What video games have you been playing? 4

[Birdjaguar]

Napoleon Total War 3

 

[bhavv]

So it seems like the single developer of this game totally didnt balance it for the highest difficulty:


Link to video.

Lets just make all the mobs impossibru!!!!

And another 100% mega totally impossibru boss fight later in the game, with an amazing trollworthy tooltip!


Link to video.

Torment difficulty too hard? Just change it to casual!!!

 

[Ajidica]

Hey, glad to see someone else playing Avernum!

And the developer, Jeff Vogel, has gone on record saying he does not balance the game on Torment, on the grounds people playing on Torment is entirely a self-inflicted choice.
So you getting beat by trash mobs is entirely on you!


Anyhow, I've been playing more Skyrim with the Requiem mod installed. After disabling Frostfall (I want to explore the northern parts of skyrim without freezing to death, darn it!) and putting in around three weekends to get my Dunmer battlemage to level 16 I'm finally getting into the swing of things. I can start exploring the fun dungeons and taking quests.

 

[Takhisis]

I've tweaked R:TW so as to be able to play Vanilla with Thrace and (currently) Armenia. Bloody hell, those Scythians and their horse archers are tough. But my cataphract archers will destroy them soon enough, and meanwhile the Seleucids will have to stay out of range of my horse archers.

Had a bout of nostalgia, bought Commandos 2 from Steam for ~3€.

Someone should make a new game like this, in proper 3D, improved AI and up to date graphics...

I think I still have a Commandos CD, I should try installing it.

 

[bhavv]

Hey, glad to see someone else playing Avernum!

And the developer, Jeff Vogel, has gone on record saying he does not balance the game on Torment, on the grounds people playing on Torment is entirely a self-inflicted choice.
So you getting beat by trash mobs is entirely on you!


Anyhow, I've been playing more Skyrim with the Requiem mod installed. After disabling Frostfall (I want to explore the northern parts of skyrim without freezing to death, darn it!) and putting in around three weekends to get my Dunmer battlemage to level 16 I'm finally getting into the swing of things. I can start exploring the fun dungeons and taking quests.

I did have to drop the difficulty to normal for all the solo parts. But I want to play on Torment QQ.

 

[Arakhor]

Anyhow, I've been playing more Skyrim with the Requiem mod installed. After disabling Frostfall (I want to explore the northern parts of skyrim without freezing to death, darn it!) and putting in around three weekends to get my Dunmer battlemage to level 16 I'm finally getting into the swing of things. I can start exploring the fun dungeons and taking quests.

Woose! Get a big fur cloak and be done with it.

Requiem was one of the big mods I wanted to try out, but I'd committed to SkyRe, which rather set my mod list accordingly.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I decided to try out The Long Dark's recent revamp over the weekend. Gathering firewood makes a little more sense; it's still not fully realistic, but I think it's clear they're not aiming for a wilderness survival simulator; and now the hatchet is one of the most important tools you can find. Fighting wolves is a little less lethal; I actually killed one of the frackers. The small travel zone between Mystery Lake and Coastal Highway has been dramatically expanded. The walking speed (slightly faster than it was before) is better than the perma-jogging you used to do, and the sprinting function actually means you can get away from predators.

It's still an aimless 'sandbox' - it's still in its "playable Alpha build" stage - but all in all, it's a good improvement to gameplay.

 

[Zack]

Making my way through Diablo 3 with a Crusader. Really liking it so far.

 

[Ajidica]

Woose! Get a big fur cloak and be done with it.

Requiem was one of the big mods I wanted to try out, but I'd committed to SkyRe, which rather set my mod list accordingly.

How is SkyRe? From the Nexus page it just looked like a MOAR STUFF mod that didn't really address (for me at least) the two big issues with Skyrim: the sensation that you never really got stronger (Bandits at level 1 are going to be roughly the same challenge at level 1, up to a point) and that it was possible to really gimp your character with due to the leveling system.
In my first playthrough, I decided to have some fun experimenting with Smithing and Enchanting because creating my own stuff is fun, and I ended up way underleveled and really started struggling. Because, after all, the draugr are training.

 

[Arakhor]

I don't recall ever seeing that issue of Critical Miss.

Now that you mention it, I'm not sure that SkyRe radically changes those two issues (if at all), but it does provide lots of interesting perks and makes room for the all-new Wayfaring tree (especially useful with Frostfall) by combining the Pickpocket and Lockpicking trees into one. (I definitely approve of that last change.)

