So, what're you playing?

[Ard]

It's pretty much nothing like spacechem.  There's a demo if you're interested, but yeah, the game is pretty much pure crack that I had to walk away from after losing like 2 hours on the demo.

[Fordel]

They released USF4 a day early \o/

Decapre has the most satisfying target combo in the game. Launcher into jump cancel air throw 

[Yoru]

I knew before I clicked on the link that it would probably be crack.  Yup, that looks like crack.  I'm going to resist the urge to buy into the alpha but I can see myself buying the full release even before it goes on sale.

Despite, last night, swearing to myself that I was just gonna start a new game on higher difficulty, get a few things set up, then call it?

An eyeblink (or six hours, sidereal) later, "Ok, that's the Anti-Fascist Protection Wall done and lined with laser turrets; hmm, the turret interval is a little wide, let me see if I can automate laser turret production and make my construction robots do the placement  -- is that the sun coming up?"

Looks like a more complicated version of SpaceChem.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

It's more like the factory/tech bits of modded Minecraft stuck into a 2D game. It's all about doing logistics and balancing power and resource production with automated assembly lines. While trying not to have your balls chewed off by aliens. So, mix "tech-style" modded minecraft with tower defense? Kinda.

And the visual style reminds me of M.A.X. from the 90s. (Which isn't a good thing; everything is brown and muddy.)

[Father mike]

The video had bits moving along a conveyor being manipulated -- thus the SpaceChem comment.  The extra layers were not apparent.  

My bad.


Edit:  despite all the crack warnings, I got the demo about 10:30 last night.  Then, suddenly, it was 2:30am.  Managed to not buy the full game until after coffee this morning.  Super glad I didn't haven any plans today.

[Ironwood]

I didn't like Spacechem.

This, however, is crack.

Nope, nope, nope, leave that card in the wallet Ironwood.

[jakonovski]

Beat Wolfenstein New Order. What a POS it turned out to be, full of dumbass bombast all completely pointless. The gunplay sucked too, constant reloading against bullet sponge enemies was ridiculous. At least the scenery was nice.

[Malakili]

I've been playing Payday 2 again.  It's definitely a lot better than it was a year ago.  Stealth is a lot more possible and they've incentivized it by giving you an XP bonus on your next mission when you successfully stealth any mission (with more % bonus for multi-day jobs).  The new heists are good and add some more variety.   The problem continues to be other players.  If you get in a group of people who know what they are doing, the game is amazing.  If you get in a group with people who don't know what they are doing (or just one person really) it can all go downhill fast.

[Rendakor]

I've been playing Payday 2 again.  It's definitely a lot better than it was a year ago.  Stealth is a lot more possible and they've incentivized it by giving you an XP bonus on your next mission when you successfully stealth any mission (with more % bonus for multi-day jobs).  The new heists are good and add some more variety.   The problem continues to be other players.  If you get in a group of people who know what they are doing, the game is amazing.  If you get in a group with people who don't know what they are doing (or just one person really) it can all go downhill fast.

I couldn't really get into the game for that reason. Some friends and I bought a 4 pack over the last steam sale and just couldn't get the hang of it before we got frustrated and quit. Stealth isn't a viable option from the get go, and the game doesn't teach you how to play very well at all.

[Fabricated]

I've been playing Payday 2 again.  It's definitely a lot better than it was a year ago.  Stealth is a lot more possible and they've incentivized it by giving you an XP bonus on your next mission when you successfully stealth any mission (with more % bonus for multi-day jobs).  The new heists are good and add some more variety.   The problem continues to be other players.  If you get in a group of people who know what they are doing, the game is amazing.  If you get in a group with people who don't know what they are doing (or just one person really) it can all go downhill fast.

I couldn't really get into the game for that reason. Some friends and I bought a 4 pack over the last steam sale and just couldn't get the hang of it before we got frustrated and quit. Stealth isn't a viable option from the get go, and the game doesn't teach you how to play very well at all.

Basically you need to just run normal/hard heists until you get a weapon you like and get the hang of the feel of the game.

Generally you're just better off going loud until you get the hang of stealth and get a weapon setup that lets you get your visibility to 3, and maybe have one person with door opening ECMs. With a door opening ECM (or improved ECMs) you can do any bank heist at any difficulty trivially provided you don't get utterly fucked on cam room placement. That'll get you a shitload of cash and levels. Once you hit level 40+ (reasonably quick IMO) you can do just about anything however you want on most difficulties minus Overkill+ on some.

