What are you playing now?

[Nonek]

Is the Mad Max game that good? Because I'm surprised to see so many people talking about a game that was, up til release, only viewed as a movie tie-in shovelware.

 

It's surprisingly fun and immersive (sorry couldn't think of another word) so far, the raw world of the wasteland is brought to life exceedingly well and the strangeness of that setting, and its characters, is captured masterfully. Probably one of the best TV/movie adaptions since South Park: Stick of Truth.

 

 

One minor gripe about Mad Max, there's a dissonance in gameplay and narrative, because i've yet to find myself running low on fuel except when forced to at the beginning. Petrol seems bounteous.

We wouldn't want players to stop playing would we and we certainly can't come up with a good in game way of gathering fuel that would encourage players to play differently. So you come up with a mediocre way of balancing the game.

 

 

Yes accessibility strikes again, that was my exact thought, and it's a pity because there is room for more walking and scouting on foot in that environment. I think Fallout 2 did this in a viable manner, simply mark ones map and go and get fuel on foot to top up the tank. There are enough little settlements, wrecks and ruins out in the wasteland to make this a real method.

[Keyrock]

Is the Mad Max game that good? Because I'm surprised to see so many people talking about a game that was, up til release, only viewed as a movie tie-in shovelware.

It's made by Avalanche, not some bottom dollar second rate company.  That helps.  

 

I'm happy to see all the positive stuff around this game and can't wait for the promised Linux version to come out.  No word on when it will happen, but if I had to guess, I'm thinking it may wind up being about the same time as when Steam Machines officially launch.

[GhostofAnakin]

Is the Mad Max game that good? Because I'm surprised to see so many people talking about a game that was, up til release, only viewed as a movie tie-in shovelware.

 

It's got the same kind of open world appeal that games like Batman, Far Cry, etc. have.  Plus, it's set in a post-apoc wasteland, which will inevitably spark nostalgia for the Fallout games.

[Lexx]

I dunno, so far I have seen nothing Fallout in this Mad Max game. Other than the leather jacket maybe, which is taken from the movies anyway. The atmosphere in the Mad Max game is really nothing like Fallout. The setting is too different, except for "there is lots of sand".

[Raithe]

The atmosphere for the most captures the movies quite well, it's got that bleakness with very strange people who have stripped to the bone morality due to survival ethics in a post-apocalyptic world.

 

I will say after reading a bunch of the "historical objects" you find (pictures, letters, blah-de-blah) that pretty much every reason for an apocalypse seems to have happened. Plagues, Government restrictions turned tyranny turned popular uprisings, war, global warming, seas disappearing... It wasn't just one or a couple, it was pretty much every way and the kitchen sink for the world to disintegrate.

 

I have to admit, I let my gaming OCD take over a bit, and I ended up doing all the possible side-stuff in the first two regions and reduced the Scrotus levels to 0 in both Jeet's and Guturash's territories.. which seemed to give me all the tokens I needed to max legendary status and the upgrades you get from those griffa tokens before I was even halfway through the story-side of things. From the time you get past the barrier wall it seems you spend most of the time doing that side stuff just to give the game time to award you scrap from allied camps so you can upgrade the car....

 

Also, one slight contrast to the movies after finishing the game.. 

 

 

The movies tended to be bleak but optimistic, even when Max was disappearing off into the sunset at the end on his lonesome, he always saved people and left things a little better or provided so me hope.

But the game seems to slowly build the optimism, showing that the reason Max was that solitary, slightly crazed nut, was because he lost his family and had withdrawn from his humanity to not get hurt again, purely leaving him with his military/law enforcement training to survive and occasionally protect people. So you spend a chunk of the story getting that pointed out, slowly getting in touch with that humanity... Only to get betrayed and the potential loved ones and replacement wife/daughter slaughtered.

Really downer ending. Not any type of optimism to Max hightailing it into the desert on this one.

 

 

[Gorgon]

I couldn't deal with how the daggers when "sheathed" would just float there on your back. Even by 1990s 3D graphics standards that looks awful. The really weird thing is that swords look perfectly acceptable and sheathe at the hip.

