What games are you playing and why?

Oh well, I do happen to play games for stories sometimes. But then again, I'm the sort of person who started with reading books and with tabletop role-playing games, so in my perception these aren't as much games with stories as they are books with some interactivity (and I actually remember having read through a few books when you chose different outcomes for things by going to certain pages at given points, before I even started with video games or even tabletop role-playing games).

A fine example there is "Quintessence: The Blighted Venom", which is a game and stuff, but really, it is often described as "the best book ever written in 'RPG Maker'" because of the fact that game-play itself is just there so that you would be able to save between cut-scenes or do some random stuff but really it is a game that you play because you want to know what will happen.


And now getting back to the topic of this thread, right now I'm playing "Dungeon Defenders". Mostly because the game itself is fun, and I have a friend who doesn't like to play with strangers who needs someone competent to pull him through it as he is playing with a summoner and his ability to place units right is, well, extremely lacking (while I can consistently get through insane survival on hardcore with mixed waves; sure, not much of a feat considering some people do it on nightmare, but that's a start and good enough for a character who can't even equip mythical gear).

 

I said it to Kan on the Freebird forums and I'll say it again here - I actually rather like the battle system in Q:TBV. It felt sort of cinematic and rewarded strategy rather than grinding, which wasn't a thing in Q:TBV. I'd love to see a more gameplay-intensive RPG do something similar with that combat. Or maybe I'm just crazy. :V

 

Dungeon Defenders is a pretty solid game. A bit too twitchy for my tastes, but it does have many ways to play.

But in general, I enjoy a good story over everything else modern games have to offer. I read all the books modern RPGs have scattered throughout the game world, and I generally play a particular way in every game. I have tried playing games like Fallout New Vegas as a total monster,but the story was less appealing playing a villain.

There is no game without story that I enjoy long. A senseless FPS with no backstory gets old once you figure out every weapon and item and enemy. A game with a solid story can keep you appeased for a lot longer even with greatly limited weapons and items and abilities.

 

Dungeon Defenders would be an okay game if they sorted the graphics out, stopped abusing their DLC system and so on. I mean it's not a bad game, but it doesn't scale to the number of players and so on so if you just want to play with a friend or two, you're kinda stuck.

I remember me and someone else tried doing a level together and we got to the first boss and just hit a wall where our skill (sorry, MY skill) and our gear didn't allow us to progress further because the boss didn't scale to just two people.

 

Still, it's not like you can't just switch characters around for the sake of getting some additional defences set up. Because I play solo when I'm trying to just level up (because getting one level when you hit 70 means getting millions of experience points), I end up doing insane survival on various maps and I somehow manage to switch characters between waves to place additional stuff and change back to my main character in time.

Heck, even bosses aren't all that hard if you know what you are doing - unless you are talking about some bosses unknown to me or about defeating them on nightmare, there's not a single one which would require more than just one person.
Demon Lord? Just place a lot of standard magic missile towers, strength drain aura, and a buff beam (or two).
Gnome Mech? The only one that can be a problem, but some generic defences and two ensnare auras do the job.
Dragon? Please, strength drain aura with a buff beam and some deadly striker towers and you don't even need to care about ballistas, just change to a summoner for the last wave and repair stuff remotely while invincible.

 

Well, they are overpowered supposedly. Never cared to check, their playstyle is about defensive towers instead of ones which can cause pain and thus I never tried. But really, on higher difficulties (nightmare and possibly insane as well) it sort of is a team effort as you need some towers, some auras, some other stuff and/or traps, etc..

Whichever way, actually. Orcs Must Die (both the first and the second) are enjoyable for me too, though I heard that most of the time people like either DD or OMD.

 

I read the changelogs and they basically had to nerf the Knight defenses dozen of times because they were better than any others by a factor of ten.

One Knight wall defense was as good as ten of any other class wall equivalent for the same cost.

 

I just bought, downloaded, installed, played a few minutes of, and promptly uninstalled Nuclear Dawn. What a joke. I do not want multiplayer games. But it is. And the offline play is not even close to worthwhile. They pitched it as a FPS with RTS elements. Not even close. It is a multiplayer only RTS with FPS elements.

