What are you playing now?

[alanschu]

I actually find winning militarily is usually much more convenient (as usually I am able to establish military dominance long before the other winning conditions open up).

[Majek]

Red Dead Redemption GOTY in Hardcore mode. Finally some real challenge while still being fun.

[AGX-17]

Red Dead Redemption GOTY in Hardcore mode. Finally some real challenge while still being fun.

 

Since I finally got a PS3, I've been sorely tempted to buy RDR. Aside from the sexism it looks as close as I'll ever get to a Man With No Name game. I'd still prefer a PC port but that's obviously never going to happen (what's the deal, Rockstar?)

[AGX-17]

I actually find winning militarily is usually much more convenient (as usually I am able to establish military dominance long before the other winning conditions open up).

 

I don't like the way war and combat function in Civ games because of the timescale. Time passes so quickly before hitting the Enlightenment/Industrial age that you can have a single "war" lasting for 2000 years. Plus I've always preferred devoting my resources to building, culture and science rather than military, so I usually just build what I need to keep barbarians at bay, make a lot of declarations of friendship and give away strategic resources as bribery/tribute to not attack me. The fact that I usually end up with the most world wonders tends to balance things in my favor when those approaches fail and someone (Alexander,) finally declares war.

 

Actually, the Ottomans are worse, they like to play they're you're friend then suddenly start denouncing you, even after making a declaration of friendship. At least Alexander just talks **** from the start most of the time. Of course, sometimes he doesn't attack at all. But he's actually just looking for allies to help him conquer closer neighbors. And I never play with randomized personalities.

 

Montezuma is surprisingly unaggressive toward players compared to Civ IV, at least in my experience.

Edited December 11, 2012 by AGX-17

[GhostofAnakin]

As I'm playing through Chapter 3 of DA2, I'm starting to realize why (for me) it falls short of other games. IMO, the main story feels more like a collection of two or three different ideas that don't necessarily flow from the beginning of the game until the end, rather than the usual overarching epic plot of most other Bio games. In essence, it's like I'm playing three different games, rather than one game.

 

Flaws or not, I think that's why I rate DA:O's story higher than DA2. The main story has a central focus that carries on throughout (building an army to fight the Arch Demon), so it's kind of like you're building toward a climax. DA2's main story was first about gathering enough money to get into the deep roads expedition, then about the Qunari threat, then about the Mage/Templar thing. Just feels less connected.

[alanschu]

I don't like the way war and combat function in Civ games because of the timescale. Time passes so quickly before hitting the Enlightenment/Industrial age that you can have a single "war" lasting for 2000 years. Plus I've always preferred devoting my resources to building, culture and science rather than military, so I usually just build what I need to keep barbarians at bay, make a lot of declarations of friendship and give away strategic resources as bribery/tribute to not attack me. The fact that I usually end up with the most world wonders tends to balance things in my favor when those approaches fail and someone (Alexander,) finally declares war.

 

Actually, the Ottomans are worse, they like to play they're you're friend then suddenly start denouncing you, even after making a declaration of friendship. At least Alexander just talks **** from the start most of the time. Of course, sometimes he doesn't attack at all. But he's actually just looking for allies to help him conquer closer neighbors. And I never play with randomized personalities.

 

Montezuma is surprisingly unaggressive toward players compared to Civ IV, at least in my experience.

 

Well Monty was "KAMIKAZE" in Civ4 haha.

 

The first thing to ignore in a Civ game, IMO, is the timescale. It's cool when it kind of matches, but yeah you get "wars" that last 1000s of years in the early game.

 

In Civ 5 I rarely build military, but usually my economy is so dominant that I can easily just buy it. In my current game as Egypt, I have a tech lead and could easily spit out 5 units of infantry with some fighters, armies, and bombers and go cap the capitals of my foes and win the game in probably 5 or 6 turns.

[Fish Of Doom]

currently playing primordia. very reminiscing of the old lucasarts adventure games, and with several references to other games with similar themes, which i found very amusing. heartily recommended to fans of point and click adventure games :D

[Deraldin]

In Civ 5 I rarely build military, but usually my economy is so dominant that I can easily just buy it. In my current game as Egypt, I have a tech lead and could easily spit out 5 units of infantry with some fighters, armies, and bombers and go cap the capitals of my foes and win the game in probably 5 or 6 turns.

 

I didn't have a single military unit, except my starting warrior which was off exploring, before China declared war on me in the early game. I had enough gold to purchase a composite bowman in my border city which combined with the city itself was able to hold off an army of 10 times that size while I built up a couple swordsmen that eventually crashed into the enemy army. The only reason I survived the early game was because I exploited the dumb AI. If I had been fighting a human they would have just gone around that city and taken my undefended capital. Or they may have gone for the city, but done so in a more effective manner the involved actually using their superior numbers to overload my defences.

