What games are you playing now?

purpleblob said:

I've hit the wall again and giving it a rest a bit now... I don't quite understand why I don't like it much either. In fact, I actually like OC much better still.

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Like narpet, that does make me feel better. I also can't figure out what the deal is. I enjoyed the OC quite a bit and played it straight through.

Still playing BG2 ofcourse -- and trying to give another go at PS:T although I have a feeling it won't last very long.

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Do you ever actually stop playing BG2? How many years have you been at it like this? It's awe-inspiring.

I've also taken a break from PS:T, mostly because I got my copy of Virtual Villagers and it's impossible to put the crack pipe...er, game, down. I have three tribes going and am raising little villagers like procreating gerbils. Good times.

With milestone 5 set to be released in a few hours, I can now stop playing/testing the U6 Project for a few weeks!!

you aint seen nothing yet, wait til you play Virtual Villagers II!

Im still playing BG, tho not playing enough to really knock the game out anytime soon. About halfway, of course i have to clear all maps tho so it takes me way longer. The life of an RPG completist can be grueling at times.

Relationship really taking up my game time, i suppose it's all for the best

Id be so dead if she read that lol

btw - i think this is "the one!", wedding bells may be sounding in a year or so

xSamhainx said:

btw - i think this is "the one!", wedding bells may be sounding in a year or so

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Suh-weet! Congrats, Sammy! (no whammies! NO WHAMMIES!)

I do not know if this will help, but at least it's my philosophy right now.

Mask of the Betrayer and Planescape Torment are like great movies.

Great movies really give you something more than just brief entertainment and they make you think and remember. However, watching them actually takes an effort for you to try to stay awake and understand all it's layers and if you try to watch such movies all the time it will eventually wear you down. When presented with another "great movie" you feel tired and you feel that "sure, it's great, but I am just to tired to watch it right now". Maybe you even shut it off after half an hour since you couldn't grasp the story at all. That's when you start to watch bad movies with lots of action, no complex characters and a story that is almost non-existant. You just want something that is easy to melt. Easy entertainment that takes no effort from you. You can even brew coffee in the middle and skip 10-15 minutes and still get back into it.

This does not make you dumb. Even rocket-scientists gets burned out and need vacation. We have a capacity for how much we can take in and once we read that capacity we cannot take it anymore.

I think most people do not expect such stories in computer games, but in MotB and PS:T you need to put down an effort in trying to understand the abstract ideas that are vital to the plot and even if you must do this, they have a slow build-up.

After playing both Arcanum, Mass Effect and Mask of the Betrayer I am currently playing action games. A game like Crysis or Halo 2 does not force me to think... I can just run through, do what the game tells me to do and shoot some targets on the screen. I even limited myself to 1-2 levels per day. When trying to play Two Worlds I feel that it's a bit much to sink in atm. I even skip dialogues and I "save" cities for later so I do not have to consume a lot of information. At best I can do "brainless" stuff, such as killing wolves/bandits to get xp/money and dustbust the landscape for alchemical components. In another week or so I will be more prepared for bothering with the story.

When it comes to Mask of the Betrayer, do not try so hard. Give it a rest. Time your gametime, only play a short time per day or limit yourself to 1-2 quests per day until you start to make real progress and the story begins to kick-in.

That's a good perspective, JemyM. It's indeed a more intense and complex experience to play a real cRPG and it asks more of you. That's good, though, as long as it gives more back. I expect to eventually overcome my MotB hang-ups, and I'll try to be more patient.


@Sammy--I figured as much by the absence of cat tracks around this place. Many happy returns and we'll never tell her about that 'dwindling gaming time' remark.
btw It is VV2--The Lost Children. And I need to go make sure my research table isn't surrounded by skeletons.

I got the Witcher from my gf as a belated birthday gift and am having great fun with it now. Too bad I have to take a break to pack stuffs for the move to a new apartment next week

Well ... I continue pounding away at my HP2133 Mini Note, currently playing:
- Unreal (pretty much done with the whole 'Gold' version)
- SiN (from Steam)
- Half-Life: Source (ditto)
- Wizardry 8
- Baldur's Gate

Playing bits of each when the mood strikes.

