The "What are you playing?" topic.

[easytarget]

Nothing simpler than that, because pink doesn't exist, there is only minus green:

then it's settled, my favorite color is minus green, and i'm ok with that

nice find on the video explanation of that too btw

[Kekvit Irae]

Started playing Grotesque Tactics. It's a bad game, and I already feel bad for paying money for it. Sad, since I want to see how it ends before trying Grotesque Tactics 2.

If you make a game and your first language isn't English, PLEASE hire a competent translator, preferably one with at least a decent grasp on grammar. If you make a game and more than half of the time spent is looking at some random scenery because of an autoscroll function that you cant control, you're doing it wrong. If you make a game where the writing and the art assets sound more like a VERY bad self-insert fanfiction than a clever satire, you're going it wrong. If you make a game where you die every single battle and have to set it to easy just to play the damn game, especially when a high difficulty curve is not one of the game's features, you're doing it wrong.

I so hate this game. I don't have high hopes for the sequel.

[A Nerd]

I downloaded Deus Ex HR as it was on sale. Loads of fun. I kept getting killed on the tutorial mission though so I had to dumb down the difficulty, still supplying me a challenge though. Good times.

[johnhughthom]

I so hate this game. I don't have high hopes for the sequel.

I got it ages ago when it was on sale, haven't gotten around to playing it. Not sure I ever will.

I downloaded Deus Ex HR as it was on sale. Loads of fun. I kept getting killed on the tutorial mission though so I had to dumb down the difficulty, still supplying me a challenge though. Good times.

If you want the achievement for completing the game without killing anybody, make sure not to kill anyone in the tutorial. It seemed that almost the entire interwebz found that unfathomably difficult to understand on release.

[Kekvit Irae]

Whelp, no more Grotesque Tactics for me. Ran into a game-breaking bug. If one member of your party has an affliction that persists outside of combat (rage, sleep, stun, etc), and they are standing a 1x1 chokepoint, there is absolutely no way to ever get past them, and that was after a really long battle with no autosave function for quite some time. This would NOT be a problem if you could take control of individual party members outside of combat, but instead you are left controlling ONLY your party leader during this point, and the other party members move only when you move. If you cant move, they cant move, and so you're stuck in place. And since you have no control over party members outside of combat, there is no way to remove the affliction.

Time to uninstall this mess. Remind me to never buy from Silent Dreams ever again. A+ for premise, F for execution.

EDIT: I will say one thing good about the game: The humor is less ham-fisted than UnEpic. But even then, I'd rather play UnEpic than a game where the title is EXTREMELY fitting.

EDIT 2: I was so ticked off by this game, I wrote my own review to ward off anyone from making the same mistake as me.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Grotesque Tactics, developed by an indie German studio by the name of Silent Dreams, is a turn-based strategy game in the same vein as Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, or any of the other hundreds of games with "Tactics" tacked on to the title. But let me clear the air here: unlike the aforementioned games, Grotesque Tactics is bad. Not "bad" as in Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing bad, but more like "all I wanted for Christmas was a Nintendo 3DS but all I got was a Nokia N-Gage" type of bad. You know, the type of disappointment you get when you are hyped up on all the good things, but are let down on every level.

The plot is nothing to write home about. There are no plot twists, no overly-emotional scenes, nothing. Just you and your party against an evil empire. You play Drake, a drop-out from the Glory Military Academy. By a stroke of luck, the very fact that you were the only dropout in the history of the academy has saved you from death in battle at the hands of the Dark Church (the aforementioned evil empire). Being mopey and emo (and yes, the game makes use of "emo" way too much), Drake finds the courage to fight back against the Dark Church with the help of the Semidivine Holy Avatar, the stereotypical "I'm better than you, and women love me" beefcake of the game. Together, you and Holy scour the world rescuing maidens, recruiting party members, and completing side-quests. Like I said before, it's nothing to write home about.

