So, what're you playing?

[Ironwood]

I tend to stare at the monsters.  Hard.

[Paelos]

Aren't you supposed to stare at monsters? They are monsters.

[jakonovski]

You cannot know the truth and remain sane. Everyone knows that. And you have to know the truth.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, you lose sanity like a motherfucker when you stare at the monsters.  I'd just developed that habit during my dating days.

[Minvaren]

Giving the original BioShock a playthrough again on normal difficulty.

Were the early "take out a Big Daddy" encounters all total zerg-fests?  BioShock 2 seemed a bit easier...

[Rasix]

The only way The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile could be more fun is if I didn't have to turn on my 360 to play it.     Great beat'em up.  Completely weird and twisted as well (title may allude to that fact). 

It also brutally reminds me how bad I am at games nowadays.  Sheesh.

[Samwise]

The "Justine" Amnesia DLC is awesome.  It's like Amnesia and Portal had a love child and named it Saw the Videogame.

[jakonovski]

The "Justine" Amnesia DLC is awesome.  It's like Amnesia and Portal had a love child and named it Saw the Videogame.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saw_(video_game) ?

[Malakili]

Giving the original BioShock a playthrough again on normal difficulty.

Were the early "take out a Big Daddy" encounters all total zerg-fests?  BioShock 2 seemed a bit easier...

Its been a while since I played it, but I don't recall having to zerg them down.  I do remember that by the end of the game when the game had trained me that dying didn't matter that I played extremely recklessly though.

[Minvaren]

Seemed to be mainly a "low ammo/no upgrades" issue at first.  I generally take them down with the crossbow easily now.

But yeah, death doesn't mean much in the game.

[Tebonas]

Thats not entirely true. It means free healing without the hassle of finding yourself a first aid kit. 

[Bunk]

The realization of death meaning nothing is about when I gave up on Bioshock. That, or the moment I realized that they were going to keep teasing me in to thinking there was some sort of RPGish interaction/dialog with a character just around the next corner - and there never was. What's the point of making such a creative setting, if all you use it for is a background map for endless zombie rushes.

Low on ammo? Pull out your wrench/pipe/crowbar (I can't remember) and just keep smacking Big Daddy till he's dead. That extra 20' run from the respawner every 30 seconds will barely slow you down!

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Low on ammo? Pull out your wrench/pipe/crowbar (I can't remember) and just keep smacking Big Daddy till he's dead. That extra 20' run from the respawner every 30 seconds will barely slow you down!

This drove me crazy too. You can't have a game with a survival horror vibe and important 'ammo management' style gameplay and then introduce boss fights whose glaringly-most-effective solution is a suicide rush with a melee weapon over and over and over. And once that suspension of disbelief (death = bad) is broken, it never comes back.

Currently playing: some Blood Bowl (regretfully) and RIFT (also regretfully). Maybe I should try Dragon Age 2, except I don't think I even finished the first one.

Speaking of games with boss fights whose only effective solutions are overwhelmingly cheesy tactics.

[Yegolev]

PC broken.  I'm a console gamer at my core, but my mortgage in LotRO is going unpaid and I'm missing Festival Shit.

Portal 2, of course.  My son, seven, loves Portal very much, as all good boys do.  He immediately wanted to go into co-op but we convinced him to let us do some single-player first.  This produced the expected results.  Later, we did some co-op and it's great except that my son is frustrated that he actually has do do stuff in Portal 2 co-op, instead of like Super Mario Bros. Wii where I do the bulk of the work in reaching the flags while he practices being a horrible liability.  Thank god for the ping tool.  We all find it funny when GladOS calls him out for sucking so much.

Reached about 65% completion of Just Cause 2.  Still have not progressed the story.  Killed all industrial chimneys.

Mushroom Wars... holy shit.  Great and angrifying as well.  I had to shut it down and go play Castlevania HD instead.

There has also been a substantive amount of Lego Clone Wars.

[trias_e]

Cargo.  WTF.  The only thing that can describe it.

[apocrypha]

Portal 2 has me good'n'proper. Soon as PSN comes back to life I shall be gettin me some co-op goodness.

[Minvaren]

Finished BioShock 1 (good ending again - I r teh goody goody).  Working on BS2.  Heh.  Easier most places, but more zerg rushes in places.  Agree with Yahtzee that Her Voice(tm) wants to make me break things.

