What are you playing now

[AwesomeOcelot]

Starting playing Hearthstone Friday evening, it's really well polished like most Blizzard games. As a FTP game, it's all right, you'd have to be extremely lucky, or spend months playing, to build the best decks, which does mean there's a PTW element, but it's marginal, especially at lower ranks since you can build solid decks by levelling. The best players can get to the highest ranks without paying anything, but they're limited to one maybe two decks. I've only just started and I'm at rank 16 without paying for anything. The only concern I have is that if you wanted to collect cards to build different decks, it's going to be random and very expensive, which I guess is the essence of card games. Arena is the best mode, it's great for learning the cards and strategies, it's way more varied and tense. So far in 2 days I've gone 7-3 1-3 6-3 1-3 5-3, I'm not very good at drafting, so I don't consistently draft a viable deck. You can get quite a bit of free gold when you start, but now that's dried up, it costs £1.50 to play an arena, it comes with a pack, that might cause me to stop playing, because there's a lot of random elements with it and other games are way better value than that.

[melkathi]

I finished Aarklash: Legacy

 

The game is real time with active pause.

 

The Bad:

The boss fights were easier than the normal fights. At least on normal difficulty.

Character progression / customization is quite limted: there are 8 characters, each of which have 4 pre-determined abilities. You can upgrade these abilities as you level up, even changing the way they behave, but you are bound by the four things that character can do.

The game is too short for the story it is trying to tell. It ends rather abruptly and the end is a bit forced; I felt as if a chapter had been skipped.

There are no side-quests as such and no real exploration - maps are pretty straight forward, you start at point A and need to reach point B. Later maps are fairly large though, making up for that. And there are at least a (very) few little things to find (treasure chests that need solving of little puzzles to reach).

There are some minor gameplay issues that weren't necessary. For example you can't cancel a spell that your character is already casting (though you can cancel it if it is just in the queue).

Icons for buffs/debuffs are tiny.

Loot is boring and items don't affect appearance.

 

The Good:

Quite a lot of love has gone into the game and I at least felt that it shows. The devs really tried to do interesting things.

Fights can be rather challenging and require quite a bit of thought.

Every one of the 8 characters you have is unique. Some have more interesting mechanics than others, but they all have something that sets them appart.

A lot of the characters' abilities are more than just click button and forget. Some travel in a straight line hitting the first person in their path. Others are area of effect. Others are channeled.

After the beginning, pretty much all enemies have special abilities, attacks, auras etc. So one enemy may heal allies when taking damage, another may lock the use of player attack powers in a radius around them etc. As a result, prioritising targets is very important but may vary from battle to battle (though certain enemies it will always be good to take out first).

Except for a certain map, you can swap party members any time, outside combat.

You may die quite a bit.

There are a lot of puzzles to solve with activating switches etc. They start simple and become more complicated, combining different elements. The game though usually ramps up the complexity gradually, so that you know what you can do. I managed to solve them all without too much difficulty, though one took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do.

 

 

Overall, I really enjoyed it. I played relatively short sessions mostly, so it lasted longer than it may for others. It was challenging and not that many rpgs are these days. I got it on sale and at that price it was deffinitly worth it. Worth it at full price? I got the "amount of" enjoyment out of it that I would have required, had I payed full price, yes. I may even replay it, though not right away.

It is not a game you play for the story/writing. Even though I actually got to like the characters, the game isn't about that, it is about the tactical combat using a 4 character strong team.

[Bos_hybrid]

Decided to try out SOASE:Rebellion Armada 3 mod. Best Star Trek mod I've played. The guys behind it did a really great job. If you like Sins and Trek, you should give it a try.

 

Be warned though, if you go against the Borg prepare to rush before the AI builds a Cube or get curbed stomped. One Cube wipes out large fleets with ease.

[Agiel]

Decided to try out SOASE:Rebellion Armada 3 mod. Best Star Trek mod I've played. The guys behind it did a really great job. If you like Sins and Trek, you should give it a try.

 

Be warned though, if you go against the Borg prepare to rush before the AI builds a Cube or get curbed stomped. One Cube wipes out large fleets with ease.

 

The same can be said for the Executor Super Star Destroyer that can be built by the Galactic Empire in the Star Wars mod of the same game.

[alanschu]

Bouncing between Blood Dragon and Horizon

[Darkpriest]

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?

 

Combat was more player skill driven (dodging, aiming, etc), and the ability to join every guild ( IIRC and also every house?), and the learning by doing mechanics which led to things like spam jump, sprint, etc.

[Hassat Hunter]

No, I don't recall that about Morrowind at all. It was more ability driven than skill, not everyone could be joined. All that, as stated, started with Oblivion. One of several reasons most people think it's Bethesda's last good game.

It did have skills training per use, a system that is good on paper, but terrible in execution.

[alanschu]

Morrowind did have ability driven elements, in that you could "see your arrow hit the target" but still miss. I don't recall if this was an issue with melee attacks or not, or if it just affected damage.

[WorstUsernameEver]

Morrowind did have ability driven elements, in that you could "see your arrow hit the target" but still miss. I don't recall if this was an issue with melee attacks or not, or if it just affected damage.

Feedback in Morrowind was pretty fraking awful. Worse than Daggerfall, weirdly enough. You'd see the hit connecting and *hear* it connecting, but it was actually missing. That was the annoying part of its skill-based melee.

