So, what're you playing?

[Paelos]

I tried Swords and Potions, but then while on Kongregate found New Star Soccer....oh dear fucking god...then I found the Ipad version of it....aiiieeeee

(it's basically a soccer career simulator with some small mini games involved, just try it)

I logged so many hours on that at work.

[Reborne]

Path of Exile, new ranger in the Domination league.  Things are fine so far even though I'm just putting points into damage and attack speed.  Things might suck on Cruel.
If there were more than two of us in the F13 guild, I'd donate the points for a guild stash, but it seems silly to have a guild stash when there are only two of us.

There are guilds in Path of Exile now?
I really should play that again.
Marvel Heroes and Van Helsing have been filling that game style slot for me recently.

[Rendakor]

Yea, they were added last patch. Come join Yegolev and I in the least active f13 guild ever!

[ezrast]

I would if I knew how to get a guild invite!

(edit: you're never on when I am but I friended you, hopefully that's enough?)

[Rendakor]

I'll try to send you an invite later tonight when I get on.

[Yegolev]

There are guilds in Path of Exile now?
I really should play that again.

Have you read the 1.0.0 release notes?  Massive changes.  Come play Domination, I only have one character in that league and I'm burning all my rares for cash.

[Soulflame]

I tried a ranger a bit in PoE, but that giant skill thing makes my eyes glaze over.  I feel as though I need to either research heavily, create character after character to test builds, or try to find a build to copy from a forum.

[schild]

There are guilds in Path of Exile now?
I really should play that again.

Have you read the 1.0.0 release notes?  Massive changes.  Come play Domination, I only have one character in that league and I'm burning all my rares for cash.

Real cash or fake cash?

[Yegolev]

Real cash or fake cash?

Fake.  Extra-fake even, since PoE doesn't have gold.  I'm not well-suited to selling things to people.

I tried a ranger a bit in PoE, but that giant skill thing makes my eyes glaze over.  I feel as though I need to either research heavily, create character after character to test builds, or try to find a build to copy from a forum.

It's sort of hardcore, but ranger is actually pretty easy if you just look around the starter area for what you want.  At the moment I'm keeping it simple with just damage increasing nodes.  There is a nice Java character builder on the PoE site, however, if you want to get all into it.

[ezrast]

At the moment I'm keeping it simple with just damage increasing nodes.

You should really, uh, stop that.

[Simond]

Having stumbled into the old old soundtrack of Diablo I, all of the sudden an urge has arisen inside me to return to the horrors beneath Tristan. Once again Diablo shall meet the steely end of my sword.

All because of a wonderful atmospheric soundtrack... I wish newer games had the same compelling appeal on me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z6ZJQEGVGY

(Via Saltybet, which has finally introduced matchmaking/tiered battles)

[Yegolev]

At the moment I'm keeping it simple with just damage increasing nodes.

You should really, uh, stop that.

I know.

[Setanta]

Skill tree in PoE keeps fucking with me. Since it reset I just can't get back into the game.

Still playing GW2 but sadly I'm ignoring most of the living story because A) there's no story and B) it's heading into "work" rather than "fun" territory.

Maybe 7 ascended and 1 legendary weapon grind later has jaded me. Having said that, I'm going back to do all the dungeons I'd never attempted.

I started the Hearthstone beta - it's no Magic Online but it's polished and has some nice ideas for speed M:TG built into it confirming in my mind that Blizzard is not an innovator or designer but a polisher (that still turns out turds).

[Yegolev]

Lots and lots of Borderlands 2.  Got the Dem Bones skin for Zero.

A little Path of Exile.  So far at lv25, my ability to damage enemies is barely keeping ahead of the ability of enemies to rush me and stab my face.  This will get ugly later, though.

[Rasix]

Just played Gone Home.  Fuck that incredible... game-like... thing.  Just... fuck.

Just played through this last night.  Price was right (thanks Jherad), and this Guild Wars 2 WvW matchup this week is boring as hell.  Very well crafted "game".  Story was a bit cliche (IMO), but well executed in just about every facet.  The emotional impact was huge, I haven't felt something like this from a game or movie in a while.

