What are you playing now?

[Amentep]

Playing Skyrim.

 

Was playing Saints Row The Third, but I hurt my back and can't drive from a prone position (but oddly have no problem hacking and slashing, although I have to lay further away from the screen and Skyrim's dialog choices aren't exactly easy to read from a distance).

[Calax]

So... I picked up Homefront, and imo it was worth the 7.50 I got it for.

 

BUT I figured since I'm digging through all this in my head I might as well lay it out in a semi-review format.

 

So, for those who don't know, Homefront is a game that had a huge selling point of "Written by the guy who did Red Dawn". Personally I haven't seen Red Dawn, but the entire game feels like a relic of the Cold War era. America has been Conquered by the Reds (Koreans in this case... was originally the chinese but politics interefered), and is now acting as an occupied country. The game itself takes place two years after the Reds take over, and it looks like the entire place had been invaded... and then just ignored. Buildings are falling apart, NOTHING is clean, and the entire aesthetic would look more at home in a post-apoc game/movie.

 

The protagonist in the game is entirely forgettable, never saying a word and only having one defining characteristic (he's a pilot). He's picked up at the start of the game because the Koreans are rounding up all the pilots (it's not explained very well), and put on a bus to a labor camp (which gives the devs a chance to show off "THESE GUYS ARE EVIL!" scenes like a mother and father telling their toddler "Don't look" before they're executed... random beatings...). Then you meet the rebels when they RAM THE BUS WITH A SEMI to "Rescue" you, and you start off on your adventures to find and steal some fuel to give to military hold outs on the other side of the rockies.

 

I have three BIG gripes with this game.

1) The characters.

Ok, I understand this is a shooter, and thus your chances for interactions are limited. I get that, I really do... but the characters in this come off as one note characters who have little to no personality. The one you spend the most time with (Conner) is the de-facto leader of the troupe, and I HATE him. Mainly because he's a revenge freak who does absolutely everything to kill every last korean on the planet. He's the one who rescues you with a Semi, then he leads you and your persuers into a semi-friendly neighborhood stating "Well, they're with us or against us!" and when people yell at him about putting the civs in danger he just says "they're in danger anyway" and trundles along. Basically, if you want something screwed up, put this guy in charge. The other characters are fairly one note, and don't say that much. You've got the black law man (who gets shot first and eliminated from the plot for the most part), the chick who's a battle-humanitarian, and the asian tech guy. These are stock characters that are SO stock you could put them in any situation and they'd still create a sitcom.

 

2) The Pacing (and a few related design elements)

The game is the fairly standard "relatively linear areas with giant setpiece battles at the end where **** explodes"... except not. Often you're told to follow characters around, but your basic RUN is faster than them, so you're standing at the door waiting for them to catch up and then say their line and open it. I'm not even kidding when I say that if you reach a door, you HAVE to wait for every NPC to get to the door, then go through the door, before you can move on through yourself. Same thing happens when you go up a ladder, or utilize any sort of map switching. It just ends up bogging the entire thing down so that you're spending more time bonking into a door than you do actually shooting somebody. The reason this worked in COD4 and it's clones, is because the NPC's you were following were just a WEE bit faster than you, so you always knew where you were going. AND they weren't required to dig through every corner of the map. It felt natural to be part of an SAS squad standing by the door while your boss popped it open and checked for tangos, here it's usually "wait at the door then somebody smacks it and it opens wide".

 

3) The Imagery

Ok, the guy who wrote this had an agenda. He stated he wanted to add in a social message about the ills of America and try to get people to be called to arms. But it's sort of like those movies where it's all style and symbols... but no substance. As I mentioned before, the Koreans are portrayed as mustache twirling thugs who just kill because they can. It gets so over the top in how it DESPERATELY wants to get a reaction from you that it gets perversely silly. In the intro alone you drive and within 100 feet you see a population round up, a couple being split up, a beating, and an execution (in front of the kid who'll become batman in 10 years). I'm serious, you see this literally within 100 feet of each other as your prison bus drives down the road. What's worse, is that they never ACTUALLY feel threatening in any way. You slaughter them by the dozen before you're even done with the intro and you never saw them actually defeat anyone. So they come off more like the school bully, strong when in a position of power, but when ordered to throw down, fails catagorically. Even a tank and Helicopter don't feel that hard because you get a robotic death god to command. Anyway, back to the imagery, This game is trying to shock you. It's trying to make something stir inside you and even gives you examples of how you should act. You come across the Koreans creating a mass grave for those killed in their labor camps, and see a bulldozer dumping bodies into it... and INSTANTLY Conner flies into a rage and starts shooting at a numerically superior force, and gives away their location (in theory it was a stealth mission). It's the same thing any time you come across something that is supposed to shock you, one of the characters will go "Oh mah gawd!" and flip out in some way. Let the scene speak for itself, let the image speak for itself... and for crying out loud, make the villains a wee bit more complex in their "evil".

