The "What are you playing?" topic.

[naut]

Japan or Argentina. Good countries to try when you just start out.

[Motep]

Been playing Soul Calibur 3

I SUCK!!!

[frogbeastegg]

I've got the full 1000/1000 on Civilisation: Revolution and have added it to my pile of completed games with some relief. That leaves me with Viva Pinata and HOMM5 on the go.

[KarlXII]

FSX Deluxe. Formation flying with my recently downloaded Eurofighters. I'll probably try to go online.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

FSX Deluxe. Formation flying with my recently downloaded Eurofighters. I'll probably try to go online.

The demo version, or did you buy them?

[drone]

Been over at a friend's, just finished Portal. This game rules, it's a shame it's so short but I guess that's part of the charm. Simple, but complex, with plenty of cool ways to get through the levels.

With the voiceover, it reminded me a bit of the old Paranoia RPG, back in the day.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The cake is a lie...
The cake is a lie...
The cake is a lie...
The cake is a lie...
The cake is a lie.......

[Motep]

Gave up on soul calibur after I puched the floor (it won the fight...)

So I decided to play Metal Gear Solid...gotta love it!

[KarlXII]

The demo version, or did you buy them?

Yeah demo Eurofighters, I uninstalled FSX so I could bring back some favorites, and my planned purchase of Il2.

[frogbeastegg]

I've been playing Braid, that downloadable puzzle/platformer game people have been going nuts for of late. I'm disappointed. Not hugely, heart-breakingly so, but definitely enough to find the game doesn't shine as I wanted.

Braid has been compared to Portal a lot, and that sums up perfectly my problem with it. I see many people saying both games are short and better for it. Agreed. That they are quite unique. Agreed. That they feature good puzzles and require the player to think, not follow through tired old game-trained motions. Agreed. That their developers poured heart and soul into them. Agreed. Blah blah blah, let's get to the last comparison, the one I add: both games are fiddly enough that on too many occasions I know what to do and how to do it, and have to keep on trying over and over because I keep missing what is required by a fraction. In Portal I struggled to aim while being catapulted about at high speed from one portal to another, often leading to me landing right on the edge of the latest portal I'd created and not quite passing through it. In Braid there are a lot of bits which require precision. A precise jump. Precise timing. Precise position. A precise chain of precisely carried out precise actions. Make a mistake and you must wind time back and try again.

Yes, wind time back. You can turn time back at any point, for as long as you like and as often as you like. It's vital to solving many of the puzzles. Later worlds add in aspects which play with this ability, such as items and enemies which are not affected by turning time back, or the creation of a shadow who then runs through all the actions you performed before you went into the past. There are occasions where you can't wind time back to fix your mistakes. They are few and far between, and I have found them all the more annoying for it. I had to exit and re-enter one level over and over again because I kept failing something which should have been very straightforward but wasn't at the beginning. That failure then made picking up a puzzle piece impossible until the level was restarted.

What else does Braid do well? Should you doubt that 2D graphics can still look stunning in this 3D day and age go and take a look at some footage of it and recant your heresy. There are two exceptions to the beauty: the boring and somehow ugly protagonist and very common enemy which looks like a cross between a goomba and a rock. The limited number of boss battles are cleverly done, and are possibly trhe only bosses in a puzzle game that haven't felt out of place for me. They simply feel like a bigger puzzle for you to solve, not an instance of "Quick! Throw in some action and pretend it's puzzly!" a la the ending of Portal. The game features many homages and digs at other games. They are best discovered by the player, so I'll limit myself to saying the Donkey Kong level (fittingly named Jumpman) is my favourite of the bunch so far, and I challenge you not to smirk when you first get told "The princess is in another castle ...". With a handful of exceptions it is impossible to become stuck and unable to progress, as the level exit door is always easy to get to and you are not required to pick up the puzzle pieces to progress. That said, if you want to complete the game you will need to collect every last piece.

In the end Braid and Portal both are games that on paper I adore, but in play I merely like. Solving a puzzle in your mind and then being held up on passing it because of a fiddly jump is not my idea of fun. I prefer the hold up to come from needing to figure out what to do.

[Rilder]

Been playing Dwarf fortress lately.

Dwarf Fortress is the best game on earth tbh.

