What are you guys playing now?

[Wolfbeckett]

Finally picked up Banner Saga yesterday thanks to Steam emailing me a notice that it was on sale. I like it so far but the battle system is weird to get used to. Usually turn based strategy games reward you for ganging up on enemies to reduce their numbers and give yourself a numerical advantage. This game punishes you for it until you get down to 1 enemy, it's much better to weaken all of the enemies equally until you can start taking them all out in one shot. Interesting, but hard to get used to, my natural instinct is still to surround a guy and kill him.

 

[Rub'Rum]

Finally picked up Banner Saga yesterday thanks to Steam emailing me a notice that it was on sale. I like it so far but the battle system is weird to get used to. Usually turn based strategy games reward you for ganging up on enemies to reduce their numbers and give yourself a numerical advantage. This game punishes you for it until you get down to 1 enemy, it's much better to weaken all of the enemies equally until you can start taking them all out in one shot. Interesting, but hard to get used to, my natural instinct is still to surround a guy and kill him.

I haven't played it but when I was considering buying it I read that complaint quite a bit. It seems a bit dumb the way it's built, I dunno. Probably going to pick it up when it's like 5$.

 

[Quintillus]

I was referring more to how 3 had more game modes and a smoother overall experience, not necessarily the gameplay itself, if that makes sense. That said, it's been years since I played either, and I never actually owned a Halo game.

I do like Gryffball in Halo 3 (although I understand that was a player-created variant, not built-in), and Zombie can be fun if you've got a large group on the right map, too. I suppose Halo 3 gives some more customization options as well, such as allowing no shields to one needle from a needler is insta-death, which makes it a very different weapon. I can't think of any other different game modes off the top of my head, but it's been awhile since I played 3. I am curious what smoother experience you're referring to... if it's only online that may be why I haven't noticed it.

For me, though, the gameplay outweighs the additional game modes. Some of each is best overall, but if I'm only playing one, I'd take H2. But I also must admit that until this year I didn't own any of the XBox versions (and still only have 1 and 2), though I have owned 1 for PC for about as long as I've been a member of CFC.

Haven't played any games since yesterday. I haven't really looked into Banner Saga myself; I saw it advertised everywhere when it came out and that kind of turned me away from it.

 

[da dick]

found HOMM3 complete in a 2nd hand store for princely price of 2 bucks. i like that the campaign games have a difficulty setting unlike homm1, but it still feels too difficult. homm seems to be one of the few strategy game series where the campaign game might be harder than a random map set on hard difficulty.

after dying many times from various campaigns in homm3, i went back to playing standard maps in homm1 for a while

 

[civvver]

Really? Cus I played the first two campaigns of homm3 then quit cus they were so insanely easy and lacked depth. Maybe cus they were introductory ones?

I just finished walking dead season 2, wrote a review. Now I'm not sure, humble store has a ton of good stuff, but I also have a couple other games looming I want to get off my play list like batman arkham city (played like 2 hours) and I have yet to finish all the victory modes in civ5 bnw.

 

[coanda]

Really? Cus I played the first two campaigns of homm3 then quit cus they were so insanely easy and lacked depth. Maybe cus they were introductory ones?

The HoMM3 campaigns... the early ones were, as you said, insanely easy. The later ones became decently challenging (particularly some of the expansion pack ones, on higher difficulty settings).

Even there though, once you got reasonably good at the game there wasn't much question that you could beat them eventually. But once you get to that point, racing against the calendar becomes more fun. Rather than taking time to run a victory lap with your heroes around the map, collecting all the spells and hero ability buffs you can find, try to beat the campaign as quickly as possible for the highest score. If you aren't in slightly over your head thinking you're about to lose, you're not rushing enough.

 

[Darth Caesar]

Picked up Papers, Please on steam today. Excellent so far.

 

[Zack]

Picked up Papers, Please on steam today. Excellent so far.

I'll be honest, I don't get why people rave about this game. It's incredibly, unbelievably tedious. The main gameplay is filing paperwork.

At least that was my impression. I couldn't play it for more than a few minutes at a time.

 

[Malachi256]

I'll be honest, I don't get why people rave about this game. It's incredibly, unbelievably tedious. The main gameplay is filing paperwork.

At least that was my impression. I couldn't play it for more than a few minutes at a time.

The gameplay is nothing special. It's what it's wrapped in that is special. I grew up in the 8-bit, cold war 80s, and I enjoy politics, rpgs, games-with-choices, etc... so I'm probably the target audience =)

 

[Maniacal]

I'll be honest, I don't get why people rave about this game. It's incredibly, unbelievably tedious. The main gameplay is filing paperwork.

At least that was my impression. I couldn't play it for more than a few minutes at a time.

It is less about being a fun game and more about creating a unique experience and atmosphere. It won't be that much fun for everyone, and is probably a bit overrated, but it is pretty funny and does something a bit different from most other games and can be kind of silly.

 

[Zack]

The Wolf Among Us was amazing.