[Darkpriest]

But if you would not hit the target, the skill check would not proc right? and you could manually dodge spells, arrows etc, right? so it was some kind of an odd hybrid, but still I'd say it was more player driven than character skill driven combat. 

[HoonDing]

One of several reasons most people think it's Bethesda's last good game.

Most people = small but vocal minority on the Internet.

Edited February 23, 2014 by Drudanae

[Raithe]

Morrowind was the first Elder Scrolls game I ever played. The sandbox and background lore pulled me in, I dabbled with various mods, and spent a long time just enjoying the hell out of it, even with the somewhat bleh combat.

 

On the strength of that I pre-ordered Oblivion. And was struck dumb by the sheer horror and soul-destroying nature of that game. I've never been able to finish it. The storyline wasn't interesting, the characters were bland, and the daedric gates just..  yeah. I've never understood why so many people seem to have loved it. The mechanics weren't any better, and the world while technically impeccable and pretty, just drained me of a will to live.

[Hurlshort]

I'd say Oblivion is the worst Bethesda game, although Arena was a buggy mess and barely a full game.  I'm less worried about them after Fallout 3 and Skyrim, because it is clear that they attempted to address many of their shortcomings.  

[Hassat Hunter]

Morrowind was the first Elder Scrolls game I ever played. The sandbox and background lore pulled me in, I dabbled with various mods, and spent a long time just enjoying the hell out of it, even with the somewhat bleh combat.

 

On the strength of that I pre-ordered Oblivion. And was struck dumb by the sheer horror and soul-destroying nature of that game. I've never been able to finish it. The storyline wasn't interesting, the characters were bland, and the daedric gates just..  yeah. I've never understood why so many people seem to have loved it. The mechanics weren't any better, and the world while technically impeccable and pretty, just drained me of a will to live.

 

My story too... *has collectors edition Oblivion here due to that, gathering dust :/*

And no, Morrowind isn't just liked by a small internet community.

Pretty sure you can't dodge arrows or spells. Though it has been too long to say for certain here...

[Hurlshort]

 

My story too... *has collectors edition Oblivion here due to that, gathering dust :/*

And no, Morrowind isn't just liked by a small internet community.

Pretty sure you can't dodge arrows or spells. Though it has been too long to say for certain here...

 

 

I think Dru is saying that it's a small group that believes Morrowind was the last good game by Bethesda.  Morrowind was very popular, but so was Oblivion and Skyrim.

[Majek]

Still borderlands, Knoxx DLC. Damn, that's a lot of driving.

[LadyCrimson]

Still borderlands, Knoxx DLC. Damn, that's a lot of driving.

That's about what I said when I played that. Don't get me wrong, I do think it's probably the best of BL1's DLC's, but the driving back and forth on those freeways really became an annoyance after a while. Hehe.

[ShadySands]

I've got nothing to play until Thursday :sadface

[LadyCrimson]

There's always Windows Solitaire.

[GhostofAnakin]

I'm not seeing much of a difference between "vanilla" ME3 and importing a character and choices over from previous ME games.  The only noticeable one is Mordin (which I won't spoil, except to say ... oops, I promised not to spoil it).

[Humanoid]

Giving Skyrim another, perhaps final go, with the Frostfall and Realistic Needs mods to turn it into a sort of equivalent to NV's Hardcore/Josh mode. Haven't decided on what the character direction will be though, am in town and haven't levelled yet so all avenues are open. Already did my archetypal thief in a previous game, so it'll have to be something different. - thought about going heavy weapons, 2H hammer only berserker, but am concerned about carry weight issues with the modded version, what with all the food, water and miscellaneous supplies.

 

Half-tempted to buy Saints Row 4, which is ridiculous because I only slightly liked the previous game (quitting after act 1). But it's on the Humble Store sale, so I can get it guilt free.

 

And while I'm typing this, it looks as if the download of the latest Wasteland 2 beta has failed because my Steam SSD is full. . I actually have a couple of new SSDs on my desk, but they were meant to be installed in new systems I'm building in a month or three's time, but hmm.....

[mkreku]

I hope you got the Samsung 840 PRO 256+ GB

[Humanoid]

I have the Sandisk Extreme II which is more or less the equal best SSD with the 840 Pro as my system disk. The Steam drive is a 840 EVO, and the other games drive is a Crucial m4. All are 240-256GB models, as is the drive I'm considering installing, which would be the slowest of the lot, a Sandisk Ultra Plus (a budget drive). If I do it I guess I could boast about having a terabyte worth of SSD.... but for now I just shunted about 8GB of games I don't play onto another drive. Took less than a minute, so it'll do for now until the next round of games to install.

[Keyrock]

I did the Fred Bonaparte level in Psychonauts last night.  I like how there are some basic elements of point & click adventure in that level to spice up the platforming.  Also, picking up the cannon ball shooting armored guys with telekinesis and hurling them into the river never ceases to be satisfying.

 

Edit:  Also, I run off a 5400 RPM HDD.  Suck on my eliteness, bitches! 

Edited February 25, 2014 by Keyrock

[Monte Carlo]

My son wanted Terraria. I made him pay for it out of his pocket money.

 

Damn it's good!