What games are you playing now?

Just picked up Need for Speed: Pro Street today. I'm really into the Witcher (that is emotionally, not distance into the game), so I will be torn between these two for a while. Probably wouldn't be a competition for most people on this site, but I'm a fast car fanatic!!

I put The Witcher aside to spend time in shooter-ville … you name it, I'm playing it … even CoD4 on DS

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
Build, sit, wait……. and wait til you have enough stuff.

Well, to the huge fan base this is most of the fun !

I mean that this sort of game IS so much popular here in Germany BECAUSE you can watch everything as it is being built !

That's why we don't call it a strategy game, but rather an "economical simulation", in German a "Wirtschaftssimulation", "WiSim in sort.

That's a different approach to "normal" strategy games. It's just like watching how a dog grows, not just simply waiting until it is big enough to be ready to bite the enemy.

The fun is to explore and watch everything - at least to the fans. That's why the Settlers I were so popular in the first place ! It just looked insanely cute !


About the heroes: Yes, they are needed (a new element since The Settlers 5), but not essential, I guess. These are not heroes like in "normal" strategy ga,es, as far as I understand it, but rather gatherers and "resource collectors". Plus, what's new in The Settlers 6 is that you can get resources only on land that has previously been discovered - this need for discovering land first of all is new to this series as well (apart from the former building of watch-towers to increase and expand th own country's borders).

Yeah, it's "build-sit-wait until you can get enough resources to just build more stuff!" Waiting just for the resources (for quite a long time) to simply build a new bldg is testing my patience, it's like watching an egg timer after a while. The map explored, etc, and I'm sitting there staring at the serfs or whatever wishing that I had a giant green Dungeon Keeper hand to slap them around with.

Then again, I only played a couple levels, I plan on getting my 12 dollars worth here one of these days. When I have no other plans!

One of the things I really enjoy in city builders is just sitting and watching my citizens going about their business. Which in itself is often an integral part of the game as it gives the player a sense of where their citizens are going and what they are doing, which allows you greater knowledge of how your supply chain is functioning (or not functioning).

So, if a guy was thinking about buying a city builder and preferred a relaxed sandbox over a hectic series of scenerios, what would y'all recommend? Sounds like Settlers 6 might be a good choice? Man, I shouldn't even ask this. Plate's already overflowing, dte!!!

finally playing call of juarez ($14) after finishing up the enjoyable alpha prime last week.

dte did you ever play any of the impression games city builders? how about children of the nile?

Originally Posted by curiously undead
finishing up the enjoyable alpha prime last week.

I found it a budget game at a budget price … nothing to stand out against the big guys, but fun for a cheapie … certainly better than Timeshift which cost 2x as much!

Originally Posted by Jabberwocky
Just picked up Need for Speed: Pro Street today. I'm really into the Witcher (that is emotionally, not distance into the game), so I will be torn between these two for a while. Probably wouldn't be a competition for most people on this site, but I'm a fast car fanatic!!

You're not alone I like a good racer every now and then. I play all types of games really not just RPG's.

Oh I'm playing Gears of War atm - which is hardly an RPG. I like it, reminds me of Advanced Space Crusade if you ever played that board game. It's not turn-based ofc but the setting and shooting from cover just reminds me of it.

Originally Posted by dteowner
So, if a guy was thinking about buying a city builder and preferred a relaxed sandbox over a hectic series of scenerios, what would y'all recommend? Sounds like Settlers 6 might be a good choice? Man, I shouldn't even ask this. Plate's already overflowing, dte!!!

The Anno games are nicely paced (1701 is the most recent) and Glory Of The Roman Empire looks like it has a lower-key approach from what the demo revealed (I haven't played the full game).

You might check out a SimCity game, those are more about ultra-detailed micromanagement than hectic scenarios, so how frantic the game becomes basically depends on you. And there's the new SimCity Societies which seems to take a more classic city builder approach to a modern city. The developers have been saying it's very much a sandbox game.

Is Anno 1701 the same as AD1701? I've seen the latter in several stores, but never the former. I know the Latin matches, but I don't want to make assumptions.

I put in a lot of hours with the original SimCity, but SimCity 2000 just never grabbed me. It's been too long to really remember what my complaint was (I vaguely remember the sandbox mode was half-assed in favor of a campaign of scenerios), or if it just got trumped by other games (I've barely even given RRTycoon2 a chance over the years because I bought it the same time as something else I deeply wanted to play and never really went back, SC2k might have gotten the same).

Originally Posted by dteowner
Is Anno 1701 the same as AD1701? I've seen the latter in several stores, but never the former. I know the Latin matches, but I don't want to make assumptions.

Yes - exactly the same … name changed for US release.

