What games are you playing and why?

Desktop Dungeons is picking up steam, mainly because some gods have been unlocked and I now have access to the Assassin class, which I really enjoy.

I don't know how other people learned, but the starting fighter (Warrior?) class set me up for failure by encouraging me to kill creatures that were the same level or lower- the XP gain perk makes it not matter.

Re DD- if you can kill only one higher level creature before you level next, is it better to kill a creature that is two levels above you or just a single level above? If you chose the creature that is 2 levels above (and level upon its death), does that make up for the XP lost by not killing the creature a single level above?

That creature now being the same level as you, for the sake of clarity. It has happened multiple times to me, generally when I am level 5 and have kill potential on a level 6 and level 7 mob.

 

I thought that would be the case, but the table on the wiki makes it look like a wash given the scenario above- monsters 1 level vs 2 levels higher. (http://www.qcfdesign.com/wiki/DesktopDungeons/index.php?title=Level). Is the wiki wrong?

 

Me and a friend have revived our Minecraft server and are playing through the Agrarian Skies mod, it was a pig to get working, but now it's up and running it's kind of awesome. We're currently trying to get some sort of steam turbine working so that we can use our storage computer. I've seen visions of automatic farms and nuclear reactors for the future... Yeah some of it is overkill, but I don't think I'd ever want to play without microblock covers and better-barrels again...

 

I've been playin Unepic since it was on Summer (Flash?) Sale: really liking it so far. The only reason it's in early access is that the multiplayer isn't finished, but I don't miss it. I'm playing on Hard++ and can really recommend it. Loads of fun.

 

I've been giving Wasteland 2's beta a try this morning and so far I'm impressed and glad I supported it.

 

Had a small-ish break from gaming to watch some SGDQ over the past few days, but kinda feeling a resurgence.

Unreal Tournament 2004 - One of THE best FPS games ever created ever in the history of FPS games ever. Seriously. There is no other way for me to describe it. I can't decide whether I like it more than UT99 (probably not, as I don't care much for UT04's handling of, say, Assault), but it has a lot of merits on its own. And yeah, I love it.

Sunless Sea (beta; early access) - This gets a Steam Early Access release on the 1st July, but as a Kickstarter supporter I got beta access a few weeks early. Only had an evening or so with it, and it's really slow paced, but it's quite good. I kinda feel like you need to have at least fiddled around with its linked browser game (Fallen London) to really get it, though. But it's something I think will be exceptionally interesting to play during the autumn/winter months due to its eerie atmosphere. Also; giant enemy crabs.

Dust: An Elysian Tail - I actually have two copies of this (there's a surprise), and I've never finished it. I love the aesthetic, I think the combat is simple but with a nice hint of skill, and it's got some great characters. I was really looking forward to the speedrun at SGDQ (which I watched live this morning), and it got me itching to play the game again. Decided to delete my old save and start anew - and I've played maybe an hour or so this evening, and I'm honestly loving it all over again (helped by the fact I decided to try to do a sidequest before part of the main quest, and I met an awesome character).

Heroes Rise: The Prodigy - One of the first text-based games to hit Steam. Ever. No, really. I've not played it too much - really only the introductory chapter - but I like the scope of it. It's also interesting to note it's by an openly gay developer, and this is reflected in-game as you can select your character's gender and sexual orientation. It's not that in-depth (cis-male, cis-female/gay, straight and bisexual), but it's a nice touch and one I'm grateful for. I also have the sequel, but I want to play through this one first. Ha. Like that'll happen.

Sid Meier's Ace Patrol: Pacific Skies - I kinda slated this a bit on release as it didn't feel as polished or as fun as the first. And it honestly isn't. Honestly. But I did enjoy playing it until the AI decided to play silly beggars like it sometimes does. It's easy to get stuck in a routine where you and the enemy are just unable to get into positions to fight, and it gets really, really annoying. But when you can get into dogfights and stuff? It can be fun to play.

Pinball FX2 - I gave this another spin, and it's not bad to pick up and play every so often. There is no way I will ever get as good as Mooms, but I don't care too much. I don't understand the rules of pinball, but I think it's fun to just whack the ball around. I've got some of the core tables and some licensed ones, but so far my favourites seem to be the Fantastic Four table (too short, though) and the Rome table (bad Latin pronunciation). But if you don't have this, you do kinda need it.

 

I was also a supporter of Sunless Sea, but it really wasn't working back when I tried it (almost every time I'd try to dock, I'd ground myself on the rocks -- suspect that was a bug). I'll have to give it another shot one of these days. I couldn't get that far in it but yes, it seemed INCREDIBLY slow.

 

I was in the second (or so) wave of Kickstarter backers (i.e. people who donated more = 1st wave, people who donated less = 2nd), and the wave I was in came with a large set of fixes and improvements.

 

UT2K4 was the best FPS ever. Vehicular CTF was loads of fun.

 

"EAGLE EYE!"
"PANCAKE!"
"TOP GUUUUN!"

 

FLAT MONKEYYYYYY

 

Sunless Sea continues to look like something I'll enjoy once it is finished.