It's mostly the neverending grind that gets to me. Seems like every time it starts to get interesting you are required to do 100 more menial tasks to earn arbitrary points that will allow you to proceed. 

 

Just...

 

This game is hit hard by the EA sickness. At least Ascreed had jumping puzzles. 

[Lexx]

I finally got the Quiet companion in MGS5 and... lel, this is so stupid. Kojima really went fully over the top with this bs again. Besides, she really isn't very quiet if you got her as your buddy... actually she is very annoying, imo.

 

D-Dog is the best / most useful companion so far, imo. Haven't really tested the D-Walker yet, but if he can also spot enemies in a certain radius around you, he might as well have a little more use than the other characters.

[Katphood]

Quiet was the companion I used the most. I equip her with a silenced tranquilizer sniper rifle and ask her to cover me. I also use her as a bait sometimes. She takes one shot and gets the attention of the guards while I slip away unnoticed.

[Lexx]

Yeah, I can see her being very useful with silenced tranquilizer rifle. Sadly, I would need to spend qui(e)t some time with her to unlock it first... meh.

 

Unsilenced rifle is really not in line with my playstyle. I like to super-stealth every mission, and enemy alert is not good for that. Already happens often enough that I make it till the near-end of a mission and then some stupid thing happens and the enemy will sound the alarm. :> (though, I got *a lot* better by now. Probably also because of D-Dog. His enemy spotting ability is so very useful.)

[Mamoulian War]

After long break, I spent few more hours to continue in my Europa Universalis Campaign.

 

If you are interested, you can read about it here

 

https://sites.google.com/site/mamoulianfh/letsplay/europa-universalis-page5

[Keyrock]

I'm really glad Crookz autosaves your game every 30 seconds or so (you can manually save whenever also).  It's not something I needed to take advantage of earlier in the game when the missions were more forgiving, but boy oh boy do I need it now.  The missions are getting really complicated and there are so many moving parts I inevitably lose sight of some of them.  There are some really tricky areas to get through, made easier or harder depending on who you chose to bring along and what tools you have.  It should only get harder and more complicated going forward.  Good times.

 

Crookz is my pleasant surprise of the year so far.  This game came out of nowhere, basically zero press coverage before launch (and not much after launch), and it turned out to be so good.  It's kind of interesting playing this game and Shadowrun: Hong Kong at the same time, as they're both great games, but they kind of juxtapose each other.  S:HK is a game with excellent writing and narrative that carries fairly mediocre gameplay.  Crookz is a game with excellent gameplay that carries fairly mediocre writing and narrative.

 

@Mamoulian War - You own a pretty large chunk of Europe. 

Edited September 6, 2015 by Keyrock

[melkathi]

Been playing Armello, having fun and trying to get some of the more hard to get achievements.

Last game I was playing as Brun the Oakbreaker of Clan Bear. He seems to quickly be becoming a community favourite. Clan Bear are the spellcasters of Armello, yet Brun is a mediocre caster on his own. His unique ability though is that he gains +1 Fight in the next battle for every spell cast, making him one of the stonger fighters in the game.

Had a great first couple of turns getting a Conjurer follower who gives a spell card every time you cast a peril spell - perfect for Brun's limited hand size.

River of Clan Wolf though was racing ahead in Prestige (the game's score), killing Banes and other Heroes. Late midgame she started to die (*coughcough*) and I put a lot of distance between us. With the end of the game imminent I had double River's prestige, thanks to an allies pact with Mercurio.

With only a couple of turns left, Thane tried for a Kingslayer gamble. Being Prestige Leader, I needed the king to die of "natural" causes, so I buffed the guards. Then River killed Thane. the guards rushed her, but she managed to hold her ground. And right on the last turn, she put an arrow in the king and won...

So close...

[GhostofAnakin]

Still trucking through the wasteland in Mad Max.  The vehicles with armor plating really ramp up the difficulty when trying to do car-based smash-ups.  I went from one zone where the cars would explode after 1 or 2 solid hits, to my car turning into an inferno after being hit by these cars that look like porcupines with wheels.

