So, what're you playing?

[Yegolev]

I found some research material for our Nerd Court.

Arena intro - Imperial court member thrown into prison, released by ghost to depose the Pretend Emperor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay7nlkf_9B0

Daggerfall intro - Friend of the Emperor asked to put down a rogue king and also do something about an embarrassing letter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niU1bRqxrIU

Morrowind intro - Orphan prisoner released with vague instruction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJXxkjAhBmE

Oblivion intro - Emperor, paranoid and feverish, recognizes a prisoner met by chance and gives him the most important quest ever, instead of his own elite guard:
Movie : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9s-NdiKz5A
Play : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdQkM-Te754
Plus the Dunmer's answer to Don Rickles.

Skyrim intro - Wrong place at the wrong time, all the kids go to the principal's office, then... FUS RO DAH:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXUnoISvM18

[Margalis]

I got a 3DS so I've been playing some Pushmo and Mario 3D Land.

At first I was worried because I have shitty vision and the 3D wasn't working very well for me - I would constantly lose the sweet spot and see double images and such. But it's gotten a lot better, I guess I am adjusting mentally and physically. Really enjoying Mario.

Now if only I could StreetPass faster than one person every 3 days...

[MuffinMan]

Picked up Sonic Generations from RedBox yesterday. Depending on game length it is tetering on being a purchase for me. Never played anything after Sonic 3 but after all the bad things I heard about the games that came after it seems they finally got it right.

It also seems I'm not very good at 2d platformers anymore.

[jakonovski]

I got over my Blood Bowl hate-on and joined our group's new season with a Khemri team. They can't get the ball but they sure can get the elf.

[Kageru]

Playing through Alpha Protocol which I bought for something like 2$. The most frustrating thing is it is *so* close to being a really good game. All the assets are there in terms of artwork and locales, the story is good with some interesting characters and dialog. Espionage / stealth games really get a lot of gameplay value out of a small map if you spend time sneaking all over it. There's just some dumb design decisions that are a bullet in the knee to the gameplay, and most of them seem relatively fixable with a bit more polish and debug time. Even the laggy engine could have been fixed with better placed respawn and loading screens. Such a waste, but even then I'm still having more fun than I expected.

Exception to that being Brayko.... wtf.

[climbjtree]

that are a bullet in an arrow to the knee

FIFY.

[tgr]

In. In the knee.

[climbjtree]

I hate this meme even more now. It should absolutely be "to," not "in."

[Kageru]

I only saw it for the first time in that Star-wars video they're enthusiastically linking (this one). And Grammar comes first even with a dumb meme :)

My other sadness is I look at the safe houses in Alpha protocol and dream of how cool it would be to own an apartment half as cool as those in RL. Spies get the coolest pads, even if they seem to have a pretty short life expectancy the way I play it.

[Rendakor]

Picked up Soul Calibur 5 for the PS3 and loving it so far. I'm not particularly good at it, but the gameplay is smooth and most of the new characters are cool. I miss Cassandra and Kilik (he's still in it but...) but other than that I've got no complaints. I'm not sure how big of an improvement it is over the previous version, since I haven't seriously played a SC game since SC2 back on the GC. Might do a BIIF for it after I get some same console multiplayer in tomorrow.

[jakonovski]

I played Homefront all the way to the helicopter part, at which point I discovered the heli controls don't work. No matter what you try to do, the chopper won't go up.

[Sky]

Picked up Soul Calibur 5 for the PS3 and loving it so far. I'm not particularly good at it, but the gameplay is smooth and most of the new characters are cool. I miss Cassandra and Kilik (he's still in it but...) but other than that I've got no complaints. I'm not sure how big of an improvement it is over the previous version, since I haven't seriously played a SC game since SC2 back on the GC. Might do a BIIF for it after I get some same console multiplayer in tomorrow.

We played a shitload of SC2 on the xbox, I really loved that game. So much better when you have about six guys all of the same talent/interest level (casual).

I'm just not good enough (nor motivated enough to get there) to play online, offline is kinda boring.

[Rendakor]

That's the primary reason why I picked this up; me and two other guys have been hanging out a lot more so I've got people to play with in person. The character creation mode is great fun too!

[Tebonas]

Got bored with cleaning up quests in Skyrim (mainly because there are three broken quests in my quest log and I can't finish everything anyway) and so I decided to kick it oldschool with Avadon. Wow, in this game it is so transparent I am an unknowing henchman for the bad guy it really hurts.

[Velorath]

Currently waiting patiently for Twisted Metal in a week.

[rk47]

I'm getting on King Arthur 2 on my spare time.

[jakonovski]

Righto, managed to beat Homefront by somehow getting the gamepad to work properly. Ended totally prematurely, the story never got anywhere. Still, I liked the campaign much more than MW2, which I'm playing now. That game's story is just incoherent and the scripting is the most broken thing ever. I feels like a Michael Bay movie on pcp.

I also went a bit nuts and decided to go for both Gotham City Impostors. It's like a crazier Team Fortress 2 with modern shooter tropes. I really love the gameplay and would play it for hours on end, but alas the matchmaking is broken on PC. I didn't notice the GFWL blurb when I bought it.  
The devs have promised dedicated servers next week though, so there's still a chance. It'd be a real shame if the game died because of something like this.

[Pagz]

Currently getting destroyed by the AI in Soul Calibur 5, makes me horrified to even attempt online play...

[Rendakor]

Picked up Tales of the Abyss for my 3DS and loving it so far. I'd never played the PS2 original so it's very fresh and new. No Japanese audio is shitty, but playing a handheld game with no voices isn't so bad.

