What games are you playing now?

I am finishing up my schoolwork this year and it seems it's time for me to start to catch up on the games released recently. I had a look and the following seems to stick out (older & newer titles):

Alone in the Dark 5
Bully: Scholarship Edition
Call of Duty: World at War
Crysis Warhead
CSI 4: Hard Evidence
CSI: New York
Dead Space
Far Cry 2
Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods
Kings Bounty: The Legend
Neverwinter Nights 2: Storms of Zehir
Penumbra: Requiem
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky
Silent Hill: Homecoming
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
Tomb Raider: Underworld

The titles marked with red seems to have flunked, meaning that I should probably put more emphasis on the rest, once I figure out in what order I should buy them.
 
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The titles marked with red seems to have flunked, meaning that I should probably put more emphasis on the rest, once I figure out in what order I should buy them.


Go ahead and mark FarCry 2 in red....trust me.

I'm only about 4-5 hours into Far Cry 2, and I can already tell that I probably won't even finish it.

Other than the graphics, there isn't a single redeeming quality that I could point to. I was a fan of the original FarCry, and this game is a huge disappointment for me.
 
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Dead Space - so far so good (especially the great atmosphere); still at level 2 as i'm busy with other titles at the moment like L4d and Fallout 3.

From the Jeremy's list; a lot of reviewers already dismissed games like Alone in the Dark 5, Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods, and Silent Hill: Homecoming.

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition definitely a great game. Could become a classic title years later among rpg communities.
 
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Dead Space - so far so good (especially the great atmosphere)

Yes indeed, the atmosphere in Dead Space is very disturbing. I play all my PC games with the lights out and a pair of headphones, and that game has me constantly turning around and looking over my shoulder. What gets me more than anything is when you hear those random phrases whispered in an empty room or hallway.

My only complaint, albeit small, is that you can't lock the camera view.
 
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Say man, how did you like it when the Lady of the Lake knighted you, wasnt that great???!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jut5_hH25Nk

Actually I found it to be a little cliche', like suddenly I got transferred into a King Arthur legend or something. But I got an awesome new sword outta the deal, so I'm not complaining!! .... And the fact that the Lady was smokin' hot... hee hee.. she can knight me any day!
 
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I actually started with Dead Space... I just reached Chapter 11. I managed to get a virus-based tonsillitis which keeps me up at night. The problems is supposed to be over after 7 days and I am at day 6 so I hope I feel better tomorrow.

It is an excellent game indeed. It seems to be very inspired by DOOM3 and RE4. I actually found references to Carmack in a log. :) The engine feels a lot like RE4, like the aiming, the stores, even a shooting gallery. DS does a better job in delivering horror though.

JDR said:
Go ahead and mark FarCry 2 in red....trust me.
I'm only about 4-5 hours into Far Cry 2, and I can already tell that I probably won't even finish it.
Other than the graphics, there isn't a single redeeming quality that I could point to. I was a fan of the original FarCry, and this game is a huge disappointment for me.

Aww. I was a fan of the original FarCry as well. I have to decide on that one later, TombRaider: Underworld and Crysis: Warhead have higher priority for me anyway. I planned to wait with The Witcher until I get a bit more time on my hands.
 
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I was about to start Fallout (just after barely losing to the sneaky Americans in CivIII!) but decided to play NWN2: MotB. I've had it for a year and never played it, but after the way the OC ended, never got up the desire to play it. After wanting to play SoZ though, I figured I'd give it a whirl. Plus, I had to run the OC at medium settings due to my old system, so I thought it would be fun to see how it looks on my ramped up machine!
 
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still hooked on quick games of Left 4 Dead!

I never get tired of fighting zombies, or in this case "infected". Close enough!

