Tanukitsune

Quitter's Club: Don't be ashamed to quit the game.

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I'm on the verge of dropping Lord of the Rings: War in the North. There are coding deficiencies on the PC version that cause severe stuttering and crashing on systems with AMD graphics cards. The most egregious offender is the first part of the very last level. Just no way through it, no way.

 

I'll make one last attempt, probably by completely uninstalling and physically removing my card to definitively force integrated graphics. If that doesn't work, it's (unfortunately) done with. Bye bye, new game plus.

 

Otherwise it's an enjoyable hack & slash adventure for one to three players, within a recognisable, Peter Jacksonised, Tolkien-inspired fiction. For a combat-oriented game, there are a couple of fairly lengthy walking interludes, purely for the purpose of establishing a feel for the characters' journey and drawing attention to its environmental art. Nice touch.

 

Anyway, it's been fun. Perhaps a little too long. Probably more fun in multiplayer (unless one or more are using AMD cards, grumble grumble). TLDR I'd recommend it to anyone that doesn't like closure.

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I dropped Gothic 3, because, although I patched it with some heavy-duty, years-in-the-making community patch, it was still very slow to play, had framerate issues, and the combat was...broken. That's the only word that really fits. I mean, I tried for 5 or 6 hours, and there are some positive aspects, but it is outweighed by the negative.

 

Lovely music, actually. That's a big plus.

 

So, I picked up Risen, which I'd read has a smaller world (not really a problem for me as G3's was SO big) and improved combat. I still struggle when facing multiple enemies, but now I can't just retreat to a big rock where they can't follow and plink arrows at them, which was my only recourse in G3. Now it's a case of keeping everyone to one side of me, and trying to find a chokepoint to use to my advantage. Don't get me wrong, it's still janky as all get-out, but it's better.

 

The world looks nice too, and is just a good place to while away the hours. This is not to say I've just been wandering; I have fought a lot and made some improvements to my character, and feel like I've progressed more than I managed to in G3, although it's still quite slow going. I'm enjoying myself, and get a cosy, warm feeling when I think that I've got 25 more hours of it to play.

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How special is Minerva's Den actually? It's obviously a classic that people have recommended time and time again, but usually without that much explanation or detail in their recommendation. Is it as expected an expansion on the existing Bioshock 1/2 story or is it more of a discrete separate thing, like Burial at Sea is to Infinite?

 

I ask mostly cause I dropped out of Bioshock after a couple hours because I liked the world but had no interest in the plot, characters or gameplay and I'd seen enough of the world after just a little while. I've never played 2, though I do know the rough synopsis of both games, so if Minerva was related but a significant shift in tone or storytelling I could possibly still get on board.

 

It's a completely seperate story that barely relies on the rest of the series at all. I found the story much more touching than anything in the rest of the Bioshock games, but I don't think that the actual story telling style differs much from the original Bioshock. It's also a microcosm of Bioshock 2, giving you a lot of the same weapons and upgrades but at a much quicker pace to finish up in a couple of hours, where Bioshock 2 took way too long to say very little.

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After posting that I realised I'm a butt because I'm now 90% sure I asked that question months ago on these forums. This time I'm putting it on my wishlist because I clearly established that's the only way I remember any game I'm interested in.

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I've had Crysis 3 on my PS3 since it was a free PSN+ game and finally decided to give it a go.

 

I had completely forgotten about "the year of the bow" and that this game also had one, I got kinda excited since you have a stealth suit to make extra sneaky stealth bow kills, but I soon found out this game suffers from "Superman Syndrome", as in the game gives you superpowers and then gives everybody "Kryptonite" and this case the game has EMP grenades, which I would be totally fine with if they hadn't thrown a few at me when it's impossible for them to know where I am and frankly left we realizing I'd rather play any other game from the "year of the bow".

 

And who gives you a bow and doesn't let you hunt? 

