What games are you playing now?

Back to Path of Exile, killing time until Witcher 3. Trying out the Templar class for the first time.

I must say, it's very enjoyable, boomeranging a huge two-handed mace with the spectral throw skill through mobs and mowing them down.

I no longer like the build I was originally trying for, so may need to restart on something else. But it sure is fun in the short-term.

Perhaps I have some frustrations needing relief...

I've finished my revisit of Jedi Knight 2. It's undoubtedly much more of a modern game, but the controls feel very sloppy, like Kyle keeps getting greased up off-camera to slide around so much. The lightsaber fights still feel as random as they ever did. They got a bit better in Jedi Academy, but they never did get them feeling really tight. Still, the JK series is still the best batch of Star Wars games we ever got, and sadly will probably stay that way.

Pillars of Eternity is still staring at me from my desktop, but I just can't get into it. At the moment I just want games that I can pick up and play around with at my leisure, so over the last few days I've been playing Saints Row: Gat out of Hell (pure insanity, of course, but woefully short with a great but thoroughly underused concept) and Children of the Nile, which remains one of the best city builders of all time.

I really want an open-world sci-fi game that's not a flight-sim, a sort of Star Wars meets Skyrim, but such a thing doesn't seem to exist. Er, unless you count Saints Row 4.

I really want an open-world sci-fi game that's not a flight-sim, a sort of Star Wars meets Skyrim, but such a thing doesn't seem to exist. Er, unless you count Saints Row 4.

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Well, there are some quality MMOs out there, have you considered them?

If you're into story, I highly recommend Secret World, which also has a sort of sci-fi vibe to a certain extent. Then there's obviously The Old Republic, but I consider that to be a mostly terrible game - but it does have some redeeming qualities.

If you insist on singleplayer sci-fi open worlds, there aren't many out there. Perhaps revist Fallout 3/NV with heavy modding? Deus Ex:HR might qualify - though it's not that open.

DArtagnan said:

Well, there are some quality MMOs out there, have you considered them?

If you're into story, I highly recommend Secret World, which also has a sort of sci-fi vibe to a certain extent. Then there's obviously The Old Republic, but I consider that to be a mostly terrible game - but it does have some redeeming qualities.

If you insist on singleplayer sci-fi open worlds, there aren't many out there. Perhaps revist Fallout 3/NV with heavy modding? Deus Ex:HR might qualify - though it's not that open.

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I've never found an MMO that I could enjoy for long enough to make it work. Secret World had a great concept and atmosphere, but I'm in the crowd that thinks it would have been much better as a single-player RPG.

But, yeah, the FO games seem to be the closest I'm going to get.

Menigal said:

I've never found an MMO that I could enjoy for long enough to make it work. Secret World had a great concept and atmosphere, but I'm in the crowd that thinks it would have been much better as a single-player RPG.

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Oh, I agree it was a bad MMO. Personally, I think it should have been a small-scale cooperative RPG, because I love playing such games with friends, and I greatly enjoyed the dungeons.

But the game really had no business being an MMO at all.

But, yeah, the FO games seem to be the closest I'm going to get.

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Unless you're willing to wait for ME4

Well ... I got caught up in the GreenManGaming 'we don't have enough keys' debacle ... so instead I kept playing VtM: Bloodlines ... oh well, one day is no biggie

DArtagnan said:

Unless you're willing to wait for ME4

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I'd have to get into the first 3 before that.

I'm a few episodes into Valkyria. I really like how heavily story-driven it is, pretty important to me. I think I'm really going to have a good time, already pretty engaged with the characters. Combat was fine so far, still learning it. It is a bit strange and annoying that people keep shooting you even when standing still. Makes it difficult to plan ahead while not in cover like in normal turn-based games.

ps: Should I play in English or Japaneses ?
Oh, and boy do I really like the medic.

ilm said:

ps: Should I play in English or Japaneses ?
Oh, and boy do I really like the medic.

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Set to japanese VO. English subs.

Medic is the wetdream materialized. Virtualized. Whatever.

After finishing my run through the Jedi Knight games I decided to fire up Unreal, which somehow I've never actually played. It still looks amazing. Obviously it's low-res, but I think it still looks better than most of the colorless, dull things getting churned out today, and it's got some great level design. Unfortunately, the combat wore me down, with almost every enemy being a bullet-sponge. It inspired my to install the original Unreal Tournament, which I've been firing up when I want some quick and dirty action against some bots. Again, some of the levels in that are absolutely beautiful.

In the RPG world, PoE still isn't grabbing me. The RTwP combat doesn't hold up as well as pure turn-based. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so schizophrenic about spell targetting; sometimes it "sticks" to the creature and sometimes it targets empty space.

Anyway, I decided to pick up another neo-classic RPG and fired up Shadowrun Returns. So far I'm really liking it, and it's bringing VtMB vibes with it. I've always liked the Shadowrun setting, so it's good to see it getting a decent game after so long. I wish it was a bit more open, but that would have taken a lot more resources. It's a setting that's crying out for a TES/FO treatment. Imagine having a whole cyberpunk Seattle to play around in.

I am annoyed at myself for spending over $40 on Witcher 3 and only having played an hour or so as of right now ... oh well ...

Still finishing VtM: Bloodlines, yet another Tremere run ... hit a few bugs, but still one of my all-time faves

Also re-installed Half Life 2 ... and it is amazing how well that scales over time. It is still obvious how Valve prioritized certain elements over others, even more now ... but it looks and plays gorgeous. I am in Ravenholm, which is good because I also was reminded how over-long the canal section was ... ugh.

Also played Technobabylon, which was loads of fun and a great genre game, and re-started Divinity Original Sin for fun.

