What are you playing now

[Hurlshort]

Picked up Gran Turismo 5 - Very fancy so far. Boy, there are a lot of cars.

[Thorton_AP]

Trying NBA 2k11, and I'm discovering just how arcane sports can be, especially American sports, if you've been out of the loop for a while (read: ever since you were 11). It's whole nostalgic play-as-Michael-Jordan thing is helping, but hell I know more players from '97 than I do now, and also all the jargon is driving me nuts.

 

 

I've been playing it a fair bit. 80% of it is great, but 20% of it is ugh haha. I created a Power Forward as My Player and have been in general having fun with it. I am a backup PF on the Spurs (drafted 20th overall) and have got my rating up to about 66 now (from like 40 lol).

 

The most frustrating thing about the game by far is how often the game takes control out of your hands. It's retarded how often you get "stuck" in some animation. It looks nice and all, but if I push to move away from the guy, I should turn away from the guy!

 

 

The MJ mode saved the game for me though haha. And now that I am familiar with most of the intricacies of the game, I find it a lot more tolerable.

[Monte Carlo]

The Arma 2 demo.

 

There's a brilliant game in there somewhere, I just can't be getting on with the controls. It's a multi-tasking nightmare for me.

[Tigranes]

Trying NBA 2k11, and I'm discovering just how arcane sports can be, especially American sports, if you've been out of the loop for a while (read: ever since you were 11). It's whole nostalgic play-as-Michael-Jordan thing is helping, but hell I know more players from '97 than I do now, and also all the jargon is driving me nuts.

 

 

I've been playing it a fair bit. 80% of it is great, but 20% of it is ugh haha. I created a Power Forward as My Player and have been in general having fun with it. I am a backup PF on the Spurs (drafted 20th overall) and have got my rating up to about 66 now (from like 40 lol).

 

The most frustrating thing about the game by far is how often the game takes control out of your hands. It's retarded how often you get "stuck" in some animation. It looks nice and all, but if I push to move away from the guy, I should turn away from the guy!

 

 

The MJ mode saved the game for me though haha. And now that I am familiar with most of the intricacies of the game, I find it a lot more tolerable.

 

It's been a remarkable experience, mainly of how when you are thrown (or, in my case, throw yourself) into such an unfamiliar landscape full of vocabulary, tables, pacing and movements you try to make sense of, it all becomes a sort of blur where you then pick up on things in a very distracted and piecemeal manner. I've now played three full-length matches and am only now starting to 'see' the actual game in terms of sport - before it was just a mass of bodies with rather awkward collision boxes sliding around. So hard to tell in my case about the animations, but I think I can see it.

 

I detest the unskippable intermissions (cheerleaders, crowd reactions, etc) but then it's an ironic appreciation of how central they are to basketball as a spectacle now. I think the worst thing is the absolutely horrible menus, the worst I've seen in a long time (for everyone else, think of like 9 or 10 different sets of menus with no centralised listing, like you are messing around directories in DOS and they keep changing depending on context), but the plus is they've clearly pulled out all the stops to create a comprehensive NBA experience.

 

To show how horrible I am at the moment, on Pro/Simulation as the Miami Heats I was trailing 10 points to the Mavericks with 2 minutes to go, just got it level, then finally won 81-79 on OT with two late free-throws. Free-throws which I had chunked down the difficulty so I could score a reasonable amount. If there's one great thing about NBA games it's how you can customise just about every imaginable setting to your liking. RPGs could learn from that.

[Thorton_AP]

Yeah the slider settings in 2k11 are pretty great. Although they aren't available in the My Player mode for some reason

 

I am playing on a controller (if you're on PC god I hope you're on a controller as well...) and I mash my 'A' button (the pass button) all the time on the popups which does seem to speed things along a little bit. It also results in me occasionally calling for a "bad pass" which makes my coach angry

 

Assuming you're on PC, give me a PM sometime if you want to try an MP game. I haven't tried one for fear of getting crunched by nublets. PM me if you have any questions about the game in general too (from a vocabulary point of view, or otherwise).

