What games are you playing now?

I have Disciples I Gold, and I once tried to get into the game, but somehow never understood it.

Can someone give me a page where I can get help texts for this, a fan page, maybe ?

http://seek-destroy.octopis.com/main15.html

Yeah, so I mentioned 'reality' … that means dealing with the stack of sucky games I need to get reviewed …

On the DS I've played Death, Jr. and the Science Fair of Doom which is just as promising yet mediocre as its' PSP brethren, and also Time Ace which is somewhat better but still pretty crappy - made worse since I've played a couple of decent PSP flight games recently.

As for the PSP I have had to make an unfortunate return to being 17 in Brooktown High: Senior Year, which is an unfortunate pseudo-social sim with some pretty lousy design choices. After I finish reviewing that I get to start on the 20th Anniversary edition of Final Fantasy … I have mixed feelings about that, but we'll see how it plays.

On the PC my only current duty is an adventure game called Dead Reefs, which means I can spend some time playing what I *want* this weekend … now I just have to figure out what that is … maybe replaying Gothic 2 or Baldur's Gate 2 on the Mac or … um … just don't know yet …

You can play Gothic 2 on the Mac?

Originally Posted by JDR13
You can play Gothic 2 on the Mac?

Oops … my bad on the sentence structure - I was just free-thinking. I have been rebuilding my Mac collection, and was thinking about BG2 or IWD. Then again, it has been nearly a year since my last G2/NotR run … then there is Overlord, Day Watch, HoMM V, replaying NWN2 or G3 or finally spending more time on Betrayal at Krondor or … well, you see the dilemma.

But my two top candidates are BG2 for Mac and Gothic 2 for PC.

How is HoMM V by the way? I was thinking of picking it up after a price drop. I played some of HoMM 2-4 and like them, but the 5th installment doesn't seem to be getting any rave reviews.

HOMMV put me to sleep halfway thru, personally. Maybe i'm not a TBS guy. Then again, i did find it rather easy, I just couldnt stay awake playing it!
Marvelous graphics and all that tho, great looking title. Just boring as hell imho

hey mike if you ever feel like unloading your copy of day watch i know a buyer

Originally Posted by JDR13
How is HoMM V by the way?

I never played any of the others, and barely got to play any of this before. I was borrowing it from a former coworker who was totally addicted so I never got it much at all. Recently I picked it up on Goozex and figure it is worth a go.

Originally Posted by JDR13
How is HoMM V by the way? I was thinking of picking it up after a price drop. I played some of HoMM 2-4 and like them, but the 5th installment doesn't seem to be getting any rave reviews.

There's a demo. I enjoyed the demo enough that I'll probably make a purchase. I really liked the addition and implementation of the initiative stack. The bad news is that rumor has it there's a fair bit of missing content in the base game which was added in with the expansion (Hammers of Fate or some such). I think I heard somewhere that there's another expansion in the works. Regardless, I'm going to wait for a "gold" version that combines the base game and expansions in one box. There's a HoMM5 Silver available in Europe that does that, but it's not available here at last check. The fact that it's "Silver" kinda implies a "Gold" to follow, so I'm going to be patient.

I really liked HoMMV at first but now I never play it…they made it absurdly easy when they did the HoF expansion and it is now, as Sammy says, boring as hell..literally sleep inducing.

They've released a standalone X pak just recently which I probably won't buy til it hits bargain prices--"something of the North"--with orcs as a playable race I think.

I could never get into the HOMM games. Perhaps it's too much of a similar game to Age Of Wonders and Disciples which I've played a fair bit of.

Currently playing Anno 1701 and Rome Total War. Rome surprised me, I didn't like Medieval very much at all, I wanted more of a strategic campaign, so I expected Rome to be the same. But I got it very cheap, and it's much more interesting than Medieval was.
Anno 1701 is a reasonably simple city-builder game, not as complex as the Impressions or Tilted Mill games, but fun all the same.

Originally Posted by Gallifrey
I could never get into the HOMM games. Perhaps it's too much of a similar game to Age Of Wonders and Disciples which I've played a fair bit of.

I cut my teeth on HoMMII, and the hours I've played through the series are probably unmatched. It is incredibly frustrating sometimes, though--the classic cheating AI. It's a very basic and primitive TBS really, but I have to loyally say it hasn't been surpassed

Anno 1701 is a reasonably simple city-builder game, not as complex as the Impressions or Tilted Mill games, but fun all the same.

