What games are you playing and why?

This is going to sound weird but the closest thing I can compare Antichamber to is playing Riven again for the first time, where most of the puzzle is figuring out how exactly your surroundings function. Riven is pretty much my favorite game ever so that's a good thing. I particularly like the sound design, very relaxing - and at the same time a bit jarring considering you have 90 minutes to beat the game or you start over.

 

BTW, I found a video of Omerta, kind of a 'let's play', and in the video, the guy did not have the same problem as I had so that's odd. So I may give it another chance just to see what's going on. I'm baffled that things work differently on my computer than on the Let's Play guy's computer, but not exactly shocked (it's not like I haven't seen that kind of thing before). there were still some mildly annoying things about the game (such as the cheesy accents/acting).

Antichamber does look fascinating, but I'm going to resist buying it for a while (have to catch up not only on stuff I've bought in the past, but on some things I've preordered, such as the upcoming Skyrim DLC).

 

Well, I decided that there's still one major thing that I really want to do in Rift, and that's construct my own dimension. It will be expensive, but he does have a potentially lucrative source of income -- Armor smithing. Unfortunately, with high-end items, it's really hit or miss whether you'll make a big sale (it's usually feast or famine, and famine is lots more common). But that one big sale can really put you into a good way financially.

Right now I'm undecided as to which dimension to save up for. My intended theme is a relaxing tropical island. But I think I'll have to settle for a desert oasis with palm trees (that's the closest thing I can find to my ideal location). I've been looking at other people's dimensions a lot and some of them are quite clever (some guy built a huge home in the sky, with floating steps to climb up to it, and a couple of twisting slides to get back down -- very fun and clever. A guildmate of mine wanted to show off her own two dimensions she's been working on. One is a tree house (unfinished) and the other is this underground cave with hidden 3-D maze-like paths, and secret areas. I accused her of trying to kill visitors, because after you enter, there's a hole in the ground that drops you several feet into deep water and your first impression is that you are going to drown lol. Anyway I thought it was very clever.

I don't want to do anything quite so elaborate. My concept is merely to make a nice place to relax, maybe fish, and sip tropical drinks while the sun bakes your skin. You know, like Hawaii.

 

Just finished Antichamber, finishing just shy of the seven hour mark. Considering that the game can be beaten in under 15 minutes if you know what you're doing, I don't know if that makes the game hard or me an idiot.

Biggest gripe is that once you get to the latter half of the game, some of the puzzles and mechanics introduced feel very unintuitive. I don't want to give specific examples to avoid spoiling others trying to get through, but I feel like I'm only doing you a favor by telling you that using the red gun's suck-things-up-and-put-them-back-down ability actually multiplies the number of blocks present. I have no idea why, it just does. Raged so hard once I figured that out.

 

I'm a fan of puzzle games, but I prefer that the puzzles be something I can figure out through anything but random experimentation.

 

I'm much the same.

Yet I still buy adventure games.

 

I got an invite to the next Defiance beta test this weekend. I have a lot of respect for Trion for the job they did, and continue to do with Rift. But I can't help but be disappointed that Defiance is A) being done in cooperation with the Syfy, and B) is a shooter. But I'm willing to give it a shot anyway because it's Trion.

Don't get me wrong, Syfy has had its share of good shows. But there's so much that they do that is damaging to the intelligence of its viewers. (I know Eureka is popular but it is SUCH a truly poorly written, poorly imagined, and intelligence-insulting show, and that's not even counting the bad or non existent science). Even when they DO have a good show, they tend to mishandle it far too often (I still don't forgive them for Caprica -- it actually was a very smart and well-written, well-acted show, that was mishandled and killed before its time). Then there was Dune and Children of Dune again, great material, handled badly. And of course the two mishandlings of one of my favorite book series "Riverworld. I'm wishing that Defiance is one of the good ones, but the previews I've seen don't give me much hope.

 

Good thing I didn't get it in the Steam Sale then
I'm still lobbing heads of in Chivalry (well, mine gets cut off more frequently...), as well as trying to like Krater and loving Unmechanical.
Oh, and I rediscovered the joys of Isaac. Judas is awesome, if only he wouldn't die that quickly :/

 

I just got Super Hexagon for my Android. I fear for my sanity :/
And I still need to beat Hyper Hexagonest on my PC as well...

 

Well, I just cancelled my subscription to Rift -- but I'm still going to play it up until it runs out, so long as I have non-grindy stuff left to do. I only signed up for 3 months, and my 3 months actually ends in about 25 days or so, so I timed it pretty well. I did have the equivalent of an 'exit interview' where I said, essentially that I like everything about the game except for the endgame grind.

That said, if 2.2 comes out in a reasonable time, I may resubscribe for a month or two (it's supposed to open up a new zone). I decided that working on a personal dimension could require me to do a bit more grinding, and I decided in favor of my sanity.

