What are you playing now?

[Keyrock]

Decided to go back and finish up Mars: War Logs.  I'm in the Shadow Line.  I'm assuming that's the last, or at least penultimate, area.  Got the overload Technomancer power.  When you reach max fluid and it goes off it's pretty fantastic.

[Deraldin]

Finally picked up my copy of Brave New World so I've been playing that most of the afternoon. Figured I'd jump into the new XP as Venice and I have to say, they make a hell of a lot of money. With my 3 cities (capital +2 puppet city states) I'm pulling in around 150 gold per turn. Makes it really easy to just buy almost everything I need. I'm working on building up my stock of great works so that I can take over the world with my trade and tourism industry.

[Gfted1]

Endless Space has its hooks in me. Must sleep...right after I finish research on my cruisers.

[Deraldin]

Okay. Calm down. It's only the third wonder that Alexander sniped on you. You're playing Venice. You're being nice and peaceful this time around. You aren't declaring war on everyone that so much as looks at you funny. Just keep calm and you can go warmonger for the next game...

 

Alexander is lucky he's on another continent. I may not have a huge production base, but with all of my trade routes I can afford to buy an army. Maybe I'll get both the Huns and the Ottomans to declare war on him instead. >_>

Edited July 13, 2013 by Deraldin

[Oner]

 

I have no idea what that is.  If it's what I think the name implies, I'd rather play the game than watch someone else play it?

So would I, but no PS3 here either.

[Humanoid]

Trying the demo of Euro Truck Simulator 2 for a couple hours - of which about 30 minutes of which was spent driving, and the balance on parking (or attempting to do so). The experience is passable with a gamepad, but I wouldn't say particularly engaging. I had a wheel about a decade ago, but being a gameport device it's sadly obsoleted, and I'm not about to buy another one, so I'm not sure the game is worth a purchase just yet. Will ponder it until it comes up on the flash sale again I guess.

 

 

Not sure how much my total absence of driving experience in real life helps or hinders here.... never driven a car in my life.

[Humanoid]

And now Surgeon Simulator 2013. Surprisingly perhaps, the controls aren't *that* unintuitive - only had one failure in the three basic surgeries. It is sort of unbalanced though, the dremel and a scalpel solve all the problems a little too easily...

 

It's just that now, after almost an hour messing around with it, my desktop suddenly feels like it's the one that controls unnaturally.

Edited July 13, 2013 by Humanoid

[melkathi]

Did you get to do a lobotomy?

[Humanoid]

The brain transplant is the easiest one by some margin, despite being the last in each category. The game has an XCOM-like inverse difficulty curve, though I suspect the similarities end there. Apparently my next jobs are just doing the same thing over again, but in a moving ambulance instead of an operating theatre, but I'm saving that for another day.

 

At any rate, already got my three bucks worth out of it.

Edited July 13, 2013 by Humanoid

[melkathi]

The game has an XCOM-like inverse difficulty curve, though I suspect the similarities end there.

 

You mean organs don't spawn in groups of three when they enter your line of sight, do some cut-scene posing and then spread out and run for cover?

 

[Nordicus]

Dragon Age 2...

... or I WOULD if the game didn't spend 2 minutes loading each 10 second line of dialog on my PS3. I played a whole session of Demon's Souls after that to make sure that my PS3 wasn't dying, and sure enough, it wasn't. Cleared world 1-1 without a single technical issue

 

Then, I uninstalled DA2, cleaned the disc, reinstalled the game, turned off all internet, social functions, auto-saves and persistent gore, aaaaand nope, still freezes like a Broodmother****er. I am glad I didn't buy the game separately, but it came with my console. God damn thing's broken

Edited July 13, 2013 by Nordicus

[Guest Slinky]

Thats like being unhappy because you can't infect yourself with herpes, now matter what you try.

[melkathi]

Dragon Age 2...

 

... or I WOULD if the game didn't spend 2 minutes loading each 10 second line of dialog on my PS3. I played a whole session of Demon's Souls after that to make sure that my PS3 wasn't dying, and sure enough, it wasn't. Cleared world 1-1 without a single technical issue

 

Then, I uninstalled DA2, cleaned the disc, reinstalled the game, turned off all internet, social functions, auto-saves and persistent gore, aaaaand nope, still freezes like a Broodmother****er. I am glad I didn't buy the game separately, but it came with my console. God damn thing's broken

 

Evil tongues would claim that your PS3 just knows whats best for you and tries to protect you. They would claim that this proves just how much better Sony consoles are than the competition.

Of course I would never make such a claim

[Nordicus]

But c'mon, I got a free chance to first-hand experience the one game that almost had Bioware's reputation flipped-turned upside down.

 

And I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there, I'd tell you how I became the champion of a town called Kirkwall

[Keyrock]

Dragon Age 2...

