What games are you playing and why?

I didn't really care for Farcry 2, though I enjoyed Farcry 1. I do like the TES and Fallout 3 and NV games.

Yeah, I did say FPS, sorry about that but it's been a few months since I tried it and I forgot it was a TPS but I remembered it had some action so I just typed FPS. Sorry about that.

For the past week, I have been playing a cool little free game called Minetest. It can be found at minetest.net and is a clone of Minecraft. I have never played Minecraft so I don't know how close it is but I do find it enjoyable. And you definitely can't beat the price. If you like a challenge, look for the SkyBlocks mod. It is fun but they don't really tell you the recipes so you may need to look at the lua files like I did to learn them.

Have fun everyone.

 

From what I see it appears to be a free open-source "clone" of Minecraft.

Well, not my piece of pie since I, as well as all of my friends, have Minecraft already so I can just play that (that, and I think that unless you really are dirt-poor or incapable of buying anything on-line, 20 dollars for a game with as much time-sinking potential as Minecraft has is not too much, but one's reasons are one's own reasons and not mine and thus I will not try to force that issue), but I think it's good that people are trying to do something like this. And by "this" I mean "creating free open-source 'clones' of other games, starting from scratch and trying to recreate everything themselves", as it is good coding practice for people and those who aren't capable of buying the original game for whatever reason can benefit from it.

 

Are you sure Minecraft is $20? It's £18 for me, which is about $28.

Minecraft is ridiculously expensive for what it is. It really is. It's good, yes, but it's not cheap.

 

You know, you are right. It's been a long time since I even took a look at the price (and it was $20 then), but it appears the prices have been adjusted to the country/region you are in which makes the game more expensive. So yeah, I can see why some people would be unwilling to pay for it, since it isn't getting any cheaper (and I can't really complain because I bought it a long time ago when it only cost $5).

 

I don't mind that it's being updated and that new content is being added, etc., etc. And I don't mind that people who bought it in alpha paid a fraction of the price.

But I think the price - which I paid - is a bit of a joke.

 

If anyone is interested. Space Empires 4 and 5 are $5 on Steam together. Both of them still have some minor bugs that are easily fixed by browsing the "Community" page on Steam. And I have no idea why Steam and the game developers has not updated the Steam games to work as they should.

But they are good games well worth the money.
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/287/

I still play them occasionally. And there are mods for each. Most of them are not too good, but you can easily make your own if you are creative and can think of a way to improve the games.

 

OK, there's a new game that I had to try. Honestly, before I bought it, I had no idea that it was originally a tablet game. It sounded actually, kinda neat, and there's a bit of fun to be had with it. But only a bit: The game is "Knights of Pen and Paper".

The concept is kind of neat, but turns out to be not as cool as it sounds. The game is about a group of role players and their dungeon master. You pick up to 5 players, and for each player, you choose the character that they are playing (a pretty standard selection: Warrior, Mage, Cleric, Druid, Thief, and Paladin). The players themselves each also have very special characteristics, such as giving bonuses to attack, and so on.

The start of the game is pretty standard -- you have to escape from a prison. But the twist is, since you are also controlling (to an extent) the dungeon master, you can select how many guards you have to fight at the same time to escape (the more you fight at a time, the better the rewards).

And that's pretty much it for plot. After that, you can choose on the map where to go to, but areas are rated for your level, so you are going to end up having to grind quite a bit in order to progress. There's even a farm you can travel to to 'farm' experience (get it?). You can create your own quests, but those quests are kinda... uninteresting to say the least (at least they are after an hour of play). And you'll have to do that (and/or use the farm) because there's no real plot that I can discern. Essentially, you set up battle after battle, and that's it. Maybe if I get to one of the higher level locations there will be more, but until then, it's not very interesting.

As you level, you can put skill points into various skills or spells, which vary based on your character class. Combat is turn-based, and not bad, but not particularly exciting either (which I find is standard for this kind of combat). Gold can be spent on items for the players (probably later, for the characters as well) and can be earned via combat and quests. Items include snacks (such as pizza), drinks, changes to the dungeon master, changes to the room you play in, and so on. Each change has a different affect on the game (but some are mutually exclusive).

As is common with tablet games, there is a cash shop where you can buy gold. This doesn't bother me as much as it does others, since why do I care what other people do with their money? The game itself pretty much supplies more than enough gold to get you started. That said, I'm sure there's more to spend on if you choose to spend a lot of time with the game.

My advice is to not buy this game unless you have OCD and love the repetition. The concept, which I applaud, is simply not handled as well as it should have been (much less, as it could have been). This just comes off as completely weak, like coffee made with a half a coffee bean.