[Tiberius of the Drake]

Playing my nice, shiny new copy of Too Human and Loving it. I have always liked Norse Mythology and the way silicon Knights used the myths ro suit their story is quite intriguing.

[Fragony]

Alone in the Dark, for the Wii. Despite knowing I was in for a truly terrible experience I bought it, sometimes one needs a horror-fix and the 360 did the die thing, what could I do? So, yes, it's terrible. The outdoor-graphics are an atrocity, indoors are acceptable, sometimes even kinda pretty. Controls, you will just have to figure it out. Once you are used to them it works great, melee combat really needs a log-on system though, but nothing really poses a thread so waggle them to death! Biggest problem of the game: it takes itselve seriously and expects nothing less from you, and to emphasise this is for mature crowds every sentence has at least one f-bomb, how very childish. So yes, it's terrible but, thing is, I enjoy it. My inner masochist tells me to go on, solve these silly puzzles, tolerate the truly awful driving sequences, deal with the epic faillure it is. So I am having fun really.

[Hax]

Movie Battles 2, a mod for Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy.

[CountArach]

Started a Vicky game as Sardinia-Piedmont. Their economy sucks, but I think I've got it on-track now.

[The_Doctor]

Started a Vicky game as Sardinia-Piedmont. Their economy sucks, but I think I've got it on-track now.

Here is a little peice of advice, When you unify Italy you will lose Savoy and Nice to the French, both of these places have loads of Italians in them, so as soon as you have an empty factory turn all of them into craftsmen(even the soliders), and then will move to the province with that factory in.

[CountArach]

Here is a little peice of advice, When you unify Italy you will lose Savoy and Nice to the French, both of these places have loads of Italians in them, so as soon as you have an empty factory turn all of them into craftsmen(even the soliders), and then will move to the province with that factory in.

Will do.

[Csargo]

Invade Tunisia

[Kekvit Irae]

Playing Viking: Battle for Asgard, and I'm disappointed in CA. I am NOT liking this game so far. It just feels like a watered-down God of War, right down to the quicktime events and fatalities. The insistence to rapidly tab the B button to do ANYTHING annoys the hell out of me. Open a chest? Tap B. Open a door? Tap B. Use a fayline? Tap B. Free prisoners? Yep, you guessed it: Tap B.
There are no levels, so no real reason to kill enemies except that they are in the way. Stealth is a poor mechanic that needs expanding upon. No classes to choose unless bad-ass sword-wielding steroid viking is a class.
Achievements are dull and lifeless. "Kill X Legion" seems to be the prevalent 360 achievement type. I can think of plenty of achievements that are more interesting than "Complete X Level" or "Kill X Enemy"

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
CA? What's that now? Oh, that...
.

[CountArach]

Ricky with the VIP mod installed. I am playing as Carlist Spain and... wow...

If you haven't played as Carlist Spain before, try it next time. You start in a Civil War with Spain and if you play well enough you can make a couple of territorial gains in the first part of the Civil War (I captured Madrid and forced Spain to sign peace... which worked out well). However, after that initial war things get much, much tougher. I just fought part 2 of the Civil War and I was forced to give up some land (Though I have still made a net gain after the first 2 civil wars). However, worse than that is that Spain destroyed all but 4 of my 12 divisions during the war. Yeah... Not good...

I shall persevere and... survive...

[The_Doctor]

I am playing as Carlist Spain

All you need to do is take Madrid, Barcelona and Estella and you win the civil war and take control of all of the Spanish Empire.

[CountArach]

All you need to do is take Madrid, Barcelona and Estella and you win the civil war and take control of all of the Spanish Empire.

Hmm... how long do I need to hold these for?

[The_Doctor]

This is the event:

#########################################################################
# The King of Spain enters the Court of Madrid (idea Sertorius, Lucius Sulla, scripted Generalisimo)
#########################################################################
event = {
id = 282001
random = no
country = U01

picture = carlist

trigger = {
exists = SPA
# important cities in carlists hands
control = { province = 708 data = U01 } # Madrid
# carlists also controls
control = { province = 347 data = U01 } # Barcelona
control = { province = 695 data = U01 } # Estella
}

name = "EVT282001N"
desc = "EVT282001D"
style = 0

date = { day = 1 month = january year = 1837 }
offset = 30
deathdate = { day = 30 month = december year = 1850 }

action_a = {
name = "ACT282001A"
command = { type = badboy value = -10 } # to reduce BB
command = { type = trigger which = 269013 } # SPA surrender
#sleep all help to U01
command = { type = sleepevent which = 111053 } # AUS
command = { type = sleepevent which = 111054 } # AUS
command = { type = sleepevent which = 247033 } # PRU
command = { type = sleepevent which = 247034 } # PRU
command = { type = sleepevent which = 251070 } # RUS
command = { type = sleepevent which = 251071 } # RUS
# take some prestige away!
#command = { type = prestige value = -100 }
}
}

It might be 30 days, I am not sure what the offset thing means.

