What games are you playing now?

I'm playing Crysis Warband now. Lovely Steam installation immediately crashes with an "expired license" message. Have to bypass Steam altogether, and run the 64bit executable manually to get the game to play. Thanks Steam and EA!

Since about July I have been experiencing a serious backlog. It is a great feeling to know that I always have a new RPG to try out in case I get bored with the current one. The days of only hack n slashes and action "RPG"s seem to be over. Who would have thought it?

Original Sin - The game has too many adventure elements and too little proper RPG aspects for my taste. I was getting bored with the endless dungeons and puzzles, with only the occasional semi hostile group of Immaculates to talk to. The dual character system is not that enjoyable and got repetitive fast. There's only one real town in the game and that was the part that I liked the most. Combat is great and I was pleasantly surprised to see that all of your abilities almost always work on your enemies; there weren't enemies who'd just resist most of your spells and powers. Writing, however, is truly inspiring and I love the concept of a corrupt, misled cult.

Wasteland 2 - An all around great RPG with only some design decisions that I disagree with. Despite the graphics, the writing was so engrossing that I could perfectly picture the setting. WL2 is quite dark and atrocities are committed by everyone, with seemingly only the Rangers and a few other groups retaining a level of sanity. The darkness is excellently balanced by the humor, though. Doing good deeds and driving away the scum felt actually rewarding.

I read some sort of a prophecy supposedly received by a woman in the 70s. She claimed to see how the world would progress, with the eventual 3rd World War breaking out. People would have to go through a series of challenges, including new virulent diseases, years long winter, extreme poverty etc. She saw how quickly people turned in to degenerate barbarians, but she also saw groups of "lights" around the globe. These eventually disappeared in a rapture and after reading her letter, I immediately started WL 2 and the radio broadcasted a message claiming that the wastelanders are the descendants of the fools who got left behind. WL 2 really got me thinking and wondering, just as a game should.

Gothic 2 - After more than a month of playing, it's really satisfying to remember the time when I didn't even have the proper clothes to enter the city. Used to be, I was at the bottom of the food chain and somehow I had to manage to become an apprentice. The odds of passing the mage test were even worse, but nevertheless I got the satisfaction of seeing the reactions of everyone once I destroyed the unbreakable golem.

Started playing Expeditions: Conquistador. I wasn't too keen on the setting at first and kept away, but damn! I'm a couple of (in-game) days in, now, and I'm loving it!

I'm already planning to make Isabela Yruenes my lieutenant, because she has exactly the traits I like in my followers and is a multilingual soldier to boot. I love the dialog choices, camping during travels (it's like an improved version of camping in Realms of Arkania). Haven't done any combat yet except for the training fight. I hope I won't suck too much at it, given that my leader's focus lies more on diplomacy and healing. Anyway, having lots of fun so far.

I've not really been into much lately, so I decided to poke around Star Wars: The Old Republic and see what it's like. The setting's so far removed from "real" SW that it feels more like a pastiche than an expanded universe, which I count as a plus. The gameplay's too generically MMO (Combat: F1, F3, F4, F3, F6, yawn) to really hold my attention, and the bizarre Biowarey forced characterisation feels incredibly out of place. I hung with it until I got my ship back, but I can't see it holding my attention for long.

I could go for a good old dungeon crawl, but there don't seem to be any around that aren't roguelike-likes or Diablo-clones.

Arhu said:

Started playing Expeditions: Conquistador. I wasn't too keen on the setting at first and kept away, but damn! I'm a couple of (in-game) days in, now, and I'm loving it!

Click to expand...

One ... more ... turn.

Found out yesterday that I need to click on the title of "contextual events" to assign someone to actually do it, like fishing. Must have missed a lot of fish so far, which is bad, because resources are so scarce.

Arhu said:

One … more … turn.

Found out yesterday that I need to click on the title of "contextual events" to assign someone to actually do it, like fishing. Must have missed a lot of fish so far, which is bad, because resources are so scarce.

Click to expand...

Playing Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms. It's okay. The biggest downside is that there seems to be massive repetition in enemy types. I've probably killed 20,000 aphotic spiders and respawns are tedious to the max since there is so little treasure worth anything. Still, the game was less than $25.

Another huge difference between it and Kult is that there is very little armor, weapons, potions, etc and so there is really no impetus for exploration. Now I haven't left Thole yet, so maybe it opens up. Kult made every item find exciting because you had to use the item to unlock its abilities.

Another no-no is that you almost always need to explore each map twice. Once as the demon and once as a bound soul. The demon is the only one who can cross chasms and the souls are the only ones who can pick up the minimal treasure. This is probably a great game for those who play in smaller time increments. My plan is to stick with it for a while. I have pneumonia so I may not be working for a couple days.

Take care of yourself, nut.

