What games are you playing now?

Got out my new old XP laptop and fired up Medieval Total War Gold Edition. I haven't played this for at least 7 years, probably longer. I was straight back into it and am currently dominating the Mediterranean sea routes and in possession of all islands.

What I did forget was how obnoxious this game was. I watched helpless as the Pope died 1 turn before the ex-communicated Italians were about to feel my wrath (death of a Pope cancels ex-communications). I facepalmed as an earthquake robs my primary unit-producing country of its Port, a stack that was about to invade another island left stranded for 6 turns. But what really made me dig-out the autosave button:

Once the Italians were gone, the Pope decided to invade me in Naples. I'd completely forgotten the Pope was pro-active as well as being just annoying. Without putting barely a foot wrong all game this one move by the AI, that took less than one full turn to put into effect, sent my entire empire into civil war. I now have to choose which 4 counrtries to automatically lose and which 4 countries to keep. After... all... that... hard... work... (and just as I'm about to launch my Crusade to Palestine for big, game winning points).

It's no wonder I snapped the disk in two when I first played the game when it was released. It's not getting me this time though, I've got years of experience under my belt after re-buying it a few days later. Now I just invoke anti-bullshit tactic numero uno and click *load autosave* and put a nice big stack in Naples, should (hopefully) keep him quite until I can get my Inquisitors into Rome.

This is still the only Total War game I've liked so far, but you don't see or hear much about this game because it was one that got shafted by Windows 7 (or Duel Cores), its not on Gog.com and while it's on Steam, it's lost in a list of hundreds (ex.) of Total War games. There's barely any love for it on Youtube, for example, another game that came just before that generation.

If I need to explain what a Total War game is to anyone then I doubt you'd be interested anyway ;)
 
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Heathen!

(And it's Viking Invasion, but bleh, not to keen on that either).
 
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Spending most of my time with Underrail at the minute and loving it. The atmosphere is spot on and the slow, thoughtful pace is really well judged.

When not on that, I'm playing Broforce, an xmas present from my actual Bro - its kinda the exact opposite, a dumb-ass side scrolling shooter that's bizarrely addictive and makes me laugh a lot. ;) I loved it from the moment I found out that Judge Dredd is one of the Bros
...
 
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Spending most of my time with Underrail at the minute and loving it. The atmosphere is spot on and the slow, thoughtful pace is really well judged.

When not on that, I'm playing Broforce, an xmas present from my actual Bro - its kinda the exact opposite, a dumb-ass side scrolling shooter that's bizarrely addictive and makes me laugh a lot. ;) I loved it from the moment I found out that Judge Dredd is one of the Bros


You are playing PewDiePie's game ?????
 
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I'm playing a virtual cryptocurrency mining game called MinerFarm and make a few dollars a day playing it :cool: I've been playing it for a couple of months and my farm is growing nicely, so obviously so does my income. I have been mining crypto for several years at home as well as doing some cloud mining, so to me the game is addictive watching the bitcoins roll in.

I also sell a MinerFarm strategy guide to help you avoid silly costly mistakes. Actually 3 guides because you need a different strategy for different investment levels. All the guide are intended to maximize profits for each investment level.

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Expert strategy guide is for investments over .5btc and well beyond. Price is .75btc

If you wish to purchase a guide contact me at: btcmininggroup21 at yahoo dot com
 
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Playing Ori and the Blind Forest. I'm not sure yet if I'll be able to get into it. Art is great and I like side scrollers but so far the story hasn't interested me. I prefer darker stories than this appears to be. I'm not far into it yet so I'll give it another try or two to hook me.
 
Follow-up to my post about Medieval: Total War Gold.

OMG, obnoxious doesn't even begin to describe it… the AI is just blatantly cheating, daring you to throw your monitor into the wall, tear your hair out and scream like a madman. It is truly unbelievable the things it gets up to in this game.

However…

It is so damn nice. Like a medieval version of Risk where you get to actually fight the battles if you want to. But there's so much more to it… so much more… Do you often read on RPG forums how this and that is good/bad, well, let's see how this strategy game fares:

Can you win the game via completely peaceful means? Yes*
Does it have respawns? Yes**
Is it rougelike? Yes***

*You might need to do some very minor battles, like clearing out trash-mob rebels and the odd bits and pieces at the start, but these can all be auto-battled for no great loss. I just won the game**** without recruiting a single soldier except the first stack I made to defend my first border.

