What games are you playing and why?

I bought it, spent almost 30 minutes completely confused, and then set it aside and never had an urge to pick it up again. I know that there's been a few different games around lately that purposefully don't give you any guidance, or even much of a goal. The problem though is that if such a game doesn't click, it's a total waste of time and money.

 

Man, I'm not playing anything right now. I used to play a lot of poxnora back in the day. But I haven't had time for that in years. That goes for any game that involves 30 minute matches and skill that requires regular play sessions. My windows laptop is kaput and I can't really justify buying a gaming laptop right now because I don't play games. Oh also, I bought a gaming PC last year that I don't use because I don't have time for real games and I don't like sitting at a desk while at home. So basically, I have no time for games so I lack the hardware necessary to play real games. When I do buy a real game, I rarely get farther that half way. I just have so little free time. Or if I get into a game, I can find a good chunk of time to play for a few days. After that I try to pick it up two weeks later and I just can't get back into it.

Until CE comes out I probably won't even log into windows for anything.

That said, I do use a ubuntu netbook and my nexus 7 tablet. So if I play anything I play flash games. I'd really like to see tablet gaming mature a bit. For me, fun casual games are where it's at.

Oh also, I got a knock off psp from china that runs android. I have it emulating psx, n64, gba, nes, snes, sega, and old school arcade games. But I spent more time setting it up than playing games. But playing all those old school games is pretty cool. It's nice to have a single handheld to play all the old megaman games or mario cart 64. And I probably fit 100 games onto a single sd card including multi disk psx games like ff9.

They aren't that hard to set up either. The current 7" model has decent enough specs that it can double as a tablet and it costs only 130 or so. I have a cheaper $60 version with a resistive screen that handles emulation great but sucks for web browsing.

http://www.pandawill.com/jxd-s7300-...droid-41-1gb-ram-8gb-camera-white-p71130.html

I get a sense most people don't even know those things are out there. But its pretty cool to be able to find an emulator and play all those old games. Also you can look up and play all the old arcade games too. There are emulators for them and on the internet you can find any title no mater how obscure.

 

Every so often (far too often lately, actually) I pick up a game that totally baffles me. Daynab and I recently mentioned Starseed Pilgrim as one of those games. Well I now have a new one: Stardrive.

Don't get me wrong -- it doesn't baffle me in the same 'WTF is the point of all this?" sense as SP does. It's more of the 'WTF is going on?" sense, and "How can anyone actually play this?" sense.

Stardrive is an RTS 4X game. Normally I would not purchase any RTS games these days as I totally prefer TBS. But there was so much positive talk about the game, and I kind of scanned a Let's Play of it, and it's the kind of RTS where you can pause the game and give orders.

My first hint that I may have made a mistake came right at the start: The tutorial. When you run it, you get a few options, including a Tutorial. So I clicked on the button, and there is a text box about movement. Cool. I close it and nothing else happens. I start the tutorial again, and get the same stupid text box. I finally figure out that I need to click on the text box to get... another text box. There's about a dozen text boxes, no tutorial whatsoever. Hint -- don't put your manual where your tutorial is supposed to be. That's where you are supposed to actually put a... Tutorial!

So I start a game... But all I can see to do is to either create a race or choose a race. So I click proceed. I'm sure I heard there was a way of constructing your game but they hid it well (that seems to be theme of their UI -- hide anything of any complexity or significance far away so it should not unduly worry the player -- kind of like Apple's policy towards users with their OS).

So I start to play the game, and after a while I figure out how to do research (kind of -- still don't know what I'm doing, where that research is coming from), there's nothing I can build except ships so I Start building a few, send my scouts out. But I keep seeing scouts. I have no idea what's going on with them. I only saw one at the start. I send it out to explore every time. There's no notification as to anything that's happening in the game. I see some red on the map, click on it and nothing happens. I keep trying different things, all i know is that some combat is happening, but my ships are no where near there. I try zooming in, and I don't see anything.

I see that there is a Terran planet, so I select to colonize it. I see the colony ship get built and head in that direction. Cool. A short time later I look at that system can't find the terran planet any more. I finally figure out that I'm looking at the wrong system (hey color coding would be nice guys, some kind of indicator of home systems, etc.). I figure out that every time I zoom out I'm getting lost. I finally find the system and planet I was trying to colonize -- it's not colonized, and that red 'combat' symbol is there again.

OK, so I figure I'll build a fleet. The only combat ships I can build are fighters, so I queue some up. Then I see the fleet thingy and decide to build a fleet instead. Cool. I continue to try to figure out the interface, and when I look back, it shows that I have a fleet, and it's no where near any of my planets. In fact all the ships in it are scattered across a straight line leading to nowhere. I suspect that the captain of my fleet, in a sudden fit of religious fervor, has gone off in search of God somewhere in the center of the universe. I mean all I wanted was a fleet built at my home planet. But each individual ship in that fleet was sent off on some random quest that I never ordered. And they never acted like an actual fleet.

So... I'm very upset, and I don't think I'll be picking the game up again any time soon.

