What games are you playing and why?

I had little interest in Elite, and the only reason I'm going to be into its major "competition" of Star Citizen is because five of my friends are into Star Citizen. No idea if Star Citizen will ever live up to its hype, either.

However, I do second the thoughts about Plague, Inc. I've played the mobile and PC versions quite a bit. It's a fun little game to play for a bit, try and kill the world, and then play something else until the urge to infect people hits again.

 

I did eventually beat Bacteria on Normal difficulty, as well as Virus after that. Failed once so far on Fungus though (fungi have some difficulty crossing national borders so I'll have to rethink my strategy). Virus was a lot of fun though -- the naturally fast mutation rate made it relatively easy (someone told me that bacteria actually is one of the hardest scenarios of the main game, so I'm probably over the hump). I've also been told that some of the player-created scenarios are a lot of fun, so I'll probably give one of those a go as well.

I supported Elite partly for nostalgia reasons. It's my understanding that Star Citizen is taking a fairly different approach to the same basic kind of game. I haven't followed Star Citizen all that closely so I'm not sure exactly what is meant by that. One of the main issues with SC is going to be the fact that they raised SO much darned money that expectations may be completely unreasonably high, and that can lead to an unfair backlash.

 

Hmm, playing—that is, in-between trying to write, trying to code, and running myself ragged because the universe had apparently decided I have to be kept busy—a randomly chosen game made in RPG Maker that happened to be featured on their website. In this particular case, it happens to be a game called “Lunar Wish - Orbs of Fate”.

It's ... well, it's a fairly standard game of the sort, it would seem (I'm only level 11 there, so I'm not too far into the plot yet). But it's nice in how it doesn't really treat itself seriously. Oh, sure, there's some sort of plot that might or might not be perceived as serious, but the creator of the game wasn't afraid to put cliché after cliché, lampshade them whenever possible, and run with the ridicule to the end of the world. Throughout the time I played it, I laughed every so often and it was actually fairly refreshing.

Oh, sure, some characters are annoying (well, that's what you get with characters who are cliché asshats), but for the most part it's actually amusing.

 

I think Elite Dangerous is really really unfriendly towards new players.

I backed in the kickstarter but didn't play until past holiday.

I did the tutorials.

Then I started the game. Spent a long long time figuring out how to operate the menus (mouse is gone in most menu's, need to use 1,2,3,4 and WASD and QE it seems), I launch, and then I try to fire my guns to see how it looks: fined!
Then some later time I eject some cannisters I have no use for: fine!
Then some fed sec ship crashes into me: fine, and they immediately all open fire on me.

I get so tired of it.. Fly a long way, wait for wanted guys, fight them, some guy bumps into you or out of nowhere flies right through your beam of fire, and then you have to fly all the way back, fiddle with modules, silent running, land, pay a measly 200 cr, launch, sc, fly, brake, drop from sc, wait for new wanted people.

And still the combat is fun enough that I keep playing.
I also had mission that couldn't complete for some reason (it appears slaves meant for freeing cannot be stolen!!), and LOTS of very unintuitive things where you're just toast the first time it happens.

I mean even the scan and silent running thing: one point I had a fine so I just fly back, little did I know they fry you on entry!
It just doesn't make sense: you're welcome to dock, you're a highly respected bounty hunter, but oh no you scratched the paint of some novice who flies right into your laser beam and suddenly you are utterly annihilated.

So yeah, a hate-love thing here.

And I tried a little exploring and a little trading, but the combat is for me so far by far the most fun. I just dislike the SC mechanic too, it's too slow and annoying. Sometimes you have systems with 100K ls between places, my starting system had my starting dock 100K ls from the nav beacon :s

 

I couldn't even get through the tutorials for Elite Dangerous without getting thoroughly frustrated.

BTW, I was able to complete every one of the basic scenarios for "Plague Inc. Evolved" on Normal difficulty or harder. Yay! Then I Realized that there are lots of special scenarios built into the game, and SO MANY achievements to get. Some of the scenarios are quite fun. Heck, some of the basic scenarios are equally fun, such as the Simian Flu (ie. Planet of the Apes), the Necroa Virus (ie. Zombie plague), and the Neurax Worm. One thing I really enjoyed was that there is this achievement you can get, where you can 'arrange' for the U.S. to attack either Russia or China with nuclear weapons. It's a bit tricky to get, but once you figure out the clues (and which scenario allows for it to happen), it's not terribly difficult. It's kind of obvious which scenario it is once you've played through it, but the tricky part is all in the timing.

