What games are you playing now?

Well, I read too many good things and blew my allowance on Cities Skylines, which after 45 minutes of playing has got a great old-fashioned SimCity feel to it. I can see myself losing many, many hours to this game. Finally, someone who gets city builder games!
 
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Well, I read too many good things and blew my allowance on Cities Skylines, which after 45 minutes of playing has got a great old-fashioned SimCity feel to it. I can see myself losing many, many hours to this game. Finally, someone who gets city builder games!

It looks like a lot of fun... so many games! so little time.
 
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I don't think so, Dart, but I don't play MP in pretty much anything, so I never really looked.

GG, if it wasn't for this whole work thing I might be able to catch up! Of course, since I'm usually replaying an older game, I'm not sure that's really possible.
 
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I don't think so, Dart, but I don't play MP in pretty much anything, so I never really looked.

GG, if it wasn't for this whole work thing I might be able to catch up! Of course, since I'm usually replaying an older game, I'm not sure that's really possible.

Oh, ok. I haven't really enjoyed a city-builder since the original Sim City. I remember loving that way, way back - but the genre hasn't evolved much in the way I'd want to.

It always seemed to be about satisfying constant needs of the people, and you never really had a choice but to make them happy.

The only really creative part of it was the actual city design, but I guess that's the point.

I wonder if I should give this one a go, just to see if I have something to learn about why it's such a popular genre.
 
So far it feels more like the old SimCity games than any of the ones from the last decade, with city layout being the core bit of gameplay. I'm sure keeping people happy's part of it, but it feels sandboxy enough that you can ignore them and make the place a complete slum if you want.

I'll post a bit more about it when I've got some more playtime under my belt.
 
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So far it feels more like the old SimCity games than any of the ones from the last decade, with city layout being the core bit of gameplay. I'm sure keeping people happy's part of it, but it feels sandboxy enough that you can ignore them and make the place a complete slum if you want.

I'll post a bit more about it when I've got some more playtime under my belt.

Cool, let us know how it plays in the longer term :)
 
Started Trine and am enjoying it quite a bit. Great graphics and good puzzles. Its shortish tho and I think I'm already on the last level.

Started Borderlands also. I like it so far, different but great art style plus I like the humor and I already hate those dog things!
 
Started Trine and am enjoying it quite a bit. Great graphics and good puzzles. Its shortish tho and I think I'm already on the last level.

Started Borderlands also. I like it so far, different but great art style plus I like the humor and I already hate those dog things!

Trine 2 is longer with varied environment and two stories. Played it in local co-op with my son and it was a blast.
 
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Started Witcher 2 again. The last saved games I have are from 2012 and I can't remember much about the path where you side with humans. Always thought that the non-humans path was more interesting and canonical.

A great game but some of the fights are seriously annoying. I'm playing on the Dark difficulty and I almost had a stroke when trying to go through the dragon attack right in the beginning. One small misstep and you're dead. I think I tried it about a dozen times before giving up. Mercifully, there's an option to skip it but the completionist inside didn't like it at all. I do remember always having trouble with that part, even though the rest of the beginning is pretty easy. I remember how I raged years ago during the Kraken fight and hope it won't ruin my game or cause any brain damage.
 
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Dumped some time into Cities Skylines and Darkest Dungeon over the week-end. Both seem like they'll be worth the price.

Skylines is easily one of the better city builders to come out in a long time. My only complaint is the prefabbed 4 block zoning areas from a road tends to limit you to very grid like building. After messing around with 2 trial cities and a real attempt for about 8 hours I think the asset editor will be the next thing I play with to get roads customized on a case by case basis.

Darkest Dungeon is rather unique. Some roguelite features, interesting and occasionally frustrating trait system, and there's a variety of classes and abilities that all contribute to a interesting degree of strategy for combat. Someone was talking about class selection and referred to the comparison between two classes as a decision based on "personal risk strategy". Those 3 words describe so much of the game. Hiring heroes is free so pushing aggressively and risking them, especially at low levels, doesn't hurt as much as you might think. The light/dark mechanic also has benefits/drawbacks based on your preference for better loot/more difficulty or safer runs (and thus experience as it's only earned from quest completion) over loot. One of the healers' spells tends to inflict a bleed effect, but a group designed to resist bleed and can negate this issue while also giving you a character with a long range spell and hexes. So far my main complaint is the trinkets you pick up seem to do more harm than good a lot of the time, but I could just be too risk adverse to embrace them this early.
 
