What are you playing now

[Tale]

I think I want to play Morrowind. But magic is so boring and I've done stealth/combat a hundred times.

[Drowsy Emperor]

You don't want to play Morrowind, its brown.

[Bartimaeus]

I got Nimble to get me a Lynx sniper rifle in Call of Pripyat, it's a modified SVD.  I consider it to be the single best sniper weapon in the game.  The Gauss Gun does more damage and has a better scope, but it's slow rate of fire and prohibitively expensive ammunition lose out to the Lynx's vastly superior rate of fire and only slightly lower damage output (The Lynx will still knock just about anyone off their feet with a single bullet and will insta-kill, to the best of my knowledge, anything with one headshot).  Now I have arguably the best sniper rifle in the game, and arguably the best assault rifle in the game.  Now I just need to get my hands on an Amsel Striker for maximum short range killing goodness.  The SPAS-12 will have to suffice until I get my hands on one.

 

I recall liking the special Vintorez more...I'm struggling to remember its name. Tide, maybe? Then again, I always liked the regular Vintorez more than the regular SVD/SVU.

[Keyrock]

 

I got Nimble to get me a Lynx sniper rifle in Call of Pripyat, it's a modified SVD.  I consider it to be the single best sniper weapon in the game.  The Gauss Gun does more damage and has a better scope, but it's slow rate of fire and prohibitively expensive ammunition lose out to the Lynx's vastly superior rate of fire and only slightly lower damage output (The Lynx will still knock just about anyone off their feet with a single bullet and will insta-kill, to the best of my knowledge, anything with one headshot).  Now I have arguably the best sniper rifle in the game, and arguably the best assault rifle in the game.  Now I just need to get my hands on an Amsel Striker for maximum short range killing goodness.  The SPAS-12 will have to suffice until I get my hands on one.

 

I recall liking the special Vintorez more...I'm struggling to remember its name. Tide, maybe? Then again, I always liked the regular Vintorez more than the regular SVD/SVU.

 

Tide is a quality rifle and it's a matter of personal taste and application.  While Tide's rate of fire is slower than that of a regular Victorez (more than compensated for by highly increased damage), it still fires faster than Lynx.  Another advantage of Tide is practically no recoil.  Tide's damage is pretty impressive, though it's not as high as Lynx or the Gauss Gun.  The thing that makes Lynx (and SVDs in general) preferable to me is that Lynx has significantly less bullet drop than Tide, making it a far more accurate weapon at very long ranges.  Of course, if you get really good at calculating the bullet drop into your aiming then that becomes a much smaller issue.

[Bartimaeus]

Ah. I never had much trouble with bullet drop, personally. I've never liked really the higher powered feel (and lower handling!) of the SVD/SVU, though.

[Serrano]

I just finished playing The Blackwell Epiphany. I liked it and would recommend it to anyone who's played the rest of the series but for better or worse the tone of the story is different and I don't think it will be many people's favourite Blackwell game although it is a typically good Wadjet Eye title.   

Edited April 25, 2014 by Serrano

[Zoraptor]

Ah. I never had much trouble with bullet drop, personally. I've never liked really the higher powered feel (and lower handling!) of the SVD/SVU, though.

I always preferred the Vintorez because it's far more flexible than the SVD, usable as a sniper rifle (never had much problem with bullet drop either, if you're not of a bullets=laser beams mindset from the outset it isn't much of an adjustment) and in close quarters, plus it is lighter and easier handling. The second is less important in CoP where there's generally less close stuff, but if I'd had an SVD for the brian scorcher or Chernobyl assaults in SoC instead of a Vintorez I'd have run out of bullets- I used a G36, Groza/5.45 and Vintorez to cover the three common high damage bullet types. The thought of trying to use a big sniper rifle in close quarters even as a last resort does not appeal.

 

Even in SoC the SVD did have some good uses though such as the Red Forest road, and it was pretty useful in most of CS and CoP since they had less general emphasis on confined spaces.

[WDeranged]

Purified Zion of the White Leg scum and broke Daniel's Mormon heart by turning the Sorrows into a warlike people, Salt-Upon-Wounds begged for his life...BEGGED! 

[Keyrock]

Agreed, the Victorez is the only sniper rifle that is even remotely viable as a short to medium range weapon, the SVD is far too unwieldly for that, and it's a far more versatile weapon.  My thought process is that for medium range, that's what my assault rifle is for.  It's at extremely long range, where the target, even in the scope, doesn't look much bigger than an insect, where the SVD (and Gauss Gun) tend to be significantly superior to any other weapon.  Knowing that a center mass shot, even on a soldier wearing a fully upgraded exoskeleton, is gauranteed to take him off his feet (with the Lynx, not sure if a standard SVD will guaranteed take him off his feet) doesn't hurt either.  Plus, I kind of enjoy the massive recoil and thundering sound of the SVD.  It makes me feel virile, or something.  

