What are you playing now?

[Wrath of Dagon]

Did Of Orcs and Men ever get released for the consoles?  I remember having my eye on it, but the release date just kept being listed at December 2014.

I think it was released for the 360 in Europe, but not in US for some strange reason, so I couldn't play it before. Now I've figured out most games for consoles are on Steam also, and if they're console they also support the controller on PC, so I turned my PC into current gen console so to speak.

 

 

The combat starts to shine once it really becomes do or die, I don't know how far you gotten but in my experience I coasted through a lot of encounters by spamming or without any thought. That changes drastically after you start fighting the soldiers.

I'm mostly fighting the militia, but there are some tougher soldiers some times. The knight was so tough I had to assassinate him to win the fight. Depends on the difficulty also, on normal so far I haven't had to be too careful, but probably on hard you'd have to understand all the nuances. Too bad I don't see anything that explains all the stats, like balance, but I'm starting to get an inkling.

[Vaeliorin]

I've finally gotten around to playing Warmachine: Tactics, which, despite the pretty godawful camera (and I say this as someone who never had problems with the NWN2 camera) is a pretty fine Turn-Based Strategy game. Keep in mind that I've never played the tabletop, but I've really enjoyed it so far.

 

My one gripe (other than the camera, which is annoying but being turn-based isn't a game-breaker) is that you can't save during the campaign as far as I can tell, which is pretty frustrating when you're a move or two from winning a 45 minute long battle, only to realize that the guy you just sacrificed was one that had to be kept alive, resulting in you having to start over from the beginning of that battle (FYI, Whitemoon Dreams, white text on a snowy background is pretty damn hard to read.)

[Orogun01]

 

Did Of Orcs and Men ever get released for the consoles?  I remember having my eye on it, but the release date just kept being listed at December 2014.

I think it was released for the 360 in Europe, but not in US for some strange reason, so I couldn't play it before. Now I've figured out most games for consoles are on Steam also, and if they're console they also support the controller on PC, so I turned my PC into current gen console so to speak.

 

 

The combat starts to shine once it really becomes do or die, I don't know how far you gotten but in my experience I coasted through a lot of encounters by spamming or without any thought. That changes drastically after you start fighting the soldiers.

I'm mostly fighting the militia, but there are some tougher soldiers some times. The knight was so tough I had to assassinate him to win the fight. Depends on the difficulty also, on normal so far I haven't had to be too careful, but probably on hard you'd have to understand all the nuances. Too bad I don't see anything that explains all the stats, like balance, but I'm starting to get an inkling.

 

The best advice I can give you is this, look at the descriptions of the skills when upgrading and at how they combine with others. The crux of the game is cooperation between the two main characters and their skill sets reflect that and not just on their mutually shared tree. Some abilities have status effects that other abilities can take advantage off for massive damage, so queue them accordingly. Also invest on skills with dump rage as it really becomes necessary to control the Orc fully at later levels.  

[Katphood]

I wish my compy hadn't died, I was trying to play of Orcs and Men back in the day. Might have to see how cheap I can get it for PS3.

 

Edit: $49.99 to buy the download for PS3 through Gamestop. $19.99 to buy it through PSN.

 

That's some bad pricing.

 

Edit2: Since I started checking the PSN store, I bought Of Orcs and Men, pre-ordered Grim Fandango, and

 

double dipped on Mass Effect 2 Ultimate Edition. I miss playing Mass Effect 2 since my computer died. I would have gotten Dragon Age: Origins too if they had the ultimate edition.

 

I would recommend buying Mass Effect 1 while it's still on sale. You can build your character in the first game and import it to the second game. There are a few extra quests available that way if memory serves right.

[Keyrock]

I'm nearing the end of Jagged Alliance Flashback.  I now control the entirety of the main island, all that's left is to go across to the small island where The Prince's stronghold is located.  I'm sure I'll encounter heavy resistance there, but my mercs are so well equipped and skilled at this point that I foresee cutting through enemy forces like a hot knife through butter.

[Orogun01]

I'm nearing the end of Jagged Alliance Flashback.  I now control the entirety of the main island, all that's left is to go across to the small island where The Prince's stronghold is located.  I'm sure I'll encounter heavy resistance there, but my mercs are so well equipped and skilled at this point that I foresee cutting through enemy forces like a hot knife through butter.

Would you recommend the game?

[Keyrock]

 

I'm nearing the end of Jagged Alliance Flashback.  I now control the entirety of the main island, all that's left is to go across to the small island where The Prince's stronghold is located.  I'm sure I'll encounter heavy resistance there, but my mercs are so well equipped and skilled at this point that I foresee cutting through enemy forces like a hot knife through butter.

Would you recommend the game?

 

Yes, but not without a bit of hesitation.  It's rough around the edges, it's a bit buggy, it's not the longest game in the world (unless there's a lot more game left than I thought), and it certainly doesn't reach the levels of greatness of JA2.  That said, I've enjoyed playing it, the tactical combat is fairly robust, time of day and weather actually have a significant impact on gameplay, the simplistic art style and saturated colors work really well, and the gun sounds are nice and meaty.  At full price I would hesitantly reccommend it if you're into turn-based squad strategy.  On sale, I would reccommend it with out hesitation, just know that it's closer to JA1 than JA2.