 

Claustrophobia: The Downward Struggle is an early access game but is already fairly well playable. I am enjoying it a great deal and the upcoming features look pretty good too. It's a rogue like and the controls are quite good so far. There are still a few bugs, in one of the store based rooms I purchased a bow for my archer and it said I did and took the money but the bow never appeared in my inventory. This has only happened once in 7 hours (according to steam) of playing. The loading is still VERY basic, it loads only the last game you were playing and only that one until you die or start a new one. If you do die and choose load again it loads the previous game you were playing before that one. I haven't tried to see how many it will keep track of, just one game besides the current one is all I have tried so far. Still, all in all I would have to say there is a lot of promise to this game.

Indiegala currently has it in a bundle until Monday for $1.99 us at https://www.indiegala.com/monday and may be worth it to some of the people here.

 

I'm still playing a bit of Worlds of Magic, Plague, Inc, and Talisman DE (which recently got 2 free characters: Ninja and Pirate). But I've also been dabbling a little bit with a very light roguelike called Hyper Rogue. You can pay under a dollar and get steam achievements.

The game is a bit of a mind-bender in that it is played on a non-euclidean map space, but otherwise is quite simple in composition -- you get attacked, you die, you attack something, it dies. There are a variety of treasures to collect, worlds to explore, power-ups, and so on. But otherwise, it's pretty straight forward (in a hallucinogenic way). Don't worry about getting lost, as I get the feeling that being lost just means you are playing the game.

Anyway, play it for free, or download it from steam for .89 US.

 

A game on my wishlist suddenly was on sale, so I picked it up: "Adventure Manager".

First of all, let me just say that this is not going to be a rave review. The idea behind the game is more interesting than its execution. It starts out like a THOROUGHLY conventional cheap-ass 2-d turn-based rpg. You recruit party members, set them up in formation, get a quest, explore a dungeon and kill monsters to fulfill that quest, get rewards, rinse and repeat.

The main twist on this is that you can control more than one team of adventurers, and share loot between them. And while you control one group adventuring, you can send others on automated adventures. Fun? Not exactly. It's like you have friends, only they are not friends at all, that are going on their own adventures, and you can get rewarded for their efforts. Which is kind of boring. Unfortunately, actually taking control of the group on an adventure is only moderately more interesting and fun.

That said, I did spend 90 minutes playing the game, but a large part of that 90 minutes was thinking "when the hell is this thing going to end so that I can save the game and quit because man am I tired of this game".

Then again, I have to admit that I've grown tired of RPGs in general. I don't know why. The last few I've tried, i just could not stick with. I think it might be me and my recent lack of focus. So YMMV. Just know that I can't give Adventure Manager a good review at this time.

 

I've mentioned before that I really enjoy Match 3 games (well, some of them). There was a new release today with the unlikely title of "Bret Airborne", a Match 3 game with a few twists and a steampunk theme. It's kind of in the style of Puzzle Quest (for those who've played that) in that you have combats that are settled on a match-3 type board, where making specific types of matches will do damage to your opponents, or earn mana/power for use in special abilities (which you can buy with the loot that you find).

The game has a unique twist. During combat, the board is divided up into two halves by a line. You can only move icons on your side of the line, and you cannot cross the line (but you can match tiles on both sides). Certain things you do, such as matching 4 or more in a row, will move the line towards your oponent, giving you more options. So this adds some additional tactical options.

Not only is this a fun game, but it can be damned hard. I've been playing the campaign, and you start with a certain number of repair kits for a dirigible that you are flying, and if you run out of repair kits, you are truly dead (yes, there's permadeath in this game). I've been playing on medium difficulty, and I think I've so far only managed to get to the third map before I run out of lives and have to start all over again.


Anyway, this game came completely out of the blue for me, and I'm really glad I picked it up. I think next time I'm going to have to try this on easy lol.

 

I'm playing a bit of "Ticket to Ride" -- it came on sale for 50% off, and I decided to pick it up for PC (I had it previously for IOS, but my old IPad is dead, and I don't intend to buy a replacement).

At least the IOS version was the BEST port of a board game that I'd ever played, and the PC version, from the little I've played it, seems to be up to snuff (and in fact, includes new maps that I didn't have on the IOS version back when I was playing it).