On that note, I should mention the writing. I'm guessing Silent Dreams hired a 16-year old high-school dropout to translate the game for them, because even though the game has had an extensive grammar overhaul for the English version, the writing would make even a first-year college student cringe in terror. Grammar and spelling mistakes abound, and any hint of humor the game wanted to convey has been lost due to the horrid translation. For example, Candy, one of the three maidens you rescue and recruit, constantly says "Hihihihihi" instead of "Hehehehehe" or *giggles*. The only thing that would make that worse is if Navi from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was put in the game and constantly said "HEY! LISTEN!" every ten seconds. But even then I would have fond flashbacks to my time playing an infinitely-better game. Grotesque Tactics just makes me want to punch babies.

And then there's the humor. I'd like it to be known that humor is NOT universal; it is purely subjective. Unfortunately, the game is billed as a parody of other great games. If anything, Grotesque Tactics is a parody of computer game designing. There is a difference between parodying a game and simply referencing a game, and Grotesque Tactics references the hell out of other games. The humor is extremely in-your-face, much like playing an interactive version of the Meet The Spartans movie. While it's not as ham-fisted as UnEpic, at least UnEpic is a good game.

The entire cast is a tragedy upon game design. The main character is an emo who isn't really emo all that much except in certain combat situations, the supporting character is the stereotypical knight-in-shining-armor with sunglasses, the rogue is a goblin who joins you because you killed his buddies, and various other travesties. Oh, and if any reader of this review is black and you want to see how German game developers portray black people, play this game. The only way the token black dude could get more stereotypical is if he had fried chicken in one hand and purple drank in the other. Yes, this is what Silent Dreams considers a parody. Sad, is it not?

From the moment you boot up the game, you can already tell you're in for a world of hurt. The pre-game loading screen features Holy Avatar and the three maidens, but the whole thing looks like it was made in Poser. Then the game starts and the Poser-like art is replaced by anime character portraits. Holy is pretty much the douche of the group, while the three maidens and other female characters are in various states of undress. Let's not forget that while you are rescuing said maidens to recruit them, they are screaming about getting their clothes torn off. The character interaction, combined with the almost-ecchi artwork makes me believe that this game is the lead designer's attempt at a VERY bad self-insert fanfiction rather than a clever satire of RPGs.

And finally we come to the meat and potatos of the game: the gameplay. As I've said before, it's a clone of the various Tactics games you see or have seen on the market. Turned-based strategy on a battlefield with positioning. Nothing new, so let's move into what makes Grotesque Tactics stand out from the crowd (other than the sad attempt at German humor).

Items are extremely standard; new weapons and armor are always going to be an upgrade from your previous one, and there's no reason to keep your old weapon or armor once you find/buy something new. Potions come in various forms from healing to mana to recovery to permanant stat increases. Unfortunately for you, there are no "THIS IS A PERMANENT UPGRADE" labels on potions, so figuring out what is permanent and what isn't is a matter of (extremely expensive) trial and error.

The really big thing about the game is the Obsession system. The game flat-out tells you in the tutorial that this is a limit break (I'm guessing Silent Dreams' thought process was "LOLOLOLOL! I MADE A FINAL FANTASY 7 REFERENCE! LAUGH, PEONS! LOLOLOLOL!"). Each character has their own way of increasing their Obsession, from hitting stuff (Drake) to getting hit (EVERY SINGLE PARTY MEMBER). Each Obsession does their own unique thing, but more often than not it involves the obsessed party member attacking another party member. West goes berserk, attacking anything in range (friendly or not), the maidens and the angel simply attack a party member, the goblin rogue blinds everyone in a radius (again, no thoughts to friendly fire) and warps to Holy, and Drake buffs nearby party members' attack rating but at the cost of halving his attack rating a few turns afterwards. Drake is obviously the most benefitial of the party, but that's not saying much considering everyone else is geared toward screwing you over.
Oh, and I'd like to point one very important thing out: You know Holy? The guy with a huge sword, platemail armor, and tons of hitpoints and defense? You'd think he was the tank of the party and would want him to take all the hits he can. WRONG! All three maidens in your party are linked to him. If he takes damage, their Obsession increases. So now, instead of one party member going batguano insane and attacking your own people , you have THREE party members doing it. Let's not forget that Holy's Obsession triggers from combat as well. I want to physically punch the douche who thought this was a good idea.