 

My harpoon used to be my saviour, as I'd just aim for the wheels.  But with the armor, I've first got to get an angle on them where I can peel the armor off, then I can aim for the wheels or the driver.  But that's while avoiding taking any damage at all from them.

[Katphood]

Sounds like a 'solid' game. 

[ManifestedISO]

2.01 redux of Pillars. Yeah, I moved the diff slider left, no regrets. I still put on my pants one leg at a time with no shame.  

[Rosbjerg]

2.01 redux of Pillars. Yeah, I moved the diff slider left, no regrets. I still put on my pants one leg at a time with no shame.  

 

I almost always play on easy at first - even new games in a series I've played for years on end. Its just nicer to not hit a wall of frustration and you can usually adjust difficulty going in.

 

Distant Worlds have a pretty cool feature, where the difficulty scales as the game develops. So you can start in easy and end on hard, works pretty well.

[Agiel]

 

2.01 redux of Pillars. Yeah, I moved the diff slider left, no regrets. I still put on my pants one leg at a time with no shame.  

 

I almost always play on easy at first - even new games in a series I've played for years on end. Its just nicer to not hit a wall of frustration and you can usually adjust difficulty going in.

 

 

 

 

I kind of have this approach with RPGs after beating them "the real way," where for instance in Fallout: New Vegas I pump up my Courier's stats when she wakes up so that she's a knife-throwing badass on a mission instead of someone who has trouble figuring out which end of the blade goes into that Powder Kegger. Or in Icewind Dale when I import my level 18 characters and play through from the beginning (though I like the challenge of the main game, I'm not a fan of Hearts of Fury mode, to be honest).

[Keyrock]

I finished the hub plot in X3: Albion Prelude and started the shady business plot.  This is the longest plot in the game outside of maybe the main plot (I'm not sure which one is longer) and I'm going to put it on hold soon because I'm not ready to do the latter parts of it.  Eventually I'll have to take on capital ships to complete that plot, even if I take the easy way out, rather than the more difficult route that also ends the Terran War.  I'm just not ready to take on capital ships, my Argon Centaur ain't gonna cut the mustard for that kind of battle.  The good news is that I now have enough money to build another crystal-less power plant, so that's my next step.  I'm going to scout out a good location for it, build it, convert it to crystal-less, then do some combat missions with my Centaur while I wait for funds to come in to build another power plant.  Eventually I'll buy a frigate, probably a Split Tiger, and then I'll be prepared to take on capital ships.  That's a still a ways off in the future though.

[Labadal]

Playing some shorter/smaller games on Steam and also Fallout 2 (GOG) with the restoration mod. I have never actually played the game with that installed.

 

On Steam, STASIS is the game I will try to finish next. I've played a couple of hours and I am finding the game to be very atmospheric, oppressing and just fun when it comes to solving puzzles in the old school adventure game way. You can die in some very gruesome ways. I have been melted and eaten alive so far.

[GhostofAnakin]

Making my way through the various territories in Mad Max.  I'm finishing off regions first before advancing the main plot.  I'm finding some regions quite difficult, though, because my harpoon is useless against a lot of their armored vehicles.  Thank goodness I have that boomstick thing to compensate.

[Lexx]

Still doing MGS5 like crazy. Fully stealthed many missions now + it becomes a hobby of me to snatch vehicles. Especially tanks. My vehicle counter is going up fast. Just sux I can't Fulton gunships, even if they are on the ground. :>

[Katphood]

Man, I can't stop playing MGS V.  

 

Why didn't you let these guys make the Silent Hills game Konami?! WHY?!!!! I kept asking this myself when I was playing throught the opening of MGS V, just imagine the things that could have been. You will always be missed Silent Hills.

[Lexx]

Oh, but I hate that I can't use the fultoned walker gear later. They just disappear. Sux. I hate the D-Walker as a buddy and rather have it under normal vehicles.

[Malcador]

D3. I am up to t7 now, going well. Focus and Restraint are so beautiful.

[Nonek]

Finished Irate Max, I must agree that it is rather a bleak ending for the old chap, still chin up.