What games are you playing now?

I'm still playing Avernum 5, and loving it. I would guess that I'm a little over halfway through... and so far Jeff has done his job of entertaining me again.

I also just started playing the NWN2 mod - Pool of Radiance - Remastered. I'm really enjoying it. Having played the original several times over the years, I've always wanted to find a remake that could do it justice, and so far this one has. I like how the creators have compressed some of the quests, like clearing the slums. In the original POR that was quite a daunting task that could take hours, but it was over pretty quickly in this remake. And it was done so well that the brevity of it did not detract from the fun. I've completed several of the main quests so far and I've really enjoyed this mod. I hate to say it, but it has grabbed me where MotB did not.

So, if anyone else loved the original SSI Pool of Radiance... you should really give this mod a chance. You can get it HERE.
 
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Playing WoW like crazy.... along with BG2.

@Narpet: I've also played PoR - remastered. I think it was ok. Didn't quite enjoy it that much. Same goes with H & C - one of the most popular NWN2 mod.
 
Did you and soon-to-be-Mrs-Sammy ever settle on a game to share?
 
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school year started and she's elbows-deep in homework again, so it's not as much as an issue as it was, but no we're still looking. Ive got her playing Puzzle Quest now and then, which she likes. She started both Witcher and NWN, but doesnt seem to like them too much.

I'm thinking that Diablo III might be our game when it hits, even tho it's heavy combat, i think us playing it together might be something she'll really like
 
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Oct 18, 2006
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I have the same problem as xSamhainx, although I finished StarCraft. I really do not have time for games. It's time for me to cool off the gaming for a few months and spend more time studying.
 
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Oct 26, 2006
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Still plugging away at Rome: Total Realism. Thus far, I've annexed and then slowly Romanized the Carthaginean heartlands in a blitzkrieg followed by slow consolidation, and followed that up with a similar operation on the Greeks and Macedonians; I'm in the process of Romanizing those new provinces. I've been playing a "Go" style strategy, leaving all of my vanquished enemies still around on the map, but too weak to be a significant threat. That's good, because I now have nice little buffer states between myself and the Seleucids and Ptolemies, which I don't feel like taking on yet.

I've been pursuing a cultural build strategy with slow expansion; consequently all of my family members have insane numbers of "management" scrolls and are called stuff like "Amulius the Philosopher" or "Quintus the Engineer." I'm also drowning in money; I've turned down the tax rate to Low just about everywhere, and have over a half million solidi in the government coffers. My family is getting rather extravagant in its tastes, too. But I guess they're entitled, what with the excellent job they're doing managing their cities, with all that help from those philosophers and stuff.

Currently, the Macedonians are still somewhat annoying, as they keep sending small invading forces over the mountain passes to besiege their former cities, and I keep kicking them back out. Also the Greek king keeps sending assassins after my governors; I have my assassins assassinate his assassins, which makes for lots of squishy noises.

My real foreign policy challenge is the Gauls, though. The Seleucids exterminated them from Asia Minor, and they've been quietly expanding and consolidating in Gaul. They were pretty quiet for a long time after my takeover of Gallia Cisalpina, but lately they've been sending over pretty massive invasion armies; I've had to recruit nearly constantly in Gallia Cisalpina just to make up for attrition. I've got the passes over the Alps garrisoned, of course, but it's a significant amount of work to keep them staffed.

My next move will be a punitive raid on what's left of Macedonia, to get them to stop sending those annoying little armies over. After that, I'll invade Western Europe: take over Iberia with troops supplied from Carthage, using my fully-developed, modernly equipped city at Palma as a jumping-off point, while simultaneously pushing into Gaul from Gallia Cisalpina.

And if I try not to pay too much attention to the silliness the AI is doing, I can get quite into it. :)
 
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Oct 19, 2006
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I didn't buy Alone in the Dark no, not after those reviews... but I had to try it to see if it was as bad as they say it is... Let me just say that I havn't played a game this incomplete since Gothic 3 and at least Gothic 3 made sense. The game was a really bizarre experience.

The first glaring issue to me was the tremendous amount of different buttons that could have easily been reduced to just a few. For example, functions specifically to be used inside a car and functions specifically used outside a car cannot be bound to the same keys (like SPACEBAR for both "kick" and "handbrake").

The game do not allow you to tie the same button to multiple functions, yet the default keyset have the same button tied to multiple functions. What does this mean? Say for instance that left mousebutton is by default tied to "attack" and "select item". If you change "select item" to something else but then change your mind you cannot bind the function back to left mousebutton, unless you reset all buttons back to the default setup.

