What are you playing now?

[Hassat Hunter]

Saw BL2 on sale on Steam, 10 euro. Then saw the DLC was 150 euro. Then said... nevermind, I'll wait for the gold-edition.

 

Well, you guys were right, people would die on my team. A LOT of them. And things have taken a turn for the worse.

After the easy starting missions with people raising rank easy I got a storymission to infiltrate an enemy base. Sure, why not? Okay, most my expert team was in the hospital, but I had my best guy on it with a couple of recruits. What could go wrong?

 

Approxatemly 1 minute in the mission 2 insectoids appeared. They killed one of my troops, hurt one other. Zombie rose, killed another team member. So, was already down to 2 members in good condition and one injured for the rest of the mission. The second time I met 2 insects I still saved myself (thanks to a rocket launcher and a grenade). By the time the third group of 2 appeared though I was down to 1 in good condition and 1 hurt, and got mauled. Bye bye most trained soldier.

 

So after my team was mostly healed I wanted to give it another shot, with better experienced soldiers and my own extra expertise. It went even worse. In the first encounter my sniper bit the dust from poison just before I could heal him :/. Then with 4 fully healed troops I met insects. 2x 3 of them closely together. And my entire team wiped.

So with all my experienced troops dead, I was left for my recruits.

 

Queue trying to train them with random missions. A terror one soon after that. Again 2 insects. You can guess the result (if not check the screenshot thread). I suppose you have to use overwatch on them, but it's hard to do that if you don't even know they're there. And once you know, their insane speed, health and power rips you appart. Still not quite sure how to proper cope with them.

 

Then a few more abductions came without the insects. Still, several deads. Which makes it hard to train troops. And gearing them was hard because not having a lot of alloys (although I suppose also part my fault for spending most of them on blasters to send to Japan for a request). The very first after the terror I saw a car burning. Nice visual effect I thought...

 

BOOOOOOOM.

2 of my troops down to 1 health, both in shock, starting to shoot on my own troops. Had to use medpack to stabilise the hit one, and the other one I kept permanently away from harm afterwards. So I was down to 2 (one already died before). Made it though.

 

But while those small victories accumalate, I loose all UFO battles. Probably lack of upgrades, but they all say 'fighter needs to get close, higher risk'. No wonder I didn't buy them. Although since I always loose now I probably should try them. The hostages can help lower panic in 1 area, but it raises it in 2 others. Failed UFO's raise panic even more. And thus currently 3 countries are already way in the red, and I have no means to prevent that from happening, and not in a state either yet to move on the main mission.

 

We'll see how the game fares. Not gonna give up. Can always restart if it really goes game over. And then, not normal or hard as some suggested here, but easy once more. I need it...

 

Talking about UFO's and fighters... why the heck do I scramble fighterS but end up only being able to get 1? What the? What's my fleet for? Although I suppose it's later so you have different loadouts against different types of UFO's, I find it really odd that fighter scrambling works the way it does...

 

And now I wonder who actually read all that xD.

[Guest Slinky]

Two things I learned from my play through of X-Com:

 

1: Always, always let the enemy come to you if possible. Keep your team covering each other so if one gets attacked, at least one can retaliate.

2. Have at least one sniper ALWAYS in your team, and keep him safe all times. Snipers are weapons of mass destruction in this game, my main sniper had almost twice as much kills as the second highest when I finished the game.

 

The fleet of fighters are for replacing the ones that get shot down. Of one gets shot down by an UFO, you can send another to attack the same UFO. Always keep at least two fighters on each continent with the best weaponry and those extra gadgets you can get.

 

Also, satellites are the key for the entire game, you really, really want to cover the entire planet with them as fast as you possibly can.

 

Edit: Just realized you went for the alien base way too early. While the game says to go do a story mission, you REALLY dont want to do that until you are ready. I took the time to get the best armors and weapons in the whole game when I finally went for that mission

Edited October 5, 2013 by Slinky

[Hurlshort]

When doing terror missions, have an operative go touch the civilians.  They will leave the battlefield when you do it.

[Humanoid]

You can save just the *one* civilian and the mission will be deemed a success. Never risk your guys for any civilians. Saving more than one means you get bonus panic reduction, but again, staying alive is the utmost priority (especially since I believe terror missions give your guys extra XP on completion).

 

I've killed more than a few civilians as collateral damage with the rocket launcher and/or grenades. Yes, I'm a horrible person.

 

Chryssalids are much less scary when you realise they can't attack as part of their move action. This means as long as you're more than one move away from them, you're safe, they'll spend their second action point just walking up to your face, at which point you can melt theirs at point blank. How relatively ineffective Chryssalids in this game is actually a point of complaint amongst XCOM fans, heh. That said though, the best advice for dealing with them is probably to research lasers as soon as possible, two laser shots will take care of them easy. Giving your snipers the Gunslinger perk (and giving them your first available laser pistols) is also strongly recommended.

