Drowsy Emperor

Well, I'm more than halfway into XCOM and its quite fun. However in some respects, it feels like a missed opportunity. The game doesn't have sufficient strategic depth to warrant many playthroughs and is burdened with some scripted missions that will always play out the same, particularly in the beginning. Its the Irenicus dungeon syndrome all over again. Really, what XCOM needs is more of everything. More tinkering in the hangar, more soldier customization, more maps, more options in combat, more randomization of missions and objectives. Of everything you get to do in the game, like research, facilities - there are so few things to do that you end up doing most of them, and that makes them less relevant because then its not really a hard choice that has an impact either way. Its a decent framework, but as it stands now its not build for sustained play. Its worth the 3$ I paid for it (In'deed) and I don't regret buying it, but if it were a bigger game in many, many respects it would have been a legendary title talked about for years to come.

I'M RICH

Can I freely sell the items the game says have no research purposes in XCOM:EU?

XCOM EU Just finished the alien base mission. It was tough but my laser equipped troops took care of it. I find the 2 snipers I always take with me invaluable. Particularly the one that can shoot using the field of vision of other soldiers. Support is also great. Heavy is okay, but his real use is when I want to kill something quickly with the rocket launcher. Since I have never played the original, I find this a pretty playable package. So far the game has only two real flaws that I can see: 1. there aren't enough tactical options in combat. Once you get used to abusing overwatch (relying on enemies to come to you - which works a lot) and never using dash the combat becomes rather predictable. My men very rarely die because I can rely on my snipers to one shot enemies often enough. 2. it isn't very replayable. While you can vary the strategic options somewhat in the base, you don't seem to have a lot of overall influence on the way events turn out

I'm getting that way more and more often. Sometimes I may want to replay/finish a game, or at least think I do - I may even load it and stare at a start screen do the tutorial bit for a couple minutes - but it just never ... quite happens. I'm still waiting for the perfect cat/pet/animal/non-human Sim, something more interesting, with more purpose/concept than, say, "ZooTycoon." That's not what I want. Oh those lost hopes for Spore... Yeah, that's me and the Witcher. I go into the gameworld to appreciate the visuals and the atmosphere, I goof around for an hour and then I stop playing. I sorta intend to play the game again, but it just never happens. After the third time I did this I realized that I'm just not going to play it again.

Back in those days they used CDs for the intro movie. Without it, everything else could probably fit on a floppy. For a while anyway

Why not?

Overwhelmingly RPG and strategy, with a single FPS (really surprised to see it was my favorite), 2 stealth/FPS (Thief 2, Deus Ex) and one simulation (Freelancer). The most played RTS are Homeworld and Dawn of War. The most played TB strategy is the Civ series, along with Alpha Centauri. The votes for the Total War series were spread out, but they're probably the second most played.

As it stands, the most played games by Obsidianites are (number of occurrences in brackets): Baldur's Gate II (10) Fallout 2 (8.) Alpha Centauri (5) Fallout (6) Arcanum (5) Civilization II (4) Civilization IV (4) Alpha Protocol (4) Dawn of War (4) Freelancer (4) Unreal Tournament (4) Homeworld (3) Civilization III (3) Deus Ex (3) Icewind Dale (3) Icewind Dale (3) Jagged Alliance 2 (3) Mass Effect 2 (3) Planescape Torment (3) Thief 2 (3) VtM Bloodlines (3)

It'll be interesting to see what the "most played games on the Obs forum are"... I'll make a list later out of all the submissions here and make a ranking of those that show up the most

XCOM. Its becoming more interesting so far, but its also very linear.

Ridiculous. The US instigated this war through overt and covert support in an effort to bring the country under its sphere of influence. Standard scenario: support rebels -> create puppet state when they come to power etc. Since its the last country in the middle east where the Russians have substantial influence they'll fight tooth and nail for it. Otherwise they might as well retreat from global policies altogether. If the west wanted to "calm things down" they wouldn't have started the war in the first place.

Nice, nice - keep them coming. Also the Homeworld 3 up there ^ should probably be 2

Moulyneux is another one of those who sustains his reputation on pure bs marketing and nothing else.

AvP 2's asymmetric multiplayer was beyond awesome. The only reason I never played much of it is because everyone was playing CS at the time and because there were no bots to practice with. The two or three times I did play it, the experince of dropping in on people as the Alien is phenomenal.

I should add Startopia to my list as well, I've installed it at least half a dozen times over the yearz.

All of the regular posters on these forums have been gamers for a very long time, with probably hundreds of games played across various platforms. We all know what constitutes a good game versus a bad game according to our personal tastes, but at the same time can often point out the elements which are likely to get a universally favorable (or negative) response. But a curious thing happens to the games we consider good. Some of them we play through once and never pick up again. Some of them, maybe not even the most perfect ones - we play endlessly over the years because the game never loses the capacity to thrill us. It may not amaze us as before but the intricacies revealed over time and/or the emotions the game inspires ensure the game experience never diminishes to the point that we completely abandon the game and forget about it. The purpose of this thread is to list those games that we have played and replayed for many years, sinking hundreds of hours into them. This is not a simple "favorites" list, although many of them probably are our favorites. But just how many of those games you consider your favorites you actually play as opposed to just fondly remember? I think that the best games are always the games that have longevity, and that longevity is the proof of good game design more than anything else. Off the top of my head, these are the games that I have replayed most over the years: Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate II Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Unreal Tournament Shadow of the Colossus Homeworld Dawn of War Planescape Torment GTA: Vice City

I know, I can make units with no armor and the second best weapons in the game at that moment in a single turn. And I have 15-20 bases, all of them only size 3-4 but fed minerals with supply crawlers. Since I don't have money to upgrade my obsolete units I throw them in combat to die so I can free up minerals for new units. And I still have more military units than the rest combined. If I need research I can bully smaller factions into giving it to me. Of all the military factions, Yang is definitely the toughest cookie. Immunity to inefficiency means I can spam bases all over the world and all of them have free perimeter defenses. Losing a base literally means nothing to him.

Still taking over the world as Yang. Now that Lal is practically destroyed I'm suffering from a deficit of challenge. I don't like Transcend difficulty. Its not that much more difficult, but the drones are completely unmanagable. I usually don't nerve staple, but here I had to.Luckily, as Yang, sanctions don't mean squat to me. I picked up the Blackwell bundle, there's something about 2D adventures - I think when I stop gaming entirely I'll still be able to play a 2D adventure game from time to time.

Same thing goes for Fargo. Its like someone cast mass resurrect on the graveyard of gaming.

Obviously: Otherwise, what's the point

You might as well convene the General Assembly of the UN to vote on it.

These days my backlog grows by the minute.

How old are you Bruce?

You just need to work on your speed. Doing more in a shorter amount of time is the key to outplaying the AI regardless in which part of the game the big conflict comes. ... I'm having a huge war with Lal currently over his major city. I'm gambling on that he can't produce units at the same rate that I can so I'm throwing my men to die in droves for every conquest. On the other hand, while my cities produce veteran troops with the best weapons in one turn, It takes a while for them to cross all the roads to the battlefield. So I may in fact be screwed. But I took the Hunter seeker Algorithm from him so at least I can't be targeted with probes. Sister Miriam is waging war on me but she's not being very active. Air power coming up very soon, that'll change everything. If I can keep Hunter seeker so that other factions can't steal air power from me and mass produce needlejets Lal and the rest of them are as good as dead. A plane can kill a unit every turn, costs little and can reinforce faster than anything they have. I think planes are overpowered in this game. Its always the game changing moment in my games, everything tends to go downhill for the AI from here.