What video games have you been playing? 4

[Kyriakos]

I would describe it as the ultimate expression of the phrase "easy to learn, hard to master". Getting the basics down doesn't really take that much time, it's pretty easy to figure out how to play. Figuring out how to be good is a whole different animal, there is a LOT of complexity and optional features hidden under the hood that you don't need to know about in order to play at first but that become crucial as your ambition for building better and better empires grows.

Some Paradox games were ruined by popular over-mods supposedly trying to control the complexity, a good case being Victoria 1 and the VIP mod which literally doesn't allow any important event to not trigger nomatter what you do to prevent it.

 

[Harv]

Too lazy to search the thread. I just started Pillars of Eternity.

(Paladin Tank Build)

 

[FriendlyFire]

Battlehand
Its a pretty neat casual game, mix of rpg combat with card collecting.

 

[Akka]

Anyone tried Sorcerer-King from Stardock ?
It looks like a continuation of Elemental War of Magic and its sequels, that I found disappointing. But maybe they cleaned up their act and made something better ?

 

[Snerk]

Just started Grim Fandango Remastered as it was free on PSN. A great classic I've never played. But to be honest I don't know if I now have the patience for a LucasArts puzzle adventure game. We'll see I guess.

 

[warpus]

Ooh I bought that one over the winter break too. Let me know how it is, if you get a chance to play through some of it.

 

[Takhisis]

I still have and cherish a DOS copy of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Monsieur Snerk. Please do not be disrespectful towards LucasArts puzzle adventure games.

 

[warpus]

Screw it, got back into Banished. I seem to be a Banished master now, it seems super easy to not die at the beginning and to get your colony up to 150 colonists. Mind you after that, after I have my farming fields set up, that's when things get a bit iffy. For some reason once you grow to that size food gathering efficiency becomes a huge issue for me.. I'm not sure what I could do to make everything more efficient, but at that stage I usually get bored of the map anyway. It's more fun starting with nothing than trying to maintain a large colony. Maybe I should try that mod that adds all those new buildings, I never ever played around with that.

Also got Art of War for EUIV sometime last week. I was playing through a CKII game and wanted to export it to EUIV. So.. That meant I had to buy a $10 DLC. Fair enough, I was willing to pay that much for that functionality. So I did that, but then was like "Hmm I should try some DLC for EUIV, I've heard that art of war greatly improves the game so maybe that one". So I did that, but then was like: "This imported map from CKII is kind of weird, I think I'm just going to play a regular game." So that's where I'm at now. At least I didn't spend toooo much on all this and in the end I don't mind giving Paradox money here and there, they're responsible for thousands of hours of entertainment.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Banished and Planetbase had a similar end point, for me. Once I had figured out how to start a sustainable colony, I could do it pretty much every time. Neither game has a "next gear", where things get harder or changed substantially, beyond the starting conditions. Even when the starting conditions are tougher, it's only temporary - once you get over that hurdle, it's the same smooth road it was on the easier settings.

I started a new Banished colony the other week, and when I got to where I could start accepting nomads, I decided to see what would happen if I didn't build a hospital. 12 nomads showed up, somebody got influenza, 15 people got sick, 1 person died. No big deal. My colony had dozens of idle workers anyway, what with food production being so efficient. Even with disasters turned on, they almost never happen. There are fires, but they happen once in a blue moon. There are no floods, no droughts, no attacks by pirates, vikings, orks or velociraptors.

Still, for small games produced by small teams (maybe even just 1 person), I got my money's worth out of them.

 

[KevinLandwaster]

I tried cities skylines, and I really wanted to like it, but the interface was like playing SimCity IV (worse, actually). I ended up playing SimCity V, because the player interface and the depth of gameplay is an improvement over SimCity IV. I wish it had some of the capabilities of Skylines, though. We still need a good city builder game.

Also: Defense Technica and Plants vs Zombies (I was on a tower defense binge).

I am planning on finally building a new desktop system so I can play Skyrim, Dragon Age 2, Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, Diablo III, Civ VI when it comes out, various racing sims, Rome II and Shogun II, and so on.

P.S. forgot to mention Heroes of Might and Magic VII and Endless Legend.

