What are you playing now?

[entrerix]

 

HR was a great game, didn't quite reach the heights of the original, but it's still one of the best games of the past few years imo.

 

I have all three on Steam, so I'll start with the first one and work my way through 

 

 

do yourself a favor and skip Invisible War....

 

[Malcador]

Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse.  I just started so I can't comment on the story or puzzles yet, but I can say that the game looks downright gorgeous.

 

Hope it is more like the first one that the last two.

[WDeranged]

On the subject of choking back vomit to enjoy Skyrim, I just did the Soul Cairn in the Dawnguard DLC and maybe my crappy mood didn't help but gaaaawd...whoever wrote this bit is really keen on doing that thing where your only dialogue option is to parrot back what the NPC just said, it's like that Threedog screenshot over and over.  

 

Another annoyance is how I totally didn't need to go find a soul gem which contained my very own soul, I got back to Skyrim and my stats were normal, a miscellaneous objective reminded me 

Edited December 5, 2013 by WDeranged

[IndiraLightfoot]

^{BruceVC: I have DeuxEx too just sitting there, I haven't got around playing yet. However, I'm so curious about what character you picked for Skyrim and how you're first playthrough is shaping up so far. If you have the time, please report back and deliver some broad sailor-tales about your exploits!}

[HoonDing]

I'm very angry about Alice that keeps bugging out. There is no patch or fix. Think it has something to do with Win7 64-bit. Uninstalled it and put EA on my hatelist.

[Humanoid]

So while most of the new Enemy Within content is relatively fresh and interesting, there's also the matter of Operation Progeny, a planned DLC that was scrapped and included as part of the expansion. Short version is that it was rightly scrapped, it manages to be worse than the first DLC, which was awful, but at least had some cool hats included.

 

 

Most would be aware by now that the first mission of this pack, Portent, is very difficult and is often considered wildly overtuned if going in blind (which any reasonable person would say ought to be the norm). But being 100% scripted, it's fairly straightforward to experiment oneself or to consult a guide about the completely fixed alien spawns to defeat it on subsequent attempts. For those who haven't seen it and don't mind spoilers, it's twelve thinmen - five static and seven overwatch drops - plus a solitary sectoid overwatch drop (which seems to be for comic relief more than anything) on classic, making thirteen aliens. On impossible, it's eight statics and eight drops, plus the sectoid, making seventeen enemies total.

 

To put it into context, at this point in the game - which is always the second month, by the way - a typical player would have a squad likely four, at most five strong, wielding the starter ballistic weapons and the standard body armour, perhaps with one inexperienced MEC in tow. One might reasonably assume that this is a portent (ho ho) of things to come. Is it hell.

 

Deluge arrived, and I loaded up with my best team to tackle it. I knew nothing about the mission structure other than there was a time limit attached. Boy was I in for a letdown when a mix of entry level aliens dropped in. There was the occasional muton and mechtoid, but the aliens literally did not get a single turn of action - indeed the only shots any of them fired were from deliberately triggering their overwatches with Lightning Reflexes. There wasn't even a sting in the tail at the end - you waltz up to the mission objective, and that's it.

 

Okay, maybe they undertuned that mission a little to partly compensate for the first mission. The final mission couldn't be any worse, right? Haaaahahah. It's eleven thinmen and two berserkers. Given the setting of the mission, I can correctly call it a literal walk in the park. Twelve-turn time limit? Done in four.

 

Understand that I'm not so much criticising the missions themselves - though taken in isolation, both the first and last missions are done poorly regardless - but that the structure of the game just can't handle heavily scripted missions given all the plot dependencies required to trigger them. This goes both ways: he initial Slingshot release had you fighting Mutons and a Cyberdisk in month two - far earlier than they'd appear otherwise - because the missions had no dependencies and just fired as soon as the initial council mission slot came up.

 

Progeny has the reverse problem in that the latter two missions require the Base Defense event to have occurred, which depends in turn on the Alien Base assault to have occurred, which depends on having researched, built, and performed all the required alien captures. Prior to Enemy Within, there was a relatively niche strategy of the Alien Base rush to capitalise on the generous panic reduction and relatively easy enemies compared to your squad. Now you progress slower, and the panic reduction is half of its old value, making it an even more uncommon strategy. But it is only for those employing this strategy that the new content is even remotely balanced.

 

Ah well, hopefully any future content is more along the lines of EW and not these silly little scripted plot arcs.

 

[melkathi]

Spend some more time in the Bloom pre-alpha demo, simply fooling around and breaking stuff. And chasing butterflies:

[LadyCrimson]

Still Borderlands 2 w/hubby (he still plays it more than I do, at this point) and the occasional brief bout of Neverwinter Online.

 

I keep looking at Steam etc. and I keep on seeing nothing that really appeals. Not that I have a lot of time/energy for gaming most days lately, anyway. But it'd be nice if I had something besides the above two things. Something new. Ah well.

[Guest Slinky]

 

 

HR was a great game, didn't quite reach the heights of the original, but it's still one of the best games of the past few years imo.

 

I have all three on Steam, so I'll start with the first one and work my way through 

 

 

do yourself a favor and skip Invisible War....

 

 

 

It's not that bad etc etc, you have all heard it before. It's just held back by technical limitations of consoles of that time.

[Humanoid]

As was Superman 64.

[LadyCrimson]

That one video I saw of Superman 64 on YouTube is still one of the funniest game reviews I've ever seen.