Inside combat, you control all characters in order based on their agility. Outside of combat, however, you can only control Drake while the others automatically follow him. This works out fine, except for one major game-breaking bug that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me: Afflictions aren't removed once combat is over. In the battle leading up to getting the mage party member, West went berserk due to his Obsession. I ended combat right next to a treasure chest in a narrow 1x1 area in the forest with West blocking the only exit in or out. Since he was technically still berserk, he refused to move, and I cant move through party members. Needless to say, I was stuck and had to reload the entire damn mission. Have I told you yet how much I hate this game?

And lastly, I come to the deal breaker: the camera. Or, rather, the automatic camera panning. Any time there is dialogue or a character is moving, the camera will pan to that character. This isn't such a big deal if the damn thing would actually CENTER on said character. Instead, it trails behind a moving character. Trying to manually compensate for this means your camera goes out of whack and ends up 50 feet in some random direction. Again, this wouldn't be such a big deal if we could turn automatic camera panning off, or if movement outside of combat wasn't in real time. Alas, no on both accounts. This will, more often than not, lead to clicking the wrong square or giving you a fit of nauseua.

And there you have it. My review of Grotesque Tactics. Please note that my own personal experiences may differ (however unlikely) from yours, and this review is mostly subjective. My verdict? If you've made it this far and you still want to know my verdict, Grotesque Tactics was made for you.

[CountArach]

The Misadventures of P B Winterbottom is a puzzle platformer, very nice visual style and time controlling concept. I prefer it to the posterboys that are Braid and Limbo.

I can confirm this. Picked it up for 75 cents last time it went on sale on Steam. It is worth far more than that, if only for the originality of the concept of time control within a platformer.

[Fragony]

Kekvit Irae can be so cute sometimes

[Kekvit Irae]

Went back to playing Dungeons of Dredmor, especially now that the new 1.0.7 patch with the female character is Humble Bundle exclusive.

[frogbeastegg]

I've gone back to Fallout: New Vegas while I wait for Bethesda to fix the mess they've made with the Skyrim 1.2 patch. Previously solid, playable game converted into a broken, barely playable mess. Good job there, Bethesda. The swap from Skyrim to NV has been ... well, if I were a safe bystander I'd say it was amusing on some meta level. Run from bugs, find bugs.

NV was buggy at release. In some ways as bad as Fallout 3 was, in other ways better. I encountered far fewer bugs, yet those few were more severe. Where my Fallout 3 playthrough was plagued with crashes, minor bugs, and broken quests, my NV one survived a few minor glitches only to end with a single spectacular bug: it crashed every time I tried to enter the strip. That area is required to advance all of the main plot variations. After a few fruitless attempts to break through this crash the game corrupted my saves. Much investigation by players revealed that the crash was caused by a bounty hunting quest from the Atomic Wrangler. When you kill the final guy and take his hat, you break the area. You can only get back inside if you bring along a cowboy hat.

It's a little over a year later now. I started a new game from a fresh, patched up xbox install. When I get to the strip all is well! Until I complete the bounty hunter quest and the game crashes every time I try to re-enter the strip. Gah! That is supposed to be fixed. It's on the fix list for one of the numerous patches, and all of the internet complaints I found about it dated from last year. Fortunately this time I had kept a save before the bounty hunter quest, so I reverted to that and can continue. Crisis grudgingly averted. The fun wasn't over. When I eventually went to see Mr House I got told my companions must wait outside. They vanished. Completely and totally. I looked all over for them and not a single sign did I find. The game acted as if I still had them in my group, and wouldn't let me pick up replacements or do anything which required me to be alone. Some 11 hours of play time later and I'm passing through the strip on another side quest. Who do I see standing on the steps to the Lucky 38? Boon and EDE. They weren't there any of the other umpteen times I passed through. Oh well, they're back and that is the main thing. I'm now afraid to do anything else which removes them from my party in case they vanish again. I still see bark scorpions falling through the world at two specific spots. Seems like those patches fixed the problems I never encountered the first time, and ignored the ones I did. Huh.

