So, what're you playing?

[Morat20]

Just wait until he's YOUR Pope, then the fun begins. Crusades are hilarious.

Yeah, I get excommunicated a lot and I've yet to work out how to make my Priests more likely to become Cardinals.

I quit my game as the English after getting sick of being hammered by the French, the Spanish, the fucking Dutch (who keep making peace treaties with me and unloading troops in England then attacking me. Without much effect, I might add. I keep spanking their asses) and finally the Holy Roman Empire.

I'm not even sure WHO the fuck the Holy Roman Empire is, just that they introduced themselves with a large army and a burning desire to take Antwerp from me. Which I had JUST taken from the French, mostly because the French pissed me off.

The Pope is constantly telling me NOT to attack my fellow Christians (and always picking whomever I'm currently besieging) despite half of Europe declaring war on my ass, and the last four popes have been from countries that hate me.

Diplomacy is not exactly my strong suit.

[Paelos]

Here's the key to getting priests to cardinals.

- Pick one city
- Build the highest level church you can afford immediately whenever it grows
- Train all your priests in that city
- Accept a Theologians Guild there
- Have all the priests sit in that city and learn from each other until they become cardinal
- Pope!

[Morat20]

Hmm. That might be better than my current plan of "Attack all heretics". Although in my Spanish game, I'm having to use them to Catholicize places. Then again, I've been focusing on taking Rebel towns and letting the Porteguese handle the Moors (whom I'm quite friendly with).

A lightning campaign later and I should be able to wipe Portugal off the map and get a ton of cities.

[Jeff Kelly]

OK Red Dead Redemption is another offender that does one thing I came to dislike recently. Small font sizes and small UI elements.

Yes I get it, you designed most of the game while sitting in front of your Über 27'' monitor at your desk in some Rockstar studio but when I have trouble reading anything on screen because I'm sitting 10 feet away from my big ass flatscreen TV then you maybe should have considered actually testing your shit on a real TV and not some 200 dpi monitor.

I mean if I at least could increase the size of the UI elements or the text so that I can actually read it but no, if the developer liked yellow on blue 8 point text then I have to too, no exceptions.

So I'll probably spend too much time looking at a horse's behind while sitting entirely too close to my TV just so that I can read stuff.

[Yegolev]

I'm back to playing Torchlight, and maybe will continue the new Dead Space game, now that I've determined that my hangs were due to my fucking bluray drive.

[rattran]

I found that mine were due to the ati hdmi drivers pooping on my Xonar drivers. My bluray drive doesn't seem to be an issue.

[Bann]

I picked up Disgaea 3 on a whim, and spent my small amount of gaming time on that yesterday. Holy crap, I can see losing an entire month of the summer with that. Gave the 3DS and some games to the GF, but school has kept her to busy to really get started with anything yet.

[Yegolev]

I found that mine were due to the ati hdmi drivers pooping on my Xonar drivers. My bluray drive doesn't seem to be an issue.

More testing required, Torchlight hung again after some significant time.  Dead Space, though, would hang in a new game at more or less the same spot until I unplugged the drive.

The real solution is for me to get off my ass and RMA my CPU so that I can put in the new main board and the CPU, then do a clean install of W7 with all the new hardware attached.  At least, that's the idea.

I'm enjoying a summoner build in Torchlight now, which takes me back to my first playthrough of Fate.

[Sky]

Apparently the expansion to Divinity 2 seamlessly picks up at the end of the original. I had mentioned I thought there was a spot that was a good ending, and the game kept going. I'm pretty impressed with that, I was a good 11 hours into the expansion before I realized it wasn't more of the original game.

[Hawkbit]

I think Divinity 2 is my next purchase, depending on funding this month.  Since going MMOless, I only have Minecraft on my PC.  It's lonely. 

[Sky]

I'd have to check my steam stat, but I think I've clocked in around 60 hours and according to the promo for the expansion (20 hours) I should finish around 70 hours. There's some drag in the original, grinding through the flying fortresses, but I've enjoyed the game quite a bit otherwise. Nice surprise.

I'm playing as a dual-wield warrior. I recently re-specced to focus on lifetapping and crits in addition to the regeneration and whirlwind spin attack from my previous build. The big damage jump attack I used to use started to get outpaced due to me finally learning how to dis/enchant gear properly to stack massive damage bonuses on my axes.

You can also play as a mage with dd or a necro with summons, or a ranger with bow. Or combo of all of the above. Pretty decent trees, not mmo-level but enough to get the job done.

[Hawkbit]

Very nice.  Which did you prefer:  Risen or Divinity 2?  I haven't played either and they both look perfect for my interests right now.

[Sky]

Risen. But I'm the resident Gothic fan. But if you like eurorpg, you should eventually get to both.

[Hawkbit]

Thanks, I'll pull the trigger tomorrow after the final EA Steam sale is announced. 

[Tebonas]

I'd go with first Risen, the Divinity 2 as well. Risen is smaller in scope (and shorter), but in my opinion they both deliver a good gaming experience.

Dualweapon all the way in Diviniy. With those +damage enchants that count for both weapons you'll never be able to find a twohanded weapon to compete with that insane damage output.

[Hawkbit]

Thanks for the tips on Risen.  I'm about an hour in and it's great.  Long load times and one crash so far, but it's a bunch of fun.

[Sky]

I kept thinking the protagonist in Risen was Turkish from Snatch. Made the whole thing a lot more 

[Minvaren]

Finished Borderlands as a L36 soldier.  Think I did all the missions, but I missed a Claptrap.  Got noticeably more fun around L20 when I stopped dying all the time.