EVEN stranger, there's an unique button for "drop rope", which by default was tied to PrintScreen!? One have to wonder why "drop rope" is an unique function when it makes more sense that the button you tied to USE or JUMP could have been used just fine without the need to assign yet another button, especially when neither button can be used anyway while you are climbing on a rope.

This is also the first game ever that have a button for "blink". Yes, blinking with your eyes. During the first part of the game you have to blink repeatidly since your eyes are for some reason getting blurry.

I also found it odd to have A & D (you know, WASD) being forced to "turn left" and "turn right", while strafe simply doesnt exist in the game. It might have made more sense with a joypad but not on keyboard.

The game seem to be preconfigured to work with an XBox controller, but I have a PS2 controller that simply doesn't work with the game. Yet the game show the XBox controllers buttons (like a green A button and a red X button) when it wants me to push that button. It took me ten minutes to figure out how to use a fire extinguisher to extinguish a fire.

But the weirdness does not stop with bad button configurations. During the short moment I had with the game I died like ten times or so, each time because I couldn't figure out what button to push or because I didn't knew that something was dangerous and I had to react.

The last time I died was while I was climbing on the edge of a scyscraper when an explosion on the street like ten floors below me sent a car flying up through the air and managed to hit me. After trying again I realized that this wasn't a freak accident, it was an actual cutscene which the developers obviously thought made sense.
 
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Oct 26, 2006
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Well, as I was finishing up Space Siege I needed to reinstall Shadowgrounds, Shadowgrounds Survivor and Alien Shooter Vengeance to check some comparisons I make in my review ... so now I'm fiddling with those while also playing Legend: Hand of God and replaying Jedi Academy and No One Lives Forever 2 on the Mac.
 
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Oct 18, 2006
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@ JemyM: That's a shame. You know the developers were working on a labor of love, as is anyone designing a game. It's a shame to see the final outcome is so poor. Like movies these days, one major failure can cost the life of the development studio and careers.
 
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Oct 20, 2006
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Midwest, USA
Not exactly playing it, but ...

... I bought today on a great & famous flea market (once in a year) a specimen of a game called "Dungeons & Dragons Stronghold". Never knew about this game.

The CD alone is okay, but I don't have much more than that. The "jewel case" where it is in looks definitively worn and I have no package and no handbook.
But I already downloaded a replacement at replacementdocs.

I'm wondering how this might turn out - does anyone of you know this game ?
 
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Nov 5, 2006
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Just as a side-note: I've installed the newest beta driver by NVidia - the 177.92 one.

And now - all in a sudden ! - I can run both Republic Commando and the Psychonauts !

They seem to have rewritten parts of the driver so that things seem to be better now ...
 
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Not exactly playing it, but ...

... I bought today on a great & famous flea market (once in a year) a specimen of a game called "Dungeons & Dragons Stronghold". Never knew about this game.

The CD alone is okay, but I don't have much more than that. The "jewel case" where it is in looks definitively worn and I have no package and no handbook.
But I already downloaded a replacement at replacementdocs.

I'm wondering how this might turn out - does anyone of you know this game ?

Great game... I played it when it first came out, and it's one of the ones I like to go back and play now and again. Check here for reviews and more info.

It is, of course a bit antiquated now, but it's still a lot of fun if you can get past it's "oldness".
 
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Dec 8, 2006
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Ohio
Thanks. I noticed - by the way - a few graphics glitches with the above mentioned beta driver with Drakensang. No wonder since it is still beta.
 
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I'm in the process of playing the Samorost 2. Sonny is in love with the game, and so am I :). Such a cute point and click adventure...
 
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Aug 31, 2006
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Playing Blood using Dosbox.

It took me more than 3 hours of tweaking to get it running the way I wanted it, but it was worth every second.
 
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Oct 21, 2006
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Blood was great. Blood 2 was not (IMO).
 
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Okay... just finished the NWN2 mod - Pool of Radiance Remastered.

I'm still playing Avernum 5... it's huge... and it's a blast. I think I'm about 90% done.

I'm starting World of Xeen (plays great in dosbox on Vista)... it's been years, and I've really been wanting to play it again. It's such a huge game that I'm not sure if I'll finish it... but I'm sure going to try (for those who don't know it's the combination of Might and Magic 4: Clouds of Xeen and Might and Magic 5: Darkside of Xeen).

Recently I like to keep two CRPGs going at once. So after I finish Avernum 5 (probably in a few days)... I'm not sure what I will start next as my 2nd active game. I'm thinking about playing Fallout again... we'll see ;)
 
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