The game is pretty simple, and there are alternate maps each with special rules, and alternate decks of cards that change the game a bit. Note that everything I'm saying now refers specifically to the basic game, on a the USA map. The premise of the game is that you and up to 4 other players (human or computer-controlled) are each running a railroad business. You are competing to complete routes connecting specific cities together. You each draw 3 routes, of which you may discard one if you wish. Each route has two city names on it and a point value. You then take turns either drawing rail cards or building your railroad. The map has specific routes where you can build rails, and if another player claims that route, you are out of luck. They each have a specific color, but there are also grey routes that can act as any color. When you play a route, you have to have at least the number of rails of the right color to claim the route. So if there's a red route that is 5 long, you need to play 5 reds to claim it. Note that there are also 'wildcards' which you can substitute for a rail of any color.

Anyway, when one player is down to 0 to 2 rails left, the game goes for one more round, and then it ends. You tally up the score, and player with the highest score wins.

It's an incredibly popular board game, and is simple to learn. And you can play a complete game in about a half hour to 45 minutes. The variants that I've played and the different maps are all fun, and have unique flavor to them. There's a European map, Asian map, and a Swiss map available as dlc, and several variants that use the US map.

Anyway, the game is fun, and addictive.

The following is of the board game. The computer version is the same, but without the celebrities lol.

 

Lately, I've been playing Besiege, Mechwarrior Online, and a little bit of multiplayer The Forest.

Speaking of The Forest, that game is creepy and atmospheric when played alone, but a bit of goofy fun when played with a friend.

 

Darkest Dungeons - very good atomsphere, solid system, but god the difficulty spike at level 3 dungeons!

Sunless Sea - again, I enjoy the setting immensely, but its nowhere near as fun to play - and getting anywhere takes a long, long time

And Dominions 4, still.

Hm.... very grim games seem to be my "thing".

 

Hmm ... I've yet to play that one but I'm waiting until it gets delivered since the Kickstarter campaign; I generally don't go for beta-access or alpha-access tiers there unless those are given by default as I don't really have time to play-test things.

That being said, I got through “Tobe's Vertical Adventure” today ... well, with one of the two characters only (with Nana, because I like air-jump more than I like wall-running), but whatever. It's not a long game nor anything overly complicated, but it was nice as far as games go.

Well, and I played “Ring Runner” a bit yesterday. This one is a bit more arcadey in how it controls, but it's easy to get used to it unless you suck at it even more than I do (and I do suck quite badly, so it's not that hard to get good at it if I could survive). That being said, the game was fun, but there were a few things that annoyed me about it, like redundant achievements (there's one mission after which you get 3 or 4 achievements just for completing it, not because you did it on some difficulty or above or for doing something else but every single one of those just for completing it at all), or the fact that the creators seem incapable of differentiating between “effect” and “affect” (which is so common nowadays that it's just sad).
Still, even with those annoyances, once you get to the point where you can customise your ship (or even earlier, if you like the ships you are given as a part of the really long—though not monotonous—tutorial) it's actually really fun as there are a lot of minor things you need to pay attention to in combat and skills you need to use effectively, and though it can get quite frantic it's not a mess ... well, unless you botch it up and allow yourself to get overwhelmed.

 

While most of my gaming has still been with Worlds of Magic, I did pick up another new game that's worth mentioning: "SanctuaryRPG: Black Edition". Imho, it's not a very catch title, and on the face of it, the game SEEMS very primitive. But once I started playing, I couldn't help but fall in love with it.

It's a very retro Dungeon Crawler Adventure RPG with roguelike influence. It's kind of a text-based dungeon crawler adventure with ascii graphics and lots of humor, challenging tactical combat with lots of decisions to make. Oh and it's harder than it seems at first glance. The tactics in the game is deep enough to be satisfying, and there are plenty of combinations of races, classes, skills, and so on to play with.

And when I say ascii graphics, I don't exactly mean the kind of ascii graphics in games like Rogue or Nethack, but more like ascii art (and if you don't get what I mean by that, watch the video:http://store.steampowered.com/app/328760/ ).

 

Regarding Sunless Sea, I'm not going to say I've cracked the code, but from captain to captain my results seem to be improving,

There are many ways to fail (and I'm on my way to discovering them all), but I'm having luck concentrating on Iron to start with - I picked the soldier background and between that bonus and a few others (+5 Iron at the pirate hideout, some Secrets) I'm up to a 65. Along with the Echoes from the Admiral and the University, I was able to upgrade my gun so that small units (bats, those small crabs) can sometimes get taken out with one shot. That changes the equation a bit, since my ship can expect to get by with fewer supplies.

I'm sure this will end in horrible death for my captain and crew eventually, but so far, so good.

 

I haven't made much progress at all with Sunless Sea, and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Or maybe I've just been completely unlucky.

 

I was having a decent run of things, but then I managed to get Mt. Nomad angry... and well, that was that really. I'll eventually work up the energy to try again!