 

Ultimately though, the best advice for XCOM is this: only ever use your first move of each turn to scout, don't reveal any more of the fog of war with subsequent moves. This ensures you only ever encounter the enemy on your terms, with all your APs available. It also means you don't have to use cover when not actively in combat.

 

---

 

 

P.S. It's weird that there haven't been any good sales for BL2 since the Steam sale. Prior to that there were some amazing deals just about every week, best of which was the game AND the season pass for $13 at GMG. That said.

 

GamersGate currently have 50% off the *Mac* version of the game (which makes it a worse deal for the base game than Steam's current sale), and DLC (which isn't on sale at Steam). But I've been told there's no difference between owning the Steam version for Mac or for Windows. Makes sense, if it's on your Steam account, it's on your Steam account, but I can't verify it myself.

 

Maybe someone who's looking to buy the second level cap pack (*hint*) might want to take the bullet for us and try getting the Mac version for $2.50 to test? :D

 

---

 

P.P.S.

 

The XCOM collection* is $10 at Amazon right now. Non-US residents will have to enter in a fake US billing address to allow the transaction through, any old address will do. (Predictably, most people I know enter Beverly Hills 90210)

 

* XCOM: Enemy Unknown (w/ Slingshot and Elite Soldier Packs) + Apocalypse + Enforcer + Interceptor + Terror from the Deep + UFO Defense

Edited October 5, 2013 by Humanoid

[GhostofAnakin]

So, my love for the Splinter Cell Spy vs. Merc mode went down the tube after I reached level 10 and could no longer access the "learning group" maps.  Now I'm in matches against these level 55 guys who basically know the maps like the back of their hands, and I'm still trying to learn my way around things.

 

Oh well, back to the SP and Co-op portions of the game.

[Tale]

 

Dragon Age II

 

Back to it after a GTA hiatus. Thankfully I got through the DLC before it, because I'm in Act 3 now and it's hard to be motivated to push forward. It's not Mass Effect's Mako bad, but I don't see it interfering with my nightly reading or writing.

Despite all the criticism in teh interwebz, I loved this game because most of the times I really had a hard time telling who was actually "good" and who was "bad".

 

I'm not sure how you had that difficulty. The bad guys were the ones trying to kill you for no reason. Even if you agreed with them.

 

IE everybody.

[alanschu]

 

I'm playing Splinter Cell: Blacklist.  As someone who usually gets frustrated with stealth games that punish you tremendously for non-stealth approaches, I'm actually having fun with this game.  Sure, it's better not to be spotted.  But at least I don't constantly get "mission failed" every time I accidentally get seen by one enemy.

To be honest, I can't remember a stealth game where you failed the mission as soon as you got spotted. There might be some short content part exception here or there, but a full game... Can't think of any right now.

 

 

Earlier Splinter Cell games had "Reach X alarms and mission is over" including triggers for "are there any bodies still in the open?"

 

They make fun of it in Chaos Theory.

Edited October 5, 2013 by alanschu

[Lexx]

Interesting. I totally don't remember this. Then again, I wanted to replay the SC games again anyway at some point.

[Hassat Hunter]

Yeah, I think one of my biggest mistake is not having laser weapons yet 0_o

After the farce of making 5 suits thinking it was improved body armor (not, and they gathered dust since) I was kind of hesitant of making engineers create stuff.

Oh well, rookie mistakes, should help next game. Or salvage this one.

 

And cryssalids ineffective? Sheesh, I don't want to meet effective ones then.

 

And yeah, saved 2 civvies, but the others kinda got killed off-screen, or while I was dealing with cryssalids, zombies and being surrounded. Though I was sure glad those civvies made sure no more of my soldiers died by being the attack target instead XD

[Humanoid]

For what it's worth, on easy and normal difficulties, civilians killed offscreen by chryssalids do nothing. On classic, they have a 50% chance of zombifying. On impossible, 100%.

 

But yeah, generally speaking melee-based aliens aren't considered a big problem. I mean later on you meet the Muton Berserker, worry for a moment as it charges towards you, then laugh at it as you pick it off. The key here is the earlier advice to only scout with one guy, and move all the others behind him such that none of them explore any more of the map. Doing this means you'll likely have all six guns pointed at any alien trying to charge at you.

 

I do admit that that kind of methodical play can get pretty boring at times - the winning strategy for higher difficulties is basically forming a conga line (literally, all six adjacent to each other in a line) out of your guys who creep around the map, out of cover but being near it, therefore being able to immediate mass firepower when contact is made.

