What are you playing now?

[jaguars4ever]

gave up on jagged alliance 2... too annoying.

Where has all the good taste gone?!?

FO1 & FO2.

[Tigranes]

Thief 3: Deadly Shadows. I finished Thief 2 except for the final level, which I'm told is excruciating. I enjoyed it, but I still prefer Thief 3, actually. I know that's probably because I came into the series by playing 3 first, but the following things get me:

 

1/ You gots to go to menu to see Objectives and Map, which really lags.

2/ In Thief 3, you don't get stuck outside a doorway for ten minutes trying to get in, or get killed because Garrett has forgotten how to straddle window-sills.

3/ Sticking to walls, climbing walls. Again Thief 3. Exploration in the city is also fun.

4/ The story is pointless and silly bollocks in all Thief games, so I ignore it, anyway.

 

I just wish the Pagan levels were gone altogether, Thief isn't about all that magic and hokey pokey. If they wanted 'nature' levels in Thief you'd think they'd let you climb trees or something.

 

Parallel, a round of Icewind Dale+HOW+TotL; I prefer IWD2 so it's been a while since I did this. 4-party; an old ex-war leader Fighter who likes his discipline, a young Druid who just wanted to study possibilities of peaceful human-nature cohabitation in frozen arse conditions, a halfling Thief with a relatively pragmatic viewpoint but not necessarily coldhearted, and a Qaralike mage. Sure, they're all stereotypes or slight variations on stereotypes, but I find that the fantasy genre really, really lock you in quite a lot. Everything's a stereotype or a stereotypical denial of the stereotype, which is even worse.

[Morgoth]

Currently I've nothing on my gaming roaster, although I think of getting Stronghold 2. I had fond memories of the demo, but couldn't run it decently on my old hardware back then.

[SteveThaiBinh]

I'm playing SimCity 4.

 

I miss all the messages about kitty kibble. :sad:

[Tale]

Thief 3: Deadly Shadows. I finished Thief 2 except for the final level, which I'm told is excruciating. I enjoyed it, but I still prefer Thief 3, actually. I know that's probably because I came into the series by playing 3 first, but the following things get me:

 

1/ You gots to go to menu to see Objectives and Map, which really lags.

2/ In Thief 3, you don't get stuck outside a doorway for ten minutes trying to get in, or get killed because Garrett has forgotten how to straddle window-sills.

3/ Sticking to walls, climbing walls. Again Thief 3. Exploration in the city is also fun.

4/ The story is pointless and silly bollocks in all Thief games, so I ignore it, anyway.

 

I just wish the Pagan levels were gone altogether, Thief isn't about all that magic and hokey pokey. If they wanted 'nature' levels in Thief you'd think they'd let you climb trees or something.

 

Parallel, a round of Icewind Dale+HOW+TotL; I prefer IWD2 so it's been a while since I did this. 4-party; an old ex-war leader Fighter who likes his discipline, a young Druid who just wanted to study possibilities of peaceful human-nature cohabitation in frozen arse conditions, a halfling Thief with a relatively pragmatic viewpoint but not necessarily coldhearted, and a Qaralike mage. Sure, they're all stereotypes or slight variations on stereotypes, but I find that the fantasy genre really, really lock you in quite a lot. Everything's a stereotype or a stereotypical denial of the stereotype, which is even worse.

 

Thief 3 also has one of the scariest levels in gaming.

[Musopticon?]

I'd go far as to say it is the scariest.

 

I mean, Silent Hill 2's hospital is one thing, facing the horror of Cradle in first person, with freaking body-awareness is entirely another...

[Deraldin]

I never managed to get to the Cradle. Was it worse than the cathedral in Thief 1?

[Musopticon?]

Yes. Much worse. Though I'm rather desentisized to haunts and zombies and always have been. Patients on the other hand were just...awful.

Edited March 2, 2008 by Musopticon?