 

The continent was a doughnut shape. I was in the 9 o'clock position, China was at 11, Alexander at 1, Rome at 3, Hiawatha at 4, Netherlands at 5 and Byzantium at 7. The doughnut hole was to the west of center so it wasn't as crowded in the east as it sounds. China was the first to fall as she was by far the most belligerent of the leaders, getting pissed at me while she still had plenty of room to expand to the east instead of south into me. Byzantium was quite nice to me until I decided that her land was easier pickings than trying to squeeze an army through the 1 hex gap in the norther mountain range that led to Alexander. Netherlands and Rome were nice, but I never came close to them before they were conquered by Hiawatha and Alexander respectively. Alexander was fairly standoffish, but we had a decent understanding. Namely Hiawatha was such a big jerk face to both of us that we would much rather pick on him than each other. Hiawatha and Alexander were constantly going to war. I propped up Alexander for a little while before I took on Hiawatha myself and stomped him while he was distracted.

 

China was taken over using Longswordsmen. Byzantium was taken with Tercio. Hiawatha had a few early losses to Infantry before I ran into problems with his cities taking a lot more punishment than I could dish out and still be able to push forward. I teched up to Bombers and massed them for anti city duties. They were joined by a handful of Artillery and eventually Rocket Artillery for most of his cities. By the time I finished up with Hiawatha I had just recently upgraded to Stealth Bombers as well. My military had had a technological edge for most of the game from the Longswordsman forward. Hiawatha did manage to keep up with my siege units briefly, deploying Artillery shortly after I did, though he was still using Riflemen compared to my Infantry at that point.

 

If I had remembered that military victory was just capturing the enemy capitals I could have done that much sooner than the space victory would have been. I was still thinking of the old conquest victory type, not domination.

[Bos_hybrid]

Nothing. Going through a period were I can't sit down long enough to play anything. Or I don't have anything that can sustain my interest at the moment.

 

Picked up Killzone 2 for $6 can't play it for 10 minutes, tried Armored Core V, didn't like it(despite enjoying the series till this point), Resident Evil 6 demo same thing. Very annoying.

[Majek]

Red Dead Redemption GOTY in Hardcore mode. Finally some real challenge while still being fun.

 

Since I finally got a PS3, I've been sorely tempted to buy RDR. Aside from the sexism it looks as close as I'll ever get to a Man With No Name game. I'd still prefer a PC port but that's obviously never going to happen (what's the deal, Rockstar?)

BUY IT NOW!

[Yes Man]

The Sims 2. All the expansions installed, of course.

 

So my Sim has a job in gaming, and one of his hobbies is video games, of course. The Gaming Career, however, is added in Seasons, while the Gaming Hobby and Gaming Hobby chance cards are added in Free Time. Two separate add-on's.

 

So my Sim is at work, doing his job (Which apparently being a designated Flag Carrier in an online FPS is a job somehow) and then I get a Free Time "Gaming Hobby" chance card in which my Sim is playing a handheld video game, and then his boss comes. I figure "Hey, his job IS to play video games, why not show his boss?"

 

DEMOTED TO GOLD FARMER FOR PLAYING VIDEO GAMES ON THE JOB

 

I am sensing a large contradiction between these two expansions.

Edited December 12, 2012 by Yes Man

[Keyrock]

The Sims 2. All the expansions installed, of course.

 

So my Sim has a job in gaming, and one of his hobbies is video games, of course. The Gaming Career, however, is added in Seasons, while the Gaming Hobby and Gaming Hobby chance cards are added in Free Time. Two separate add-on's.

 

So my Sim is at work, doing his job (Which apparently being a designated Flag Carrier in an online FPS is a job somehow) and then I get a Free Time "Gaming Hobby" chance card in which my Sim is playing a handheld video game, and then his boss comes. I figure "Hey, his job IS to play video games, why not show his boss?"

 

DEMOTED TO GOLD FARMER FOR PLAYING VIDEO GAMES ON THE JOB

 

I am sensing a large contradiction between these two expansions.

You better keep your mouth shut or they'll demote you to jRPG Grinder.

[Yes Man]

The Sims 2. All the expansions installed, of course.

 

So my Sim has a job in gaming, and one of his hobbies is video games, of course. The Gaming Career, however, is added in Seasons, while the Gaming Hobby and Gaming Hobby chance cards are added in Free Time. Two separate add-on's.

 

So my Sim is at work, doing his job (Which apparently being a designated Flag Carrier in an online FPS is a job somehow) and then I get a Free Time "Gaming Hobby" chance card in which my Sim is playing a handheld video game, and then his boss comes. I figure "Hey, his job IS to play video games, why not show his boss?"

 

DEMOTED TO GOLD FARMER FOR PLAYING VIDEO GAMES ON THE JOB

 

I am sensing a large contradiction between these two expansions.

You better keep your mouth shut or they'll demote you to jRPG Grinder.

 

Oh no! What I get get demoted from that?! I don't want to go back to my job as a Trash Talker!

 

(That is a real job in this game, by the way. Sims do get paid for going online and cussing at people)

 

 

There is a Game Designer job in The Sims 2, but apparently in The Sims game dev's only hire people who have gone through eight different personalities and skill sets of gamer and managed a guild in World of Warcraft which I'm not sure is entirely how a Gaming Career works...

