches. They *do* work, though, as I've noticed that I don't encounter certain issues on my PC that I had to deal with when I played on console...

Yeah the Operation Anchorage items are OP lol. Its a fun scenario though. I used the stealth armor and lightning sword and could crouch around hacking up those nasty higher tier lobster people or whatever they are. Hit them more than once and they still don't find me...

Do table top RPG's count for this thread?

Will be starting my first ever D&D campaign tonight, after two intro sessions.

Dunno we're technically in the video games sub forum, but I dunno that people will crucify you for mentioning it

Playing the newest rules or an older edition? Have fun, don't forget to loot all of the bodies


Still chipping away at Prophesy of Pendor. Starting to wonder if I should help the one faction too much more, I mean.... if I help them take over half the map and then betray them, there will be one faction with a *lot* more potential guys than the others and it will start out hating me by default lol...

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Do table top RPG's count for this thread?

Will be starting my first ever D&D campaign tonight, after two intro sessions.

Yeah, this one is about the computer games, but don't worry, there's an equivalent thread for tabletop and hobby stuff. - http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/550385.page

As for me? I'm still Saints Row-ing.

After finally getting OS X Yosemite working properly (it's been a long, hard road) I'm eagerly awaiting Darkest Dungeon. I've been looking forward to playing it so bad, and have been unable since I bought it because of problems with my old OS. But that's all fixed now, so i shall be cracking on with that a little later. Still playing Diablo 3 and CoD: Modern Warfare 2 as well though... Busy, busy, busy