What are you playing now

[Katphood]

Dead Rising: Off The Record brought my Drakensang playthrough to a long halt! Finding combos and trying different challenges was a blast. Definitely recommended if you are looking for a zombie sandbox game. You can either go for the story mode or simply start on sandbox mode if you are more into exploring. You can also start a New Game+ at any given moment and you get to keep all of your upgrades.

 

Also, played a little more Drakensang today. It still hasn't lost its touch since the last time I played it. Almost everything you see in the game world serves it's purpose at some point. The world around you feels alive and is fun to explore.

Edited February 21, 2014 by Astiaks

[sorophx]

Alan what did you think about Titanfall? Did it manage to be FPS but not too FPSy?

it's very FPSy, though I'm not Alan. it's more reliant on twitch skill than any other game I've played (didn't play CoD, it's probably very similar). it's made worse by the fact that killing AI and TItans nets very little points, and identifying enemy pilots can be tough. I saw people get 20+ pilot kills in one round of death match. that's just insane, and there's no way I could compete with them. 

 

but using titans is very fun. especially since they can run autonomously, and you can order them to guard an area and double team stray pilots

[alanschu]

I made a 30 min video here:

 

I play three rounds in that video and am still learning the game at that point. Though in my own experience, just watching the game didn't do it justice. I was completely indifferent until I had a chance to play it at PAX, and I was like "wow this was pretty fun." With the beta and playing with my friends, I'm likely going to pick it up at release now.

 

 

Titanfall is a fast paced game to be sure, although I think it has some well designed elements that can help ease people in. I find the parkour elements very easy and intuitive, and the game is generous for things like rodeoing other titans. But the big thing I liked was that the smart pistol was a good segue into the game for me. It's a pistol that can lock onto people in its targeting bracket, and once locked on it'll hit its target. Once I got good at the game I used it less, but it was handy for helping me through the game, and it's great for large groups of grunts.

 

As for the grunts, I love them. If I'm struggling in a game, I can still contribute via killing grunts and help me get some mojo back. In the standard attrition mode, killing a grunt gives you 1 point, while killing a pilot gives you 4 points. Grunts often work in small squads of 3-4 though, and they die much faster.

 

As I got experienced I also just learned various hot points and other things. For instance, it's typically only pilots that take the game vertical. So if you ever see someone jumping or on difficult to reach platforms, that's a pilot.

 

 

I have two moments that I loved in the game. My friend and I were locked in a fight against an enemy titan. My titan went critical and I had to bail out, and while flying through the air I locked on with the missile launcher, doomed the enemy titan, while my friend then melee'd and ripped the enemy out of his titan for the kill. Second was when I was rodeoing my friend's titan (grabbed onto the back) and an enemy titan stormed us. I jumped from the back of my friend's titan onto the other titan, ripping off some plating so I could attack its core. Unfortunately for the enemy, he was mired in the titan battle with my friend and couldn't get out to get me off, and eventually I "doomed" the titan (when destruction is inevitable), at which point my friend dashed in and melee'd the titan, ripping the dude out and crushing him (this can only happen on a "doomed" titan). I then jumped back onto my friend's titan and waited as I now called in my own titan.

 

 

I only played a little bit by myself (I was when I made that video). My friend made some videos too, and you can see me do some running around in it. In fact, the rodeo scene can be found here:

 

http://youtu.be/V4BXF5V0eoU?t=3m4s

 

When he gets in, I'm already rodeoing his titan (helping protect it), and a few moments later you can see me jump onto the back of an enemy titan, doom it (while he's focused on Kouzui), then jump away. A minute or so before that, you can see him call down his titan onto an enemy titan, destroying it in the process.

 

 

In summary I like the fast paced gameplay because I'm not an FPS guru and it's a bunch of quick 6-10 minute maps where I get to stomp on people with a giant robot. I just find it a well designed game that works for short bursts of entertainment (although that doesn't mean I didn't have some 8 hour sessions playing it last weekend...)

Edited February 21, 2014 by alanschu

[IndiraLightfoot]

Thx for that playthrough video, Alanschu!

 

As someone who's never have played BF, Counterstrike or Ghost Recon, I found the gameplay nearly breaking my action-meter! I mean, I have played Doom and Darksiders II, but this is just pure mayhem. How can you stand the intensity? I must be getting old. I reckoned Might & Magic X had some action to it.