If you got friends, here's the short version of locking down a bank heist:

1. Figure out where the cam room and cameras are. If the cam room is somewhere you can't get to without being spotted reset.
2. Wait around and see if any guards or the manager walk outside on their own and pick them off accordingly.
3. After that, if there's any outside cameras (roof or side door), break one and pick off whatever guard comes to investigate.
4. Use the card key from the manager (if he didn't have it, it's on his desk), or ECM the cam room door open and kill the cam guard.
5. Position 2 people by the side door, 1 at the back, one ready to run out into the street.
6. Rush. Have one person dedicated to killing the tellers as soon as fucking possible to keep them from hitting their panic button, have one in the back there to shout down everyone near the back area panic button, have one outside to shout down any street civvies. If there's any guards left make sure you answer their pagers ASAP but make sure someone is there to shout down and tie up civvies while you do so.

Congrats you've won and can't possibly lose now. If you have the cameras down and don't mind the lost cash you can also just chuck grenades into each room and kill everyone in the bank.

And fyi overkill/death wish aren't really much harder than normal/hard/very hard. At worst you have titan cameras which can't be broken and skylights to be spotted through. The guards still go down in one hit, there are only ever 4 of them max, and nothing else changes really.

[Rendakor]

It would have been nice if the game taught us any of that, when we still cared. We'd get as far as picking off an outside guard, but we have no silencers or melee so killing him just aggros the whole place and then we're basically just playing a cover shooter with infinitely respawning cops.

[Fabricated]

You start with a basic silencer you can put on your starter pistol.

Also I personally dislike the stealth mechanic since it seems really fiddly at times. It's better than it was however. The only heists I like doing stealthily are the bank heists and diamond/jewelry store and maybe nightclub. The rest are fiddly/annoying/overlong.

The loud ones (Rats, Watchdogs, Firestarter, Election Day if you intentionally fuck up the first day, Transports minus the fucking horrendous bonus heist, Big Bank loud) are the best IMO.

Never Runs:
Big Oil (obnoxious to stealth, obnoxious objective on second day, terrible map to fight on)
Go Bank (NEVER EVER RUN THIS. Worst heist in the game for like 3 paragraphs of reasons. It is bad. Trust me)
Transport: Crossroads (gigantic crossfire clusterfuck with 200,000 snipers. With a team full of high level, combat skill focused players you'll STILL get shot to fucking pieces)
Train Heist (Huge, huge payout, such a huge pain in the ass it is not worth it)

[Druzil]

Gone Home - Really glad for the recommendations on this one, I wish there were more games with story this interesting.  Also there something oddly satisfying about rooting through someones house     

Only If - Played this because I thought it looked similar to gone home but it ended up being a sort of suspense/puzzle game.  Also the story is very... different.   Still it's free on steam and looks pretty good.  Finished both story lines in ~3 hours.  Also contains some of the worst gun aim/accuracy of possibly any game ever.

Sunrider - The difficulty on this one is seriously screwed up but otherwise I'm enjoying it.  Even with the recent "missile fix" patch you can still die on the first turn with bad rolls.  I think I'm about ready to just drop the difficulty to easy and just finish the story.

State of Decay - I know this one got kind of mixed reviews but I'm enjoying it.  I just got moved into a new bigger place, some warehouse next to a gas station on the west side of town.  So far I haven't lost anyone but I've had a few close calls.  I wish I would have understood outposts more from the beginning, they really do a bad job of explaining it.  Trying to decide who to kill off to get the death achievement 

Factorio - I made it through the tutorial campaign and part of the next one.  The conveyors kind of gave me a headache with the whole two sided thing.  I got really annoyed by putting the wrong thing a conveyor and then trying to take it back off.  I tried destroying it but then it just sits on the ground so I ended up using inserters to slowly take everything back off.  Someone told me there's a key to just grab stuff off of the conveyer/ground so I need to figure that out.  I haven't tried a full game from scratch yet some I'm interested to see how that goes once it gets even more complicated.

Paper Sorcerer - Fun little indie jRPG.  If you like Dragon Quest style combat you might enjoy this.  Also true to DQ style the boss fights are pretty difficult, which is a good thing.  Overall the game could use some polish though, the story seems pretty bare bones and the art style is very interesting but gets a bit monotonous as the game goes on. 

