What games are you playing and why?

In between other games, I've been dabbling with "Heroes of Steel: Tactics RPG". It's moderately fun, seems to have a stereotypical fantasy rpg plot (but I tend not to expect much from video game writing anyway). It's pretty scripted, and not all that special, but I see it more as a time killer than anything else, something that I can play in small doses.

 

Well, I finally took the plunge and started playing Europa Universalis IV. It took a little bit of getting used to, but now I'm well on my way to expanding the Ottoman Empire to greatness. Slowly, surely, and half the time with nothing but my awesome diplomats, but the world will be mine I say. Mine.

 

My Binding of Isaac: Rebirth binge seems to be over. About 40ish hours, unlocked more than half the things. Samson is good now, and I don't like Cain much. Have yet to do any of the challenges, but the game is solid and the new items added some neato tear effects (Rubber Cement with Mysterious Fluid and Guppy was crazy fun. Things happened on the screen and everything just died.)

The EU games never really tickled the grand strategy itch for me- I see lots of other people playing it, however. I think it must be the setting... I just don't care to spend time in a WW I or II game. Tanks- bah! I need robots and magic.

On that note, after getting burned with the ME3 debacle (and it was. Bad Bioware ending team.) and singed with DA: 2, I hadn't planned on getting DA: Inquisition anywhere near release. But I ended up getting it yesterday after reading the cautious but seemingly widespread acclaim.

Thus far, I spent about 2 hours in the Keep (this online tool that lets you record your actions in the previous games and thus affect the starting worldstate of DA:I. Its pretty cool, I must say. It got me excited for the game as well, reminding me of all the nifty characters and situations bioware crammed into the first two titles) and like 30 min in game after character creation. So, I have nothing to say about gameplay yet!

Anyone else pick it up and perhaps get a bit farther in? (Rolled a female Dalish Dual-Wield Rogue to start)

 

EU is set during medieval times. Hearts of Iron is the WWII game. Both are still distinctly lacking in robots or magic.

 

Well then. I definitely merged EU with Hearts of Iron in my head at some point. Thanks for setting me straight

 

I picked up a few inexpensive games during the current Steam sale, including one called "Letter Quest: Grimm's Journey". I've mentioned before that I like word games. Well this is kind of a word game/rpg hybrid. You travel through a dungeon, fighting monsters by spelling words, and collecting treasure, which you can then use to purchase or upgrade a variety of items. You can unlock a variety of weapons, potions, books, and so on. My favorite book enables me to heal a little every time I use the letter 'E', as an example.

Each room can be played in 4 variations, but you must at least beat the first variation before you can try the second, and so on. getting through the first, unlocks passages into one or more other rooms, so technically, you don't have to do all of them (but you get more treasure if you do).

The first variation is always pretty straight-forward -- the monsters are relatively easy, and there's no special rules. The second variation is always timed -- so you may have 30 seconds or 1 minute or so on to kill all the enemies. The third has special rules that affect all your combats -- so, for example, words containing doubled letters (eg. the 't' in the word 'LETTER') do double damage, or words containing 'O' do double damage). The fourth is the hardest -- monsters have greatly increased health and damage, and there are special rules to inure them. For example, some monsters can only be injured by 4-letter words. Others can only be injured by using 2 or more corner letters (letters that you may use to attack with are displayed in a rectangular array).

To make matters harder, some monsters can poison letters, or crack them or infect them. If you use a poisoned letter, you do damage to yourself. Cracked letters do no damage at all. And infected letters are like cracked letters, only if you don't use them up, the disease can spread.

Every once in a while you find a treasure chest -- to open them, you must solve a hangman-style puzzle by picking letters.

Anyway, it's a fun little game that will make your brain hurt at times (if you are about my age) but will get the grey matter going. I definitely recommend it.

 

I've been playing Dungeon of the Endless. It's an interesting blend of procedurally-generated dungeon crawl and tower defense. Your primary resource is is time, measure per door you open. Opening said doors is the main way you accumulate different kinds of resources, which you use to purchase standing defenses, and other resource gathering modules. It's an interesting game.

 

I've certainly tried that in other games after they kill me 10 times in a row :X

Have you tried the game Clockwords on Kongregate? (and possibly other sites). It has a similar "type enemies to death" mechanic, where you build a "deck" of letters that show up during the fight, and you can craft weaker letters into stronger ones that deal AOE damage or bonus damage based on word length etc. Letter Quest sounds a lot more indepth, but you might find this one enjoyable too.