[Rosbjerg]

When doing terror missions, have an operative go touch the civilians.  They will leave the battlefield when you do it.

 

Bring a SHIV and have that round up civilians.

[Majek]

After getting the XCOM DLC i had

 

 

 

I'm playing Splinter Cell: Blacklist.  As someone who usually gets frustrated with stealth games that punish you tremendously for non-stealth approaches, I'm actually having fun with this game.  Sure, it's better not to be spotted.  But at least I don't constantly get "mission failed" every time I accidentally get seen by one enemy.

To be honest, I can't remember a stealth game where you failed the mission as soon as you got spotted. There might be some short content part exception here or there, but a full game... Can't think of any right now.

 

 

Earlier Splinter Cell games had "Reach X alarms and mission is over" including triggers for "are there any bodies still in the open?"

 

They make fun of it in Chaos Theory.

 

That was made even worse in the HD versions on PC. I alsmost threw my console out the window out of sheer frustration when i didn't get a gold trophy because of this. Maybe it was even a bug, but i'd have to replay the WHOLE game again to get it. Stupid aholes at UBISOFT.

 

as much as i love Rayman Legends i absolutely abhor the person or people responsible for the Awesomeness trophy. Ubisoft

 

 

As for the Terror missions, those are one of the several reason why i won't ever play ironman in XCOM,  but then again i won't play Ironman in anygame if i don't have to.  I can hold back my saving just find to keep me on my toes.

[ShadySands]

Started over in NBA 2K14 because I really don't want to play for the Celtics

 

I did better in the Rookie Showcase this time around and went 2nd in the draft to the Magic. They really suck but at least I am getting most of my minutes at the point.

 

I am noticing that scoring seems easier(including getting to the foul line) and defense and assists have become much harder and my turnovers have more than doubled. It's not unusual for my stats to look like this

 

25+ points

1 or 2 boards

5 assists

1 steal

5 or 6 turnovers

 

then to compare I switched to my PG in 2K13 and after playing a handful of games my stats look like this

20 points

2 rebounds

13 assists

3 steals

2 turnovers

Edited October 6, 2013 by ShadySands

[alanschu]

I found steals hard to get in 2k13 (especially compared to 2k12).  Interesting that assists are harder to come by.  Teams playing more stay at home defense?

[ShadySands]

The defense seems to be a lot better at stopping the pass inside and even with my calling the plays my team seems to stand around a lot more

 

Also, even when I hit the open man or the defense breaks down my teammates tend to put the ball on the court instead of go up with it... and I'm on the Magic and they can't shoot. My last game Vucevic missed 5 in a row right under the basket and ended up going 4 for 13. Worst part is that since it's MyCareer mode I can't even adjust the sliders

 

I might just abandon all hope of getting assists and just try to score 30 or more every game because even with my shooting not being great I can get to the foul line 5 to 10 times a game now

[AGX-17]

Two things I learned from my play through of X-Com:

 

1: Always, always let the enemy come to you if possible. Keep your team covering each other so if one gets attacked, at least one can retaliate.

2. Have at least one sniper ALWAYS in your team, and keep him safe all times. Snipers are weapons of mass destruction in this game, my main sniper had almost twice as much kills as the second highest when I finished the game.

Never less than 2 snipers. Providentially, my blonde-haired female Russian sniper was randomly assigned the nickname "Wolf."

 

 

For what it's worth, on easy and normal difficulties, civilians killed offscreen by chryssalids do nothing. On classic, they have a 50% chance of zombifying. On impossible, 100%.

 

But yeah, generally speaking melee-based aliens aren't considered a big problem. I mean later on you meet the Muton Berserker, worry for a moment as it charges towards you, then laugh at it as you pick it off. The key here is the earlier advice to only scout with one guy, and move all the others behind him such that none of them explore any more of the map. Doing this means you'll likely have all six guns pointed at any alien trying to charge at you.

 

I do admit that that kind of methodical play can get pretty boring at times - the winning strategy for higher difficulties is basically forming a conga line (literally, all six adjacent to each other in a line) out of your guys who creep around the map, out of cover but being near it, therefore being able to immediate mass firepower when contact is made.

Those aliens can throw grenades, you know.

Edited October 6, 2013 by AGX-17

[ShadySands]

Just had my best assist game against Boston and my team is now 4-4

 

18 mins

23 points

8-16 from the floor

2-5 3pts

5-5 ft

8 ast 

5 to

2 stls

 

I've been browsing the interwebs on the line and it looks like I'm not the only one having issues getting assists. The defense has been "improved" and for the most part it's not bad but they strip the ball and deflect passes like crazy

[Tale]

Finished Dragon Age 2.

 

Now to play something else. I want something particularly good. I'd even play Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition if they had fixed the quest bugs in the tutorial. Maybe it's time I gave Planescape: Torment a second go.

