What games are you playing now?

As much as I want to get into it, Pillars of Eternity's just not grabbing me. I'm just not in a deep RPG mood right now, I guess.

Anyway, I'm still having loads of fun with Cities Skylines, and might put up some images of my latest city later. I think this game's going to constantly be on my list for the foreseeable future.

I've also just restarted Jedi Knight, now that GOG's got their version running smoothly. I'm not hugely far in yet, but it's still as great as it ever was. This is what Star Wars used to be. No such thing as sith or midichlorians, everybody and their pet chinchilla doesn't have a lightsaber, blasters are still fun and actually useful, and there are lots of clearly evil gangsters and stormtroopers to blast. The level design is great, with big levels with lots of places to explore, the thrilling "secret area found!" message that pops up when you've made a particularly tricky jump to reach that weird ledge, and it really captures the Star Wars feeling, with lots of bits of set dressing that really add to the ambiance. The enemies are memorable and Star Warsy, the weapons are fun and feel like they've all got a purpose, and even the cheesy old FMV works pretty well.

Seriously, I don't think there's been a FPS in the last decade that I've enjoyed anything like as much. Even the later Jedi Knight games, as fun as they are, don't work quite as well. In those, the bits without a lightsaber feel like a chore you just want to get through as quickly as possible, but in the original JK, I could happily play an entire game like the pre-Jedi, Han Soloesque levels.

If you've never played it before, do yourself a favor and drop a few squids over at GOG to pick it up. I also recommend the original Dark Forces, but that one has an "old game" feeling that might be harder for some people to get past.

I stopped playing PoE as well. I didn't like the combat much and since it has lot of it, I thought it in was getting in the way. I had problems following the flow of combat (too many seconds and sub seconds timers to keep in my head) and I just don't have the time of patience to figure it out now. I might pick PoE up later on when I have lot of free time.

Anyway I am currently playing Might & Magic 10 and I am hooked so far. It’s been ages since I played turn based game and nice to be reminded how enjoyable and relaxing turn based combat can be! Everything flows nicely and easy to follow yet you still have lots edge of your seats moments as well. I loved all the strategic elements of the combat, it was like playing chess!

Picked up from where I left off on Might and Magic X before I got sidetracked by Dying Light. I'm at the end of Act III so I expect to finish it soon.

Also playing a nifty little Rogue-lite called Ziggurat.

Menigal said:

I've also just restarted Jedi Knight, now that GOG's got their version running smoothly. I'm not hugely far in yet, but it's still as great as it ever was. This is what Star Wars used to be. No such thing as sith or midichlorians, everybody and their pet chinchilla doesn't have a lightsaber, blasters are still fun and actually useful, and there are lots of clearly evil gangsters and stormtroopers to blast. The level design is great, with big levels with lots of places to explore, the thrilling "secret area found!" message that pops up when you've made a particularly tricky jump to reach that weird ledge, and it really captures the Star Wars feeling, with lots of bits of set dressing that really add to the ambiance. The enemies are memorable and Star Warsy, the weapons are fun and feel like they've all got a purpose, and even the cheesy old FMV works pretty well.

Click to expand...

You just inspired me to reinstall JK. I only have it on Steam, so I'm not sure how well it's going to run in Windows 8.1 though…

JDR13 said:

You just inspired me to reinstall JK. I only have it on Steam, so I'm not sure how well it's going to run in Windows 8.1 though…

Click to expand...

C'mon ... you can't put up soda money ($1.37) for the most unique shooter of the mid-late 90s?

txa1265 said:

C'mon … you can't put up soda money ($1.37) for the most unique shooter of the mid-late 90s?

Click to expand...

I didn't realize it was on sale at GOG. Maybe that would have saved me an hour of tweaking just to get my Steam copy to run properly.

After applying some kind of unofficial patch that's linked to in the Steam forum, I finally got it running with hardware acceleration no less. Oddly enough though, the menu and cutscenes will only display in windowed mode.

Played the first level of Nar Shaddaa until I died. It's funny.. I'm so used to the auto-save in modern games, I never thought about saving until it was too late and I had to start from the beginning again.

Nice blast of nostalgia, but it could really use some modern updates like proper scaling, etc. At 1920x1200, the HUD icons are almost impossible for me to make out. It also suffers from some pretty bad LOD scaling where the textures suddenly sharpen at a certain distance.

Hey, I remember picking up the box in the store and thinking the graphics were amazing.

