So, what're you playing?

[jakonovski]

Ok so what the fuck, Mad Max is actually great. Car combat works and has loads of upgrading just like it should, and the ground combat is Batman but with wrestling moves and a shotgun. Max is landing drop kicks and suplexes all over the place or breaking limbs like Steven Seagal. There's good characters and shit is popping off really nicely in the story missions. On top of that there's all the open world collectibles if you want to do them, and you will because there's super duper useful stronghold upgrades scattered all over the map.

And like I said earlier, it looks gorgeous.

[Ironwood]

I'm playing Fallout 4 and it's utter shit.  And I'm still playing it.

Also, Marvel.

[Kail]

Watching Star Wars got me in a Star Wars mood, and Gog had the old games on sale, so I figured I'd play through all the classics I haven't touched in ages.  Having a surprising amount of fun with them.  I guess I had reverse nostalgia glasses on, I remember Tie Fighter being an absolute pain to control, but muscle memory has been pretty spot on so far.  I remember it being slow and kind of awkward, and it is, but it's also atmospheric and immersive in a way that not a lot of modern games really are.  Star Wars has probably more varied games than any other IP out there, and a lot of it is really great stuff.

Also started Assassin's Creed: Unity.  This is probably a case of expectation management, but I'm liking it so far.  The initial tidal wave of hate against this game had me ready for something that would somehow cause actual feces to leak out of my USB ports, but it's not that bad.  Janky, in places, definitely, but it feels like more of an Assassin's Creed game than any of them since the original.  I've only done one assassination and they had you scouting the area and finding secret routes and things, which is much more assassin-y than the last game's "run up to the dude and murder him, then jump in a haystack and play the mobile companion app while the alert timer ticks down"  I don't know if it's a better game than AC4, but it definitely feels like a more cohesive one so far.  The new parkour system lets you control your direction better, the new combat system is less complex and more difficult so you're not just able to murder ten guys without breaking a sweat anymore.

[Strazos]

Recently played through Ryse, which is basically a "cinematic" QTE game with the buttons not being entirely random as they're tied to your sword and shield animations. The final few set pieces are actually pretty neat. Overall it's pretty mediocre, though.

Bought and played through The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, as it was cheap on Steam. It's a 3rd person cover shooter with two companions and a swath of abilities a la Mass Effect. The AI for your squad is ridiculously wonky, and it's entirely linear. You could probably beat it in a single day if you really tried. The story was kind of meh, but it's XCOM, and it actually has a neat post-WWII feel to it. I'd be furious if I paid full price for it, but luckily I paid less than $7.

Also played Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes with a friend. Basically, one person plays the actual "game," while one or more friends direct you through disarming the bombs by reading a pdf manual. The trick is that the player isn't supposed to see the book, and helpers cannot see the screen, so you all have to talk through what you're seeing and what to do. It's actually a lot of fun, even when you're fucking up.

[Yegolev]

I'm not playing much lately because being a grownup is hard.  I have done some LEGO Dimensions, though, and I like it.  I'm not very interested in the cost, but it's still fun.

Otherwise I'm just dicking around in Rogue Legacy.

Watched someone play Mad Max and I'm sold.  Not sure when I'd play, since I managed to get literally 20 minutes of Fallout 4 in last week.

I did do quite a bit of Grim Dawn last week while I was supposed to be working.  If "quite a bit" = "4 hours".

Everything else fun is work stuff and Lazerhawk.

[Shannow]

Mech Commander for the nostalgia kick.

Gnomoria...is it some pre-req of DF like games that they must make the UI as confusing as fuck?

[Morat20]

I started playing Sunless Sea -- fun, but a bit slow at times. A also finally got around to trying The Wolf Among Us, which was exactly what I needed this weekend. Exactly the right game for the mood I was in.

I picked up a few other Telltale Games off that, since they were still on sale.

[Arinon]

Tales from the Borderlands has been fun.  One more episode left, hope they stick the landing.

Finished Undertale and I'm still not sure what all the fuss is about.  Felt like I got my money's worth but that's about it.

Next up is Witcher 3.  Hopefully there's enough time to plow through that before X-Com 2 and the new Fire Emblem hit.