Almost bought Spellforce 2's add-on "dragon storm" today on Steam (theyre having some sale where SFII& add-on are 15 bucks) but I decided against it. I'd rather dl it for another ten bucks when i do want to get it from the actual site, and be able to play it without the Steam nonsense (being logged in online etx). It is kinda nice being able to play L4D without the disk and all I guess, but i dont really like there being any conditions on my games if possible.
 
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I moved on from Dead Space to Tomb Raider - Underworld. The PC port rises questions. First of all, the mousebuttons cannot be remapped so you have to mess around with the registry to do so.

Second of all, in the first map, before you dive off a boat, my Q6600 Quad Core 2,4ghz with two 8800GTX in SLI took a tremendous FPS hit, while the rest of the game have been perfectly fluid in 2048x1536. I found this to be rather surprising considering it's pretty much the first scene in the game. Besides that the game is graphically stunning.

Beyond that, I am enjoying myself. I decided to check TR:Legends out in a moment of craving for more games to play, even if I have avoided the TR series for many years. Reviews said that it was a great game and it ignored the older titles as "non-canon" (which means that new players wouldn't need to "catch up"). The game took me by surprise as a game much better game than I had expected, much thanks to the better-than-average story. When I later played TR:Anniversary I found that to be a more frustrating experience, much thanks for being hardcore and unforgiving. Yet the story in TR:Underworld seems to pay attention to both TR:L and TR:A so I am glad I played those.
 
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Still playing Final Fantasy XII; I have ~70 hours under my belt by now, including lots of exploration/side-quests. Probably about half-time, story-wise.
 
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Still playing Final Fantasy XII; I have ~70 hours under my belt by now, including lots of exploration/side-quests. Probably about half-time, story-wise.

I played FFXII in two sessions with about five months between. I actually forgot to turn off the PS2, which I discovered much later...

Here's a screenshot of my timer capped:
cappedtimer.jpg


It's still one of the largest games I played. Simply running for all optional content takes forever. The story borrowed a lot from Star Wars but managed to be more epic and cinematic than previous titles, even if I found the story of FF7-10 to be better. I loved the gameplay though. It's the most western of all games in the FF series.
 
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1000 hours, that's quite a record ;).
While I like FF XII I wish I had finished it already so I could play some of the beat'em up games I bought back in the days... y'know...
 
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I think the count cannot go beyond ? 999:59:59 :p so he'll never reach 1000 ?

I heard the combat system in FFXII has some problems, like you don't need to do anything since your auto-controlled companinions could defeat most enemies is this true ???
 
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I heard the combat system in FFXII has some problems, like you don't need to do anything since your auto-controlled companinions could defeat most enemies is this true ???

FFXII have a rather unique system in which you program your characters. If you are really good and have a tactical mind you can simply program your characters and let the game carry out many of the fights for you, at least as long as you are good at building scripts. This have some uppers and downers. One of the uppers is ofcourse that ofcourse you do not need to do all the stuff yourself, your characters do it for you, which in a game like FFXII ease up lots of boring and repetitive work. Imagine manually chaining 10 or so commands over and over and over again every two-five minutes for two weeks. The scripts pretty much do your job for you when running around in the simpler areas where you need to smack down hordes of monsters diablo-style.

There are some downsides to it. For example, you do not have enough commands to do everything you like. Spellcasting require too many commands to be used perfectly with scripts alone. You might also not want to script item-use since it will waste your items far too quickly, so you might still need to manually quench potions etc. Finally the bossfights aren't solveable with simply using scripts. Any form of tactical challenge will require your brain rather than your script.
 
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@Jemy M: 1000 hours? Heh. So your PS2 was just running like that for... how long? O_O

Heh, I remember a bug (or a secret cheat, perhaps?) in FFVIII that I saw once. When I changed the name of one of my Guardian Forces at the beginning of the game, my timer suddenly displayed the cap of 99:99 (with red font) and my Gil was set to some ridiculously high amount of 999...9. I was never able to recreate it, though.