What to play until Witcher 2 comes out...

[Rasix]

Finished Borderlands as a L36 soldier.  Think I did all the missions, but I missed a Claptrap.  Got noticeably more fun around L20 when I stopped dying all the time.

What to play until Witcher 2 comes out...

Hah.  Yah, gaming right now is just a holding pattern until that hits.  

Wasting time in Rift right now.   I wish Witcher 2 was out this week with the rest of the family out of town.  I actually have some time to do some decent binge gaming.

[Mazakiel]

Current plan is to try to finish a play-through of the first Witcher before Witcher 2 hits, since my old save files went to the great beyond when my old computer died.  Both to gear up for the sequel, and to get a save file ready for it as they're apparently going to import some of the decisions you made in the first game. 

[Jeff Kelly]

Still playing Red Dead Redemption.

I like the setting, I like the characters, I like the story so far (although it's very gritty). I am astonished just how much they got out of the 360 graphics wise.

I hate the controls and some of the design choices.

The game is not TV-friendly. The font sizes are too small, the brightness and color settings are too dark, the target reticule is ridiculously small. When you cannot see a wanted criminal fleeing on a horse who is right next to you because he blends into the background then it stops being funny.

Dead Eye is activated by pressing (and holding) right stick, you sprint or gallop by repeatedly pressing a button, you not only have to use the menu to access the map or the inventory but you actually need to press a button to activate a menu choice. The controls don't work well.

Your character and your horse moves like it was a Mack truck and in complex situations you quickly run out of fingers/hands needed to press all of the buttons (e.g. repeatedly pressing A to build up speed while holding B to look at the target while holding left trigger to prime your lasso before throwing it with right trigger and that's a fairly normal event)

I hate Rockstar's save philosophy, although you can at least build a camp and save there which is progress. Although you cannot save before challenges and most strangers' missions (NPC vanishes upon reloading) and some missions cannot be restarted (they are always marked as finished even if you load a previous save). Oh and some cutscenes cannot be skipped.

You also spend entirely too much time riding from point A to point B while being mauled by mountain lions and cougars (or being insta-killed by a random encounter). Once I got shot by 7 goons that camped at the side of the main road from the MacFarlaine Farm to Amardillo.

The story and most of the missions so far are really good, alas they failed to fix any of the things that annoyed everybody in GTA IV.

[Hawkbit]

Luckily it was a far better overall experience.  I finished RDR, but stalled on Undead Nightmare.  I need to get back into that because it had fun mechanics. 

[Yegolev]

Borderlands co-op.

[Paelos]

Mount & Blade: Fire and Sword. I just put a BiiF up about it. Pretty fun so far.

[MuffinMan]

You also spend entirely too much time riding from point A to point B while being mauled by mountain lions and cougars (or being insta-killed by a random encounter).

[Yegolev]

Fucking cougars.

[Sky]

[Yegolev]

All the time.

[Jeff Kelly]

Relevant quote is relevant ;)

[kildorn]

Just to pimp a little bit, SPAZ is out today on impluse, out other digital outlets in a few weeks. Looks like a blast, so I'll be playing that tonight. And Brink is out tomorrow.

[Ingmar]

I feel like I missed out on some collective experience, people always talk like they are constantly under attack by cougars in RDR, I think I saw maybe 3 or 4 the entire game, and none at all before I went to Mexico.

[Rasix]

I think I got killed or got my horse killed at least a handful of times.  Some of those were me trying for the cougar killing via knife hunting task.  It happened enough to be annoying.

The game is not TV-friendly. The font sizes are too small, the brightness and color settings are too dark, the target reticule is ridiculously small. When you cannot see a wanted criminal fleeing on a horse who is right next to you because he blends into the background then it stops being funny.

This was probably my biggest gripe with the game.  So much stuff was just difficult to see.  It's obvious Rockstar never accessibility tests any of their shit. All of their games are a nightmare for red/green colorblind people to play.  Plus, all of the brown people, wearing brown, hanging out in the desert made for some difficult viewing times.

I didn't run into too many problems with restarting missions and the like.  It felt like they made serious strides with that in RDR.  GTAIV had none of this and it's what eventually drove me from the game.  Plus, RDR was just a bit easier than GTAIV with it's generous auto aiming (this was the only way for me to seriously see some of the baddies).

[Yegolev]

The fucking cougars.  See, I like to explore and this is where you can run into trouble; maybe it's not bad if you stick to the roads and follow the story ho-hum-dee-dum but if not then you'll see cougars very early.  One of the first places you go to west of Armadillo, if you fuck around in the cacti north of there, it's cougar time.  Now, there are a lot of dangerous animals in the game, but the cougar is special.  First, it's a fucking ninja.  Those bitches ALWAYS came at me out of nowhere at 120mph.  Grizzlies are Obvious.  Second, they are the color of the ground.  Which is also due to their feline-ninja status, unlike a wolf which can be spotted from two miles.  Thirdly, about half the time the tip-off that I was being attacked by a cougar was my horse suddenly keeling over.  Followed by a cougar eating Marston's face, and a loading screen because I was probably riding a good horse.

[Strazos]

Do want Steam version of RDR. 

[Sky]

Do want Steam version of RDR. 

Yes yes yes yes. I had a history-based estimate somewhere but I forgot what it works out to. Like Oct or Nov or something...unless they pull a Bully.

Is it too early to start wanting a Steam version of LA Noir? 

And by Steam I mean PC, not PS3