I'd also really like to play a match of HOTS that doesn't have Nova on one or both sides.

[Falconeer]

Ok so what the fuck, Mad Max is actually great.

I know right? I loved it.

[Druzil]

Started and finished Axiom Verge.  Really glad I played it, the style of all the aliens and the tools was really great.  The controls are passable but things like the grappling hook really needed more work to feel right.  It seems to just randomly detach when you don't want it to.  I have this strong urge with most of these style games to go back and 100% everything but I'm trying to resist and move on to more games in the backlog.  I found most everything anyway, so it's really only the really obscure stuff I missed.

Had a friend get me into both Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen so I'm giving both of those a try.  I need printouts of all the keyboard keys though, which I feel is a pretty big barrier to entry to those games.  If I didn't have someone telling me the basics I would have been lost for quite awhile.  At least with Elite the controller works pretty well, their interface is pretty easy to get used to.  Still have no idea what I'm doing though ;)

I'm a few hours into Undertale and so far its kinda funny but it's not grabbing me yet.

[Sir T]

Tried playing Fallout 3 and it refused to run. Launcher screen came up and then nothing. 

And before you all scream STEAM IS THE GOD OF BEING ABLE TO RUN SHIT at me this is the steam version.

[Rendakor]

FO3 required GFWL so it's sort of finicky. Here's a guide from the Steam forums to get it working.

[Yegolev]

And before you all scream STEAM IS THE GOD OF BEING ABLE TO RUN SHIT at me this is the steam version.

No, that's dumb.  Get a PS4 and everything magically works.

[Sir T]

FO3 required GFWL so it's sort of finicky. Here's a guide from the Steam forums to get it working.

Thanks man :)

[brellium]

FO3 required GFWL so it's sort of finicky. Here's a guide from the Steam forums to get it working.

Thanks man :)

To get FO3 to work it really only requires one thing:

Run the launcher,
Go to Task Manager,
Find the FO3 Launcher in processes,
Right click, set affinity,
Deselect all but one of the cores.

That should pretty much stop all crashes, if you're still having problems wait for it to launch fully and do the same thing with the Fallout 3 process.

Seriously, with that one fix it has less crashes than FO:NV and FO4.  That game seriously hates multi-threading.

[Samprimary]

I am so happy I played Undertale before knowing almost anything about it.

I am sincerely pleased by it. Sincerely. It is a paean to gaming itself.

And I love how it has inspired other people to just have to do things to show their appreciation for the experience.

Want a metal crusher remix with kazoo? sure we got that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyuvjwS3jpk

Want a bonetrousle remix as ... klezmer? yeah we got that too i guess

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIuBpl7k_eU

man i dunno maybe you would enjoy playing Undertale, it's been a delight for me

[Sky]

I am so happy I played Undertale before knowing almost anything about it.

I am sincerely pleased by it. Sincerely. It is a paean to gaming itself.

To NES kids era gaming. Know your biases :)

I was reading a curator review for a game that had such a hard bias I had to chuckle; "Despite not being anime, it's visually gorgeous." Ye gods, kids.

[apocrypha]

Started playing Heroes of the Storm with a couple of friends. We play together against the AI, so there's no offensive MOBA players mocking our newbieness. Which they would, cos we're rubbish.

[Rasix]

I play nightly co-op v. AI in League to level my son's account and get him IP (since I don't let him play with actual humans).  I've had to report people in roughly a third of my games and that's in possibly the most benign, easy, and carefree mode the game offers. 

Witcher 3 is going to take a long, long time to beat.  Fuck, this game is packed.  Only major gripe so far is how wonky the swimming controls are.  This is probably one aspect that should have been cut. 

[Sky]

I was pulling stuff out of a sunken ship and yeah...I think I found a decent compromise in the controls, if you just use the thumbsticks for tricky sections or to right Gerald when he gets 'confused'. Push forward on L stick and L/R on R stick was working for me.

Had a cool moment at level 10 last night where I came across a string of lvl 3-4 pirate camps. At one camp, 4 pirates rush me and one stay back with a bow. I pull up my defensive stance as the guy in the back of the pack gets killed by the archer, then my power swing cleaves all three (arm/torso/head) in two. One second, four dudes down, was pretty cinematic.

