Games you learned to love.

EvaUnit02 on 24/9/2008 at 06:24

I've never heard of Red Spear. Was it adapted from one of those Chuck Norris B-movies, where the Red Menace has invaded America?

icemann on 24/9/2008 at 11:32

Rainbox Six: Raven shield was another for me. The difficulty of that game drove me bonkers initially, but the game grew on me over time. Quite a good game overall.

Jusal on 24/9/2008 at 14:34

F.E.A.R.

I found F.E.A.R. Combat to be quite unimpressive when I tried it out a year back or so (such old HL mods as The Specialists are probably to blame), but I gave the actual game a try recently. A pleasant surprise. I found it to be an excellent game for the "I-don't-want-to-think-right-now" moments. Great actiony fun plus a handful of spooks coupled with a pretty sick plot: Fine by me.

LancerChronics on 24/9/2008 at 15:14

Baldur's Gate 2: After I first got it, I never made it past the dungeon without getting incredibly bored. Then if I did make it out of the dungeon it drops you in the middle of nowhere without a clue of what to do next. After my 5th play through I actually managed to survive past that and started loving the game(and ToB).

Icewind Dale 2: I know I'll love it, I really do. But i still cant seem to get past party creation.
"Me:Hmm, I want a bard, thief, mage, and fighter". "Guide: no, don't do that. your party will suck. Its best to start everyone off as fighters then multiclass later, oh and they all have to be human".
"Me: ok, what about the other two spaces",
"Guide: don't use them, you get more xp".
"Me:Fine, so i made them all fighters, i'll multiclass to what i want at level to, then all will be right with the world".
"Guide: no don't do that, your party will suck. You should probable get 2 lvls of fighter for this class, 4 for this class, 3 for this class, choose this proficiency cause there are not that many of the weapon type you want...oh and diplomats are useless, and paladins and monks dont get rewards..."
"Me: ok fuck this....*shuts off game for 6 more months*"

heretic on 24/9/2008 at 15:34

Your guide needs smiting.

A typical party consisting of your PC of choice; two tanks and a healer, a mage and a rogue can make it through quite well. I played through with a bunch of bumbling gnomes at one point, would not have worked in HOF mode but it was viable in Normal.

Also, w/o really spoiling anything there is a huge battle geared specificaly towards Pallys (to acquire the Holy Avenger) and an entire quest-line location geared towards monks.

There are also quite a few mods out there to smooth things over with pre-builts and the like.

N'Al on 24/9/2008 at 16:00

Plus, the game itself comes with pre-built parties.

The only thing I would suggest - on top of the general mixed layout of your party as per heretic - is to have one member be a monk (for the final challenge in the monastery), although he shouldn't be party leader.

LancerChronics on 24/9/2008 at 16:02

hmm maybe i'll check those out. I've only ever picked up the Ease-of-use pack by weimer. Just so long as I don't have to min/max(the most horrible thing to ever be concieved by a gamer) my characters maybe i'll give it another go.

N'Al on 24/9/2008 at 16:09

You don't really need to min/max, no.

That's the problem with these kind of guides; they're generally written by huge D&D ~~fans~~ nerds, so the character generation section is usually unnecessarily complex (hence heretic's advice to smite 'em!) The main thing to remember is to mix up your party - after that, you can pretty much just do what you feel like.

[Edit] The guides are usually quite useful regarding tactics for particular fights, or how to complete quests, though... [/edit]

IndieInIndy on 24/9/2008 at 22:34

Can't do much more than continue the trend...

I tried to play FPSs and learned to hate them. They're much too fast-paced for my liking. I'll tolerate them in short doses in a LAN setting while fragging friends, but that's it. So I assumed all first-person games were the same, and ignored them.

Somewhere around '01, I broke down and bought Thief due to all the praise from TTLG, and was amazed: there was actually a first-person game that let me play at my pace, rather than at the frenetic pace dictated by the devs. I play games very slow and deliberate, and like to plan out what I'm doing. Crouching down in the shadows for ten minutes listening to the guards, figuring out their patterns... Now there was gameplay that matched my pace.

Then I tried DX, and found out that a first-person game could also be an RPG -- since RPGs are the only genre I've found I like to play. After that, I started picked up other first-person RPGs, like TES, Underworld, Arx... Damn, you guys are a bad influence.

But those ended up being easy sells, once I started playing them.

The big turn-around was Dungeon Siege, which I thoroughly hated by the time I finished play it. I expected an RPG, which DS failed to deliver. But after a year or two, I was desperately looking for something to play that didn't require thinking (oh, the perils of full-on crunch mode). Something that almost played itself... So knowing what to expect, I reinstalled DS and started playing through the multi-player world, which I'd never touched. For me, it had enough of an RPG air to it that it was fun to play, without requiring much thought. That taught me that there is value in games that can be described as "interactive screen savers".

Malf on 25/9/2008 at 06:13

Yeah, the multi player world of Dungeon Siege was fantastic and had a great feeling of exploration. The non-linearity helped greatly, and there was some really cool stuff hidden in it, such as the Pit of Peril or whatever it was called.

That and I remember me and a friend traipsing through the desert for AGES, and then finally stumbling upon a pyramid full of goodies that linked to the underworld.