What games are you playing now?

Here is my review bomb for it ...

"If it was released earlier in the year, Blacksite: Area 51 might have been worth some time for shooter fans hungry for something to play. But in this extremely crowded fall release season, there are so many excellent shooters available that this isn't worth a second look."

Then time passes, and you yet again find yourself in a drought of decent games. :)
The sideeffect of playing too much is that you eventually run out of the good stuff. :p
 
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"If it was released earlier in the year, Blacksite: Area 51 might have been worth some time for shooter fans hungry for something to play. But in this extremely crowded fall release season, there are so many excellent shooters available that this isn't worth a second look."

Then time passes, and you yet again find yourself in a drought of decent games. :)
The sideeffect of playing too much is that you eventually run out of the good stuff. :p

Hehe ... and I am a full believer in trying a variety of stuff and hoping to find the diamond in the rough.
 
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i had to stop after playing the first level in iraq or whereever they were. the model designs for the 'arabs' seemed awefully racist to me. don't know why they had to put that segment in the game, but it was pretty horrid as was the gameplay itself.

i thought the orginal area 51 was decent enough and the humour of the fake lunar landing level was reason enough to play it. oh and it was a must buy for me since tom hall worked on it.

i'm currently jumping between a bunch of non-story based games.

mosby's confederacy-not to many civil war games out there. this one isn't great but a better than average game that is simple and easy to play for if you only have an hour or even less at a time. theres to portions to it: the map portion which has ten towns that each have ten recruits. you can upgrade towns loyalty, weapons, medical care, etc. and all units gain experience which gives them new traits, which enhance their stats and give them special bonuses. you 'general', actually a major also gets a new attribute for each mission you complete. they are varied though some are practically required like one that each time you pick it allows you to command more men. you only start off with the abiltiy to lead 5 men including the major. the other portion is the missions themselves which have no music, and simply the sound effects of battle. units can sneak or charge, use a rifle, pistol or sword, and of course if you aquire them they can ride horses which soak more damage, allow for better flanking, etc. like i said the game is simple but that isn't a bad thing in this case and makes me reminsce about an old game of past cannon fodder.

worldshift-from the makers of knights of honour, i finally decided to import this game as its still not out here yet, despite a lukewarm experience with the demo last year. its not really anything great so far, but after 2 levels or so i've yet to do any army or base building. there's no real 'rpg' leveling to it either though there are spells and skills and relics which you can collect during the missions and after successful completion of them you also choose one. these give you bonuses which apply to the 3 factions and not only affect the single player campagin but also i believe carry with you for online multiplayer. being how i nearly never use the later its not a boon for me. the best thing about the game though is the music and graphics. the futuristic fauna is beautiful and the music is very well done. on a side note it seems that black sea studios is now crytek-black sea.

imperium romanum-of the past 7 years or so i've found very few city builders that can keep me coming back for more. when the bridge was built to 3d city building some of the magic and fun never carried over. stronghold 2, children of the nile, civ city rome, and caesav iv all were decent enough games but they never amazed me like their predessors. i noticed this game on sale at impulse, and the screens which don't tell much intrigued me enough to try the demo last night. this city builder is superb and is so smooth in its mechanics and its easy to do a lot without getting overwhelmed through cumbersome and unintuitive menus. purchased it this morning and is worth the 14.99 its on sale at impulse presently just for the few hours i've played. top notch city builder and have to wait and see but it will probably rank in the top 5 city builders for me with ease.
 
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Oof, Civ IV ate my soul, or something. It's nasty.

I've played a few games now; got past Warlord level, jumped to Prince level, got my ass royally handed to me a few times, so I notched it back down to Noble level. Meticulously destroyed the Egyptians, the Incas, the Romans, and the Mongols; was twice as strong as the next guy and repositioning my forces to attack the Spaniards when they attacked first. By the time I had gotten my counterattack rolling, America won a space victory. Meh.

IOW, it's pretty good, although not quite as good as I had hoped. Specifically:

(1) There's not much differentiation between cultures. Tech trees are mostly the same; there's not much more than one path to each critical tech level. It makes some slight difference in the early game, and not at all in the late one. They could've made it more interesting with a more tangled tech tree.

(2) Artillery is badly done. It should work like air units -- you don't attack and retreat with artillery, you call in strikes (and get destroyed if someone attacks you when you have nobody protecting you). As it is, it's basically disposable; useful in big stacks to wear down cities, and that's about it.

(3) The AI is... not bad, but still a bit weird. For example, what's with its mania of slapping down settlements around the edges of my civilization, when there's no way they can thrive there if I don't let them? They're not all that big on territorial contiguity or strategic borders either. I don't get it.

(4) There's not as much depth to it as I had hoped. The tech trees in Total War, for example, are much deeper, and of course there's way, way more unit variety. (OTOH the Total War strategic AI is on par with George W. Bush, but still.)

Overall, I'm very much hooked, but I can't say I enjoy it quite as much as Total War at its best. I really wish there was some way to combine the two -- the strategic AI and flexible city positioning and borders from Civ, the unit variety, depth of tech trees, and of course great real-time battles from TW.
 
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territory is everything is the civ games. the ai slaps downs those settlements for good reason and you should as well. even if you can't grow the city and slowly ebb their borders out through influence (religion, culture, etc.) its still a valuable tool in attrition by taking away what would otherwise be a city with full access to all of its resourse tiles. these strategies can be risky as it can stretch your civ thin, but as i nearly always played noble level, or even warlord for some of the scenarios, the ai isn't to ruthless.
 
