So, what're you playing?

[Trippy]

The game is such a wasted opportunity. It could've been a great f2p title or at least something that works. ATM they're promising a matchmaking fix in March, at which point the game will probably be dead. It has already fallen off Steam's Top 100 stats page.

Yeah this game was a waste of $15. Oh well.

[Yegolev]

I'm somewhat sorry I missed it when it came out. It's quite an interesting game.

Crying baby levels.

Regarding G.C. Impostors, we played again in our Monday night session for a while.  My friends were lv46 and 47, and one of them actually acted amazed that I was lv6.  I yelled out that I have a fucking job.  We eventually got tired of fighting the matchmaker and played Borderlands, which was lots of fun for mostly the wrong reasons.

[koro]

If you want to give Max Payne another go (maybe with the Kung Fu mod or something) but don't want to do it without working sound, there is a fix for that. Wish I'd known about you playing it earlier so this could've been linked beforehand.

[Kageru]

Thanks for the link and pointers...  very tempting to try one more play through.

Also messed around with Magic the Gathering:tactics. It's pretty bad. The tactical map doesn't seem to add that much and is visually noisy. Meanwhile cards having health encourages zerg behaviour and devalues counters, no land cards means you can't tune mana ramp up and there's no interrupt mechanic. It's at an uncomfortable place between a game designed for turn based tactics and a collectable card game without the benefit of either. It's also f2p only in the sense that it gives you access to the first piece of content before you need to pay, under which interpretation WoW is f2p.

[HaemishM]

Magic the Gathering: Tactics was fucking awful from the get go.

[Kageru]

Yes. It has that familiar SoE "design by committee" feeling to it. Graphically the parts don't hang together and the game mechanics are a product of the absolute minimum effort and thought.

[Tarami]

Trine 2 co-op. It's not great, although it could have been. Didn't play the first, so can't compare, but the mix of puzzler, platformer and side-scroller doesn't quite gel. The platforming is too inexact (especially on PC, I imagine), the puzzles aren't mechanical enough to have satisfying solutions and the side-scroller combat is... kind of superfluous. Some sections get frustatingly hard and thus solved in cheap, obtuse ways (using the wizard for flying platforms solves like 40% of the puzzles). It looks good/cute though.

I would get Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light instead if I were looking for a co-op puzzler. Same deal from a different perspective and ultimately much more satisfying to play.

[Azazel]

Yeah, both Max Payne games were excellent when they came out, and still hold up well today (IMO anyway). The baby nightmare sequence(s) in the first one is pretty shit, though. 

[Sjofn]

Played some Sims Medieval last night. For several more hours than I intended. Stupid game can still suck me in for longer than I expect, apparently.

[Strazos]

Been messing with Star Wars: Empire at War (bought cheap via Steam during a holiday sale). The land battles are pretty meh, but I love me some space pewpew. Too bad I cannot get multiplayer to work for the life of me (something about NAT).

[koro]

I really need to play more Empire at War some time. I tinkered with it for a couple of hours but never really sunk my teeth in too deeply.

[jakonovski]

I've been a bit nuts lately, buying multiple (almost) full price releases. That means I spent the weekend playing Assassin's Creed: Revelations on the PS3. Much improved from BroHo IMO, the city feels more real and the characters are better. I even like the tower defence minigame they added. They've also seemingly ditched the weird ass puzzles to uncover the truth, which is good because they totally jumped the shark with those.     

[murdoc]

Been playing SWtOr, Kingdom of Amalur and I finally just picked up Deus Ex on the weekend for $10 (yay Steam).

[Thrawn]

Lately I've been playing almost all Tribes with a little League of Legends on occasion.

That's it really.

[Fabricated]

Playing SWTOR, picking over some of the Humble Bundle games and playing Deus Ex: The Missing Link since I picked it up for $5.

[Mrbloodworth]

Oblivion, Realm of the Mad God, Minecraft. A Friend Bought me Dx, so ill work that in at some point.

[taolurker]

Still doing small doses of Skyrim every once in a while. Over this weekend, spent time playing the "patching MMOs game" for both TERA and also for Tribe:Ascend. Spent about 2 hours total messing around with TERA (mostly character creation), because their system went haywire (I didn't get a response to account creation until Sat early AM, and the patch was giving a checksum error I needed to research via forums). I didn't actually get finished patching until late Saturday night. Patched Tribes up yesterday while I was out, and still haven't tested to see if it still crashes my machine.

[Sky]

TOR, bit of minecraft. Feeling some FFH2 coming on soon (or Master of Mana).