[WITHTEETH]

Bioshock

 

It has a lot of character. The theme is very refreshing to me.

 

My "new" graphic card likes to artifact with everything on high, so i play on medium settings with high textures and its ok. It seems to be a common problem, especially with the 8800GT's....

[GreasyDogMeat]

After realizing how sucky my characters were in Curse of the Azure Bonds, I've gone back to Pool of Radiance to replay it again with better characters (More humans). I didn't realize it until Curse of the Azure Bonds, but certain races have level limits. A human fighter can reach level 18 by the end of Pool of Darkness (The final game in the 4 part series), while a Dwarven fighter is stuck at level 9.

 

This time through I created 4 humans, one for each of the 4 classes in PoR (Fighter, Cleric, Mage & Thief) and 2 demi humans, a gnome fighter/thief & a half elf fighter/thief/mage. I only have to finish Zhentil Keep, then assault Valjevo Castle and I'll be finished with Radiance. Once done, I will import the four humans over to Hillsfar. Hillsfar, while technically not a part of the Pool of Radiance series allows you to import Pool characters and improve them with XP rewards and some bonus hit points. After finishing Hillsfar I'll import my humans to Curse of the Azure Bonds and create two new humans, a Paladin & Ranger (Both classes were added to the series in Curse and were not present in Radiance). Basically, I've decided on class diversity so I can have a character of each class over a party of multi-class demi-humans that are limited in their max levels. I can just imagine playing Pool of Darkness with a 5th level Half-Elf Cleric.

 

Despite all the difficulties of getting this game to run in the first place, atleast one save game corruption, restarting because of poor characters and host of other problems I'm actually enjoying my self quite a bit. Man, figuring out how to transfer characters was a nightmare! If anyone ever plans on playing Pool of Radiance I could give a lot of advice about starting the game, why the Manual of Bodily Health doesn't give a point of constitution, transfering characters between Radiance, Hillsfar & Curse and what to do if the game asks to insert a disk during character creation! I even took the time to figure out how to Hex edit the characters if something goes wrong. I used a Manual of Bodily Health on my fighter, but his constitution did not raise. Thinking it was a glitch I edited the save game to raise his constitution by a point, only to find out later that in Pool of Radiance it takes many days for the book to kick in and get the con point. So... I re-edited my character to again lower the con and remove bonus HP I recieved from previous level ups before the bonus kicked in.

 

Yeah... I'm gonna finish this series come hell or high water.

 

I think I'll even try and play Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor when I'm finished with the original Pool of Radiance Quadrilogy, though I haven't heard many good things about it.

Edited March 3, 2008 by GreasyDogMeat

[Enoch]

Good luck! I wasn't very good at particularly skilled at the subtle art of AD&D exploitation ages and ages ago when I played those games. I knew enough to avoid the level caps, but I'm sure that my spell use was rather sub-optimal (and I never did figure out how to transfer my characters). I recall that my PoR party never made it past the Boss' squadron of 8th-level fighter guards, and my CotAB party got stuck/lost somewhere in the lower levels of Zhenthil Keep.

 

It'd be interesting to see if my more polished D&D juju could get me further in the games now (and maybe even take a stab at the Mulmaster Beholder Corps!), but I don't have the tolerance for tedium that I once did. I doubt I'd make it out of the Slums.

 

 

On topic, I played some Portal, but stopped when I started feeling a bit ill. I don't know if it's motion-sickness related (which I've never had a problem with before), but better safe then sorry.

Edited March 3, 2008 by Enoch

[GreasyDogMeat]

Good luck! I wasn't very good at particularly skilled at the subtle art of AD&D exploitation ages and ages ago when I played those games. I knew enough to avoid the level caps, but I'm sure that my spell use was rather sub-optimal (and I never did figure out how to transfer my characters). I recall that my PoR party never made it past the Boss' squadron of 8th-level fighter guards, and my CotAB party got stuck/lost somewhere in the lower levels of Zhenthil Keep.