 

Dragon Age: Inquisition. It has a lot of heft, and the characters in it are enjoyable to get to know. Assuming you enjoy that sort of thing in your bioware games, this is a good game in the tradition of Kotor and Dragon Age: Origins. Combat with a DW Rogue feels incomplete though- no auto attack and a not that great tactical combat mode keep it inferior to Dragon Age Origins Combat. This is all for the PC, so its possible on consoles combat works better.

Re my major irritations with Dragon Age II, environments are far more varied and enemies don't jump in from rooftops in immersion breaking waves.

 

Been grabbing lots of single player TDs lately, as my ISP has given me 600+ ping for the past 2 months (and my new computer's not here yet for Clockwork Empires)...

About done with Super Sanctum TD from earlier. The final two achievements apparently require you to mindlessly grind Chapter 3 Survival Mode for 14 hours or so. Doubt I'll do that unless I get too sick to think. And the Lightning Tower is still ludicrously good.

Grabbed Bloons TD5 on Steam. Was quite fun for free on Kongregate, then they released a mobile version with a few new things that I didn't try, then added a few more for the Steam version. After about 30 hours it gets kinda repetitive, as most maps are beaten exactly the same way (and beating a map on Hard *does not* grant the xp/money/tokens/achievements for beating it on easy/medium, which leads to further brainless timewasting). The new towers are interesting, and there's a ton of old Daily Challenges I could go through for variety, but the basic "campaign" is the fastest way to grind the tokens/buildings needed for upgrades.

Got Defense Grid 2 last night, and I definitely advise everyone to wait for a few more patches...
*UI is pretty unresponsive sometimes, some buttons literally do nothing, tooltips lie etc
*The range indicator circle still does not take LOS into account, so a tower that "covers" an entire lane might actually only reach 20% of it because there are towers/hills/invisiblespecksofdust in the way that prevent it from shooting
*The Fast Forward button is now a toggle instead of a hold, hooray! Unfortanately it also triples the speed of aliens but SLOWS YOUR TOWERS DOWN how did this leave beta like this...
*There's some rune/socket system for towers that's never really explained anywhere. Before each map you can "equip" each tower with modifiers (I assume one per tower, but it's not explained anywhere), and the modifiers available come from random drops after finishing a mission (and it appears to be completely random, as I got one from Gold Medal normal difficulty, one from less-than-Bronze medal normal, one that showed up in my inventory with no popup whatsoever so I don't know where it came from, but getting a Gold Medal on a Challenge on Hard gave nothing). The modifiers do things like "stronger debuff", "more armor piercing", and "auto-target high priority enemies" which as far as I can tell causes the tower to IGNORE ENEMIES THAT ARE CARRYING CORES wut.
*The new Boost tower is a cheap blocker that you can build a tower on top of (which maaaybe improves its LOS?), and allows a one-time upgrade to that tower's Damage (which is given as a % while the tower itself uses a line chart) or Score (which is unlisted; you get a score bonus for NOT SPENDING MONEY, so it's possible this upgrade REDUCES your score depending on the secret numbers?) or an aura "in the towers range" (which is apparently the Boost tower's secret range because it's not listed on the boost tower itself but it's the same tiny range when on a Flamethrower or a Meteor artillary tower...). You can't change this bonus without selling *both* towers.
*Towers are exactly the same as the first one, with the following changes:
--Flying enemies removed, so the air-ground towers *probably* got a damage bonus vs the ground-only towers, but it's hard to tell with the line graphs (there's a helpful "Damage this tower has dealt" tooltip, but that depends a lot on location on the map and how early you bought it...)
--The Heat system replaced with a standard DOT system (enemies no longer "cool off", they go straight from On Fire to Room Temperature.)
--Command Tower replaced with the aforementioned Boost tower
--Missle tower replaced with...Missle tower, which deals bonus damage based on how far it can shoot. Good luck finding the LOS.
--Tesla towers no longer build up charges over time.
--Gun, Flame, Cannon, Laser, Concussive, Meteor, Temporal seem unchanged except invisible number tweaks and the new more-boring Heat system.

So um...good changes from the first one:
*Graphics are more detailed
*Continues the great voicework with new lines
*Toggleable Heat Map for damage dealt, and Damage Dealt By This Tower tooltip
*Toggle speed option (if it worked)
*Boost tower, Modifiers, Orbital Laser replacements could be interesting (if they worked)
*There's 20 maps each with a dozen-ish Challenges, 3 Modes, 4 Difficulties, meaning there's a ton of separate medals/leaderboards if that's your kinda thing.

