Finally defeated Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal a couple weeks ago. That game ranks among the oldest I have that I never finished. It actually wasn't as hard as I remembered but I got lucky in one level where the deathknights were not hammering me. If I tried restarting the level they were. Well, I was having some problems, I had various saves, but I took a different approach at one point and took out the dragon roosts from one of the opposing bases and that solved my issues.

It was actually a lot of fun. I played through One and then Two and the expansion. Even 20+ years ago One was too primitive for me to get into, considering it was bundled with 2. I forced myself to stick with it and I'm glad I did.

I got deep into the Starcraft expansion but never finished it. At this point, I think I'm just going to wait for the remaster. I think I'm going to get back into Alien Isolation next. It's been a couple months since I seriously played it. I in the medical area now. Great atmosphere in the game.

I'm still playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild (on Wii U). If you find my old posts you can see I wasn't too happy with it during the first few hours (because it was hard to find decent weapons, and once I did, they just shattered after using them on one enemy). Right now I conquered 3 of the 4 divine beasts and I'm busy slaughtering guardians and finding shrines to build up my power. The problem with the weapons is no longer a problem -- I have significantly increased the number of weapons/shields/bows I can carry and now the issue is that there are too many cool weapons I want to keep and I still don't have room for them. Much better problem to have than being forced to fight enemies using only a stick. My son has all 4 divine beasts and he also bought a house so he can keep weapons and such there (ones he wants to keep but not use).

The open world is great. The initial powers are cool but the ones you get after each divine beast are fantastic, too. I don't have many complaints anymore; the biggest one is that the shrine detector thing is too difficult to use; it supposedly beeps when you're heading toward a shrine but it's really hard to figure out which direction to go once the beeping starts. I think it would be much better with a directional indicator (and if that was too powerful, they should have decreased the range).

There are 120 shrines to get (I have 40 left to get I think). I am planning to get them all before I fight Ganon. About 1 in 10 or 15 I end up looking online to figure out how to expose or find it. The rest I've found myself. There are 900 korok seeds to find. I have ~180. I pick them up as I find them but I'm not planning on getting them all.

There are a zillion side quests (and not usually like "go kill 30 rats"), all of which so far have been pretty fun, but I don't stop what I'm doing to do most of the side quests (unless it sounds really interesting).

The world is huge. Like stunningly huge. And there's a lot of story behind everything if you take the time to listen to the people, watch the memory cutscenes, etc. (Cutscene voice acting isn't super great, I'd rate it 6 out of 10).

Overall I think this is a fantastic game and if you get the chance to play it, you should. Apparently the Wii U version has a few framerate issues that aren't as bad as on the Switch but I've really only been bothered by them a couple of times. I do notice them in certain areas but it doesn't bother me much because unlike an FPS, it doesn't usually cause any problems. The loading time is also supposed to be better on the Switch (loading happens when you warp somewhere, which you do more often later in the game, and when you go into or exit shrines). I haven't tried the switch but the default controllers look really small. The Wii U controller (the fat one with the screen) is nice and wide and pretty comfortable. The screen on the controller is not used for anything, it just flashes annoyingly (put some cardboard over it).

I found my old Game Boy the other day with the game "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers". The Gameboy didn't work anymore, but my trusty SNES with the Super Game Boy adapter could did. I have many fond memories of that game but I could never beat it. My brother was much better at the game than me. He even managed to beat the guard that's guarding the Turtles in case one of them gets captured (no death in this game). I guess now I'm old enough to actually approach this game intelligently. I tried again and now I'm stuck at the last level. Keeping my SNES running so that I can try it again every other day.

I haven't played much as of late, but when I have made time, I've played Age of Empires II, Hard Reset, & Faster Than Light. I intend to grab the expansion of The Talos Principle & The Witness when I get the time or when they're on sale.

I've been playing some Civ IV and occasionally MGSV, when I feel like grinding my %complete up. I'm now at 98% complete, so I thought I'd hurdle the last 2% that's really difficult.

Was playing Gran Turismo 6 for a while, because I loved GT2 as a kid because I could autistically collect every Nissan Skyline in the game, then GT3 and GT4 came out with a tiny car selection. But 6 has a huge car selection with loads of Skylines, so I can be autistic about it again.

Other fun recent games: bought Rogue Squadron on May 4th and beat most of the game, like 2/3rds of the missions have gold. Don't know if I'll ever complete it. Bought Factorio, that's a fun autism simulator but lacks endgame motivation in free play.

Ever since Christmas I've been playing Elite: Dangerous. Aside from that my wife and I sometimes play shared or split-screen co-op games on steam. Lately she's just wanted to watch me play the Tomb Raider reboot from a few years ago.