My lone Steam Summer Sale purchase to date is Epic Battle Fantasy 4. I really like the art for the enemies and world screen- classic Secret of Mana/FF goodness. Apparently there actually was a 1-3, but I'd never heard of it. The combat system is traditional turn-based FF, with AP used to upgrade abilities and learn special skills. The skills are limited per run (only one character out of 4 could learn it, for example), but there is a NG+ mode. Basic item "crafting" is integral (to get from Widget lvl 1 to Widget lvl 2 needs 4 assorted bits of monster y and monster x), but is nice all the same.

It was super cheap when I got it, but even on normal the difficulty has ramped up rapidly. This is not a game for auto-attack grinding; skill selection appears to be important, though there very well may be certain character builds that roflstomp the game.

 

One more.

Saints Row IV - Okay, I'll admit I wasn't going to get this. Between the reuse of Steelport, the massive reuse of assets from SR3, the Rectifier weapon and a few other things, I was really kinda put off. But I finally caved and got it (w/ the Season Pass and a few other content packs, though I have left the Rectifier uninstalled because I honestly don't think that's even close to being funny), and after about three or four hours I've got to say I've been enjoying myself. I am playing a character similar to my SR3 one, even down to the clothes, but the new superpowers do add this extra element that really works in its favour.

 

Gothic 3 - Got it on GOG.com's daily deals. After reading the many, heated reviews it seemed Gothic 2 was better for fans and 3 was better for beginners. Or something. After looking at several LP's I thought the combat system sucked. And it kinda does, but the community patch improves it slightly. Even with the "bad combat", the game is amazingly hard. You will get wrecked by Bloodflies if you can't heal yourself fast enough, and starting out your combat skills are WEAK. The quicksave system is nice, but every time you load the game it takes 30 seconds, which isn't the best if you get beat up by the same group of wolves every reload.
But when you DO play the game, it's amazing. The game has pretty good voice acting and amazing passive story telling (no flipping cutscenes every step), and the world just feels believable. You can hunt packs of deer down, make potions and do quests for one of three factions (there's multiple endings), and the world is HUGE. I heard it takes 1.5 hours to walk from the bottom left to the top right of the map, and there's huge replay value, because it's actually impossible to do all quests in one playthrough.
Throughout the game you forge your character the way you want to; you choose your skills through trainers rather than clicking the buttons in the skilltree to magically get skills. And you will need to train your skills. A lot.
The game is very slow-paced and I love it; it's very immersive. Even with the thousands of bugs that aren't fixed with the community patch, the game breathes immersion, and much more so than Skyrim and Oblivion, which do have better combat but worse questing and progression. I don't know what else to say, Gothic is just amazing.

 

http://geekmontage.com/texts/review-gothic-3-with-the-community-patch-1-74/
I wrote that years ago. It is still a great game.

 

Minecraft - Shut up.

Octodad: Dadliest Catch - So there was a load of buzz about this jam game and then it got a full version and it's about 2hrs long. Shorter if you do everything first go (and if you get really good you can do it in under 20mins). And I finally picked it up in the sale. When it's good, it's really funny and quite clever in a bizarre way. When it's bad, it's extremely frustrating (as in anger-inducing), and sometimes it's not as clear as it needs to be. Also that final bit before the final boss is just obscenely infuriating. But I finished it and probably won't go back until Octodad Shorts or whatever they're called come out.

Valiant Hearts: The Great War - Latest small title on the UbiArt engine, set during WW1. Extremely good, though at times the difficulty seems vastly out of place. But as I said, it's extremely good.

 

Diablo 3 - Game for the most part gets better every patch. I'm getting more build-changing uniques/sets. However when leveling an alt I was reminded how much I *hate* having monsters auto-level with you.

Level 1 - Yay I have Paragon Points and Hellfire ring and I can fight stuff on hardest difficulty!
Level 2 - Yay my health and damage went up by like 1.5%! Oh and enemies went up by like 80%.
Level 3-14ish - every time I level up I feel weaker.
Level 15-ish - Socketed weapons are available, damage goes up by 600%!
Level 16-39 - every time I level up I feel weaker. *Lowers difficulty multiple times so monsters die in less than 200 hits*
Level 40 - Max level reduction weapons, damage goes up by like 300%!
Level 41-69 - UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Risk of Rain - Unlocked 4 new classes and about 6 relics so far. Ranges from fun to frustrating; the relic that lets you *choose* item drops instead of randomizing them helped a lot in helping you actually *build* a character instead of having a derp with 4 mushrooms, but it's also frustrating to die to monsters that spawn inside of you while you're scrolling through 20 icons with no names or tooltips. ~_~ It's probably a lot better in Co-op, only done Single Player so far.

Had one really fun level with the Kin relic (forces the level to only spawn one type of enemy) rolling Gups (giant blobs of jello that split into smaller pieces when they die, which then split etc). I had the rare item that causes each enemy you kill to fight as a friendly ghost for a few seconds; the big Gups have area affect attacks that kill their pieces fairly quickly, which then spawn as ghosts... (however, another level had robots with homing rockets that seem to not fire from ghosts, only "living" ones ~_~ )

 

Risk of Rain is awesome, me and a friend pretty much 100%ed it on co-op, find a friend to play it with and it'll improve no end. Also relics, some of them make the game easier, some harder, unlock the ones that cause enemies to drop chests where you can choose the items you want and it becomes 100x easier and more fun.