What are you playing now?

[GhostofAnakin]

I want to play hardcore team deathmatch, but they don't have that in the classic playlist.  Stupid jetpacks.

[HoonDing]

Valkyria Profile preload is up.

 

Fitting that the game is out on November 11.

[Labadal]

Valkyria Profile preload is up.

 

Fitting that the game is out on November 11.

I'd repurchase Valkyrie Profile. I might repurchase Valkyria Chronicles at some point in the future.

[GhostofAnakin]

I have the worst luck/timing ever.  Literally 90% of the time I get killed in CoD, it's by someone who is coming from a direction I *just* turned away from.  If I'm staring left down a hallway for a second, someone comes at me from the right.  If I'm facing left for a bit, then decide to turn right to make sure no one is coming that way, the moment I turn someone comes from the left.  If I'm staring straight ahead for 10 seconds and see nothing coming, when I turn around to cover my flank, it's at that very moment when someone finally comes from the direction I'd spent most of my time looking.

 

I must have a beacon above my character's head that says "he's looking the other way! Swarm now!" or something.

[Bokishi]

COD is always so random to me. One game I'm owning everyone, and the next game everyone else owns me. I guess that's what keeps it from being boring

[Lexx]

Somehow I find the COD games all way too stressful to play.

[Keyrock]

I downloaded The Talos Principle public test (essentially a free demo) on Steam and gave it a quick spin.  It's kind of Myst-y with religious and philosophical undertones, from the brief bit I played.  It's cool to see Croteam put out something that doesn't involve shooting hundreds of aliens, plus I really like weird puzzle games where they essentially drop you somewhere with no instructions and just let you figure out what it is you're supposed to be doing on your own.  I think they're using the same engine from Serious Sam 3, probably with some tweaks and upgrades.  

[Keyrock]

I finished up the story in Bayonetta 2.  There are several chapters to do after the final story chapter called Witch Trials.  They are basically a series of Muspelheim or Alfheim-like arenas where you fight increasingly more powerful foes each verse one after another.  You can't use any items in the witch hunts, so it's all about taking the least amount of damage you can each verse in an effort to get to the end.  It seems like they are 6 or 7 verses each.  The first witch hunt was a piece of cake, the second one was tough, but I got through it eventually.  I'm on the third one now and it's kicking my ass.  The first 2 verses are easy, but the third verse is a pair of Pains (essentially demonic tank robots) and I'm terrible against those enemies.  It's going to take some time to get the dodge timing down on them.  Beyond that, I'm going to start running through the story chapters again on 3rd climax difficulty (hard) so that I can unlock the chain chomp.

 

 

I also played The Talos Principle public test all the way through.  It took me about an hour to figure out all the puzzles.  I'm pretty impressed, I like these kinds of puzzle games.  I look forward to the full game, whenever it arrives.

 

Lastly, I fired up Tropico 5 for some relaxing banana republic dictator sim goodness to offset the frantic fast paced action of Bayonetta 2.  One thing I really love about the Tropico games is the music.  It's hard to not have a good time when they play music like that.

[GhostofAnakin]

I don't mind people holding down a strategic position in HCTDM, but the players who literally lay in one corner the entire game are annoying.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Play Unreal Tournemant or Quake 3 for a day or two and you'll be right back on track. I swear, those game make you develop a sort of pre-cognition

 

They just rape you until you're jumping at your own shadow. I remember playing UT with some high difficulty bots on turbo mode. A person standing next to me couldn't make out what was happening on the screen and I had to switch to switch my brain to some sort of primal mode to get the reactions I needed because thinking was slowing me down. It was like a caffeine overload. Twitching after a game too.

 

Later I tried the game back on regular speed and I was thinking... why is this all in slow motion now

[Gorgon]

I Played UT(2004) yesterday against an old friend. It didn't take that long for the rust to wear off and your arena blood to start rising again. We were even able to hold our own against drop in players. Amazing that there is still a thriving comunity and tons of public servers 10 years on. It's true through, you have to move where you think your opponent is going to be, both defensively and offensively, you come to rely on that feeling like it's a radar or a sixth sense. 

[Starwars]

Briefly tried out the early access of The Long Dark. Gotta say it's extremely promising so far and seemingly nearly bug-free as well. Some tuning is needed (less wolves plz) but overall I'm really looking forward to release. I'm not typically a huge fan of hitchiking simulators and survivalism stuff but from my short time with it, The Long Dark really hit the mark.

[Drowsy Emperor]

I could never figure out why arena shooting gave way to tactical shooters. Now CS is a really a great game in it own right, and deserved all the popularity it got but CoD is mechanically a pos. And it turned out to be the preferred multiplayer shooter experience of everyone and their uncle.

 

Why anyone would prefer to spend their time crouching to regain health while staring at muddy textures to precisely propelling a flying saw to rebound from a map obstacle and cut a target's head off,  while jumping in mid air between two buildings is beyond me.

Edited November 10, 2014 by Drowsy Emperor

[GhostofAnakin]

I'm pretty much convinced that lag is what's killing my CoD MP experience.

