What games are you playing now?

Testing Hard Reset, which came in a previous indie bundle (I really don't have to buy any games outside of indie bundles these days, it would seem), as I've heard that it is supposed to be quite good. I'm not a shooter fan, but s game is actually pretty good. It is a game that is not afraid to punish you for your mistakes, and I've already died a few times (I'm only 1h into the game). Gameplay reminds me a lot of a late 90's shooter, but with better graphics and sound. And a higher level of challenge.

I played through Hard Reset when it was released, and I thought it was pretty good for a pure shooter.

I heard they're going to release an extended version with additional levels.
 
Joined
Oct 21, 2006
Messages
39,017
Location
Florida, US
Today I'll be paying Penumbra and Stacking and I'll be hoping that I will not be driven insane.
 
Joined
Sep 18, 2009
Messages
693
Which Penumbra? Black Plague is tops.

Just finished Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. Fun times! Mostly...
 
Joined
Jul 9, 2010
Messages
30
Which Penumbra? Black Plague is tops.
I understand it's one story isn't it?
I've started with overture either way.


Nowhere near as scary as Amnesia this far. I'm glad I let time pass though because otherwise I would probably be annoyed by the more primitive controls.
 
Joined
Sep 18, 2009
Messages
693
Based on my Last Finished Game it shouldn't be a surprise that I am playing Chaos Strikes Back. Wow this is a different game… and I am not sure it is to the better. This isn't a linear experience anymore and it's actually quite random. The beginning of the game is extremely confusing, you start in a dark room attacked by poisonous worms without weapons. After dying a few times I managed to kill them and found that a secret pressure plate summons two new worms everytime you step on it. Then you have to buy items but can only grab 3 of 4, choices-choices. Then you can with some retries get some inventory before ending up in an inevitable pittrap. Finally you end up in the Junction of Ways, the central node that connects 4 areas, each inspired by one of the four classes; Fighter, Ninja, Mage and Priest.

I started with Fighter. Bad idea… I was ready to drop the game numerous times while dragging myself this frustrating nightmare. First things first, each of the 4 sublevels starts by teleporting you randomly to one of 3 starting points, so you have to begin to explore from there. Once you learned the section you know which starting point you teleport to and it gets easier.

But the Fighter level is like some evil modmaker decided to throw every monster at you at once and thought it was funny to put room after room literally filled with monsters. That means that in a 3x2 section there are 6 spiders and in another section with 8 squares there were 32 antmen. There's one section that have a mummy respawner that you basically have to hack yourself on top to be able to get up the stairs behind it. The worst room was packed with Vexirks that is a small mage that hurls fireballs at you with a flying rabid poisonous wormlike creature respawning behind you. But there's more… part of the many obstacles you have to get through is a section with 6 dragons at the same time and very little fighting room. No way I would even bother about them. But I did bother about the 4 Death Knights that you aren't supposed to kill so I had to sleep for them to respawn after which I had critical foodbars left on all my four characters…

However, after two days of playing this section alone I finally had dragged myself up to the top floor, got the first of four Corbums (a glowing rock), then dumped down again to get into the Ninja level.

Which actually was fun. Many interesting puzzles and just about enough monsters and completed in very little time. Now I look forward to the priest level which is up next.

- Edit -
Done with the priest level as well now, that was also a fun section. Now it's just the wizard left.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Oct 26, 2006
Messages
6,027
Well, having just had a few days off (Easter) - I've had time to get back into a number of games.

Most surprisingly, I decided to "test" Mass Effect 3 - and I decided it was actually pretty good once you get past the horrible introduction sequence. So, I deleted that - and I went back to my Mass Effect 2 playthrough. I still don't like the incredibly predictable structure of the levels (in fact, I hate how much potential the game has that's been ruined by this design) - but I'm now motivated to care about the story again, and in particular my decisions in the hope they will matter later on.

I find that the writing goes from interesting to over-the-top regularly. Almost all characters are totally extreme in their ways, which is really not my kind of writing. I like plausible characters with reasonable personalities. I don't mind extremes, but there has to be a limit. Not for Bioware, apparently. It's like they're screaming "check this guy/girl out - he/she is so EXTREME" right into my ear. I get it already, Bio.