I should have done some research first. But too late now.

 

And it just came out in an Indie Bundle too. Ha.

I've spent most of today playing The Secret World. It's really kinda good once you get into it, but it gets directionless too quickly (particularly with skills), and a lot of it is counter-intuitive or over-indulgent, e.g. the research quests. Oh, and there's no player levels. At all. Quest difficulties are based on your gear quality. And you can only have 7 attacks in your bar at once. Oh, and it's 200k of the in-game currency to get a fragging haircut (well, to change a couple of hair options), which is absolutely obscene.

Aaaaaaargh. It's a bit frustrating at times, but I'm sticking with it for now.

Also, this guy is an utter arsehole and I wish a zombie would eat his face:

 

I bought Nuclear Dawn from the bundle. I gave away the rest, but sadly wasted the key for it on myself.

 

I bought Battlefield 3 since it was reduced pretty hard and I loved Bad Company 2 to bits, the only online FPS I ever enjoyed. I only play bits and bobs and only ever on public servers, or with some friends.
Well, I'm not sure why, but I enjoy BF 3 a lot less. I remember having decent amounts of fun in BC 2 even when starting out, when I was an utter FPS noob. My K/D was like 0.3, but it was still entertaining. Haven't felt that way in BF 3 often, sadly.
What follows now is a huge rant about Battlefield 3 and why I still play BC 2 instead, please do not read if you have no rant tolerance

Spoiler

A big turnoff is the unlock system, basically you have to make 40-50 kills or even more to get the upgrades that make a weapon decent. That is for any weapon. That means if you are a casual player like me, pick a gun and stick with it, because every other gun sucks since it has no sights, no upgrades and less ammo. Yay.
Also crippling are the classes. In BC 2, they all felt fun. Assault had the noobtube, C4 and assault rifles, the Engineer had his big ol' launchers, but pretty bad primary weapons, the medic had LMGs and revives, and the recon had it all. Ok, the recon was overpowered. But each class was fun to play.
In BF 3, only the assault is good. He gets assault rifles and medkits and the grenade launcher. The engineer has decent guns this time round, but his rocket launchers suck big time. The support is ok, but his ammo often feels useless since you carry much, much more ammo than in BC 2 by default. LMGs are also only viable when you set them up with a bipod, then they become emplacements essentially. The recon took the biggest nerf by far. Bolt actions are much weaker, so aggressive recon doesn't really work anymore, especially with the hard nerf to the motion sensors, which are now stationary. The beacon is useful, but not really fun to use. The recon is further nerfed by the fact that every gun can now equip strong scopes, and assault rifles can be extremely precise in this game. SOFLAM is pretty boring to play and useless in many public servers. So yeah, I only find assault and support fun to play, with only assault really being versatile.
Then we come to vehicles. We now have Jets again, yay! But no, not yay. They may be dumbed down, but are still hard to fly, and especially to fly well. Expert pilots circle the runways and shoot you down within 5 seconds from takeoff. If both sides have decent pilots it's ok, they occupy themselves with dogfighting and picking off the helos, and the odd tank. But if your side has bad or no pilots, things become ugly. The pro pilots are pretty good at attacking ground targets, they strafe run you and bam, dead. Wouldn't be that bad if you could retaliate, but Anti Air is seriously underpowered in this game. I tried using the stationary AA, but you need a ton of hits to bring a jet down that way, a lot more than another jet would need. By that time, the enemy is out of reach. Well, that is if you have stationary AT. What about a ground soldier? Well, you can pick engineer and use the AA missiles. Only, they suck. Lengthy lock-on time, and he can just flare them away. If he is still in range. It's ok with helis, they aren't that fast, but jets can nearly outfly the rockets anyway. Plus, it's just not fun. Keep target in sights, wait, click, rinse repeat. No skill required. It doesn't feel gratifying getting a kill, just a necessary task so you don't get raped by that plane/heli. Plus, the AA rockets can't attack ground targets. They simply can't. Pick AA and tanks roll over you.Bad Company 2 was much, much better in that respect - Taking down enemy air was challenging and fun, and you could do it as a foot soldier. And you weren't locked out of attacking tanks/infantry, because in BF 3 you are hugely limited as an engineer. I do like the way damage to tanks was reworked, it makes attacking them a lot more challenging. However, in the process the RPG and SMAW were nerfed a lot, doing next to nothing against infantry. It's not that bad since the primary weapons of the engineer are better this time around, but it robs him of any flexibility.
Then, maps. There are some good ones, and Damavand Peak Rush is extremely fun. But there are atrocities like all the Team Deathmatch maps and Operation metro conquest. The maps were designed for perhaps 32 players, yet DICE said they support 64. Sure, they do, but it's not fun. Large, epic battles seldom happen because the maps aren't built for it. Then there's the bunch of CoD stuff, which is amusing for a while, but lacks any tactics whatsoever. It's basically: learn the maps, learn the routes by heart, no one needs tactics or cooperation. Yet everybody plays them, mostly for the unlocks. Yay, full circle.
I haven't talked about the singleplayer yet - it's bad. Very bad. A lot worse than Bad Company 2. It's all scripted, peek out of cover at the wrong moment and you die. It also tries to be serious and mature and grown up, and it has fancy flashbacks and morale and stuff. It fails. It has some moments, but all in all, it tries to imitate CoD and fails hard at it. Bad Company's campaign was completely over the top and much more enjoyable. The serious business failed especially hard since I had played through Spec Ops a few days ago...
The Co-op is quite enjoyable though, even with randoms. How they forgot to integrate a chat into co-op is beyond me though.
Another issue: the behaviour of DICE in general. As seen by the 64 player thing, the claimed E-Sports support, months between any patches and fixing things to death, if they get fixed. Also the attitude towards the community in general, especially the PC community, and even more especially towards the very limited modding just sucks.
Add to that that there are major problems with Punkbuster and BF 3, me and others getting extreme lag spikes due to punkbuster and it really feels like money spent in vain.