[Malcador]

Makes me miss a proper Tribes game (man how awesome would that have been if they worked in HERCs somehow )

[Malcador]

As someone who's never have played BF, Counterstrike or Ghost Recon, I found the gameplay nearly breaking my action-meter! I mean, I have played Doom and Darksiders II, but this is just pure mayhem. How can you stand the intensity? I must be getting old. I reckoned Might & Magic X had some action to it.

How sad that Ghost Recon is on that list w.r.t "action-meter"

[alanschu]

Thx for that playthrough video, Alanschu!

 

As someone who's never have played BF, Counterstrike or Ghost Recon, I found the gameplay nearly breaking my action-meter! I mean, I have played Doom and Darksiders II, but this is just pure mayhem. How can you stand the intensity? I must be getting old. I reckoned Might & Magic X had some action to it.

 

That's why I like the round length. I find they tend to be 6-10 minutes which isn't long, with like a 90s break between matches to adjust loadouts and stuff like that. It's an adrenaline rush for sure. And ripping pilots out of their titans never gets old. I love the context sensitive titan entrances too.

 

I have seen some pilots have fun staying outside of their titan, let it draw the attention and then sniping people for hiding spots. Suppressors are great too because they stop the pilot from showing up on the radar/minimap when they shoot.

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

 

How sad that Ghost Recon is on that list w.r.t "action-meter"

 

If I f*cked up there, it serves me just right. I actually got Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 when I bought a graphics card like six years ago. I just looked at the cover art, and shrugged: "Another war fps. Not for me." And then I threw it into a drawer. This means I have no idea what kind of game it was.

Edited February 21, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Malcador]

Just me being grumbly about the way that series went along, at least in tone.  Rainbow Six got similar treatment.

[sorophx]

 

I want to buy it, but it's clearly not polished enough to justify a day-one purchase.

Huh! That's definitely not something that I agree with :S

maybe you just got lucky, but I had to manually close the game's process in Task Manager after every single round, otherwise it would just freeze in-between rounds and eventually crash. every. single. time. and it was happening to all of us (played with 4 friends).

 

also, that matchmaker... they're probably using some kind of an ELO algorithm, and it could be the lack of players in the game for it to function properly, but I lost count of the times when a band of lv. 1-10 would be put against an all-14 team

[alanschu]

Yeah strange. I had one crash after an 8 or so hour session, and probably played over 20 hours of the beta. None of my friends had issues either. The only other issue I had was when the servers were down on Friday.

 

 

Where are you located? I heard Europe was having more issues.

 

 

I'm not sure how the matchmaking is done. Depending on the purpose of the beta, however, there may have been more value in simply making sure games were going first and foremost.

[sorophx]

Europe

[Rosbjerg]

Decided to replay some Skyrim for fun when I'm taking breaks from studying. Gonna build an unarmed Khajit this time, going heavy armor, fist of steel, dual flurry (for increased atack speed) and then using the enchantment from the Gloves of the Pugilist to boost my unarmed stats to crazy levels.. If I focus on stamina and unarmed damage enchantmets, I think I can build a Cat that can Falcon Punch a Dragon to death. :D

[Labadal]

Reached level 25 in Skyrim. Also got beaten to death by a giant. I usually just snipe them with bows but thought it was a good idea to try out the melee route.

 

Note to self: Stay away from giants.

 

I read a lot of complaints about many locations in Fallout: New Vegas only being small shacks and the like. The same could be said about Skyrim. Found lots of shacks and standing stones. I personally don't mind. I just wish complaints could be consistent and not just pointed at one game but not the other.

[Hassat Hunter]

I read a lot of complaints about many locations in Fallout: New Vegas only being small shacks and the like. The same could be said about Skyrim. Found lots of shacks and standing stones. I personally don't mind. I just wish complaints could be consistent and not just pointed at one game but not the other.

 

Hear hear.

Bethesda seems to have a lot of "negativity shielding" for some reason. Complain about bugs? Sure... but nothing is then said about the many in ANY of their titles. F:NV buggy? No one mentions they're the same bugs from Fallout 3, which never got the complaint.