 

[EgonSpengler]

I tried Civ: BE over the free Steam weekend, and found it to be what so many people said it is: Something of a lost opportunity that suffers from a disappointing lack of imagination. I played for 6 or 7 hours, which is at the same time a long time to spend doing anything and not a lot of time to spend on a game this size. Still, much of the game felt very timid, somehow.

I like the idea of the tech web, for instance, but in my 6 hours of playing I didn't have any sense that my selections were very meaningful. I only got to the first couple of rings, but a friend who's played more than I have told me the tech web gets less interesting as you go outward. Oy vey. The missions were also a nice touch, but in the three games I started, I think I got all the same ones, in the same order, and the choices I made just didn't feel very important (that is, when I deliberately made a different choice on the 2nd or 3rd game, I couldn't discern much of a difference on subsequent turns).

The game also clings to gameplay mechanics that were designed for a society still grappling with the implications of agriculture and writing. Fog of War, for example, makes sense when you're talking about the Aztecs and the Assyrians, but you have to squeeze off the bloodflow to your brain trying to deal why these colonies don't have networks of satellites, hi-resolution imaging, 3D printers, and so on. I mean, heck, the drones we have now, in 2015, are more advanced than what your colonists get in the game.

At several points, I wondered to myself whether the game's designers were even fans of science fiction.



"I got signals, in front and behind."
"Where? I don't see [crap]."
"I'm telling you, there's something moving, and it ain't us."
"Maybe they don't show up on infra-red..."

The one thing I did like, and that felt different from Civ V, was the aliens. Without a mod, barbarians in Civ V are hardly even worth acknowledging. After a hundred turns of BE, some of the alien nests had taken over whole portions of the continent and my exploration teams were just dodging around, trying to survive and find a way back to base. At one point, I finally had had enough and assembled a whole army just to go stomp the bugs, and it weren't no cakewalk.

 

[Commodore]

The one thing I did like, and that felt different from Civ V, was the aliens. Without a mod, barbarians in Civ V are hardly even worth acknowledging. After a hundred turns of BE, some of the alien nests had taken over whole portions of the continent and my exploration teams were just dodging around, trying to survive and find a way back to base. At one point, I finally had had enough and assembled a whole army just to go stomp the bugs, and it weren't no cakewalk.

My first serious game of BE, I got stomped by the bugs because I treated them like the barbs in Civ V. I did eventually fight them off, but they had caused so much damage and I invested so much into fighting them that I had no hope of winning that game and fell woefully behind the other civs.

 

[EgonSpengler]

My first serious game of BE, I got stomped by the bugs because I treated them like the barbs in Civ V. I did eventually fight them off, but they had caused so much damage and I invested so much into fighting them that I had no hope of winning that game and fell woefully behind the other civs.

Yeah, I didn't play long enough to notice, but I imagine my war effort would have impacted my economy in the long run. A couple units of infantry, a sharpshooter, two of the gun buggies, and two missile buggies. And my hippy neighbors were getting cranky that I was mowing down the local fauna. I mean, hey, they started it. I was totally going for the peaceful scientist approach until they started eating people...



Link to video.

(Vid is a little NSFW.)

I actually didn't know that Stations pack up after a while if they don't get any trade routes, so I thought the aliens were destroying them.

 

[cardgame]

If we're talking DnD style games I have played a bit of Pillars of Eternity and it is amazing.

However, I'm spending the majority of my game time on World of Warships.

 

[Commodore]

Yeah, I didn't play long enough to notice, but I imagine my war effort would have impacted my economy in the long run. A couple units of infantry, a sharpshooter, two of the gun buggies, and two missile buggies. And my hippy neighbors were getting cranky that I was mowing down the local fauna. I mean, hey, they started it. I was totally going for the peaceful scientist approach until they started eating people...

See, I stupidly decided to pick a fight with them on first contact, so all I had was the most basic military unit to fight with.

 

[Takhisis]

So, I've suddenly had this urge to play the old UFO games… let us say that, if you alternate it with reading Lovecraftian poetry you'll soon be dreading any shadow. I'm writing this at dusk, btw…

 

[Arakhor]

Don't forget to check out Open Xcom then!

 

[Takhisis]

No! No! Don't do that! I used to only load it on the Windows partition, now I'll have to play it from Linux too! Curse you, Arakhor the Dremora!

 

[Arakhor]

You're welcome!

 

[Synobun]

I've been playing Europa Universalis 4 as Ryukyu lately. I'm also pondering the idea of getting back into Terraria now that there are achievements. I haven't played the latest content expansion so it seems like it'd be new.

Sure hate playing it alone, though.