Octopus Overlords

At the same time, there were quite a few games in those days that I bought because of the demo. There were a lot fewer games, so trying out new demos was always a good way to spend some free time, and it sold me quite a number of games. I still remember trying the demo for Deus Ex, getting about halfway through, exiting, and then going straight to the store to buy it.

Ive narrowed my choices down to do I want to play Cyberpunk or Mass Effect 2 Legendary. It would be my first real go at Cyberpunk because I have a GTX 950 now that can play it and its all patched up and the ME2 would be my 5th play through but first Legendary version....with some added mods

Why play something new when you can see a new pair of pants on a character in a game you've played 5 times already?

My vote for the best demo of all time was Unreal Tournament. It was so good I never bought the actual game.

Jaymann wrote:My vote for the best demo of all time was Unreal Tournament. It was so good I never bought the actual game.

For me it was the original Diablo. Spent all night babysitting my 33.6 modem downloading it (60MB, I think) and then hacking it to get the extra levels.

The best demo of all time was for X-Com: Ufo Defense.

Smoove_B wrote:Why play something new when you can see a new pair of pants on a character in a game you've played 5 times already?

So you’ve noticed I’ve been replaying Saints Row 4? Pants are optional.

New game announcement from Zachtronics, Last Call BBS

Apparently "last game from Zachtronics" is not a joke.

Max Peck wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 6:20 am Apparently "last game from Zachtronics" is not a joke.

Yeah, IIRC, Zachtronics' founder is moving on to a full-time teaching job instructing computer science for high school students.

While the title and Zachtronics pedigree has me intrigued, speaking as someone with fond memories of the forgotten world of BBS door games, I couldn't help thinking the video trailer for Last Call BBS seemingly contained surprisingly little relating to BBSes.

If I'm reading the description correctly, the BBS is just the conceptual framework for the collection of minigames. When you play the game, you log on to the BBS and select the particular game you want to download/play. I think he's going for a pirate BBS schtick, where you're downloading cracked games rather than presenting them as BBS door games.

Totally forgot I own Days Gone.....maybe Ill delete Division 2 and try Days Gone instead

jztemple2 wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 12:47 am New game announcement from Zachtronics, Last Call BBS

yeah this may be a Day 0 purchase for me

Just got free next gen upgrades on my Xbox one series x for Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 7. Nice.

Decided to go retro... By almost 20 years. Star Trek: Elite Force 2. I remember playing Elite Force 1, but never played 2. Come to think of it, I've never played Bridge Commander either. Hah!

Good thing the engine can be set to do modern resolutions, but I had to disable the other two monitors, else the game stops working. Also, had to play with the config to get 16:10 (1080p) as the game predates these ratios. There's even a fan patch for widescreen. But had to play with the settings a bit to get it working.

Also got the Daggerfall Unity thing. May mess with it later. MUCH later.

I replay both Elite Force games regularly.

hepcat wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 8:50 pm Just got free next gen upgrades on my Xbox one series x for Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 7. Nice.

I just got an upgrade for my XBone copy of Minecraft when I logged in yesterday. It broke my ability to smelt iron ore into ingots. I see that that's been a problem over the past 10 years or so. But, nothing comes up as a solution in recent days.

Guess I'll play something else.

Bought TMNT: Shredder's Revenger on PS4 yesterday. It's great retro fun especially with friends, as you can invite up to 6 people to play at the same time. Lots of chaos and mayhem

Read a quote tonight about remasters that really hit me. Could probably be said about going back and replaying any beloved game from yesteryear. This was specifically about the recent Chrono Cross remaster, and sums up my feelings on it quite well.

If you’ve never played Chrono Cross before, The Radical Dreamers Edition is the way to play it. But if you have, I’d think carefully about whether you really want to play it again, or simply reminisce on your good memories of it.

I find that more often than not when revisiting older games I end up feeling…I dunno, disappointed? Underwhelmed? These games that I loved so much back then just turn out to be either janky as hell or simply not as fun as I remember. I know that has lots to do with it being hard to go backwards due to technological and gameplay advances, but it almost always ends up feeling kinda sad.

Maybe they’re right and just reminiscing on my good memories is the best way to go.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite. Whoever designed the inner workings of this thing needs smacked upside the head. They release regular patches. Here are the patch notes for the most recent patch:

ANIMATION
Fixed an issue with the reload animation on the Heirloom Standoff weapon.

