What are you playing now

[Lexx]

Played through the "story" of Metal Gear Solid - The Ground Zeroes. It was good, but extremely short. Stuff like this was called a demo back in the years. Or, well, the prolog as we know it from MGS2 and MGS3. Just that you now have to pay 20 bucks for it.

 

Well, at least there seems to be quite some stuff to unlock. Will try out the side-mission stuff tomorrow, but I'll doubt they need much time either.

Edited March 25, 2014 by Lexx

[GhostofAnakin]

Played through the "story" of Metal Gear Solid - The Ground Zeroes. It was good, but extremely short. Stuff like this was called a demo back in the years. Or, well, the prolog as we know it from MGS2 and MGS3. Just that you now have to pay 20 bucks for it.

 

Well, at least there seems to be quite some stuff to unlock. Will try out the side-mission stuff tomorrow, but I'll doubt they need much time either.

I was tempted to get that, but the reviews mentioning how short it was kind of turned me off.  Especially because it's likely that whenever the "full" game comes out of Metal Gear Solid 5, I bet this gets added as DLC or part of the "Game of the Year" edition.

[marelooke]

With the Diablo 3 promotion prior to the expansion release (and the enthusiasm of fellow forumites about the expansion) I finally bought the game (I know I am "seriously late to the Diablo 3 party, dude" as one of my WoW buddies put it).

 

Having a blast playing a Wizard so far, made it to lvl30 in about 2 days. Started out on Normal got told to "ramp up the difficulty man, seriously", so that's what I did. Playing on Hard now, got a lucky Legendary weapon drop and now hard is starting to feel easy-ish so I'm considering going the final mile difficulty wise (no access to anything harder than whatever comes between Hard and Master until I either complete Act IV or hit lvl60)

 

Dunno why but Diablo 3 is more engaging for me than Torchlight was (which I only play for an hour now and again until I get bored and go play something else), it definitely isn't nostalgia though, I never played enough Diablo to be worth mentioning and I didn't touch Diablo 2 at all.

[Monte Carlo]

^ Marelooke, actually I think you were lucky coming to D3 late. We've been through a couple of sucky iterations of the game to get to the Reaper of Souls version. Which is really, really good.

[Humanoid]

With the Diablo 3 promotion prior to the expansion release (and the enthusiasm of fellow forumites about the expansion) I finally bought the game (I know I am "seriously late to the Diablo 3 party, dude" as one of my WoW buddies put it).

 

Having a blast playing a Wizard so far, made it to lvl30 in about 2 days. Started out on Normal got told to "ramp up the difficulty man, seriously", so that's what I did. Playing on Hard now, got a lucky Legendary weapon drop and now hard is starting to feel easy-ish so I'm considering going the final mile difficulty wise (no access to anything harder than whatever comes between Hard and Master until I either complete Act IV or hit lvl60)

 

Dunno why but Diablo 3 is more engaging for me than Torchlight was (which I only play for an hour now and again until I get bored and go play something else), it definitely isn't nostalgia though, I never played enough Diablo to be worth mentioning and I didn't touch Diablo 2 at all.

My former WoW buddies always thought it was strange that I expressed having no interest whatsoever in Diablo, to the point of not signing up to the theoretically free* copy of it if purchasing a year's subscription to WoW. Given all the shared design elements, the assumption would be that it'd be right up my alley. I guess it's partly a mystery to me too, but I played a friend's copy of Diablo 2 back in the day, and did not enjoy it at all, so despite all the theoretical similarities, I stayed well away.

 

*As it happened, I ended up quitting WoW months short of the one-year point from the start of the annual pass program, so it wasn't as if I had turned down something literally free.

 

---

 

Anyway, nearing the end of Stick of Truth I assume - in Canada at the moment - and while I'm still having fun, I think the game was stronger when it still was immersed in the guise of the extended LARP. I get that the intention was to cram as many elements and references to the TV series as possible, but I feel the game isn't at its strongest there as it tends to lose focus as a result. Granted as a non-fan of the series, much of it went right over my head, so the stuff I'm complaining about might be stuff that tends to delight long-term followers. So yeah, best bits of the game for me are the earnest humans vs elves 'war' and the set pieces that revolve around that.

