What games are you playing now?

Only played Book three and from my understanding it was pretty much the same as Book two.

3 is much, much smaller. The complaints of the first two games was too much empty walking. The 3rd game is really short in comparison. I'd say the first two games are about 30-40 hours and the third might be 15 or so. BW then added a free dlc to bring it up to the same size, iirc. The games were like $15 for the whole trilogy. I bought them again just for the Steam convenience.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
Played Eschalon I and am tackling Eschalon II at the moment. I think the hunger/thirst mechanic is pretty lame in this game so I generally disable it. I haven't done that yet this time, but I probably will eventually. I'm spoiled by real survival games, so a half baked attempt just irritates me

There's a coincidence, I've been playing Eschalon Book II myself the past few weeks. I'm near the end now and will be writing up a mini-review either next week or the week after in the Finished thread.

Regarding the hunger/thirst: The first time I pressed play I found it to be awful. However, I looked up various methods to attain food and found that a build very close to the one I'd already made could work the system just fine:

A mage with a small side in Divinitation skills can summon both food and water out of thin air. My mage is currently 31 Elemental and 8 Divine (+4 from swap-outable rings). The mage has the create water spell and the cleric has the create food spell. This has worked fine all game and enables the mechanic to be relevant but only marginally without being offensive and enables the game to be played on recommended settings. A fighter/rogue with five in Elemental and Divine would work as well, as would a cleric with 5 in elemental.

I know what you mean though, the general intention of it doesn't really work as a key mechanic, it's either too much of a hassle without those spells or to less of a hassle with them.

3 is much, much smaller. The complaints of the first two games was too much empty walking. The 3rd game is really short in comparison.

As per usual it's a case of solving the problem with the wrong solution because the problem had been phrased wrong. I've yet to play the third game, but if I was asked what the main problem was I'd say that the character moves too slowly, or, rather, there's no speed toggles depending on what type of exploring one is doing. Most open world RPGs have too much empty space walking, the good ones don't make you notice it, and, in some cases, make you love it.

Another solution that would be more in keeping with the game's other mechanics would be to make movement speed dependent on a skill/stat combo, like mana or health regen speeds. Or do like IWD did and have some boots of speed that actually make you travel quicker with no other benefit, that you can swap in and out of use when needed.

Making the game smaller seems like a real arse-about-face way of both looking at and solving the 'problem', lmao.

The last god of war *o*

NFS Most Wanted. Remembering my childhood

I've been playing Might and Magic: World of Xeen for the past two days, knocking out some early quests and exploring a dungeon or three. I started on the light side this time, which I always find to be a slightly easier way to ease into the world. Right now I'm trying to get a solid collection of spells going, as I'm a big proponent of having at least two folks that can make use of the beacon spell.

Last night in the World of Xeen, I was working on clearing one of the towns, Winterkill. You have to do certain things in a particular order to eradicate the opposition in the town, and even though I've played this game several times in the past, I kept neglecting one part and wound up basically clearing the environment maybe three times over.

I will say though, I wasn't frustrated or upset about it, just thumped myself on the head, smiled, and moved on. What a great game!!

Playing Lost Lands: The Golden Curse. Another moody day and can only play puzzle games.

Originally Posted by kazga
Playing Lost Lands: The Golden Curse. Another moody day and can only play puzzle games.

Thanks for this

Days Gone. Enjoying it more than Horizon Zero Dawn so far and i've heard the beginning here is bad.

I'm on third Mass Effect now. I had a dilemma whether I should get a break between 2 and 3 (loved 2, btw, even with some of its flaws) but I decided to play it right away while the story is still fresh in my memory. It's a bit better than 2 in some areas (weapons and armor are the best in the trilogy, IMO) and worse in some (quest log is almost useless, it only tracks whether I got the quest and whether I completed it, nothing in between). I'm a bit overwhelmed by all these random side quests I got on Citadel. There's a ton of them and they look like simple fetch quests. I hate that they are clogging my quest log.

If I had to describe the trilogy in terms of movies, the first would be a cult classic, the second would be a fan favorite, and the third one is a Hollywood blockbuster. Whether the third is good or not, I cant yet judge, I'm only 10 hours in.

Just started The Outer Works

Got some spare time to play, so here is the menu:

Something new:
Outer Worlds (PS4): just 3 hours in, currently about 70% love, 30% hate. The guy who QA'd the UI, must burn in Hell though.

Something offbeat:
Outer Wilds (PS4): yup, there is still some creativity in the Biz. Kudos!
(damn you, why name two very different games so similar?)

Something classic:
Icewind Dale (Switch): my favorite IE game, playing as solo F/M/T on hard. Surprisingly playable on the go.

Yesterday I completed Might and Magic four, and crossed over to the dark side to begin the fifth game. While the fourth one is pretty large, I believe the fifth one is even bigger, so I'm looking forward to another solid week or two of entertainment and exploration. The Xeen fight at the end of the fourth game was rather anti-climatic, his pet gave me a better fight than he did himself.

Not playing that much at the moment.

I'm mostly playing a bit of Borderlands 3 here and there, which I like - but it's not great or anything.

But I like the gun variety and I don't really have a problem with the awkward writing.

To me, Borderlands was never about great writing - so I'm sort of missing how BL3 is so much worse, according to a lot of people.

Maybe it's because it targets modern streamers as obnoxious people - which might be a little hard to swallow for…. streamers

Still Outer Worlds and having a ball! It is the first game I role played(in sections) a ’bad’ character.

I didn't quite finish Might and Magic Five, but found a good stopping point and signed up to play some Everquest one. I jumped on the new heroic server, I'll give it a month and see if the old spark hits me.

Call of Duty forever!!!

Trying to stay interested in RDR2 - but it's not making it easy.

I have to conclude that the wonderful and beautifully detailed open world is largely a complete waste.

Better to focus entirely on the story missions and be done with it, if I can manage that.

I need a good game come december, where I have two weeks of vacation time.

I wonder if something will come to me. I wanted Phoenix Point to take the spot, but with recent DLC plans announced, it seems clear that it'll be smarter to wait.

Oh well…..

Originally Posted by BriefDArt
I need a good game come december, where I have two weeks of vacation time.

I did some research for you and the AAA release schedule for the rest of the year is:

Death Stranding (couple of days ago)
Stormland Rift (in a couple of days)
Star Wars Jedi Fallen order (couple of days)
Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts (end of Nov)
Terminator Resistance (beginning of Dec)

And some other stuff like Ashen, Shenmue 3, Star Ocean, Narcos, but TBH I'm not entirely sure what version of console shoot-em-up while wandering around looting stuff is exactly your specific cup of tea.

Death Stranding is supposed to be really original and ground-breaking, and Jim Sterling didn't like it, so you should be all over that…? No?