So you're the other guy!
For a long time I thought it was just me.

And it wasn't a remake, it was a prequel. And a really accurate one. If you watch "The Thing" when they investigate the abandoned base, they made sure EVERYTHING, every scrap of paper, piece of debris, EVERYTHING was in the exact same place when they filmed the new one.

Oh, and did everyone here know that John Carpenter never understood why people were confused by the ending. He went out of his way to, in his mind, to make it very obvious who was human and who wasn't, but most people never picked up on it, though now that I know what to look for, it is pretty obvious.

I would have liked the prequel a lot more if they had done practical effects like the original movie instead of CGI. Allegedly the effects team did indeed do that very well but the producers decided CGI would sell better and had all their work replaced.

The game is neat, although it's too bad that the infection stuff is all scripted, making the testing function pointless. I gather that the developers couldn't implement a randomized system, which would have made the game much more intriguing and given it replay value.

For me, the prequel was a perfectly fine movie in every way except the effects. I love the story, the amount of detail in keeping consistency with the original, and the ending was just perfect. All I hated was the CG, and that can be blamed on the studio. A video from GoodBadFlicks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxPK3sYb90w) really sold me on it more than I already was. Hearing all the behind the scenes stuff as well made me wish the crew got to release the film they shot. Not as good as the Carpenter one, but still better than most give it credit for.

As for what I'm playing now... Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition

This one was hyped up to no end for me, and after finishing New Vegas, I decided to go back into Black Isle Studios' history. All I can say right now is that I am loving this one so far. I love the writing, the world building, the premise, the soundtrack. So far, there's not much bad I can say outside of the combat being a bit clumsy. The EE is pretty good as well, with no changes to the writing or gameplay outside of quality of life improvements approved by the original designer. I'd honestly rank it as one of my favorite role-playing games.

Assassin Creed Origins

I usually report to the "games finished" thread only when I have finished also expansion packs and such, so for now I finished the base game of Age of Empires 3, and now moved to one (of the two) expansion packs, Warchiefs.

The base game wasn't that long, three acts, 8 missions in each so 24 missions in total. I would possibly even complain the game (single-player campaign) was a bit too short, but I guess it is fine as there are two expansion packs for it, which I presume add two more acts to the campaign.

I don't recall if AoE 1-2 were any longer, but somehow they felt like that. Or then I have just become so much better playing these games that I rushed through AoE 3.

I played AoE3 on Hard difficulty, and for my skills (and finding out about pausable gameplay) it was fine overall. There were a couple of tricky missions, especially the "Journey through the Andes" in Act 3 which was all about micromanagement and precise timing when to move your units, albeit I read somewhere that in case you don't care about achieving the secondary objective, you can also choose to just mostly run through the level to the goal before the pursuing enemies reach you.

The first mission in the Warchief expansion pack feels oddly hard though, maybe it is because you are restricted again to level 3 civilization and can't build gun towers. I just feel constantly overwhelmed by enemies attacking all the time from two sides, unable to set up good defenses. I think I've restarted this first Warchief mission for dozen times already.

Extra difficulty comes from the fact that there are now two enemy warchief's in my base who revive from time to time, so I have to keep several soldiers near them who "kill" them as soon as they revive so that they don't start causing damage to buildings and killing peasants. The enemy warchief's are similarly unkillable as your heroes, reviving after some time. I don't recall having similar problems in the base game where an enemy hero would end up in my homebase and I'd have to babysit (knock it out) it all the time. If there was some enemy hero, it would usually just stay in its homebase.

I presume that is Starcraft 2. Since I dropped it in disgust before because I felt the game was running too fast (and no way to slow down the gamespeed in Brutal), does it have pausable gameplay, ie. you can give commands in the paused mode? If yes, then I could consider continuing playing it.

That was a big revelation to me in Age of Empires 3. In it I also felt the game was at its busiest points too speedy, then I finally figured out somehow that you can indeed give commands in the paused mode.

For some reason it is not made apparent though. First of all there are two different kinds of paused modes (either press F10 to access menus, or press the actual Pause-button on the keyboard to get another paused mode), and giving commands works only in the latter paused mode. Also, in that mode, there is a big "PAUSED"-dialog box obstructing most of the view which is kinda silly when you are trying to give commands to units on your screen, having to scroll the screen so that those units are on the edges of the screen, away from that dialog box.