 

It'd be interesting to see if my more polished D&D juju could get me further in the games now (and maybe even take a stab at the Mulmaster Beholder Corps!), but I don't have the tolerance for tedium that I once did. I doubt I'd make it out of the Slums.

 

 

On topic, I played some Portal, but stopped when I started feeling a bit ill. I don't know if it's motion-sickness related (which I've never had a problem with before), but better safe then sorry.

 

Figuring out how to transfer is a pain. You actually needed to go into one of the training rooms and remove all the party members you planned to transfer from the party. Removing the character from the party would create a file called "charname.CHA", i.e. "whackyhalfling.cha". Then you can either drag and drop these .cha files from your Pool folder to the curse/save folder or use the 'copycurse.exe' file to have the game do it for you. Not too tough if you know what to do... a flippin' pain when the %#&@ manual doesn't tell you about this.

 

That group of lvl 8 fighters defending Tyranthraxus is indeed a real pain. The trick to beating them was loading up your mages with charm spells & your clerics with hold spells. While they land about 33% of the time its usually enough to really turn the tide of battle in your favor. Initially I used Fireball but it just didn't do the trick on a large group with 80+ HP per enemy.

 

Oh, and the Mulmaster Beholder corps is impossible.

 

Well, unless you use 'Dust of Disappearance' beforehand. Gives your party a specialized invisibilty, so even after an attack you don't lose invisibilty and enemies can't cast spells on you. They can still fight back with melee attacks, but a Beholder in melee only is a different story. Still a brutal fight even with the dust... took me almost 30 minutes in a single fight to beat it and the use of every spell and inventory item in my arsenal. If I remember right it was 12 or so Beholders, 15 Drow fighters and 8 Drow clerics.

 

Its funny you should mention the Beholder Corps, as that is the exact fight where I realized my Dwarf was lower level than he should have been. Then consulting the manual I realized in horror that 9 was a dwarf fighters max, and even worse my party was comprised of numerous demi-humans I hadn't multi-classed. :'(

Edited March 3, 2008 by GreasyDogMeat

[Pop]

I'm interested in this Pool of Radiance jazz, but I know more of the game's infamy than the game itself.

[GreasyDogMeat]

I'm interested in this Pool of Radiance jazz, but I know more of the game's infamy than the game itself.

 

http://www.mobygames.com/game/pool-of-radiance

- Youtube vid of the Pool of Radiance intro/demo. I'm play the dos version, which doesn't have music or sound as good and, if you can believe it, doesn't look quite as good.

 

At the time, the original Pool of Radiance was extremly well recieved an liked. It hasn't aged the best and it does require a bit of die-hard interest to get into it. Since I basically started playing RPGs with Baldur's Gate and Fallout, it was extremly difficult to get into Pool of Radiance. I can certainly handle older graphics, I grew up on Kings Quest & Space Quest, but getting around the menus and performing tasks often makes you jump through hoops.

 

For instance in Baldur's Gate, to pass an item to a companion you click drag and drop. In Pool of Radiance you press V for view, I for inventory, press up or down to hilght an item, press T to trade, highlight the character you want to trade to and then press Y for yes I want to trade to that person. Combat is also a bit awkward to get used to and requires numerous key strokes to access different commands. It has become second nature to me, but in all honesty this game had one of the steepest learning curves I've ever experienced.

 

The positive is that these old SSI games offer great tactical battles and fairly interesting stories that play out through a journal. Pool of Radiance basically involves a town, Phlan under siege by beasts, with various sections of the city under control. You go through the city liberating each section unravelling more of the story and getting closer to the big bad 'boss' controlling all the monsters.

 

Another cool thing about the series is you can take your characters through 5 seperate games (Pool of Radiance, Hillsfar, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades & Pools of Darkness), creating one long epic experience.

