The "What are you playing?" topic.

[CountArach]

Playing NFS: Most Wanted 2. I've never really been that in to racing games in general but this one is really and truly fun. Police chases while you are doing street races make for some tense moments.

[komnenos]

I download Real warfare: 1242 and play it. But it was very bad. I hope the second one will be good.What do you think? Is it worth downloading it?

[Xiahou]

I grabbed "King of Dragon Pass" at GOG for a few dollars based on its 5-start review. Wow.... what a time sink!

Basically, it's a tribal politics simulator. You play one of the clans that has fled strife in their homeland and settled in Dragon Pass- so named due to the fact that far in the past, all settlements in the pass were wiped out by dragons. It's cool though, since the dragons are all gone now (we hope).

You choose your clan ring (advisers) from among the prominent members of your tribe. You appoint the chief, the strongest warrior you put on the ring will be the war leader, the best with tribal customs will be the law speaker, ect. Wealth is measured in cattle- having a large herd means you are a wealthy clan. You can raid neighboring clans, trade with them, forge alliances and so on. If you become powerful enough, you can forge your neighbors into a tribe which opens up another level of politicking. Your carls and cottars (and thralls if you practice slavery) work the fields and you recruit weapon thanes to patrol your talus and form the core of your armed forces. There are many gods and spirits that must be appeased so they'll grant you their favor and a bad omen can spook and cripple your clan unless you act decisively.

Some of the amusing stuff that's happened to me so far....

Our ancestral spirits manifested themselves in our clan hall to complain that they were being nauseated by the constant nonsensical proverbs being uttered by our chief (things like 'no fish can swim in a frozen river.') My response was to give them a scolding for wasting clan magic to make such a petty complaint.

Another time, someone mysteriously left a basket of strange eggs in our talus. My advisors suggested selling them or feeding them to our thanes, but I decided to try to hatch them. They turned out to be "earth shaker" (triceratops eggs) and my advisors suggested sacrificing them to various gods or trying to sell them. I decided we should try to raise them. Finally, the carls began complaining that the earth shakers were eating too much and trampling crops and small animals and they wanted to eat them. I insisted that we train them for war. This turned out to be a great success and our next half dozen or so raids were massively successful until they finally died.

I love that the game is so steeped in lore rather than being a spreadsheet type game. The stats are almost never just laid out for you. Sacrificing to the god of death should help your warriors fight- but it never says "+2 to attack" or anything of the like. For such a simple seeming game, there is so much to consider. Never raid in Sea or Earth (spring or fall) seasons or your harvest will suffer because you took the carls away from the fields. You can send your heroes into the realm of the gods to re-enact your mythology. Success means great blessings for your clan, but failure means embarrassment for your clan or even the death of the quester.

Definitely $3 well spent.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I have it for my iphone. I'm too impatient to the spirit quests properly which is frustrating.

[Fragony]

Been playing Halo 4 at friends place, if the 360 wasn't replaced soon by I would consider buying one for it. It's simply awesome. I loved the first Halo but didn't care for the other ones, actually disliked the third. Than the xbox died, it was the third time so I stopped bothering and bought a ps3 instead. But gawd is Halo 4 awesome it gets everything right, it has the same imho still unmatched flow to combat of the first and it looks simply stunning. There is just something about it that makes it play better than other shooters even if it supposedly runs on 30fps. If you have a xbox and don't have Halo 4 I am going to call your mom and tell her there is something wrong with you.

[Hooahguy]

Playing a lot more Spec Ops: The Line.

Holy this game is good, at least story-wise. Im really enjoying it. I think its a really excellent SP experience. Many really tough choices you got to make, even if they arent so apparent initially. I like it much better than the Mass Effect "decision wheel" since the method employed by SO:TL forces you to always consider if theres a better/more humane way of doing something. Its a really gritty game and oftentimes disturbing. I love the atmosphere, and the shooter mechanics, while sometimes a bit clunky, do the job and make for enjoyable combat. Granted, Im playing on the lower difficulty because I want the story, not the combat. If you are into a gritty story, I highly recommend this game.


