What are you playing now?

[CoM_Solaufein]

Fallout 3. Oblivion started to bore so I'll get back to that later.

[Bos_hybrid]

Anyone try Entrenchment? I was going to get it, then someone mentioned horse armor while talking about it.

[Pidesco]

GalCiv II arrived today, and Empire should get here tomorrow, so a strategy rampage is nigh!

[Deadly_Nightshade]

I think I'll give Fallout 3 and/or Tomb Raider Underworld another go after I free up a little space on this drive (I'm currently on my laptop and like to keep a 60GB+ "free-zone") by uninstalling other games... Maybe Unreal Tournament III. It's been fun but I have the disc, and that patches on another disc, so I can always re-install if I need/want to...

[Gorth]

Still playing BG2. Finished BG2 proper and brought my party into ToB. Sighing deeply I quit the game in disgust, since I just can't bring myself to play this ridiculous part of the game

 

Examined some of my old games of Europa Universalis III. A fairly fresh game of playing Muscowy or an old game of being the Byzantine Empire. Funny situation in the latter... the Kingdom of Quebec is under pressure from the Empire of Haiti, being completely surrounded and outnumbered. Don't ask me how that came to be.

[CoM_Solaufein]

ToB does get boring. I prefer just to play through the SoA part of the game.

[Rosbjerg]

Maybe it's because I haven't played it that many times, but I actually like ToB quite alot.. It felt like a good endning for the series.

 

Come to think of it.. I've yet to do a a complete game, from Candlekeep to the Throne of Blood.. hmm

[Calax]

Well I started a game of Farenheit... I own the american version but I wanted the uncut stuff, so I modded it a bit

 

God I can't believe how old this game is. The exteriors look pretty bad, particularly in the swooping over NYC shot that the game opens with. I also had to do a little bit of working with the controls so I didn't have EVERYTHING on the right hand side of my keyboard (bad idea that for defaults)

[Monte Carlo]

People slam ToB, and yes some of it was rushed (particularly art assets). However, it was a big, crunchy expansion pack, good value for money and Watcher's Keep is good fun. I like the protracted boss battles, hack and slash and OTT loot. Fully modded with Ascension / Redemption (cheers, Dave) it's a good end to the series. I've usually got a few BG2 save games on my 'puter... my latest has just seen my Ftr/Thf leave the Underdark and I'm looking forward to WK (haven't played it in ages, only remember a few bits of it). Hmmm..... I might go play again.

 

My other games in progress are MTW2 (which ain't on Steam ) and SoZ. Still can't get my SoZ party right, it's bugging me.

 

Cheers

MC

[CoM_Solaufein]

I did Watcher's Keep one and a half times. Boring. ToB was too rushed IMO. The best expansion of any game was Tales of the Sword Coast. Durlag's Tower was great.

[Gorth]

The thing that bothers me most in ToB is the combat. The rest isn't so bad and it was nice getting an ending to the story. But the sheer feeling of inflation of values when peasants are armed with Pitchfork +3 and priceless gems are strewn about, it hurts the "immersion". Highlevel campaigning is just not my thing. Mask of the Betrayer suffers a bit from the same things despite having many other good features (IMNSHO).

[Purkake]

I played a bit of the Planescape Trilogy's first part Purgatorio demo, which just came out on Neverwinter Vault. The environments look really awesome and if you mind a few crashes here and there, it's pretty playable. I don't really want to play the demo, because I feel like I'm spoiling the real thing. The team has put some real effort into this.

[Hurlshort]

MLB 08 - The Show...

 

I'm terrible. I got a AA ball contract for 30k a season after an abysmal spring training. I was doing ok at the start, but then I just started striking out like crazy.

[Musopticon?]

Installed Civ IV and Beyond the Sword after a looong hiatus and now I can't find the darned tutorial anymore. I thought there'd be a section for the new features, notably espionage and corps, but I guess they decided to stick to Civilopedia.

 

Works fine in Vista 32bit, by the way.