Not much else until steam sales cut down some recent releases to my pocket size.

[koro]

Instead of chipping away at my backlog or playing something I don't have that much experience in (like FFH2), reading a recent LP on the SA forums inspired me to opt instead to load up Final Fantasy Tactics (the PSX version) for the dozenth time, this time with a romhack! No, not that one. The other one.

I'd be tempted to Radicalthon it, but quite frankly I'm not that great at FFT despite having owned it since February 1998 and it'd be a pretty horrible thing to read.

[Kail]

I think my time in Skyrim is finally coming to an end, for now.  I was thinking about Radicalthoning something Elder Scrolls-esqe, but I can't think of a way to make the games interesting since they're basically a solo experience.

Currently wrestling with a flight sim I picked up a while ago on Steam, for the KA-50 heli, and holy hell, this thing is a beast.  One of those "highly realistic" type games where I need a notebook to remember the shit I need to do to bring my guns online, let alone shoot anything.  I can handle the book learnin' aspect just fine, but once I'm off the ground, trying to fly this thing is like trying to balance on a beach ball.  I don't know if I just suck or if this game wasn't designed with gamepads in mind (it's the kind of game people make plywood cockpits to play) but man, that goddamn training mission is kicking my ass.  If we're ever invaded by derelict buildings and abandoned trucks, I'm screwed.  Like, half the time it'll be me screwing up something I understand due to impatience or whatever (and starting back from scratch, another four minute startup sequence + ten minutes travel time to get back to where I was), but then there's times when I'll just be flying level and just suddenly pitch over ninety degrees and slam into the earth for reasons passing my understanding.  Or just suddenly start losing altitude, like I'm in some kind of stall or something but I have no idea how stalls work in a helicopter so I don't really know how to avoid it or how to get out of it.

[bhodi]

Currently wrestling with a flight sim I picked up a while ago on Steam, for the KA-50 heli, and holy hell, this thing is a beast.  One of those "highly realistic" type games where I need a notebook to remember the shit I need to do to bring my guns online, let alone shoot anything.  I can handle the book learnin' aspect just fine, but once I'm off the ground, trying to fly this thing is like trying to balance on a beach ball.  I don't know if I just suck or if this game wasn't designed with gamepads in mind (it's the kind of game people make plywood cockpits to play) but man, that goddamn training mission is kicking my ass.  If we're ever invaded by derelict buildings and abandoned trucks, I'm screwed.  Like, half the time it'll be me screwing up something I understand due to impatience or whatever (and starting back from scratch, another four minute startup sequence + ten minutes travel time to get back to where I was), but then there's times when I'll just be flying level and just suddenly pitch over ninety degrees and slam into the earth for reasons passing my understanding.  Or just suddenly start losing altitude, like I'm in some kind of stall or something but I have no idea how stalls work in a helicopter so I don't really know how to avoid it or how to get out of it.

I hear there is a good community surrounding those types of games that are happy to help and walk you through the issues. I was reading about it because I had my eye on the A-10 warthog simulator which is the same company (and is actually compatible!)


I'm playing witcher 2 that I got for $15 through amazon, and also a friend just gave me a gamestop code for SWTOR for free. Of course, I registered my account and found out they silently truncate passwords and so I had to password reset a few times to figure out what was wrong. Nice going, EA.

[Ironwood]

Kicked up Amnesia there to the bit I last left it.

Heard the music, saw the darkness, heard the wee thing roaming the halls.

Switched it off.

That's some scary shit.

[trias_e]

Flower Sun and Rain on DS.

http://www.amazon.com/Flower-Sun-Rain-Nintendo-DS/dp/B001HCQVYY

Apparently it's from Suda51, the guys who made No More Heroes.  I never played No more Heroes, or Killer 7, or whatever.

This is a fascinating, weird 'game'.  But I like 'art games', where I would use the term for any game that primarily tries to communicate/get you to think (this may, or may not be, at the cost of fun value), hopefully using game mechanics to help do that.  I'm not sure this game works on the latter part, but I'm pretty sure it's attempting the 'get you to think' bit.  So I'm intrigued.   The fourth wall is broken constantly.  It plays out as a groundshogs day scenario, however you do make progress from the days before...despite the fact that it forces you to run back to wherever you left off from the beginning (getting worse as time goes on).  The makes fun of its faults, both graphical and gameplay-wise, but yet suggests that the gameplay is entirely intentional.  