Not sure what I'm on to next.  Got Jade Cocoon 2 and Legaia 2 to play on the PS2 yet.  Their original versions were fun, but not sure if nostalgia can hold up after this much time.

[Amaron]

Playing Deus Ex for the first time ever here.   Expected it to look like ass but I picked up the mod which gives unreal engine games a dx11 renderer and it looks pretty great.   Loving it so far.

[Sky]

Say what?

[Ironwood]

Say what?

[Trippy]

I think he means this:

http://kentie.net/article/d3d11drv/index.htm

but that renderer doesn't have any DX11 specific features so really you just want this one:

http://kentie.net/article/d3d10drv/index.htm

and possibly this:

http://kentie.net/article/dxguide/index.htm

Edit: any

[Ironwood]

Reaaallllly.

I suspect I now have to dig into that cardboard box that I put in the garage.  Easter Monday fun.

[Strazos]

Just buy it from Steam or something. Is the couple of bucks worth more than the time it would take to find your discs?

[Yegolev]

You are more adult than ever.

While I was working ALL FUCKING WEEKEND, I played some more Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels.

[Amaron]

I think he means this:

Yea my bad it's a dx10 renderer really.  Mostly it's just nice for making the game run smooth and letting you run at a modern res/fov with modern AA and filters.   You can fiddle with it to get some more advanced effects though.  I believe there are also some incomplete texture packs for the game.

[Sky]

After taking no less than a dozen 100 question practice exams on Sunday, I finally got in an hour or so of Divinity 2.

I still really like the game, but the Flying Fortress sections are just slogfest fillers outside the boss battles. Looking forward to getting back into the story again.

[Malakili]

Played a few hours of BC2 with my friend over the last week or so and put maybe 45 minutes into Minecraft beta 1.5. 
Waiting until I finish all my papers for the semester before I cave on Portal 2 - so far so good.

[Yegolev]

cave on Portal 2

Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!

[Mrbloodworth]

Mostly Global agenda, and Minecraft.

[jakonovski]

Magic: the Gathering Online. Yes, I know it's sad.

[Yegolev]

As long as you're aware, it's cool.

For my own sad endeavors, I'm at 76% completion of Just Cause 2.  I just found all 300 faction items last night.  I'm planning on writing a stern letter to Avalanche about the lack of fanfare for these achievements.  I still feel good about it, in a "PS2" way.

Portal 2, the boy is really into co-op so my wife and I decided that we would forge ahead without him in singleplayer.  If he wants to play singleplayer at some point, we will just pick up an old save file and he won't be the wiser.  I think.

[WayAbvPar]

Magic: the Gathering Online. Yes, I know it's sad.

I downloaded it last week, but haven't gotten any farther than seeing I have 466 cards still in my collection. I don't know anything about how the game plays any more, or the first thing about deck building. It is there in case I get excited and want to relearn everything.

[Bann]

I just finished another play through of Castlevania Symphony of the Night (downloaded via PSN before it took a giant crap all over itself.) Still easily in my top 5 games of all time. Playing in a few dominions 3 MP games at the moment, (anyone here play dom3?) and looking forward to the start of Blood Bowl Season 4.

Anyone out there that would like to share an opinion on the DS(i/3ds/whatever?) GF's all time favorite game is Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, shes in love with the Fire Emblem games too. I'm thinking about surprising her with one before she goes out to do some extensive traveling in a month. I've got FFT 2A in my amazon cart right now, and am browsing Fire Emblem games now too. I'm not sure if it makes sense to go with a 3ds or pick up a used DSi for half the price, and would welcome any advice. Also - what are your favorite DS games?

[Rendakor]

The DS is an awesome system; the lite has backwards compatability for GBA games which is nice, while the DSi has the whole camera thing. The 3DS is nice, but there aren't any SRPGs out there for her yet so no need to buy one now. As for games like FFT/FE, pick up Disgaea (if she's never played it before; it's just a port of the PS2 version), Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, Luminous Arc (1 and 2), and/or Rondo of Swords. For good, non-SRPG DS games, check out any Etrian Odyssey, any Castlevania (they play like SOTN), and The World Ends With You. If you've got one as well (or are buying two), the FFCC games are very good for co-op.

[Ingmar]

Caveat on the Etrian Odyssey games: they are really goddamn hard. Probably a little harder than they really need to be, frankly.