I'm cautiously not gushing about how much I love this game.

[Ard]

I'm cautiously not gushing about how much I love this game.

It's both the first open world game plus 80+ hour game that I did not get bored part of the way through and just rush to the end with.  It felt solid to me from beginning to end.  I really want to go back and finish all the side stuff for probably the first time ever, but real life is about to take away all my free time.

[Mandella]

Dying Light. Steam Winter Sale. Totally sucking me in.

Might have more to do with me being laid up for a couple of days last week with the flu. I took the "I'm sick" excuse to make just enough of an appearance in the morning to demonstrate to my wife that I hadn't passed on yet, then retired into the home office to "work on some things," wherein I played Dying Light until I was surprised to realize that it was dark outside.

It's been decades since I last had the requisite no life to have the time to do such a thing. I may need to get sick more often.

[Rendakor]

Minecraft again; two separate modpacks. Tekkit Classic on the laptop because it has Project E in it (EE2 updated); I had to drop Thermal Expansion in because IC is just awful. Playing "The 1.7.10 Pack" on the desktop, which I dropped Project E into.

Marvel Heroes off and on. Working on Scarlet Witch now that I know how to play her.

Steins;Gate on the Vita. The beginning is pretty long; 3+ hours in without any real gameplay which would be more interesting if I hadn't seen the show 10 times.

Also grabbed Shiny Days, the prequel to School Days. It's pretty strange as a VN because the story is told from Kiyoura's perspective 90% of the time, but the dialog choices you make are from Makoto's. It works ok if you're doing one of Kiyoura's routes, but I can't imagine how the game will work if I'm trying for any of the other girls.

[apocrypha]

I play nightly co-op v. AI in League to level my son's account and get him IP (since I don't let him play with actual humans).  I've had to report people in roughly a third of my games and that's in possibly the most benign, easy, and carefree mode the game offers. 

Interesting. I've played about 50 games now with random humans vs AI and last night had my first game where anyone was even vaugely dickish, and to be fair when he said "you guys really need to l2p" he wasn't wrong, we were making a total balls up of it 

[Threash]

Grim Dawn has brought back my altitis in a huge way.  It's not as polished as D3 but plays way better than PoE and completely scratches the character building itch that both D3 and Marvel Heroes fail at.

[Viin]

I played some Heroes of the Storm tonight, co-op vs AI.. why would I play this instead of LoL? (Or DOTA2, though I haven't played that yet). Seems a bit slow.

[Merusk]

Because you hate last-hits and want map objectives not just laning and team fights?

[Kail]

I played some Heroes of the Storm tonight, co-op vs AI.. why would I play this instead of LoL? (Or DOTA2, though I haven't played that yet). Seems a bit slow.

LoL is more focused on farming to get items, HotS is more focused on team fights around objectives.  In my opinion, team fights are more fun than farming, but farming adds a lot of strategy.  So for me, HotS is more fun to play, but Dota / LoL are more fun to watch or talk about. 

In terms of game speed, I dunno.  HotS matches generally last ~20 min, which is a lot faster than Dota.  It's been ages since I played LoL so I don't know if I'd comment there but they seemed pretty similar from what I remember.  A fully decked out carry in LoL will definitely wreck an under geared enemy a lot faster than in HotS because the power gap tends to be a lot bigger in LoL, but otherwise they felt pretty similar.

Plus, when I get stuck having to be support (which I often do) in HotS at least everyone scales together.  In LoL / Dota, you're the team bitch, which means you tend to get the unglamorous (but still vital) jobs while the carry gets all the gold and fucks your girlfriend and rides away on a motorcycle.  In HotS there's no warding or camp stacking or anything, and support classes level with everyone else so you feel like an actual part of the team rather than the towel boy.

[Rasix]

Play HotS because it's quick, accessible, and fairly mechanically sound.  A 20 minute game is really nice when your greatest limitation is playing time.  It's also nice that being the later to the game than LoL or DOTA2 it's a fairly cohesive in its design.  LoL and DOTA2 have a lot of weird shit that's persisted throughout the lives of the games just because they've always been there.  It has a lower barrier of entry because you don't have to worry about last hit mechanics or item builds.