[Gromnir]

we played poe beta last night.  the game bugs and performance has been cleaned up a great deal since we played it last (september?) but the gameplay is has been altered less than we expected, given the amount o' time that has elapsed since our previous exploration o' the title. perhaps our hopes were quixotic and our fears unfounded, but while we believed the best option for the game were that the developers would largely ignore the community (and that includes Gromnir) and move ahead with their own vision as a guide, we didn't believe such would occur given the additional development man-hours expended. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Keyrock]

I did my first ever Rift Run in Infinity Wars.  It's basically the same thing as Arena Mode in Hearthstone (i.e. you draft a deck more or less at random then play that deck until you lose 3 times, trying to get as many wins as possible).  I wound up going 4-3, so at least I had a winning record, which is pretty decent for a first ever attempt at it.  Many of my victories came at the hands of the insane Defense Golem/Balance combo.  Defense Golem is a relatively low cost creature with no attack power and very high health, plus reach (meaning that while it can't fly, it can block flying creatures).  It functions basically like a wall in MtG, putting up an obstacle and delaying your opponent.  Balance makes a target creature's power equal to its health, turning a tough but harmless blocking creature into an insane machine of destruction instantly.  I wasn't specifically drafting for that combo to begin with, since combos in Rift Runs are foolish to depend on seeing as you may not draft the necessary cards, but about halfway through the draft I realized that by chance that synergy was coming about and decided to pursue it, so it kinda fell into place.  

 

Anyway, that was pretty fun and I quite liked that deck.  I don't as of yet own the cards to effectively replicate that deck in the constructor to use in ranked play, but it the future I'd like to do it with some tweaks.

[Tale]

Got my Mass Effect 2 PS3 installed and gave it a whirl long enough to see if it's noticeably different from when I played on PC.

 

It's clearly using a lower resolution with more aliasing. They might be using better shadow settings than I did. None of that's a problem. Having to go to the power wheel a little more often is annoying, especially for weapon switching.

 

The Genesis comic is kind of awkward. Like all the girls are thrusting out their boobs or butt. It's like a real comic book! Ashley has these pouty lips in it. It skips over Shepard being grounedd and lots of minor things. I wonder if the fanboy character I forget the name of will even show up now or the green Asari from Novaria. When the team assaults the Citadel at the end, it's got an image of Tali and Garrus both of them dual wielding pistols to shoot at husks (I don't even remember husks in that part). Garrus is spread eagle flying through the air getting headshots. It's ridiculous.

 

An ultra minor but neat thing is because of this, Miranda doesn't bother asking about the council. But also because it's placed after Shepard's death, they won't bring up saving the council in the intro conversation and Liara is always the squadmate with you aboard the SR1. I hear everything but Liara is fixed if you do an import.

 

Edit: Looking around the minor choices like Conrad Verner aren't set. That stinks.

[roller12]

I dont understand why i have to post 5 posts when its obvious im not a spambot but anyway here goes..

im playing.. hmm im playing Romance of the Three Kindoms IX now, certainly a slightly different kind of a game.

[Bartimaeus]

From what I can vaguely recall, there was a bug in the original game with specifically Conrad Verner that the relevant variables weren't set correctly, so that regardless of what you did, it was always going to import to Mass Effect 2 as having been mean to him or whatever...and they never bothered fixing it (perhaps because they noticed late enough that it would be pointless for the majority of players - and since they never bothered creating the minor content if you *had* been nice to him, why bother?).

[Labadal]

X-Com UFO Defense.

 

I now have 4 bases, so I'm starting to get an easier job of defending Earth. Problem is that I have over 50 soldiers KIA.

[Serrano]

X-Com UFO Defense.

 

I now have 4 bases, so I'm starting to get an easier job of defending Earth. Problem is that I have over 50 soldiers KIA.

So long as you still have a healthy budget and a number of experienced troops then you're doing okay. A lot of players use rookies as cannon fodder so 50 KIA isn't even especially high.

[Rosbjerg]

Makes we wanna replay Xenonauts, a good succescor.

[Serrano]

Makes we wanna replay Xenonauts, a good succescor.

Xenonauts is amazing, I prefer it to UFO and TftD. Apocalypse is still my favourite of the genre though, even beating JA2 to the number one spot. I wish someone would do a spiritual successor and expand on the interacting factions, individual scientist and engineers, alien types, vehicles, equipment, the living, breathing city ect. There were so many cool facets in that game that were only lightly touched on, a good team could create something monolithic out of the skeleton of X-Com 3.

Edited January 21, 2015 by Serrano

[LadyCrimson]

Still 7 Days to Die. Some days I don't play at all, other days I start it up and can't stop for bloody hours. Waiting for the new Alpha version (maybe end of this month, maybe March), which looks to have some nice improvements, graphically and with stuff like weapon attachments (flashlights on weapons), new POI like random cave generation and zombies/enemies being able to chase you at least a little bit underground again if there's a hole (not sure how that works yet).