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Wanted another title that would push my new machine to its maximum, so I got Farcry 4. And man, it looks good. The lighting is very nice, and I love the snowy-wind that blows across the landscape. Looks beautiful. As far as anything else, it's very much like Farcry 3. Damn, I'm really gonna love seeing the Witcher 3 in all its graphical glory.
 
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Skylines is easily one of the better city builders to come out in a long time. My only complaint is the prefabbed 4 block zoning areas from a road tends to limit you to very grid like building. After messing around with 2 trial cities and a real attempt for about 8 hours I think the asset editor will be the next thing I play with to get roads customized on a case by case basis.

You can break away from grids a bit better than other city builders, but I am a bit disappointed in how it sets out the space around non-gridded roads. Sometimes you end up with a perfectly usable space, but other times when you think it's even better, you get a few awkward clumps of useable squares. Thankfully even a small space is capable of holding some sort of building.

Other than that, my only real complaint is how awkward it is to upgrade zones and roads. If it fits, it should just let me paint the new zone/road over the old one and be done with it. As it is, you lose a lot of buildings it you want to replace a road with one of the fancy new ones you've just unlocked.
 
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You can break away from grids a bit better than other city builders, but I am a bit disappointed in how it sets out the space around non-gridded roads. Sometimes you end up with a perfectly usable space, but other times when you think it's even better, you get a few awkward clumps of useable squares. Thankfully even a small space is capable of holding some sort of building.

Other than that, my only real complaint is how awkward it is to upgrade zones and roads. If it fits, it should just let me paint the new zone/road over the old one and be done with it. As it is, you lose a lot of buildings it you want to replace a road with one of the fancy new ones you've just unlocked.

There is already a mod that helps with upgrading roads: Extended road upgrade I think it's called.
 
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Wanted another title that would push my new machine to its maximum, so I got Farcry 4. And man, it looks good. The lighting is very nice, and I love the snowy-wind that blows across the landscape. Looks beautiful. As far as anything else, it's very much like Farcry 3. Damn, I'm really gonna love seeing the Witcher 3 in all its graphical glory.
TheWitcher 3 doesn't contain season pass scam.
 
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There is already a mod that helps with upgrading roads: Extended road upgrade I think it's called.

I figured there'd be something pretty quick. I might give it a bit longer before I look into mods, though.
 
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TheWitcher 3 doesn't contain season pass scam.

Witcher 3 is already bought and payed for. And highly anticipated for some time now. What is really disgusting is the brazenness with which these developers push ads on the main menu of the game. It looks horrible. You have a big stretch of text on the bottom of the main menu, telling you about whatever new dlc they just released. It's gross. I wonder what's next. Getting ads during actual gameplay? Wait till these game companies start selling advertising space right in the game.

And it's a shame, since Farcry 4 is a decent game. Looks great, has good mechanics (by just mimicking FC3). The funny thing is the way I have to run the clients. I bought the game on Steam, since it was 40% off, and all they gave me was the Uplay key. But in order to run it, I have to be logged into both clients (or keep them both in offline mode). Just preposterous.
 
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The funny thing is the way I have to run the clients. I bought the game on Steam, since it was 40% off, and all they gave me was the Uplay key. But in order to run it, I have to be logged into both clients (or keep them both in offline mode). Just preposterous.

I agree it's a joke that you should have to run two online clients to play a game, but in reality it's little more than a slight annoyance. I have that same situation with M&M X since I purchased it on Steam, but Uplay automatically boots up and logs in so quickly that I barely notice it.

I guess it could be an issue for people with slower systems and/or internet access.
 
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I agree it's a joke that you should have to run two online clients to play a game, but in reality it's little more than a slight annoyance. I have that same situation with M&M X since I purchased it on Steam, but Uplay automatically boots up and logs in so quickly that I barely notice it.

I guess it could be an issue for people with slower systems and/or internet access.

Well, for me it's a bit different. I refuse to let clients store my credentials to enable auto-login. So I have to insert them everytime I login. And I keep my credentials randomly generated and in a password vault. So it's a bit more work since I'm extremely paranoid about security. Good thing it's only on the first startup.

But yeah, it's mostly just stupid to require 2 clients to be logged-in. It's a sign that things are getting out of hand.
 
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But yeah, it's mostly just stupid to require 2 clients to be logged-in. It's a sign that things are getting out of hand.

When there's any of that nonsense, I just crack the game and have done with it.
 
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