What games are you playing now?

I have tried to find another game to play but I seem to be unable to stick to them for long.

I left Ankh: Heart of Osiris after the first chapter. It's fun. It's hillarious. I just seem to be unable to give it the time it deserves. Maybe the game just fails to keep me excited.

I actually began playing God of War. I can tell that the game is absolutely great. The graphics is stunning, despite the PS2 hardware. The story seem to be well written. The action is top-notch. I just do not like actiongames and I found myself bored.

I played the first level of ICO. Beautiful game. Strong atmosphere. Maybe not interesting enough to keep me excited.

I played the first bit of Project Zero (aka Fatal Frame) and while it was a really gripping game, I was annoyed with the clunky controls. After finally managing to capture two ghosts on photographs I got enough and decided to give the game a rest.

Then I have a few games that simply feels that would take up too much time for me to play.

Maybe it's not the games fault really... Maybe it's just that I feel a lot of stress since the school begun, the apartment looks like crap, I have finished an assignment but I do not feel satisfied with result while I feel that it needs to be in mint condition to pass my grades...

JemyM said:

I actually began playing God of War. I can tell that the game is absolutely great. The graphics is stunning, despite the PS2 hardware. The story seem to be well written. The action is top-notch. I just do not like actiongames and I found myself bored..

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A friend of mine lent me his copy of God of War once just so I could see what all the hype was about. While I can agree that it has decent story, good graphics, etc, it doesn't stop me from feeling that it's an incredibly overrated game.

JDR13 said:

A friend of mine lent me his copy of God of War once just so I could see what all the hype was about. While I can agree that it has decent story, good graphics, etc, it doesn't stop me from feeling that it's an incredibly overrated game.

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Probably because the action is very fluid with lots of minigames and advanced buttonmashing...

Out of all games I have actually started to play Starcraft and I am about half through the Terran campaign. I thought I should finally play the game since StarCraft II is coming up. I feel a bit crazy for doing so. I do not particulary enjoy RTS games but I know the basic strategies.

JemyM said:

Out of all games I have actually started to play Starcraft and I am about half through the Terran campaign. I thought I should finally play the game since StarCraft II is coming up. I feel a bit crazy for doing so. I do not particulary enjoy RTS games but I know the basic strategies.

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Great game, probably the best story ever for an RTS game. I've played through SC + SC:Brood War several times. I'm not a huge fan of RTS games myself but StarCraft II will be a release day purchase for me.

Perhaps it's all the excitement on the real-world map these days, but... I went back to one of my all-time faves -- Rome: Total Realism 6.2.

Strangely enough, I had never played that through as the Romans, so I decided to give it a shot. I'm trying not to get hooked into doing all-nighters with it, so progress is slow; I also want to try a more deliberate strategy than "if it's undefended, then grab it."

Thus far, the gods have been with me. My initial attacks on Southern Italian rebels were costly; two of my four generals died like true Romans when fighting them. But then Pyrrhus of Epirus launched an ill-advised attack on my legions in the field; my peltasts drove his elephants into a panic, after which my legionaries drove a wedge into his lines and cut up his hoplites one by one; it turned into a heroic victory with the Greek king felled by a javelin from one of my hastati. No Pyrrhic victory for him this time, just a straight-out, humiliating defeat.

I had allied with the Carthageans to take care of the Greeks, but they shamefully stabbed me in the back just as I was besieging Syracuse; however, they misjudged their strength too, and my general beat their field army and followed up by laying siege to Agrigenta, where Hanno the Carthagean king was stationed.

Then the gods struck him down with a heart attack just before my attack. Another easy victory; his men were too few and too poorly led to be able to mount more than a symbolic resistance to the legions led by my rapidly-star-accumulating general.

My plan is to annex the rest of Sicily, then launch a raid on the Carthagean heartland, plunder and lay waste to their cities in order to destroy their economic base and their ability to raise troops; that ought to keep them quiet for a generation or two at least. Then withdraw and bring some good ol' Roman law and order to the Greeks, Macedonians, and Illyrians. But that'll have to wait a bit; I want to properly Romanize Syracuse first at least...