 

I know I'll probably remember a few more things once I've woken up... and come up with some good points then, but right now I just needed to get that out of my system.

[Hurlshort]

I played a bit more of Mafia II last night. It's a beautiful game with solid game play and voice acting, but I still struggle with the fact my character is a total douche.

[Guest Slinky]

If you were expecting to play a character who gets horrible nightmares from the stuff he does, goes on a crusade against all evil on the planet and hands out flowers to people on streets, you might want to stop playing now.

[Hurlshort]

If you were expecting to play a character who gets horrible nightmares from the stuff he does, goes on a crusade against all evil on the planet and hands out flowers to people on streets, you might want to stop playing now.

 

Yeah, I get that they are trying to capture a Goodfellas or Casino type story, but the main character just doesn't have the charm of a young Ray Liota or Robert De Niro. You rooted for those guys even though they were in some messed up stuff.

 

It's a big departure from the original, where you were just a cabbie mixed up with the wrong people.

[Raithe]

It's a big departure from the original, where you were just a cabbie mixed up with the wrong people.

 

It was a nice touch when you run into that original "cabbie" you played in the first one.

 

But overall something did feel disapointing about Mafia 2.

The open world you never really had any reason to wander around it, the ending that didn't satisfy. Just.. something didn't capture the originals spark.

[HoonDing]

I laid Akrham City to rest, I guess it's time to head back to Skyrim again. I thought about getting Saints Row 3, but after watching a few Youtube vids I'm glad I didn't get it.

[Hurlshort]

I laid Akrham City to rest, I guess it's time to head back to Skyrim again. I thought about getting Saints Row 3, but after watching a few Youtube vids I'm glad I didn't get it.

 

Everything I've heard is that it is awesome, but you are better off getting Saints Row 2 cheap and figuring out if it's your type of game. It's heavy on the lampoonery.

[Raithe]

I laid Akrham City to rest, I guess it's time to head back to Skyrim again. I thought about getting Saints Row 3, but after watching a few Youtube vids I'm glad I didn't get it.

 

Personally, I've had a fair bit of fun with Saints Row 3. It is fairly irreverant, and some of the humour has the potential to be somewhat offensive. But it's generally tongue-in-cheek, self-aware, and ridiculously over the top.

 

Also, it might just be something that hits my simple funny bone, but any game that can flip from ultra-violence to a "Burt ****ing Reynolds!" reveal, and carry it off as if its all a totally normal part of reality is worth some game play.

[HoonDing]

Only GTA "clones" I've ever liked are Total Overdose (kinda like Saints Row, I guess) and the Saboteur.

 

Volition is a developer I trust, though. Summoner is one of my favourite games of all time. I'll wait for a price drop.

Edited December 10, 2011 by virumor

[Oner]

Summoner is one of my favourite games of all time. I'll wait for a price drop.

Can I ask why? I'm curious.

[Hurlshort]

Only GTA "clones" I've ever liked are Total Overdose (kinda like Saints Row, I guess) and the Saboteur.

 

Volition is a developer I trust, though. Summoner is one of my favourite games of all time. I'll wait for a price drop.

 

Hmm, if you liked Total Overdose, did you ever play Just Cause 2?

[Labadal]

Still playing Trine 2. Mother of God, that game is beautiful. Frozenbyte, I salute you.

[Majek]

Bastion. I still wish it was more complex but time flies when i play it, so it's worth the money i spent.

[ShadySands]

Trying out Bastion from the Chrome Web Store.

 

So far so good but I dunno if I want to pay for the full game

[Morgoth]

Summoner is one of my favourite games of all time. I'll wait for a price drop.

Can I ask why? I'm curious.

Isn't Volition working on a new Action RPG? Don't know though if this is gonna be a new IP or Summoner 3.

