What are you playing now?

[Collector]

And just how big has that list gotten?

[Tawmis]

And just how big has that list gotten?

Well for this year, not that long. I am trying to do less (in terms of the many hobbies and ideas I have) - and focus on a few to knock them out. (The ones I can easily finish).

So Lands of Lore won't be on my radar, along with quite a few other games (Gold Rush Remake, Gold Rush II, GK1 Remake, Gray Matter, Moebius) until 2019, God willing that I still walk the Earth next year.

[Rath Darkblade]

I also bought:
-The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind, Dark Brotherhood, Thieves' Guild, Orsinium, Imperial Province

Oh, wow... I remember Morrowind. Whoops... I thought you were talking about The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. Now THAT is going a fair way back.

I tried TESO by itself, but I don't know what happened... it installed fine (I started installing it at 7pm on a Saturday night), but then it took the rest of Saturday night - and ALL NIGHT - and on to 11am on Sunday morning - before it was finished installing updates, or whatever it was doing. And this is on fairly fast ADSL - I've never had this kind of problem with any other game - AT ALL.

I thought, "After all that, it'd better be a hell of a game!!!"

It wasn't. I managed to... verrrrrryyyyy slowwwwly... get out of the beginning area and tried looking around. The game was as slow as a pile of horse manure. Slower. Much slower. There was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy too much lag. It got so bad that by the time I got to the second screen, and was attacked by... goblins? I think? I really can't remember... well, anyway, I tried drawing my two-handed sword. Meanwhile, the goblins firing arrows at me.

I get hit by one arrow, two, three, four, five... still drawing my two-handed sword... six, seven, eight, nine, TEN %&@*ING ARROWS!!!!!... still drawing my sword...

It went on like that for what seemed like an eternity. And then I died.

Then I tried again. I tried to play the game but simply could not do so; I was constantly kicked off the server (about 8 times in roughly 25 minutes - I counted), and when I was in the game, my character - again - did not respond to my commands (e.g. sneaking, or drawing a sword).

Needless to say, this was not conducive to good adventuring. When I wasn't being kicked off the server, my character died or was attacked, and I was not able to fight back. Eventually, I simply uninstalled the game and never played it again.

I wrote a very irritated email to noreply@mail.elderscrollsonline.com and also to ESO_Help@helpmail.elderscrollsonline.com, requesting that they remove my account immediately and completely. I never heard back.

The whole thing has put a dampener on my feelings towards Zenimax and Bethesda. I really enjoyed TES4 and TES5, and it's a shame that TESO turned out to be such a pile of crap.

I'm currently replaying Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos. I'm not much for RPGs overall, but this one I quite like. I'm finally getting better at it, too; this is the first time I've made a lot of progress without resorting to a trainer or hex editor to max out all my stats.

I remember Lands of Lore! The last time I played it, I was probably about 14 or 15. That was many, many, many moons ago. (But how many, I'm not going to say).

[MusicallyInspired]

Never had any problem with lag once. The game runs the smoothest I've ever seen for an Elder Scrolls game, actually. As smooth as Morrowind.

In other news, I played through Full Throttle Remastered last night. Love hearing everything with HQ voices and music, and the sprites and animations are nice, but the backgrounds are seriously disappointing. Looks like they just ran every image through a filter with minimal editing and it makes every scene look like a jelly mess. Even things like pavement. It's embarrassing, really. It's nice to have this game remastered like the others, but it's definitely their weakest attempt yet, which is a shame because it was one of Tim's favourites I thought. Still haven't beaten Turok 2 yet. Man that game is full.

[Collector]

Full Throttle is a game that I put off playing for a while since the subject matter didn't appeal to me, but once I started I found what a fun game it was. I have not considered getting the remaster, but what you say about the backgrounds puts me off.

[MusicallyInspired]

Here's an ingame screenshot from the remaster. Some others they made fine-tune changes for things like pipes and wires in the background for detail, but most are like this. Looks like it just used a SuperEagle or HQx filter on top. Almost the same thing that ScummVM renders on-the-fly.

It also doesn't use point-filtering for scaling in classic mode so the pixels are a little blurry and not crisp as they should be. DOTT never had this problem. I also spotted one scene where the paintover of the background in Remaster mode wasn't complete, exposing older pixels. Still no fix in sight. It's a little sad. Also, the GOG version seems sluggish to update to the latest version that the Steam release is currently on. Still not updated as I understand it. DF must have bigger fish to fry...

