What games are you playing and why?

That's true in Skyrim as well.

You can even loop alchemy and enchanting to get some really ridiculous bonuses... including to smithing, which you can then improve your weapons and armor to insane degrees(my glass armor is workbenched to about 400 armor, just the chest piece, my daedric bow has 193 attack power).

It's still not quite as insane as morrowind alchemy with self-looping intelligence potions.

 

I haven't enjoyed Skyrim very much. I spent like 30 hours there and then it got pretty repetitive - similar mines and dungeons over and over again, similar enemies over and over again, similar takedown scenes over and over again and so on. And AI is pretty dumb. And UI (that GPS-map for example) ruins the atmosphere as well.

 

Can't be that bad if you spent 30hrs in it. (I'm on something like 110 apparently)

 

I was overwhelmed at first, but it turned out that that enormous open world (which is praised like the best part of the game) is basically the worst as well, because it's very generic and sometimes even dull.
I don't want to say Skyrim is bad or something, it's enjoyable and well executed, but definitely not a 94/100 as Metacritic says.

 

That was about my reaction to skyrim. The dungeon design is superior to previous entries, and the enemy variety is definitely better than in Oblivion, but the gutting of the magic system and same-y feeling you get after a dozen hours or so killed my enjoyment. It's not bad, but definitely not my favorite TES game.

 

Mods are what really makes the game. The same was true for Oblivion, at least for me. There are mods to add entire new areas to explore, to add diversity to the monsters, to make the game much more challenging (so that you REALLY DO need to craft), to add diversity to the quests (even the starting quest), and so on. To me, if you aren't using mods in an ES (or recent Fallout game, for that matter), you are getting only an infinitesimal portion of the full experience.. And there are some really superbly talented modders out there.

Btw, I decided to put South Park on temporary hold, while I do more of M&M 10. It doesn't say anything about the South Park game (though the ui can cause me problems), just that when I preordered the game I didn't know I would already be absorbed into something else.

 

...indeed, but you must know when to stop.

Spoiler

 

Wow... 1 post... 1 post and then it all became Skyrim... It's such a shame for the developers of this great game that it got completely overshadowed by Skyrim, even now, so much time later in this thread, tragicomically enough
This is the article I just happened across that made me decide to install it finally and give it a try: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/02/26/why-didnt-everyone-play-kingdoms-of-amalur/
I disagree with just one thing: that it's riddled by bugs. I found 1 minor, completely unharmful bug so far, and I am 10 hours in according to steam.
Might be more down the line though, we'll see.
Read the article, it has a nice Don Quichote-vibe to it

EDIT: and thanks for the tip Daynab, I actually noticed as much with the one Birch Staff I blacksmithed
I'll take care.

 

Speaking of skyrim mods and skyrim ui, there are a few mods available out there to make the ui work better (the one I use is called SkyUI. It significantly improves most aspects of the interface but does have the drawback of making it considerably less immersive. I also use a file [whose name I forget] that I found on the website Skyrim Nexus that repairs the dialog selection glitch.)

 

That's nothing:

And of course:
http://imgur.com/a/6Zl7k

 

Well a game I decided to support on Kickstarter a while ago, is now in early access on steam: "Planet Explorers". So even though I'm in the middle of both "South Park: The Stick of Truth", and "Might and Magic X: Legacy", I decided to give it a try. And so far I'm having fun with it. Not all modes are fully implemented yet, but I'm playing in Story mode (single-player, quest-drivenn, pre-built world). But there's also an Adventure and build mode. Multiplayer (for up to 32 players) will eventually support a co-op Adventure mode, co-op build mode, and several different pvp modes.

It took me a little bit to get used to it, but so far I like it. Apparently, you don't have to fight in the game if you don't want to -- you can just be a farmer if you wish or something like that. I haven't had that much experience with combat, except being ambushed at night (should not have left camp while sun was going down lol). I died quickly. Apparently the spider-like creature that attacked me is nocturnal so staying in camp would have been a much better idea.

So far, most word of mouth on the game has been very positive.

 

I'm currently heavily focused on Craft the World, a pretty 2D-ish Dwarf based builder game. With crafting- oh so much crafting.

Its in early access, but all that appears to remain is adding the final content and Quality of Life features. In other words, I'm not hitting bugs and the dungeon is not collapsing You are a demi-god, basically, and you control your dwarves (pop will go up from 1 to about 10 in 4 or 5 hours of play, completing tasks to advance the tech tree, etc). You give them tasks and cast spells (as mana allows) to assist them. There are a large variety of raw resources to find (wood, snow, ice, stone, iron, coal, silver, gold, mythril, dirt, water- think that's all) which are the building blocks for your shelter, food, and gear.

After level 3 or 4 (30 min of playing, maybe? The early levels go by quick), the undead will start coming for you every 45ish min at night via red portals of doom. Even if they totally overwhelm your base and kill your dwarves, all you lose is time. They don't destroy/loot resources, and a dwarves will regenerate at a rate of 1 per 4 min until you hit the pop cap again. It makes for a nice distraction/goal to prevent player tedium, I find.

There are currently 3 different world types (forest, ice, desert), each with some unique creatures. Each world is procedurally generated when you create a new game. Desert was added last month, iirc. I'm enjoying myself immensely, setting up underground wheat farms, deadly trap corridors, fishing ponds, wood cultivation. I didn't enjoy dwarf fortress (my eyes, they bled), for comparison purposes.

As far as complaints, the dwarf pathfinding can get confused/slow if you don't limit its options by closing off old mining zones, and there is no way to give priority to certain tasks (thought there is a panic horn spell for defending your base). The final comfort mechanic for bases isn't in yet, so aside from having sturdy walls and doors, the dwarves don't mind sleeping in beds of leaves or that everything else is dirt and guttering torches.

If you like builder variants, its pretty fun.

Edit to Add: I am also now interested in this Planet Explorers game. The crafted but consumable main story world sounds like something I'd really enjoy trying to maximize. Talk about ambition in your game design, though!

 

I got sucked into Civ 5 again. Dear God, it's 5am and I'm only on turn 471 and I need to take down these over-reaching and utterly wrong Polynesians for landing a city next to me...

 

If I play as Spain and someone founds Catholicism before me (hiss) then I go for Islam or Protestantism. #CivVFacts

 

And I prefer Total War. Rome II was an epic fail, but the other games of this series are just great. Medieval II is my favourite one (I think because it was my first TW game). It's one of those games that keeps surprising you over and over again for years.

 

The Total Wars are also on my list; I play them when I'm in more of a conquering / military mood, and play Civ when I want to do tech trees and culture and other parts.

Speaking of conquering / military mood, I bought Europa Universalis IV on sale a long time ago and still haven't played it...and that also reminds me that I haven't played Hearts of Iron II in a long time...

too many games, not enough time

 

Rome II was ugly and, to me, unplayable. Felt like the excellent direction and plot use for the tutorial was completely wasted. It should have had an actual campaign mode. Felt a bit cheated that they advertised it with like that woman on the boat and Cleopatra and stuff, and yet these figures weren't really part of the game.

Give me The King's Crusade any day (though that's The Holy Crusades, not Ancient History)

 

Still playing hearthstone, one way heroics and skyrim, all at low intensity. (Like 1 hour sessions).

Just reinstalled Dead Space 3... so I can play with the gun crafting, and I actually liked the combat in that game.

 

Remember Steam Marines? Playing it now. It's had some nice updates.