I think this would be well worth the money at a $10 price point. I think $20 is a bit high, since it's rather short and there's a general lack of real game play.  But as a 90 minute experience in story telling and exploration, it can deliver at movie theater pricing.

It definitely has me a bit over the whole trepidation at playing this sort of experience.

[schpain]

Yea, they were added last patch. Come join Yegolev and I in the least active f13 guild ever!

Now that's REALLLLLY open for debate.

[Jeff Kelly]

I cancelled my PS4 preorder because what's the point really and caved and bought a Wii U instead (please don't judge me ).

Super Mario 3d World sold me and also the fact that the Wii U is backwards compatible. So this device will basically act as my 'plays most things Nintendo from the NES to the Wii in addition to Wii U games' device.

I can play everything from Super Metroid to Mario Galaxy on there in addition to upcoming Wii U titles and Nintendo's announcement to add Nintendo 64 titles to the virtual console will expand it even more. Hopefully.

First impressions:

Set up and configuration are nearly as horrible as they were with the Wii. I wish Nintendo would finally hire people that know how to do a OS/interface for a console/home appliance. W-LAN support or network support in general is exactly as wonky as it was with the Wii and this part of the setup process took me the longest amount of time to get to work.

Working with the Wii U controller is seriously frustrating. You just connected the console to a huge ass flatscreen and it forces you to instead look at and do everything on that tiny and frankly quite bad touch display.

Wind Waker HD looks gorgeous though and Beautifuly 101 seems interesting. I also spent too much time replaying Super Mario World and Super Metroid.

[jakonovski]

WiiU is looking pretty strong, might buy one myself. All those cool Wii exclusives, must be over a thousand hours of gameplay there...

[MrHat]

The video for Super Mario 3D World look so good.

[Fabricated]

The completely asinine way Nintendo handles accounts and downloadable games has put me off the WiiU forever.

Also the Wii being terrible and worthless if you didn't care as much about first-party titles didn't help. I'm officially "over" Mario and Zelda games. Last one I fully completed was Sunshine.

[Yegolev]

I'm not really upset that I paid $450 for LEGO City Undercover, because that game is fantastic.  Minus the pizza-boy bug that kept me from getting 100%.

I'm again considering a racing wheel now that I see GT6 is for PS3 but they all look difficult to set up.  Not sure if any have a lap setup.  Instead, I ordered just enough PC parts to assemble a ESX server.

Borderlands 2, Ultimate Vault Hunter mode.  Jesus Christ.  Games scale to the highest level player, not the player that hosts the game, so look out for that.  A three-level difference is rough, and a four-level difference is skull-labeled murder.  I have a few nice items (meaning: over lv50) that I can't use until I gain a couple levels, so I guess I'll have to spend some time soloing playthrough 3.  In true ARPG fashion, the Torgue rifle that I've been using for the past five(?) levels is kicking the ass of the new shit I'm finding.  I'm not really complaining, I could use some other (elemental) weapons to augment the rifle.

In PoE, I'm still looking for some life leech greater than 1%.  There are some nice new trinkets in Domination that I'll be happy to have back in Standard, once the league ends in February, but they aren't useful to me at the moment.

All the fourth-graders are playing Kingdom/World of Keflings.

[Bann]

In PoE, I'm still looking for some life leech greater than 1%.  There are some nice new trinkets in Domination that I'll be happy to have back in Standard, once the league ends in February, but they aren't useful to me at the moment.

This sounds like you need life leech in dominion, right? If it's nemesis, I've got a pair of slitherpinches I'll trade ya for a chaos or 2.

[Yegolev]

Dominion, Domination... not Nemesis.  I don't have any chaos orbs yet anyway, still Act 2.

[ghost]

Anyone playing Cobalt Alpha?

[Yegolev]

The doctor said I needed to stop.

[Margalis]

With the Wii U I do remember that at first the "look at the pad" "look at the screen" stuff was annoying but eventually you get used to it and it becomes second nature.

[Tebonas]

Since State of Decay is out on the PC now, I grabbed it last thing before going to sleep yesterday. Which delayed sleep for quite some time. This really is one of these "One more mission" games.

[Jeff Kelly]

I've managed to put a few hours into Wind Waker HD yesterday and I really like it even more than the GC version which already was in my top 3 after OOT and ALTTP.

