What games are you playing and why?

It is so painful waiting for the PC release, I've been doing forest invasions to pass the time until DkS2.

 

Goat Simulator - Well, kinda, because it's kinda unstable and not particularly optimised. But when it works/worked, it was quite fun and really stupid, and it's cool they made the effort to try to turn it into a 'proper' game. There's goals to meet, things to unlock and so on, and there's easily a couple of hours of game play there.

Minecraft (PS3) - TU14 just came out, and for the first time in the almost *four* months since release we got new skins and textures, so I've finally felt able to give it a try. I've been playing with the plastic texture pack, and it's quite cool. The controls are absolutely terrible, mind, but it's quite fun and a nice 'alternate' version of Minecraft to play.

 

Well, been enjoying ESO's launch. It's been about par for the course for the first day -- I experienced one issue with a quest where I couldn't see the npcs I was supposed to rescue. I fixed it by quitting and restarting the game. And I had one crash. But pretty much all the problems I had in the betas (getting stuck at crafting tables, for example) seem to be fixed. Also, I'm not sure if its because I'm doing things slightly differently or if they've smoothed things out, but I'm not running out of on-level quests. I also finally figured out where the bank is (it's far from obvious), so I no longer have to struggle with an overflowing inventory.

 

What I've been playing... since Saturday:

1. Goat Simulator
Yeah, okay. It's not bad. I've got all but three objectives done (I think), and I'm missing most achievements. And I don't think I'm "burned out" as such, but it's too much time for too little reward at the minute. I'd rather put my time and energy into other games. But I think it is worth picking up, even if you wait until it's 75% off or bundled.

2. Beatblasters III
A musical/rhythm-based game which is kinda annoying but not. The sound design is good - not Sword & Sworcery good, mind - and the idea is interesting, but the execution leaves something to be desired. Movement is slow, the default control map frustrating due to a lack of real thought, and I swear the 'metronome' at the top is neither accurate nor correctly functioning as I'm pretty sure it moves.

3. LEGO Marvel Superheroes (PS3)
This is a steaming pile of shit that should be fired into the heart of the frigging Sun. I spent £35 on it. More fool me. Absolutely no excuse for how utterly awful and broken it is, and it's making me doubt whether I'll get The Hobbit.

4. Age of Wonders III
I've not had much experience with the franchise - I didn't know about it until I saw the earlier titles on GOG whenever they hit the site - but I liked what little I played of the first game. I ended up in a position where I had money I could only spend on certain sites (through my own idiocy) so I put a good chunk of it towards an AoW3 Deluxe pre-order, and aside from some light regret to finding out it was a bit 'boobier' than I'd like (though not as bad as I feared except the female Dwarf - holy Moses), I've found myself playing it for a couple of hours today and enjoying it. It's a nice mix between, say, Civilization V and Might & Magic Heroes VI, and I find it a lot easier to keep track of, and I don't think it'll screw me over like M&M titles tend to. There's also a bit of a King's Bounty vibe. It has a bunch of issues, sure, but it's going to... but I think a few patches and it'll be perfectly fine. This really is a great step in the genre, and it blows away post-Armored Princess King's Bounty and the latest Heroes iteration.

 

You know what the best thing is? It's a hex grid for both maps, but combat is based on a hex 'flower'. The 'attacked' force is the central hex, and it encompasses the *six* around it. So it's theoretically possible to surround a single city (which takes up one hex) with six troop stacks (each stack being six units, so you're talking a maximum of 36 units), which is absolutely jaw-droppingly awesome. I LOVE seeing a line of troops.

One thing it does dispense with is running back and forth for troops. Troops move independently of your leader (the leader being considered a unit themselves), so you can ferry them to your leader whilst exploring, but they're also considered a single unit with X amount of health. You don't have the leadership thing from King's Bounty or M&MH where you can have, say, 35 Archers in a stack. In this you have an archer unit, and they heal between battles (if you camp).

I want to marry this game.

 

I'm currently switching between SimCity Societies: Destinations, Quantum Conundrum, andnDungeons of Dredmor.

SimCity Societies is really a lot better than most reviews give it credit for, but I get where they're coming from as it was kind of misleading for EA to call it a SimCity game since it is radically different from the other games in the franchise.

