So, what're you playing?

[Rasix]

Still mostly LoL ARAMs (all random, all middle).  Nothing quite like getting your MOBA fix in 25 minute intervals.

Been meaning to play some more SWTOR, but I had a problem where I was blue screening after the latest patch.  I'm not sure if it's my system or them.  Updated drivers, and tried playing  a bit, but if guild members aren't on, I just go back to LoL.

The new Warhammer game for iOS is pretty neat.  I guess it's an adaptation of a board game.  Fun time waster.

[koro]

Been playing the original Shadow Warrior of all things, since it's free on Steam.

I really loved Shadow Warrior back in the day, but playing it again recently is kind of making me rethink it. The level design is generally more interesting than in Duke3D, but the weapons are terrible and the enemies do a shockingly large amount of damage. They're also bullet sponges and squirrely enough to make hitting without autoaim an ammo-wasting disaster.

[MisterNoisy]

Dipped into Neverwinter a bit (L15 so far).  I don't know if I like it yet, but for the price, I can't complain too much.

[Druzil]

Been playing the original Shadow Warrior of all things, since it's free on Steam.

I really loved Shadow Warrior back in the day, but playing it again recently is kind of making me rethink it. The level design is generally more interesting than in Duke3D, but the weapons are terrible and the enemies do a shockingly large amount of damage. They're also bullet sponges and squirrely enough to make hitting without autoaim an ammo-wasting disaster.

The one liners are the #1 reason that game is (was?) greatness.  Even if the game itself isn't as fun as it used to be.

I'm also playing mostly LoL ARAMs.   Also some occasional Planetside 2 when I can get into a battle that's actually enjoyable.

[ghost]

Finished Bioshock Infinite last night.  It was surprisingly good, although a bit short.  Well, the story was good.  The gameplay was pretty much status quo.

[Tebonas]

Wizardry 6, in all its glory. I'm surprised how much I still remember, should be a straight walkthrough to Wizardry 7 (which I never finished originally) and beyond.

[Fabricated]

I picked up "The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing" for no reason other than being kinda drunk.

What a weird game, what a bad time to release it. I'd feel terribly for this company if they were developing this and saw Torchlight 2 come out first.

It's basically a bog-standard ARPG where you play as Van helsing (or rather his son) with elements pretty arbitarily ripped from every ARPG in existence. I swear to god this has to be Iron Lore's Titan Quest engine because the fonts and UI look SCREAM Titan Quest but who else has the code besides Crate?

Lots of little refinements on the elements ripped off are present:

-Your companion (A godawfully voiced ghost woman) has MUCH more programmable behavior and can be set up to pick up items/gold for you, can use your weapons/gear, has a skill tree, and can still do all the shit the Torchlight Pet can do, and you level her stats as well.

-The game has a more traditional Skill Tree where skills/levels unlock other skills but each skill has 3 different perks that alter its behavior you can burn points on too. Like, a lightning melee attack that arcs to 2 enemies has perks that increase how many jumps it makes, makes it stun enemies, or makes it have a chance to flat out drop enemies.

-There's like a bunch of random systems. Like, you have skills which you hotkey that burn mana but you also have separate tricks that are on cooldowns and a series of passive auras you can slot. You also have "perks" gained from the fame system which is basically a second experience bar like Torchlights; these are stuff like an extra stash tab, or 4 seconds of invulnerability when you take fatal damage that can only happen once every 3 minutes.

-A slot mechanic for armor/weapons of course exists, as does crafting.

I'm like only a tiny bit in and all I can think is, "Dear God, this is going to be the last game this studio ever makes because no one is going to buy it with Torchlight 2 owning the cheap ARPG fix, PoE owning the f2p arpg fix, and Blizzard owning the aspergers Blizzard ARPG fans." Did I mention that the special today is a complete Dungeon Siege pack? I mean I know the third one was really bad and the first two were mediocre at best, but wow talk about bad timing. In a month you'll probably be able to buy Torchlight 2 for like 10 cents on steam sale, and that was made by the ACTUAL people who made Diablo 1/2.

Combat is kinda slow and so far feels less kinetic than literally all of the ARPGS I just mentioned. You think Torchlight 2 has no weight to its combat? Hooboy.

I mean, it's not terrible and reeks of effort for an indie effort (cinematics, obvious attempts by a reasonably good art team to dress up what looks like an old engine even if it isn't actually the Titan Quest one, B-grade voice actors instead of employee friends/family, etc), but just ouch. I have a feeling this studio will be gone or sucked up by a better one (probably the goal) in a year or so.