 

In the long run, I might end up viewing this game as I did KoTOR, a game I enjoyed despite the setting, not because of it.

Edited March 25, 2014 by Humanoid

[CoM_Solaufein]

FNV, just started Lonesome Road.

[BruceVC]

Tonight I'll start playing F.E.A.R, I have never played any of these games in the series before and I'm looking forward to it

[IndiraLightfoot]

Tonight I'll start playing F.E.A.R, I have never played any of these games in the series before and I'm looking forward to it

Good luck! I've been meaning to play these games too, but I haven't come around to it yet.

[marelooke]

The first FEAR was pretty awesome imho. The expansions were a pain to get working on Win7 though as they are standalone and were never patched while the main game was. Iirc the workaround was running the expansions as administrator, but I'm not entirely sure anymore.

 

FEAR 2 and 3 went the way of the Dead Spaces. Nice shooters, but the atmosphere of the first game was gone.

 

 

Me, I'm most likely going to play Diablo 3 this evening, I just finished Act I so I've still got a ways to go I imagine. Act II looks like a desert, I hope it's a nice desert as I'm generally not too fond of deserts in games...

[Bos_hybrid]

Tonight I'll start playing F.E.A.R, I have never played any of these games in the series before and I'm looking forward to it

 

FEAR was the best, boring level/enviroment design, but awesome AI and atmosphere. Still better AI than any recent FPS has to date, sad when you think about it.

 

FEAR 2 was better level and environment design, but lacked the AI and atmosphere of the first. And that ending...

[mkreku]

I've been playing State of Decay (PC version) a lot lately. But even after spending 20+ hours with it, I'm not sure what I think about it.

 

Technically, it sucks. Plain and simple. It's clunky, it's ugly, you can change resolution between a few presets (not 2560x1440) but the internal resolution seems to remain the same, the game features are all half-done, everything feels like it barely works and you can never really trust the various game systems. A lot of annoying console specific quirks remain in the PC version (when I run in one direction and want to look to the left or right while running, DO NOT FORCE MY VIEW BACK TO MY RUNNING DIRECTION AFTER TWO SECONDS!!). It is also buggy, with me getting stuck in menus, getting stuck in endless running mode, getting stuck in the environment (which zombies do too), getting stuck in gliding-in-recoil-after-an-attack pose, etc.

 

But the game somehow manages to be fun despite these problems. The open world, set in a believable setting (contemporary rural America), is such a joy to explore. Sure, I won't find any dragons or magic, but going from a 9mm Sig-Sauer to a .50 Glock just by managing to break into an abandoned and zombie-infested police station never gets old. There are different types of cars to find and drive through the zombie crowds with. Your characters (you can switch between all the survivors in your camp at will) all have different skills that increase the more you use them. You can find new settlements that you can move your homebase to (and upgrade things in) and you can find other little pockets of survivors that take some convincing but eventually joins your group.

 

I think I like it. I know I would definitely like it if they had fixed one of the most common problems with computer games of this age: the non-consequence of your actions. If you drive a car through enough zombies, your car will take a beating. If you then leave the car somewhere random, you can come back to it days later and it will be exactly like you left it. There are a finite number of cars in the game, so this is actually cool. Your actions have consequences.

 

But with the zombies.. You can clear out a building full of zombies, go out the door, realize you forgot something on the inside, go back inside and face 10 new zombies ready to punch a hole in your face. I've had the same problem with all the GTA games so far: blow up your car in a horrible inferno involving 10 other cars, turn your back to the scene for a few seconds (literally just rotating on the spot), turn back and everything is back like nothing ever happened. I remember Dead Rising did the same, with one huge difference: they had a little counter (51000?) that kept decreasing every time you killed a zombie. If you ever managed to kill 51000 zombies, there would be no more. The zombies were finite. Even if you were never even near killing so many zombies, at least knowing they weren't infinite (like in State of Decay) made me feel better. Having infinite zombies = zombies are meaningless and only wasting my time.

 

Why don't any games do this? I want everything I do to be remembered by the game! I don't want to blow up a car and find it in perfect condition 20 seconds later.

[WDeranged]

Put simply, I rape Deathclaws.