[Raithe]

Thought I'd give Fallout New Vegas a fresh start. Now I've got all the dlc to run through, and it's been a fair while since I completed the game originally.

Hm, so is there a "best order" in which to fit the dlc into the playing time? Or does it not matter so much storywise if you randomly approach them?

 

 

Of course, not sure how far I'll actually get with early access on TOR this week, but we'll see how it goes.

[Starwars]

My preferred order is Honest Hearts, Dead Money, Old World Blues, Lonesome Road.

 

Honest Hearts can fit in pretty well wherever you place it but I think the premise of it makes the most sense for a low level character who may not be the richest guy in the wasteland yet.

 

Lonesome Road should definitely be played shortly before you decide to tackle the final mission in the main game.

[Orchomene]

Thought I'd give Fallout New Vegas a fresh start. Now I've got all the dlc to run through, and it's been a fair while since I completed the game originally.

Hm, so is there a "best order" in which to fit the dlc into the playing time? Or does it not matter so much storywise if you randomly approach them?

 

I would say Dead money, Honest hearts, Old world blues and Lonesome road. But as far as I remember, first two have no real link and thus could be played in any order.

 

I'm playing frayed knight after having seen a reference about it in another thread of this forum. It's pretty fun so far.

[Maria Caliban]

Finally got my new computer up and running. Went from a Radeon 5750 to a GTX 560 ti 2 GB. Installed Batman: AC on both just to benchmark.

5750 Min: 3 FPS, Avg: 12 FPS, Max: 57 FPS

560 Min: 58 FPS, Avg: 58 FPS, Max: 60 FPS

 

Can't wait to play Skyrim on this.

 

Anyways, started playing Batman: AC and it's as fun as the first game.

 

Bizarre personal note: Catwoman's prisoner number is 4011. If you've ever worked in an American grocery store as a check-out clerk, you know there are some items that you scan in and others that you have to key in by hand - mostly produce. One of the first codes you'll memorize is 4011, the code for bananas as, by quantity, they're the most popular fruit in the USA.

[Pop]

I've been DMing a (retooled / rejiggered) Van Buren PBP game. It's a bit of slow going (as PBP games are wont to be) and my sea leg acquisition is definitely visible at points but we're nearing the end of the prologue (the Tibbets / Big Empty prison, renamed The Big Top to avoid clashing with Old World Blues). Only took us 2 months and one player dropout!

 

You can read the thing here, if that's your bag. I've been heavily drawing from advice / documentation I acquired from Josh back in NWN2 day, when he lacked the good wisdom to prevent fans from directly contacting him. I also collaborated with Ausir to some extent when I was first pulling it all together. Good times.

Edited December 11, 2011 by Pop

[Starwars]

Spurned on by having played through Storm of Zehir, started up a game of Darklands. It's been quite a long time since I played it so feeling a bit rusty all in all. However, it did not take long before it sucked me in completely. A game from the early 90s (92 I think?) does a lot of things better than many games today. The interface is a bit annoying (but actually got into it surprisingly fast again) and combat is not too exciting but man... It's a great game.

[Guest Slinky]

Continuing with Baldur's Gate. My PC is level 8 berserker and Imoen is dualed from thief at level 7 and is now level 8 mage, and I still have the whole city of Baldur's Gate and all of the expansion content to do.. Having Jaheira and Minc in the party too, I think I might destroy everything in BG2 with ease when I get there

Probably going to dual my PC to mage at level 13, shouldn't take too long to get berserker abilites back as I might be at level 9 when I get to BG2.

 

Also started a new world in Minecraft when 1.0 was released, the most effective spare time annihilator known to man. Got really awesome map, they really made the world generator better.

 

Still playing World of Tanks too. Remains to be seen how long though, it's turning to be the most expensive "free game" ever FAST.

[Hurlshort]

I'm definitely having trouble focusing on much with TOR just around the corner. I ended up playing a few rounds of Battlefield 3. I got teamkilled a few times, one time for jumping in a helicopter that I saw a person in, and then bailing when I realized he wanted me to fly it. I guess this bothered him, so he opened up on me. Then I was killed in a jeep for driving off without someone. I was actually going to pick up a few folks who were running up ahead, but whatever. Hardcore servers are hardcore!

 

I might go back to Mafia II for a bit, at least the cars in the 50's are a lot more fun.

[Malcador]

Tried some more Tropico 3, still facerolling through things so blehh.