[Tarami]

It's actually selling reasonably well, sitting at position 46 on Steam's Top Sellers list and position 30 on GamersGate. I have no idea what numbers that translates to, but we're probably looking at profit. It has had fairly good word of mouth and received some critical appreciation, even if most are of the kind "there's a game here that I really like that's slowly being smothered in weirdness".

That said, I finished this a few days ago and it picks up a lot of speed a few hours in. There are two more games coming in the series (a trilogy, of course) and I for one am looking forward to them. Had far more raw fun with this one than D3, to be honest. Clocked in at 11 hours playtime or there about.

As an aside, Torchlight 2's major problem is its fucking terrible responsiveness. It feels like you're playing through a fog of sedatives. Movement is fine, I guess, but combat just feels like a wet turd. It takes soo-o long to cast a spell. I still liked it enough to play it lots, but that's what Van Helsing has on both TL2 and PoE. Combat is snappy and sleek enough to be fun on its own, even if it does lack gratifying feedback.

[Paelos]

I'll buy VH at $5 when the next episode comes out and they put it on sale.

[koro]

Welp, I've found the next thing I'm going to be playing:

http://neverwinter.nexusmods.com/mods/794/

Baldur's Gate 1, including Tales of the Sword Coast, fully redone in Neverwinter Nights 2. As far as I'm aware, this is one of the few "redo an old game in a new game's engine" projects to actually get completed.

[Rendakor]

Did they ever patch NWN2 to not be a buggy mess? It was almost unplayable for me at launch.

[koro]

I played NWN2 at launch as well, and got it again a couple years back on Steam. It's pretty much fine and dandy now.

[Lantyssa]

Well, it runs.  It's still got a terrible control scheme and nothing is going to help that story...

[rk47]

Wow Good thing I saved money in not buying that shitty HD remake. This is the true Next Gen remake. Will look at it if I have the time.

[koro]

Wow Good thing I saved money in not buying that shitty HD remake. This is the true Next Gen remake. Will look at it if I have the time.

Well I've played the NWN2 port a bit. It's kind of janky, and pretty obvious that it was only really done by one person.

It's also borderline impossible to beat the first "boss" at the Friendly Arm Inn without cheating or being an arcane caster, thanks to how strong he is.

[Stormwaltz]

I'm going to start a long-term strategy game this weekend, but I haven't figured out what yet.

Distant Worlds: Age of Shadows - I bought the original on release, and kept up with all the expansions, but never dove into it. I'm a-feared. It's not an EVE-cliff, but it's a deep, complex game.

Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes - I got it for free. I'd paid no attention to it until I noticed sites that remorselessly excoriated the first two games (RPS) were saying, "What the... this one actually gets it right?"

[Reg]

Yeah, I've been playing that quite a bit lately and it's actually fun now.  If this had been delivered a couple years ago rather than that Elemental abomination Stardock wouldn't have so many enemies.

[Margalis]

I played the Project X Zone 3DS demo like 6 times last night. This is a game that was totally made for me, combining two of my favorite genres (SRPG and fighting) into a crazy fanservice extravaganza.

[Venkman]

Finishing up Far Cry 3 and then onto Blood Dragon. It's good for yucks. Kinda feels like an open world Tomb Raider. You all played it awhile ago though, so I offer nothing new. Other than I'm turning into quite a completionist. Never been one before.

Also The Swapper. Fun side-scroll puzzler. May grab Skyward Collapse too. Not much to look at, but the idea of playing both sides in an RTS simultaneously is interesting.

Playing Frozen Synapse on the iPad. Good standin until XCom launches. Also Cubemen 2. Similar art style, though of course it's more tower defense. Pretty robust (relatively) community of players and custom levels. Also grabbed Baldur's Gate for iPad, but it's not nearly as good as I hoped it would be graphics/UI wise. Too much of a straight port in some ways.

[Stormwaltz]

My first attempted game of Legendary Heroes did not go well. The first quest I discovered next to my starter city was listed as "Medium" difficulty. Well, my leader's army was "Medium" and the enemies we'd already killed (a smallish ogre and some kind of lizard) were "Medium," so I figure, let's go for it.

Apparently quests use an entirely different measure of "Medium," because I found myself facing eight big ogres that had an initiative advantage on me.

Bam, bam, bam, I'm dead. Elapsed play time (not including game setup): 12 minutes.

I'm not sure if they consider this by design or not.