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I hate to make another post when the last post was mine, but... it's really killing me to say this, I'm quitting Double Fine's Hack 'n' Slash.

 

The game starts simple enough so any logical person can solve the puzzles without any knowledge of programming, with simply stuff like "Open=true", eventually the games puzzles are small scripts which are still understandable, but the start becoming more complex too.

 

When I finally passed the trial, I was given a new item to enter lua scripts and... that's when I quit, I don't know anything about lua scripts, but these have way too many layers for me to keep track of everything. I expected the game would require some minimal knowledge of programming and maybe it's even build in a way to slowly teach code, but the point I've reached is too complex for me, or to be more precise, too complex to be fun, because as the code becomes more complex it feels less like a game and more like work.

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Yep, it's a programmer's game. The hacking complexity increases at some point. I don't know if you managed to get back to the wizard's castle, but there it becomes more difficult if you're not a programmer.

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Would you say that it's a game that's good for practicing programming or is it just supposed to be fun and accessible if you're already familiar with programming?

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No, it's a game which might be fun for people with experience in programming, and probably not much for people who do not have experience.

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Considering to just drop KotOR for now, which surprises me a bit as I really like western RPG:s and did enjoy most of the Mass Effect trilogy. The intro was quite slow for me and I found Taris to be rather dull. I realize it was released in 2003, so I tried to keep that in perspective. It is quite remarkable how far narrative driven games have come on a technical level! I got a grasp of the RPG mechanics, though I'm not sure how well the turn based formula blended with the 3rd person perspective. It felt quite conflicting to me having played the original Fallout titles.

 

My biggest issue with the game is the writing itself. The main story feels typically good vs evil, "you are the chosen one" etc. Yeah I know, it is a Star Wars game after all. Playing this made me conclude that while I might like the Star Wars universe as a concept, I really despise the execution of it. Full of clichés and predictable plot twists. The writing was disappointing to me as well, characters are either just way to whiney or simply badly written. I have not found HK-47 yet though so I might be missing out its better moments. All in all I found myself skipping through most of the dialogue.

 

It mostly boils down to not having fun while playing it, and I find it hard to justify spending 40 hours on KOTOR for that reason. I'd rather spend that time on an RPG with better writing and more focused gameplay. Oh and Wasteland 2 is being released tomorrow!

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I think a lot of love for KotOR is similar to the love for FF7. I was a young teen at the time of KotOR's release, and so I have a huge amount of nostalgia for that game. Not to mention that the writing seems a lot better when you're 13 years old and haven't been exposed to every trope or cliche in the book. 

It was also a shining beacon in a mountain of shitty Star Wars games, and really cemented my love of western RPGs. Plus it's a turn based game that feels real time (or at least did at the time). Which is something quite difficult to achieve in my opinion.

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My time for playing games has been dramatically curtailed this year. I still find time to play, but all notions of actually getting through my backlog are disappearing. It was futile anyway, but still... I loaded up the Game of Thrones RPG the other day with the idea that I would finally play through it only to realise that I bought the game at a time when the TV show's theme tune behind a game menu was enough to get me interested in playing a game and that the actual game itself just doesn't appeal to me all that much. It's a weird mix of "look, if you like the TV show you'll like this!" and a real game. That's being a little unfair really, especially as the whole reason I bought the game was for that TV show/books vibe. It's just not enough to carry it for me. Maybe I'll reinstall it midway through the next GOT season.

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Now I'm fascinated to know what Titan was supposed to be. I guess both Blizzard and the MMO market have shifted enough that making a follow-up MMO isn't necessarily what they want to do.

 

Edit: someone at Massively is willing to talk; apparently it was a lot like Destiny, and while reworking to try not to step on Bungie's toes, they discovered it wasn't fun enough to continue.

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Just uninstalled Dota 2 after about a week of matches I wasn't enjoying, with teammates/enemies were obnoxious and rude. This coupled with the shitty gamergate goings on have led to me being fed up with the whole multiplayer gaming culture thing. Fuck it. I need to play less games anyway. More time for movies and reading.

