What games are you playing now?

Just started Advance Wars: Days of Ruin on the DS ... absolutely sweet strategy game, as always!
 
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With Eschalon under my belt, it's on to Mark of Chaos! I've already received my initiation whoopin' on-line. At least I made them laugh a bit. Now I'll be splitting time between looking for a MP game and marching through the SP campaign. First up, the Hordes of Chaos! Prepare to die horrible deaths, fancy-pantsed Empire and High Elven sissies!! :evilgrin:

P.S. Will definitely come back to Eschalon to try another build after I let it rest for a while. Great game...
 
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Good luck with Mark of Chaos, chamr. I must say I'm still getting slaughtered in the demo, but I do like the no base-building, no unit-cranking aspect a lot--much more time for pure slaying.:devil:...and being slain...:raincloud:
 
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I'm playing the newly released Advance Wars: Days of Ruin on my DS, replaying Disgaea and Jeanne d'Arc on my PSP, and just fiddling with loads of stuff on the Mac & PC ... and trying to catch up on all of my reviews ...
 
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Witcher, Chapter 2. It's swamp time!!
 
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The swamp can be tricky, it's easy to get overwhelmed. One wrong step, and youve got a whole mess of enemies on you. Group is not good for the Bloedguizers tho, so you have to single them out!

And youre going to have to face The Plant sooner or later.....

You only have to beat it once. The place that I faced off with the Plant of Death for the last time and walked away with it's fetid heart on my trophy hook was up in the northwest, at the small shack where that weird "grampa" lives. It tends to pop up over there. I would take a bit of a beating, then make a quick tactical retreat around the corner of the shack and rest a sec, then hit it again. I'd also use the "Quen" sign (temporary invulnerability) just before running up and engaging it, and just before I'd make my retreat, thus soaking it's poison projectile thorns completely with it.

I purrsonally cant seem to do crap against it w/ Igni (as others suggest), so I just bolt right up and take it on, old school!
 
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I think the secret to the Igni approach is to have a lot of your talents in Intelligence and the power-up skills. I couldn't kill the botanical Sasquatch with Igni when I first stumbled into it, but after a few levels and filling out the skill tree, it was no problem. (It's also extremely useful against the Bluedzingers.)

I had really bad luck with the 'mowing it down' man-to-plant approach...:)


btw, contrary to your hopes, I haven't actually abandoned Mark of Chaos...:sneaky:
 
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Playing Puzzle Quest for the PS2 right now. Just like the demo it's a blast :).
Sonny wanted the female druid with the dark green hair, so I gave in. After meeting the queen for the first time, sonny decided he'd rather be the queen instead of the druid. When I told him it wasn't possible, he was mad at me... :p
 
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We played a bunch of multiplayer Puzzle Quest on the Wii last night ... it is the same core game, but the controls aren't great, nor are the graphics ... definitely the worst of the 4 versions I own ... by a lot.
 
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The PS2 and PC versions are little different regarding battlefield graphics (the difference is actually minimal, but it's there), but once I got used to the controls (pressed x a little too often at first), it was a pretty smooth affair.
 
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Infinite Interactive seems to expand the Puzzle Quest concept: "Deathbringer" and "Galactrix" seem to use the same or at least a similar concept as well, as far as I've understood it.
 
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Still flying around on my Griffin kicking ass in Puzzle Quest this morning myself. The ai is strange on this game. On one paw, it seems to cheat like a mofo and hands me my tail. And on the other, it fails on some reallly simple "duh" moves. I used to think "well, it's thinking long term" or "it's just going the more mana-grabbing route". That isnt the case, it's just being retarded and making downright stupid moves. Now that I'm getting way better at the game, it's starting to taint some of my feelings of triumph.

For example, there will be a 4 in the row there for the taking:
OOXO
XXOX
Instead of shifting the bottom gem upward, it will move the far right gem left instead and get 3 instead of 4. There's no reason why it should ever do that.