 

The initial thing that drove me try this game is the remakes for NwN 1 & the more recent Pool of Radiance Remastered, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed and there was just something about going back and trying the original D&D video game that started it all.

 

The 'infamous' Pool of Radiance is a sequel/remake to the original game from Ubisoft. Its the one that supposedly removed everything from your hard drive when you uninstalled & recieved horrible reviews.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/pool-of-radi...of-myth-drannor

Edited March 3, 2008 by GreasyDogMeat

[Noceur]

I'm finally playing MotB, and I must say I'm really enjoying myself. I bought it when it came out, but I was so fed up with D&D at the time that I just couldn't play it. I was a bit into ACT III when I stopped playing yesterday.(Le Spoilerette follows:)

The Romance Feat made me laugh out loud. Other than that I have enjoyed almost every aspect of the game. I figured out (most of) the plot long before getting to Ashenwood but I've enjoyed watching the characters, including my slightly slower than me PC, finding out the plot for themselves. I still have no idea what'll befall my main character... I've decided to tackle the Wall (and the Gods in general, the bastards) but I feel I'm in over my head.

 

 

I've finally abandoned the Paladin class and gone for a fighter. It feels good to Intimidate people instead of using diplomacy. There's also a certain freedom to not give a damn what happens to my alignment. I chose feats that are considered pretty useless by most, so my brute weaponmaster is merrily wielding a greataxe* and tower shield. I guess the Gods of d20 will put him in the Wall of the Munchkinless for his lack of respect for proper powergaming.

*= I'm not sure how weaponreach and stuff works in NWN2... I wanted to go for Halberds or Spears for the esthetic value, but went with the greataxe in the end anyway.

Edited March 3, 2008 by Noceur

[Tigranes]

The Cradle is pretty damn scary. I think my first playthrough got corrupted just before the end, and I managed to see that level. I think.

 

About a third of the way through now. Even on low-medium settings it lags a bit on my crappy computer, but it's still very enjoyable - I had fun jumping down from above to club a Pagan, then arrowing another in the head for instant kill before he even noticed.

[Noceur]

Even though Thief III is slightly gimped compared to its predecessors when it comes to gameplay, the atmosphere is very much intact. I really loved the freedom of movement in the inbetween mission city. With rope-arrows and larger architecture, one can only imagine how grand the game would've been (or take a look at assassin's creed).

 

I really should replay the game with my Alien Technology From the Future computer. Not sure if I have the patience to nerve the Cradle, or the Zombie boat mission again though. The biggest panic was probably the

statues. Don't remember if it was the first time you see them or not, but I remember clinging to wall with two of them stomping around below.

 

[astr0creep]

Fallout 2

 

I've played it before but always got turned down when arriving in Klamath for some reason. Must be a graphics thing because the first time I played it was years after it's release.

 

Now I've completed 4 quests in this starting town and I must say I'm hooked.

[Shryke]

gotta love the Super Sledge and the Louisville Slugger

 

there's just something so satisfying about smacking things with large blunt objects

[Magnum Opus]

The 'infamous' Pool of Radiance is a sequel/remake to the original game from Ubisoft. Its the one that supposedly removed everything from your hard drive when you uninstalled & recieved horrible reviews.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/pool-of-radi...of-myth-drannor

Heh... those old gold box games were great fun. I've recently taken to installing older games, more for the fun of trying to make them work on a modern operating system and modern hardware than for the games themselves, and discovered that my fingers still know the keystrokes necessary to make it all the way through Bard's Tale: Tales of the Unknown.

 

Ruins of Myth Drannor really is a piece of work. Last I heard, it was actually Norton Antivirus that messed things up with that game and certain operating systems (can't verify this, since I never use Norton), but that whole issue was supposedly fixed with one of the patches that came out (yes there are patches: if you've got the game, find them). The game is large, though... lots of exploration (that you may or may not feel is worthwhile), fighting with creatures that all look and behave eerily similar to one another... the number of creatures in the game, technically, is a lot larger than the 4 or 5 basic animations that the game uses would suggest, but when you've literally got 8 or 10 creatures using 1 animation... yikes.

