What are you playing now?

[Wrath of Dagon]

I finished Chapter 1 in Of Orcs and Men. I'm enjoying it, but I'm nearly maxed out in my chosen skills at only level 11. And I checked a walkthrough to see how long it was, it has five chapters.

 

I'm kind of worried about it getting repetitive.

 

I send in Arkhail to taunt and then spam his defensive area attack until I need to manage his rage. Styx finds the biggest target and takes them out. I see no reason this strategy, or the moves I use for it, to change substantially.

What does taunt do? Decrease their defenses? Now I'm worried may be I upgraded the wrong skills.

[Agiel]

Playing a C: MANO scenario modeled after the brawl in the Indian Ocean from "The War that Never Was". A dastardly regiment of Tu-16 Badgers lobbed a boatload of AS-6 Kingfishes at my Surface Action Group centered on the USS Hue City (CG-66) in the Gulf of Aden.

 

"Vampires inbound! Birds affirm and away!"

 

"Good hits! Engage for second round!"

 

"Cutting it close! All hands, brace for impact!"

 

EASY!

 

Unfortunately, the Hue City is down to a mere 40 missiles with a dangerous Soviet SAG still out there. Though more exciting stuff was going on in the Persian Gulf, with 2 Tu-95 Bear MPAs and four Tu-16s from the Caucasus ABs bearing down on a FFG-7 with a mechanically scanned array radar and arthritic SM-1s as compared to the Hue City's SPY-1 phased arrays and SM-2MRs and an LPH carrier escorting a convoy of tankers. Thinking that the convoy was f***ed, I lifted off the LPH's complement of Harriers to ferry them to the Nimitz battle group in the Indian Ocean, but that FFG-7 crew earned its pay. Four Kingfishes intercepted by the SM-1s, two of them spoofed by the SRBOC chaff salvos, and the remaining two vampires nailed by the Phalanx. That crew is getting the Navy Cross!

Edited January 26, 2015 by Agiel

[Tale]

 

I finished Chapter 1 in Of Orcs and Men. I'm enjoying it, but I'm nearly maxed out in my chosen skills at only level 11. And I checked a walkthrough to see how long it was, it has five chapters.

 

I'm kind of worried about it getting repetitive.

 

I send in Arkhail to taunt and then spam his defensive area attack until I need to manage his rage. Styx finds the biggest target and takes them out. I see no reason this strategy, or the moves I use for it, to change substantially.

What does taunt do? Decrease their defenses? Now I'm worried may be I upgraded the wrong skills.

 

Taunt gets them to focus on Arkhail, as standard for taunts.

 

It can be upgraded with a chance to destabilize, which lowers dodge/parry.

[HoonDing]

It's worth purchasing Venetica on Steam, it's the gold edition that comes with artbook (96 page pdf im Deutsch), soundtrack and some other things.

[Labadal]

More The Witcher 2. Trying to do the side quests in chapter 2 and then move on. I have one or two left where I am at. My opinion of the game is very much the same as when I played it at launch: I enjoy everything but the combat. It's really the only reason I haven't bothered finishing it to this date.

[GhostofAnakin]

More The Witcher 2. Trying to do the side quests in chapter 2 and then move on. I have one or two left where I am at. My opinion of the game is very much the same as when I played it at launch: I enjoy everything but the combat. It's really the only reason I haven't bothered finishing it to this date.

 

What in particular do you hate about the combat?  While it certainly wasn't a strength of the game, I didn't find it the least bit distracting or discouraging.  I viewed it the same way I viewed combat in games like PST, KOTOR, or any number of otherwise good games with average to below average combat.

[Tale]

So I'm playing Mass Effect 2 and I have to do something I don't like doing, but I absolutely must. I have to apologize to Bioware. I know they won't read it here, but they probably never read the complaint, so whatevs.

 

Bioware's dialogue camera is not simply shot-reverse shot. It's been part of my rants against cinematic dialogues for a little while, but playing ME2 again, I clearly was wrong. I think Dragon Age: Origins does things that way, as well as the KOTOR, but it's apparently something they have already moved past.

 

I feel it's important to make this apology because it's kind of come up again with regards to DA:I. I defended the camera for minor dialogues as an improvement for this reason. The reason was wrong.

 

There's actually quite a bit of well framed shots, timing, and character expression going on in these dialogues. Even if the expressions are almost all canned.

 

 

I still like the way they handled it for Zaeed and Kasumi. If Shepard's not really contributing, I don't care about the cinematic style. Keep it short and sweet and let me play around with crap in the room.