Next up, I need to pick a PoE build for next weeks new leagues.  Thinking of trying Arc as it was so popular last league or maybe do a ST build as my last one died.  Also considering a shadow build since it seems to be my best class, maybe EK as I haven't done an end game build with it.

[Shannow]

Civ 5 baby! (lets see how many ppl i suck back in)

Going for a cultural victory with a random civ, got the Ottamans.. Oh well, onwards to one...more...turn...(was almost late to work this morning...)

[Jeff Kelly]

Still playing Rogue Legacy.

It's a fun game. The fact that I've now sunk more than 20 hours into it tells as much. I'm disappointed though in the lack of variety offered. I still have two bosses to go and I only unlocked about half of the runes, half of the items and probably 40% of all skills and upgrades. I'm also pretty fed up with the same old things to do.

For a game that plans on making you play 30+ hours to unlock everything it offers too little variety. 10 hours in I had seen every randomized room, every special room and all mini bosses. That's not enough when the gameplay itself is so limited and your intention is to keep players invested for > 30 hours. I don't think I will finish it.

[Malakili]

The loud ones (Rats, Watchdogs, Firestarter, Election Day if you intentionally fuck up the first day, Transports minus the fucking horrendous bonus heist, Big Bank loud) are the best IMO.

I really don't like going loud.  A co-op shooter where you just survive waves of police isn't an interesting game to me.  Unfortunately some of them that require going loud have amazing payouts in both cash and experience.

[Yegolev]

Path of Exile, punching through quests while waiting for the expansion and full respecs.

Some Gran Turismo 6, wherein the driving is better than 5 but the rest of the game is hardly even there.  I've decided that GT6 is the full-formed car physics that would have been in 5 if they had the time, and I'm hoping it means GT7 will have really awesome driving while also having anything else other than that.

[Rasix]

Playing Fallout: New Vegas. It's a fun trip down nostalgia lane, but holy hell is there a lot wrong with this game.   I think the greatest offender has to be the UI.  They really need to ditch the whole Pip-boy for everything and add some modern QOL fixes into the experience.

I just needed something that was light with the repetitive action and generally low key.  Had some sudden health issues pop up and needed to make sure my leisure time stayed on the relaxing side of things.  Maybe I'll just resub to SWTOR and do the quest lines or something.

[Fabricated]

The loud ones (Rats, Watchdogs, Firestarter, Election Day if you intentionally fuck up the first day, Transports minus the fucking horrendous bonus heist, Big Bank loud) are the best IMO.

I really don't like going loud.  A co-op shooter where you just survive waves of police isn't an interesting game to me.  Unfortunately some of them that require going loud have amazing payouts in both cash and experience.

Watchdogs is the only really bottlenecked of the loud heists really. The rest are pretty objective based and outside of waiting 2-3 minutes for a drill (optionally on most if you have shaped charges/saws/safe picking) getting objectives done fast means less fighting. Typically pubbies are dumb though and make everything take forever.

Rats is a good "loud" heist that can be done "wham, bam, thank you ma'am". Outside of Death Wish difficulty you can do the following and still get close to the max payout:

1. Blow the lab on day one ASAP and leave.
2. Rush the apartments on day 2 and steal the intel. This can be done in literally like 20-30 seconds with shaped charges, or like 1 minute with safe picking.
3. Kill the Mendozas on the bus on day 3 like 15-20 seconds into the heist and then leave, or if you want a shitload of cash hire an ace pilot and steal the cash out of the bus.

The meth from day 1 really doesn't add up to much even if you cook all the bags and steal them back on day 2 WITH the payment for it. Also Rats awards a ridiculous amount of EXP.

Also if you dig the stealth somehow there's really good heists for it now. Big Bank is pretty crazy with a good group, Framing Frame still has a good payout, Shadow Raid has a ridiculous payout on high difficulties, Election Day has wholly unique circumstances for properly stealthing it, Big Oil is far far far less obnoxious if you can stealth it, etc.

I'd say Transports are the best quick loud heists but some chucklefuck always grabs the stupid awful train heist documents if you drill the trucks and don't luck out destroying the documents using C4.

[Khaldun]

Civ 5 baby! (lets see how many ppl i suck back in)

Going for a cultural victory with a random civ, got the Ottamans.. Oh well, onwards to one...more...turn...(was almost late to work this morning...)

