So, what're you playing?

[lamaros]

Just thought about VGA planets for the first time in years. Notice it's still going strong at http://planets.nu. Tempted to give it a go.

[Yegolev]

I started up Civ V to see what sort of bullshit it perpetrates against my memories.  Now I'm way behind in my Timetable for Galactic Conquest.  THANKS SID.

[Paelos]

If you're a M&B Warband fan, I highly recommend Persino as a great SP mod. It's got a ton of different factions, ramps up the difficulty, and provides a lot of more cool troop trees and items in addition to a totally different map. Plus you can ride a wolf. I hear there are also dragons.

[koro]

If you're a M&B Warband fan, I highly recommend Persino as a great SP mod. It's got a ton of different factions, ramps up the difficulty, and provides a lot of more cool troop trees and items in addition to a totally different map. Plus you can ride a wolf. I hear there are also dragons.

Got a link? Sounds like something that could be interesting as a new heavy fantasy M&B mod, especially since I'm kind of sick of Prophesy of Pendor at this point.

[Paelos]

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/board,341.0.html?PHPSESSID=3uvmsld116dva11gt05l4pj0o5

That's the subforum link for Persino. Download mirrors are shitty and it's a big one, so I used the ModDB link and just found a mirror that wasn't awful.

[Kail]

Well, my PC died, so I spent the last week or two trying to make do with my phone.  I never realized before that it's like the video game equivalent of Hell.  There's hundreds and hundreds of games on there, and every damn one of them either has the depth of Cookie Clicker or demands ridiculous amounts of money for in-app purchases or flat out doesn't work or is just fundamentally broken in some other way.  I just kept having this mental image of a guy in a corridor lined with doors running from room to room going "there must be SOMETHING of value in one of them!"  It's pretty much the most depressing possible market I can imagine.

*Shudder*

Finally got a new PC, though.  It's cheap as hell, but still slightly better than my old one, so I'm looking forward to getting some stuff running that was just out of reach of my old PC.  Going to finish my run of Deus Ex HR (thanks, cloud saves!) and try to get Dark Souls working.

[Quinton]

Broken Age and MTGO.

Is anyone else playing Magic Online?  I'd love to play some casual magic against f13 folks if people are still playing.  I've got little in the way of valuable cards, but learning by losing horribly isn't terrible if one's opponents are complete assholes about it.  It's fun to poke at MTGO while I wait for HEX to stabilize into Beta -- I never played back in the day and have only ever done a tiny bit of paper magic.

[jakonovski]

Fired up Demon's Souls in anticipation of Dark Souls 2. Cleared Tower of Latria until the boss, then decided to call it a night. It's refreshing after the oversaturation of Dark Souls everywhere.

[Sky]

Quinton, just because someone is on f13 doesn't mean they won't be assholes in the game. There's a reason I don't play Blood Bowl anymore.

[Nebu]

Quinton, just because someone is on f13 doesn't mean they won't be assholes in the game. There's a reason I don't play Blood Bowl anymore.

To be fair, the converse is also true.  I've known some people that are assholes on f13 but quite nice in games.  Funny how that works.

[Rasix]

There's like, 2 bad experiences total I've had with f13 people.  One guy I had to threaten with deleting every post he ever made, unless he stopped bitching about Rift's inventory system.  And then there's the time NiX trolled the WoW guild on an alt.   

[Quinton]

I haven't had a ton of ingame experiences with F13 folks, but they've been generally positive.  Certainly I think my odds are better than with random online people.

Worst case, at least they're *our* assholes, and that's worth something, no? ^^

[Sky]

Actually, the BB thing was someone invited to f13 just to play BB...otherwise I've only had one experience I wouldn't even call bad, more 'wtf'. Dusematic being his charming self in EQ2 when Signe and I both decided to kick him from the guild. Otherwise, even people I don't get along with here have been really cool in games.

[Falconeer]

So I fired up Rust for the first time at 6:30 a.m.this morning before work. I started naked with a rock, a torch, and two bandages.  I used the rock to hack some wood chips off of a tree in the vain hope that I could somehow repurpose this wood later towards a higher purpose.

