What are you playing now?

[Starwars]

Playing a bit of Valiant Hearts, bought it and Child of Light (maybe I'll play that next) 50% off.

 

It's... alright. I dunno, the art is lovely and setting the story during WW1 is good. But the gameplay is just... not good. Would've been better as a straight up adventure game. And the story kinda goes "oh, and then a bad thing happened to our heroes, and then *another* bad thing, and then yet *another* bad thing". It's kinda weak.

 

When the story works, it works really well. When it doesn't, it just grates. The gameplay kinda grates most of the time unfortunately.

[melkathi]

Child of Light is fantastic though. Great writing. Lovely art. When playing with controller the gameplay works fine. Haven't tried keyboard + mouse.

[Raithe]

Wrapped up Shadows of Mordor last night.

 

For my general thoughts on it:

 

The gameplay in general - as has been noted - is a mashup of Assassin's Creed and Batman Arkham, with a lot more stabbity-slashy. If you enjoy  the majority of a game being slaughtering Orcs and Uruks, whether sneaking up and brutally stabbing an Uruk 5 times to terrify his companions, or jumping into a mob to engage in rolling swordplay and multiple decapitations, this is probably one you'll enjoy. The stealth is pretty basic, and the running, jumping, and climbing doesn't have any serious flaws and it all has some very fluid animations.

 

The Nemesis system is quite innovative, and yes you will develop connections with the various Uruk's and such that you encounter who manage to kill you or you kill. Sometimes you'll think you'll have killed one only for them to turn up again later with fresh scars or burns (in some way relating to your earlier fight). Plus the way they remember things, whether you fought them, whether you ran away, if they ran away, if you threw them into a fire, if you dropped a wasp's nest on their head... That's all a nice touch.

 

The open world is split into two maps. You literally have half the missions, collectibles, and "side" missions on each one. Certain skills only open up when you carry out specific story missions - one of which is gaining the "brand" ability that basically dominates Uruk's to your will, and you only gain that at the start of the second map. So you will spend half the game without it. 

 

As a character you earn XP to unlock a chunk of your abilities, but those are on a set of 4 or 5 tiers which have to be unlocked by gaining Power. So you gain power by basically disrupting Sauron's army with killing the Captains and War-chiefs and disrupting the various events they do to gain more power. These are all random things the Nemesis system gets them doing. Whether holding a feast to impress their troops, going on a recruitment drive to bully other Uruk's into joining them, duelling each other for respect and position (quite often killing each other...). So you can jump in, and help or hinder them. Of course, for the first half you have no reason to help them.

There is also a third set of upgrades for your attributes that cover how many runes your weapons can hold, your health, your focus ability and just how much elf shot you can carry.

 

On a certain level the basic storyline is lacklustre. It has some good voice acting, the general mood is nice, and it does have a few moments of impact. But it also feels very shallow to a large chunk of the game. Then again, you can blaze through the majority of the 20 Story missions if you want, but the serious time will be taken up with the points where the story pauses as it were to let you deal with Uruk killing / manipulation on a grand scale.

[melkathi]

Started a game of Long War. It deffinitly improves on the vanilla experience.

[ShadySands]

Pre-loading NBA2K15

 

Nearly 41 gigs

[IndiraLightfoot]

The games just get bigger and bigger.

[melkathi]

41gigs? Seems some dev team never figured out compression.

[ShadySands]

It really stands out next to Endless Legend's 1.8 GB

 

[Bokishi]

Loading up Alien Isolation

[Starwars]

Finished up Valiant Hearts. Overall, the one thing I feel when thinking about that game was "missed opportunity". Could've been much better overall. The ending was nice and sad though.

 

Started up Child of Light just now. Certainly seems quite lovely so far.

[GhostofAnakin]

I finally got around to finishing the main story campaign for Destiny.  It ended more abruptly than I thought.  Not as much further story as I thought there was going to be after the first two planets.  I thought they'd flesh out a few more of the characters and factions, but it sort of just glossed over various characters and moved on to the next part.

 

I'm probably going to put it on the shelf for the time being.  My character is pretty much as high a level as you can get, and the equipment upgrades are just taking too long.  Grinding for one piece of material per day when you need 20 of that type to upgrade is just getting tedious.

 

Can't complain, though.  I spent around a solid month playing it.  I don't know whether that's depressing or not that a game is considered money well spent if it lasts me a month.

[Labadal]

Going to finish up Blackgaurds tomorrow. Did a fair amount of quests today and yesterday. Once I am done with it, it will mean that game #45 of the year has been completed. (I have also completed two games twice.)

[Wrath of Dagon]

 

Got Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments, pretty good so far. It's kind of like an adventure-puzzle game, but instead of arbitrary puzzles you have to make logical deductions based on the evidence you uncover. Also finished Highpool in Wasteland 2, so far a great game, right up there with the best RPG's I've played; and I tend to get bored with the old RPG's, so I was surprised how it immediately drew me in. Also have Xenonauts,and about 3-4 other games in my rotation, kind of unmanageable. Problem is I play so slow, and PC games are so long.