I love Full Throttle. It's short, and a couple of the action sequences can be tedious, but the atmosphere, music, dialogue, story/plot, characters are all fantastic. I've never played Grim Fandango, but I'd say besides it's shorter length that it's Tim's best achievement (yes, over DOTT. Though, DOTT wins in length and compelling puzzles). Full Throttle is a world I just wanted to see more and more of and I'm sad that we didn't get to see more.....from Tim. I'm ABSOLUTELY glad that LucarArts pathetic attempt at a revival in some kind of action adventure form with a rehashed story without Tim (and without Roy Conrad to boot) never saw the light of day.

[Collector]

Yeah, that is what it looks like they did. I agree with your take on Full Throttle. The first time that I played it ScummVM skipped the one action sequence because of bugs in their interpretation of the engine for the game, so I did not have deal with it then. I would not mind being able to skip it still.

[Semi-Happy Partygoer]

I've recently been dabbling with Heaven's Dawn, a seemingly rare point-and-click from 1995. Developed by a Taiwanese company, then released in English in Australia. It features most standard P&C conventions, though not done nearly as well as Sierra's work. Visually, the game is an obvious Kyrandia knockoff- same style interface and icons, similar color palette and music, even the main character's sprite is drawn as the exact same angle as Brandon. The programming is also clunky - the opening cinematic is 3D rendered, and even on the slowest DOSBox settings it absolutely flies by like a tape on fast forward, but then the game runs slower than dirt. It needs at least 30,000 cycles to prevent lag during animation-heavy screens. Still, for all the flaws, it has a certain charm about it, and it's fun to experience a "new" P&C from that era that I haven't seen before.

[Tawmis]

I've recently been dabbling with Heaven's Dawn, a seemingly rare point-and-click from 1995. Developed by a Taiwanese company, then released in English in Australia. It features most standard P&C conventions, though not done nearly as well as Sierra's work. Visually, the game is an obvious Kyrandia knockoff- same style interface and icons, similar color palette and music, even the main character's sprite is drawn as the exact same angle as Brandon. The programming is also clunky - the opening cinematic is 3D rendered, and even on the slowest DOSBox settings it absolutely flies by like a tape on fast forward, but then the game runs slower than dirt. It needs at least 30,000 cycles to prevent lag during animation-heavy screens. Still, for all the flaws, it has a certain charm about it, and it's fun to experience a "new" P&C from that era that I haven't seen before.

It's funny that you call it a Kyrandia knock off - when the first Kyrandia was called a King's Quest knock off (so much so that they ended up putting disclaimer stickers on the boxes)! I am now, officially curious to play said Heaven's Dawn sometime...

[Semi-Happy Partygoer]

It's funny that you call it a Kyrandia knock off - when the first Kyrandia was called a King's Quest knock off (so much so that they ended up putting disclaimer stickers on the boxes)! I am now, officially curious to play said Heaven's Dawn sometime...

It's very much a Kyrandia knockoff visually. The developers were clearly basing the overall look on it. You can view some screenshots and read more about it here: http://www.mobygames.com/game/heavens-dawn-

I've never thought of Kyrandia as really being a knockoff of King's Quest, actually. True, the format and basic concept may be the same, but to me the two series had very different aims and executions. Kyrandia also radically evolved with each installment and was quite goofy by the third one, not taking itself seriously at all, whereas King's Quest always maintained a certain gravitas.

[MusicallyInspired]

I'd even put forth than King's Quest was the opposite. It kind of started out a bit silly and got increasingly more serious.

[Semi-Happy Partygoer]

I'd even put forth than King's Quest was the opposite. It kind of started out a bit silly and got increasingly more serious.

Fair point. I haven't played the early games as much but you're right, they are much more lighthearted than later entries. Whereas the first Kyrandia didn't take itself overly seriously, the underlying story was quite melancholy.

[MusicallyInspired]

Interesting. I mean, obviously you know more than me. I haven't played through Kyrandia yet but the beginning came off a bit tongue-in-cheek to me. The opening cutscene was serious and somber and then Brandon's reactions to everything and the chippy music was like a huge contrast (maybe that was just the voice acting). Someday I'll play through them.

[Collector]

It is Hand of Fate that is my favorite. The first one seemed tedious and shallow. The third one was too silly for me to get into.

[Semi-Happy Partygoer]

The first one's probably my personal favorite in terms of atmosphere, but there are obvious signs it was Westwood's first foray into adventure gaming. I'd say Hand of Fate is easily the strongest game in the series - they clearly had a better feel for things by then as it's much more polished. Malcolm's Revenge has moments which are incredibly funny if taken on their own, but it's too different in tone to really feel part of the series.

I seem to recall an interview with Roberta where she said Kyrandia's single button interface inspired her to try a similar approach for KQ7 - which I know had a mixed reception.