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territory is everything is the civ games. the ai slaps downs those settlements for good reason and you should as well. even if you can't grow the city and slowly ebb their borders out through influence (religion, culture, etc.) its still a valuable tool in attrition by taking away what would otherwise be a city with full access to all of its resourse tiles. these strategies can be risky as it can stretch your civ thin, but as i nearly always played noble level, or even warlord for some of the scenarios, the ai isn't to ruthless.

The point is precisely that they don't get any territory; all I have to do is switch my neighboring cities to produce "culture" (after I've done some cultural building in them), and they're squeezed down to an unhappy one or two tiles. If relations go bad, they're completely cut off. If I switch my civ from research to culture, they'll even switch sides all by themselves. They don't grow, they don't produce. And if there's a war, they're completely vulnerable, because I can attack them from any of my surrounding cities in one round. Territory is everything, sure, but it has to be defensible territory -- without territorial contiguity, you're vulnerable to being sliced up and then destroyed.

But other than that, the strategic AI is pretty smart, I think -- Isabella's surprise attack was quite devastating; she managed to Pearl Harbor much of my air force in the initial advance. Next time I won't put it all one place so close to the border...
 
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Installed Dungeon Siege on the netbook, for one purpose of course - Ultima V Lazarus! Got it installed and just started. Hope to actually finish this time!

Also installed but haven't started Beyond Divinity ...
 
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Hehe ... and I am a full believer in trying a variety of stuff and hoping to find the diamond in the rough.

I have an interest in gamedesign so I like to play games and just see the trends and the innovations, so a failed game that at least try to be different can still give me something to think about. I have noted that what Blacksite, Jericho and Turok, that was released within 6 months of eachother, all have in common is that none of them have a run key. Maybe because they were developed for consoles with an analog stick.
 
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Still working thru Bioshock. Had my second crash over the weekend, literally seconds before completing a rather long level. Upset me a good bit. I played that level in a single sitting, so I very well might not have a mid-level save. Going to have to resurrect the "save early, save often" mentality, me thinks.
 
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Installed Dungeon Siege on the netbook, for one purpose of course - Ultima V Lazarus! Got it installed and just started. Hope to actually finish this time!

Also installed but haven't started Beyond Divinity ...

Mike, Mike, you need DS for more that just Lazarus. U6P is coming this year and it will be bigger and better than Laz. We're getting close to Alpha stage with most of the world building complete including the Gargoyle lands. Don't lose that disc!! :)
 
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Still working thru Bioshock. Had my second crash over the weekend, literally seconds before completing a rather long level. Upset me a good bit. I played that level in a single sitting, so I very well might not have a mid-level save. Going to have to resurrect the "save early, save often" mentality, me thinks.

I only allowed myself to save twice per level in Bioshock, once at the beginning of, and once in (what I guessed was) the middle of each one. I also forced myself to reload if I was killed, rather than use a Vita-Chamber. I guess that was my attempt to add more tension to the game.
 
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for me self-imposed save limits just doesn't work. often saved games take up more hard drive space than the game itself. nwn2 for example--those saves are massive. personally i opt for the higher or highest difficulty. however i don't mind a limited save game approach if the game itself imposes it. blade of darkness had a cool save system in that it rated you based on how many times you saved in each level. you got a free save at the beginning of each level and if you used more than 1 save beyond that you rank went down. more than 3 another rank. some console games do that as well but those are usually for games that have little meaningful replay value besides the bonuses themselves. i also enjoy save 'zones'. would have been cool if the vita-chambers had done just that and served as the only place you could save your game. maybe if i replay bioshock i'll try playing with only saving while standing next to one...could be cool.
 
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you got a free save at the beginning of each level and if you used more than 1 save beyond that you rank went down. more than 3 another rank. some console games do that as well but those are usually for games that have little meaningful replay value besides the bonuses themselves.

The first 3 games in the Resident Evil series did that. It was one of the few things I didn't like about my all-time favorite console series. One thing I really hate though - is when a game penalizes you for taking too much time. The early RE games, as well as the Metroid series, another personal favorite of mine, were notorious for that.


i also enjoy save 'zones'. would have been cool if the vita-chambers had done just that and served as the only place you could save your game. maybe if i replay bioshock i'll try playing with only saving while standing next to one...could be cool.

The v1.1 patch for Bioshock added an option to disable the Vita-Chambers, as well as several new plasmids and gene tonics. Unfortunately I had already finished the game by the time it was released.
 
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Well, for some reason Fallout 3 decided my old saves didn't exist anymore, so I started fresh again, and tried to get going with Operation Anchorage again ... and ran into the popular bug where the DLC isn't recognized ... so I just stopped.

Went back to more fun in Sacred 2 and rejoined Storm of Zehir and realized it has been long enough that I have no clue what I was doing ...
 
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Windows Live cancels out your non-WL saves; that could be your problem!!
 
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Windows Live cancels out your non-WL saves; that could be your problem!!

Hmmm ... hadn't thought about that - thought I was *always* logged in, as I always get those annoying messages at the top. Something to check ... if Operation Anchorage didn't suck, and remind me of all the weaknesses of FO3.
 
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I only allowed myself to save twice per level in Bioshock, once at the beginning of, and once in (what I guessed was) the middle of each one. I also forced myself to reload if I was killed, rather than use a Vita-Chamber. I guess that was my attempt to add more tension to the game.
Playing on easy like I am, death is not an issue, even for an FPS idiot like me. The only time I save is when I stop playing (plus the start-of-map autosaves). Well, I take that back--I did save the game before killing Cohen in Fort Frolic, since I wasn't sure how that would go. Since I know the half-way points, I might have to start saving somewhere in that timeframe.
 
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Im at chapter 14/14 of TUROK. This is a rather average FPS although with some cool dino melee bashing in it. The story is enough to keep me going.
 
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