 

Still, if you can get over the annoying-as-hell invisible rope that prevents scouting, and the deadly-slow combat, and the lack of character classes (no wizard) and races (no gnomes... no loss either, this), and the neutering of the 3rd edition rules (can't choose feats or skills), and joinable NPCs that start out seemingly full of promise but then go absolutely nowhere as characters, and dice rolls that are more loaded than anything you'll find in Atlantic City, you'll eventually get to what's easily the best implementation of Myth Drannor in any Forgotten Realms game to date. It really takes until one gets to the City Heights before you really notice the character of the city, but there are quite a few features of interest scattered about once you get there. Oh, and the loot in this game is ridiculous, too.

 

Still, it does have a couple redeeming qualities.... if you're patient enough to slog your way through to see them. A couple of interesting characters, a relatively good story line, and a pretty good atmosphere (for a 1500 year old ruin, that is). As a game, it's really kinda wretched, though. When the fighting starts, and there's a lot of it, bring a book with you. And it's the only DnD game I've played where there are lyrics to a song. That's right, it's not just an orchestral score: someone bloody well sings a few times during the course of this game. I was shocked when I first heard it: wish other games had sort of picked up on that feature. I also liked the "DM" feature, sort of explaining those things about the game or the setting that don't come across all that well visually/aurally. Gives the whole thing a more "storied" quality, IMO. RoMD is probably the game that I associate most with "What should have been". It just should have been so much better than it ended up being, and you can see flashes of that as you go through.

 

 

Oh, interesting point of note about the gold box Pool of Radiance/Curse of the Azure Bonds: the item tables between those two games are largely compatible . If, when importing your Pool characters into Curse, you copy the .itm file associated with your pool character and rename it as a .swg file, you'll get all that character's stuff in Curse as well. There are differences, mind: a PoR Ring of Fire Resistance will still be labeled as a Ring of Fire Resistance in Curse, but it will behave like a Ring of Wizardry. And I don't think that imported Gauntlets of Ogre Power work either, although in that case it doesn't matter since a bug in the character file importation procedure will keep the imported character's strength at 18/00 in Curse anyway... but those are the exception rather than the rule, if I recall correctly. And some items, like your +2 Flame Tongue and Fine Composite Long Bow, and spiffy Silver Plate Mail, can't be had in Curse any other way. Ahhh the exploits to be had in those games... almost as good as the game itself, finding all of those. :D

 

I haven't tried to tackle that Beholder Corps in ages, though.... hmmmm...

[GreasyDogMeat]

Thanks for the info on Ruins of Myth Drannor. I'd like to complete the entire Pool of Radiance series, even if it turns out PoR: Ruins of Myth Drannor is Pool of Radiance in name only with no connection to the previous Gold Box Radiance series other than its location in the same region.

 

I don't really mind losing my equipment in the transfer from Pool to Curse, as it is explained in the manual/journal that your party is jumped and then wakes up in Tilverton with the titular five azure bonds tattooed on your arm. Makes sense that the baddies who managed to put my party under and place the symbols on their arms would want all my phat loot and gold . Heh, I'm betting once I complete Curse that my party will lose their equipment again in the transfer to Secret of the Silver Blades.

[mkreku]

The positive is that these old SSI games offer great tactical battles and fairly interesting stories that play out through a journal. Pool of Radiance basically involves a town, Phlan under siege by beasts, with various sections of the city under control. You go through the city liberating each section unravelling more of the story and getting closer to the big bad 'boss' controlling all the monsters.