[Gorgon]

Medieval total war : Kingdoms. It's the best of all the Total War series by far, the Crusades campaign in particular.

[Magnum Opus]

Giving Alpha protocol another whirl, and having a good amount of fun with it.

 

Am getting a black screen after the first cutscene in the Triad mission for Hong Shi in Taipei, though. Don't recall this issue in my first play when the game came out... anyone know whether there's a fix for it floating around out there?

[Malcador]

Supreme Commander Forged Alliance. Nothing like fighting with a high unit count on a huge map, get a proper sense of scale in an RTS finally. Dig the music too, but TA's still seems superior to it.

[entrerix]

just beat infamous last night, good game, was almost a great game but for too many flaws:

 

too repetitive

 

hand to hand combat has no effective place in the second half of the game, felt like a wasted opportunity

 

trish, the "love interest" was horrible in so many ways: annoying, angry, ugly, demanding... i think the game wanted us to like this character but good lord I hated her from the moment she first started talking. absolutely atrocious writing and acting (unless they WANTED us to dislike her, in which case they did a great job, but i dont think that was the idea)

 

mediocre voice actor for the main character, he lacked zazz. A deadly serious protagonist character can work, but its hard, clint eastwood can pull it off, so can bronson and a few others, but the guy they hired just came across as flat and unlikeable, I don't blame him, he was probably told to act that way, but I think they need a new direction for the sequel. He doesn't need to be spiderman or drake from uncharted slinging one liners etc, but a little personality would greatly improve the experience. Which is a tricky thing because in the sequel the character is supposed to be even more grim.... if thats the case then maybe a new actor is needed to lend some spice to the stone cold killa.

 

muddled storyline. the most interesting part of the storyline seemed to be told via the "dead drops" but those took lots of searching for... you shouldnt make the fun parts of your game feel like a chore, bad design. HOWEVER (now i move onto the good bits) the ending of the game was great... its just too bad the setup wasnt stronger or it really would have been a top-notch ending)

 

great enemies: cool designs for the 3 sets of bad guys, good bosses (bad boss fights)

 

fun. the most important thing, most of the game is very very fun to play.

 

not too long: this game was starting to get repetitive before it ended, thank god they knew enough not to keep dragging it out for now reason, i think i beat the game in about 15 hours, they still could have shaved 3-4 hours off the experience and had a better game for it. generally I'd rather play a short but excellent game twice, than an overstuffed overlong borefest once (ie i've played metal gear solid 10+ times, and gta 4 I only got halfway through, infamous smartly picked a shorter length rather than keep dragging things out)

 

eh now ive written too much for no good reason, i have more thoughts but they aren't super relevant so i'll just shut my brain down now.

 

last thought: my "reviews" are normally much shorter than this, i think because this game was very close to being excellent i found it frustrating and wanted to vent. if it had been a great game my review would have been: just played infamous, it was awesome.

[Rosbjerg]

Medieval total war : Kingdoms. It's the best of all the Total War series by far, the Crusades campaign in particular.

 

I highly recommend checking out "Kingdom Grand Campaign Mod" it's made by one of the developers (I believe) and it adds all the countries and units from the expanions into the main campaign (on a bigger map) - so Wales, Ireland, the crusader states and The Teutonic Order etc etc all appear in the regular campaign.. it's like playing all the expansions at once.

[Gorgon]

Before you download this new full mod version be aware that this installer may not work for steam users. I am sorry about this but there is not much I can do to support Steam versions of Kingdoms

 

I actually have the non steam version, but the disks are scratched. It won't install.

[Crazy Tuvok]

Infamous was pretty fun. As far as the dead drops go I thought that a good bit of design actually (like the shards). It allowed me an excuse to explore the city and accomplish something at the same time (something either important to the story or critical for the game). To date in open world games in my experience only Rockstar has ever gotten this right. A big open world is only interesting for a while, no matter how cool looking if there is nothing to do in it. Again, Rockstar has this done perfectly, but Infamous I thought did a nice job of it.