[taks]

The thing that bothers me most in ToB is the combat. The rest isn't so bad and it was nice getting an ending to the story. But the sheer feeling of inflation of values when peasants are armed with Pitchfork +3 and priceless gems are strewn about, it hurts the "immersion". Highlevel campaigning is just not my thing. Mask of the Betrayer suffers a bit from the same things despite having many other good features (IMNSHO).

yup... i think there's a way around that problem, but it may mean not being on the prime plane with the commoners.

 

well, they could do it that way, or they could get rid of the fanciful loot lying around and make it so you simply don't get anything worth keeping unless you kill a baddy carrying something worth keeping. intersperse that with high-loot areas that are overall unrelated to the game, but difficult to get to without being high level, i.e., you won't even be able to get to the point where the "reward" lies unless you're already strong enough, and even still you'll need to be able to off (or trick) the baddy at the end.

 

speaking of high-loot, i'm going through BG2 again, this time with my own party, however. it's still amazing how easily you can fall prey to a section if you aren't paying attention. two different loads of druid grove attempting to kill ihtafeer (the rakshasa) ended drastically different: the first resulted in several of my characters dropping rapidly, the second resulted in all three of the rakshasa dropping rapidly. the difference? i held my priest back and cast a few of his spells and focused everyone on ihtafeer rather than attempting to work on her helpers with missiles/minute meteors when they arrived. once she was down, the others dropped rapidly.

 

taks

[Hurlshort]

I'm starting to get good at MLB The Show. My batter is still playing AA ball, but I'm batting .375 and in the top five among hitters in the league halfway through the season. I really like the progression. You get training points when you play well, and you can use those to increase a bunch of skills. Those skills start off pretty low (and they go down if you don't train them every once in awhile.) It will probably take me at least two seasons just to get my skills at a solid point, right now I'm rated at about a D. It's a pretty rewarding system. I've just gotta be more patient on the pitches, I strike out way too often.

[mkreku]

I read about MLB 09: The Show on Gamespot. It's the only baseball game I've ever been interested in trying. EVER.

[Bartimaeus]

Team Fortess 2 - FYI, I am a spy

 

BK:N&B but I suck at it...so...

[Calax]

Finished Fahrenheit. I found it easier than the first time, and started reflecting on the game itself. I think people wouldn't have so many problems with the game if they actually took the time to explain how Lucas all of a sudden became Neo. I mean the first time his "powers" mainfest themselves like that he dodges bullets. If they had either made it so he developed his powers (like he started doing small feats of strength or something), or that it was obvious something else took over when he was in those situations, people probably wouldn't have been nearly as frustrated with it.

 

Of course that still doesn't get around Carla "I have sex with ice cubes" Valenti's oddities. I mean the girl doesn't seem to have any sort of personal life (except for talking with a gay neighbor)... She's a workaholic taken to a whole other level, and she seems to be somewhat of a to trusting soul to be a good investigator (would you really not bring in somebody you KNOW did the killings because he said that he was mind controlled?). Also the fact she falls in love with her murder suspect at the drop of a hat (even though he's already dead) and has sex with his nearly frozen body (from what I could tell, he was about room temperature which at the time seemed to be about -60 C, that must have been uncomfortable to say the least)

[Zoma]

Ravenloft: The Stone Prophet.

 

Oh man, I'm seriously getting old for playing ancient RPGs. But again the RPGs in this age doesn't entice me anymore I guess.

[Purkake]

Finished Fahrenheit. I found it easier than the first time, and started reflecting on the game itself. I think people wouldn't have so many problems with the game if they actually took the time to explain how Lucas all of a sudden became Neo. I mean the first time his "powers" mainfest themselves like that he dodges bullets. If they had either made it so he developed his powers (like he started doing small feats of strength or something), or that it was obvious something else took over when he was in those situations, people probably wouldn't have been nearly as frustrated with it.

