What games are you playing now?

I am playing Far Cry 2 - and it's a lot of fun.
In my opinion the game is closer to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. than to Far Cry 1.
I like it as well - don't think it is as good as the hype suggests, but a nice solid shooter ... albeit one dripping a bit too much consolitis for my taste.

... failed to finish anything in prep for Fallout 3 today ...
 
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Do you think it is better than S.T.A.L.K.E.R?

Woot!, sound like many year-end titles turn up to be good game. Dead Space, GTA 4, and Fallout 3 are on my must buy list now. Also waiting for reviews on Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, Red Alert 3, Call of Duty: World at War. Then again if there are too many good titles for me to finish i would trim down the list to 4-5 titles only.
 
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Do you think it is better than S.T.A.L.K.E.R?

Far Cry 2 is a near perfect free world sandbox-shooter

Quests und story are generated, so you get a good replay value.
You get rewards (diamonds) for world exploring and questing.
With diamonds you can buy better weapons, equipment, weapon enhancements.
A lot of choices and consequences - often you have to chose between bad and ugly ;). You can repair cars, trucks, boats, jammed weapons ...
There are alternative solutions to quests, just ask your buddies ..., buddies come to help if your are going down.
Complete quests for weapon dealers, to get better weapons.
You can drive all vehicles in the game (cars, trucks, boats ...). The bus is a map shortcut.

I would say it's just as good as the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and has less bugs.

my only complaints:
- to many bullets are needed to kill someone in a T-shirt
- the enemy respawning rate could be a bit lower
- outdoors everyone is hostile
 
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my only complaints:
- to many bullets are needed to kill someone in a T-shirt
- the enemy respawning rate could be a bit lower
- outdoors everyone is hostile

You forgot about the worst thing. The fact that destructible buildings and landscape respawn\rebuild once you get a certain distance. Very unrealistic and immersion breaking imo.
 
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You forgot about the worst thing. The fact that destructible buildings and landscape respawn\rebuild once you get a certain distance. Very unrealistic and immersion breaking imo.

And the fact that the whole things feels much more console-ish compared to the original.

Better than STALKER? Not at the core, but since it is much more polished it is a tougher call.
 
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You forgot about the worst thing. The fact that destructible buildings and landscape respawn\rebuild once you get a certain distance. Very unrealistic and immersion breaking imo.

Naive explanation ;)
The enemy is not sleeping and huts out of sheets of metal are easily rebuild.

Technical:
a) If you save every destruction, you get savegames in Gigabyte-size

b) We are in a sandbox game here - not a real world simulation, in my game I got 2 different quests with a similiar intermediate goal: blow train xyz in city abc up.
If this train is destroyed permanently in mission 1 you cannot blow it up in mission 2 again.
To generate new missions is much more complex if you have to factor a huge history of events and destruction.
 
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I had high hopes for Far Cry 2 but I find it pretty bad for mostly the same reason that have already been listed here. Roadblocks/guard posts ALWAYS respawning together with the feeling of meaninglessness I get from the generated side quests just makes me feel like they have managed to implement the worst kind of free-form, sandbox game, the kind where things you do hardly matter at all. But I never was much of a GTA fan either, so...
 
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Finally bought myself the highly loved Zoo Tycoon - in the form of the "Complete Collection" ! :)

I'm happy now. :) All of the time I had always the game of my sister I gave her as a present (plus all of the add-ons) on my PC ...

I've been playing now for at least 3 hours ... :)
 
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one thing that i disliked about the zoo tycoon game back when i played it a few times was the everpresent sound of a toilet flushing, literally the rest of the game once i built a commode. People heading into those things at a steady rate, its constant flush flush flush flush for hours whenever, the entire time I'm playing. Didnt like that part.

Rest of the game was alright, tho like w/ all sim games i find myself saying "now what" when everything's said and done. Time to break open the fence and let the big cats roam free in the park for a little fun!

Im playing Fallout 3 and Hinterland.
I dont care what anyone says - Hinterland freakin rocks! Also, im happy because my girl loves it too, we spent quite a while this morning playing it. Finally something that's not an MMO that she can totally get into. It's a great game, just the right mix of city-builder/rts and action-rpg. Not enough stats to make it too involved, not enough sim aspects to make it a babysitting borefest, just enough action to keep it exciting. About to go play a game right now, see ya!
 
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Still don't have King's Bounty yet Sammy? What is this Hinterland you're refering to? I haven't heard the name before. Is there a demo that you know of?
 
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Hinterland updates have been regularly posted on the news board here. Developed by Tilted Mill studios. Don't know if there's a demo, but the full game (download only) is only $20 if I'm not mistaken.

You can read the latest review on it in Thursday's news 10.06.08
 
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ive been putting King's Bounty off, due to me trying to juggle finishing BG:ToTSC, and playing Fallout. Hinterland is one of those quick and dirty cheapies that came at me sideways, like FastCrawl or something.

It's basically this - an action-rpg, in which you build a city w/ the spoils of your battle, and pick certain townspeople to join your aRPG grinding party as a variety of different warriors. You start w/ nothing but a small house, yet eventually attract thru your exploits in battle (the accumulation of the "fame" resource) different medieval fantasy-type bread and butter npc denizens. They drop in to say hello, at which point if you have the prerequisites (enough fame/gold/this building/that building) they will settle to your town as blacksmiths, farmers, alchemists, innkeepers, fortunetellers, whatever, if you want them to.