Ah, another Total War fan. So what do you think of the new Empire TW coming out PJ? I for one am not as excited as I was for MTWII, but that's because I don't enjoy gunpowder as much as swords.

Jabberwocky said:

Ah, another Total War fan. So what do you think of the new Empire TW coming out PJ? I for one am not as excited as I was for MTWII, but that's because I don't enjoy gunpowder as much as swords.

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Very excited.

I was less excited about M2TW, actually, because I've never really been that keen on medieval warfare -- I always felt it was somehow terribly petty compared to the titans struggling in the ancient world... or the ferocious stuff that went down when the musket became the Walkman of war.

I've also always had a thing for naval combat in the time of wooden ships and iron men. There's a tactical beauty and simplicity about it, which nevertheless makes for enormous depth, and an almost poetic quality in the way the whole thing culminated in the clash of the two greatest empires the modern world has known, with Admiral Nelson's genius gloriously crowning and closing that chapter in the history of warfare.

I'm also hoping they'll take less historical liberties with the period. It's more familiar, so there's less room for flying cows or lye-soaked heads or flaming pigs, which is not a bad thing IMO.

Empires promises to be something that I've wanted to play for a long, long time. If antiquity is my first choice, that period is my second, and after RTW and RTR, there's really not a whole lot to add to the former. Medieval warfare comes in a fairly distant third, and the punishing grind of modern, mechanized warfare a long way behind that.

So, to answer your question, I'm setting myself up for a huge disappointment here.

JDR13 said:

Great game, probably the best story ever for an RTS game. I've played through SC + SC:Brood War several times. I'm not a huge fan of RTS games myself but StarCraft II will be a release day purchase for me.

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It is ironic that Blizzard's RTS games have had more story than their RPG's.

I finished the Terran campaign today and there were some twists and turns indeed.
Now I know who "Jim Raynor" is. I also finished the first Zerg mission which was an "alien" experience.

I hope the Zerg and the Protoss campaign are as interesting as the Terran campaign.

Starcraft really is one of those PC games that everyone have to play at least once just to know what it's about, even if you do not like them. Kinda like Tomb Raider and DOOM.

@ PJ: Well put. And an accurate description of the differences in period warfare. For me personally, the small scale is exactly why I like the medieval period best. I can get caught up in the emotion of my small band of Scottish Highland Rabble brazenly defying the English Heavy Calvary, but ask me to play a juggernaut empire bent on conquering the world and the units soon become nothing more than playing pieces on a game board. - I enjoy the strategy, and have enjoyed all the TW games thus far, but the medieval period is my favorite.

JemyM said:

It is ironic that Blizzard's RTS games have had more story than their RPG's.

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What RPG's?

Aside from my various 'retrospectives' games, I'm finishing up Space Siege and starting on Legend: Hand of God now.

I bought Wizardry 8 years ago, but never actually played it. Recently though, there has been quite a bit of gushing about it, both here and at the Codex, and I finally caved in and installed it. After looking at some party composition tips (Fighter, Valkyrie, Bard, Ranger, Priest and Mage), I'm now done with Arnika, with my characters at lvl 8 to 9.

I'm having fun.

Playing Lego Star wars with the gf in the evenings. Good fun, but the game has some flaws (the camera makes it impossible to tell depth, and some scenes such as pod racing are simply only playable in SP).

I'm also looking forward to ETW, not because of the period but because I've overplayed Medieaval 2. I'm not really expecting much though, as my beefs with the Total war series (ridiculous campaign AI and ahistorical conquer the world gameplay that only barely made sense in Rome but not at all in other timeframes) have been rather persistent, but it should still be possible to get some lighthearted fun out of the game...

@kazikluBey: Solid party build. You should have no trouble running them thru the game.