JDR13 said:

I didn't realize it was on sale at GOG. Maybe that would have saved me an hour of tweaking just to get my Steam copy to run properly.

After applying some kind of unofficial patch that's linked to in the Steam forum, I finally got it running with hardware acceleration no less. Oddly enough though, the menu and cutscenes will only display in windowed mode.

Played the first level of Nar Shaddaa until I died. It's funny.. I'm so used to the auto-save in modern games, I never thought about saving until it was too late and I had to start from the beginning again.

Nice blast of nostalgia, but it could really use some modern updates like proper scaling, etc. At 1920x1200, the HUD icons are almost impossible for me to make out. It also suffers from some pretty bad LOD scaling where the textures suddenly sharpen at a certain distance.

Click to expand...

I feel like it is a case study on why standardized graphics engines are a good thing - because I didn't think that even by 2001 when we were starting to get the RtCW and Medal of Honor games that Jedi Knight held up graphics-wise nearly as well as Half Life, Quake 2 or Unreal. But the rest of it .... ahhh.

JK2's definitely in the old guard of FPS games, but it's got a lot of things that seemed to get lost over the next generation. I'm sure the change isn't quite as sudden as I remember looking back at it, but we slowly lost big, convoluted maps sealed off by red key/blue key, an actual in-game map (but then, why do you need one when you're just walking down a corridor?), and an inventory of usable items in addition to your weapons.

The change to look at how things evolved is part of the fun of playing these old games. You get the impression that lots of modern game developers have never played most of them. I remember an interview with some developer who was said he loved old games, then mentioned some that were maybe two or three years old at the time.

I have a bunch of games currently installed, and I'm bouncing between them at times. My latest install is:

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1

Fun game. It's a turn-based JRPG whose entire universe is a spoof of the video game industry. The world is even called Gameindustri, and there are different Lands in this world, which all represent a different console. There's even a Console War going on, lots of references to classic video games and characters, a lot of computer-related technology and a lot of humor to boot. It's also very pretty graphically, with a cute, colorful art style, the voice acting is great and the dialogue is quirky and a lot of fun. Did I mention it's cute?

The combat is turn-based and pretty strategical. There are combo attacks, skills to use, super forms called 'CPUs' to transform into, even some assisted "EXE Drive" super-attacks that can be triggered when the bar is full. Oh yeah, it's party-based as well. I currently have a total of 3 members in my party, the main character, Neptune, and 2 friends she's made along the way.

It's got pretty much everything you've come to expect from modern JRPGs. I've only played a handful of hours but I'm enjoying myself quite a bit.

Ah, one thing should be mentioned. Either get a controller to play it with, or be prepared to LEARN the controls. And I don't mean just re-map a few buttons here or there, I mean learn that stuff. You actually will end up playing the game with both hands on the keyboard, as strange as that may sound, with no mouse control at all.

It's pretty tricky, and I'm even still learning it, but it does get better the more you play and memorize your keys. You'll see what I mean if you play it.

txa1265 said:

C'mon … you can't put up soda money ($1.37) for the most unique shooter of the mid-late 90s?

Click to expand...

It's $8 for me. That's an entire meal at McD's.

Thrasher said:

It's $8 for me. That's an entire meal at McD's.

Click to expand...

Really? At GoG? I have Jedi Knight (the original, including Mysteries of the Sith, a great ~15 hour expansion) listed just now at $1.37 with 5D left on the sale. Even JK2 (Outcast) is listed at <$3 ... or is taht only if you do the 'Saber Bundle?

Which JK game are you all talking about? There's few. OK, the only one that comes up under search "jedi" for under $5 is Jedi Knight: Dark Forces, but that's $3 not $1.29.

Thrasher said:

Which JK game are you all talking about. There's few. OK , the ony one that comes up under search "jedi" for under $5 is Jedi Knght: Dark Forces, but that's $3 not $1.29.

Click to expand...

Wow - that is a HUGE bundle discount! You can get ALL the Dark Force, Jedi Knight, Republic COmmando, both KotOR, full Empire at War, Battlefront II and more for ~$23

Menigal said:

JK2's definitely in the old guard of FPS games, but it's got a lot of things that seemed to get lost over the next generation. I'm sure the change isn't quite as sudden as I remember looking back at it, but we slowly lost big, convoluted maps sealed off by red key/blue key, an actual in-game map (but then, why do you need one when you're just walking down a corridor?)

Click to expand...