Back to playing Arx Libertartis. It's been a jolly good dungeon delver, until that demon in the temple. Unresponsive controls because of low frame rates. Of course it has to be one of the hardest fights in the game. So I can't cast any more than about 3 precast spells because the demon interrupts spellcasting by damaging me. Framerates too low to accurately hit and run. 3 hits kill me even with the armor spell active. After about 10 tries, my Mage did it by casting 3 spells: armor, curse, and harm. Had to just run around the platform in a circle letting the harm spell do damage when he got close, while guzzling heal potions. Idiotic gameplay. 3 fireball or ice bolts weren't enough to kill him.

Pneumonia? Holy crap, that's pretty bad! Hope you stay warm and well. What a winter, the search party is already out for DArt, couch is couch-bound and now pneumonia! Best of luck Nut

I've been playing Endless Legend and quite enjoying it. It's got a nice twist to the fantasy setting and some good races to choose from. I'm not a big fan of the combat, which feels a bit limited and oddly balanced. I gave up on my first game when I got tired of another faction sending endless waves of super-strong secondary faction (ie, critter) troops at me that seemed to be loads stronger than when I recruited them. I've started over with a new faction now that I know the basics of how things work, but so far I've been having issues with minotaurs near my first city who can wipe out most of my starting units in one hit.

Still, odd bits of bad luck are part of the genre, and overall I think it's the best fantasy 4x I've played in ages. I imagine I'll be one-more-turning my way through this one for a quite a while.

I've been playing Deux Ex: Human Revolution (Director's Cut) this weekend.

I think I'm in the last mission of the first main area.
I think the atmosphere of the game is really well done. It captures the first game really well.

I was planning on being a master hacker, but the hacking mini-game is already getting a bit boring.

It's so useful though I might stick with it.

Stealth seems to be a massive part of the game, which I don't mind too much, as I did get to massacre everyone in the first of the missions.

I love the assortment of weapons. They're simple, but they all work very differently plus they can (almost?) all be upgraded.
I try and shoot tranq darts into everyone, but then they can be awakened by their team members, so I sometimes resort to killing them with my wolverine blades or by shooting with a sniper rifle in their head.

The story is (I think) quite predictable, but that might change I guess.

I think the atmosphere and the multiple approaches (not always outcomes) to quests are the top pros.
The cons for now seem to be the stealth AI being moronic and not being able to look up as well as there being no tutorial on how to use some things such as remote explosives.

Hey guys, I tried out Might and Magic X. Though, I tell you, that Uplay client is crapware compared to others (i.e. Steam and Origin).

First of all it corrupted my download without telling me. It does have a manual file verification function, but I didn't try that until I wasted all lot of time researching why DirectX and .NET framework installation kept failing per the error log file.

And then, on top of it, Uplay turns off my headphones and turns on my speakers even with the headphones plugged. So I can't play other games on headphones while I am downloading gigabytes of game files (that get corrupted).

I'll definitely keep my distance from any uPlay games in the future. Eee gawds… What a waste of time…

Yeah I've had bad experiences with both Uplay and Origin, there isn't a game worth playing enough to have either of those on my computer, ever again. It can be a very tough lesson to learn.

I've had no problems with Origin (well except for dropping ME3 multiplayer game connections), so no lessons to be learned there, except don't worry about Origin.

Yeah, seeing Uplay as a requirement is enough to keep me away from a game. I suppose if there was something I really, really wanted I'd probably put up with it, but so far there's nothing on there that's really tempting me. I imagine I'll have to suck it up to finish off M&M X one of these days, though.

Warframe

It's actually pretty good now!

Still playing Shadows Heretic Kingdoms. It's growing on me. The fun in the game is choosing how to build each puppet. I kinda suck at it, but it's fun

100+ hours into DA:I still surprising me (pleasantly!)

Also started playing DA:I yesterday but haven't got far due to severe thunderstorm in Sydney I'm currently at Hinterland and the amount of quests here are tiring me out. I'm a bit of completionist but I really want to take a break now.

So far, I love the cut scenes and dialogues. Not sure about the rest. Can't say I'm enjoying the game at this point, control is really crap on PC and the game feels like a copy/paste from a lot of different games (strange mix of Skyrim, MMO, DA:O with DA:I combat animation. I've put down graphics to lowest due to my PC capabilities and god the game is ugly.... Hair is so shiny and plastic-y.

Is there any way to tell his much influence I have on each companions? And is there gift system? There are so many things to figure out too, it's quite overwhelming.

@purpleblob - no gift system that I can see, also no clear way to see relationship although greetings change if approve / disapprove. Do companion quests (which open up after hinterland and later) does impove relationship.
I also,find the controls on PC a bit strange and as I splurged 2 years agon on big machine with twin graphics cards not seeing the plastic hair. I am a bit annoyed that some retrieval quests need your character to do paccor!
I'm also a bit of a completionist and only just managed to finish all quests in one area! Btw the retrieval quests given by the requisition officer in each area loop so you can't finish them!