What games are you playing now?

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
Hey mags, I just loaded Heroes IV up yesterday. Funny quinky dink.

One question, did you load each individual patch for the expansions as well?

…

I didn't. The Complete pack is all patched up. It's this one:


(But when I was just playing my old version of vanilla H4, I didn't bother patching it.)

I have the exact same combo pack mags, but mine is from a different distributor.

Thanks. The only reason I asked is because sometimes the expansions will patch up the original games and sometimes it's a confusing mess like The Sims 3 where you have to patch every single expansion.

I started playing Discovery Freelancer - Reunion, an extensive mod for Freelancer. It's sort of like an unofficial expansion pack for the game, with a lot more to do and explore. There's an RP server with enforced role-playing that has 150-200 players online constantly. While you start out as a civilian, eventually you get to choose a faction. Depending on your faction, you are restricted in what you are allowed to do and where you can be without consequences. For example, if you are a pirate you may not do escort missions etc.

I've only done some basic missions so far, like in the normal Freelancer. But with all that background chatter going on and death messages of other players in the system it already feels very interesting.

I'm playing Crysis. With my new GPU, it's actually fun in a brainless bang-you're-dead kind of way, and not a chore. And it shore is purty.

Played few sessions of Street Fighter 4 on the PC and run well with near top settings on E6750 and nVidia 8800 gts

Assassin's Creed, filled up to the edge with MMORPG style grinding quests…

Let me give you a slight spoiler for this game. There are about 10 areas in total, plus a center area. Each time you enter a new area you can do the following;
1. Visit about 12 lookout points (important in some areas)
2. Collect about 30-40 hidden flags (100 for the center area)
3. In 9 city areas you need to save about 12 citizens harassed by guards, simply by killing the guards then speak to the harassed one.
4. In the 9 city areas you need to do 6 quests each, these quests are pretty much the same in every city area so you are going to have to complete about 6 different quests 9-18 times throughout the game.

Everytime you complete a quest you get a message telling you how many you have left to do.

This will be about 90% of what you do in the game, the rest is story, scripted, 100% linear.

Originally Posted by JemyM
This will be about 90% of what you do in the game, the rest is story, scripted, 100% linear.

Plus the very cool looking combat animations. Some of the ways in which you kill guards towards the end of the game is amazing. Really gruesome stuff. What I liked most about the game was the free-running which looks great, the story which is nice and the combat animations which are very entertaining. Other than that, yeah, it's pretty much the same thing. But personally I never got bored. And I'm hoping AC2 will improve on AC1 adding more variety.

I found out that the flags have no purpose on PC. Simply giving up the search for flags did improve the game quite a bit. Besides that I agree with your points, the animations are top notch, but counterattack is overpowered.

Still blasting thru RE4, just got done doing that one section where ashley has to crank the levers while you protect her from below. Great fun!

Now time to go take care of my other resident evil - painting new baseboards in the office!

I'm still finishing up Drakensang, alongside the 'casual' Popcap game 'Bookworm Adventures #2.'

Played Tomb Raider Anniversary for abour 2 hours before uninstalling it. I used to really like the old Tomb Raider games back in the PS1 days, but TRA just didn't do it for me. Rather than focusing on exploration and finding stuff, TRA seems to be nothing more than one precision jump after another.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Played Tomb Raider Anniversary for abour 2 hours before uninstalling it. I used to really like the old Tomb Raider games back in the PS1 days, but TRA just didn't do it for me. Rather than focusing on exploration and finding stuff, TRA seems to be nothing more than one precision jump after another.

I never really played them back then, so it is all new to me. I had fun with them, but never replay them at all.

Just installed Return to Castle Wolfenstein for a replay. The sequel is finally being released this week.

Back to system shock, the final game I promised I will get through before september.

4 maps left to explore in System Shock. It's not a large game by todays standard, but extremely hardcore, not checking all directions when walking around will most likely make you dead and sometimes checking all directions isn't enough either. I still find the maps a bit difficult to navigate but I found some maps on the web which makes it easier.

playing nba in the zone on my psp. any suggestions on other games?

Originally Posted by JDR13
Played Tomb Raider Anniversary for abour 2 hours before uninstalling it. I used to really like the old Tomb Raider games back in the PS1 days, but TRA just didn't do it for me. Rather than focusing on exploration and finding stuff, TRA seems to be nothing more than one precision jump after another.

Considering that Tomb Raider Anniversary is pretty much a straight port of the original Tomb Raider game into the Tomb Raider Legend engine (except for updated combat mechanics, a few boss encounter alterations and the wall running/grappling hook swings), it would seem that this is more a matter of you no longer liking the style/genre rather than the game not living up to the original.

As for myself, I'm currently breaking in my new graphics card/CPU upgrade with Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood along with replays of both Prince of Persia and Tomb Raider Underworld on the Xbox (I originally bought the PC version of both games but the damn DLC's turned out to be Xbox exclusives so if I wanted to play them I had to get the xbox versions of the games …. and I did, so I did).

I had a load of fun playing Assassin's Creed when it came out. While I can see what the repetition complaints are about I never once felt bored when playing it myself, but that was probably because I was having too much fun with the marvelous free climbing mechanics that made it enjoyable to just run from one end of the map to the other and back again. I can only think of 3 games here and now that made just traveling between missions/quests enjoyable and that's Assassin's Creed, Gun and Prototype.

Originally Posted by fatBastard()
Considering that Tomb Raider Anniversary is pretty much a straight port of the original Tomb Raider game into the Tomb Raider Legend engine (except for updated combat mechanics, a few boss encounter alterations and the wall running/grappling hook swings), it would seem that this is more a matter of you no longer liking the style/genre rather than the game not living up to the original..

I'm not sure how well you remember the original Tomb Raider, but TRA is a far cry from being a straight port of it, at least the beginning anyways. I lost interest while still in the first level, but I barely recognized what I saw, and I remember the original quite well.

While it follows the same basic storyline as Tomb Raider 1, Anniversary is actually more of a "re-imagining" than a straight remake of the classic. The updated plot ties together the events of the original game and Lara's quest to rescue her mother, introduced in Tomb Raider: Legend.

With few options, I am back to GTA4, but I decided I would have to take a break. Being forced to replay an entire mission from scratch if something goes wrong is bad gamedesign, especially when the mission include 5-10 minutes of driving from point A to B before the real mission begins, or that things out of your control (like a NPC killing themselves) send you back 20-30 minutes of gameplay numerous times.