As far as that is concerned, all I can say is thank God because as good as the Dark Forces and Jedi Knight games were, the totally linear level design often times outright sucked (IMHO a general LucasArts games problem in the mid to end 1990s because Outlaws also had poor level design). The games sometimes made you look for the proverbial needle in a haystack. You needed to do/find this one exact thing to be able to advance.

I have to say I much prefer the more open levels you find in games nowadays where often times you are offered several solutions on how to proceed (brute force, go/sneak around, find the key/hack/lockpick/whatever etc.). - It also helps tremendously that the graphics today make it easier to distinguish stuff. The greenish/brownish pixel puke soup of the earlier JK games (or Outlaws) made it extra hard to find that tiny crack in the wall where you needed to slip through or pull a lever or whatever.

I believe I actually liked Jedi Academy the most since the series had matured by then. I also liked the fact it had Skywalker in it. If it were up to me then I would have loved to see those games cross over with the movies much more. The Kyle Katarn story was a little too expanded universe to me with too little attachment to the canon main Star Wars themes, characters and locations.
It's complaining on a pretty high level though. The games were generally very much worth playing, of course.

Moriendor said:

I have to say I much prefer the more open levels you find in games nowadays where often times you are offered several solutions on how to proceed (brute force, go/sneak around, find the key/hack/lockpick/whatever etc.).

Click to expand...

I can't say I agree much with that. First-person shooters nowadays are a very mixed bag when it comes to being linear/non-linear, and they're not generally more "open" than the genre was back then. Sure, we get some series like FarCry that are open-world, but we also get a ton of corridor shooters like CoD, Halo, etc.

Yes, I agree and I should have maybe mentioned the exclusion of CoD-like scripted corridor shooters.
What I generally meant though regarding the level design, well, look at the new Tomb Raider (2013) for example. It had excellent level design. Really outstanding. The levels were thoroughly thought through from A to Z and everything in the levels made perfect sense. If you were stuck, you just had to examine the environment and before too long you knew how and where to proceed (usually even w/o using the "cheat vision").

In the DF/JK games you often had to find hidden passages that were just hidden for the sake of being hidden so you as the player would have a challenge but it often times did not make much sense within the level environment. It was an artificial obstacle. Just like some of the puzzles which required rather obscure solutions (where you just thought "dafuq?! which drunkard came up with this shit?!" ).

And this is where some/many (not all of course) modern games are doing a better job IMHO. Tomb Raider is just one example. I'm also thinking of Deus Ex Human Revolution which allows you many options and paths to get through a level. Or BioShock... games like that where you simply have a much larger variety in overcoming the obstacles within a level or in finding your way to the finishing line.

Did I mention I finally got on and finished Tomb Raider reboot? Moriendor now reminded me on it.

That game needs just two things to be a masterpiece:
1. QTEremover mod
2. Better OST

Everything else in it is done absolutely fantastic. And it isn't even RPG!
This is the first game when the protagonist you're playing gets butt kicked so much it's almost unbearable to watch. And unlike another game Moriendor mentioned, the bloody Bioshock - here the overpowered chick didn't wait for some pathetic male to save her.
In case someone doesn't have TB reboot, buy it. Forget older games, this is totally different game.

And forget them calling it this and that genre. It's a top notch environment puzzler. You affraid the puzzle is perhaps too hard for your brain to crack it? You'll never know unless you try. And the right time to try is - right now.

I fired up a game called Ironcast, which was a kickstarter some time ago. It is a quaint mech-style game, set in Victorian times with you played a member of the British forces vs French opponents. I've only played maybe 2 hours so far, but it is surprising good and fun.

A mech-style game set in Victorian times? Time to Google Ironcast.

18 hours, 48 minutes and I produced 144 children. Beat that (rogue legacy).



Starting out was pretty fun, unlocking new classes and upgrading your character. However halfway through the game becomes more of a grind. I know that this is more or less the idea of a rogue lite but then there should be enough variation. Enemies were all quite similar and after the initial couple of upgrades it became more the bog standard +5 mana or +5 health upgrades. Still I completed it and had some fun, I'll give it a 6/10



As an aside, I have been seeing a 'Save replay' overlay for a while now. First I thought it as game specific, then a new steam feature. Turns out is a feature of my AMD video card (AMD raptr or something). You can save the last 15 seconds of gameplay with the press of a button. Pretty neat, I would upload my endgame statistics as proof but then I needed more than 15 seconds



Next up, alpha protocol. I'm very excited to get started on that one for some reason. Blind faith in Obsidian I guess.