I suspect that the game took far too much influence from SotS 2, since I can see a lot of similar design decisions in it. If you are going to copy, at least copy from the best, not the worst.

 

With regards to 4x as a genre, I have to admit I think the best ever will not be surpassed in our lives. (The best ever being Master of Orion 1 and 2.)

I supported the kickstarter for M.O.R.E. but I think as time goes on they promise more and more and eventually they are going to have to cut and run. That sadly dooms the project unless they pull their heads from their asses and realize perfect is not feasible.

It will not be MoO. Period. It will be a clone with a plethora of problems. Moreso if they keep pretending they can satisfy everyone. The whole idea was to be a spiritual successor to MoO. That is very possible. But I doubt I will even play the damned thing if they keep trying to please everyone with one project.

I too watched the LPs and reviews of Stardrive and thought it looked good. But the suspicious part of me thought everything I saw sounded like a sales pitch. So I disregarded it entirely. Perhaps they will fix it in time. I remember when DoD had a badly broken tutorial too. They fixed it up quite well with some time and (doubtlessly) a boatload of work.

 

My feeling about the combat in Endless Space has changed a whole lot over time, as I not only got used to it and gained a better handle over it, but also as I began to appreciate the greater emphasis on strategy over tactics (which is what I usually prefer in games in any case -- I USUALLY find strategic games to be more appealing to me than tactical ones, with a few minor exceptions (mostly board games). And MoO had a fairly weak and mildly buggy/flawed tactical level, in any case (don't recall MoO 2 quite as well, actually).

 

L.A. Noire.

Lol, what the flip?

 

I know you are talking about space games, but I just want to say that I really hope (and am working at it to that end) that Age of Wonders 3 is getting it right. I feel Aow1 and 2 got it right. I love those games, they're the best TBS I ever played (it feels weird saying this because I formed that opinion when I was just a random player, so it was unbiased. But now I am employed there... can I still say I am unbiased about the first 2 or would that sound weird?).
I haven't played MoM and MoO games though. Which is a real pity. There's quite a few coming out, so chances are at least one will get it right.
There's M.O.R.E., Predestination, Eador (out now, didn't really like the original version), Fallen Enchantress Legendary Heroes, etc

Maybe I should watch a let's play of MoO2 and see if it's still playable (I actually have MoM but never really got into it yet (time etc)).

 

A LP will show you lots of good things about MoO 1 and 2. If you decide to try them yourself, they are reasonably cheap from GoG.com. ($5.99 for both of them.)
http://www.gog.com/gamecard/master_of_orion_1_2

 

I posted about this one before -- finally decided to become a backer:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/304725524/worlds-of-magic-a-new-classic-4x-fantasy-game

As far as MoM is concerned, it's one of the better 4X games out there, as far as its fun factor is concerned. Yet it was also one of the most flawed 4X games in its time, due to all of its stability issues, bugs, and balance problems. I don't know what GoG did to it, or if I had missed some updates back in the day, or if I simply had an incompatible or horrible computer (very possible), but the GoG version is very stable. All the balance issues are still issues, but it's still an incredibly fun game. There are clearly racial imbalances in the game. I always have fun playing halflings with all white + Myrran + Warlord -- find one of those purple ore deposits (forget what the ore is called), and start churning out super slingers. Dark Elves can also be cool, but their cities take a heck of a long time to develop in comparison, and so can be a lot riskier. You can also substitute High Elves or High Humans for the halflings, but halflings are my preferred go-to race. Ideally, though, you'll start with halflings, and get at least one of each of those races cities, again, preferably on one of those purple ore deposits (less important for Dark Elves, since you want them mostly for their warlocks who don't benefit as much from the ore).

I don't know which games coming up will get the formula right, but there are enough of them that I have high hopes for the continued progress of the genre.

 

Playing GTA IV. Holy shit the story is amazing. It's less over-the-top than the other games (which are all great parodies aswell), it's just the details that make me laugh.

 

Eh. I dunno. It's a good story but I don't think it ever reaches "amazing" due to the gameplay getting in the way - particularly towards the end.

Now GTA IV: The Lost and Damned? That's an "amazing" story.

 

Do you skip the cutscenes or what. They're great

 

Well I just finished Bioshock: Infinite, now that game has an amazing story... (and only just finished it now because I was away for a month heh).

Otherwise I'm mainly stuck in same old SotS: The Pit, and Planetside 2, though I did just start up a run of Alan Wake, feels like playing a TV series, albeit in interactive sort of clunky gimmicky horror TBS fashion.

 

Lol, I skipped that because I found the original to be a bit too difficult, and the general consensus seems to be that not only is the original's AI dumb, but the new one is a whole lot harder.

Don't get me wrong -- I probably just suck at poker. I enjoy it, and did reasonably well when playing with my friends back in Ohio when we had our poker nights. But in any reasonable poker simulation that I've ever played, I realized quickly that I tend to just suck.

 

In other news I bought Alpha Protocol on sale at gamersgate but the hacking minigame singlehandedly made me uninstall that shit, never to be played again. I shouldn't need to look up some third party cheating program to play the [Redacted] game, but that's exactly what that horrible minigame would require of me.