I'm definitely interested in hearing your continued (as spoiler-free as possible) impressions of Crimes ans Punishment once you play it some more.  I'd love to play a good Sherlock Holmes game.

 

I'm stuck in the first case. I seemed to have done everything right according to the guide, but at one point a character doesn't spawn, so I can't proceed. Pretty sure it's a bug, but may be only on 360, I haven't been able find anyone else having that problem. As far as gameplay, definitely a matter of preference. You hunt for clues, have conversations which only have options according to the evidence you find, make deductions, and based on that find more evidence and have more conversations. Not the most exciting thing in the world but fun for some, I'm liking it. There's also an occasional mini-game or puzzle. Game definitely seems more logical than most puzzle adventures, so that's a big plus. The most annoying thing is to constantly have to shuttle back and forth between Baker Street, Scotland Yard, and the crime scene (basically a fairly long load each time). Edited October 6, 2014 by Wrath of Dagon

[GhostofAnakin]

Playing some The Last of Us.  Those zombies that need to be shiv'd are annoying, especially when you don't have enough shivs.  I had to waste molotovs on them.

[bussinrounds]

 I'd love to play a good Sherlock Holmes game.

 

Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes by Mythos was the best one.  It actually was a series of 2 games..

 

The Case of the Serrated Scalpel and The Case of the Rose Tattoo.

[Malcador]

Got into that Witcher Adventure game beta, so that'll be something new.

[Raithe]

Hadn't quite realised all the modifiers that go into the Rune drops on Shadows of Mordor.

 

So apparently when you kill an Orc/Uruk captain, you get an automatic rune of the same level as the Captain.

However, if that Captain had killed you before, you get +1 level to the rune for "vengeance".

If you utilise something the Captain hates, you get a +1 level.

If you use something the Captain fears, you get a +1 level.

If you have gained intel about the Captain before the combat, you get a +1 level.

Finally, if you made a death threat against the Captain, if you don't get an Epic Rune drop, you get a +1 level to the Rune.

 

And they're cumulative, so if you get a Captain up to 20th level first, have let him kill you, gained intel on him, make a death threat, show up with something he hates, and then use something he fears.. then.. (as long as he doesn't drop an Epic Rune), you'll get a 25th level Rune drop...

[HoonDing]

 

At least that Snowblind Studios game wasn't an insult to Tolkien.

[Hurlshort]

Pre-loading NBA2K15

 

Nearly 41 gigs

 

Must be all the video and music.  You've got to figure that's about the cap for the future.  Unless Blu-Ray capacity is going to change.

[Labadal]

 

At least that Snowblind Studios game wasn't an insult to Tolkien.

It was a very bad game either way.

[Humanoid]

1TB Blu-rays have been mooted...

[Bokishi]

 

Pre-loading NBA2K15

 

Nearly 41 gigs

 

 

Must be all the video and music.

No it's the textures, they're really detailed.

 

Currently playing Alien Isolation, they caputered that 70s retro future look perfectly

[ShadySands]

It's a good looking game but man do I suck at defense

 

Pardon my French

[Gorgon]

Alien Isolation anyone.

 

I want this to be good, I really do. So is it ?

[Wrath of Dagon]

 

 

Got Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments, pretty good so far. It's kind of like an adventure-puzzle game, but instead of arbitrary puzzles you have to make logical deductions based on the evidence you uncover. Also finished Highpool in Wasteland 2, so far a great game, right up there with the best RPG's I've played; and I tend to get bored with the old RPG's, so I was surprised how it immediately drew me in. Also have Xenonauts,and about 3-4 other games in my rotation, kind of unmanageable. Problem is I play so slow, and PC games are so long.

I'm definitely interested in hearing your continued (as spoiler-free as possible) impressions of Crimes ans Punishment once you play it some more.  I'd love to play a good Sherlock Holmes game.

 

I'm stuck in the first case. I seemed to have done everything right according to the guide, but at one point a character doesn't spawn, so I can't proceed. Pretty sure it's a bug, but may be only on 360, I haven't been able find anyone else having that problem. As far as gameplay, definitely a matter of preference. You hunt for clues, have conversations which only have options according to the evidence you find, make deductions, and based on that find more evidence and have more conversations. Not the most exciting thing in the world but fun for some, I'm liking it. There's also an occasional mini-game or puzzle. Game definitely seems more logical than most puzzle adventures, so that's a big plus. The most annoying thing is to constantly have to shuttle back and forth between Baker Street, Scotland Yard, and the crime scene (basically a fairly long load each time).

 

My bad, it's not a bug. I contacted tech support and I missed what seemed like a very minor clue. This is the walkthrough they direct you to if you get stuck : http://www.gameboomers.com/wtcheats/pcSs/SH7/SH7.htm

 

The way you know you missed evidence is the task in your journal to investigate an area doesn't go away when you think you're done.