Running through a forest, i stumbled upon another naked man in a clearing.  He stared at me blankly in a face-off that lingered.  Then, almost as if the starting pistol had been fired in a 100 meter dash, we both rushed each other with our rocks in hand.  We traded two-handed, overhead rock haymakers, until I was felled, my body broken and picked over by "Thamaturj01."  "Nice fight," he said.  "I respect you for attacking me naked with a rock."  "Thanks," I replied, "same to you."

Later, after my resurrection, darkness came over the land quickly.  I was blind, so I employed my torch and began running through the forest.  I tried to break down a door to a shanty with my trusty rock, to no avail.  I searched through many crates and bins, and found nothing.  Finally, a light in the distance. At this point desperation had crept in.  I was cold and hungry, with no food or fire. I snuffed out my torch and followed in the shadows.  Before I could strike from the dark, morning came, and "youngjuice" stared me down.  I asked him questions such as "where do you find rocks?" He never answered, but, assured that I was not an immediate threat, he began rummaging through some bins.  The bottom of those bins would be the last thing he ever saw as my rock smashed into his head, killing him instantly.

I searched his body and found 2 bandages, a torch, and a rock.  Ah, the circle of life.  I also found some woodchips.  I took everything and found an open house with a small fireplace.  I placed all the wood on the fireplace, and instantly died.  "You have killed yourself, you silly sod" was the message I was greeted with in the afterlife.  It was hard to disagree.

Been tempted to buy rust.  This may have pushed me over the edge.  

The strange rumor around is that DayZ is for psychos who liked pre-Trammel Ultima Online and other sociopathic things, while Rust is a nicer place, where people collaborate to build things together and keep darkness at bay.

It is not.

I am warning everyone here, don't believe the hype: they are BOTH pre-Trammel Ultina Online, punishing, merciless, unforgiving and pointless with the added douchebaggery of voice comms. If you hated that, if you laugh when someone here brings up UO, then these games are just gonna make you angry.
(Anyway, I love them).

[Signe]

I think you're all lovely, even Douche O Matic.  But he had to go!

[Rendakor]

Are either DayZ or Rust any good if you don't like/suck at FPS? That's why I've avoided both.

[Sky]

I think you're all lovely, even Douche O Matic.  But he had to go!

Yeah, it wasn't even what he was saying. It was that he kept up a running commentary of how he was being a douche to people. This is relevant to the Rust recommendation :p

[Falconeer]

I honestly don't know Rendakor. I am not ashamed to say that I spend most of my time dead or respawning or looking for a firearm only to die as soon as I get it before being able to fire a single shot. Day Z, for all I know, is very precise when it comes to aiming so it might pose a challenge if you are not good at that. Then again, shooting other people is only 10% of the fun. Rust seems similar but probably slightly less realistic, so inherently more forgiving. They both have awful melee as of yet.

[HaemishM]

I actually bought that Humble Weekly sale just to finally try DayZ, and got my wife to do the same so we could play together. To call DayZ aiming precise is... not accurate. It's about as precise as if a normal, uncoordinated drunken teenager strapped salamis to his arms and then rigged up rubber bands to pull the triggers of an actual gun, then tried to shoot spastic, teleporting bats hovering two feet in front of his face but blinking into and out of existence every few twitchy seconds. Depending on whether you get on a server that actually gives you weapons to start with or not, it may be interesting or it may be a hour of running trains of zombies larger than Saturday night in Lower Guk into the water before finally dying before you can find a weapon.

She gave up on it after an hour (also after I killed her seconds after she spawned because I saw a person and thought I'd take their stuff). Too frustrating for her. We both agree that it's very creepy though. I'll probably play it a bit more if it doesn't interfere with my Battlefield 4 progression.

[KallDrexx]

So in the past 2 weeks I've gotten through a few backlog games:

1) Brothers: This was fantastic game.  Took me about 4 hours to get through, so I'm glad I only paid $2 for it but it was definitely a good experience.

2) Tomb Raider (new one).  This ended up being very good, I was half expecting it to be a bad attempt at copying Uncharted series, but it actually turned out quite good (once you got past the first hour that's filled with some unresponse QTEs, after that they go away and the game is much enjoyable).  Beat it in 16 hours getting 93% overall.  No motivation to get the last 7%.