 

Of course that still doesn't get around Carla "I have sex with ice cubes" Valenti's oddities. I mean the girl doesn't seem to have any sort of personal life (except for talking with a gay neighbor)... She's a workaholic taken to a whole other level, and she seems to be somewhat of a to trusting soul to be a good investigator (would you really not bring in somebody you KNOW did the killings because he said that he was mind controlled?). Also the fact she falls in love with her murder suspect at the drop of a hat (even though he's already dead) and has sex with his nearly frozen body (from what I could tell, he was about room temperature which at the time seemed to be about -60 C, that must have been uncomfortable to say the least)

 

The game is semi-good if you just look at the first half(?). The developers had to finish the game on a deadline and the last half(?) suffered... a lot. The game had some interesting ideas, but the quick time events really aren't the way to do action sequences. Want to watch 5 minutes of exposition? Do it while playing Simon Says...

[Calax]

Finished Fahrenheit. I found it easier than the first time, and started reflecting on the game itself. I think people wouldn't have so many problems with the game if they actually took the time to explain how Lucas all of a sudden became Neo. I mean the first time his "powers" mainfest themselves like that he dodges bullets. If they had either made it so he developed his powers (like he started doing small feats of strength or something), or that it was obvious something else took over when he was in those situations, people probably wouldn't have been nearly as frustrated with it.

 

Of course that still doesn't get around Carla "I have sex with ice cubes" Valenti's oddities. I mean the girl doesn't seem to have any sort of personal life (except for talking with a gay neighbor)... She's a workaholic taken to a whole other level, and she seems to be somewhat of a to trusting soul to be a good investigator (would you really not bring in somebody you KNOW did the killings because he said that he was mind controlled?). Also the fact she falls in love with her murder suspect at the drop of a hat (even though he's already dead) and has sex with his nearly frozen body (from what I could tell, he was about room temperature which at the time seemed to be about -60 C, that must have been uncomfortable to say the least)

 

The game is semi-good if you just look at the first half(?). The developers had to finish the game on a deadline and the last half(?) suffered... a lot. The game had some interesting ideas, but the quick time events really aren't the way to do action sequences. Want to watch 5 minutes of exposition? Do it while playing Simon Says...

I think it's because their idea was to try to make it so that it was less like a standard game, and more like a movie. I personally think that you're right in that the simon says sequences were just unnecessary and made it so that you didn't really watch the sequences. it looks like they're improving on this with Heavy Rain.

[Musopticon?]

Okay, that's 4 days of just about nothing but Beyond the Sword on Warlord.

 

I think I might do some studying right about now. BA thesis deadline in two weeks and all.

[Rosbjerg]

Okay, that's 4 days of just about nothing but Beyond the Sword on Warlord.

 

I think I might do some studying right about now. BA thesis deadline in two weeks and all.

 

I know that all too well..

[mkreku]

I read about a free MMORPG on Eurogamer and since I had no plans for this weekend I decided to give it a shot (they sounded positive on Eurogamer..).

 

It's called Runes Of Magic and seems to be a strange mix of World of Warcraft (it's actually a complete rip-off, down to exactly the same quests in some instances!) and some sort of anime. So far I've been having fun with it.

 

The main selling point is that you're allowed to choose TWO classes in one character. The way it works is that each class' skills are divided in General skills and Class-specific skills. Your primary class has access to its own General and Class specific skills, but only the General skills of the secondary class. You can switch freely between your classes (except you have to be in your own house to do it), although it poses problems because you basically need two sets of equipment if you switch often. A mage can't exactly wear the same armour as a warrior.

 

Apparently there's stuff you can pay real life money for but the game really feels free anyhow since I still don't know what I could buy or where I could buy it. Totally unobtrusive pay features.

 

Oh, and I had to take a picture of my character in a typical anime pose. Yes, those are women's legs. Yes, that's supposed to be a haircut on my character's head.

 

 

I accidentally ended up on an all German server. I just chose the server that the game suggested for me when I created my character. I was a bit curious why everyone seemed to be talking German on the public channels.. Now I'm too lazy to switch to another server. Oh, and the patch that arrived today (I started my character yesterday) fixed the problem with the server choices! Typical!