Bugs included, NV is a considerably better game than Fallout 3 IMO. I felt that way at release and I feel that way now. 3 always felt like a safe, cheesy themepark of a wasteland filled with banal, bland and boring, as wide and deep as a puddle in a car park. NV has teeth, dirt, and personality. Importantly, I'm level 19 now and still get eaten by the wastes if I'm not careful. I was an unstoppable demigod of uber-everything by level 8 in both of my Fallout 3 games.

I don't like the combat much. The ironsights stuff does make it a bit less VATS dependant and dull compared to 3. The engine's animations are still twitchy and too fast, and the AI stupid, so the main problems remain. Enemies always charge straight at you, flitting around at unbelievable velocities and cornering like moths on speed. It's still possible to completely miss when unloading both barrels of a shotgun point blank into someone's face, or unload an entire 24 round clip of ammo into a charging deathclaw's torso without 'hitting' it once. Sneaky sniping is definitely the way to go.

Hardcore mode is pretty pointless. Drink the occasional bottle of water, carry some doctor's bags, choose a couple of weapons and stick with them, sorted. Unless you have companions - oh the pain! Thanks to the lousy AI companions will frequently suicide. I got tired of reloading due to companion suicide and turned it off.

I do miss Skyrim's smithing system though. And the way NPCs don't fill your screen and stare at you with the Eyes of Death(TM) whilst barely animating through their conversations.

At around 24 hours of play time I now have most of the wasteland explored. I'm starting to focus on the side quests. Once they are done I'll tackle the DLC. After that I'll choose a side and do the main plot.

[Kekvit Irae]

Hardcore mode is pretty pointless. Drink the occasional bottle of water, carry some doctor's bags, choose a couple of weapons and stick with them, sorted. Unless you have companions - oh the pain! Thanks to the lousy AI companions will frequently suicide. I got tired of reloading due to companion suicide and turned it off.

>Grab companion
>Go to safe location
>Tell companion to Wait Here

Free companion perk without the disadvantages of babysitting.

[Fragony]

Downloaded BF3 expansion. It's good, great in fact. There's the problem, the revamped BF2 maps are just better than anything BF3 offered initially. 15 Euro is also a lot for a few maps, no matter how good.

[Husar]

15 Euro is also a lot for a few maps, no matter how good.

Haha, yet when Modern warfare 2 started offering them for that price, they ended up among the top sales on Steam.
No surprise that we get more and more of that then.

[phonicsmonkey]

Hardcore mode is pretty pointless. Drink the occasional bottle of water, carry some doctor's bags, choose a couple of weapons and stick with them, sorted. Unless you have companions - oh the pain! Thanks to the lousy AI companions will frequently suicide. I got tired of reloading due to companion suicide and turned it off.

I kind of enjoyed it but only by banning myself from using bottled water. If you restrict yourself to toilets and drinking fountains it's either more fun or more annoying depending how you look at it. harder at any rate.

I took to leaving my companions out of dangerous fights, which again made it harder. That was good.

Overall I really enjoyed it and was lucky not to encounter any gamebreakers like your wrangler quest bug (I killed everyone in goodsprings at the start to make it harder). Only problem I had was in the main quest I tried to keep my options open for too long and ended up pretty much railroaded down one route - I should have seen that coming though.

[Fragony]

Haha, yet when Modern warfare 2 started offering them for that price, they ended up among the top sales on Steam.
No surprise that we get more and more of that then.

Guilty of making it so easy for them, stopped buying COD games after WOW kept putting me in servers with maps I don't have making the game unplayable FU, but couldn't resist this one. But DLC when the game barely launched and is still fully priced make it hard not to feel cheated. When epic launched Unreal Tournament that to their surprise eclipsed Quake 3 we got an absolutely massive pack for free. Which was apreciated

[frogbeastegg]

And now I find that EDE's companion quest is bugged and totally inaccessible because I went to the Gibson scrap yard before I fixed the 'bot. That's another old, well known bug. What did those patches fix?!