As things get tougher out in the titular hinterland, you'll be needing some backup. So you recruit from your townspeople a raiding party of tanks, casters, healers, etx. It really isnt much like Majesty when the rubber hits the road, but I cant help but be drawn to it in kinda the same way. Youre building a little town, w/ npcs all kinda doing their thing, and you just hope some of your star pupils will turn out well. In hinterland however, you do have a central hero character that youre in direct control of, and the robot npcs just follow along and kill whatever you start whacking on, or heal and buff and all that. The weapons have simply attack and speed, the armor has defense. Simple concept, yet complex in it's simplicity, you need to find the right mix of party members yet your town has to have labor. I can see it not being totally earth shattering for most, but worth the 20 bucks ive spent on it already. I like the genre-mixers
 
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Hinterland updates have been regularly posted on the news board here. Developed by Tilted Mill studios. Don't know if there's a demo, but the full game (download only) is only $20 if I'm not mistaken.

Correct - $20 on Steam. I have already bought it ... but haven't even started ... crappy time of year!
 
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one thing that i disliked about the zoo tycoon game back when i played it a few times was the everpresent sound of a toilet flushing, literally the rest of the game once i built a commode. People heading into those things at a steady rate, its constant flush flush flush flush for hours whenever, the entire time I'm playing. Didnt like that part.

LOL ! :D

I know that ! I have a similar problem with the sounds of the animal houses (don't know what's the English word for that).

So I sometimes just turn the sound off. ;) What a relief ! ;)

There are several easter eggs in it, too. The last one I heard about it dropping the mermaid statue into a water basin ... Haven't tried it I think. The statue is also only unlocked by and after beating scenarios.

It is also possible to create an exhibition with my beloved Uncorns :) - this is also a cheat. The enclosure must be renamed "Xanadu" for that, if I remember correctly.
Beware, they are very, *very* picky, though ! They don't like many visitors at all !
 
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Sammy tries digital distribution ='.'=

back (almost) on the subject of Hinterland, I was quite torn as to what avenue to take to acquire the game itself. I'm very apprehensive to put Steam on my system. I dont want to have to be online to play my game, and I dont want something weaseling it's way into every part of my system. I'm very anti-intrusive software, and the last thing that I want is some new service, process, task, whatever now inserting itself into my computing environment or renaming my file extensions or other malfeasance. I really, really hate that.

So I blew off Steam (pun intended lol) and went to D2D - which wouldnt work for me for some reason. Everytime i went to check out, my cart was suddenly empty. Tried it again. Yes, my cookies are on. Ok, Ill turn my firewall off. Tried again, cart comes up empty. So i told them to piss off, and went and tried Stardock, and their Impulse download browser thing worked well.

I would of course prefer a direct link to an exe, (and from what Ive read I can backup a copy to disk w/ impulse) but for now the system worked well. Impulse of course tried to institute itself as a startup program, which was easily taken care of, but besides that little bit of now-standard elbowing-in, I see no new processes or weirdness of any kind other than impulse trying to update when it's loaded. I can run the game sans the impulse interface running w/ no problems. Impulse does it's job, then when it's put away, it stays away without any wrangling. A+

So, just reporting on that, I dont know if anyone else is wondering what I was when scanning around for the right digital distributor.
 
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I'm playing Red Alert 3 and in the near future (I'll keep it as a gift for 6/12) I'll be playing fallout 3. Seems to be that 3 is the key number for my games right now, since I was playing Gothic 3 yesterday ;)
 
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A few days ago I finished The Witcher, the ending of which left me staring at the screen with my mouth open, not knowing what to play next. Well, actually, the first thing I did was to play those extra adventures, and *now* I really don't know what to play next.

Red Alert 3 and Fallout 3 both sounded tempting, until I read some of their reviews. They still sound tempting, but now I simply cannot decide whether they are worthy of my time and money.

What do you think of RA3, Bart?
 
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I think my love for Zoo Tycoon has struck me again. ;)

I'm playing at least for 2 hours now, again ... :rolleyes:
 
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A few days ago I finished The Witcher, the ending of which left me staring at the screen with my mouth open, not knowing what to play next. Well, actually, the first thing I did was to play those extra adventures, and *now* I really don't know what to play next.

Red Alert 3 and Fallout 3 both sounded tempting, until I read some of their reviews. They still sound tempting, but now I simply cannot decide whether they are worthy of my time and money.

What do you think of RA3, Bart?

I just played the tutorial and the first two campaigns. It seems like a mixture of commando's with a traditional RTS. Quite an easy one, I might add -> Usually I play an RTS on the Easy level, but this one seems meant to be played on Medium. The video's are great -> I always like dark haired women in black and red leather :biggrin:
 
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The video's are great -> I always like dark haired women in black and red leather :biggrin:

Yes, but they changed Tanya into some blonde girl, from what I've seen. A travesty! I mean, really...

That aside, I'm not sure I like the direction in which the series has gone, with all those crazy units. I mean, squids and dolphins in RA2 were kinda weird, but they didn't play a big role in general - but RA3, whoa, that's a completely different league! Parachuting bears? ... 'Scuse me? O_O

Well, at least they've kept the videos thing. I have one question though: are there any covert-like missions, where you have only a few troops or a hero (e.g. Tanya), as in the previous games?
 
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