Still not much on the PSP ... just still noodling with Brave Story: New Traveler.

DS: added Final Fantasy IV and Izuna 2 to the pile today ...

Nice, a few others are replaying BG too atm. This is the first time Ive picked up Safana, and tho she's not as good as Imoen, I almost like having her around better in my last slot than Dynaheir (who i usually toss there). At least she's always doing some damage, it starts adding up!

txa1265 said:

Well ... I continue pounding away at my HP2133 Mini Note, currently playing:
- Unreal (pretty much done with the whole 'Gold' version)
- SiN (from Steam)
- Half-Life: Source (ditto)
- Wizardry 8
- Baldur's Gate

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Wow that's a lot of gaming there, I don't know where you find that much time. I've finished all those games but it probably took me months. Loved Unreal Gold, even by today's standards it still looks and plays fairly good. SiN - Are you talking about the original game or Emergence? Half-Life: Source - the added effects and physics were nice but I was disappointed that Valve didn't port the expansions as well. Wizardry 8 and Baldur's Gate are both classics, although W8 could have been so much better if Sir-Tech had actually finished it.

txa1265 said:

DS: added Final Fantasy IV and Izuna 2 to the pile today ...

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I absolutely loved the original FF IV when I was younger, definitely one of the best Final Fantasy games along with V and VI.

I don't have a ton of time ... I've been playing Unreal since May and am only a few hours into SiN and HL. The other two are also relatively early on ... and with Wiz8 I restarted because I let my last play get stale. Certainly don't get to game like I used to ... SiN is the original (this is on an ultraportable), but runs well at full settings.

I am dug into Izuna and will have to wait to see how well FF IV translates ... heck, it seems like I just finished the GBA version! (no consoles for me )

Is it your first time playing Wiz-8?

I wish Nintendo would release some kind of peripheral that allows you to play DS games on a TV, I would purchase a DS in a heartbeat if they did that.

magerette said:

Do you ever actually stop playing BG2? How many years have you been at it like this? It's awe-inspiring.

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Hmm... can't honestly remember when I've started playing it... but I'd say about 5 yrs? And no, I will never stop playing it

I just got WoW as well! So I will be playing that along with BG2 (PS:T is all forgotten now) and I think I will restar MotB with new class (probably Socerer/Eldrich Knight/Paladin/Red Dragon Disciple combination) but I'm still going to keep this save in case I want to go back to it.

JDR13 said:

Is it your first time playing Wiz-8?

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No - but I never actually finished ... and when I start a game and only get a few hours in and then don't play for a couple of months I tend to restart.

JDR13 said:

I wish Nintendo would release some kind of peripheral that allows you to play DS games on a TV, I would purchase a DS in a heartbeat if they did that.

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I wonder how that would work. With the PSP it works pretty well, you use standard controls and just look at the screen (where it is severely clipped in terms of screen usage) ... but for that I never use it anyway. On the DS it would be trickier - especially with games that make heavy use of the touch screen.

txa1265 said:

No - but I never actually finished ... and when I start a game and only get a few hours in and then don't play for a couple of months I tend to restart.

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It's a great game but you'll have to invest a lot of hours to finish it.

txa1265 said:

I wonder how that would work. With the PSP it works pretty well, you use standard controls and just look at the screen (where it is severely clipped in terms of screen usage) ... but for that I never use it anyway. On the DS it would be trickier - especially with games that make heavy use of the touch screen.

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True, I completely forgot about the split screen. Would be nice if they could port some of the DS games to the Wii, perhaps as modified downloadable games for the Wii's virtual console. I would love to play the FF 3 and FF IV remakes, but not so much that I'm going to buy yet another system.