Fortunately, I like the writing that's not related to characters. The plot is interesting (and I don't remember much from my last playthrough) - and I'm reasonably engaged.

The actual gameplay is what I would call solid but extremely narrow. Which means I can only take 1-2 hours at a time of it. I think it's a classic example of what happens when you streamline everything to its "logical" core. I put logical in quotation marks, because the logic is highly flawed. It's such a typical design oversight to look at features in these basic terms and try to boil everything down to the essentials. You ruin the flavor and the mystery that way. Oh well.

Still, the cover-shooter gameplay is ok when it works. It does suffer a lot from the sheer amount of it, which is so typical of Bioware. Too much, and too predictable. The game would have been so much better, for me at least, if they'd cut 50% of the combat and replaced it with meaningful exploration of the levels. The atmosphere is so rich - and they decided to just throw predictable encounters at you, instead of letting you breathe and explore your surroundings. Something as simple as the computer interaction from KotOR would have worked wonders here, instead of the pathetic "hacking/bypass" crap.

For the real positives, I have to underline the atmosphere and art design. The levels look fantastic - and they're truly immersive in that way. They take you to alternate worlds with great efficiency. I can only dream of a game with this kind of production values AND an interesting design with intricate mechanics and gameplay.

Beyond ME2 - I've been playing:

Bioshock
World of Warcraft
Lord of the Rings Online
Vampire Bloodlines
Path of Exile Beta
Diablo 3 Beta

I've enjoyed them all to various degrees :)
 
Last edited:
I'm playing various of games now -- not in a mood to stick with just 1 game.

Playing:

BG2, ME1&2, DA1&2, Skyrim, Age of Mythology, and Lemmings! :D Might add Civ5 to list as well.
 
Unfotunately Ive gotten the warhammer 40K tabletop bug, so I havent been playing anything else. Studying the rules, doing the minis, getting up to snuff on my chapter all that. It's a lot of work!
Playing small 500pt basic games w/ a small Codex marines force right now, purchasing a bunch of Black Templar stuff tho in the interim, I'm sold on them for my chapter.

It's a really expensive hobby tho, I've been hitting Ebay now and then for stuff. It's getting hard to justify 50.00 for a box of toy soldiers to my wife ='.'=

Other than that, I'm playing Dungeon Crawl Classics on the weekends with my friends, the full rules are out now and the pre-orders now have the PDF until the final game ships. I highly recommend DCC for tabletop RPG, it has the spirit of the Old Games, with the convenience of D20 for combat. What's different about DCC? Why have we abandoned even the mighty Pathfinder for it?
- There is a "luck" attribute that gives players an advantage at times, and gives the DM some fun stuff to use it for. The better or worse your luck, the game can swing for or against you. Your luck score improves, or you can "burn" it for point loss. Anyway, it's fun.
- fails and crits have a tabular system that can again, really swing the game one way or another.
- The class progression/abilities are handled differently than your run of the mill "you get a better attack modifier" as you level. As a warrior for instance, you get additional dice for your attack rolls/dmg.
- The magic system rocks, incorporating a chance to fail spells or pull off epic spells - all depending on how you roll and your modifier. You can blow yourself to smithereens casting a fireball!
- the character funnel of handling several 0-level characters and keeping the one that survives to level 1 as your character is cool, and starts the entire campaign off with several glorious fatalities and crazy characters taking their former occupational tools down w/ them to the dungeons. Cook may have a frying pan, a farmer may have a pitchfork and a donkey, you get my drift.

There's other cool shit, it's just off the beaten path and has a good system that's easy to pick up and fun to play. Looks like they dont have the Beta rules up anymore, drat.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
5,228
Location
San Diego, Ca
Loving playing:
- Legend of Grimrock on PC
- Avernum on Mac
- and Max Payne on iPad this weekend!
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
14,912
I'm trying my hands at Ascension to the Throne right now. A game which I think got mentioned in a thread about rare games a while ago, and which I got in the 1C complete pack. Thus far it has been quite fun, though one really has to be careful with what you decide to fight, as it is very easy to get wiped out otherwise.