I'm also a moderator on a dead minecraft server. So once a week I'll drop in for half an hour in case someone happens to log in and needs me for anything.

I've been playing Overwatch and Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. Come die in PUBG with me, idiots.

I was wondering if Brian was going to revisit the Zelda topic after his scathing review. Seems that most reviews for the game are quite positive. I've never gotten into them. I have a Gamecube release of Ocarina of Time (I think that's it). Have never played it though.



Oh, cool!



That's one of six Star Wars games that are still on sale for the next 12 hours that I haven't purchased yet but it's also one of the five of those six that I own on disc or another platform. I might pick it up just because.



I learned of that game somewhat recently. I may check it out when it comes to PS4. I'm guessing that will be some sort of enhanced release.

Messed around in Alien Isolation for a short time the other night. It's always rough getting used to the controls in a game after taking some time away from it. I really enjoy the game and it really doesn't bother me getting killed by the alien.

Learned today of the Top Trump card game. I'd never heard about it but I saw a video about this product. Pretty cool.

Another game related item I've actually wanted to bring up for quite some time is the Rubik's Cube. I learned how to solve it about six years ago. It's kind of depressing after you know how to do it because the magic is sort of gone. Funny how many people are impressed by it though.

I only got so far with the book that I learned the process from so I only learned a basic and slow way. Later in the book it covered ways to combine processes and speed everything up. I'm glad I didn't get that far because I learned several techniques on my own. Last year I decided to find out what it would take to get closer to a 30 second solution but what I found is that you end up having to memorize algorithms and I wasn't particularly interested in that but I did learn some techniques I incorporated into the way I solve the cube. When I'm practiced, I can do it right around two minutes and I think I can get close to a minute if I really work at it.

I tried the rubik's cube a few times when I was young and could never get more than 2 faces. I never made the connection that all the adjoining edges had to be correct as well. A year or two ago, after I read a few web pages with some techniques I was able to solve them slowly. I certainly didn't feel smart because I was completely unsuccessful until reading how to do it. I wonder how many people figured it out on their own vs. learned from others (in person, books, videos, web pages, etc.). I'm certainly less impressed when people solve them now. Although I did enjoy the rubik's cube guy on America's Got Talent last season.

When I was a kid I think I might have gotten two faces once. The thing is, that's one of the hardest ways to solve the cube. It's very easy to solve one face, then the edges in the next layer, and then the edges in the opposite face. At that point there are only a few corners to solve and learning that is easy. I don't know if it would have ever occurred to me to solve it in that manner but if it was suggested to me I probably could have gotten it all on my own except the final corners.

I did one run trying to solve it face by face and knowing some ways to move pieces where I want them it is a fun and interesting challenge. I'm going to try that again.

Steven Brundage, I believe that's his name. He is very impressive even knowing what he's doing and catching tiny glimpses of his slight of hand. For those that haven't seen his various tricks they're definitely worth watching on YouTube.

I feel like Rubik's cubes are one of those semi-pretentious hobbies. Like Mensa, worthless but a good place to wank off about how smart you are. Not true of all people, of course, I just get that vibe from the time or two I watched videos of Rubik's cube tournaments.

Also they're pretty straightforward algebraically and it wouldn't be hard to write code to solve one. Which would be my preferred method, rather than memorizing moves and building up the muscle memory to do them. Which is, as you suggested, how most people learn to solve them.

Speed solving isn't about computation. It's about planning and dexterity. I find it very impressive.

It is impressive, and I don't condemn it wholesale, I only dislike the air of elitism that surrounds these kinds of things. Other than that, it's great.

Just played through the first level of Dark Forces. Still an enjoyable way to steal the Death Star plans, even compared to the movie. I guess I prefer the interactive medium to sitting through a movie if the outcome is going to be predetermined.

In case you don't have Alan Wake, it's currently available for 3bux https://www.gog.com/news/special_sale_goodbye_alan_wake

I've been DMing a D&D game and playing in another. I like 5e. Lots of fun. Gets creative juices flowing.

Also Fallout 4. Death to feral ghouls.

I can't imagine that most people actually do learn how to solve them in that manner. To speed solve them, sure, but then as Jon's comment below suggests that's not really the point.

As I said above, I'm not interested in memorizing any steps to solving the cube. The closest I have come is one particular pattern I like to put it in and I had that algorithm memorized for a few weeks but I couldn't do it now. But you can hand me a cube five years from now and it'll be solved in a couple minutes because I understand a process for solving it. The process is so easy that, really, most people should be able to learn it.

I'm a little surprised there hasn't been anyone else posting about solving the cube. I know many if not most of you must be capable of it but doesn't anyone else here know how?