 

... or I WOULD if the game didn't spend 2 minutes loading each 10 second line of dialog on my PS3. I played a whole session of Demon's Souls after that to make sure that my PS3 wasn't dying, and sure enough, it wasn't. Cleared world 1-1 without a single technical issue

 

Then, I uninstalled DA2, cleaned the disc, reinstalled the game, turned off all internet, social functions, auto-saves and persistent gore, aaaaand nope, still freezes like a Broodmother****er. I am glad I didn't buy the game separately, but it came with my console. God damn thing's broken

As long as you went through even a single battle, you've gone through all of them, as they are all practically completely identical, right down to happening in the same areas again and again and again and...  Now all you have to do is watch the cut-scenes on youtube and, congratulations, you just experienced the entirety of Dragon Age 2.

Edited July 13, 2013 by Keyrock

[GhostofAnakin]

Acts I and II of Dragon Age 2 were actually pretty good.  Things just fall apart, story-wise, in Act III.

[Keyrock]

I'm playing The Adventures of Pre-Boob-Job Lara Croft.  I could definitely do with less QTEs (like all of them), otherwise it's pretty good so far.  My lappy (i7 3630QM GT650M) can't handle TressFX, but I can crank most other settings to max besides AA (FXAA) and anisotropic (4X), so the game looks quite purrdy.

 

[Guest Slinky]

Finished Sam & Max season 1 and moved to Skyrim. First impressions of Skyrim:

 

1. No options menu on main menu, what the goddamn ****ing hell?

2. Mouse acceleration is once again on, and can be disabled only from a .ini file, just fabulous.

3. The guy responsible of UI should be shot. Can be modded much better but still is far from good

4. Audio volume is REALLY low, by googling it seems many many people have the same problem and it looks like skyrim doesnt like stereo mode, changing to 5.1 surround in windows fixes it even if the player is using just two speakers like me.

 

I really dont know why I even bother with bethesda games 

[Keyrock]

Man, Tomb Raider is really frustrating.  A lot of the game is quite good and enjoyable.  Then there are the QTEs, so ****ing many QTEs.  Good lord, I knew the game had QTEs, but this is ridiculous.  If I didn't have to deal with a QTE every 5 seconds (I'm exaggerating... a little bit) I could actually enjoy myself.

[ManifestedISO]

Use a controller, you'll be less frustrated, IMO. Or not. I enjoyed the cutscenes, mostly thanks to Camilla Luddington's impeccable voice.  

Edited July 14, 2013 by ManifestedISO

[Keyrock]

Use a controller, you'll be less frustrated, IMO. Or not. I enjoyed the cutscenes, mostly thanks to Camilla Luddington's impeccable voice.  

I do use a controller, it doesn't make QTEs any less of a garbage mechanic.  I'm fine with QTEs for optional mini-games, and I can stomach them as part of the core game if they're used VERY sparingly, but the amount of QTEs in Tomb Raider is egregious.  

 

I enjoy the cutscenes too, at least when I'm not having to do QTEs, they're well acted and well scripted.

Edited July 14, 2013 by Keyrock

[Malcador]

R6 Vegas 2 is even worse than I remember, playing the SP to get sharp for MP with friends. At the hardest difficulty it is an exercise in frustration. I'm fine with dying easily as...that is the point of R6. But the way the levels are designed it seems you're funneled from killzone to killzone (why there's not a bigger response to these mercs and Mexicans deploying companies in Las Vegas than the three guys they send, I'm not sure).

 

Still, as a COD game it would be pretty good.

[Humanoid]

 

I enjoy the cutscenes too, at least when I'm not having to do QTEs, they're well acted and well scripted.

 

Even after the umpteenth time you get captured in a cutscene?

[Keyrock]

 

 

I enjoy the cutscenes too, at least when I'm not having to do QTEs, they're well acted and well scripted.

 

Even after the umpteenth time you get captured in a cutscene?

 

Yeah, as long as there were no QTEs involved I've enjoyed all the cinematics: capture, recapture, etc.

[LadyCrimson]

After reading Keyrock's experience of Tombraider I think I'm going to assume that my old-fashioned husband wouldn't like it.

 

We did finally get around to playing some of the Borderlands 2 Tiny-Tina DLC late in the evening. So far, it's definitely the best DLC of BL2 and perhaps the best one for both games. Like the silly humor, new enemies, the additional effects enemies can do on ya, like that they finally put in something else to spend the purple bars on, the boss fights seem a bit more interesting, etc. And less focus on vehicles (actually, none at all so far). I've never been fond of the vehicle stuff in BL.

 

We're using our lvl 50's (Siren/Commando) in True Vault, so most enemies are 49-52 .. but there's been a few lvl55's which led to a lot of hollering and me running around in circles while hubby took shots+turret as I ran by.