**Some opponents are set to 'appear' at a certain point in the timeline, such as the Mongols, the Swiss and the Burgundians, for example, but the Pope permanently respawns if you ditch him at any point, and if there's too many rebel held provinces a previously dead faction can respawn as them*****.

***You can play like a genius and have everything fine and dandy and the game will suddenly declare your game over because you have run out of heirs. You king failed to produce a male heir so your game is over when he dies. That's it, nothing you can do (except find a cheat code of course, but even that might not help you if it's too late). So there you are, 300 turns in half the world at your feet and… game over.

****You are allowed to 'win' the game at 60% dominance. It says "do you want to take this lesser victory", so you click yes, then the end cutscene takes the piss out of you for not completing a full victory.

*****Imagine the insanity of spending 100 turns defeating an arch rival who hold 30% of the world's lands, finally cornering him in Finland while your capital is Tunisia, you now hold 45% of all the terratories on the map. you set your sights on the next enemy when suddenly there's a civil war. You have to choose between 2 sides of your own faction, each with half your 45% of lands. The half you don't choose becomes rebel-held states. Then imagine, a few turns later… the country you just spent 100 turns defeating respawns as that rebel group… and… you… have… to… do… it… all… over… again… with a heavily weakened state.

I would say, without hesitation, that this is one of the most insane games ever made, a game where reloading old saves isn't a cheat, but a must. Fail to kill that king in a pitch battle? Reload and try again. Fail to produce an heir? Reload and roll that RNG again. Get taken by surprise by a respawn? Reload and prepare…

Eventually, and by a combination of skill, luck and sheer determination, you might just get to see the end cutscene and credits.

I played as the Sicilians, normal difficulty although the Sicilians are described as playing on a harder difficulty than the one selected, starting from the Early Period.

You think you're good at strategy? You want to take the insanity test? Have you got the ability to be hooked on a game for days with very little sleep? You know, I wouldn't be surprised if this game carried a health warning. I'm putting it down for another few years, I know that much…
 
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Since Xmas I've been bouncing between games with nothing really grabbing me. I got Sword Coast Legends cheap and have dabbled in that a bit. I didn't expect much out of it, since a D&D logo hasn't been more than a symbol of mediocrity for years now. It feels like a mindless, Diablo-meets-NWN sort of thing, fun in its way, but ultimately nothing special.

I picked up Anno 1404 DRM-free on GOG recently and have been having some fun with that. As city-builders, I've never really liked how the Anno series does some things, but I still find myself enjoying the ones I've played. I think it's because there's a lot to do, but it's all fairly simple at the end of the day. It's just easy to pick up and play.

Oh yeah, I've also been playing Majora's Mask on my 3DS. I'd forgotten just how weird it was; surreal horror disguised as a Zelda game. Good times!
 
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Follow-up to my post about Medieval: Total War Gold.

OMG, obnoxious doesn't even begin to describe it… the AI is just blatantly cheating, daring you to throw your monitor into the wall, tear your hair out and scream like a madman. It is truly unbelievable the things it gets up to in this game.

However…

It is so damn nice. Like a medieval version of Risk where you get to actually fight the battles if you want to. But there's so much more to it… so much more… Do you often read on RPG forums how this and that is good/bad, well, let's see how this strategy game fares:

Have you tried Paradox strategy games? (Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis 4, etc). If what you like about Total War is not the real time battles but the strategy gameplay, then Paradox games make that part of Total War feel like playing tic-tac-toe with your niece.
 
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While I've played a lot of Strategy games, I haven't actually played too much variety, title-wise, like I've played Civs 1 through 4, Alpha Centauri and freeCiv, Total Wars Shogun through Medieval, Rome and Medieval 2, but whenever I try something else it doesn't appeal to me. Heck, Medieval TW is the only TW I can bare from that series and of the Civs I really couldn't get into 1, 4 or AC with 2, 3 and FreeCiv being the only ones I've spent a lot of time with.