>Grab companion
>Go to safe location
>Tell companion to Wait Here

Free companion perk without the disadvantages of babysitting.

But - but - but pack mules! That's the whole point!

Overall I really enjoyed it and was lucky not to encounter any gamebreakers like your wrangler quest bug (I killed everyone in goodsprings at the start to make it harder). Only problem I had was in the main quest I tried to keep my options open for too long and ended up pretty much railroaded down one route - I should have seen that coming though.

It's a fairly typical Obsidian/Black Isle game. Above average writing, world and quest design, below average technical polish. I'd rather play a buggy Fallout: NV than a polished Fallout 3. Such a pity that their next RPG is that South Park tie in.

[johnhughthom]

Such a pity that their next RPG is that South Park tie in.

No! Really?

[frogbeastegg]

No! Really?

Really.. First Obsidian RPG I've zero interest in playing.

[johnhughthom]

Whats the betting this is the game a publisher actually allows Obsidian to finish?

le sigh.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Really.. First Obsidian RPG I've zero interest in playing.

The South Park guys did write a very critically acclaimed Broadway musical about Mormons. It'll be interesting to see, at least.

CR

[frogbeastegg]

In addition to Fallout: New Vegas I've been dabbling with a pair of 3DS games. I seem to be getting most (all?) of my Christmas presents early this year. My family has never been that bothered about timing things for the yearly commercial-fest.

Mario Land 3D has proven one thing to me: games can still provoke that feeling of raw, playful joy. I'm not a Mario fan; I only like the first two Paper Mario spin-offs, Yoshi's Island, and Mario 64. There's just something about the way this one is put together. Cheerful worlds, catchy music, masses of imagination, spot on controls (normally I find Mario far too skiddy), the first implementation of 3D which adds something to the game, bite-sized levels packed with secrets to replay for, nods to old games, plenty of new material so that it feels fresh - it's a wonderful package. Having flown through the first world and a half I'm having to force myself to complete no more than 2 new levels per day so that I don't binge on it. I can't remember the last time I found myself smiling at a game, or replaying levels after I've collected everything.

I was given Tales of the Abyss at the same time. I've been waiting 6 years for that game to reach the UK! 6 years! Excellent gift: the game's print run is almost entirely sold out within a week of release so I'd never have managed to get a copy if I'd had to pay for it myself. What is it with companies refusing to release Tales games here, and then on the rare occasions they do so making a tiny print run so hardly anyone can get the game? Then they complain that it didn't sell as much as in parts of the world where ten times the number of copies were available. I believe the phrase is "Well, d'uh!". Ahem. The game. Amazingly, after 6 years of waiting it doesn't disappoint. It's quite amusingly written, the cast is better than 95% of JRPGs, the battle system is nicely featured, it's got a proper world map instead of the menus this generation keeps trying to foist on players, the voice acting is decent, and thus far no character has a voice pitched high enough to cause dogs to wince. The conversion from PS2 to 3DS hasn't caused any cutbacks in quality; from most player reports the 3DS version is the superior one due to the lack of load times. The 3D effect is completely pointless in that I can't tell the difference whether it's on or off, which is fine by me.

I suppose over Christmas I really should play that copy of Xenoblade Chronicles which has been sat on my shelf since release day. I'm honestly afraid to. This JRPG generation has not been very successful for me, not at all. A genre I formerly liked and was able to laugh at has ended up as something I now eye with trepidation. If it's not badly thought out innovations which backfire spectacularly, it's yet another round of tired old factors tepidly warmed over and served up to give food poisoning. That's before you get to the increasingly tiresome characters and plots.

The South Park guys did write a very critically acclaimed Broadway musical about Mormons. It'll be interesting to see, at least.

CR

It could be objectively the best written game in the history of the universe and I'd still not touch it. I can't stand South Park.

[rajpoot]

But - but - but pack mules! That's the whole point!

Well you can simply use the console to set them as essential... setessential <NPC id> 1
A command which has been working in all Bethesda RPGs since Oblivion.

