What games are you playing now?

I finished Mysteries of Westgate over the weekend. Fabulous!

Started Batman: Arkham Asylum. Very fun, great characterizations of the arch enemies, especially Joker, and good exploration, though I'm pretty bad with action fighting games. Have no idea about what upgrades to pick.

@ Sammy: No I never played the first Alice. You're right, I probably should go back and play it. I get the impression that this sequel relies heavily on the story set up by the first one.

@ Thrasher: I'll probably get tarred and feathered for saying this on an RPG site, but Batman: AA may be my favorite game of all time. I've finished the game at least 5 times. Of course I'm the biggest Batman fan of all time too, so take that with a pinch of salt.
It's not critical to pick one upgrade over another. If you struggle with combat, you can't go wrong with armor upgrades. You definitely want Inverted Takedown, as that helps you out in the silent predator sections. You won't see much of a payoff with the first couple combo enhancers because you have to have your combat multiplier pretty high to activate them (a challenge for the combat challenged). Still you should invest in them because you will eventually be able to choose the ability to perform special moves once reaching a multiplier of 5 instead of 8. Translation: It's easier to kick @$$! You will want to be able to throw 2 batarangs by the middle of the game and three by 3/4ths the way through, due to multiple armed thugs needing to be disarmed simultaneously. If you concentrate on finding most of the riddles and trophies, you will be able to unlock all skills by game's end. You should finish the story around 70 - 85% completion showing on the main menu. The additional challenge maps count toward game completion, so if you are playing story mode only you will be halfway through around 35 - 40%.

Hey J, thanks for the tips! I've unlocked the 2 combo moves, but NEVER reach the 8x combo to be able to activate them. I do reach x5 every so often, so maybe I should unlock the x5 ability? I had a tough time with Bane. Took me about 12 tries. Finally figured out I had to dodge/evade ALOT and let his attacks take out the goons. After that, I'm thinking maybe armor upgrades for a couple, instead of the x5. :/

I am trying to play Cthulhu dark corners of earth , man even on easier setting it is very hard , i have not reload so many times since starlancer.
Still the game is very atmospheric and Innsmouth feels great.

Have you gotten as far as the chase sequence through town? That was the toughest part, I think, since you have no weapons to defend yourself. Great game though!

I stopped playing at that specific section, and I always wanted to go back. I'm a huge Lovecraft fan, and DCotE was pretty good overall.

It gets better after that section too. I'd give it another go, and grit your teeth through that chase. I actually liked the panic of that sequence - perfect survival horror feeling, but it was frustrating.

Yeah, I had that feeling myself - like I didn't give it a fair shake.

Seeing as how "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is my favorite Lovecraft tale, it's pretty stupid not to give it another shot

It has some particularly startling sequences, so go for it if, you like that sort of thing. Later it becomes more of shooter, but it's still fun.

I have the Xbox version lying around here somewhere…. Would be a good game for the projector and surround set!

Originally Posted by Jabberwocky
I'll probably get tarred and feathered for saying this on an RPG site, but Batman: AA may be my favorite game of all time. I've finished the game at least 5 times.

I've probably finished it more times than that myself. It's the only actual action game that caught my attention in years, I've tried a few more since then but I'm very disappointed that I can't seem to find any other that I like enough to play through even once.

—

On a different note, I'm currently being annoyed and bored by Gray Matter. It really annoys me that recent adventure games are so keen on helping me out to the point of solving their own riddles by themselves for me. It's getting really dull… Thankfully, although I was a moderate Gabriel Knight fan I wasn't all that hyped so I'm not too disappointed.
I'm really glad the indie scene of that genre is very strong.

it was dirt cheap on steam, and I tried getting into it but was turned off by all the bread-crumb style guides - where to grapple, etc. I'd like to figure that out myself.

The fighting seemed like it had potential, and the Joker was freakin hilarious in the cut-scenes. Maybe i was too hasty in dismissing it, I'lll give it another whirl. If it's still installed…

Today is the last "heavy" day at the university for me for the rest of the summer. Top priority for me is to finish the games I started; Call of Duty: Black Ops, Final Fantasy VI and Fallout NV. This summer I intend to put higher priority on long games. The Witcher, Arcania, Two Worlds 2, Drakensang, Divine Divinity 2, Final Fantasy XIII for example.