[Mamoulian War]

Played little bit of Star Ocean 4 again... 500 battles to go to 30k kills Battle Trophy for Arumat... Gone over 450 hours played this week O.o

[melkathi]

Gone over 450 hours played this week O.o

 

Sounds like the Steam "time played" bug

[Mamoulian War]

Ehm, i kind of written it in bad english, it should be "This week, I got past 450 hours played" Played the game 3 years ago for the first time... And I get back every now and then to play it, when I feel burned out from playing any new games... I still have around 6 games installed which i never played...

[melkathi]

Played some Speedball 2 HD.

Guess it is a pretty accurate remastering of the old game. But it is rather simplistic for this day and age.

[LadyCrimson]

Tried the new Hunter in NW:Online for a couple hours. Not bad, I like it more than the Rogue by far. Bow works well early on. Didn't buy the booster pack, nothing interesting in it. Got her to lvl 10 and now she'll sit and pray I suppose. Haha. Hilarious to see the entire main town hub filled with practically nothing but huge clusters of Hunter's, half of them named Legolas or Drizzt or or whatever.

 

The new enchanting system sucks, as far as I'm concerned. Glad I made a bunch of 6 and r7's beforehand...

 

They redesigned some of the early areas a bit, looks better as well, which is kinda cool. Still...back to the Gateway.

[Keyrock]

Tried the new Hunter in NW:Online for a couple hours. Not bad, I like it more than the Rogue by far. Bow works well early on. Didn't buy the booster pack, nothing interesting in it. Got her to lvl 10 and now she'll sit and pray I suppose. Haha. Hilarious to see the entire main town hub filled with practically nothing but huge clusters of Hunter's, half of them named Legolas or Drizzt or or whatever.

 

The new enchanting system sucks, as far as I'm concerned. Glad I made a bunch of 6 and r7's beforehand...

 

They redesigned some of the early areas a bit, looks better as well, which is kinda cool. Still...back to the Gateway.

Yeah, the new enchanting system is more convoluted than anything else.  The one positive is that it allows you to upgrade enchantments that are already slotted, but they could have just tweaked the existing system to do that.  Really it just seems like it's more complex for the same of being more complex, which is just plain stupid.  Whatever, I'm already at 12.9k and decked out in rank 7s.  Once you reach really high levels in a modifier you get diminishing returns for increasing it.  For example, I have a 36.1% critical chance (not too shabby for a fighter).  Were I to upgrade all my rank 7 azure enchantments to rank 8, I'm not sure it would even rise to be as high as 37%.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Keyrock

[nikolokolus]

Temple of Elemental Evil with the vanilla Circle of Eight patch.

 

I never finished it before because of some horrific optimization bugs in the engine that caused the game to slow to a crawl on the computer I used at the time. Much smoother this time around and quite a different experience with my 27" widescreen vs. the 17" CRT I had at the time.

[LadyCrimson]

Were I to upgrade all my rank 7 azure enchantments to rank 8, I'm not sure it would even rise to be as high as 37%.

Yeah, exactly. Anything over r7's seems to be mostly for the OCD stat crunchers and of course bragging rights. It's not necessary at all. You don't even need r7's, really.

 

But it can be a pain if you have a lot of alts/pets that you want to gear up even with all r6 (and you were using mostly the Leadership chests to get them). I've been trying to stock up on a lot of both enchants and runestones, for months. It's my personal obsession. Or it was. It might not be anymore.

[Keyrock]

 

But it can be a pain if you have a lot of alts/pets that you want to gear up even with all r6 (and you were using mostly the Leadership chests to get them). I've been trying to stock up on a lot of both enchants and runestones, for months. It's my personal obsession. Or it was. It might not be anymore.

 

Lucky for me I don't have that problem.  I have my GWF for adventuring and my other character does nothing but stand in Protector Enclave invoking his deity and doing leadership jobs to make AD (he's still wearing level 7 and 8 gear ).  Once I earn enough Zen to buy another character slot (I'm about halfway there), I'll make a hunter just to try the class out, but eventually that character will become just a worker to get me more AD.

 

I do like the free weapon transmutes they introduce with events once in a while.  I chanced my weapon again after the last event so now it looks like a MASSIVE mallet.  It's pretty sweet looking.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Keyrock

[Deraldin]

Quelaag is dead. It took me about 8 tries over the course of 1.5 hours but I finally punched her to death. I still need to beat up the capra demon so that I can get the large ember as my cestus doesn't exactly do a lot of damage. Having to whittle away at Quelaag with 16 damage hits seems like a good indicator of things to come. I really don't want to fight the sentinels in Anor Londo without the ability to block those massive halberd swings.

 

I really want Ciaran's armour set for this character which would mean fighting the hydra, sanctuary guardian, Artorias and finally Ciaran. I'm thinking that SL31 might be a little low for all that without the ability to block.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Deraldin

[Guest Slinky]

Played some Speedball 2 HD.

Guess it is a pretty accurate remastering of the old game. But it is rather simplistic for this day and age.

 

"Ice cream!"

 

Aww, memories.

[melkathi]

 

 

"Ice cream!"

 

Aww, memories.

 

 

Yeah, they keep shouting that

[Darkpriest]

I've played Brutal Legend... Shame it's so linear but overall a nice comic relief with heavier music (I've found myself sitting and riding around in Duce more than doing quest stuffs)

[Labadal]

Going to watch Samurai Champloo and have Steam games running in the background to get some Steam cards.