 

Been playing the crap out of Warframe lately. Before that I was playing the hell out of Underrail.
I finally bought the secret world too(50% off on steam today, for another 17 hours 50 minutes as of this post), but haven't booted it up yet. Also bought Penny Arcade's on the rain-slick precipice of darkness 4, again not yet booted it up.

Btw: I would recommend warframe, it's sort of a coop PvE TPS with ninja power-armor suits. Nice gunplay, lots of customization, and while it's free to play, I recommend chipping in €8.99 or your regional equivalent just to buy more warframe/weapon slots, as you only start with slots for 2 warframes and 8 weapons(and enough premium currency to buy 2 warframe slots or 8 weapon slots). You can play fine with that, but having more variety available is nice, chipping in as I recommended can get you a nice and cozy 10 warframe slots and 18 weapon slots.

 

I play the Pinball FX2 now and again, but only a few minutes at a time. But they've just released their Sorceror's Lair table Free for all steam users. I like it a lot. But as I said, I can only play the game in small doses due to eye strain issues. It's a fun table, I'll probably be playing it some more, but it's not one of those games that you'll see me wracking up the hours (5 minutes here, 10 minutes there, it will add up very slowly).

 

Edna & Harvey: The Breakout - Been after this for AGES! I don't know why I avoided it, I came very close to buying it more than a few times, but I finally picked it up in the GOG sale and I've really enjoyed it so far. I love the sense of humour it has, and I think it has actually made me *less* sane. Doobeedoobeedoo.

Sanctum 2 - Hm. Liking it, sure. But I'm not as enamoured as I was at release. I just don't think something about it is quite right, and partially it's to do with the bosses it (rarely) has. I also think some of the maps feel just obnoxiously difficult. The Roadworks map in particular has annoyed me because it has random places for some towers that just don't make sense at all. But I like it for all its flaws, and I *think* I'm looking forward to the first DLC pack in the next week or so.

Deponia - Less a game I'm playing and more a game I've tried. And perhaps my avatar choice is - at this moment - optimistic. It's... really pretty, runs fairly good (though I still want to know how Daedalic continue to make such poorly optimised games, they're like bloody Telltale in that regard) and the puzzles are thought-invoking but not particularly stupid if you're used to adventure game logic. But the game's attitude towards women is kinda scary within no time at all. A "bitchy note" is found, Rufus (the protagonist) blames his ex-girlfriend for a lot and then talks about "owning" another character, there's a character who seems to be a pretty irritating attempt at making jokes at transpeople (though thankfully we're spared any actual commentary on their gender, just a fairly bad design and very, very unfunny voice work), blah blah blah. Basically it's a game that seems to do things right except for the way it handles women.

That's... about it for now, I think. Not really playing much at the minute.

 

This is not exactly about a game that I'm currently playing, but one that I loved but totally burned out on -- Rift. It's gone Free to play so if you have ever been curious about it, but didn't want to spend the money to try it out, now's the time to go for it. It's my understanding that the newbie zones are once again quite active, which is a good thing.

I did log in just to take a look around, check out the cash shop, and so on. I'm not sure if I'll be playing or not in the future, but right now I just found myself totally uninspired to do so.
http://www.riftgame.com/en/

 

BTW, I gave Expeditions Conquistador another shot, starting again completely from scratch (I liked the game, but I just was really bad at it lol). I'm doing a lot better now. Learned my lesson to save frequently, but ironically, I have yet to feel the need to restore from a save due to a party wipe or something similar. Still, I'm now kind of lost in the mountains and my expedition is having some serious food issues, I'm not sure if that's better or worse than getting killed by native tribes, but I have gotten a whole lot further into the game at least.

 

Finished Sanctum 2's single-player campaigny thing. Very bizarre difficulty curve with some stupidly frustrating maps that feel obnoxious rather than challenging. And then you have the final map. And this happened.

 

What do you mean? That it's pretty?

 

Look at all the dots on the minimap. It got worse.

 

ah right, never played it so don't know, I guess red bricks are destroyed towers? that's looking somewhat grim then

Can you recommend it? I should really try sanctum 1... it's still unplayed in my games list >_<

 

Red blocks are Level 3 upgraded towers. Lighter blue blocks are tower bases.

I can but I'd recommend playing Sanctum 1 first, even though Sanctum 2 does go in a slightly different direction. But I never finished Sanctum 1 whereas I have finished Sanctum 2.

 

I've been playing achron whenever I can.
It's pretty rad, what with being a real time strategy game featuring time travel and all.
Unfortunately it's hard to find other scrubs to play against, and the veterans just decimate me.

 

Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade

It is hard. This might be partially because I have never been good at fighting games (nor have I played many), but also because I'm using a controller, not a fighting stick.