CLASS KITS
LANCER: The Lancer Horde Slayer Kit Skin should now properly unlock for players who complete Horde Mode on Extreme or higher difficulties, and unlock automatically for players who have previously completed Horde Mode on Extreme or higher difficulties.

INTEL
Entries for each topic in the Intel menu should now be ordered according to the relative locations they are found in each Campaign.

GENERAL
Fixed a memory related issue that sometimes resulted in a crash

An animation, a script, reordering something, a bit of code.

1.4 GB download. Once downloaded, the installation takes an hour and ten minutes. This isn't a fluke or a bug - it's like that for every update, every person, even when it is just a small fix. It's like they recompile the entire game every time they make a change. I haven't looked (I don't care enough to), but I'm guessing that they did the paranoid thing and encrypted every single file to 'prevent' piracy. It's causes this sort of thing in other games in the past.

Patching the game takes an hour. Uninstalling the game and reinstalling it from scratch (fully up to date) takes five minutes.

Rumpy wrote: Fri Jun 17, 2022 1:49 pm Bought TMNT: Shredder's Revenger on PS4 yesterday. It's great retro fun especially with friends, as you can invite up to 6 people to play at the same time. Lots of chaos and mayhem

FNM does TMNT

any opinions on Märchen Forest for the Switch?

https://www.nintendo.com/store/products ... st-switch/

Sorry hitbyambulance I don't know that game and don't have a Switch

As for me, anyone have opinions on the Steam version of Morrowind? It's on sale for 70% off and it's been so many years since I played it. Does it work well under steam and Win10?

jztemple2 wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 4:19 pm As for me, anyone have opinions on the Steam version of Morrowind? It's on sale for 70% off and it's been so many years since I played it. Does it work well under steam and Win10?

Sadly I can't answer your questions. I can tell you that I finally picked it up on sale solely in the hope that someday they will release the Skywind mod.

It works fine, and it's a good deal.

Gameplay wise, what are the differences between the modern (3, 4, 5) Sniper Elite titles and the modern (new trilogy) Hitman games? What do they do differently?

I've played all three Sniper Elite titles, but I haven't touched a Hitman since Codename 47 and Silent Assassin.

The new Hitman games offer a lot of replayability with set in-game achievement goals. The methods of assassination are many and varied. There’s an early mission where one of the goals is to assassinate one target by dropping the other target on top of them from a balcony.

More points unlock different starting locations with you already camouflaged.

Your goal, in most cases, is to terminate the two targets and nobody else and get away clean. No leaving a trail of death in your wake.

As much fun as shooting Nazis in the face can be, the stealth and fun of Rube-Goldberging an assassination is a lot more fulfilling than a long sniper shot.

Yeah, Hitman is much more about hiding in plain sight and minimizing the body count. A ghost run is much more expected in Hitman games. I pretty much never used a gun in the Hitman games.

Also, there's a Free trial you can play. And you might have the full first game on Epic.

I've got the first one, actually - and the second. I was trying to decide whether to grab the third while it's on sale for the ability to 'merge' the three. Since I wouldn't be playing them for a little while, I just wanted to get an idea as to whether it was more of the same as Sniper Elite before I went all-in (I always get bored with the repetition before I finish a SE game, and end up rushing through the last couple of missions.)

Blackhawk wrote: Fri Jun 24, 2022 1:33 pm I've got the first one, actually - and the second. I was trying to decide whether to grab the third while it's on sale for the ability to 'merge' the three.

Turns out I also have the first and the second one in my library . What does the "merge" do for me as a player?

https://profile.hitman.com/

HITMAN 3 is the final game in the World of Assassination trilogy. All HITMAN 2 players have the option of performing a one-time carryover of their progression, allowing them to start HITMAN 3 with their existing profile, XP, suits, items and unlocks.

THIS PROCESS DOES NOT IMPORT YOUR HITMAN 2 LOCATIONS. CHECK OUR PLAYER GUIDE FOR MORE DETAILS

Isgrimnur wrote: Fri Jun 24, 2022 5:38 pm https://profile.hitman.com/

HITMAN 3 is the final game in the World of Assassination trilogy. All HITMAN 2 players have the option of performing a one-time carryover of their progression, allowing them to start HITMAN 3 with their existing profile, XP, suits, items and unlocks.