I bought one, learned with the instructions, did it for about three days and then forgot. I don't feel motivated to spend the time the figure it out independently now.

When I was a kid I had some booklet that showed you what move to make depending on what piece was where. I solved the cube following the instructions but I didn't learn anything.

I bought Spelunky on a whim yesterday because it was about $3. It seems alright. I don't quite get why everyone was so hyped about it but maybe I just need to put some time into it.

I also tried out Hearthstone last week and it didn't quite hook me. Like, it seems interesting, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was playing MtG. The friends I had who were really into MtG ruined it for me, since it was impossible to play casually while they sperged out about Standard/Modern/Legacy and getting to spend hundreds of dollars when the next series released.

Spelunky came out at the right time. The indie platformer market is completely saturated now; it'd probably never stand out anymore.

I also played through Steamworld Dig last weekend. It wasn't bad, worth whatever I probably paid for the Humble Bundle it came in. I'm not going to be replaying it anytime soon, but it scratched an itch.

I don't want Zelda to end. I have completed all 120 shrines. I'm not going to try to find all 900 Korok Seeds cuz that's insane. I have to gather a few more things to upgrade my rubber armor and then I'm off to fight Ganon

So that game is like ... an actual video game.

Recently I was thinking how annoying it is that everything has to be cute and retro but I quickly began to think that it's cheap and probably about the only way most new games can get made nowadays.

Yeah. First one I've played through in a long time. Actually I did play through Zelda III on an emulator after a thread on here when the NES classic came out. Prior to that, I don't know.

Pretty much. The game industry has been completely bifurcated into AAA and mainline Indie, which seek profit by absurd scale/polish, and lean processes, respectively. There's no room in the market between them anymore.

Edit: But to be clear, the platformer market is uniquely saturated. It's one of the most popular genres for new entrants, but platform games just weren't that popular to begin with. The market can't sustain the kind of long tail that indie developers are throwing at it.

I wonder if JK: DF2's/Quake low-poly, low-color depth textures aesthetic will be the new "retro."

Gotta mine all that nostalgia.

Yes, it is one of the most 'trendy' retro genres right now.

https://www.reddit.com/r/lowpoly/

Although I think it started with Superhot.

Oh, definitely:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyBX_TG7V7M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pl7y5BDEEs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5ON4quVbFw

I've been replaying some JK single player lately, and I have to say that the game has not aged so well as, say, TIE Fighter. I think the latter is much more in the sweet spot of quantization that sufficiently saturates you in pixel-laden nostolgia. I mean, you can pixelate JK too (I guess I could turn down the resolution and turn off 3d acceleration, but then again I never played JK this way so the nostolgia wouldn't be there), but the 2D cockpit art and immersive sounds and iMuse system of TIE Fighter just strike a much deeper chord with me. I mean, JK was a journey, but TIE Fighter was a universe, like being embedded in a novel (well, literally this was the case if you read the Steele Chronicals that were packaged as a part of the instruction manual), which makes sense given its LucasArts pedigree.

To me, JK was always about what you could do by messing around in JED or in multiplayer. Too bad those were both ill fated in their ultimate destiny of stagnation and neglect....

Actually playing it, I get a bigger kick out of Dark Forces I than I do with JK.

Once GMDX for Deus Ex will be released, I'll carry out my 6th post-Deus Ex: Nihilum retirement from game editing, with NEO-TODOA as my last failure*.

On the other hand, spending nearly 2000 euros on UE4 and related assets has not left me in financial dire straits (still worse off than 1-3 years ago) and that sum is far smaller than what my family members owe me in money I'll never see again. Oy.

* = When it comes to game editing, naturally. I'll have tons of other fields to work on for other achievements in this category!

Yet recently I've really come to realize that even though both TODOA and DXN were released way after their respective games were, uh, released, I couldn't have asked for a better timing with releasing them. Any earlier, and they'd have been far worse overall. Any later, they'd have gotten zero attention from more than three (3) people.

Alas, these are the laments of the one who did nothing with his life.

Nikumubeki, I admire your perseverance and skill, but wouldn't you agree that you sound a little damaged about this whole modding thing? I know it's humor, but I feel that you are proving that he who fights with game editors should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into a game editor, the game editor also gazes into you.

It's over. Finito.

Or what the Norwegians call, finitos.

Also join this group http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SWDarkForcesUnreal

So I reinstalled the 2003 Akella Pirates of the Caribbean game because I'm lacking in dopamine hits with all the abstract stuff from school. Put on this pretty impressive and extensive community mod called new horizons. http://www.moddb.com/mods/new-horizons

It's fun. Anyone else every play this, vanilla or mod?