My pile is actually kinda short. Like I said in #1657 I am currently working on games I for one reason or another installed but never finished. Beyond TR:A, Two Worlds and Heart of Osiris I do not have many games left that I want to finish, at least not right now.

I have CSI4 (Hard Evidence), Lego Star Wars II, NoX and Empire at War but I am not sure I will play them. They aren't that intriguing to me to be honest.

I was planning to maybe take up Devil May Cry 1-3 since #4 was recently released on PC, but it depends if if I will enjoy the gamestyle at all.

I also have a few PS2 games left to play (God of War, Kingdom Hearts, ICO, Fatal Frame, Silent Hill Origins and Shadow of the Colossus) but with the PCSX2 emulator so close to perfection, maybe I will wait playing those games with improved graphics on PC instead.

Then I have Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem for GameCube to finish before I can sell the cube.

I am considering to buy another console to have something else to play. Maybe a PS3 for Metal Gear Solid 4, or a PSP for Portable Ops.

It might be that my gaming summer is over and I should put my effort into something else.

JemyM said:

I was planning to maybe take up Devil May Cry 1-3 since #4 was recently released on PC, but it depends if if I will enjoy the gamestyle at all.

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Imo they're just mindless hack&slash action games, with a mediocre storyline. If you want great action games try the Legacy of Kain series.

As for currently playing, I think I'm going to start Icewind Dale 1 with the Heart of Winter addon and Trials of the Luremaster bonus pack.

I have reached the last level in Tomb Raider: Anniversary so I will probably finish it this weekend. When playing games, I usually go for story above gameplay and even if they have tried to add story in the remake, you can see that the original game lacked it, and like most old games were made on challening puzzles that often took many retries to beat.
In Tomb Raider: Legends, which I loved, the story progressed in every level and it was really exciting to see what going to happen next, but it wasn't up to level 11 that there were any real twists in TR:A.

In Two Worlds I have covered about 45% of the map (north). I realized quickly that if you are playing mage, you do not need to bother about mechanics. Unlike warriors, armor and equipment are useless. The only thing you may want (but can do without) is equipment that adds to willpower so you got more mana. I have 80 skillpoints in total, but the highest level of firemagic only requires 15 points. This is enough to cast the greatest damaging spells in the game. Instead of using skillpoints you have to chase spellcards, the more you have of a spell the more damage it makes. I have found 23 cards of fireball, with 6 spell boosters, 2 damage boosters and 3 mana savers. Each time I sell stuff I teleport to the shop that often store these cards meaning that I often get more every time I sell loot (which is like all the time). I have already cleaned out what's known as one of the most challenging dungeons in the whole game without taking damage.

To have some use for the skillpoints I maximized alchemy. Cleaning out that dungeon gave me enough ingredients to make a permanent +75 vitality potion. I had 25 vitality and 1000 HP before I took it, and now I have 90 vitality and 6500 hp. So I boosted my survivability by 650% just for cleaning out one dungeon.

If I wouldn't enjoy simply exploring the map (or promised myself to explore the entire game) I could probably finish the game in a day just by running the main quest. Two Worlds falls closest to Gothic in my book, just not with the story and characters that Gothic have. It have glaring flaws but it's still more rewarding than Oblivion.

Right now I haven't had much time for gaming. I've been playing Need for Speed Pro Street for a long time now, but still have a long ways to go. I spend half of the time customizing my cars. They all look like works of art by the time I'm through.

I'm anxiously awaiting The Witcher EE so I can restart and finally finish that game all the way through. It would be nice if they would finish the beta testing of that big mod Strands of Destiny so I could at least get some Witcher action while waiting for the EE. It would have been cool to beta test that one but I don't have enough time to offer any real value as a tester.

Just a quick thought:
- Final Fantasy IV is wonderful, nicely done, good voicing and music and updated classic gameplay.
- Izuna 2 is disappointing. Izuna was fun but quirky, and Shiren the Wanderer set the new standard for DS rogue-likes ... so I expected Izuna 2 to up the ante ... but it doesn't.