Play LoL because it takes less time than DOTA2.    Your standard LoL game is 20-40 minutes.  It's got a decent meta and good tactical and mechanical layers to it.  It has a very mature e-sport scene with very well organized leagues.  The production values from Riot at their events are top notch. Seriously, my son watches their tournaments and league games like he's watching any other sport.  He runs around the house pretending to be Bjergsen/Faker/Marin/Huni for days after. The community is also huge and mature.  Sure there's a lot of toxicity, but it also has one of the most active presences on Youtube and a massive reddit community.  

Play DOTA2 because you want the most mechanically intensive and tactical MOBA there is.  It's simply the gold standard for a competitive MOBA in terms of champ/hero diversity, meta game maturity, and mechanical skill needed. It's completely fucking free.  You can play every champ from the start and that isn't a small thing.  The community isn't my cup of tea and the stuff outside of the major tournaments feels like amateur hour, but TI and the majors are really well done.  TI is the esports event of the year.  

Right now I'd like to play HoTS, but I'm currently playing Witcher 3 and leveling my son's LoL account for him.    DOTA2 just requires an investment that I can't hope to make.  The games last too long and the feel of the game doesn't work for me quite as well as LoL or HotS.  Anyhow, too many words.  HotS for quick and accessible.  DOTA2 for free!, complex and tactically soundness.  LoL is somewhere in between but is probably the biggest money sink of them all.  Then there's always Smite... uhh.. for first person and a metric fuckton of skill-shots.  

[Viin]

I think part of my problem with HotS is that I really don't care for any of the characters. I never bought into the Warcraft/Starcraft universe, so most of the characters are just weird to me. LoL, on the other hand, has characters I can at least recognize - oh yeah, she's got a bow, she's probably ranged DPS. I have no idea what archetype the characters in HotS are.

I do like the idea of skipping last hits and having additional objectives, so I will play a bit more and see if it grows on me.

[Jeff Kelly]

Played a whole load of Elite Dangerous: Horizons. Contemplating the purchase of a HOTAS setup.

Send help.

[Pennilenko]

Played a whole load of Elite Dangerous: Horizons. Contemplating the purchase of a HOTAS setup.

Send help.

I use, and am very happy with, the Thrustmaster T.Flight Hotas X, I spent like 40 bucks and have had it for more than a year. Don't spend a bazillion dollars on a hotas, it just is not worth it unless you are a flight sim enthusiast. Also, there are tons and tons of build quality complaints with most of the madcatz/saitek products that are several hundred dollars.

[Signe]

I've started playing TSW again since I only ever played the beta, although I played a lot of the beta.  It's fun.  It's a wee bit harder than most MMORPGs.  Different, to be sure.  It's also VERY distracting... which is mostly what I'm after.  I will still play Grim Dawn and Fallout 4, though later.

[TheWalrus]

If you get a crew together, Payday 2 is a great time. Losing sleep on this one.

[Kail]

Ran through Pony Island, if you've got a few bucks it's a fun way to spend a few hours, but only really worth it if you haven't read anything about it.

Finished Nuclear Throne, finally.  And by finished, I mean I beat the throne, haven't looped yet.  WHATEVER, STILL COUNTS.  Throne fight was like five seconds since I had Crystal with a super slugger and a super bazooka.  Now to start unlocking B skins...

Finished Hotline Miami 2, immediately went to the wiki to figure out WTF I just played, immediately watched a pair of youtube videos to figure out WTF I just read on the wiki.  I don't think it holds up as well as the first one, it seems more geared towards high level play at the cost of being just fun to play around in.  Also, not sure how I feel about the story.  Or there being an actual story, rather than just weird trippy cutscenes with almost no context.

Still playing AC: Unity, seems like the side activities are way more fun than the previous games.  They're actual content, solving murders or collecting heads for Mme. Tussaud or duelling cross dressing secret agents, much more interesting than previous games "a red dot has appeared on your map, go kill it".  A lot of stuff seems to be multiplayer only, did we ever have an F13 club or whatever the guilds are called in this game?  The dedicated thread for Unity was all about the launch (though I did get a chuckle at this quote).