[jakonovski]

Binary Domain demo was promising. Gameplay is nothing to write home about, but I'm a sucker for the Japanese cyberpunk aesthetic. It's going to be great to take in the sights.

Also tried the MW3 free multiplayer weekend on Steam. Entered a game, there was a wallhacker, and I quote, "lol u cant report player". Uninstalling as we speak.

[Flood]

My comp. here at home was so old and out of date that I am about 3 years behind on any of the "marquee" PC games.  With the new job I got myself a much needed present and rebuilt my rig from case up....err in.  So now I'm all up on Steam's business and most of what I'm playing now is influenced by what's on Steam.  I think because I couldn't play most of the games specs-wise I didn't realize how cool Steam is for gaming and socializing.  Anyway in no particular order:

Skyrim - Oblivion used to piss me off, but I like the franchise.  My buddy was hyping Skyrim up to me and after I got my new comp it was one of the first things I bought.  I agree with the general sentiment about the game, but I'm still having fun playing it.

Warhammer 40k DOW 2
MTG Duels of the PlanesWalkers - the DLC decks are cool, cheap DLC items
Killing Floor - slow-mo zombie headshotting good times
Terraria
Nation Red - rando fun casual topdown zombie shooter
Blood Bowl - I suck balls at this game 
Magicka
Bastion - music and visuals are stunning

Need to eventually work back to some stuff I missed out on - Batman / Arkham games, Dead Island.  I'm stalking Kingdom of Amalur until it goes on sale.

 


 

[rk47]

went back to soulstorm with some steam friends. I find base building and stuff more interesting than DoW2 free weekend demo. Tau is imba.

[HaemishM]

In almost every way, DOW 1 was a superior game to DOW 2. But they really are two totally different games that don't exactly even share a genre other than they are both sort of broadly definable as RTS.

[rk47]

I know, but the miniscule engagements in DOW2 turned me off for some reason. The lack of forward bases etc. I gave the free weekeend a look and it did not grab me.
Soulstorm on the other hand...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDGh8d8PyEQ&feature=player_embedded

[HaemishM]

I hated the linear tube-like feeling of all the campaigns in DOW2 and the tiny size of all the units. They really did make an entirely different game with 2. I miss the huge campaign map from Dark Crusade.

[koro]

I have DoW 1 and all its expansions along with DoW 2 and its first expansion (snagged as part of a huge THQ pack during a Summer sale a year or two back for $50), but I am so, so bad at DoW 1. I've mainly messed around with Soulstorm, but my ass gets kicked so hard even on the easiest difficulty levels using the armies I was used to from the DoW 1 beta years and years ago, mainly Spess Muhreens and Orks. Found IG pretty fun and have been playing them as well... but damn. I just suck so bad that it actually makes the game almost not worth playing.

I'm almost scared to install Company of Heroes for fear I'll be even worse at it.

[Trippy]

I hated the linear tube-like feeling of all the campaigns in DOW2 and the tiny size of all the units. They really did make an entirely different game with 2. I miss the huge campaign map from Dark Crusade.

Dawn of War II is a throwback to the table-top "HeroHammer" days where it was all about your Hero units instead of your troops/squads.

[jakonovski]

Never thought I'd say this, but Fear 3 made me quit out of frustration. First the story went to shit and then the atmosphere got destroyed by a retarded benny hill style boss battle where you basically have to kite a mech around a tiny arena for about 10 minutes.

[Sky]

I bet if you play Yakety Sax over it, things will improve.

[jakonovski]

I bet if you play Yakety Sax over it, things will improve.

That's true, everything is improved by Yakety Sax.

[Yegolev]

My dumbass friends got me to play Gotham City Impostors, which should be called Team Fortress Impostors or something.  It's fun when we can actually get a game going.  Buggy as shit game lobby.  Dedicated servers might fix that but there's also the one where our team would usually have only one or two people actually in the desired game mode.  The others were not able to see or interact with the football or other gimmicks, seemingly stuck in deathmatch mode.  I'm hoping it gets better soon.

[jakonovski]

My dumbass friends got me to play Gotham City Impostors, which should be called Team Fortress Impostors or something.  It's fun when we can actually get a game going.  Buggy as shit game lobby.  Dedicated servers might fix that but there's also the one where our team would usually have only one or two people actually in the desired game mode.  The others were not able to see or interact with the football or other gimmicks, seemingly stuck in deathmatch mode.  I'm hoping it gets better soon.

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.

[Yegolev]

March?  Stupid Monolith.

[Fabricated]

So basically, it's going to be Brink 2.0 where the dev kills off a perfectly good game by not fixing it fast enough (or releasing it in a fixed state).

[Kageru]

I don't know why they do that. For a PvP game if you allow the population to tank after launch it's extremely hard to build up critical mass again. Even if Brink could have been made good (very unlikely) it's pretty pointless since there'll be no one on the servers (and bots don't count).

Just finished playing the original Max Payne, thanks to Steam tempting me with discount prices for archaic games with good meta-critic scores and word of mouth. Sadly the sound didn't work reliably (music and voice over frequently lost), and the low poly models are pretty hilarious, but the game itself was surprisingly fun and addictive. The painterly comic book approach to story telling is great because it focuses attention on ambience and mood while covering up the terrible acting they painted over. The core combat mechanic of using bullet-time rolling moves along with a fairly fragile character encourages you to play carefully and take encounters apart in a fairly tactical manner and consider the appropriate weapon for the approach you are using. Like a stealth game you need to consider environments and threats as important elements rather than run in guns blazing because you can die so quickly. And the environment is nicely interactive or used for some cool visual set-pieces (including the nightmare sequences). That said the main power is the quick-load button and I left an awful lot of dead Max Paynes littering the ground, especially in the "run from the fire" restaurant scene.

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