 

Etc. etc.

Not quite sure why Bethesda has a green card to do many things badly where other games got burned to the ground for doing them ****ty like them. :/

 

Anyway, still ploughing through KOTOR2, fixing bugs left and right 0_o

[Oner]

 

I read a lot of complaints about many locations in Fallout: New Vegas only being small shacks and the like. The same could be said about Skyrim. Found lots of shacks and standing stones. I personally don't mind. I just wish complaints could be consistent and not just pointed at one game but not the other.

 

Hear hear.

Bethesda seems to have a lot of "negativity shielding" for some reason. Complain about bugs? Sure... but nothing is then said about the many in ANY of their titles. F:NV buggy? No one mentions they're the same bugs from Fallout 3, which never got the complaint.

Oh they did mention FNV sharing F3's bugs. And complained why they haven't been fixed yet.

 

I like how people give free passes over several Beth games downright refusing to start up after expansion and patches are released.

[Rosbjerg]

It's simply because they keep their games fun I think - say what you want, but I always have fun playing a Bethesda game. In much the same way Bioware and Creative Assembly had some adament fans, they kept their games fun too.. and when Rome II, ME3 and DA2 came along they skipped a little too hard on the fun/"just one more turn" parts and fans suddenly got seriously aggressive about the faults.

[BruceVC]

It's simply because they keep their games fun I think - say what you want, but I always have fun playing a Bethesda game. In much the same way Bioware and Creative Assembly had some adament fans, they kept their games fun too.. and when Rome II, ME3 and DA2 came along they skipped a little too hard on the fun/"just one more turn" parts and fans suddenly got seriously aggressive about the faults.

 

I agree, also in Bethesda games they truly embrace the concept of a sandbox game set in a  large open-world RPG where you can basically travel anywhere you see. You can't expect Bethesda to have every part of the world populated with something to do

[HoonDing]

I kill lynx, puma and bear with my hidden blade bare hands in AssCreed 3, damn this game is awesome.

[Keyrock]

Psychonauts, one of the best damn games ever made.  It's been several years since I've played it, and I am happy to say the graphics hold up quite nicely.

[melkathi]

I never could get past the Circus level...

[Keyrock]

I never could get past the Circus level...

Yeah, that level is pretty rough.  The platforming itself in the game is subpar, but the game way more than makes up for it with an overabundance of charm, personality, humor, and level variety.  Quite possibly the best level variety I've ever seen in a platformer, it's like playing a completely different game in each different level.  Plus, it includes the single greatest level ever made, The Milkman Conspiracy.

 

It's been so long since I've played the game that I'm starting over from the beginning.

[Darkpriest]

Playing Skyrim, starting to appreciate the game for what its designed to do, although I still feel the story telling and NPCs simply suck.

 

If you max out sneak and archery, the game is EZ mode. I can just stand in shadows with occasional roll to another spot if too many things are coming in my direction and slowly kill any enemy. I think I killed my first masked guy (the liches with unique masks) at level 11-13 and kited to death a blood dragon, not to mention killing a master vampire and gargoyles on lvl 7.

 

The same thing bothered me in F:NV. if I had any rifle with a scope, I could clear all areas safely. I prefer RPGs being more about my character build and the characters skill in given field, instead of a twich game play of action games and shooters. On the other hand I liked the game design in Deus Ex:HR, but that was not an RPG. It was an action game with a relatively good story.

 

This thing bothers me a lot. I never liked Morrowind because of that, I also disliked the way ME2 moved the series into more shooter genre, and I would say that even Alpha Protocol was a bit meh in that regard.

 

If the combat checks are player skill checks instead of character skill checks other than tactics, than i tend to mvoe the game more into action gaming, which if done good is still fun, but I'd rather have character skill checks in cRPGs over player's reflexes check.

[melkathi]

  Plus, it includes the single greatest level ever made, The Milkman Conspiracy.

 

 

My favourid as well!

 

Though I did enjoy most of the other levels too.

The race-track was boring. The circus damn annoying. But most other levels had a lot of personality and charm.

[Hassat Hunter]

Ehm, Morrowind had skill checks instead of flex. It's Oblivion who started to move away from the dice roll to the actiony gameplay.

So, why dislike Morrowind again?