Also I just got X3: Terran Conflict so any advice would be great.

[edyzmedieval]

Oldies as usual - Shogun 2 Total War and Day of Defeat: Source.

[easytarget]

Oldies but goodies here as well, currently in a campaign I'm half way through in Rise of the Samurai. And I'm getting my ass handed to me in Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy. And this is just against the AI, I shudder to think how badly these engagements would have gone against a reasonably competent human.

[Fragony]

Playing a lot more Spec Ops: The Line.

Holy this game is good, at least story-wise. Im really enjoying it. I think its a really excellent SP experience. Many really tough choices you got to make, even if they arent so apparent initially. I like it much better than the Mass Effect "decision wheel" since the method employed by SO:TL forces you to always consider if theres a better/more humane way of doing something. Its a really gritty game and oftentimes disturbing. I love the atmosphere, and the shooter mechanics, while sometimes a bit clunky, do the job and make for enjoyable combat. Granted, Im playing on the lower difficulty because I want the story, not the combat. If you are into a gritty story, I highly recommend this game.


Also I just got X3: Terran Conflict so any advice would be great.

Spec Ops is my game of the year, it really gets under your skin. What other shooter makes you feel bad about shooting those who try to kill you?

[Fragony]

Borrowed latest Medal of Honer, it's also disturbing but only because how tasteless it is. A game that pretends to be serious with an achievement for running down all Somali merchants, please. It completely fails where Spec Ops succeeds gloriously. Where Spec Ops feels like decent into hell where the violence you inflict will increasingly haunt you MOH relishes in it. Spec Ops is a clever game, MOH a dumb one. Spec Ops has some extremely ghastly moments but it's 'oh no' not 'hell yes'

[Fragony]

Can't edit, but wanted add that Spec Ops is earns the award for having the award of having the most disturbing moment in video-game history. The airport shooting in MW2, forget it it's Disney compared to this.

[Monk]

Can't edit, but wanted add that Spec Ops is earns the award for having the award of having the most disturbing moment in video-game history. The airport shooting in MW2, forget it it's Disney compared to this.

Yeah definitely. I don't think I really had "fun" playing spec ops because you do some straight up horrible things there, but the experience isn't one I'll forget. I can't remember a more interesting and compelling deconstruction of the FPS and modern military shooter genres, and I feel it's one we really needed. Spec Ops is firmly on my unofficial "games you gotta experience before you die" list, and for very good reason.

As for what I've been playing, well, things that are much less subtle in their execution. Crusader Kings II and Skyrim eat up what little free time I have for now. CKII has to be one of my favorite grand strategies since EUIII, cannot wait for EUIV. As for Skyrim it's more curiosity that got me back into it with the new DLC coming up sometime soon. I got dawnguard and Hearthfire for super cheap in the steam sale but, being the RPG minded gamer i am, it felt so wrong to build a house while a giant dragon was threatening it. So naturally I had to save the world first, Alduin, Blades, Civil War and other quests are finally done. Now to check our Dawnguard

[easytarget]

Making a game where you shoot people because that's the way the game developer designed it, then setting up scenarios to make you stop and think about the very killing the game developer set up for you to do, while giving you an achievement for it, hum, anyone see some disingenuous irony lurking about here?

[Fragony]

It's been done really well, in the same way Manhunt did it. All the violence serves to disgust you. You will do terrible things. But it's smart.

[easytarget]

I guess in my book "smart" is only used to describe games that succeed in manipulating me w/o my being aware of it, say only in reflection after the fact.

This must be the year games try and make you feel bad about the killing you do, because it keeps coming up, in Spec Ops, in The Walking Dead and in Farcry 3.

No doubt game critics are proclaiming some corner has been turned in gaming maturing as it stares a bit at it's own navel, to me this is just the devs not being nearly as clever as they think they are (which reminds me of the movie/book Cloud Atlas, where both the author and the directors thought themselves far cleverer than they in fact were).