With the HD graphics, the cell shading style and enough performance that the game has a decent viewing distance and no pop-in issues it really looks like a cartoon and I mean that in a positive way. They've also managed to fix a few of the pacing and gameplay issues. You can for example buy an upgraded sail where the wind will always come from the right side and which makes you sail faster. So you don't ever have to use the wind waker baton to change wind directions again just for sailing.

The Controller Pad is very very pointless though in my opinion and it's also not that well integrated into the experience. You really notice, that Nintendo didn't really know how to handle it most of the time.

Case in point: For Wind Waker they decided to play the in game sound and music through the speakers of the gamepad but only up to the moment the game starts. So at first it weirds you out because the sound comes from both the TV speakers and the controller and it isn't even completely in sync. Then it just is replayed through the TV and the controller just plays sounds related to the map and inventory interface. The controller has a headphone jack though.

I could see three use cases here

1. You game with headphones plugged into the TV
2. You game using the TV speakers for audio
3. You game using the headphone jack on the controller for audio

1. might be necessary when you play late at night or generally don't want t disturb people around you. 1. doesn't work though because then you'll not hear the audio from the controller pad or the audio from the controller will disturb the activities of others
3. would be useful if you don't owm a wireless headphone but 3 only works for the mode when you play on the controller without the TV

So if you want the experience as Nintendo intended it then 2. is the only viable option.

That alone shows me that the guys at Nintendo didn't even think about a few pretty basic use case scenarios for the controller.

[ghost]

Playing Gone Home.  It's really a game, but it's super atmospheric and quite interesting so far.

[rk47]

Replaying CK2 - I'm somewhere up in Britain, Cornwall.
I was enjoying my game, beating up the Norse invasion, converting them one by one and helping out/sabotaging the other Catholic rival lords in the region when I have a sudden urge to check how the rest of Europe is doing...

 

[cironian]

Empires are really stable right now, and muslim empires twice so, because the worst that can happen to them is to be replaced by an identical blob with a different name.

[Miasma]

If you're in Canada it seems as though Future Shop is suddenly having an unadvertised promotion where you can trade in any xbox/ps3/wiiU game and get a free copy of AC4/BF4/CoD Ghosts this weekend only, one per person.

http://community.futureshop.ca/t5/Tech-Blog/Future-Shop-offers-FREE-copy-of-new-Call-of-Duty-Assassin-s/ba-p/462111

It seems really suspicious and too good to be true but they are confirming it so I guess you can bring in a crappy five dollar game and walk away with one of three hugely popular new releases.  Spread the news I guess?

Edit: I guess some municipalities have laws against resales so a few stores can't do it, link says which ones.

Edit2: Oh you can even bring in old vita or ds3 games.  I'd make a new thread for this but it's only for a few days and only in Canada so nah.  I mean even if you don't have used games you could pick a ten dollar title out of the bin at EBgames and walk over to Future Shop.  If you don't want any of these titles you could then walk the game back to EBgames and trade in a new copy...

[schild]

wut

Anyone in Canada want to get me a copy of PC Ghost (and BF4?)

[Malakili]

I bought the Deus Ex 3 Director's Cut and am enjoying it.  I'm not sure it is strictly worth the 10 bucks I paid for it, but paying 10 bucks got me to play through this excellent game again if nothing else.  I'm just past the first boss fight and the revamp was not as significant as I had hoped, but it isn't trivial either.  You still ultimately have to kill the boss, but they included some ways to make that easier based on your skill set.  Still kind of obnoxious and took me a few tries as a non-combat character who is going for the pacifist achievement, but much improved over the heap of crap the boss fights were originally.

[Miasma]

wut

Anyone in Canada want to get me a copy of PC Ghost (and BF4?)

Can only receive an xbox 360, ps3 or wiiU version of the game, not PC.  Redheaded stepchild and all.  I wouldn't want to play a shooter on a console anyway so I'll let my PC smugness cancel out how bad I feel about being ignored.

Also note that all three of these games can be upgraded to ps4 versions for ten bucks once they come out if you have the curren gen version I guess.  That's not a future shop thing that applies to everyone.