 

ONLY ONCE YOU HAVE MANAGED THE ULTIMATE WOW GUILD WILL YOU BE PREPARED TO TWEAK THE GRAPHICS ON LEVEL 3

Edited December 12, 2012 by Yes Man

[Janmanden]

Haven't touched Origin or ME3 for quite some time. Did some ME3 multiplaying a few months ago, but was mostly unaware of any new additions.

 

Origin is pretty useless to me after I moved to Ukraine, because everything is in Russian and there is no way to change it in settings. I can change the menu language and menu related things, but not the location or preferred shop language. Pretty much the same thing with the EA homepage. Ffffeh..

 

So I just added the Extended Cut to ME3, because neither PayPal nor any of the other options work, and had a hard time putting up with the slow drag of the ending, this game is really pissing me off on so many levels, glad it's over (mostly), and then I realized that the game makes an autosave before the end, that I could simply rename to my last save and thus I managed to overcome the slow-mo three more times to see it all.

I was quite surprised about the new no-nonsense ending triggered by taking a shot at moon-boy, it's so unusually brief and non-BioWare'ish, that would have been nice as the ONLY ending, it felt almost like the return of the Mako and square maps in ME1, but the rest felt more like a desperate attempt to make up for an ultimately flawed, narrowminded and stupid ending.

Not extended, but partially expanded and recycled at least once.

[LadyCrimson]

What? No Dungeon Keeper 2? **

 

Wasn't much of a fan of DK2. I own it, but the game is about offense where DK1 was about defense. Or aggressive defense. Or offensive defense...

That's an interesting perspective. I'm not sure I'd completely agree, since you could play DK1 very aggressively if you wanted (there were plenty of maps that if you attacked very swiftly, you could almost always win in like 15 minutes...). But DK2 did seem to force the issue of aggressiveness a lot more, rather than leaving it as a playstyle option. I liked the Pet Dungeons and a couple of the vampire levels. That's about it. I did use the editor a lot, however, to make my own levels/do silly things. Dk2 isn't a game I have much urge to replay tho. It's always DK1 I go back to.

[Gorth]

A bit of Mass Effect 1, but mostly Carmageddon (the original 'GoG' version). Nothing like a bit of Pedestricide to relax at the end of the day

[melkathi]

That's an interesting perspective. I'm not sure I'd completely agree, since you could play DK1 very aggressively if you wanted (there were plenty of maps that if you attacked very swiftly, you could almost always win in like 15 minutes...). But DK2 did seem to force the issue of aggressiveness a lot more, rather than leaving it as a playstyle option. I liked the Pet Dungeons and a couple of the vampire levels. That's about it. I did use the editor a lot, however, to make my own levels/do silly things. Dk2 isn't a game I have much urge to replay tho. It's always DK1 I go back to.

 

That's the thing with AIs that don't cheat

Magic of Endoria could be beaten within 5 minutes on any difficulty level if one simply attacked from the get go.

Now I want to play Magic of Endoria again... Shame globalization took so long and one of the best games to be made in Gemany was virtualy unknown anywhere else in the world.

Edited December 13, 2012 by melkathi

[LadyCrimson]

The thing with DK1 (enemy Keeper) AI is that it was just plain stupid, no matter which 'type' of AI you used. You had to design a level with all kinds of contortions and/or pre-built dungeons and scripting tricks to make it resemble anything remotely challenging. Yet somehow, it was still all kinds of fun.

[melkathi]

The problem with threads like this one is that they remind you of all the cool games you really want to play.

And there just aren't enough years in a day.

[Yes Man]

You better keep your mouth shut or they'll demote you to jRPG Grinder.

 

Quoting again to say:

 

Holy **** there IS a job in The Sims 2 that is the exact equivalent of JRPG grinder.

Edited December 13, 2012 by Yes Man

[Nordicus]

Holy **** there IS a job in The Sims 2 that is the exact equivalent of JRPG grinder.

Yeah... that's something. I'm not completely sure what they were thinking when they were making the whole "Gamer" career path.

 

Game Designer, the top level of "Gamer" career path, earns almost as much as Executive Vice President in "Game Development" career, and that is triple what a Designer earns in "Game Development" path.

 

What

is

this

i

dont

even

[HoonDing]

Gallows humour, I guess.

[Keyrock]

I'm about 4 1/2 hours into The Book of Unwritten Tales now and have really enjoyed the experience so far. The game is constantly poking fun at fantasy stories, mythologies, movies, and video games. It doesn't do anything new, it's a standard point n click, but it's just so gosh darn charming that I can't help but smile the whole time I'm playing. Dated, but pretty, visuals. Pleasant soundtrack. Good voice acting. I'm definitely happy I scooped it up when it was on sale.

[Orchomene]

I'm still into Eador. This game is just great. The mix between Battle for Wesnoth and Homm is absolutly well done with enough complexity for a Paradox fan to enjoy the game.

If you like turn based strategy with a touch of rpg mechanics, you will enjoy it too.

[alanschu]

I wouldn't read too much into the careers of The Sims.