 

Or maybe Dead Space 2. Got Dead Space 3 from the Humble Origin bundle, so might as well.

 

Edit: Did everyone know about this?

VERSION 4.13: Includes some new engine fixes, the highlights being fix to "Ice Knife" spell

http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/647-pst-ultimate-weidu-fixpack-v413/

[Humanoid]

 

Two things I learned from my play through of X-Com:

 

1: Always, always let the enemy come to you if possible. Keep your team covering each other so if one gets attacked, at least one can retaliate.

2. Have at least one sniper ALWAYS in your team, and keep him safe all times. Snipers are weapons of mass destruction in this game, my main sniper had almost twice as much kills as the second highest when I finished the game.

Never less than 2 snipers. Providentially, my blonde-haired female Russian sniper was randomly assigned the nickname "Wolf."

 

 

For what it's worth, on easy and normal difficulties, civilians killed offscreen by chryssalids do nothing. On classic, they have a 50% chance of zombifying. On impossible, 100%.

 

But yeah, generally speaking melee-based aliens aren't considered a big problem. I mean later on you meet the Muton Berserker, worry for a moment as it charges towards you, then laugh at it as you pick it off. The key here is the earlier advice to only scout with one guy, and move all the others behind him such that none of them explore any more of the map. Doing this means you'll likely have all six guns pointed at any alien trying to charge at you.

 

I do admit that that kind of methodical play can get pretty boring at times - the winning strategy for higher difficulties is basically forming a conga line (literally, all six adjacent to each other in a line) out of your guys who creep around the map, out of cover but being near it, therefore being able to immediate mass firepower when contact is made.

Those aliens can throw grenades, you know.

 

The line is just something you do to move around between engagements, the idea being that every encounter initiated by the player means the point guy still has a move to get back into cover (and since it's probably an Assault trooper, to hit run and gun), and everyone else can get into cover and fire. When the contact is enemy-initiated, then you likely get to fire all six overwatches simultaneously, then start your turn fresh.

[ShadySands]

Highlights of my last game

 

29 points

5 assists

12 turnovers

 

most of my turnover where just from either driving in or going up with the ball and getting stripped which happens to me constantly even though now I've maxed out ball security, dribbling, and off hand dribbling

 

I've been cheating to try to pad my assist stat by dishing the ball a couple of seconds before the shot clock expires but as you can see by the 5 that I got last game it hasn't been very successful

[Guest Slinky]

Edit: Did everyone know about this?

VERSION 4.13: Includes some new engine fixes, the highlights being fix to "Ice Knife" spell

http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/647-pst-ultimate-weidu-fixpack-v413/

 

Yes, Qwinn's fixpack has been essential for PS:T for years, just like the G3 fixpack has been to Baldur's Gate 2. Also the Unfinished Business, UI mod and the tweak pack from the same place are great.

[Undecaf]

Tried out the open beta for Battlefield 4 since it's free and... it feels awful. Not particularly different from BF3 (which wasn't very good to begin with), it was - as usual - a confusing mess with everyone seemingly just flailing around and the usual 24/7 people buzzing around showcasing their leet killstreak skillz. Not unexpected. Not my cup of tea. Not something I'll bother with again.

[Bos_hybrid]

Worst part is that since it's MyCareer mode I can't even adjust the sliders

 

You could in 2k13 with cheat engine. Just have to wait until someone finds the addresses for 2K14. Of course I'm assuming your playing on PC.

[Calax]

Tried out the open beta for Battlefield 4 since it's free and... it feels awful. Not particularly different from BF3 (which wasn't very good to begin with), it was - as usual - a confusing mess with everyone seemingly just flailing around and the usual 24/7 people buzzing around showcasing their leet killstreak skillz. Not unexpected. Not my cup of tea. Not something I'll bother with again.

BF3 is one of those games, for me, that only works when I'm really in the mood for it. BF4, from what I've looked at, just seems to be BF3 but with extra levels that can be blown up further. Effectively it'd be like they just added another one of the x-packs to the system rather than actually updating the game, but I haven't played it personally.

 

Hopefully this time they won't cross their hearts and say "we totally had single player in mind for this!" given their last effort in BF3 was just a massive pile of bugs, confusion, and failure that attempted to ape CoD's famous "FEEL TERRIBLE THAT THIS THING HAPPENED" plot twists.

[Bos_hybrid]

Hopefully this time they won't cross their hearts and say "we totally had single player in mind for this!" given their last effort in BF3 was just a massive pile of bugs, confusion, and failure that attempted to ape CoD's famous "FEEL TERRIBLE THAT THIS THING HAPPENED" plot twists.

 

To be fair, BF was never about SP. Didn't even have a campaign until BF2:MC.