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Have you gotten as far as the chase sequence through town? That was the toughest part, I think, since you have no weapons to defend yourself. Great game though!

Yes i passed that section and i am currently reloading the car chase , i have died already like 20 times ….wtf developers were thinking ?

Yep, that car chase scene is also a pain. It took me a few tries, too… While a great game, the port of the console controls to PC really hurt this game where precision was required, for example, in both of those chase scenes.

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
it was dirt cheap on steam, and I tried getting into it but was turned off by all the bread-crumb style guides - where to grapple, etc. I'd like to figure that out myself.

The fighting seemed like it had potential, and the Joker was freakin hilarious in the cut-scenes. Maybe i was too hasty in dismissing it, I'lll give it another whirl. If it's still installed…

Yeah, I do get your complaint with that Sammy. Some of the necessary button mashes are prompted all the way through the game. I would have preferred them to ease up on that a little ways in. As for the grapple targeting, I felt that was a necessary and beneficial targeting system. Regardless, it wasn't GOTY for nothing. You really ought to do it justice.

Still playing Alice and OMG, some fights are kicking my butt on Normal difficulty. There have been a couple that I've died so many times I want to chuck the controller across the room. I'm still in chapter 2 of 6 so I don't even want to know what's ahead of me…. well… actually I do… This game is madly addictive!

I finished Batman main story on normal difficulty over the weekend. I will not, I said NOT, be playing the challenge modes, or "extra content" fights. I am tired of key and button mashing after the last set of boss battles, and have no desire to improve said skillz.

PROS: atmosphere, art direction, writing, level design, voice acting, literally hundreds of "secrets"/"puzzles"/"collections, fun "vertical" exploration and attack tactics, "predator" mode / sneaky kill rooms, trophies, nice tidbits when finishing riddler's challenges.

CONS: a little too much back and forth to pick up all secrets/riddler's challenges, some tough boss battles (for me) required too many retries, controls occasionally awkward, especially the third person far removed viewpoint.

I am no fighting game expert, but the combat felt OK to me. The timing seemed a bit off/unresponsive to me, but I'm no expert in this genre.

Overall I'd rate it a 90 though, the cons being somewhat minor, compared to the pros.

Now for something completely different…

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - first play through.

I am definitely liking this, especially after the frantic bat. I'm playing Deirdre - Gaia's Stepchild just for laughs to see if I can win this diplomatically / politically by being nice to everyone, trading technology, making loans, getting elected as governor, convincing factions to stop fighting each other, etc… Totally different from my normal scorched planet approach to strategy games.

Her domain is crowded in on either side by 2 other factions, so she's about run out of land to colonize at about 6 bases total. Not sure if she should try to expand into friendly territory (and risk starting a war), or expand over friendly territory and create a hard to defend patchwork of non-contiguous colonies, or start teriforming the ocean and building on the ocean shelves (not much coastline for that) or, maybe, make a land bridge to another continent? hmmmm

Really liking all the possibilities. Haven't even started playing with navy, airforce, or probe teams, yet.

Enjoying some retro-FMV goodness with Tex Murphy: Overseer (the 5th, and sadly last game in the Tex Murphy series). For you who don't know, the Tex Murphy 3-5 were some of the few good FMV adventure games (Gabriel Knight 2 & Black Dahlia were not all that bad either). I do have to admit though that I have a bit of a soft spot for these FMV games, they appeal to me, even though most of them were horrible.

I just started playing Divine Divinity.

I've never manged to get very far in this game, but it's something I've always wanted to finish. I'm going to try to complete it as a Warrior.

I'm playing the GOG version, and so far my only issue is trying to figure out what resolution I should be using. The default is 1024x768 which is ok I guess. Anything much higher than that zooms the camera out too far.

Originally Posted by txa1265
So … Duke Nukem Forever …. so, so disappointing …

I would rather put a campfire out with my face.