What games are you playing now?

Hey I still am still plenty challeneged by silver. The last few times I've played gold the whole team failed, and I felt that I let them down (I was constantly dying) so haven't gone back. Gold for me would only stand a chance with highly defensive builds, rather than the aggressive builds.

BTW it seems that the gear is really the defining factor on how good you are. Which requires an enormous grind. I think I'll get bored before I graduate to regular gold and platinum runs. :/

Originally Posted by curious
JDR13 - i agree with Count on keeping to the harder difficulties though i disagree about the heart. the amount of dialogue the heart has about nearly everything should not be missed. unless you can guarantee a 2nd playthough which, for me is something that never seems to pan out these days on any game you'll be missing out on a huge element of the game/gameplay the RPS article from yesterday sums this up http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012…onoreds-heart/

Thanks, I planned on using the heart anyways, just without the compass marker. I'll keep it on hard difficulty as well. I'm guessing it gets a little easier anyways once I start to gain some powers.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I just started playing Dishonored last night. Still in the first area, but it seems entertaining enough so far, and I'm being reminded of Thief which is a good thing. What difficulty are you playing on? I'm playing on Hard and I'm already starting to think that's a mistake for a first playthrough.

Visuals are a mixed bag. While I like the art style, some of the textures in the game are really ugly from a technical standpoint.

I also recommend the highest difficulty, as other posters did. The game becomes less challenging as you go on, though by going with the no kill route (and no detection), you'll have to carefully consider how to approach many situations.

Corvo doesn't speak and you make "choices" by taking actions. He doesn't speak so you can morally play "yourself". Because of this, I would recommend acting in a way you would in real life, rather than choosing a "good" or "evil" playthrough. You're basically playing an assassin and each target can be handled differently. Sometimes the non lethal way is more gruesome than just murder and sometimes the targets don't deserve to be killed.

Originally Posted by JDR13
It doesn't live up to the hype. Not a terrible game if you got it cheap though. It does have some interesting areas, and the races are actually quite fun if you enjoy that sort of thing.

I didn't follow the hype though and didn't really follow Rage at all. Are the NPC interactions meaningful and long?

Originally Posted by The Walkin' Dude
I didn't follow the hype though and didn't really follow Rage at all. Are the NPC interactions meaningful and long?

In my case, I thought RAGE was severely underrated, there was a lot of negative press about the game stemming from some botched performance drivers released by AMD, and a lot of people didn't understand or didn't like the partially resident texture streaming in the game's new engine.

It's not an RPG. Some of the NPCs are interesting, and the voice acting is decent, but there are no dynamic interactions with people living in the Wasteland. Really looking forward to the upcoming release of the mod tools, as I think there is a possibility of fleshing out the game world with quests and more interesting NPCs. If you are into exploration, the game world is big and rather open, but the rewards for exploring are few and far between. My first playthrough lasted about 45 hours, which is probably longer than most, as I spent some time exploring and looking for stuff.

The best feature of the game is the fact that it looks as good as it does, with stunning environments and high quality lighting and character models, but still runs extremely fast on lower end PCs. This is due to the highly innovative game engine, which uses the PRT technology we will see more of in next gen games.

The crafting and some of the minigames are also fun. The multiplayer is lacking. They should have included a way to play through the entire game in co-op mode, or some team deathmatch / capture the flag multiplayer modes. Not really into racing games, and those got boring after a while.

Thanks, sounds good! Didn't know the world is open.

Bethesda seems to release really smooth running games. These days I would choose a smooth running non RPG than something like Witcher 2.

Originally Posted by The Walkin' Dude
Thanks, sounds good! Didn't know the world is open.

Bethesda seems to release really smooth running games. These days I would choose a smooth running non RPG than something like Witcher 2.

I know what you mean, Witcher 2 is the only game I can't run on my laptop at native res. It might look nice on a super high end gaming desktop, but it looks like crap when you have to reduce the resolution and all the settings.

I'd say RAGE doesn't really provide a good open world experience. You can explore a lot of areas after you complete the first couple of quests for John Goodman, and I've gone off and completely ignored the main quest to do this, but too much of the world is empty IMO. Hopefully mods will allow it to be fleshed out a bit more.

There's not much as far as exploration goes in RAGE, but there are some neat little easter eggs you can find scattered about in the form of references to other id and Bethesda titles. Most are just items, but there are also four hidden areas.

I found the visuals to be a mixed bag. Most of the distant vistas are stunning, but some of the close-up textures are mediocre by PC standards. I recall the devs saying something about a texture upgrade pack for the PC version, but it never materialized.

Regarding The Witcher 2, I think it was simply ahead of its time as far as the PC requirements.

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Believe it or not, I am still playing ME3 multi-player coop. There is a ton of unlockable weapons, upgrades, character builds/races that you only get randomly and slowly by spending in-game earned funny money on packs in the store. Talk about a terrible temptation for completists like myself who like the thrill of the random drop/gamble. Hopefully I'll get tired once I am done trying out all the unique powers in character builds and assorted rare/ultra-rare weapons.

This sounds as if they had succeeded at turning ME3 into an MMO - because what you write here is quite common to MMOs.

Evochron Mercenary 2 (or v2 of the old game) were released a week back which completely revamps the graphics of the game and do a lot of other changes that make it feel almost like a new game. It used to have low res textures and low quality models, but now it looks really professional with new menues, new hud, new models and new textures. The new Starports look really cool and have actual docking bays now.