 

I grabbed an emulator and started catching up on the PS2 backlog... having fun with Front Mission 4.

 

Too many games to play right now... But I just discovered 'public dungeons' in ESO, and had a blast, in spite of all my deaths lol. Anyone who remembers EQ and dungeons like Befallen, etc. will know what I'm talking about. I spent about 2 hours just running, sneaking, and nuking around this goblin cave with lots of other people (even found a boss/miniboss (?) that just destroyed me in 2 seconds). I've been doing a lot of crafting research, which seems to take a long time (first attribute to research for a particular item type takes 6 hours, second takes 12, third takes 24... not sure if it continues to double after that, since that's as far as I've gotten so far). The number of skill choices that I can make has also been expanding exponentially, it seems, as I grow in level, which is both cool, yet really overwhelming (I'm currently a level 11 High Elf sorceror, majoring in light armor, Daedric summoning, and destruction staff. And now I have to figure out how to expand my bank vault, since that's now filled to the brim.

 

I've been playing around with VTM Bloodlines a bit over the last few weeks -- mainly because the SA Let's Play is making me nostalgic. It's still a great game. Apart from that, it's been Crawl (which I'm terrible at) and Persona 4 (at which I'm doing OK). For moments of light relief, I've been firing up Saints Row 4, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, and giggling like a maniac.

 

Played a bit of Evoland which has been experiencing a bit of a push lately. It was in a recent bundle (the Open Source Humble, I think) and it's currently the Daily on Steam. If you don't know what it is, it's a short RPG that's meant to take elements from the past 20 or so years of RPGs and as you progress it becomes more and more like a modern RPG. It starts off monochrome with basic controls then quickly moves into Mode 7 scrolling w/ random battles then crude 3D then nicer 3D and I don't know where from there because I stopped playing during the mines dungeon. Why? Well...

1. It has none of the charm of older RPGs and all of the annoyances.
2. It can be funny, but for the most part, no, it isn't.
3. The combat is awful. It's hard to try and kill some of the enemies because you can't get into position quick enough or it wants you to attack in 8 directions but really only works in 4 due to the controls (at least to that point).
4. The health system is ridiculous. 3 hearts, each into a quarter, which means 12 hits before death. Fine. A dropped heart from an enemy restores one quarter. Not fine.
5. It wants to be clever before it's anything else.

Edit: Just to note, I had something like 1/3 to 1/2 of the collectables (if not more), so I got into a chunk of the game.

 

Of note is the fact that Evoland has many negative reviews on Steam, many of them quite well-written, which says something.

 

Steam's reviews are full of haters. Just the existence of the "walking simulator" tag should tell you everything.

Evoland isn't bad. It's just misguided. It speeds through the one interesting idea it had (the 'evolution' through different RPG styles), and everything else is kinda dull. It can look 'cute' (Kaeris' animation when you win a battle = squee), and it can look good, especially once it gets to more modern art styles, but the map isn't exactly interesting, the random battles in the cave are infuriatingly frequent and... yeah. It's misguided. A good idea that doesn't come close to its potential.

 

Oh, it does. Many negative reviews are rubbish regardless of the game they pertain to. Though some were surprisingly good here once you read them; and yes, I admit I spent time doing that.

Which is exactly the same thing most people with good negative reviews said, though worded differently. Which is a bit of a shame, honestly, as it does look neat in the trailer.

 

I've mostly been playing Project Zomboid and Don't Starve lately. It's the first time I've touched Zomboid since the original release, and while it's still the same game, they've improved it a lot. Here's to hoping they start work on the UI next!

Don't starve has drawn me back in lately with the new DLC, it adds a lot of small things and was only a couple of quid. I have something like 110 hours on it on Steam and I'm only now starting to get any good. It's worth a look if you like survival games!

 

Oh, bleedin' 'eck, we gots ourselves another Brit

 

Yep I tried to write, "A few dollars" and just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Today I've been playing Heartstone rather obsessively, as it's one of the few games that actually runs on my laptop. You can pay for cards, but at the moment it's giving me enough free booster packs that it's not bothering me. It's not terrible if you need a lightweight laptop game!

 

Bloimey, guvnah, that makes two of us, that does.