THIS PROCESS DOES NOT IMPORT YOUR HITMAN 2 LOCATIONS. CHECK OUR PLAYER GUIDE FOR MORE DETAILS

Thanks. I'm downloading the Hitman 3 demo right now.

jztemple2 wrote: Fri Jun 24, 2022 5:43 pm

Isgrimnur wrote: Fri Jun 24, 2022 5:38 pm https://profile.hitman.com/

HITMAN 3 is the final game in the World of Assassination trilogy. All HITMAN 2 players have the option of performing a one-time carryover of their progression, allowing them to start HITMAN 3 with their existing profile, XP, suits, items and unlocks.

THIS PROCESS DOES NOT IMPORT YOUR HITMAN 2 LOCATIONS. CHECK OUR PLAYER GUIDE FOR MORE DETAILS

Thanks. I'm downloading the Hitman 3 demo right now.

It's more than that. If you own 1 and 2 and set them up in advance, you basically get a free DLC for Hitman 3 for each that contains the entirety of the previous games. In other words, you can launch Hitman 3 and play all of the content from 1 and 2 with all of the mechanics and engine upgrades that have come about over the course of the series. The process is a little confusing, and I haven't really dug too deeply into it (as I haven't bought HM3 yet), but it seems like it would be the best way to play them.

Anonymous Bosch wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 10:52 am Yeah, IIRC, Zachtronics' founder is moving on to a full-time teaching job instructing computer science for high school students.

Or not...

Goodbye Zachtronics, Developers Of Very Cool Video Games

With the decision made and announced, then, what comes next? For Barth, he’s hoping to work on something else, while other members of the team are likewise looking to try their hands at new challenges. “My original plan was to wrap things up at Zachtronics and then find a new job teaching high school computer science, but the timing was off,” he says. “I just finished my first year of teaching and Last Call BBS hasn’t even been released yet! I was hoping that I’d really like teaching and stay with that for a few years, but I learned that’s definitely not the case and I’m having a hard time imagining anything other than games in my future, in some shape or form.”

I can imagine how jumping into a high school teaching position in the middle of the pandemic might turn out not to be a great career move.

probably not worth its own thread, but the current GOG sale got me back into gaming after a half-year hiatus with Shadowhand (from Gray Alien, developers of Fairway Solitaire). it's golf solitaire, but with some psuedo-RPG inventory trappings on top. i'm playing on the highest difficulty setting and you do need to pay attention to your 'loadout' before the dueling portions, or you will not succeed (and no hoarding your consumables here! they're essential for getting out of tough spots). a welcome addition is the need to observe the cards' suits during gameplay as different suits help 'charge' different classes of weapons' ready statuses, as well as to unlock different portions of the board in some levels, which creates a need to make further decisions on where to play a card. this game is somewhat less suited for the casual solitaire market - i tried to get my mom to play it and the number of options present and tactical decisions to be made was too much for her. (it's also by far the most violent and bloodiest solitaire game i've ever played, which isn't saying much at all, but there you go.) for $3.74, i could recommend it.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/shadowhand

My only disappointment about Shredder's Revenge is that it's so short. It can easily be completed in 2-3 hours. With friends, there's no question about being able to breeze through it. The full price, which I paid, was around $30 CND, not including taxes, which makes it rather expensive for such a short game.

Rumpy wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 3:16 pm My only disappointment about Shredder's Revenge is that it's so short. It can easily be completed in 2-3 hours. With friends, there's no question about being able to breeze through it. The full price, which I paid, was around $30 CND, not including taxes, which makes it rather expensive for such a short game.

you're not supposed to use the unlimited continues, lol

We're not though. We're just using whatever the game gives us. Sometimes one of us will actually get a game over, but it's still fairly rare.

Rumpy wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 3:16 pm My only disappointment about Shredder's Revenge is that it's so short. It can easily be completed in 2-3 hours. With friends, there's no question about being able to breeze through it. The full price, which I paid, was around $30 CND, not including taxes, which makes it rather expensive for such a short game.

I've enjoyed my first playthrough of Shredder's Revenge (I'm on the last level, I think?) but I'm happy I could play it through Game Pass rather than buying it.