 

Agree totally about the girlfriend and I felt the same way about Zeke. I hated them both. Cole I liked, I didn't find his delivery too deadpan or B-movie badass.

 

The pedestrian character models were terrible but yeah the enemies were pretty neat. And the comic book cut scenes were nice too. The side quests were meh, but I really liked the RPG-lite elements of the game. And Cole's movement was superb. Getting around the city is a blast.

 

Good combat , cool powers, nice looking ruined cityscape. All in all definitely a good purchase and am actually fairly excited to see what they do with the sequel improving on what I think is a pretty good foundation.

[Rosbjerg]

Before you download this new full mod version be aware that this installer may not work for steam users. I am sorry about this but there is not much I can do to support Steam versions of Kingdoms

 

I actually have the non steam version, but the disks are scratched. It won't install.

 

Wait what? you need a cd to install the mod?

 

This mod?

[Gorgon]

It doesn't work with STEAM, only the regular version.

 

EDIT : I can't install the regular version because the disks are ****ed.

Edited December 9, 2010 by Gorgon

[Kaftan Barlast]

Im exhausted after taking pole position in F1 2010 on the hardest difficulty. I dont know what it is about driving games but they just make me completely hyper in a way that no other genre of game can do. I should take a shower now

[Rosbjerg]

It doesn't work with STEAM, only the regular version.

 

I use it with steam - so that's not true.. install the mod, then right click MTW2:K (in steam), select properties, then select "set launch options" and add this @mods\kingdoms_grand_campaign_mod\medieval2.kingdoms_grand_campaign_mod.cfg

 

this forces steam to launch via the mods batch file, which makes it work.

 

This works with every mod for MTW2:K - just find the batch file in the mod folder and edit it.. then copy the "adress" like this:

[Gorgon]

Thanks, I'll have a look

[Gorgon]

Download dies after 1 minuite, no other mirrors. Ohh well.

[Gorgon]

Worked with a dl manager. Hurrah.

[Gorgon]

It doesn't work with STEAM, only the regular version.

 

I use it with steam - so that's not true.. install the mod, then right click MTW2:K (in steam), select properties, then select "set launch options" and add this @mods\kingdoms_grand_campaign_mod\medieval2.kingdoms_grand_campaign_mod.cfg

 

this forces steam to launch via the mods batch file, which makes it work.

 

This works with every mod for MTW2:K - just find the batch file in the mod folder and edit it.. then copy the "adress" like this:

Where is MTW2:K 'in steam'. Are you talking about the game's install directory or something in the STEAM browser ?.

 

The Game executable is not called MTW2:K. I see the batch file you are talking about 'medieval2_kingdoms_grand_campaign_mod' that would be in the mods dir.

[Gorgon]

Nevermind, everything works now, as long as I launch from inside the game dir instead of the shortcut.

[Bendu]

BioShock 2 Multiplayer = very average.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Finished Dragon Age Origins... got through in roughly 20 hours, maybe less. It's incredibly overrated.

[Labadal]

Two Worlds II. I'm not rushing, only playing an hour a day now. I think I have 12 hours logged. Very fun, and I have started to play with the magic combos since I'm mostly using spells.

 

Baldur's Gate II + Expansion. Playing a Kensai/Mage combo for the first time. I'm about to leave the starting dungeon. Using several mods for widescreen and whatnot. The game is as good as I remembered. I wonder if we will ever see anything like it again.

 

Arcanum. It finally works well with Windows 7. I'm liking this game more than Fallout/Fallout 2, mostly because of the mood and setting. Trying to make a mage character with as many followers as possible.

 

All three games have one thing in common: I really like their soundtracks. No, not like, I love them.

[entrerix]

Finished Dragon Age Origins... got through in roughly 20 hours, maybe less. It's incredibly overrated.

 

 

i think it took me between 60-80 hours to finish the game my first playthrough.... i thought it was a tad better than the witcher, how overrated are we talking here?