I recall you very much wanted the "paused gamemode" update for the new Homeworld game, so I presume to you that feature is quite important? Can you name some other RTS games where that pausable gamemode is available, just so that I know what to look for? Not sure if e.g. AoE 1-2 had that, if they did, I never used it but played them in realtime all the time.

Reminds me of Mega Man 1; that game also has 2 different paused modes. One, accessed by pressing Start, allows you to switch weapons (provided you've acquired at least one other weapon, of course). The other one is accessed by pressing Select, and it has a few quirks; you become briefly invincible after unpausing (allowing you to avoid getting hit by small enemies/projectiles if your timing is really good), and the brief invincibility that bosses get after being hit will continue to run while the game is paused this way (allowing you to hit a boss multiple times with the same attack).

Mega Man 2 got rid of the Select pause, but kept the Start pause, and it has its own quirk in that game; it will reset your vertical speed, allowing you to make jumps you couldn't otherwise. This quirk is not present elsewhere in the series, except that it is present in Mega Man: The Wily Wars in all 4 games in that collection.

Completed first scenario in Hard West on Hard, and I am enjoying it a lot. I needed only one restart during all of the missions. Thinking to go for Ironman attempt on Hard. But probably I should just go and play new unlocked scenarios.

You could slow down Wings and Swarm, but they got rid of that for Void, and no pause and play, but I paid $20 so I'm not quitting.

As for Brutal, NO WAY! :P No amount of speed fixes, pause, and even cheats, would make that playable for me. I'm on Standard, doing okay, barely, and doing just fine. :D I'll stay there.

I fired this one up recently too. Good game! I'm a few scenarios in and it keeps things interesting. Love the setting and art direction, plus I'm a big fan of "alternate" "armor" schemes (Banner Saga had one too) and the way Fate is used is a really novel and fun implementation.

Privateer 2. Still have it on disk somewhere around here, so I should probably drag out the paper manuals and ref cards. The gOg version includes the Prima guide in the goodies (remember goodies, the things you used to get as a free add-on?) and that might take the guesswork out of some things.

The cutscenes are pretty funny. The acting is fine, considering it's a late-90s PC game, but those scenes have a feel - in the set design, apparel, etc. - that reminds you when the game was made. Good stuff.

OK, but keyboard controls for that King of Fighters (freebie at the moment) are definitely not for homo sapiens. Or there is something seriously wrong with me.

Well, at least we get a new Mamma Mia movie soon, hehe.

I'm currently switching between three games (Five: Guardians of David, Saint's Row 2 and Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition), because none can hold my attention for very long, though I've only just started the latter two and they'll hopefully get better.

I forgot how biased Diablo 2 is against the Amazon. There are virtually no perks to playing her, and even then the good bows are shit compared to the good swords, staffs, wands, axes etc etc etc other people get.

Almost through Act II and I've yet to come across one "Amazon Only" bow all the while I've been selling off countless Targes, Zombie Heads, Staffs, Jaw Bone caps, Horned Helmets, Globes, Wolf Heads, Antlers, Claws.

The Amazon gets shit!
Poor girl. :P

Still focusing on KOTOR mainly. Cleaned up a few of the party side-quests, finished everything left on Dantooine, and got the star map on Kashyyk, so I just need to do the Leviathan stuff and get the final map on Korriban.

I find Kashyyk a very annoying place because it's quite large and your party selection option is blacked out for most of it. After completing my side-quests, I went back there, went all the way down into the Shadowlands only to realize that I had neglected to bring Jolee back with me and he's the only one who can turn off the forcefield to the deeper area with the star map. So I had to trudge allll the way back to the first map just so I could swap him back into the party, just so I could go through a stupid door.

Turok 2

F*** the River of Souls (Level2).
Seriously, first level is long but second one is long maze of areas connected with tunnels (some of them hidden).
Sometimes you find the right path but try the other one and forgot about first one and then - you run around looking for that first one.
Was looking for the second Sister of Despair for like 2-3h, alone.

I have to take a breath, those 2 levels (Port of Ardun? and River of Souls) were a nightmare in my previous 3 attempted playthrough enough to drop the game, with new HD remaster I want to finish it finally.

Oh, I checked guides and there is two more awful levels coming, ohboy...