 

[Labadal]

 

More The Witcher 2. Trying to do the side quests in chapter 2 and then move on. I have one or two left where I am at. My opinion of the game is very much the same as when I played it at launch: I enjoy everything but the combat. It's really the only reason I haven't bothered finishing it to this date.

 

What in particular do you hate about the combat?  While it certainly wasn't a strength of the game, I didn't find it the least bit distracting or discouraging.  I viewed it the same way I viewed combat in games like PST, KOTOR, or any number of otherwise good games with average to below average combat.

 

I find it boring and mindless. It feels like an inferior version of Souls combat. I'm basically using Quen for every fight at the moment.

[Gorgon]

Old controllers sometimes had an 'auto toggle' that let you spam a button by holding it down. You could win every withcer encounter with that. The only thing that really matters is enemy reach and position, not enough to make it really interesting. Still, it's better than Skyrim.

[Keyrock]

Quen is far and away the most overpowered ability in TW2.  If you don't use it battles become much harder and much more interesting.  The combat is still not responsive enough, but without Quen at least you're forced to use your brain.  Quen is essentially the "I Win" button in TW2, particularly if you upgraded it.

[GhostofAnakin]

In the process of trying to defeat the 4 legendary ships in AC: Black Flag.  I'm having trouble with the one where you have to face 2 man-o-wars at once.  I know they supposedly have less HP than the other ships to make up for the fact there are two of them, but I can't seem to last against both their barrages.  I finally destroy one, only to have barely any HP left for the final one, which is still sitting at full HP.

[HoonDing]

Quen isn't that powerful in enhanced edition. It's all about the timed rolling and button mashing.

 

Edited January 27, 2015 by HoonDing

[Nordicus]

I find it boring and mindless. It feels like an inferior version of Souls combat. I'm basically using Quen for every fight at the moment.

Quen isn't that powerful in enhanced edition. It's all about the timed rolling and button mashing.

Which reminds me, are you playing enhanced edition Labadal? If so, how many attacks does Quen block for you?

 

Might be just me playing at higher difficulty levels in EE, but regular Quen only blocked 1 attack before fizzling out. Which isn't great when it's a simple nekker swipe in middle of a group, and you lose your vigor regeneration and up to 25% of your attack power to use it. Vigor affects attack power linearly, 50% when out of it, 100% when full.

 

In Witcher 3 they'd better give other signs more utility from the beginning.

Edited January 27, 2015 by Nordicus

[Labadal]

It usually takes two hits. When I don't use Quen, I just roll all over the place. In one on one battles, I usually just hammer the attack buttons to stunlock the opposition.

[Tale]

Playstation's setup for pre-loading/downloading Grim Fandango was FUBAR last night. So much so they had to release a seperate SKU to fix it and reports (including my own experience) largely indicate that made things worse.

 

Let's go over it, shall we?

 

First, the pre-order timer told me that it would be another day before the game released.

When I tried to pre-load it, it was a 7+ gig game that required 90+ hours to download due to the crappy download speeds PS4s have been suffering for a few months.

 

To try and fix this, it's suggested that you go to the store, find the special SKU, purchase it for free, and restore licenses. And if necessary, delete the current data, then redownload.

So I did that. But then couldn't download anymore. It only has "start" and when you press it, it says it can't find the game, and wants to check the store. When you get to the store, it says the same, putting you in a loop.

 

The only workaround found is going to the webstore from another computer and queuing the download from there. This resulted in a 4+ gig download that finished in minutes on my system. So, what were the other 3 gigs?

[Humanoid]

Buying it from GOG, which incidentally works out cheaper because of its regional pricing: $17.19 vs $18.85 if the US $15 price was converted directly. Also picked up Guild Wars 2 and Valkyria Chronicles for a tenner each (the latter from Amazon which pricematched Steam), though I have no plans of playing either of them anytime soon, just library titles for a rainy day (I don't believe in the concept of backlogs because that implies an active intention to play).

 

 

P.S. I was an Aard spammer in TWitcher 2, essentially never used Quen - or rather, I tried it on some unsuccessful boss attempts before figuring out that chain-staggering him was more expedient. Non-enhanced edition for what it's worth.

[GhostofAnakin]

Been a couple of years since I played the Witcher 2.  Which was Quen, again?  The one that's sort of like a wave and knocks enemies back or down?

[Zoraptor]

Quen is the 'shield' power. Aard is the 'wind' power.

[TheChris92]

Grim Fandango Remastered -- Feels sooo good to play it again. Should do Psychonauts then Sam & Max after.

[Blarghagh]

Post limit reached. Made a new one for you guys here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/70176-what-are-you-playing-now/