*edit*
The game could really use some more variety, because it is starting to feel quite samey, and after figuring out a strategy that worked, I've been able to plow through a lot of fights, just repeating the same strategy over and over. I tried to branch out, and try new things, but all it felt like was me intentionally crippling my own chances of success.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Jun 2, 2011
Messages
1,756
Location
Stockholm, Sweden
Gothic 2

Ahoy there community,

since this is the offtopic part, I would like to take the opportunity to introduce my Let's Play channel on YouTube, where I currently role play the second Gothic title and intend to do the same with Gothic 1, Risen and Risen 2, as well as a collection of other video games in the near future. I'd be honoured if my fellow gamer colleagues could pay me a visit, have a look at my videos and tell me what you think. Any advice, criticism or just friendly word will be very welcome:
http://www.youtube.com/user/CptGreenbear
Best regards,
Greenbear

P.S. I'm rather new to this forum and not yet accustomed to all the rules and features of this site. If I chose the wrong topic/style/whatever, please tell me. Thanks.
 
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
4
Hi, Greenbear. Welcome to the Watch.

I checked out a few of your Gothic 2 clips as well as your playthrough of Thief. It's always nice to see someone playing the classics.
 
Joined
Oct 21, 2006
Messages
39,017
Location
Florida, US
Hey Greenbear,
welcome, and have a beer :party:.
 
Joined
Aug 31, 2006
Messages
3,754
I'm now finally playing Divinity 2 The Dragon Knight Saga. I originally bought the German CE of Ego Draconis in July 2009 and played a bit of that back in the day but then it quickly became clear that Larian was planning on more than just bug-fixing with their patches so I put the game aside to wait for the feature-filled patches to arrive.
I also didn't really want to play the German version. I prefer playing the original version and so I decided to wait for an opportunity to get my hands on a patch that makes the game multilingual. That never happened unfortunately because of dtp's strict region locking policy (those assholes ;) ) and so I had to wait even longer for an English retail release. No, couldn't buy the game on Steam either. - Steam was/is only selling a region-locked German version to customers with a German IP address (those fuckers ;) ).

Anyway, all of those sob stories apart, here we are, finally playing an English retail of DKS, and I have just finished the Ego Draconis part of the saga, playing on "hard", after ~46 hours.
This game is really good action RPG stuff and I was positively surprised -after some negative comments on here and other places- by the enjoyment I got out of the dragon gameplay. It wasn't perfect by far but it was a nice change of pace from ye olde exploring by foot.
The battle tower also proved to be a nice, rather fresh feature.
The game has the usual (for Larian) quirky characters (the necromancer Jonelath anyone? WTF is up with that dude? :biggrin: ), funny humor and a HUGE, surprisingly diverse world to explore. Almost a little too huge maybe. I kind of prefer shorter games these days but it's all good.

My list of negatives is very short. I think they should have maybe worked on a better game balance. I don't know if I did something "wrong" but the last third/fourth of the game I was more or less one-shotting (battle mage type of character) everyone (including bosses) and getting very little XP with a level 36 character when everyone else was level ~30.
I think I might have done the fortresses too early. I was climbing up the level ladder like crazy when I first went to one and kept at it (did two fortresses in a row in the early level 20ies).
Dunno... but it really got pretty boring towards the end with almost no challenge. The beginning (especially) and some of the mid game was definitely "hard" as advertised though.

Anyway, really looking forward to diving into Flames of Vengeance now. Should be fun...
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
3,201
I'm having a bit of a mech-simulator itch again, so MechWarrior 2: 31st century combat it is!
I bought this game last year, but now I have an itch to play this types of games. Getting it to run in XP was a bit tricky (as it is the win 95 version), but well worth the effort.
 
Joined
Jun 2, 2011
Messages
1,756
Location
Stockholm, Sweden
Hey Jaz and JDR13, thanks for welcoming me and taking the time to check out my videos. That is mighty nice of you.
Hope you have a great time.
Greenbear
 
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
4
I had grand intentions of replaying Risen before Risen 2 hit ... but between Legend of Grimrock, Avernum, and others ... oh, well.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
14,912
Back
Top Bottom