So, what're you playing?

[lamaros]

Well, I finished PS:T finally (at 2am). It was pretty good. Would be in the top 10 RPGs I've played I would say. Pity about the pacing and the combat system/UI, but I guess that's not really the point hey.

Now... nothing, until I get my internet connected.

[schild]

I found nothing wrong with the combat/UI... when it came out. The bar wasn't set very high back then. With that in mind, it's passable now, still.

[lamaros]

I found nothing wrong with the combat/UI... when it came out. The bar wasn't set very high back then. With that in mind, it's passable now, still.

Maybe my brain has just failed to get the autopause settings down properly this time around, but using your party members efficiently in combat, especially with spellcasting, was very laborious. Especially casting missiles. Plus I hate how it would unpause you whenever you left the spell/skill selection menu for a character. It can all be worked around, just not especially fun.

Thankfully most of the combat is boring and not challenging, and you can talk/run your way past most of it when even that gets too much.

[Sky]

Some Rocksmith hitting the new DLC I nabbed.

Also taking my time, savoring The Walking Dead, in episode 2. So awesome.

Episode 2 spoiler comment

[JWIV]

Said what the hell and finally launched my copy of Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes.  It's certainly better than Elemental ( and I never played straight Fallen Enchantress so I can't compare it to that), but it's still a bit of an odd jumble.  They did streamline and clean up some of the more disparate systems, but the seams are still showing where it very obviously feels like there's two games running in parallel (rpg questing with a character stack, then more traditional 4x with stomp stacks and city management). The color palette and art direction was a bad decision all the way back with Elemental and has not aged well through the expansions. 

The UI has also dramatically improved from the unusable disaster that was the first game, however certain basic functions continue to be missing (Seriously, no select all while in a city? REALLY?) 

I got the game for free because of the Elemental debacle, and really, this feels like what Elemental probably should have been from the get go - not two expansions worth of work later.  It's got some interesting tidbits, and they've managed to at least get some poor design decisions to a coherent if not completely elegant state. 

I wouldn't pay 40 bucks for it, but there is actually a decent if not great game here.

[Merusk]

Picked-up Sim City 4 in the Steam Sale and I've been trying to play with that.  I haven't played a Sim City since 1994 and heard good things.

So far it's been great fun. It's where I felt Sim City should have been two decades ago when I lost interest. (It was so primitive!) Sometimes knowledge of a subject is a bad thing. I suppose it's the same experience actual players had with Guitar Hero. 

I just wish the damn thing was more stable.  Crashes right and left, audio and runtime errors galore.  I'll have to do some research and figure out if there's some way of keeping it hale and healthy in Win7.

[Rasix]

Finished Dishonored. For all of the hubbub over the ending, the good ending was kind of short, but at least it was better than what I saw of the bad ending on youtube. Fun game, last mission felt a bit rushed and it was incredibly hard to stealth through parts of it.  Luckily I only killed one guy (like only the second guy aside from some random weeper after the first mission) and avoided all 3 alarms I managed to raise without much incident. But I guess the mission was just there as a closure, and really didn't need to be some long, drawn out affair. 16 hours is well worth the $10 I paid for this, and actually wouldn't have felt bad if I paid full price for this title. This was well done and a lot of fun.

Now what do I play? Heh. MMO time (and which?) or Spec Ops: The Line time? Still a huge backlog on my steam library, but at least I've scratched the stealth game itch for a bit.

[MrHat]

Now what do I play? Heh. MMO time (and which?) or Spec Ops: The Line time? Still a huge backlog on my steam library, but at least I've scratched the stealth game itch for a bit.

Same boat as you. I took the time to organize my steam library a bit - Winter Sale/Summer Sale etc.

After doing that I played through Mirror's Edge, Bioshock: Infinite and Mark of the Ninja.

Waiting to play Sleeping Dogs, New Vegas, and a few others until my new PC parts are in.

On Spec Ops, I really enjoyed it, if you're looking for another single player game that's 6-8 hours long, totally worth it.

