What games are you playing and why?

I generally fail to get into the mid-game in any RPG, let alone the late/end-game.

And I've finished Remember Me. I really liked it despite a few flawed things about it, and it's kinda ugly on the PS3 with some performance issues to boot, but DONTNOD get a dozen billion plus points for making the closing cut-scene pre-rendered (and I assume not in UE3). It's rather stunning to watch.

 

Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - I like to annoy Mooms with the fact I've got this (it doesn't have an NA/Can release at this minute, and it's been out here a couple of months), but... hm. It's a good mix of Phoenix Wright gameplay and I've not played Professor Layton but I assume it's just as good in that regard, whilst it dials up the wacky twists and turns somewhat... but it doesn't half feel like it goes on too long. I'm about 13hrs into it and I've spent about a third of that (actually longer) on a particular courtroom scene, and it just got too much, especially as it was full of false-finishes. You'd think you'd cracked it... and then boom! - it gets a bit tiresome, especially when the game has very light voice acting so you occasionally get a certain phrase or sound played ad nauseam. I will eventually finish it, though. I want to play it in bursts but that has the negative effect of making it hard to keep track of what's happening.

 

DOTA 2. It's the International, baby! Watching those pros play has me trying out all kinds of new strategies that I completely and utterly fail at. Miserably. But still having a blast.

 

Wolf Among Us, because the thing is finally finished. I was waiting till now because it was released in 5 episodes. I can't enjoy episodic content- I want to be able to finish the story NOW, and all that.

Anyway, finished it over the space of four days, and the story was fun. Not nearly enough choice and consequence (lots of "Character X will remember that," but no story impacts )- only a few things seem to actually matter in the full arc.

Also, everyone kept treating my character as a bloodthirsty monster, which got old. I hadn't been playing a bloodthirsty monster, but rather a scrupulously non-violent guy. Eventually, that starts to make you feel like your actions aren't having enough of an impact on the story. Since this game is all about the story, I was surprised a bit.

 

Talking of games where your choices and the story don't quite gel, I've been playing a bit more of Heroes Rise: The Prodigy. which is the first text-based game to ever land on Steam (along with its sequel The Hero Project, and today the finale of the trilogy, HeroFall, landed). On the whole I'm really enjoying it and you can literally close the window at any point and pick up again later, which is really convenient. It does tend to get a little ahead of itself, though, in that it sometimes goes on and on about how your character likes or wants something or someone, only to give you the option to say "I don't like X". Which is a bit weird. It then sometimes does the opposite in that it doesn't give you chance to back out of other things even though the options imply you can. So my character got her rocks off when I didn't want her to, for example. But I'm pretty much loving other aspects of it. It's relatively diverse, and I even encountered a gender-neutral hero, which was awesome.

If there's one other complaint I have it's that it's an intensely sexual game at times. It isn't particularly graphic but a lot of the women in particular (as a point of clarity, I'd like to point out my character is female and bisexual, and has only expressed interest (in-game via my choices) in women) are either extremely attractive or described as presenting with a high level of sexual allure or confidence. Heck, one character you encounter basically has seductive powers, and it seems like a couple of characters got their costumes after looking at galleries of Bianca Beauchamp(1). I've not encountered many male characters, actually, but one was described as being gorgeous (though I don't remember much being said about if his costume was tight around his Power Wand).

(1) She's a world-famous fetish-wear model with enhancements. She basically has a figure not far off the stereotypical mainstream superheroine - in fact, would not surprise me if Greg Land(2) has traced her more than a few times.
(2) A hack, quite simply. He's been caught out badly tracing pin-ups, centre-folds, adult film scenes, etc, even if they don't make sense (one I think illustrates it well is he traced a woman lying on her back on a bed (with her head off the edge), turned it upside down and he had Storm flying through the air. Derp).

 

I've been playing "Lexica", which is a simple word puzzle game, which is kind of a cross between Scrabble and Sudoku. I don't like most puzzle games, except for word or mathematical puzzles. This is more of a word/logic puzzle.

This is the tutorial puzzle. Letters can slide up and down, or left and right, and can cross one another. The trick is to, using logic and word knowledge, position the letters into the white spaces so that you have a crossword-style grid with all legal words.

BTW, I did find an error in the second easy pack of puzzles (there's 3 difficulty levels of puzzles) but I'm assured by those who've gotten much further than I have so far, that this is the only such error they've encountered. I don't know precisely how many puzzles there are but there's certainly enough to justify the $4.99 list price (I got it much cheaper on sale).

 

I've finished Heroes Rise: The Prodigy, with a total of 3.7hrs logged (due to me leaving it open at times, I've worked out my playtime was about 2.5-3hrs).

Yeah, it's pretty dang good. Can't wait to get started on the next.

 

Got Bardbarian in a humble bundle or indie gala thingy..
Gotta say the game surprised me with how much I enjoyed playing it and for how long.
Just finished playing it after 6 hours.
Really fun.
Really basic, casual and very light, but there's plenty of different of characters that even just running around and dodging stays fun.
Can recommend it (if you buy it in the bundle then definitely absolutely worth it).

 

I'm good at this game!

 

Anyone can learn how to spell -- but it takes real talent and imagination to create your own words.

 

Trying to get into Divinity: Original Sin, but for the life of me they make it hard.

The character systems looks well developed, with multiple viable builds and synergies, but its been like 3 hours of play and all I want to do is kill something. There are RPGs, wordy RPG's, RPG's with diarrhea of the keyboard, and then Divinity: Original Sin. It needs its own category.

This is the wordiest game I have ever attempted to play. I like games with a solid amount of text used to develop the world and characters (BG2 or Fallout 2, for example). But this game uses 8 words when two would be sufficient and three a great plenty.

Part of the problem is that there are a lot of generic characters wandering about who say the same thing in response to questions, but you don't know for sure until you ask. And then it takes multiple clicks to get back to the basic dialogue screen. Combined with the pacing between combats in the game (glacial) it is feeling like work to play, and not fun.

And this thing had a super extensive beta to boot. DAMN YOU, BETA TESTERS!

 

I haven't played it, but heard that the game is decent in spite of terrible writing. Based on a screenshot that a friend sent me, the dialog could be used as an example of how NOT to write (what I saw was certainly cringe-worthy, something along the lines of 'I watched him sitting there just being awesome'.)

Granted, I haven't encountered more than a couple of computer games yet that had a story that could give the same enjoyment as a decent book or movie.

That said, I am reconsidering my avoidance of adventure games for the upcoming title created by Neil Gaiman (I'm a huge fan of his writing): http://store.steampowered.com/app/246720/

 

Why is everyone always surprised by the quality of the writing in a Larian game? It's generally MEANT to be pretty bad, because the Divinity franchise as a whole carries a strong streak of parody.

 

I'm at over 130hrs on it now, with the majority of that as one character with about 76hrs playtime. It is an excellent game if it isn't bugging out or crashing or giving you a splitting headache due to the FoV (which can be altered via console but doesn't always help). But yeah, I don't think it's really grabbed me like Oblivion did. I don't quite feel the same need to wander around discovering things.

 

Sadly hit the summer brick-wall. Finished all of my backlog and I've been pottering around in "Dungeon of the Endless". There is something about the universe that drives me to just...play. Maybe I'm a suck for silly. Who know. (also, lots of nice things coming in August and all that. Tis a nice time to game)

 

That's the perfect Skyrim review.

 

Skyrim is great with mods, just 'good' without.