I'd consider moving on to a different MMO, but the two I have lifetime subs to:
1. Lotro -- loved the game but most of my friends from it, in this small guild I was in, went on to SWTOR, and the game is not that fun without friends to play with. The guild still exists, but the last I checked they weren't all that active. Plus I'd be playing catch-up a whole lot, and feeling like a fish out of water due to a long absence. I could consider starting a character from scratch and joining a new guild though, but that's always rough in a mature game. Still, Lotro has one of the best newbie experiences of any game ever (at least if you are even a minor fan of the IP). But I've done all the early quests for so many different alts that I don' t think I could abide doing them yet another time.
2. The Secret World -- my feelings about the game and reluctance to return should be known by now

AS I said, I'm going to be beta testing Defiance this weekend, but I don't expect it to be something I really want to pay for, let alone play a whole lot (don't enjoy Shooters or PVP much).

So any suggestions (particularly of the f2p variety, and even better if it's not a stereotypical fantasy setting) would be welcome.

 

I started in Lotro just around when Moria came out. Besides it being a really solid game, what really did it for me was finding this small family guild (a lot of the people in it were related, and of all ages). I really think that family guilds, at least if you find the right one, are the best, at least for me. People want to socialize, group together, do just about anything that they think might be fun (chicken runs anybody? -- so ridiculous, and yet so much fun).

And I LOVED the Shire. And I LOVED Moria. And I simply loved grouping with my friends from the guild to do dungeons and quests and the like. We were small, but consequently we became close friends. And we all had alts, so there was nearly always someone to group with around your level regardless of which of your alts you were playing.

Oh and I LOVED tanking on my Warden. This is the ONLY MMO where I've actually enjoyed tanking for a dungeon, and it was largely because of how much fun it was to play a Warden in that role. It reminded me a whole lot of playing a Bard in EQ. My first 'main' character was a Hobbit Burglar, and I loved playing him, but I didn't really feel that skillful with him. My Warden actually gave me a lot of confidence, that I knew what I was doing. I think part of it was that so many other people found Wardens to be intimidating to play, whereas I found it to be refreshingly engaging. It was literally impossible to play a warden on autopilot the way you could for some other classes.

 

Totalbiscuit gave a bit of a thumbs up to Tera, which has gone free to play(and with a fair model where free players aren't penalized). I'm considering trying that. I've also considered the secret world... the problem with MMOs though is that I don't have that much time to play them anymore.

 

TSW may be a bad choice for those with limited time to invest in the game. The investigation missions, which are the main draw of the game versus other MMOs, are often rather involved and can take a long time if you're doing them without spoilers (and if you're doing them with spoilers, I can't see the game being worth paying for over more action-oriented competitors).

Honestly I'm getting disenchanted with MMOs as a whole. TSW is still fun to jump in and knock out some missions, do a nightmare with friends, and experiment with builds, but I find myself not playing it as much as I did at first. I'll get my mileage out of the LTS in due time but I'm wishing more than ever that at least one MMO would do something different enough to warrant paying for it for more than two or three months if at all. I like the writing in TSW, and that'll carry it for me along with the great community. My beef is very much with MMOs as a whole and not just the one I'm playing now.

 

LotRO is boring as hell unless you consistently have a group to play with that take the edge off the boredom.

TSW is TSW. I haven't loaded it up in what seems like a month.

There's always some slightly... obscure European MMOs. Rune(s?) of Magic is doing fairly well, and I remember Allods being somewhat playable.

 

Well I just reinstalled Gothic 3, this time with the community patch 1.75 (last time I played was shortly after launch when it was a buggy mess).

 

When I logged in again a few months ago for the first time in ages, and I saw how few and how infrequently my old guild mates were on (from the guild log). I got disheartened. Although there are things that you CAN do solo, coming back from a long absence, I definitely wouldn't have wanted to be there alone, which is why I kind of just logged off again after a few minutes. I tried that again a month or so later, and the same thing happened -- I was alone. Even if they were on just to say hi, and to catch up with all the events of the past couple of years, it would have made a huge difference, I think. As it was, it would have been hit or miss to catch anyone online.

I guess that's the advantage of being in a larger guild (like my Rift one) is that if the guild is solid, you can sometimes come back after a year or two, and find that there are still familiar names.

BTW, Jadkini -- you may want to give Rift a shot. Get into a decent guild (let me toot the horn of "Tractus Aparatus", a defiant guild on Faeblight (not that the servers have as much meaning anymore). It has just enough in common with traditional MMOs that you won't feel too overwhelmed, but at the same time, it has lots of cool and 'different' features to make it feel fresh. I guess it's ironic that I'm leaving and yet I'm still tooting the games horn. But my overall feelings about the game and my feelings about the end game are entirely different.