Think I might give DOTA2 a go for a bit, LoL got way repetitive.

[Fabricated]

Playing PoE again since they gave my ranger a full passive reset and fixed the life/survival stuff so you can get away with actually taking damage nodes.

Got a good piece of armor with 2 green sockets linked to a red, got enough life that I was comfortable taking blood magic, then socketed the armor up with my lightning arrow+lesser multiple projectives+life gain on hit. It's pretty hilariously OP and my equipment is garbage.

[satael]

Back once more to playing Mount&Blades (can't decide between pop-warband and mostly vanilla fire&blade). I have to say m&b is probably on top of my list for games which I'm waiting for a sequel to (which should be under development but no ETA). Hoping also that Realms of Arkania gets patched into a playable game in the near future.

[Rasix]

Now what do I play? Heh. MMO time (and which?) or Spec Ops: The Line time? Still a huge backlog on my steam library, but at least I've scratched the stealth game itch for a bit.

Same boat as you. I took the time to organize my steam library a bit - Winter Sale/Summer Sale etc.

After doing that I played through Mirror's Edge, Bioshock: Infinite and Mark of the Ninja.

Waiting to play Sleeping Dogs, New Vegas, and a few others until my new PC parts are in.

On Spec Ops, I really enjoyed it, if you're looking for another single player game that's 6-8 hours long, totally worth it.

Think I might give DOTA2 a go for a bit, LoL got way repetitive.

I've considered doing some DOTA2.. it's just... GAMES ARE TOO LONG. WHY MUST THEY BE SO LONG?  Most of the time I was playing with Fordel and Ingmar I couldn't even finish a second game.

They nerfed the shit out of Tidehunter anyways, right?

[MrHat]

No idea, I just got super bored of LoL ARAM.

So, I just finished Walking Dead.

Holy hell.  Best "Choose Your Own Adventure" ever.

[Ingmar]

Now what do I play? Heh. MMO time (and which?) or Spec Ops: The Line time? Still a huge backlog on my steam library, but at least I've scratched the stealth game itch for a bit.

Same boat as you. I took the time to organize my steam library a bit - Winter Sale/Summer Sale etc.

After doing that I played through Mirror's Edge, Bioshock: Infinite and Mark of the Ninja.

Waiting to play Sleeping Dogs, New Vegas, and a few others until my new PC parts are in.

On Spec Ops, I really enjoyed it, if you're looking for another single player game that's 6-8 hours long, totally worth it.

Think I might give DOTA2 a go for a bit, LoL got way repetitive.

I've considered doing some DOTA2.. it's just... GAMES ARE TOO LONG. WHY MUST THEY BE SO LONG?  Most of the time I was playing with Fordel and Ingmar I couldn't even finish a second game.

They nerfed the shit out of Tidehunter anyways, right?

I've been fucking around with the tutorial stuff, I might get the inclination up to play the noob limited hero stuff soon!

[Mrbloodworth]

Back once more to playing Mount&Blades (can't decide between pop-warband and mostly vanilla fire&blade). I have to say m&b is probably on top of my list for games which I'm waiting for a sequel to (which should be under development but no ETA).

They have gone dark for quite a while now. I hope all is well with it.

[HaemishM]

Still playing Mass Effect 3 and still struggling a bit with it. The TUBE is so strong in this one. I'm 7 hours in and feel like I've had about 1-2 hours of actual gameplay (I don't really consider the conversations as gameplay). What little shooting I have done is TERRIBAD. The cover mechanic is so fucking sticky I feel like all the walls are made of flypaper and I'm a goddamn fruit fly. It's so damn clumsy. For every 20-30 minutes of gunplay, there's an hour of running back and forth between conversations and cutscenes. Between many of the returning characters merely being there for "old home week" so I can catch up on them in completely superfluous to the main story segments and other characters like Sgt. Dudebro and Chobot Press Secretary being annoying, some parts are really grating. The level design is SO shitty - the Citadel feels like literally five rooms instead of a massive space station. The Normandy feels bigger. There doesn't really feel like any sort of freedom in play. The story itself is wonky. IT'S DESPERATE WAR - but oh, wait, go see Kaiden in the fucking hospital so he can whine about your relationship. ... the fuck? There seems no urgency despite the constant calls of "EARTH IS DOOMED!!!!" And yet again the Council acts like idiots and ignores Shepherd despite the previous two games showing what a bad fucking idea that is.