Does this game have any combat aspects? I'd like a new city builder to play, but I hate the clunky way they tend to implement combat, as in Cleopatra/Emperor, where it requires the dexterity of a marmoset on methamphetamine to move your garrison from one side of the town to the other. Very distracting when all you are desparately trying to do is get the grain harvest in before the market peddlars run out of food and keep the crafter's district from burning down.

I recently picked up Ceaser IV, but found the interface and mechanics rather offputting, so haven't gotten far with it. Curious how Anno 1701 stacks up.

Originally Posted by magerette
Does this game have any combat aspects? I'd like a new city builder to play, but I hate the clunky way they tend to implement combat, as in Cleopatra/Emperor, where it requires the dexterity of a marmoset on methamphetamine to move your garrison from one side of the town to the other. Very distracting when all you are desparately trying to do is get the grain harvest in before the market peddlars run out of food and keep the crafter's district from burning down.

I recently picked up Ceaser IV, but found the interface and mechanics rather offputting, so haven't gotten far with it. Curious how Anno 1701 stacks up.

So far the only combat I've seen having to defend against the occasional pirate vessel. There is or can be combat, as you can build military structures and such, but so far I haven't seen battle. Now, I've only really been playing in something of a sandbox mode which is pretty peaceful due to the settings I've assigned. The main campaign likely calls for some fighting at some point, but I can't say how it plays out. Probably not all that great, as battle in city builder games is usually bad.
I completely understand what you mean, though. Having to manage inept soldiers while tending to other things is a major irritation in these types of games.

The game itself though is very nice looking, great models, graphics and animations. The music is good and the voice acting very respectable. As I said it's simpler than things like Caesar, mainly in that you don't have to micromanage goods distributions all that much. It also doesn't use the walker mechanic that plagued the Impressions games, goods and services are distributed on a radius scale for the most part. Chains of production need road access and whatnot but it's pretty straightforward.

The interface is really nice. Easy to navigate and most importantly *responsive*. I found the interface in Caesar IV to be quite lag-laden, for example.

Overall, it's quite enjoyable and I often find myself sucked into it for much longer than I may have intended. As far as it goes for a city builder it's pretty casual but not insultingly simple.

@curiously undead : Thanks.

The earlier Homm games, especially 2&3, are great games. You'll see them somewhere on pretty much every top 100 list.

@magerette
Are you sure that Homm V expansion is standalone? I've read a few reviews on it, but none of them mention whether or not you need the original.

@dteowner
I'll definitely wait for the gold version as well. I hate paying 30-40 bucks for a game and then seeing a gold version with extras included for $30 a few months later. That seems to happen a lot especially with strategy games.

@JDR here's a linky

snip:

Ubisoft and developer Nival …. decided to make the game a special form of expansion in the vein of Dawn of War: Dark Crusade. Tribes of the East will be both a stand-alone game which can be purchased and played by itself, or an expansion to an existing installation of Heroes V.

I think Dhruin posted something about this awhile back. My mistake on saying it had been released; it's later this fall apparently. (Hammers of Fate is the one already out and it is definitely not a standalone.)


@Gallifrey Thanks for the summing up. I also tend to play more now in the sandbox mode to avoid the combat as much as possible, but sometimes a campaign is a welcome challenge.

Thanks magerette. It was Hammers of Fate that I had read about, not Tribes of the East.

Thought maybe that was it. It's a pretty underwhelming expansion, anyway--I regret buying it, since it turned me off to HoMMV entirely. I guess we can hope this new one will be better.

i'm currently playing company of heroes which i finally nabbed a good deal on. i enjoyed the demo greatly last fall but haven't really been interested in or enjoyed anything relic has done since the remarkle original homeworld. this game is turning out to be one of the best strategy games i've ever played however. it caters perfectly to a defensive style player/builder like myself and the only flaw i've found in the game is that the menu is mapped to the f10 key instead of the escape key! hearing mercurios voice from bloodlines is also amusing to no end for me as his humour is just as solid as in that fine game. before this game however i was also pleasantly suprised to find how really enjoyable jade empire was. that's a definate replay sometime in the future, my favourite bioware game for sure.