[Tale]

I got another hour into Dead Space 3 and it's definitely feeling like the weakest installment. The areas are smaller and less interesting, they're so far nothing but corridors. And the plots not as compelling. Isaac basically volunteered for this mission. And there's no mystery to solve behind the necromorph presence. The mystery of what happened was the biggest draw for the player in Dead Space 1 and 2, with getting the heck out of danger being the motivator for Isaac. Even the ultimate objective, find out how this planet stopped a necromorph infestation as a key to ending the necromorph threat, seems like an excuse. Because they clearly didn't find a long term solution. And Isaac's already figured out how to stop the dang things himself.

 

The plot thing really hit me when I got the second optional mission. I went off and did it and towards the end I realized I didn't know why I was doing it. I'm searching for some guy who is probably dead and his resource cache. Resources that aren't being actually used for the mission, I don't need them to repair something, it's not food or medical supplies for the wounded. It's gun parts. And I'm pretty happy with my guns. They could stand to be better, but it's not something to risk your life for.

[Blarghagh]

The first FEAR was pretty awesome imho.

 

Agreed. It was clichéd but it had a tense atmosphere and some massive jumpscares that nearly had me launching myself out of my chair.

[BruceVC]

 

The first FEAR was pretty awesome imho.

 

Agreed. It was clichéd but it had a tense atmosphere and some massive jumpscares that nearly had me launching myself out of my chair.

 

 

Wowzers, I have to honest I'm now even more excited, it sounds like a game that would benefit from some good weed 

[Tale]

FEAR is the greatest FPS I've ever played, at least with regards to actual action and combat. It doesn't have exploration or wonderful visuals. It's just really intense shooting with great AI and encounter design.

[Hassat Hunter]

it sounds like a game that would benefit from some good weed 

And now it makes perfect sense why you come across as such a weirdo...

[BruceVC]

 

 

it sounds like a game that would benefit from some good weed 

And now it makes perfect sense why you come across as such a weirdo...

 

As long as  you are still my friend and support Romance in RPG  I can deal with anything....even being a weirdo

[Hassat Hunter]

I'LL NEVER LOVE YOU!

[/Drama]

 

Anyway, finished Holy Avatar... for it's price (free) it's good... wouldn't suggest paying much for it though, the other 2 Grotesque Tactics are longer, and more importantly, much funnier (and the turn-based combat sucks in all).

Edited March 26, 2014 by Hassat Hunter

[Tagaziel]

Just finished Burial at Sea Part 2. In a word: Jesus. I'm not sure how to feel about the ending, but the entirety of the DLC is just amazingly well done from a narrative and character development standpoint.

 

Biggest freak out:

 

 

The lobotomy scene. Jesus. ****ing. Christ. If I wake up screaming in the middle of the night, I'll know who to ask. That's the single biggest fear I have and Irrational had to go an exploit it. Thank you, I really wanted to see how a lobotomy would look from the perspective of one on the receiving end.

 

 

Also, ending:

 

 

Which Elizabeth died? The Booker-123 one? Does that even matter?

 

[HoonDing]

I'm pleasantly surprised by Memoria. It's the best adventure game I played in almost ten years.

[Zoraptor]

FEAR 2 was better level and environment design, but lacked the AI and atmosphere of the first. And that ending...

Wouldn't be surprised if Bruce likes the ending.

 

'Romance' and female empowerment? Surely that's any true Promancer/ SJW's perfect game...

 

[Llyranor]

Wargame: Red Dragon (preorder beta)

So. Freaking. Good. 

 

I'm seriously addicted to deck-building, and the gameplay is so tense/fun.

 

My favorite RTS series, definitely (essentially because it just does its own thing, rather than trying to be a standard RTS)

[Orogun01]

FEAR is the greatest FPS I've ever played, at least with regards to actual action and combat. It doesn't have exploration or wonderful visuals. It's just really intense shooting with great AI and encounter design.

FEAR has had the best enemy AI I've encountered to date, later gen games had gimmicks that just copied what FEAR did. Sadly the sequels were "consolized" and "CODed".

[WDeranged]

Took out Motor Runner, for some reason I'd never been into Vault 3 dressed as a Khan so it was cool to waltz right into his throne room unmolested.  Going to dive into Honest Hearts soon, I love the location so I'm looking forward to it.