I'm going to finish it, though it might be a struggle, but this game is some serious weak sauce.

[MrHat]

I was looking for it in the Summer Sale but didn't find it.  Is it EA Origin only on PC?

[Ingmar]

You can buy the digital download on Amazon if you don't want to use the Origin store to buy, but you'll be using Origin to download/play it regardless.

[apocrypha]

I gave up on ME3 before the end because it was such a load of shite, as you describe Haemish. Firmly belongs in the "fail" section of the Suspension of Disbelief Metathread.

Anyway, I'm mostly messing about in Arma3 still. So much fun with a few mates on voice comms.

[Khaldun]

ME3 is a really good example of why you don't want an RPG to have its entire gameplay built around an urgent time-delimited mission. Either you have a clock running all the time, and so the player doesn't feel like he can explore branching threads or go wherever he wants, or you don't have a clock running and so the constant message of "now, hurry, omigod everyone is dying" is continuously contradicted by the player just hanging around and having conversations and whatevs. It's ok to have a specific mission or portion of the game turn *suddenly* urgent and on the clock, but not all or most of it, unless the entire thing is on rails and feels balls-to-the-wall from beginning to end. It really turned me off. I played it very diffidently after being really into ME1 and ME2 largely for this reason.

[jakonovski]

I'll tell you what I'm NOT playing: Dragon's Crown. The EU release is still in the air for some fuckstupid reason.

[cmlancas]

Playing:  acoustic guitar (including Rocksmith!), DotA2, and WoW (heroic raiding woo, 8/13 H atm).

Somewhat interested in:  EQ Next.

Not interested in at all:  This PhD program that will cut my playing time to -2.

[Zetor]

I'm playing a whole lot of Shadowrun Returns... or maybe "playing" is a better term to use. I finished the campaign in a few days (it's short, but pretty good), and have been spending way too much time with the editor making my own campaign... or rather, transcribing my SR gaming group's campaign into the game.

[Rendakor]

I'll tell you what I'm NOT playing: Dragon's Crown. The EU release is still in the air for some fuckstupid reason.

It doesn't come out in the US until this Tuesday; maybe you guys will get it then too. I was really psyched for DC but I heard that you have to beat it single player before you can play multi which is and might keep me from buying it.

Just finished SMTIV Chaos ending; great game and I'm eager to start NG+ to see the Order and Neutral sides to the story.

[apocrypha]

I'm playing a whole lot of Shadowrun Returns... or maybe "playing" is a better term to use. I finished the campaign in a few days (it's short, but pretty good), and have been spending way too much time with the editor making my own campaign... or rather, transcribing my SR gaming group's campaign into the game.

Keep us updated on this, I'd love to see some decent community campaigns appear :)

[Goldenmean]

It doesn't come out in the US until this Tuesday; maybe you guys will get it then too. I was really psyched for DC but I heard that you have to beat it single player before you can play multi which is and might keep me from buying it.

Just finished SMTIV Chaos ending; great game and I'm eager to start NG+ to see the Order and Neutral sides to the story.

Regarding Dragon's Crown multiplayer, I think you only have to get about halfway through before you unlock online multiplayer (people seem to be saying around level 17). Apparently, local multiplayer is unlocked from the beginning. Not sure if that sways your decision at all.

I really wish the art on this game wasn't so ridiculous. I was willing to accept the sorceress with breasts bigger than her head and advanced jiggle-tech. It's juvenile, but it's pretty much par for the course in gaming. The ability to poke at shopkeeper's and questgivers who seem to be selling you items from their boudoir while they moan suggestively is possibly more stupid than I want to deal with. Still haven't canceled my pre-order though, so I'll probably just play it and feel vaguely guilty about being part of the problem for the whole thing.