I played (and finished) 7 Days A Skeptic, the sequel to 5 Days A Stranger. I rather thought that this one would not impress me much since I already knew the "who, what, where, when, why, how", but I was wrong. Wrong in the sense that the game was still a good experience, and I could not say "I saw that coming" (apart from the obvious parts). I read somewhere that you can finish it in under an hour, but after 2 or 3 hours I stopped playing after a very sudden and unpleasant death of my character, and I was only half through I think. I suppose I'm a slow player. Anyway, it's climatic and scary, just like I wanted.

I'm sort of hungry for scary games now, while waiting for F.E.A.R. 2 that is, so I just might try out that Dead Space, but I haven't decided yet. I heard that the whole "monster suddenly jumps out" thing gets repetitive very soon - is that true? 'Cause I hated that about Doom 3.
 
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I'm sort of hungry for scary games now, while waiting for F.E.A.R. 2 that is, so I just might try out that Dead Space, but I haven't decided yet. I heard that the whole "monster suddenly jumps out" thing gets repetitive very soon - is that true? 'Cause I hated that about Doom 3.

Dead Space is a genuinely good horror game. I haven't finished it myself, (multitasking way too many games at the moment) but I've never heard anybody describe it as "repetitive", or mention that it got boring at any point. Once you get used to the controls, it's a good action-packed scarefest.

Btw: I'm also looking forward to F.E.A.R. 2, I loved the first game.
 
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There are couple reviewers said Dead Space was repetitive in term of mission progression at each levels (finding tool & fixing thing before moving to next level.) I am only on second level so don't know how big deal is the thing they mentioned. So far I think it is very good horror survival game. Monster won't always jump on you from behind door/object, but they will show up near you from inside ventilation system, from ceiling, breaking through floor, round the corner, room, etc. It's quite hard to guess which way they would come, and that tend to keep the tension high.

The game have very good sound effects and sound system implementation. I found the game more scary if you have good surround speaker. With a 5.1 speaker and on high volume, you could hear faraway unidentified background noises, sound of something creeping around, sound of wailing and screaming, sudden clanking noise, etc - all working together very well to provide deep atmosphere that i hoped for horror game.
 
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I have just restarted Arcanum for the third time, this time because something odd happened with the mayor in Black Root ... thought I was all set with the taxes thing, but apparently not ... and even trying to pick his pocket or kill him I didn't get anything. Oh well ... next time I'll go directly back after collecting them ...
 
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@Jemy M: 1000 hours? Heh. So your PS2 was just running like that for... how long? O_O

Five months. :(

I'm sort of hungry for scary games now, while waiting for F.E.A.R. 2 that is, so I just might try out that Dead Space, but I haven't decided yet. I heard that the whole "monster suddenly jumps out" thing gets repetitive very soon - is that true? 'Cause I hated that about Doom 3.

I found "Dead Space" to be more scary than F.E.A.R. Then again, I didn't find F.E.A.R. to be that scary at all. It's not the scariest game ever, sure (I think that title would go to Condemned, Fatal Frame or Silent Hill 2), but it's a refreshing game when the survival-horror series have taken a nosedive (Silent Hill 5, Alone in the Dark 5 flunked and Resident Evil 4/5 is now an actiongame, not a horror game).

And I wouldn't label it repetitive as far as monsters go. I found it a bit annoying that each level tend to begin the same way with you stepping off a train with a store, toolbench and savestation nearby. Then some of the missions felt a bit "You go ahead and find 5 of these" "you go ahead and find 3 of these" "you go ahead and find 8 of these". But I wouldn't say that the horror itself was repetitive. The times I got scared was when monsters popped up in places where I didn't expect them to be, and that happened a few times, even if I am very used to this narrative.

In DOOM3 you pretty much always knew, everytime you entered a room and everytime you picked up something from the floor, there would most likely be a monster there, and they were for some reason hiding behind walls that opened up when you walked around. Dead Space do not have that problem. In DS, monsters make more sense in where they appear, unexpectedly.
 
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