What are you playing now?

[Malcador]

Just a lot of WoW lately, got the urge to get one more character to max level before the end of the month for some reason, rather enjoy that process even if it does involve silently playing along with 4 other folk from time to time.

 

Might nab Gray Matter and give that a run through once I feel more burnt out.

[egamer4lyfe]

I started back up with Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. I think today is going to be an 8 hour day for me.

[Calax]

Xcom Enemy Within.

 

Four false starts on Enemy Unknown and I'm finally getting the hang of this although my panic levels are high.

[Raithe]

After a day of not playing anything I went back to Wasteland 2. But there seems to be some bug issue with leaving Damonta. Now every time I try to exit the map, I get a loading screen with a full yellow bar.. and the music and sound effects of already having loaded.. and a cursor you can move around the screen that will change as if it's on a normal map.

 

Upon looking across the internet, the best advice is to apparently kill Red, and be unable to finish his quest off... Pondering whether I should try that or look for other things first...

[Bokishi]

GTA Online and Dark Souls 2, currently downloading Risen 3

[Keyrock]

Slowly making my way through Chapter 1 in Neverwinter Nights.  I've defeated the Intellect Devoured and the Yuan-ti so far, so I guess I'm about halfway though the chapter.  I'm doing the docks now, just started in that district.  My druid is up to lev 7, so I can unleash a decent bit of damage now with my magic.  I scooped up Zen Archery making me more accurate with my sling, though it's only a small difference at this point, it will get more pronounced as I continue to pump up my wisdom score at higher levels.  I still haven't bothered with a henchman, probably never will.  Between my bear companion and summoning a creature, I basically have 2 free henchmen at all times.

[sorophx]

After a day of not playing anything I went back to Wasteland 2. But there seems to be some bug issue with leaving Damonta.

good to know, that's where I'm headed, better turn around I guess :D

[Agiel]

Picked up Max Payne 1 and 2 on sale on Steam after remembering the unadulterated joy the mods for those games gave me, in particular the Cinema mod for 2:

 

http://youtu.be/HwYVWTnp18w

 

I suppose enjoyed Max Payne 3 well enough, even if Dan Houser's less than subtle writing had kind of corrupted the noir, hard-boiled atmosphere of the first two (I could go at length at the problems I had with its narrative, but I won't here).

[Katphood]

Watch_Dogs

 

Gameplay-wise it's okay but MY GOD does the city feel lifeless!

 

...

 

Wish I had bought Battlefield 4

Edited August 13, 2014 by Cat Food

[Endrosz]

I got an invite to the ArcheAge 3rd Closed Beta, will be playing from Aug 14-18 (Thursday-Monday) whenever I can and posting pics and commentaries here. The game is installed, I'm waiting for the server opening.

 

It's got a strong sandbox foundation, with a player-driven economy including building ships and non-instanced (!) houses and castles, bringing a strong Ultima/EVE Online vibe. It has flying (gliders), which is awesome on its own, and the build-your-own class system from Titan Quest/Grim Dawn.  I'm really curious about it, this is the first time I'm excited about an MMO beta since GW2. Finally something to challenge the theme park crowd.

 

More info: Classes and Crafting,  Housing and Farms, Traversing the World (staggering amount of travel options, it deserves an article of its own!)

 

Edited August 13, 2014 by Endrosz

[Guest Slinky]

Still roaming around in Skyrim. Next stop is Markarth, from there towards north all the way to Solitude and then I have gone through the whole map. And by "gone through" I mean I have just visited most of the places so they appear in my map, I've cleared only a small fraction of them. Theres so many of them I would probably die out of old age before going through them all.

 

After Solitude I'll probably finish the main story and then see do I still have the will to start the dlc's. Which is not given, the more I play Skyrim the more I want to switch to New Vegas.

[HoonDing]

I'm not disliking Saint's Row 4 as much as I thought I would. It's more fun than Saint's Row 3.

 

After all, there is Haddaway. And the the superpowers relieve much of the tedium.

[Majek]

Rayman Legedns on ps3 ... Damn you Ubi why did you have to make the last trophy so grindy. FU trophies and achievements, i should've played this on WiiU.

