What games are you playing and why?

I haven't played skyward sword yet. Does Fi manage to be as irritating as the Hey! Listen! from ocarina of time?

 

Yes. Very much yes.

 

@Fi:

Spoiler

(Haven't played it myself)

 

Started the latest installment in a franchise I grew up with today. Yup, none other than Might & Magic X: Legacy. It's... well, you kinda have to compare it to Grimrock, because even though M&M did grid-based stuff before Grimrock did, it's become basically the best example of it in recent years, and after a few more free-form titles (especially IX and Dark Messiah) it's more a return to form, so yeah. Um. Basically it plays pretty well, albeit a little sluggish and with some kinda poor graphics (not to mention a UI that doesn't scale, but instead 'shrinks', giving poor text quality, etc), but it's not bad at all. I've had a bit of fun with it, and the design is promising.

But right now, as it's 'Early Access' (read: paid beta w/ more game to come later), it's clearly a little rough around the edges. Um. I don't know where I'm going with this.

Simply put: I like it.

 

I kinda liked Might and Magic as well back in the day, but always had difficulty navigating. I've always had problems with old-school games where you have to do your own mapping or get hopelessly lost -- my sense of direction has always been horrible, and I hated manual record keeping. While the series in the early days was certainly one to take notice of, it did not age well, and as later versions came out, I'd already seen games like ES: Arena and Ultima Underworld, and Fallout and the like. I did play the later games, but they were clearly not keeping up with the evolution of RPGs. They were fun, but honestly, they'd been overtaken and surpassed. I guess my expectations had been raised by some of the competitors. But back in the day, they were among the best.

I guess I'll take a look at M&M: Legacy. I'd tried replaying one of the later M&M games a few months ago, and I couldn't stick with it.

 

I know some strongly disagree with me, but I think they went the wrong way with the spin-off "Heroes of" M&M series. M&M 1-7 or so were great, but every one past that was terrible in its own unique ways.

M&M Legacy looks good, but they have had abominations before that looked good until you get knee deep into the game and realize the many fatal flaws. Time will tell with this one. But requiring UPlay to play the game may sink the ship before it even leaves the harbor.

I for one never pay to play a beta. Free would be one thing while in beta, but paying full price for a daily crashfest sounds as appealing as eating my own eyeballs.

 

How? It's a spin-off that very quickly went in its own direction, not to mention it was based on JVC's earlier King's Bounty. HoMM is - IMHO - actually a better series than M&M, but that's because I kinda like those strategy games.

 

I've been playing the alpha for Sir, You Are Being Hunted and also just got the alpha for 7 Days to Die. Both have been extremely fun. Sir in particular is amazingly polished for an alpha.

Also, I only play DOTA2 with my wife and friends vs bots. I would never venture to play with real people, but that's mostly because I have a severe aversion to playing competitive games. I managed to get myself into the StarCraft 2 1v1 Gold league once and that was about as far as I go.

((Also, been playing Sanctum with my wife these past few days as part of an anniversary celebration. It's now sort of becoming a tradition))

((Also, been doing some freelance quest-writing work for a little game called Frontiers. I'm not allowed to talk about what I'm doing, but I can tell you this much: it's going to be awesome. Pure, total awesome.))

 

Need more actually be said?

You like it because it is more of a strategy game than a true RPG. Whereas I rather liked the RPG elements of the original and saw the change as less enjoyable.

 

But it wasn't a change. Whilst it's shared the universe and aspects of it (in fact, M&MX:L is set in the same world as all(?) of Ubisoft's own titles, Ashan), it's never replaced the M&M titles nor has it particularly influenced them. It was JVC/NWC making a different sort of game in the same world.

And it's not like there weren't other RPGs to play, whereas HoMM (now MMH) has typically been the only major player in its own arena (Disciples and King's Bounty being, arguably, the only current competitors)

 

Well, just played through Dead Space 3, from the humble bundle, and started up a new game+...

 

Yeah, when I found out there was going to be a store, my expectations for a game as good as the first went down drastically. Whenever they add a store, quality almost always seems to suffer. They are too worried about how to get you to spend more money than they are about having a good gaming experience.

 

Yes it's free to play but it looks like some things can only be gotten by purchasing them. I don't mind cheats and such for single player games for people that want to purchase them but plants? If the only way to get them is by purchasing then it cripples the game a bit for people that don't purchase them.

 

That's kinda the point.

 

Free to Play is a great idea, but I too automatically loathe anything with "Premium" whatever added to soak money from people. Most such things say they do not ruin balance, but often that is a bold lie.

I have not actually been playing much lately, but I am still on a seemingly endless Let's Play marathon. My current playlist is Risen. I played the game a bit recently, but quit once I could not decide which way to go.

 

It's hard to say in an alpha, but I've had a good time creating new islands. The middle island, so far, is always the same type but there are several other types you can make any of the other 4 islands, which gives something different. I wouldn't say it has depth, though, as the structure is very simple.

Atmosphere, however, it has in spades. And that's what keeps drawing me back.

 

Very cool. I donated to the kickstarter and I have high hopes for it.