Edited April 26, 2014 by Keyrock

[Bartimaeus]

Purified Zion of the White Leg scum and broke Daniel's Mormon heart by turning the Sorrows into a warlike people, Salt-Upon-Wounds begged for his life...BEGGED! 

 

What game is this? "Salt-Upon-Wounds" reminds me of some of the Dustmen names from Planescape: Torment...

 

Vintorez is much more useful in SHoC/CS than in CoP. It's a sort of jack of all trades, master of none...which is great when it's your only rifle, but not so great when you can specialize by having two large weapons like you can in CoP...even though I still did use it in CoP. I usually used the Protecta as my other weapon, because it was such a fun shotgun, unlike most of the others, (in my opinion...besides perhaps the SPAS-12 to a much lesser degree).

Edited April 26, 2014 by Bartimaeus

[Bendu]

 

Purified Zion of the White Leg scum and broke Daniel's Mormon heart by turning the Sorrows into a warlike people, Salt-Upon-Wounds begged for his life...BEGGED! 

 

What game is this? "Salt-Upon-Wounds" reminds me of some of the Dustmen names from Planescape: Torment...

 

Fallout: New Vegas Honest Hearts.

 

Still playing Dark Souls 2. Love it.

[Rosbjerg]

Some Xcom Enemy Within, really enjoy the MECHs - they look and play absolutely menacing. And also how the Meld resource forces you to move a little quicker, it's a little cheesy gamey mechanic, but it works.

 

Being able to genetically modify your super psy soldiers makes the game a little easy in the mid to late game though.

[Keyrock]

Finished Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse.  Good game.  Started out fairly meh.  Not bad, just not particularly exciting for a good chunk of part 1, but it really takes off in the second half of the game.  Pretty much the entirety of the second part is great.  It took me a little over 14 hours to finish, which is fairly long for a point & click adventure.  The voice acting is all top notch and all the audio is quite good.  The 2D backgrounds are gorgeous, and while the 3D character models are really good, they sometimes don't fit perfectly with the background, sort of popping out.  Nothing really egregious, a solid job, but far from perfect.  I consider this is the best Broken Sword since the first one.  It's way better than The Sleeping Dragon or The Angel of Death, a little better than The Smoking Mirror, and not quite as good as The Shadow of the Templars.

 

I give it 3 1/2 meeflors out of goojyflux on the arbitrary scale.

Edited April 27, 2014 by Keyrock

[Guest Slinky]

Some Xcom Enemy Within, really enjoy the MECHs - they look and play absolutely menacing. And also how the Meld resource forces you to move a little quicker, it's a little cheesy gamey mechanic, but it works.

 

Being able to genetically modify your super psy soldiers makes the game a little easy in the mid to late game though.

 

Have you had any line of sight issues with Enemy Within? I really wanted to like XCOM, especially on harder difficulties and ironman mode, but the issues with the engine made that pretty hard for me. Like first one my soldier doesn't have a line of sight from a place where he sure as hell should have, and the next turn I'm able to throw a grenade through two solid walls.

 

I'm prefectly okay with me doing a mistake and suffering because of that, but if I lose a soldier because the engine says "hehe, **** you buddy"... well, you all have seen The Exorcist.

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

 

I give it 3 1/2 meeflors out of goojyflux on the arbitrary scale.

Aaahh!!! This extreme precision is searing the retinas off of my eyes!

[Agiel]

Well that didn't take long.

 

Had my first invasion in my own world in Dark Souls II PC and lo and behold it was a cheater. Landed several good hits on him without doing any damage (saw no numbers, he had no shield and I even landed a backstab on him). If Steam recent players was accurate, hopefully my report was on the right player. Thankfully I got iced near a bonfire while I was waiting to get summoned so no big deal to corpse run to get my souls back.

 

So far as online gaming goes, that's just the lowest of the low. 

Edited April 27, 2014 by Agiel

[Bartimaeus]

Well that didn't take long.

 

Had my first invasion in my own world in Dark Souls II PC and lo and behold it was a cheater. Landed several good hits on him without doing any damage (saw no numbers, he had no shield and I even landed a backstab on him). If Steam recent players was accurate, hopefully my report was on the right player. Thankfully I got iced near a bonfire while I was waiting to get summoned so no big deal to corpse run to get my souls back.

 

So far as online gaming goes, that's just the lowest of the low. 