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I gave up on NaissanceE after about 3 hours. I bought it on a whim when it was on sale a few days ago, but despite the striking architecture it is overshadowed by tedious first person jumping and obtuse level design. Obtuse not because it is overly difficult - because it is rather easy - it is just so far removed from anything grounded that progression isn't very satisfying. I suppose that might be the appeal to some people. This game feels like the Xen levels of Half-Life extended to what must be 6 hours give or take. God this game would be so much more interesting if it was more of a Myst style puzzle/adventure game instead of a platformer.

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I gave up on NaissanceE after about 3 hours. I bought it on a whim when it was on sale a few days ago, but despite the striking architecture it is overshadowed by tedious first person jumping and obtuse level design. Obtuse not because it is overly difficult - because it is rather easy - it is just so far removed from anything grounded that progression isn't very satisfying. I suppose that might be the appeal to some people. This game feels like the Xen levels of Half-Life extended to what must be 6 hours give or take. God this game would be so much more interesting if it was more of a Myst style puzzle/adventure game instead of a platformer.

 

I ended up giving up on it a little later than you did; I think there was some grounding, enough to highlight the otherworldliness of the space, and the huge sense of scale, I felt, helped give a sense of progression. But then there's a bit where they throw all that away for weird disconnected segments after some fairly tedious jumping puzzles and that's when I went to YouTube to see if it gets back to the bits that were working for me. Spoiler alert, they don't.

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I ended up giving up on it a little later than you did; I think there was some grounding, enough to highlight the otherworldliness of the space, and the huge sense of scale, I felt, helped give a sense of progression. But then there's a bit where they throw all that away for weird disconnected segments after some fairly tedious jumping puzzles and that's when I went to YouTube to see if it gets back to the bits that were working for me. Spoiler alert, they don't.

 

I gave up when I got to the white strobe room where you can barely see the black platforms because the lights appear to move constantly. I couldn't walk around in there for more than 60 seconds before feeling like I needed to throw up, I thought the game was glitching out or something. Then I looked at a YouTube clip and saw that it was a normal part of the game. =/

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Quit playing about a month ago but should probably just delete local content at this point for L.A. Noire.  I really enjoyed it early on but after figuring out how some of the systems work and seeing some of the seams I haven't gone back.  Early on into the homicide desk and unless someone says its worth continuing on I don't see myself tuning back in unless I have a hankering to drive old sweet cars.

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I would complete homicide and then move on, it's the best part of the game. The ending is just mind-numbingly stupid, and it basically becomes a full-fledged shooter with some of the worst controls you've ever experienced.

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L.A. Noire has ones of the worst endings to a game I have ever put myself through, so it's good to get out early. I liked it in the early stages as well, but as it goes on it seems to not really understand its source material. The game feels like someone watched Chinatown, but fell asleep half way through and woke up watching Die Hard instead.

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I still haven't finished it. Not sure where I am, but I think it's the 3rd part (I think narcotics?) and I hit a wall where I've had to redo the same mission a couple of times (including driving all the way to the mission). The game is just so tedious at some point. The only interesting thing going on was the backstory from the newspapers.

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i was playing with my wife...i was drudging through she was enjoying the story some

 

and then glitched through the stairs in one of those XL sequences/cases and had to restart at the very beginning of the case.  i turned it off, quietly explained to her that it was awful and no fun for me anymore.  i havent turn it on since and no intention to

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LA Noire was a moment-to-moment thing for my wife and I.  Super frustrating/tedious gameplay, but the time-travel-tourist aspect of it was very satisfying.  And the music is wonderful.  I'd say if you've fallen off the wagon there's no use going back.  If I had been playing alone I would not have finished it.  Also, we cheated on every interrogation and found the game so much more fun.  The "right" answers could be so nonsensical, so it still felt like we were watching something new unfold even though we were technically cheating.  :D

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