 

It's finally an Early Access game where I actually kinda get excited for each major Alpha release. I really like these guys, despite their funny-silly name (The Fun Pimps).

 

...this could, essentially, be my new Dungeon Keeper. The game I return to again and again for years, even when I take long breaks.

[Tale]

From what I can vaguely recall, there was a bug in the original game with specifically Conrad Verner that the relevant variables weren't set correctly, so that regardless of what you did, it was always going to import to Mass Effect 2 as having been mean to him or whatever...and they never bothered fixing it (perhaps because they noticed late enough that it would be pointless for the majority of players - and since they never bothered creating the minor content if you *had* been nice to him, why bother?).

You recall correctly. If you did his quest, ME2 assumes a renegade resolution. If you didn't, then he doesn't show up. Genesis goes with the former.

[Gorgon]

Shadowrun Dragonfall. Decided to give it another go. 

 

It's decent. The combat system is kinda meh though and I also feel they starve you for abilities. It's just hard to have a satisfying build when you can't realistically advance more than 3 skill bars and for each skill advancement bar there is a prerequisite bar which ads no skills. Usually it's just core to hit bonus. 

 

Also, why is there no cover behind doorways ?. I suspect it's because LOS is sortof broken. Don't like the graphics much, the best that can be said about them is that they are adequate. The story is strong and you generally care about the NPCs you are straddled with. Straddled as in there is no permadeath and in select missions you die automatically if a party member dies. 

 

It would have been a much better game if more care had been taken designing the combat system and play testning the environment. Not complaining though. It's well worth getting overall.  

[Labadal]

More X-COM UFO Defense. I now have 6 bases but two of them have barely had any work done to them. Need to build some stuff there soon. Some power armors and flying suits on my soldiers. They are now decent in mind controlling enemies and I actually have some decent weapons.

[Keyrock]

I finished up Jagged Alliance Flashback.  Not the greatest ending in the world, but this is a low budget game, so I shouldn't have expected some epic cutscene.  Anyway, I enjoyed the game overall.  It's nothing special but it kept me entertained and coming back to it quite willingly, so there's something to be said for that.  I'll take a look at the toolkit in the future and maybe set up my own scenario if I feel so inclined and the tools are up to snuff.

 

I'd like to see Full Control do a follow up.  The framework is in place and the combat mechanics are solid, good even.  While characters don't have special abilities, so the leveling is pretty plain and straightforward, the actual combat itself works really well, better in many respects than XCOM, with the ability to stand, crouch, or lie prone anywhere, giving both offensive and defensive bonuses, good shooting mechanics with sustained fire bonuses, solid line of sight mechanics, and a relatively simple, but well functioning stealth/detection system that incorporates line of sight, lighting, time of day, weather, and noise.  I wouldn't mind them tweaking and improving the mechanics further, but even if they left the mechanics alone and concentrated fully on making a better story with more interesting characters, I'd be happy with that, since that's the area in which the game lacks the most, in my opinion.

Edited January 22, 2015 by Keyrock

[Tale]

I rushed through Catherine over the weekend. I've had it since release and never got far into it, the time pressure on the puzzles made me too tense. So I set it to Easy this weekend and used a walkthrough. Sue me.

 

Apparently I heard some fake spoilers a long time ago, so the storyline really surprised me. And it was kind of touching, too.

 

 

I heard that Katherine and Catherine were both sides of the same demon. So through the game you were basically choosing how you want her to be. I kept expecting the game to say "HAH, it's not cheating, it's really your girlfriend, she's just nuts!"

 

But no, Catherine is the demon and a separate character that only technically even exists. It makes the Katherine arc a little more interesting because Vincent never cheats on her, Catherine just teleports into his room while he's asleep and claims they did. So when the realization hits and it becomes a journey to win back Katherine and convince her of the truth. Aww.

 

So why would anyone go with the Catherine ending because her entire personality is faked? I think that's the weakness of that path. The only reason to go that way is because Katherine does a fake baby scare and that's kind of ****ed up.

 

 

Felt good to get that off my backlog.

[Katphood]

Just started playing Saints Row IV: Re-elected. It also came with a code for the Gat Out of Hell stand-alone expansion, pretty neat stuff! I expected the graphics to look a little better since this is a remastered version we're talking about. It's great fun though, I still dig the customization and the chaotic, over the top action.

 

Edit: It seems that the Xbox One version of the game includes the expansion on the disc, while the PS4 users have to download it separately. Weird! 

Edited January 23, 2015 by Cat Food

[Raithe]

I'm just having a short poke at Gat Out of Hell.

 

I have to say, got plenty of chuckles in the first 10 minutes.

[Labadal]

X-COM UFO Defense completed which makes this my fifth completed game of the year, meaning I'm on track to finishing 60 games this year, too.

 

I had somewhere around 80 soldiers killed and it took me circa 40 hours to complete. I ended up cheesing the missions in the final stretch. Mind control and then put all enemies close together and blast them.