As Kelly Bundy would say "the mind... wobbles" ='.'=

It of course will get several 4 in a rows later on, and the game does manage to still nail me quite often. I also think of it this way "how often do I myself make idiot moves?". Even tho far less than I used to, still it's more than I'd like to admit, especially when I'm going really fast. I miss some obvious better move, or just plunk away without thinking ahead at all. So i think that it may make it more like a sentient opponent in the end, able to make bonehead mistakes like the rest of us. So maybe it evens out, at least in the sense of fair play.
 
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Yep, I've noticed the same things about the AI and come to pretty much the same conclusion--that it's done on purpose to mimic a human player's occasional oversights. How many times have I been looking at the top corner of the board, desperately needing red mana and missed four or five of a kind at the other end that the computer annoyingly snatches?(Answer--wa-a-y too many.)

Overall, though, the AI opponents have sickening runs of luck, clearing the board and playing for what seems like endless bonus turns, so it evens out in an irritating way. If it loses an edge for ya, Sammy, you can ramp up the difficulty..I know playing it on easy is so boring it's not worth the time so hard should be hard.
 
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I believe that how good the AI is partly depends on the kind of opponent you have.
I believe that there might be different "AI layouts" for each opponent, especially if they have certain spells in their list and will concentrate rather on getting enough mana for them.

A Wight is for example much harder to beat than a mere Zombie, or a Skeleton, which makes sense in a way, imho.
 
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Crysis!

I think I had a fps toothache earlier this weekend, so I made my mind and eased it with crysis. Its quite similar to far cry, the open ended map design which makes it possible for everyone to choose his own way how to accomplish objectives. An other aspect which I love in crysis is the physics. Almost everything can be broken and blown in pieces or cut down with heavy machine gun fire. The Environment in crysis behaves very realisticly.

In addition this whole suit thing with 4 different combat modes is a blast. Maybe the best thing to come out since the orginal "bullet mode" in Max payne. In the nutshell you wear a nano augmented battlesuit which lets run like a speedy gontzales (speed mode), throw enemies on air, snap their neck with your bare hands, kill the enemy soldiers with one punch, jump above roofs and trees (strenght mode) or become invisible and move undetected among enemies like a predator and take them one by one (stealth mode) and go rambo taking dozens of bullets in your chest and asking for more (armor mode). All these actions drain the suit energy so you'll have to let it recharge itself between stunts and use it wisely.

There are also many different vehicles like jeeps, tanks and assult boats which can be used against enemies. You can do just fine without them, but a machine gun with unlimited bullets gives an upper hand. Simply racing inside the heavily guarded enemy camp guns blazing is tons of fun :)

Weapons? Quite regular stuff so far..dual pistols, granades, sniper rifle, assault rifles, machine guns..I've heard there are scifi weapons too, but I'm not that far yet. What makes a bit more unique are various wepon mods..silencer, flashlight, laser aim, different sights (scope or iron sight) etc.

Good brains off entertaiment :)
 
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witcher

Ive spent all day playing this game, and I'm only halfway thru chapt III!
Thank GLOT that the patch reduced the loading time so much or I'd still be back in chapt II!
 
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Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria on the PS2.

A recent discussion about console rpg's got me interested in trying this one. First I tried getting my hands on the first Valkyrie Profile game, but when I saw it was going to cost me over $100 on Ebay I just decided to give Simeria a try.

The graphics are great for a PS2 game, I tend to think they must have pushed that console to it's limits with this game, but everything else is just so-so to me. The voice acting is decent, but the problem is the length of the conversations, I found myself usually just skipping through them. As is typical of a Square-Enix game, the cut scenes are overly long and drawn out, and the game in general seems quite linear. The battle system is a combination of real time and turn based, and the animations very good. The towns and dungeons are all traveled in a 2D side scrolling view, but battles are on a 3D field where you can maneuver your 4 person party into an attack position, although the actual attack animations are shown from a side view. All in all it seems like a decent rpg by console standards, but not enough to make me want to finish it.
 
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Yeah - I heard that VP2 didn't' meet the bar set by the first one. Heck, you could almost get a PSP *and* a copy of the game for what the PS version would cost ...
 
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