At the moment I am playing:

Kings Bounty: Armoured Princess
Plants vs Zombies
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars
Simon the Sorcerer
The Longest Journey

However, I've kind of abandoned The Longest Journey, though not uninstalled, as I found myself looking at walkthroughs way too often.

I thought I'd never played Simon the Sorcerer before, but, upon playing it, it turns out I had played it before, as I started getting immense deja vu each time I solved a clue. I then got stumped and remembered getting stumped in exactly the same place last time, hence why it's been erased from my memory. Great game, but, again, it's either too much walkthroughs or too much time wandering around getting frustrated for not seeing the nose in front of my face. Probably abandoned.

Broken Sword was going excellently. After spending a few hours getting past the install and first few screens I put aside a whole day to play it. When that day came a few days ago it was, again, great. But then my Windows 98 went blue screen and it all seems effed beyond repair. I dunno, I've been scared to turn the system back on since. Possibly abandoned.

Plants vs Zombies is just great fun all round. Playing for the second time is a bit more boring than the first time though as I know most of the tricks, this didn't stop me being completely hooked though.

Same with Armoured Princess. Second run through and it's going great. I'm managing to defeat most enemies with zero casualties but am still loving all the variety of not having one fight exactly the same as the last. The variety of encounters in these games is phenomenal. I went with Paladin this time which added another aspect of variety. I think I'm currently about halfway through and playing about 10% a week, so it's also a wonderful time consumer without losing the plot while away from it.

There's just one bug with AP though when I hover over some (most) tool-tips (such as spell descriptions, item descriptions and skills descriptions) the screen goes absolutely mental and flashes like a 70s disco. If I spend too long playing it I start to feel as if I'm developing Epilepsy. This is another reason I'm probably just doing it in smaller chunks. If anyone knows how to solve this just by using the game options (rather than full rig explanation) I'd be delighted to know as a google search brought me nothing.

I just finished one of the shortest campaigns on Germany at War - Barbarossa 1941 (nine battles in total with 7 decisive victories and 2 marginal ones on Hard difficulty as the German Heer). Earlier today I put shame on the American flag once more by resigning in my PBeM battle to the Imperial Japan (Order of Battle - Pacific) -sorry for all my fellow American buddies )

I played serpent in staglands for a bit but I decided to put it on hold and wait for few patches.
I am playing Dead state 2.0 and right away I can see some improvements, most noticeable is that now it's lot harder to sneak upon the enemies if you are running full party, so you can no longer sneak kill every zombie in the level.Also ironman and hardcore modes are added(I am playing ironman, I might try hardcore at some point).

I've noticed the ability to sneak up on zombies has disappeared too. I have a feeling Hardcore really amps up the difficulty as map 3 spawned several enemies out of thin air as I forced my way into buildings. They actually managed to KO one of my guys too. So far alarms haven't been a problem, but it's still too early to know for sure.

Down to the last two battles in Shining Force Two, man, I really miss games like this. Assuming I finish at some point today or tomorrow, I'm really not sure what game I'll start next out of my massive backlog.

I started a game of New Vegas just before the big announcement. It's probably going to be the newest Fallout game I'm actually going to be able to run for a little while, since I really doubt my ageing PC will run FO4 when it comes out.

I'm always surprised at how awkwardly paced the game is, despite the many times I've played it. Even though most of the stuff on the way to New Vegas is optional, it feels like there's too much of it to just skip. Then by the time you get to Vegas, it's like you come out of a narrow tunnel into in a big, mostly empty space, with no real barrier to the rest of the game, unless you've done something weird with your finances. All of the Freeside stuff feels a bit lost at that point. I would have preferred getting to Vegas sooner, without the railroady trek around the bottom left of the map, and then have to work a bit in a more open environment to get into the Strip.

And then there's the hiding so much good content behind follower chatter that it's easy to miss if you don't know about it. As someone who prefers not to drag NPCs along alerting everyone and getting in the way, I've still not seen most of their quests through to the end.

It's still fun, though, and hopefully it'll scratch the Fallout itch for a little while.

I'm waiting for the right opportunity to play TW3 properly. Both in terms of time available and getting it properly patched. I'm not liking what I'm hearing about the new bugs being introduced.

So, I'm sort of dabbling in a few games - as usual.

I'm currently playing The Bureau, which is that X-Com tactical shooter that came out a few years ago. It's actually not all that bad, so far. I have a thing for the setting, so that probably helps me forgive some of the significant flaws. I've only played a few missions - but it's mildly entertaining and I might even complete it.

Then I'm playing Neverwinter (the MMO) with the GF, which seems a good fit for her tastes and playstyle. It's not really for me, but it's always fun to kill and loot cooperatively. On the upside, I'm finding the combat very entertaining and there seems to be a reasonably good amount of content variety.

I've also had something of a tactical shooter obsession, ever since playing Hidden and Dangerous 2 cooperatively with my brother. I absolutely adore that kind of game in cooperative mode - but we gave up on H&D2 because there's no campaign consistency during coop. That means you just pick a mission without briefing and you don't get to keep weapons or progress - which is stupid.

I've spent ages trying to find a game with cooperative campaign consistency in the genre, and there's almost none to be found. It seems SWAT 4 has it - so I'm going to try that with my brother.

If any of you guys know of a cooperative tactical shooter with a fully playable campaign, please let me know

I'm also playing New Vegas. Made it 67 hours last time before quitting - not sure why. I probably went back to back with FO3 and burned out. I love this game as I did FO3. FO3 got a bad rap from the Bethesda haters. Is it really that cool to hate Bethesda? Guess I'm not in the cool club oh well.