[frogbeastegg]

Well you can simply use the console to set them as essential... setessential <NPC id> 1
A command which has been working in all Bethesda RPGs since Oblivion.

As I mentioned a few times across the posts, I'm playing the xbox version.

[rajpoot]

As I mentioned a few times across the posts, I'm playing the xbox version.

Ah
My bad.

[Prussian to the Iron]

Downloaded BF3 expansion. It's good, great in fact. There's the problem, the revamped BF2 maps are just better than anything BF3 offered initially. 15 Euro is also a lot for a few maps, no matter how good.

If you pre-ordered, you get the maps for free...

[Fragony]

Hmmm I know what I'm going to keep track of.

'The Last of Us' as I always love the HUMANITY IS SO SCREWED-genre. It's made by the awesome folks who gave us the Uncharted games, it's a big-budget Sony exclusive, it simply can't go wrong. Trailer breaks forum rules but it looks awesome.

Spec Ops: The Line, shooter set in a Dubai reclaimed by the desert. It aims to be like Heart of Darkness, it wants to disturb. I want to be disturbed, disturbed is good.

[Fragony]

YAY Dark Souls, the pc game you have been waiting for, console only. It's a better game than Demon's Souls. That's saying a lot. It weirdly looks less good, sometimes PS2'ish badly in fact, and it can't be a hardware thing, xbox could run Demon's Souls just fine. But it's a more compelling game, better in every way by taking a step back. It's clumsier. It's also cheaper hehgotya-technically, A lot. They are making fun of you and you realise that at every sorry step you make. You will die a lot, no questions asked byebye. And I love it.

[Kekvit Irae]

Roommate got me a Wii and some games as an early Christmas gift. I returned the favor by giving her a plane ticket to Maryland to see her parents (and get her out of my hair for a week while I play said games, but that's another story...).

New Super Mario Brothers Wii sucks. The controls just aren't as tight as Super Mario World.

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is interesting, but extremely annoying to play. I just want to press a button to swing my sword or thrust with the shield, especially since waggling either the wiimote or the nunchuck doesn't register half of the time.

Monster Hunter 3 is full of awesome and win. And it plays with a Classic Controller, so there's another plus. The only problem is that the Monster Hunter games are put out on systems nobody cares about (Wii and PSP). If Capcom put the games out on a system that was relevant, they would see a huge influx of sales.

WiiSports. Kicking my roommate's tail in 2-player bowling. I don't need to say anything more.

Super Mario Galaxy is surprisingly fun, but it suffers from the same flaw that Super Mario 64 had, but worse: bad controls. I'm never sure if the controls will inverse or not whenever I am walking upside down.

And lastly, ActRaiser and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Delicious.


Oh, and I've been playing Ultima Online again between Wii gaming sessions. Nostalgic and fun, especially now that they did away with the 3D client and gave us a choice of using the old 2D client or a hybrid 2D/3D client.

[Kekvit Irae]

Ultima Online is still around!?

Guy that designed that game in the first place deserves a Nobel Prize, IMO.

He didn't get a Nobel Prize, but he did go into space.

[frogbeastegg]

After around 110 hours I finished 3 out of the 4 main endings for Fallout: New Vegas, plus the various DLCs. I've done most (all?) of the major side quests and a whole bunch of minor stuff too. All I have left is the Caesar's Legion ending. I think I shall start a new game and do that on hardcore mode as a melee fighter ... another time. I'm rather Vegased out. It will be nice to play something which doesn't crash at least twice per play session.

I started a new game this afternoon. It's philosophically complex, and poses thoughtful questions about the nature of life. It has a lot to say about race relations, and about the nature of heartless technology versus the lesser efficiently combined with capacity for feeling of organic life. 'Orcs must Die'. There's these orcs and they need to die - the game recognises the fleeting nature of life and the inevitability of death! And don't get me started on the challenging nature of its questions regarding life-direction decisions! Do I want to fill the hall with massed arrow traps and giggle, or should I pursue a more efficient strategy in order to maximise my score? Very deep stuff; my froggy mind is blown.

[smooth_operator]

Minecraft, Civ 5 and NFS Undercover