I also played through Spec Ops: The Line recently. The game itself isn't that good, but you should have played it. I disagree with some things in there, but it is definitely something different. Pick it up if you get it for the cheaps, since it quite light on content. And play it on easy, since the gameplay is just not that fun and it will frustrate you much less that way.
I'm also playing Super Hexagon right now, it's evil. Addictive and makes your head hurt quite bad after a time, but immensively satisfying.

 

I honestly regret getting it. The price was ok, I got it for 30€ with premium, but for the reasons stated above, I don't think it was money well spent.
The only one I'm missing on Super Hexagon is Hyper Hexagonest, and I can't even get past 15 seconds there Terry Cavanagh is an evil wizard!

 

As long as Shotgun Recon is still viable I don't care about anything else. (although during my quest to bronze every weapon, I discovered one of the sniper rifles, I forget which one, could no-scope bodyshot TWO PEOPLE with one bullet at shotgun range...)

Really though the only reason I quit playing BC2 was because so many servers auto-kicked you if you spiked once. Play 18 minutes with <80 ping, then randomly jump to 200 for .3 seconds, AUTOKICK stats wiped etc. If I could find a single populated server that didn't have that "feature", I'd still be playing today.

 

It is still surprisingly populated and many of the real hardcore players have switched to BF 3, so I enjoy BC 2 more still Shotgun-Recon is so, so good on Arica or Oasis Conquest, on Oasis you can even blow up the BMD with your C4 I'm still sad they nerfed motion sensors so hard.

 

I have been playing the hell out of addons for ToME. (Addons are like mods. They add or change parts of the game. Usually they add a race or class or even a new area to explore.)

My current run is a lame cheater Barbarian. This addon class is like a berzerker, but specializing in two handed weapons and can easily focus on Antimagic to wipe the deck with mages.

To be clear, *I* am the lame cheater. The Barbarian class is good, not too easy and in no way a cheat. I just want to figure out what skills work best before I make a real character to attempt it. Cheating as I am, I can try all the skills and see how I like them before I have to actually compete to win.

I am likely to focus on antimagic and fungus skills the most when I bother with a non cheat character.

 

Card Hunter beta... because oh Dog where did my life go.