The gameplay is stripped down adventure gameplay:  The puzzles are abstracted away from the situations at hand, but the gameplay remains strikingly similar.  The game makes fun of the fact that you have to run around so much by leaving a fucking step counter in the top left taunting you.  And this fucking troll (whom I've decided is the developer making fun of you and leading you along like a dog on a leash):  
http://lparchive.org/Flower-Sun-and-Rain/Update%2011/39-FSR-0075.png .  Yet I just want to play more.  I love this style, a sort of meta-story telling where literally anything could come next.  But by no means is it a good game.  The puzzles are mostly too simple, with a few being real leaps of the imagination.  Tons of backtracking (although, considering the groundhog's da-esque scenario, maybe it will be justified eventually plot-wise).  No, it fails almost every basic test for good gameplay you can come up with.  I can't stop playing it.  This is a bad game that I really like right now.  So weird.

[Llyse]

Kicked up Amnesia there to the bit I last left it.

Heard the music, saw the darkness, heard the wee thing roaming the halls.

Switched it off.

That's some scary shit.

Pretty much this.

So I've finally gotten to 2011 and am really enjoying Deus Ex: Human Revolution and some Frozen Synapse/BloodBowl on the side

[Margalis]

You should really play Killer 7 and/or NMH if you like FSR.

[trias_e]

You should really play Killer 7 and/or NMH if you like FSR.

I fully plan on it!  Unfortunately, I have such a massive list of games to play it might be a while before I get to them.  The DS has the benefit of being played every night before sleep, thus DS games rise to the top of my playlist quickly.

[Merusk]

So I've decided my gaming Ennui requires a good, long-session shooter.  It's been a long time since I've played one. Any recommendations?  SP only, I don't give 2 fucks about multiplayer so that pretty much rules out any of the Battlefield or MOH series as I understand it.

[koro]

So I've decided my gaming Ennui requires a good, long-session shooter.  It's been a long time since I've played one. Any recommendations?  SP only, I don't give 2 fucks about multiplayer so that pretty much rules out any of the Battlefield or MOH series as I understand it.

Does it have to be first-person?

If "yes" then Crysis the First or maybe (re)visit Half-Life 2. Republic Commando is nice as well. Maybe even FarCry if you're willing to back further, or some of the Build engine games (Blood, Duke3D, Shadow Warrior...) if you're willing to go back even further. One of the newer Red Factions may even tickle that itch; I have Red Faction: Guerrilla from a couple years ago that I have yet to even install. Even Unreal Tournament 2004 is still very fun to play against bots. I honestly cannot think of many post-2005 shooters with good single-player. And even though it's multiplayer, Team Fortress 2 may be worth dipping a toe in for, especially if you stick to Valve-hosted servers.

If "no", then I'd say Just Cause 2. I've been having a lot of fun with it lately, and I can spend hours in it just futzing around. Space Marine I've heard is alright as well if you haven't tried it. Saint's Row 2 and 3 are also good options (SR3 is great and all, but SR2 probably edges it out just a little for me due to a combination of not trying too hard and not having an imbecilic DLC system).

[Sky]

Far Cry 2 is pretty cool, as well.

Ditto Just Cause 2 if 3rd person does it for you. That game is just fun. And huge.

Otherwise, I dunno. I haven't really played them much in the last few years, either. I think BF2 online bunny hopping/dolphin diving etc just broke it for me.

[Sjofn]

Played ME3 this week, to the surprise of no one. I'd be playing the new Sims 3 expansion now, but there are problems going on with their last patch, which I can't even install if I wanted to, which means I cannot install the expansion either. Good times! This may be, at long last, the end of my relationship with the Sims series. It was a good run, Sims. A good run.

[Sky]

Yeah, ME3 kinda took over this week.

[Sjofn]

Yeah Fordel told me SWTOR was a goddamn wasteland on Tuesday. Not very surprising. 

[Merusk]

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about Crysis and Farcry series because my rig was in no way up to them before.  Thanks.

Yes, it needs to be First Person.  Over-the-shoulder stuff is wearing on me.  I don't care how 'cool' my character moves are - which those games seem to focus on a little too much. I just want to kill shit.

[Kageru]

My "just want to shoot things in the face", single player, fps standby is Serious Sam.

[tgr]

I gave SS3 an hour or so, and I was left with a kind of "what the fuck?" reaction. All I did was run around and rip eyeballs out, none of the usual "hey look 100 monsters coming screaming at me with bomb arms". I haven't returned to it yet, but I assume things change somewhat after that. 1 and 2, however, are still just as good (if not actually better, because of the update in engine etc) as they were back when they were first released.