The thing about Pool of Radiance that really got to me was the positive and fresh atmosphere the entire town of Phlan radiated. I don't know how they did it, but they really made the story stick to me. Phlan was basically a town overrun by invaders (or monsters) and abandoned. Later they recaptured the dock part of the town and started it anew, now under the name New Phlan. There's a wall separating the old Phlan from the New Phlan and your job as adventurers is basically to regain the old Phlan parts of town, block by block, until you've figured out enough of the story to move out into the world.

 

The old Phlan really is divided into city blocks, where each and every block has its own quests, its own special encounters and its own story and atmosphere. While you're scouting about, you always have the help of New Phlan's "quest master" (forgot the name, but it's a guy that hires adventurers and sends them out on missions). I still remember the feeling when I had battled in old Phlan for hours and hours and I got my first mission outside of town. The realization that there was an open-ended world outside the city walls was just mind-blowing to me! I had expected the entire game to play out in old Phlan!

 

I'm so glad I still have my old Commodore 64 Gold Box games stashed away in my grandma's house somewhere. The pride of my collection!

[theslug]

Trying on Sins of a Solar Empire. Glad I didn't buy this one. It's a cool game but I have one major problem with it. Taking over the enemies planet is ridiculously long. I didn't have the particular type of ship that can actually attack a planet except for my 2 capital ships so I left them there attacking, I go downstairs and come back 10 minutes later and it still has a little longer to go. Even if I did have the type of ship I'd need like 10 of them to really make an impact. I'm going to try on another game tomorrow this time 2v2 on medium difficulty and see what happens.

 

Edit: But with that stuff said there is a ton of research development you can do and I like how capital ships level up. I've never played civilizations but I'm guessing this is a good mix of civ type games and rts games which I have had plenty of experience with and would say they did a pretty good job. It just seems like a lot of idle time passes by but thats a lot of me being a complete noob, it was my first game today in such a new type of genre so I was pretty out of my element. But there is something nice about having a monster sized fleet and just murdering an entire fleet of damn pirates, which is another thing. Pirates are freakin a holes.

Edited March 4, 2008 by theslug

[Deraldin]

Trying on Sins of a Solar Empire. Glad I didn't buy this one. It's a cool game but I have one major problem with it. Taking over the enemies planet is ridiculously long. I didn't have the particular type of ship that can actually attack a planet except for my 2 capital ships so I left them there attacking, I go downstairs and come back 10 minutes later and it still has a little longer to go. Even if I did have the type of ship I'd need like 10 of them to really make an impact. I'm going to try on another game tomorrow this time 2v2 on medium difficulty and see what happens.

 

Edit: But with that stuff said there is a ton of research development you can do and I like how capital ships level up. I've never played civilizations but I'm guessing this is a good mix of civ type games and rts games which I have had plenty of experience with and would say they did a pretty good job. It just seems like a lot of idle time passes by but thats a lot of me being a complete noob, it was my first game today in such a new type of genre so I was pretty out of my element. But there is something nice about having a monster sized fleet and just murdering an entire fleet of damn pirates, which is another thing. Pirates are freakin a holes.

 

No. Pirates are not "freakin a holes". The people who put bounties on your head are freakin a holes. I'm in the middle of an 8 player FFA with a friend and 6 hard computers. 60ish planets spread over 3 stars. I've been trying something new this time around. My entire fleet is made up of carriers except for 2 colonizer battlecruisers. It's actually going pretty well. Not much can stand up to 30 bomber wings making an attack run. Unless of course the enemy decided to go straight flak frigates, but luckily they aren't smart enough to do that. This way I at least get to kill a few cap ships as everything runs away. I've currently got 3/4 of the planets in my system so I'm pretty much just mopping up at this point. Both enemies that are left have some pretty decent sized fleets, but they never want to stick around and slug it out.

 

On the planet bombardment topic, yeah it is pretty damn slow. I tend not to build seige frigates just because they take up so many supply points and instead just keep 4 or more caps in a fleet. It still takes some time, but once you research some of the bombing techs, it's not nearly so painful.

[Magister Lajciak]

I am playing Minesweeper!