[frogbeastegg]

I'm playing the Simpsons game. It's alright; the main thing which drags it down is the camera. It's one of the worst I've seen in a long time.

[doc_bean]

Restarted The Phantom Hourglass. I stopped playing it several months ago after getting frustrated with the temple of the Ocean King.

It really is a charming game but I already felt the tedium set in going throught hat temple again ...

[Kekvit Irae]

I finally got myself a 60gb PS3, and I'm now enjoying all my favorite PS2 games in HD, along with Metal Gear Solid 4, and Siren: Blood Curse.

EDIT: I LOL'ed greatly at the "Don't litter! Use an ashtray!" comment during the installation screen when Snake is tapping out the ash from his cigarette.

[CountArach]

Spore.

[Kekvit Irae]

I am absolutely LOVING MGS4!
I especially like all the easter eggs they put in as a nod to all the MGS vets out there (Otacon has an MGS2 wallpaper on his computer desktop).
But what puts the game over the top for me is how non-lethal combat effects boss battle cutscenes. In MGS2 and 3, if you kill a boss with a tranq, they still die, but in MGS4, the cutscene will play out as if you actually tranquilized them instead of killed them.

[Martok]

Now that my PC is up and running full speed once again, I've reinstalled Shogun Total War (Warlord Edition -- my red box copy is currently on loan to a friend), and have started up a Shimazu campaign. Haven't played them in ages, so should be interesting to see how well I fair.


Also playing Birth of the Federation again (no surprise), this time with the 3rd edition of the Ultimate Dominion Mod (UDM3) installed. The mod changes a lot of things -- the Ferengi being replaced by the Dominion being the biggie, of course, but it also has new & revised "special" buildings, bigger colonies, new & revised minor races, a *ton* of new ships, etc. -- so am still getting used to it.

I'm definitely having fun, though. The new/revised special buildings seem to be much more useful than in the vanilla game, the minor races are generally much more useful *and* powerful (Son'a battleships & Ferengi Marauders, anyone?), and the expanded shiplist means that you get new toys more frequently as you move up the tech tree. Speaking of ships, their maintenance costs have all been drastically lowered, meaning that the five major powers can now afford to build much bigger fleets than in the vanilla game -- I'm only about 80 turns into my current Federation campaign, yet my fleet is already composed of over 40 starships. I'll have about double that in another 20 turns or so.

In addition, the game has received something of a visual revamp/upgrade. The Dominion gets their own interface, thankfully doing away with the ugly Ferengi one. Indeed, all major races have had visual tweaks to their UI, with the Federation's UI second only to the Dominion in seeing the biggest change. There are also small changes like the new major race symbols and territory coloring being more subtly shaded. Far and away the biggest visual change, however, are the ship models, which are absolutely stunning -- it's hard to believe the mod's creators managed to add these beautiful-looking vessels to a game that's nine years old!

The only real complaint I have is the pacing, which is quite a bit faster than in the vanilla game. Not that I have a problem with the fact that colonies now develop much quicker, as I actually appreciate that bit. What I *do* have an issue with is the tech tree, which I now seem to be racing through in no time flat. It diminishes my sense of accomplishment when I get a new technology breakthrough every 4-5 turns, not to mention which it hardly gives me time to appreciate the new toys I just got from the *last* tech achievement.

Still, the last is a fairly minor quibble overall. I'm enjoying the game as much -- if not more -- than I ever did playing the original game back when I first got it. Kudos to the mod creators siggi & thunderchero!

[Motep]

Been playing Metal of Honor Frontline, rising sun, european assualt, and call of duty for the ps2. Took advantage of a sale and got all of 'em for $24!

Nostalgic...