 

[warpus]

EgoSpengler, The one thing I like about planetbase, is that once you get to that "easy enough to build a sustainable colony" stage, there are still 2 other planets to master, as well as a bunch of achievements. But you're right, it's a bit disappointing that there wasn't a "next gear" you could turn to, after reaching sufficiency. I feel that's one of the things the early Anno games got right, or at least.. uhm.. Anno.. 1404 or 1503 or something like that. But then those games had a problem that you'd set up an elaborate micromanaged chain of supply and demand, and if pirates messed up one part of it somewhere, it could often lead to huge problems. But I mean, even with that, I loved that there was more to do after you became sustainable enough.

The reason I haven't played much of Cities Skylines is.. well, it'll sound silly, but all the mods. I'm a lazy gamer, I don't keep up with which mods are good and which aren't, which ones you need to have, etc. I have been waiting for them to integrate some public transit functionality that was in the transit++ (Or whatever) mod, but.. It seems they're not doing it. Right now my game has a bunch of mods in it, and I haven't launched it in half a year. I don't want to sit there and figure out which mods I should get to make gameplay the way I want it. I want them to make the vanilla version of the game to have all the functionality you need, such as changing transit line colours automatically or whatever. Yeah, I had a lot of fun with the game initially, but can't be bothered to screw around with the mods to make my gaming experience worthwhile.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I was at a friends house last night and we rented copies of Black Ops 3 and tried to play via system-link. We kept getting an error that there was a host/server mismatch or something and we never got to play. :-(

 

[Snerk]

Ooh I bought that one over the winter break too. Let me know how it is, if you get a chance to play through some of it.

It's what you woukd expect if you've played any other game from those developers. Good setting and story, with clever dialogue. Graphics are very similar to the original, so the "remastering" is somewhat minimal. But like I said earlier, I suspect no longer have the patience to play these game as progressing the story can be quite tricky. Combine random item with random item to make new random item to use on random item to trigger cutscene that advances the plot.

Though I don't know how much (if any) there is of that in this game. I've only played it a little and haven't got stuck yet.

I still have and cherish a DOS copy of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Monsieur Snerk. Please do not be disrespectful towards LucasArts puzzle adventure games.

I love those games. They can be quite hard though.

 

[cardgame]

I've been trying to re-learn DiRT Rally with every single assist turned off. Quite a bit harder to control the cars now.

 

[Takhisis]

I love those games. They can be quite hard though.

Then you should definitely play Hex-a-hop. I recommend it.

 

[Dachs]

A bunch of us were drinking last night and decided to compel one of our number to play Until Dawn. She doesn't play many video games but she likes horror films, so it went down reasonably well.

I was paying more attention to what she was doing than anyone else, which means I still don't remember much. I do remember that a couple of the others started playing a homemade Avatar: The Last Airbender version of Guess Who?, and one guy won like every game while the other guy progressively melted down like Jerma playing against STAR_. (I'd link the videos I'm referencing, but there are about eight zillion instances of profanity in it, so just search "Jerma is Mad" on YouTube.)

 

[warpus]

It's what you woukd expect if you've played any other game from those developers. Good setting and story, with clever dialogue. Graphics are very similar to the original, so the "remastering" is somewhat minimal. But like I said earlier, I suspect no longer have the patience to play these game as progressing the story can be quite tricky. Combine random item with random item to make new random item to use on random item to trigger cutscene that advances the plot.

I played through all the Space Quest games about 7-10 years ago or so, had to turn to tips and walkthrough docs a lot more frequently than what I first thought I would... even though I already beat some of the games at some point in the past..

Def. not easy but def. a huge part of my childhood.

 

[Commodore]

So I ultimately decided not to get EU4 and instead chose to start another playthrough of the Mass Effect trilogy.

 

[Civ'ed]

Picked up a game called Sol 0: Mars colonization, which is, you guessed it, about colonizing Mars. I enjoy it, it's kind of challenging (my first two colonists died of starvation before I could set up a greenhouse, and you can only take up so much at a time), but overall, I'd recommend it for the current price.

 

[bhavv]

Link to video.

Binding of Isaac latest expansion, end boss double kill!