What games are you playing now?

Playing the first witcher and enjoying the atmosphere, but finding the combat to be a bit samey. From reading other posts it's my own fault for playing normal difficulty. Looking forward to the sequel after this. I've also started playing DDO with an old PnP gaming buddy and it's sweet nostalgia. I especially appreciate the dungeon master-like narrator, For my strategy fix I've been playing Endless Space, a fairly new turn-based 4x space strategy game with simultaneous turns in multiplayer. Very reminiscent of the old master of Orion games.
 
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I've put Deus Ex on hold, and started with Dragon Age Origins. I didn't buy it when it came out, and bought the Ultimate Edition with all the DLC. And I'm loving it. The gameplay is exactly what I wanted from it. The story seems ok so far, nothing extraordinary, but decent enough.
 
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The banter was the part of the game I liked far most.
 
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I wanted to do an exception and mention that right now we are playing a lot of pen and paper roleplaying games and I am the Game Master of two campaigns.

The first one is our Star Wars game, set in the Dark Era between the two trilogies. The campaign is called the Dawn of the Defiance in which the players are a group of political fugitives that introduces the very idea that the almighty empire can be challenged, something which is seen as impossible. Their spark initiate the defiance that lay ground for the later rebellion. The campaign uses the SAGA Edition system, which is a much improved version of d20 that was used in the Knights of the Old Republic games.

The second is a cyberpunk adventure in 2091. The players worked with security on Corsica when the company they worked for bankrupted. In search for something new they go to Paris where they haven't found a job. Their friend did, but one evening after dinner he gets shot down by unknown bikers and end up in coma. What follows is a detective story where company espionage plays a central role. The system we use is New World of Darkness that works amazingly well. We use the same setting in my friends campaign set in the ruins of a post-world war 3 Poland.
 
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On a similar note, I'm currently in a TDE [Aventuria] pen & paper group which has just begun the Drachenchronik (the big event/campaign to which Drakensang 1 was a kind of pre-prelude) - the group is on its way to an ominous digging site about the group knows next to nothing - apart from the wizard who was commissioned to go there by his academy.
Curiously it has turned out that my half-elf is seemingly becoming a kind of "communications specialist" (which is odd for an half-elf) within his group due to at least 2 group members having a very high value in arrogance.
The only thing I miss within this group are female players.
Apart from that, the players fit very well together (as a group) and we have a lot of fun.
 
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Finally started playing Assassin's Creed (yeah, the first one, I've got a big backlog). Playing with X360 controller as I often do with third-person action games. Impression so far: an enjoyable historical game about assassins spoiled by intrusive sci fi silliness. Graphics look very nice. Game has just done the oft-repeated "oh I'm going to strip you of all your skills/powers now" - apparently because I've been demoted. WTF? Being demoted makes me…forget everything? Stupid game but will perservere as I'm a stubborn completionist.
 
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Stupid game but will perservere as I'm a stubborn completionist.

Assassin's Creed was fun for the first 10-12 or so hours, but the repetitive gameplay wore me down after awhile. I ended up quitting about 2/3 through. Great visuals and character animation though.
 
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Assassin's Creed was fun for the first 10-12 or so hours, but the repetitive gameplay wore me down after awhile. I ended up quitting about 2/3 through. Great visuals and character animation though.

First game had moment of brilliance when you did the assassinations, followed by long sections of repetitive MMORPG-style nonsense. Second was much better in that regard. One of those cases when cutting bad content improves the game.
 
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AC2 was much better, indeed - but I ultimately don't care much for the GTA style gameplay anymore.

As in, I prefer a real open world like Skyrim/Gothic - as opposed to these smallish worlds with a number of "activities" that you can repeat, or stuff you're supposed to collect. Not saying Skyrim was free of that, but it had a LOT of unique content for such a massive world.

AC2 and other GTA paradigm games feel so "structured" and very quickly becomes predictable.

It has, unfortunately, become an extremely popular genre - and almost all so-called open world games follow this formula.

Not a suprise, as it's much easier to create systems and assets for a few dozen activities and just repeat them endlessly, than it is to create a genuine open world where exploration is about more than getting achievements for finding a predefined point or doing an activity X amount of times.