3) Guacamelee:  This is a good game for sure but I don't have the coordination for it.  It's like a platformer version of simon says that cramps my hand and frustrates me, mostly because I know what button sequence to do but I don't have the coordination apparently to get the precise 10 trigger sequence off.  I've gotten 2.5 hours in and I might have to give it up.  The fact that I know how to get somewhere but can't get the button sequences right is extremely frustrating and making my OCD angry.  Luckily I only paid $3.50 for it so it's not a huge loss if I drop it now.

[Quinton]

3) Guacamelee:  This is a good game for sure but I don't have the coordination for it.  It's like a platformer version of simon says that cramps my hand and frustrates me, mostly because I know what button sequence to do but I don't have the coordination apparently to get the precise 10 trigger sequence off.  I've gotten 2.5 hours in and I might have to give it up.  The fact that I know how to get somewhere but can't get the button sequences right is extremely frustrating and making my OCD angry.  Luckily I only paid $3.50 for it so it's not a huge loss if I drop it now.

I'm in a similar spot.  I love the game - but I hit a point where the timing on jumping, world shifting, etc just seems to defy my abilities - had to put it down for a while.

[Stormwaltz]

I waited until a three day weekend to try Civ5 BNW. Eight hours later...

In the early stages of the game, I stopped and noted that single unit per tile was transparent. To me that was a huge black mark against the game when it came out. I had few enough units and enough space, I didn't notice it at all.

Then I went to war with someone, and tried to do it proper by sieging cities with artillery, melee, and a Great General, and Civ turned into a shit Puzzle Quest minigame.

That aside, it felt like I could win games in this version as a player who tends to build tight and vertical. So maybe my own playstyle will mitigate it...

[MrHat]

At about the 40+ hour mark in SMT4 and I'm starting to feel a bit of exhaustion, might be time to just power through the main quest and see what's up.

As an FYI - 40+ hours is insane for me for any game in any genre.  I simply do not have that attention span.

[trias_e]

.

[Rasix]

Are any of these alpha/early-access/released? zombie/not-zombie survival games worth it from a solo perspective?  It's a rarity that I game with other people on the internets outside of MMOs.   Some of these sound compelling, they just all seem rather dickpunchy.

I've mostly just been playing GW2 after taking some time off.  Finished Arcanum and Brother's before feeling the need to dive back into WvW. And finally, the Winter patch nonsense is over.  Maybe I'll get a bit closer to 5000 achievement points.  I've stalled out after getting past 4500. 

[Shannow]

I'm about 3 years late to the party but playing Minecraft, in particular the Millenaire mod. Fucking creepers.

[Sky]

I'd install minecraft on our public PCs if not for the hassles of updating another damned program. The kids love it and there are only a couple computers I allow exes to run from flash drives (which are all minecraft all day).

[Tannhauser]

I'm playing The Secret World.  It's pretty cool, but it makes me feel like a dummy. :(  Grouped with a dude last night and we knocked out a few quests.  Fun and lots of SP and AP were gained.  He's two-shoting mobs and I'm plinking away with my AR.  A quiet, nameless fear grows in me;  am I gimping myself?

[trias_e]

Ooh.  The Secret World is great.  You can't really gimp yourself too badly, since you can get all of the skills in the game.  I haven't played in a while, so I can't comment on what would be the best for leveling up early, but I'd recommend looking up an AR build to shoot for if you are set on using AR.

[Ironwood]

I'm playing Rift.  It's fucking horrible.

[Soulflame]

What part is horrible?  Be specific, man!

[Paelos]

I'm playing Rift.  It's fucking horrible.

I lasted 2 weeks. By the time I realized I couldn't even trade on the AH at all without giving them money, I was done. I didn't like the game enough to pay them just to sell some crap.

[Ironwood]

What part is horrible?  Be specific, man!

The races, the classes, the graphics, the starter zone, the talents that seem to distribute THEMSELVES without input from me.  The Combat.  The mobs.  The morons running around beside me.

It's really not the polished 'Welcome to This Game' that WoW was.  More the Shitty 'This is Beta' that Neverwinter was, which is odd because this game's been out for fucking yonks.

I don't think it's for me, but I'd be willing to listen to people here telling me it somehow gets better...

[Paelos]

It doesn't.

[Ironwood]

Well, that's a bollocks dissapointment.

You still have to pay for Secret World, don't you ?