I'm playing Sacred 2 couch co-op with my dad. Game is a ton of fun. We're level 38 or so and just entered the human realm. The map is enormous and we're trying to clear it 100%. Daunting task to say the least.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
This sounds as if they had succeeded at turning ME3 into an MMO - because what you write here is quite common to MMOs.

Hopefully MMOs have more variety in locations/missions/quests. I am getting tired of the same Multiplayer ME3 maps, over and over again.

Well, for PvP - which is the more appropriate comparison - very few MMOs have much in the way of PvP map variety. Even WoW is somewhat limited in that way.

That said, I think a lot of people fail to understand how MMOs set themselves apart from other multiplayer games.

Trying to get going on Sacred 2, but for some reason I keep stalling.

Warcraft 3 too, trying to play the Night Elves vs the PC but getting stomped!

I'm playing Find & Climb, It is a new puzzle game based on keen observation and quick action. It offers a different style of finding “hidden objects” gameplay and meanwhile takes you to travel through history collecting epoch-marked items.

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition: I'm loving it. Yes, there have been well documented issues, public outcries, etc. I'm extremely pleased with it in spite of all that. Maybe because all I wanted out of it was a way of playing BG on a modern system without having to mess around with the mods (mainly the wide screen one), which I could never seem to get working properly. I don't care about the Black Pits area (since way back when arena type scenarios have never been appealing to me) or the new NPCs, which I find utterly annoying as it turns out so they may never be played.

For $20 and the added convenience I am enjoying almost every second of the game again (except stupid respawns in some areas). BG:EE has reminded me how much fun single player games can be. I have a copy of The Witcher I bought for cheap years ago, which I'll probably get into after BG.

Just finished up Dead Space 2 (another notch for the backlog!) Twas quite tricky and terrifying in moments towards the end. An insanely brutal last couple of chapters. I had to revert to a previous save in order to save more ammo for the satisfying (once completed!) endgame.

It's served as a nice introduction to Dark Souls actually. For my first character, a Warrior, I got about six hours in before deciding to restart.
Using my primitive early knowledge, I went for a Cleric and have now stumbled past the first two bosses to the Undead Parish area.

I've also got a game of STALKER: Clear Sky with the complete mod installed ready to go and had a quick look at Avadon for when I'm after some more party based action.

Ive been revisiting Fallout 3. I think anyones whos played Elder Scrolls AND New Vegas can say that Fallout 3 is top notch.
Initially (years ago) I said that Bethesdas game engine wasnt fit for a shooter, and definitely a melee focused game, just because of the stiff animations and the AI, but honestly, Fallout 3 is still one of the best games to date.
I have my HUD amber colored and nearly transparent, no cursor (a bit harder, especially without iron sights, but sooo much more satisfying dropping bodies with no cursor ) and then im playing on Very Easy, just for more realistic damage.

I always hated: Elder scrolls, im slashing the hell out of you but your just losing health, no mortal wounds or anything (as if thats not a huge part of swordfighting) and how many vicious cuts from a sword it takes to down someone, same with Fallout, how many bullets to your face until that health bar is empty, ya know? I can almost understand because of the Post-apocalyptic deal, like well degraded weapons so less bullet damage, but I still say phooey, on Very Easy people are dying properly.
The offset for me is, I dont wear anything more than just some cool clothes, not much armor, and then I really try to play the gunfights realistically, like taking cover to inject a stimpak, always imagining myself actually sticking 1 or 2 of those f*ckers in my arm
And taking appropriate cover and pretending to be wounded and torn apart after fights (love the crippled feature)
My own little hardcore mode

Big Dan Teague?

Originally Posted by Pessimeister
Just finished up Dead Space 2 (another notch for the backlog!) Twas quite tricky and terrifying in moments towards the end. An insanely brutal last couple of chapters. I had to revert to a previous save in order to save more ammo for the satisfying (once completed!) endgame.

Dead Space 1 & 2 were both fantastic imo. I think I liked the first game a little more overall, but the PC controls were greatly improved in the second. I'm planning on replaying DS2 before DS3 gets released in Feb.

Originally Posted by TheWharfMaster
Initially (years ago) I said that Bethesdas game engine wasnt fit for a shooter, and definitely a melee focused game, just because of the stiff animations and the AI, but honestly, Fallout 3 is still one of the best games to date.

Indeed, I think FO3 is vastly underrated. It got a bad rap from all the old-school elitists crying about how it wasn't a real FO game, but I had more fun with it than I ever did with the earlier titles. The vanilla game definitely has some flaws, but it's an incredible experience if you tweak it the right way. I highly recommend installing the iron sights mod. (I assume you're playing the PC version.)

FO3 was not underrated - it simply didn't contain enough drugs, alcohol, sex and thousands of quests like FO1 and FO2. Hell there wasn't a single memorable NPC like in previous games. For example I hated the Vault City chief bitch in FO2, I mean I hated her behavior and praise designers who made her that antipathic. Not to mention that she accepts only geniuses, while (if you rob her) you learn that she's heavily using mentats and without those, she's probably just plain stupid. Etc. etc, on every location there was some story to get hooked on and usually it got wider more you dig. In FO3… Comparing to predecessors of course, stories were crap.

Apart from that, FO3 is still a fun game. Definetly not boring as Oblivion was, so calling it Oblivion with guns was a pure insult.