The battle-map fighting of the Total War series is actually its biggest draw, it's great marching your troops around and trying to outwit medicore AI. The feeling of holding off 5000 troops with a stack of 900 is something truly 300esque :cool: and is what makes the TW series what it is. In the above game I was just finishing off an experiment I started over 10 years ago to discover if you could beat the game without building troops and without invading anyone, which I did on both Conquer Victory Condition (only 60% though, for 100% I had to kill a king on a battlefield) and Achievement VC. Normally I would play just for the battle-maps, but this can add weeks to a playthrough, heck you can spend an entire day just on one pitched battle.

HoMM got me hooked for a while, but, like you, I prefer the campaigns which are more RPG than strategy, or more like many mini-strategy games in a row than a single huge campaign. The things like King's Bounty I don't even class as Strategy.

I prefer turn based to real time, for example, so games like Populous and Age of Empires I tried but hated with a passion, even though I don't dispute they are good games.

Perhaps you could provide more detail to your opinion of why Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis 4 'own' Total War in the features I spoke about? Ie: What makes you say that?
 
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Playing Divinity Original Sin EE with my dad in couch co-op. Really surprised at how great the game is as I was not that interested in it at all when it came out. Basically, I thought it was going to be cheesy and I didn't care for the art style, but actually playing the game, it's really good.

I'm playing as a Witch while my dad is a Knight. Love the combat and exploration. My dad usually can't play turn-based games because he doesn't like them, but this game actually convinced him that turn-based can be great.

I really look forward to Larian doing more of these epic, huge co-op RPGs in the future. The writing in this game is truly excellent. :)
 
You are playing PewDiePie's game ?????

Ha ha, I'd never heard of him before - Google to the rescue....! :) And he does have a game as well.
I don't think they're connected though...
 
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Perhaps you could provide more detail to your opinion of why Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis 4 'own' Total War in the features I spoke about? Ie: What makes you say that?

Well if what you like about the Total War games is the real time combat, then never mind. Paradox games are all about pure strategy. You're not the general, you're the ruler, so your job is diplomacy, economy, planning, etc. But once two armies meet, you have no control. You can make things more likely to go in your favor by many different means before a battle takes place (having a better army, better technology, fighting on the defensive, choosing the terrain, etc), but you don't control the actual battle.
 
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Hey guys, have any of you heard of the game Divinity: Original Sin? It's new!

Turns out it's pretty good.

For whatever reason when I tried vanilla D:OS soon after release I got bored with the murder plot and stopped early on in Cyseal. Recently restarted with the Enhanced Edition, and I don't know if the game is that much improved or if I'm just more able to give it my attention, but … it's so great. So great.

I am now ready to vote in the 2014 GotY poll, can we redo that now? Thanks.
 
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Well if what you like about the Total War games is the real time combat, then never mind. Paradox games are all about pure strategy. You're not the general, you're the ruler, so your job is diplomacy, economy, planning, etc. But once two armies meet, you have no control. You can make things more likely to go in your favor by many different means before a battle takes place (having a better army, better technology, fighting on the defensive, choosing the terrain, etc), but you don't control the actual battle.

Cool, sounds interesting. So what kind of obnoxious things does the AI get up to? What are the challenge elements? Is it about domination or achievements or are they rogue-like and you just play for as long as you can? Are they primarily designed for single-player or multi-player? Etc etc etc
 
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After having spent about two dozen hours in Dragon's Dogma and playing a bit of Trail in the Sky last night seems like today I'm going to have to play…

Mass Effect 2

It's the game 6th anniversary and it is already installed on my PC, so why not.
 
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Mass Effect 2

Ahhhh good old Mass Effect 2. Great game. Great NPCs. Happy days! Enjoy :)

It's sometimes great to go back to a game. I've just fired Grimrock up again, and I was pleasantly surprised about how much I've forgotten about it. What was intended as a quick look has turned into a another play through I think….
 
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Over the weekend I felt like some magic using fantasy so logged into TESO… And felt restricted. So fired up Oblivion and played some more of Shivering Isles with my arch-mage character. Summoning minions, scouting around dungeon's whilst invisible, dark environments requiring a light source - lots of those little things that for me make it a better experience character-wise than it's MMO offspring. That and doing a friggin 'sneak into this building' quest and being surrounded by half a dozen other people all running around the doing the same thing, I find that kind of annoying in TESO, it needs more instanced content IMO. Really breaks immersion to be sneaking down some passage and some other toon runs past and clears the place out in front of you allowing you to just waltz in unopposed or sit there watching everything respawn after a minute or two.
 
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