 

Somehow, I wouldn't be surprised if the game is as insecure as its predecessor. I like creating cheats for games I play, (though not necessarily to use, and never in multiplayer), and the things you could do in Dark Souls without the game performing any sort of check, server side or client side, is ridiculous. It would be pretty easy, and not *that* much work, to have the game check player side - doesn't even have to be server-side, so it's not any more work for the server - as to whether a character attempting to join's main stats (and any substats derived from them) compared to their soul level are legit, (as well as check the stats of theirs items). It was embarrassing that Dark Souls 1 was released the way it is, more embarrassing still that they never fixed it, and it'd be a complete joke if they didn't fix it in their second game.

Edited April 27, 2014 by Bartimaeus

[Agiel]

Oh I totally agree that in Fallout: New Vegas and TES it's plenty fun to mess with the Console Commands. But it goes without saying that what you do online affects other people. I can only imagine that the person who unleashes these Dark Souls trainers upon the community are as psychopathic as the people who use them.

 

More notes from my travels: Got to Sinner's Rise from the Lost Bastille and died on the boss. For whatever odd reason, From Software thought it was a good idea to put a bonfire next to three mobs that immediately aggro on you as soon as you respawn there; not exactly conducive getting summoned to try and become human again. I suppose this is one of those times you're supposed to be glad they don't respawn after you kill them a certain number of times (which I made a point of doing just that once).

 

Also this likely has to do with the hoard of players hopping on at launch, but it's unfortunate that you can't really afford to be choosy on who you summon given that a potential sign is liable to already be taken the moment it appears.

Edited April 27, 2014 by Agiel

[Drowsy Emperor]

I tried Dark Souls again but even after much fiddling the game doesn't recognize my gamepad (PS2 gamepad over USB converter) which works with everything else. It doesn't work with Dark Souls II either which is a port as ****ty as the first one. That they couldn't build a respectable PC interface is a disgrace.

Edited April 27, 2014 by Drowsy Emperor

[Guest Slinky]

I tried Dark Souls again but even after much fiddling the game doesn't recognize my gamepad (PS2 gamepad over USB converter) which works with everything else. It doesn't work with Dark Souls II either which is a port as ****ty as the first one. That they couldn't build a respectable PC interface is a disgrace.

 

This Totalbiscuit video mentions something about disabling stuff at device manager to get controller to work, you might want to give it a try. It's around 9 minutes in the video.

[marelooke]

I bought Dead Space 3 recently despite it being on Origin (due to it being on sale for a price I deemed acceptable ).

 

Combat seems to be more clunky than I remember. I mean, I get hit way more often and Necromorphs in general seem to be faster and tougher than before, guess they want to force more use of stasis. There's also lots more of them on average. Seems they just went full out for a shooter feel (get jumped by loads of necromorphs all the time, spam health packs).

 

The weapon upgrade system also seems more complex, I personally don't really care for it very much so so far it hinders me more than anything.

 

Also I was aware Ellie got a makeover, but good lord, it's looks even worse ingame than on the screenshots I saw. Was that seriously really necessary?

And then she runs around with cleavage that wouldn't be out of place at some award ceremony, seriously is Isaac the only one with enough brains to wear a space suit when visiting derelict spaceships?

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

I tried Dark Souls again but even after much fiddling the game doesn't recognize my gamepad (PS2 gamepad over USB converter) which works with everything else. It doesn't work with Dark Souls II either which is a port as ****ty as the first one. That they couldn't build a respectable PC interface is a disgrace.

 

This Totalbiscuit video mentions something about disabling stuff at device manager to get controller to work, you might want to give it a try. It's around 9 minutes in the video.

 

 

That's one of the first things I tried. Didn't work.  >

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

I tried Dark Souls again but even after much fiddling the game doesn't recognize my gamepad (PS2 gamepad over USB converter) which works with everything else. It doesn't work with Dark Souls II either which is a port as ****ty as the first one. That they couldn't build a respectable PC interface is a disgrace.

 

This Totalbiscuit video mentions something about disabling stuff at device manager to get controller to work, you might want to give it a try. It's around 9 minutes in the video.

 

I got it working. My PS2 converter had 2 slots for Dualshock gamepad's and the game was defaulting to one which apparently doesn't work.

[Keyrock]

I'm glad I didn't pull the trigger on Dark Souls 2 yet.  I almost did, got a far as having it in my (virtual) shopping basket and starting the checkout process, before I balked.  I'll wait until I build my desktop rig, scoop it up on sale, and this will give time for Durante and others to work their magic.

[ManifestedISO]

Playing the Wait game while downloading Catalyst 14.4 drivers. WHQL and everything, finally. As far as I know, this is the main Mantle update.