Did you get and install Wizfast yet? If not, you should. Combat will get pretty ponderous when you visit Antone's brother without Wizfast.

Zaleukos said:

Playing Lego Star wars with the gf in the evenings. Good fun, but the game has some flaws (the camera makes it impossible to tell depth, and some scenes such as pod racing are simply only playable in SP).

I'm also looking forward to ETW, not because of the period but because I've overplayed Medieaval 2. I'm not really expecting much though, as my beefs with the Total war series (ridiculous campaign AI and ahistorical conquer the world gameplay that only barely made sense in Rome but not at all in other timeframes) have been rather persistent, but it should still be possible to get some lighthearted fun out of the game...

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The "conquer the world" gameplay was probably my main beef with M2TW. As you say, it did make sense in RTW -- that was, essentially, what these empires were attempting.

But... it does make sense in the period of Empire. That's what these empires were attempting, and Napoleon got pretty damn close to succeeding. So that mode of gameplay will feel a lot more natural in the period of Empire than it did in Medieval.

I agree about the campaign AI -- I really hope they'll manage to come up with something just a leetle bit less boneheadedly stupid as in Rome and Medieval. (The Illyrians insist on sending raiding parties over, that consist of exactly two units; I repeatedly wipe them out with my legionaries, after which they reluctantly agree to a ceasefire and trading rights again. OTOH I suppose that's not too far from what the real Illyrians did.)

Maybe it makes slightly more sense in the 18th C with Napoleon and Louis XIV both in the timeframe, but Louis didnt go far outside the modern French borders and even Nappy preferred to install puppets and no other country made a go for it But balancing a non-expansionist wargame is so hard that I can live with CA not fixing that issue.

The AI is a whole different thing though. The suicidal stupidity of the AI nations actually made ridiculous expansion necessary to save one from the tedium of fighting endless hordes of illyrian raiders, massed ballistae/catapults (why does the M2 AI build such stacks??), or genoese crossbow militia... I havent played shogun but both the Medievals and Rome suffered from that problem, and the lack of effort to resolve the issue on CAs part is one reason that I dont expect a halfway serious campaign mode from them...

I think that's why the expansion for MIITW worked so well - It kept the conquerable territory at a more realistic size for the playable factions. I honestly don't see how they could alter the game dynamics enough to make it any better and still allow you to play who you want. If the game was kept to realistic outcomes for every nation you would have a lot of disgruntled players.

Jabberwocky said:

I think that's why the expansion for MIITW worked so well - It kept the conquerable territory at a more realistic size for the playable factions. I honestly don't see how they could alter the game dynamics enough to make it any better and still allow you to play who you want. If the game was kept to realistic outcomes for every nation you would have a lot of disgruntled players.

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Very true on all accounts! Kingdoms also benefit from having a few developed settlements (just as RTW:BI) which gives one a chance to use top tier units against the enemies the descriptions claim they were intended to fight.

Realistic outcomes for everyone is of course a pipe dream (and realism should at any rate trump gameplay. But wars being WW2 style conflicts that only can end in unconditional surrender and total occupation of all enemy territory does affect gameplay One never gets to a point where one uses interesting units against the "natural" enemies as those always are conquered by that point of time. Drawn out wars are almost impossible to achieve in vanilla.

Overall I blame that AI more than anything else, and it is the one part of the game that I think CA should fix. Suicidal attacks on bigger neighbours does not add to the challenge or fun of the game and has been there from the start. Crack troops and the 3D map would allow a smaller side to win using strategic chokepoints, but the AI doesnt understand that nor bothers to build up stacks BEFORE going to war... I also dont understand how the AI not using generals to lead its armies could slip under the radar with all the patching thats been done of Medieval 2. It seems like CA only playtested the battle AI

dteowner said:

Did you get and install Wizfast yet? If not, you should. Combat will get pretty ponderous when you visit Antone's brother without Wizfast.

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Thanks, I had read about it, but your nudging made me get it.