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Maybe videogames have hardened me, but Spec Ops (while still very interesting) didn't horrify me that much. On an intellectual level what I was doing was frequently bad or monstrous, but it was easy to compartmentalize that the same way I do for any other shooter (or even worse perhaps, the genociding you end up doing in a whole lot of strategy games).

If you had an actual choice leading up to that one scene and I had gone and done what led up to it of my own volition, maybe it would be more affecting. But that part was on rails, so I kind of found it to be a little underwhelming. "Oh, I guess I'm supposed to feel bad about this. Too bad I had to do it to experience the rest of the game." If you were to be a "good guy" (or at least not a monster) the game sort of says the action should've stopped just about at the start of the game. I'm willing to accept that, but then it'd be a rather short game.

The ending (while maybe trope-tastic) was a lot more interesting.

[Fragony]

Bit unfair critism but it remains a shooter, even in rpg games you can't avoid the plot-twists. The choices you make in Spec Ops don't really change the game but it's cool that there aren't any easy ones, no way to become a light-side jedi.

[CountArach]

Also I just got X3: Terran Conflict so any advice would be great.

Go on to the forums and download and read all the guides that you can find. The game is just so easy to get overwhelmed by and, while I'm not sure about TC, none of the others really have a tutorial.

[Hooahguy]

Go on to the forums and download and read all the guides that you can find. The game is just so easy to get overwhelmed by and, while I'm not sure about TC, none of the others really have a tutorial.

Yeah Ive been reading up on it a lot. Still quite confused, but Im slowly understanding things. Emphasis on slowly. trying to understand trade before anything else so I can make money.

[komnenos]

Yesterday I downloaded a patch of Crusader Kings2 but when I wanted to set it up, an error displayed on my computer which said:"Couldn't find CK2 installed." But the base game is installed. What's the problem of that? (I downloaded it in http://www.patch-your-games.com)

[Hooahguy]

Yesterday I downloaded a patch of Crusader Kings2 but when I wanted to set it up, an error displayed on my computer which said:"Couldn't find CK2 installed." But the base game is installed. What's the problem of that? (I downloaded it in http://www.patch-your-games.com)

Looks like a fishy site. Isnt there a better way to download patches? Did you get CK2 through Steam? Try the CK2 thread.

[komnenos]

Have you tried downloading from that site?

[komnenos]

And I didn't bought it through steam but also I bought it from a shop.

[Hooahguy]

Have you tried downloading from that site?

No I have not but it looks fishy.

[Fragony]

Time for a director's cut I'd say http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...nes-of-deus-ex

Gimme.

[Hooahguy]

Playing Civ5 at the moment. Good game, but I absolutely hate having to cycle through all my units before I can end a turn. Who thought that would be a good idea?

[Husar]

Playing Civ5 at the moment. Good game, but I absolutely hate having to cycle through all my units before I can end a turn. Who thought that would be a good idea?

I hated that at first as well, then I thought it helps me not to forget moving a unit or attacking with it. If you don't want to have them selcted every turn, just put them into sleep mode, alert mode or defensive stance. You can also turn it off in the options before you start a new game if you don't start with standard settings. What really surprised me is that the game offers a touchscreen mode for Windows 8!

[CountArach]

Bought Football Manager 2013 on steam. Not because I like football but because I really, really want a proper management game.

God damn this is fantastic. I've played about 14 hours of it this weekend alone...

[Fragony]

Had Madden on the Wii, seemed like fun but they should explain the rules for European buyers, had no idea what to do and returned it

[johnhughthom]

It definitely is the most complex mainstream sport out there, I understand most of the game but still find myself googling quite often when playing Madden, and generally use Ask Madden for my offensive plays, though sometimes it does give strange things, like a run play on 3rd and 10. When it comes to defence, I am completely at the mercy of Ask Madden.

The complete lack of any tutorial, or introduction to the sport is idiotic, I'm sure there are many examples like Frag's outside North America. The last few FIFA's I remember playing had an introduction to soccer, a much simpler sport.

I haven't been able to get into this years FM, the match engine just feels off. This might be the year I finally manage to give it up, got 6 of the flipping things on my Steam account.