Bad:
*bugs
*Like Bloons, difficulty is not retroactive. Beat a map on Hard, it will still be blank in Normal mode. ~_~
*Also like Bloons, too many numbers are kept secret for my taste. There are a lot of things that I feel should be ingame rather than having to alt-tab to the wiki.
*buuuugs

Could be fun after a few patches, right now I can't recommend it

Edit: The Fast Forward thing seems to work better on Lowest graphics settings. Apparently tower targeting AI is lower on the CPU priority list than particle effects or something.

Edit edit: Aaaand a dev confirmed on the Steam forums that the Fast Forward button, besides making the game harder...REDUCES THE LOOT YOU GET AT THE END OF THE MAP. wutisthisidonteven

 

Thanks for those details about Defense Grid 2. The first is still one of my favorite games, and I'd heard this one didn't (yet) live up to it. Looks like I'll be waiting a bit.

 

Anyone else notice that "Dragon Age: Inquisition" is the same exact idea as "The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion"?

Someone important dies. Gates to some generic form of Hell open up everywhere, and the only one who can close them starts the game as a prisoner, and quickly becomes the ruler over basically everyone... Nothing more needs to be said about this one.

I hate plagiarism.

 

Except it isn't the same idea once you investigate a bit.

The death of the important person was very necessary to the opening of the sigil gates in Oblivion. The death of the important person is irrelevant to breaching the veil in Inquisition.* (It is useful for confusing everyone, but not needed.)

While I suppose you could say the plane the sigil gates lead to is a generic version of hell, the Fade in Inquisition is not "basically" hell. If anything, it is a variation on the idea of a "spirit world"- magic is everywhere, and there are good and bad spirits who may be interested in mortals.

In Oblivion, like all Elder Scrolls games, the player starts as a prisoner with a blank background slate. In Inquis, the player starts the game as a distinct race/class with a predefined background and last name who is attending the Conclave for different reasons.

Re becoming the ruler over basically everyone.... um, does that even happen in Oblivion? Pretty sure a khajit PC would never become emperor. And while I haven't completed Inquis yet, Bioware doesn't allow all PC paths to lead to dominion. So while, yes, in Origins a Human Noble PC could become a second-class King, a City Elf would never have that option. Ditto in Dragon Age II- a Mage Hawk is never going to become Duke. Hence, I would be surprised if ALL the PC paths enable dominion at the end of Inquisition.

Calling it plagiarism is simply not justified. Unless you consider all stories where the world is saved plagiarism, then it is totally plagiarism. Along with reams of other works.

*= I haven't beaten the game yet, so if there is a reveal that shows the Divine had to die in the ritual that triggered the breach, please let me know.

 

I'm currently playing Craft the World and (still) Dragon Age Inquisition. Craft the World is a resource gathering/tech up/build base game, with a bit of /defend base thrown in. You are the god/spirit in the sky of a tribe of dwarfs, who depend on you to direct their activities. You also can get access to a number of spells over the game, though I spend the VAST majority of my mana on transport portals to speed up resource gathering.

The game finally left early access within the past month, and is highly polished and enjoyable, though once you learn some of the key areas to dump resources into it becomes much easier. You do "craft" everything you make in the game with different inputs (soil, sand, silver, wood, water, iron, coal, meat, leather, fist, etc), which I found fun.

If you play the campaign (and why wouldn't you to start), the first world takes about 10 hours to complete the first time. The second takes longer, and the third longer still. Each has some new fauna to exploit, some new monster types, and different crafting restrictions imposed by the conditions of the world. Plenty of trees for wood in the first world, for example, with barely any in the third desert world. Sand is, of course, abundant.

If you like base building and crafting with a dash of combat, this game should be up your alley.

 

Your points are accurate and well taken. I stand by my opinion, but it is just that. And I will not spoil it for you. I will never play the game so long as it requires Origin installed to play it, but one day there may be a DRM free version sold. At that point I may have different opinions about it.

The one thing I will say against your points is that while Humans in the DA series are the only ones that can govern Humans, the Inquisition is entirely different. An elf could come to rule the Inquisition, and have far more power than any Human king/duke/earl/whatever could manage. That is all I can say without spoiling it entirely.