 

[Antilogic]

Papers, Please does look like a very atmospheric-type game.

I've played one round as the Western Entente in To End All Wars, the latest AGEOD game that covers World War I. I think it's a little rough at this point (and these developers are known for patching and tweaking their games years after release, so I'm expecting good things), but it was a lot of fun. They've implemented this war plan system where you choose how to mobilize your troops during August of 1914, then you have to deal with the consequences. Looks like it really increases the replayability factor, even more so than the games already have.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

So I started a new game of Skyrim this weekend with no mods with the intention of making an overpowered character that I can use to easily farm the achievements I don't have yet. I haven't played it without mods in ages. The conclusion I've come to is that Bethesda doesn't know what the hell they're doing. Did they test this Legendary Skills feature for balance at all? Using Legendary Skill resets and the Illusion spells Muffle and Harmony, I went from level 1 to level 150+ in the course of one weekend. Luckily that was my intention, now I can run through the quest lines I've never completed to get achievements, but hot damn.

 

[Maniacal]

... how the hell?

Also the only AGEOD game I really want is, ack I forget the name, one of their ancient Mediterranean ones. Looks pretty neat. They never seem to go on sale though, and they only just started putting them on Steam.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

... how the hell?

Also the only AGEOD game I really want is, ack I forget the name, one of their ancient Mediterranean ones. Looks pretty neat. They never seem to go on sale though, and they only just started putting them on Steam.

It's pretty simply. You use Muffle, a spell that is easy to cast, can be cast in the middle of a town for full XP, and gives rather a lot of XP for an Apprentice level spell, until you get to 100 Illusion. Probably take, eh, 20-30 minutes or so. Then you go to the college, do the Master level Illusion spells quest (which is quite easy) to make Master level spells available, buy the Harmony spell. Make sure you have enough Magicka to cast it. Go to the middle of a busy city like Whiterun. Use the Legendary feature to reset your Illusion skill to 15. Cast Harmony. Watch your Illusion instantly go up to like 55. Harmony gives an ABSURD amount of XP per casting if there are a decent number of NPC's around. Depending on how many NPC's are in range you'll probably get it back to 100 in anywhere from 6 to 8 castings. The only difficult part of this process is making sure you have enough magicka or illusion cost reducing items to reliably cast Harmony while at skill level 15, once you manage that, you can reset your skill to 15 and cast Harmony a few times to get it back to 100 as many times as you want.

 

[Quintillus]

... how the hell?

Also the only AGEOD game I really want is, ack I forget the name, one of their ancient Mediterranean ones. Looks pretty neat. They never seem to go on sale though, and they only just started putting them on Steam.

IIRC most AGEOD games, if not all, lack demos as well. There's generally four ways I'll try a game:

- It has a demo that I try, like, and I buy it. This is what happened with EU3, Gunpoint, and others.
- Someone I know has it, I see them play it, maybe play it on their computer, and buy it. This covers Age of Empires II, Killing Floor, and more. Alternately, a friend says I have to try it and gifts it to me.
- It has a really good sale, has a cool concept and good reviews, and I take a chance on it. This covers Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, Plants vs. Zombies, The Corporate Machine, and some more.
- The predecessor was really good and the concept for the successor looks good, so I buy it. This covers EU4, Civ4, and so forth.

Without the sales, demos, and predecessors, AGEOD's kind of out of the range of what I'm likely to try. The recommended-by-friend route is still possible, but I don't know of any of my friends who have any of their games.

So I'm kind of curious about their games, and would like to know more. But so far their business practices haven't been conducive to me trying/buying their games. I kind of understand the lack of sales, since that more or less has caused a race to the bottom price-wise, which isn't necessarily sustainable. But if there aren't going to be sales, there ought to at least be a demo (even a post-release demo) so those who are skeptical and don't want to chance $40 on a game without knowing it's good might buy it.

 

[Arakhor]

Humble Bundle's weekly deal is offering some really good games really cheaply now. I own some of those already, but not in electronic format.

 

[warpus]

I picked that one up. Omerta isn't very good, so unless you really really like games like that, you can probably avoid that tier. The game mechanics are a lot crappier than XCOM, in terms of moving little guys around and ordering them around turn by turn. It's not nearly as intuitive and I found the interface and graphics sort of lacking.

Can't complain for $9, I know, but the preview made it look a lot better. It just seems that there's a lot of undelivered potential there.

Has anyone played the Patrician games? Looks like something right up my alley, but I haven't tried it yet.

 

[Arakhor]

I briefly played III and I own IV. If you like merchant sims, III should be worth trying at the very least.

 

[civvver]

I spent a couple hours playing Legend of Grimrock. It's kind of like a throwback dungeon rpg lite. I mean it seems very casual but I kind of enjoyed it. I got bored after a couple hours but I will return to play it in ~30 min chunks. Easy game to pick up and put down. You need some games in your life like that.

Although the tutorial sucks. It doesn't even tell you how to attack, I had to google it lol.