[Humanoid]

More XCOM Long War while D:OS is on ice. Classic kicked my butt in the strategic layer (an aspect of XCOM I'm largely disinterested in), I had one game where I got in a death spiral by the start of the third month, and a followup game where I crashed and burned at the start of the fourth - they took about a week each to play out that far, so definitely painful losses, such is Ironman.

 

So I figured I'd try Normal, which is the easiest difficulty level available in LW, and supposedly tuned to roughly the same as Classic in the unmodded game. It's definitely easier in that I find I have a fair bit more cash, but hard to tell what the other changes are. Unlike unmodded Normal, the game never outright cheats in your favour (unmodded, the game does stuff like give you silent hit bonuses, and limits the number of enemies that can actively fire at you), so it's probably subtle things like alien research and resource gathering rate scaled down. Yes, in LW alien progression is not dictated by time passed, but by a simulation of them developing new stuff and harvesting resources using UFO missions, just like XCOM needs to. They even research your soldiers' corpses, i.e. if you lose a mission, all the dead or left behind soldiers give research boosts to the aliens.

 

Enemy count is kind of funky though, just came off a 'moderate' mission with 11 aliens, so when I got a 'swarming' mission, I prepared for the worst, took my best troops, and played ultra defensively, essentially camped at the start and exploring a few tiles at a time with the Scout. There were only 14 aliens, and none of the Mutons despite it being mid-May. Huh. But just prior to that I did a medium landed UFO which had 19, and a shot down small UFO with 7. But then apparently how many enemies you get in a mission, and what type they are, are dictated by the alien resource level. It's a sort of point-buy system where they spend X credits worth of aliens and send them at you, so I guess they spent a fair chunk on the UFO and had to cheap out on the abduction mission.

Edited August 13, 2014 by Humanoid

[Gorgon]

I'm playing classic and I find I'm forced to reload a lot. Before I got power armor it was practically every round. Normal ironman is probably the better choice. 

 

I'm down to four remaing council countries largely because there have been no spare resources to develop better interceptors so I get terror attacks which always cost panic. If I cant build the firestorm in time I will lose. Countires come back with an almost full panic bar so I can't do very many base missions. This is due to a bug where after 20 messages of a country leaving the council the game will crash on message nr 21. 

[Humanoid]

I was doing mostly okay in classic in the ground war, losing only four soldiers by the end of the third month is reasonable going I thought. But yeah, got hopelessly outclassed in the air war, and lost all 3 of my satellites. Then two of those countries subsequently were lost to panic before I could build new satellites, I instead opted to put the sole spare I had over a different continent. But too little too late, barely any income at the start of that fourth month, and Exalt (which are officially overpowered: they're being toned down in the next beta) finished me off.

 

Main misplay was probably trying to rush Beam Lasers but finding I didn't have the alloys to actually research it (terrible luck with shooting down UFOs in the first month), thereby having to do Xenobiology instead anyway. That's a net loss because rushing aside, you want Xenobiology as the absolute first research, since it enables trading sectoid corpses for scientists.

Edited August 13, 2014 by Humanoid

[Gorgon]

I pretty much always forgo lasers for mechs instead and maybe a shiv or two. It's a dead end after all once you start on gauss. I think there should be some kind of reward for doing laser, like a bonus scope. It did help a bit that long war made lasers more accurate like in the original game so they still have their uses for soldiers with very low aim.

[Labadal]

I just beat Tactics Ogre: Let us Cling Together doing the Law route.

 

That was good fun.

 

No to finish Kingdoms of Amalur and Puppeteer.

 

I'm thinking of actually setting up the PS4. Haven't even opened the box other than to check that everything came with it.

[Raithe]

Went back to Wastelands 2, had to reload from before I arrived in Damonta and redo it all. Went through it in slightly different order, and then it fixed things so I was able to leave and exit to the wasteland again. So, no clue what was causing that bug.

 

You don't seem to have any really good choices with the Diamondback Militia and the Servants of the Mushroom Cloud. All choices lead to screwed situations it seems.

 

The DBM's are hardcore versions of the Rangers, but in a crappy, oppressive, and rigid way. Plus, for a group that's basically copying the Rangers, they talk crap about them.

The Priests are.. bug nutz crazy, but they do care about keeping the valley "safe'ish" to travel, and have a hospital accessible by all. But they do like to do suicide mini-nuke grenades to "protect" themselves and those that have paid tribute.