Originally Posted by dteowner
I put in a lot of hours with the original SimCity, but SimCity 2000 just never grabbed me. It's been too long to really remember what my complaint was (I vaguely remember the sandbox mode was half-assed in favor of a campaign of scenerios), or if it just got trumped by other games (I've barely even given RRTycoon2 a chance over the years because I bought it the same time as something else I deeply wanted to play and never really went back, SC2k might have gotten the same).

Yeah.. I played the original SimCity a lot way back when, but recent attempts to get into newer versions have never amounted to much. SimCity 4 looks really good, but is a micromanagement nightmare. I suppose if you're an aspiring city buerocrat it's a good game, but it just went too in-depth into things I didn't care about.

Played the Demo of Legend - Hand of God today.

To me, it's quite a good game, of course it's hack & slaysh - oriented, but the number of enemies isn't too much, I think.

Interesting is that there is no "load" menu entry, since there is only one hero, and in the main menu there is only "continue". If he dies, he is revived always at the big "runestones".

If you "reload", however, enemies are respawned, which is seemingly typical for these games.

The in-game world looks quite nicely, fitting to the plot, imho.
Of course I can say this only as far as the demo goes.

The bow-man "class" (I call it as such, because I don't have other words for that type, and I guess the in-game term "Light-Archer" wouldn't say too much to you) I played was a little bit weak for my own taste. Hit & Run tactics became a marathon run with stronger opponents.

The talent screen looked too much copied from Blizzard for my taste.

The game is imho located in the upper mezzanine in terms of gameplay, look etc. . Not perfect, but imho quite good. It even uses the Agaia physics engine (a driver, I read).

I enjoyed it so far, my only real complaints are the respawn and the number of enemies, which is a little bit too high for my own taste.

Alrik



P. S. : For those who love building towns and see how everything develops … Have you tried Tropico ?
I just love it.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
P. S. : For those who love building towns and see how everything develops … Have you tried Tropico ?
I just love it.

I have not played any of the Tropico games, but I have noticed you've mentioned Tropico quite favourably a number of times. I'll take a look at it.

The more I read about SimCity Societies the more intrigued I become. There are a number of different "theme" cities or city styles you can build, but that theme only becomes evident or unlocked by building in a certain way. Want a dystopian post-apocalyptic city? Or a corportate-controlled cyberpunk city? Or a ghost town? I've even read you can have zombies. It all depends on how you administer your town and build it.

There's a demo for the original Tropico that is practically the whole game. They disabled a few options and put a (relatively long) turn limit on it, but I got quite a few hours of fun out of it. There was an expansion pack that was supposed to be pretty good. There's a Tropico 2, but I don't even know if it's available yet, let alone if it's any good. Perhaps the biggest selling point was the background music—it was very good and did an excellent job of setting the mood.

I downloaded the demo this morning and will give it a try soon.
The sequel was Pirate Cove, a pirate-themed city builder. I seem to recall playing the demo for it quite a while back.

I am still playing MMOs but also I am playing Galactic Civilizations II sometimes with expansion pack Dark Avatar plus I am getting the next expansion pack in December 07 so I am having fun conquering the galaxy and crushing all opposition OR maybe just playing nice and trying to make an alliance between these bastards.

Also you can make custom races, so I scowered the internet for all sorts of pictures of aliens and I ended up with over 500 alien pictures for the game !!! That means I can make like 500 races so I can play FORRRRRREVVVVEEERRRR !!! On-and-off though between MMORPG days, so that if I ever get the urge to single-player I just hop into GalCiv2 and kick some ass or sometimes get my ass handed to me…

Right now I am on a "large"-sized map (which is way smaller than the others) that has some races I custom-made: the Replicators (from Stargate SG-1 show), Darth Vader race (lol), Jedi Council, these Ascended-like beings from another dimension (lol), a Dark Jedi Council, ummm…. the Borg Collective (lol), the Vulcans (Star Trek, Spock's race)… and couple ones I made up.

Right now the Vulcans are pretty big but I am twice the size because I got extermely lucky and started in a pocket in the SE corner of the map where there were no other races at all, lol, and separated by a ways from them. Also I got really lucky because there were tons of great planets in my section. So now after about 2 hours playing, I have this huge-ass empire there that is going to grind everyone else into space dust.

Oh and I made it so the Replicators really breed fast, lol. Theres a million of those guys, they're spreading fast so I gotta kill their empire first.

Personally, I don't recommend Tropico 2. It's too hard to keep all the "enslaved" prisoners (needed as "workhorses") down meanwhile keeping the morale of the pirates up.

Also, the income via pirates is based imho too much on luck (although this can be influenced by better weapons, better crew etc. …).

Also, the whole sounding wasn't that good, and not at all as good as in Tropico 1, imho.