I'm on a Civ5 kick in the last week. Was thinking about Civ Beyond Earth and decided to play some Civ 5. I'm still amazed at how much this game improved between the day 1 release and the state it's in now. The midgame particularly is really nicely complex on some maps.

[Tannhauser]

Been back on Civ V for the last week.  Found some great mods and am currently playing as Troy.  Trying to reach 1000hrs/played before the new game comes out.

[Jeff Kelly]

I've played Act 1 of Diablo 3 on my PS4. Being able to play this with a controller improves the gameplay experience so much, it's really a whole new dimension of play. The PS4 also looks gorgeous and doesn't seem to get any slow downs even when the whole screen is filled with mobs and effects.

It's so much better to play this on my couch, controller in hand than with mouse and PC.

The only thing that isn't as good as on the PC is the handling of loot. They added quite a few features to make the handling of loot as easy as on the PC but at times it feels a bit more clunky.

I also realized that Hotline: Miami is now available for PS4 so I played a bit of this. I played the whole game on the PS3 and I had a hard time with some of the levels. I don't know if it's my experience with the game but it seems that just using the DS4 makes the game a lot more manageable.

[Rendakor]

Playing Disgaea 4 Vita. They nerfed the super easy shop dupe method from D4's original release, but they added a new one that's still pretty quick. I'm almost ready for LoC, and still have a chapter left of the main story.

Still raiding weekly in EQ2. Wonder if I'll stay interested long enough for the new xpac to come out.

Also debating hopping back into POE since they just had a major content patch.

[Yegolev]

Path of Exile, Tomodachi Life, LEGO City: The Chase Begins
Small amount of PvZ: Garden Warfare

[Phildo]

Chrono Trigger, because I just hooked my old modded X-Box back up to my tv and Super Nintendo games on a large-screen LED TV are awesome.

[Signe]

I'm still playing Rift.  I keep forgetting to log out, too, and for some unknown reason it doesn't disconnect me.  I've checked and this happens to a very few people and I'd like to figure out why because it's totally impossible for me to remember to do it myself.  Kinda sucks.  I have my computer set to turn itself off after a certain amount of inactivity but this game buggers that up.  Also, I'll be able to finish Dishonored because it's the xbox freebie.  My nephew never returned my copy!

I am also playing Cookie Clicker.  Please kill me.

[Samwise]

I am also playing Cookie Clicker.  Please kill me.

[Paelos]

How many chips do you have?

[Samwise]

1 million (hence +2M% CpS).  It scales logarithmically with number of cookies forfeited.

[HaemishM]

There is something seriously wrong with you. 

[schild]

There is something seriously wrong with you. 

Pot calling the kettle black there, Gibson Jr.

[HaemishM]

TRUTH.

[Samwise]

Also I'm playing Metro:Last Light, which is the most Half-Life-ish game I have ever played that was not made by Valve.  And Gnomoria here and there.

[Sky]

I'm still playing Rift. 

I don't believe you.

[Kail]

Still working through AC3, this game is a mess.  But I keep thinking that if they axed the Templar/Assassin stuff (which is pretty much crap anyways and always derails the story like an iron bar across the train tracks when it does show up) they'd have a really solid educational piece here.  There's a ton of good history in this game, or hell, in all the AC games, all presented in a neat package that's fun to play.  Could have been this generation's Carmen Sandiego / Oregon Trail / whatever.  Though I suppose the budget would have to be lower, fewer people are going to buy an educational game, regardless of how it plays.

FINALLY finished Darksiders 2, like two years after I started it.  I love this game to death (lol) but I can't shake the feeling that it's the video game equivalent of fast food: something that tickles the caveman part of my brain, but is ultimately bad for me in some vague way that I'll regret later.  It's weird.  I had a really fun time playing it, but some part of my brain kept telling me that I shouldn't.

Still trying to git gud at USF4, but not making much progress.  I need to find someone local I can scam into playing this, practicing vs. the AI isn't doing shit for me and I can't get an online match to proc for some reason.

Grabbed Freedom Planet, too... this game is pretty fun.  It's like, exactly the game I would have made when I was 13, as sketched out on the back of my math notebook.  Allegedly it gets pretty hard later on, though, so who knows if I'll see it through.

[Signe]

I'm still playing Rift. 

I don't believe you.

Why not?  I am.  Do you want me to send you my Rift cards?  I'm very nearly almost level 30, too.  The character I'm playing is named Siggie because I was too lazy to think of something clever and the moronotards I went to school with used to call me that.  I'm a dorf.