When I first started watching Let's Play videos of it, I decided it was plagiarism, but now after watching quite a bit more, I have to retract that opinion. It is too different for the similarities to lead to that conclusion. I am still watching them today. So I may have even more differing opinions before I am done watching them. And I am watching different classes and races too, so I can see it is unique enough that even if they called the Fade "Oblivion" it would still not be plagiarism.

And if you like spoilers,

Spoiler: Spoiler

There is a bit that you will learn that does lead you in a particular way that seems to support my comparison, but I still do not think it is plagiarism anymore. You will see this right after Adamant. (If you do not know what that is, then you have not seen that part yet.)

 

I have not played Dragon Age: Inquisition (probably won't since I was unimpressed with the first Dragon Age game). But I also have problems with the term 'plagiarism' except where it literally is true (passing off someone else's work as ones own). You'd have to have more than common plot elements for something to count as plagiarism. You pretty much need to show where the dialog is the same or nearly the same, where the story is not just similar, but exactly the same, and so on.

The problem may not be plagiarism, but a lack of originality. The first is criminal, the second merely lack of imagination.

Part of the reason (although not the entire reason) why (until I discovered urban fantasy) shied away from reading fantasy novels is that, ironically, they tended to feel lazy to me, and lacked much in the way of actual imagination. Ideas were far too often recycled, and/or uninteresting, the stories didn't usually seem all that relevant or interesting, they dealt too much with stereotypes rather than real characters, the so-called morality tended to be far too simplistic, they often had undercurrents of racism, and so on. There were exceptions, but they were far too rare for my taste.

 

Playing Northmark, since I had it on my wishlist and it was in an indie gala bundle recently.
It's simple, but so far good fun actually. Just the type of thing I have energy for after a hard day's work

 

I supported the Elite Dangerous Kickstarter, mostly because I really enjoyed playing Elite back in the day. Well, it's been released, and I finally got a chance to try it. Long story short, I can't even get through the second tutorial (basic combat). The first tutorial was simply to shoot cannisters that are immobile and don't shoot back. I managed to do that eventually (but it's amazing how difficult it is to hit a non-moving target lol). Second (of about a half dozen or so ?) tutorials, there's only 1 target. He doesn't move and will not shoot at you until you shoot at it. First attempt, I don't think I got even close to hitting him once. Second attempt, i probably hit a total of 5 times for every 100 or so times I got hit (and eventually destroyed). I don't think it's actually supposed to be difficult (I went to the forums and people are complaining that the game is too easy lol).

OK, money wasted. And I knew better.

As far as more positive experiences are concerned, I also have been dabbling with Plague, Inc. Evolved. It's a game that was on my wishlist for a bit, and I picked it up during a holiday sale.

While it does take a BIT of good reflexes, I actually can play the game without getting TOO Frustrated. I've been able to beat the game on casual difficulty, and made a pretty decent showing on normal difficulty (though have yet to win). The premise is that you are a disease, with the capability of evolving, and your goal is to kill everyone in the world. Yes, it is a kind of dark premise, but it's still fun.

The main playfield is a global map. You select where your disease will first appear, and let it go wild. You pop bubbles (Orange and REd to collect DNA, Blue to slow down research on a cure). When you've collected sufficient DNA, you go to one of 3 screens where you can choose to spend that DNA either on transmission mechanisms, symptoms, and/or abillities. Transmission mechanisms include things like water, transmission, livestock, etc. Symptoms include rashes, sneezing, and so on. Abilities include things like a resistance to hot or cold temperatures, and so on.

You can only win in 1 way -- kill everyone in the world. You can lose in two ways:
1. If a cure is found before everyone is dead or...
2. If the disease is so dangerous that it kills all carriers before it can spread sufficiently to kill everyone.
I've lost both ways (didn't realize I could lose in the second way -- I guess I went a little bit too hog-wild on symptoms, and didn't put enough into transmission).

There's a degree of replayability in that as you win games, collect DNA, etc., you can unlock a wide variety of options, such as viruses, prion diseases, starting bonuses, etc. There's also Steam Workshop integration for player-created scenarios. (there's also some dev-created scenarios, including Simian Flu, which is a kind of Planet of the Apes product placement. I haven't yet tried any of the scenarios, and dont intend to until i can actually beat the game on normal difficulty.

Anyway, its a fast-playing game that you can finish in a half-hour to an hour or so, and then move on, or try again with a different strategy.