 

 

 

So if you side with the DBM's and let them have the nuke, they basically kick you out of their territory, and because rigid law and order to their spec's with no real thought of justice or mercy.

If you side with the Priests, someone will end up setting the nuke off and wiping out the canyon.

If you dismantle the nuke, the whole situation goes to pot, turning it into a three way stand off of Raiders, DBM's and  Surviving priests and it becomes a no-man's land in general.

 

 

[TheChris92]

New Vegas ... well more like modding it than actually playing.. Gonna take a while.

[sorophx]

You don't seem to have any really good choices with the Diamondback Militia and the Servants of the Mushroom Cloud. All choices lead to screwed situations it seems.

I first I thought this was W2's gimmick: make players face hard choices at every location. I liked the way they handled Ag Center and Highpool, where you still feel you did some good (although I wonder if it's possible to save both settlements)

 

but then Rail Nomads showed me it wasn't the case. maybe it's just an inconsistency stemming from the various writers each doing their own thing 

[Lexx]

Went back to Wastelands 2, had to reload from before I arrived in Damonta and redo it all. Went through it in slightly different order, and then it fixed things so I was able to leave and exit to the wasteland again. So, no clue what was causing that bug.

 

You don't seem to have any really good choices with the Diamondback Militia and the Servants of the Mushroom Cloud. All choices lead to screwed situations it seems.

 

The DBM's are hardcore versions of the Rangers, but in a crappy, oppressive, and rigid way. Plus, for a group that's basically copying the Rangers, they talk crap about them.

The Priests are.. bug nutz crazy, but they do care about keeping the valley "safe'ish" to travel, and have a hospital accessible by all. But they do like to do suicide mini-nuke grenades to "protect" themselves and those that have paid tribute.

 

 

 

So if you side with the DBM's and let them have the nuke, they basically kick you out of their territory, and because rigid law and order to their spec's with no real thought of justice or mercy.

If you side with the Priests, someone will end up setting the nuke off and wiping out the canyon.

If you dismantle the nuke, the whole situation goes to pot, turning it into a three way stand off of Raiders, DBM's and  Surviving priests and it becomes a no-man's land in general.

 

 

 

 

I dismantled the bomb, because even though you will bring chaos now, the situation still can be stabilized again. Siding with the DBM probably will generate a new strong enemy for the Rangers (they want to take control over all of Arizona after all), and siding with the Monks means destruction of everything anyway. So yeah... no bomb for anyone = probably the best for everyone in the future.

 

 

[Raithe]

 

 

but then Rail Nomads showed me it wasn't the case. maybe it's just an inconsistency stemming from the various writers each doing their own thing 

 

 

The Rail Nomads..  the only time you can actually interject your own word into a conversation to have an effect on the storyline.  Or least it seems the only one I've seen so far. By putting in one word in a conversation rather then selecting the choices they give you,  you get to make peace between the tribes.

 

And it takes a bit of odd thinking to get there. Or just pounding your head trying to figure it out.

[sorophx]

that's odd, I got the right option in the dialogue on my first attempt, just needed a proper skill to pick it

[Humanoid]

I pretty much always forgo lasers for mechs instead and maybe a shiv or two. It's a dead end after all once you start on gauss. I think there should be some kind of reward for doing laser, like a bonus scope. It did help a bit that long war made lasers more accurate like in the original game so they still have their uses for soldiers with very low aim.

I've never gotten as far as mechs, or genemods, or even gauss in Long War. But Gauss weapons in themselves don't seem particularly attractive: on a one to one basis, sure, it's 1 damage vs 7-10 aim, but when the Gauss weapon costs 3 times more? Not so much. Exception for the Recoilless Rifle for obvious reasons, and the Alloy Cannon (but even then it's mostly because the Scatter Laser sucks). Fortunately this has been recognised, and the next beta will reduce their cost, while also having them ignore 0.33 damage reduction. But above all I think the power of the Laser Cannon for the air war is what makes Beam Lasers most attractive.

 

EDIT: Just reading the tech tree now admittedly, I hadn't really looked at it and was mostly going by instinct.

Edited August 14, 2014 by Humanoid