[Rendakor]

Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Myself and 6 friends all picked it up yesterday while we were hanging out, so now we all have every starter fruit type. Got my house down payment covered yesterday as well, so it should be built today. Anyone else here play? Might start a thread for it, if so.

Still playing a bit of TERA; up to level 46 on my Slayer. I don't think I'll ever play it hardcore, but it's nice to have a decent MMO to just hop into and run a dungeon without keeping a monthly sub running.

[HaemishM]

Got beat on my Bismarck playthrough of Civ 5 and didn't want to start another game with only an hour to go before bed. So looking through my Steam library I see Arkham City begging to be played.

Holy shit. What the fuck happened to this game? Arkham Asylum ran like butter on this same machine. This game runs like dogshit on fire in a dumpster rolling downhill on two broken wheels. I actually had to dial back some of the graphics but didn't really notice their absence. Game felt sluggish, even when dialing it back, like I was treading through water the whole time. Wait, I can't change the controls or the graphics while I'm in the fucking game? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? What year is this? Do I have to create an autoexec.bat file too? The fuck? How did we go from one of the best 3rd person action games I've played to I think it's eating my face off? And the art direction - Batman looks great, Bruce Wayne and Catwoman look like melted mannequins. They really stand out terribly against the gritty models and textures of the enemies. I'm going to give it a bit more time, but damn, the first impression was really poor.

[MrHat]

Mark of the Ninja was fantastic.

[Phred]

Rift. Can't believe how much the f2p conversion has been ignored here. They gave out free access to former account holders a week or so ago and have been running a promotion to give new players a month's playtime as well as the storm legion expansion. The game has actually gotten quite fun.

[Paelos]

Is there a chart of how the F2P features work? I can't understand F2P without a comparison chart.

[DevilsAdvocate25]

Rift. Can't believe how much the f2p conversion has been ignored here. They gave out free access to former account holders a week or so ago and have been running a promotion to give new players a month's playtime as well as the storm legion expansion. The game has actually gotten quite fun.

I'm playing Rift as well. it is scratching my MMO itch. The kids are still on Monster Hunter Tri on the Wii U. I have also played some Pokemon Black 2. I like the new Join Avenue. It's a neat feature.

[Soulflame]

I have largely ignored Rift because when I stopped playing, I had hit a wall while leveling around 35 or so that I could not overcome.

On the 3DS - Fire Emblem: Awakening.  Thinking about getting Animal Crossing:  A New Leaf.  Assuming I can find a copy anywhere.

On the PC
- Terraria - I don't have minecraft.     Also, I'm looking forward to the Terraria update that's rumored to hit soon.
- Borderlands 2 - Playing this instead of other ARPGs, because I like sniping, loot, and setting things on fire.
- Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance - My RTS fix.  Plus:  GIANT ROBOTS RAR!

[Yegolev]

Pokemon White v2 even though I haven't gotten halfway through Soul Silver.  Although White v2 seems to be a far superior game at this point, it might be because I hadn't played a Pokemon game before Soul Silver.

Played some LEGO City on 3DS and I wished I had played that before I played the WiiU version.

Before vacation:
I played enough LoZ: Skyward Sword to make me want to finish Twilight Princess.

On the gameplay roadmap, we are looking to:
Do the Sleeping Dogs DLC
Fit in some Borderlands 2
Get Last of Us
Figure out how my son and I can play Animal Crossing: New Leaf without buying two cartridges, also mumbling curses at Nintendo

[Margalis]

Twilight Princess is definitely worth finishing, IMO the game gets consistently better from start to finish.

[Paelos]

I'm bouncing around between Just Cause 2, Civ 5, D3, Deus Ex HR, and Star Wars Jedi Academy.

Nothing is really holding me right now. I may try Rift now that it's free to play. Have I lost it or is that actually fun now?

[Phred]

I have largely ignored Rift because when I stopped playing, I had hit a wall while leveling around 35 or so that I could not overcome.

Dunno what wall you hit but instant adventures would probably get you over it.

[Venkman]

It was a good idea, but I thought GW2 did most of it better.

Now onto Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon. Still funny even a few hours in, though a couple of gags are getting repetitive.

[Fabricated]

Thomas Was Alone is basically ":3 - The game". Amazing how good writing, narration, and music can make you like a semi-janky featureless platformer.

[Rendakor]

Figure out how my son and I can play Animal Crossing: New Leaf without buying two cartridges, also mumbling curses at Nintendo

You can have two charscters in one town, but whoever creates their character first is the mayor.

[Hawkbit]

That's how my kid and I are playing it.  I wish we could afford a second 3ds and game - Ahhh, first world problems.