 

Almost half of my deaths have occurred when, on my screen I see a guy and shoot him a bunch of times before he's even lifted his gun in my direction only to have him kill me, yet when the replay of the kill is played it's *me* that hasn't even lifted my gun when he's already shot me a couple of times.  So many times I'll yell "Wtf?  I shot him first", only to then see the replay that I hadn't even fired a single round before he'd put 2 or 3 into me.

 

The problem is I'm not sure if the lag is on CoD's end or on my own internet connection's end.

[Bokishi]

CoD is supposed to be getting a lag fix soon

[Marceror]

Finally giving EUIV a try. Not sure how I waited this long to try it.

[ShadySands]

LOTRO

 

Rolled up a new Beorning class/race and it's interesting but not sure I want to play through the whole 100 levels again because I'm a completionist and this game is seriously grindy

[Bokishi]

Waiting for Halo Master Chief Collection & Assassins Creed Unity to unlock

[Lexx]

Briefly tried out the early access of The Long Dark. Gotta say it's extremely promising so far and seemingly nearly bug-free as well. Some tuning is needed (less wolves plz) but overall I'm really looking forward to release. I'm not typically a huge fan of hitchiking simulators and survivalism stuff but from my short time with it, The Long Dark really hit the mark.

Yeah, it does look interesting, but imo it suffers from the same problem that any other game of that genre has: You've seen everything soon, and then the game gets boring and pointless.

 

In case of The Long Dark, it's a huge problem that most of the time you are looking at a loading bar (when looting). It's a slow and boring mechanic. A small village with 5 houses and many shelves looks like this: Loading, Loading, Loading, Item!, Loading, Item!, Item!, Loading, Hey now let's check out this other house - wooops a wolf! - Ok, we made it to the next house. Loading, Loading, Loading, Item!, Item!, Loading, .... You get the point.

 

The landscape looks awesome at times, but it also is lacking important looking landmarks quite often. I'd like to compare such games always with what one of the Fallout: New Vegas developers said about the worldmap. Here they wanted the player to see at least one of the few huge landmarks that are on the map at any time (Helios One, Dinky the Dinosaur, the Black Mountain radio stuff, the NCR and Desert Ranger statue at the Mojave Outpost, etc.) and this made it look interesting. Didn't matter where you've been, there was always a point in the distance where you thought "hey, I totally want to check that out!".

 

The Long Dark *does* have such cool landmarks too, but usually you only see them if you are right in front of them (that huge train bridge was awesome, and so is the hydroelectric power plant). But yeah, that's it so far. Rest of the time you walk through mountain corridors that all look the same, hoping not to meet any wolves and if you do, that there is a house where you can rest a day and heal up without running out of food.

 

Last but not least, the game gets super repetitive fast (if the "loot loading" didn't destroyed you yet), because you do nothing else but walking around, trying to find food items. Yeah, "survival!" etc. etc. but let's face it... it's boring after a short while. Even if you could do stuff like partially building your own base with placing custom house parts and so on.

 

For me, such games need a real point of some sort. Scatter around notes that tell me stories, give me real tasks to do like "find parts to repair a radio" or w/e... Let me progress in some kind of way other than "find the best clothes and keep them at 100%" and "find a rifle to make getting food easier" or "increase the 'days surivived' counter as much as possible".

Edited November 11, 2014 by Lexx

[Keyrock]

Still in the grips of my Bayonetta 2 addiction.  I'm up to chapter 4 on my 3rd climax difficulty run through.  There are a few enemies on this difficulty that put up force fields quite often (the centaur looking angel dudes), making it very hard to pull combos on them, even in witch time, with my big ass hammer and whips weapon set that I prefer.  Those weapons are just too slow for me to pull off a whole combo before witch time expires.  I should probably wise up and switch over to a much faster weapon set, like my quad-rakshasa swords set, when I encounter those enemies.  That's what having 2 weapon sets you can switch on the fly is for, right? 

 

I'm also having fun with Tropico 5.  I'm up to the first campaign mission that brings me into the World Wars Era and I'm getting invaded by a neighboring island.  Good times.  Hopefully I'll have a chance to see to it that said neighboring island's leader happens to have an "accident." 

[Lexx]

Started a NewGame+ in Dark Souls 2. It's funny how in my first playthrough I needed hours for the chapters and now I am burning through them in 10 to 15 minutes. My character is lvl 225 now and the savegame says 112 hours played...

[Malcador]

Need more RAM to enjoy Planetside 2. They should never allow skins, trying to tell NC from Vanu in a night fight is ridiculous. I did rather enjoy my squad storming a building with grenades and dynamic entry only to find we wasted a friendly squad. Whoops.

[GhostofAnakin]

CoD is supposed to be getting a lag fix soon

 

I'll believe it when I see it (read about it).  In the meantime, I think I've had enough of the MP portion of the game.  Nothing more annoying than seeing on my screen that I shot an enemy multiple times before he'd even seen me, only to see a replay where he's put 3 bullets in me before I'd even turned around the corner.

 

Losing to a better player is a worthy challenge.  Losing to lag is just a waste of my time.

[Bokishi]

So I got home and MCC and Unity didn't unlock, they got hung up during preload ughh. Bogged down XBone servers are probably not helping the cause either, going to let them download over night

[Guard Dog]

Happy Birthday Skyrim. You are 3 years old today and still awsome.