I can't wait for people to catch on and realise they're playing the same game over and over and over - and stop hailing them as the second coming. I'm not talking about you guys - but the mainstream.
 
AC was one of the few games I never "finished". After the main story was done there were these flag finding missions, that were just pure tedium, and may be a few other missions too. It really became too repetitive, even for me. ;)
 
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Thanks for the feedback guys, I've got a fairly thick skin when it comes to repetitive gaming but it sounds like even I might be tested with AC1 - we'll see how it goes...
 
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I just got into Battlefield 3, and it's one helluva an experience. It's the most immersive shooter I've ever played. I've been mainly going at team deathmatch games, because in conquest I'm awful. But just TD is amazing. I just got done with an 1 hour and half TD battle and time flew like crazy. You can't not get involved and keep trying to push back your opponents. And it's cool how even without any headset on my part, and probably others as well, we kinda set up a small battleplan just by following each others lead. Very fun stuff.

Anyways, it looks and sounds unbelievable. And the mechanics that they have in place are very cool. My two most favorite are:
- when you're under fire, as in suppressed, your vision gets blurry.
- you can tag enemies as you see them for them to appear on your teammates' hud.

Oh, and I forgot about the destructibility of the environment. That adds so much both in gameplay and in amazing visuals. It just looks amazing. It's one thing to see it on youtube, and quite another to be right there, having bullets running over your head, having grenades tearing down walls around you.

Amazing. I'm so hyped about it. :D
And yeah, it's got miles ahead of Call of Duty imo. When it comes to multiplayer. The singleplayer campaign is kinda average.

And I also love how they've integrated their web app with the game client. You can track all your stats and information through their web app, and easily jump into a game. Very cool. Having Origin installed is kinda annoying, but what're you gonna do.
 
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Trying to decide what to play now. I finished Mass Effect last week, and I'm looking for something semi-casual to play for a few days or a week before I start Mass Effect 2.

I'm thinking about giving Galactic Civilizations II a try. I also might mess around with Left 4 Dead or one of the Grand Theft Auto titles I recently purchased from Steam.
 
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Trying to decide what to play now. I finished Mass Effect last week, and I'm looking for something semi-casual to play for a few days or a week before I start Mass Effect 2.

I'm thinking about giving Galactic Civilizations II a try. I also might mess around with Left 4 Dead or one of the Grand Theft Auto titles I recently purchased from Steam.

How would you rate Mass Effect 1? I keep starting it up and progress a little further every time, but then I keep getting a bit bored, and some other game comes up and I put it down. I'm sure my Battlefield 3 kick will keep for some time, but I was thinking about ME. Either that or I'll continue with DAO when I have more time to invest then I do now.
 
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How would you rate Mass Effect 1? I keep starting it up and progress a little further every time, but then I keep getting a bit bored, and some other game comes up and I put it down. I'm sure my Battlefield 3 kick will keep for some time, but I was thinking about ME. Either that or I'll continue with DAO when I have more time to invest then I do now.

I think you need to concentrate on one game at a time. At least when it comes to RPGs ;) jk

Mass Effect is good. Especially if you're in the mood for Sci-fi. It might have been the most fun I've had with a Bioware game since BG2. I thought the story was excellent, and the background lore is well fleshed out.

Companions are actually semi-interesting to talk to. (Compared to most Bioware games where companion interaction feels like a chore to me.) Planet exploration and the loot system are the only real weak points imo. Otherwise, I really enjoyed it from start to finish.
 
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I've recently replayed Call of Duty 1 and it's expansion United Offensive. When I got my internet back I even hopped onto a 50+ person Base Assault match, a bit late in the game. I've also spent an inordinate amount of time in Minecraft, builind a house out of brick, tearing it down and rebuilding itm I've also built a small castle out of sandstone, and a network of roads connecting my house to my castle and a couple outposts.

Beyond that I've also spent some time playing Might and Magic 6 and writing code on my own game. One day, I shall have art that doesn't make children vomit on sight.
 
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Just started Mass Effect 2. I'm only on the 2nd mission right now, but so far it seems like a big step backwards from ME1 in almost every way. Please tell me it gets better…

I also installed and briefly played Galactic Civilizations II. Wowza…talk about a learning curve. It's been a long time since I've actually needed to read the manual for a game. I think I'll save it for when I have more free time.
 
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