[jakonovski]

I kind of like how it's blatantly juvenile (and the art style is divine). Most games pretend they're all hip and aware and then proceed to zoom every cutscene at the nearest virtual female's virtual ass.

[Rendakor]

That actually helps a lot, local is what I'll be doing mostly. I have no shame in admitting that I love the fanservice.

[Ingmar]

I was willing to accept the sorceress with breasts bigger than her head and advanced jiggle-tech. It's juvenile, but it's pretty much par for the course in gaming. The ability to poke at shopkeeper's and questgivers who seem to be selling you items from their boudoir while they moan suggestively is possibly more stupid than I want to deal with. Still haven't canceled my pre-order though, so I'll probably just play it and feel vaguely guilty about being part of the problem for the whole thing.

I don't think even the character designs are 'par for the course'. They're significantly more grotesque and fetishized than almost anything but the more embarrassing Korean MMOs and such.

[Goldenmean]

I kind of like how it's blatantly juvenile (and the art style is divine). Most games pretend they're all hip and aware and then proceed to zoom every cutscene at the nearest virtual female's virtual ass.

This was sort of my thought at first. Despite finding the subject matter incredibly juvenile, I love the overall style of the game, and at least they aren't sugar coating anything.

This video though... so dumb (Probably NSFW, despite not actually being R rated)

[Goldenmean]

I don't think even the character designs are 'par for the course'. They're significantly more grotesque and fetishized than almost anything but the more embarrassing Korean MMOs and such.

Oh, yeah, this game goes well beyond normal. I was more referring to overly sexualized female characters being par for the course.

[jakonovski]

That video is really dumb, but at least the barbarian grunts when you touch his nipples.

[Kail]

Grabbed Bohemia Interactive's new space exploration sim, Take On Mars, and it seems interesting so far.  Drive around on mars taking samples and stuff.  It's got a real time clock so the time on mars corresponds to it's real life counterpart.  My landing spot at victoria crater is in darkness for a few more hours and I didn't put a light on my lander, so I've got basically nothing to do at the moment.  Seems like an interesting idea, but I'm just getting in to it and I'm not sure how deep the game is.  It's also early access, and feature incomplete.

Still trying to make it through Planescape: Torment.  Playing it infrequently enough that I'm forgetting what I have to do next, I keep having to look up FAQs and walkthroughs much to my personal shame every time I forget where I'm supposed to go.  Perhaps I should tattoo it on my back or something.

Playing a lot of Dota and LoL too.  My brother only likes LoL and my sister's husband only likes Dota 2 so I'm trying to balance both of them.  It's always slightly weird playing one and then switching, it's like the uncanny valley of video games.  They're like 95% alike so the 5% difference is always fucking me up.

[cmlancas]

Just because I went out with my high school friend who I hadn't seen in six years, DDR Suprnova 2.  Yeah, it happened.

And I still pulled a B on Unlimited, A on legend, and AA on 300.  Funny how some of that stuff comes back to you.

[Rendakor]

Picked up Dead Island: Riptide over the weekend after the insistence of a friend. It actually feels worse than the original, although some of that may have to do with buying the new one for PS3 when I had the original for PC. It was alright, but nothing special.

Started a NG+ in SMT:IV and solo'd the Macca DLC map for a while until I could resummon my old demons, then proceeded to smash my way through the first few quests. I'm going to try for the neutral route this time, since Jonathan is still a pretentious twat and I can't be arsed to play order.

Also going to buy Dragon's Crown today after work and hopefully get some coop in. Tales of Xillia comes out today as well (and I've got the CE preordered) but that'll have to wait since I'm going on vacation this weekend.

[apocrypha]

Rage isn't very good. Bad case of consolitis. Load times! Pointless racing with no mouse support! Annoying vendors that talk idiotically for 3 seconds before you can access their shop! Ten million Carmack settings, all buried in config files!

Don't think I'll be finishing this particular game.