What Video Games have you been playing II: Have you finished that backlog?

[SS-18 ICBM]

Besides those two points I just made, it's a very original title that is worth at least a playthrough.

Original? What did it have that wasn't done before in a Ubisoft or Rockstar game?

 

[Wrymouth3]

Original? What did it have that wasn't done before in a Ubisoft or Rockstar game?

I do find the hacking aspect of the game to be quite intriguing. The gunplay and combat are also slightly different. The minigames as well are also pretty cool and definitely not like anything I've seen in a AC game (Chess puzzles).

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I do find the hacking aspect of the game to be quite intriguing.

Switching viewpoints with a camera is cool. Unfortunately I find that most hacking is pretty scripted. I once read of a guard who likes porn being distracted by playing the appropriate sounds on his phone. Turns out that the game chooses it for you when you hit Distract. There's no need for you to figure it out yourself.

The gunplay and combat are also slightly different.

Reminds of GTA IV: place crosshair over enemy head, win. Even easier now that there's a stealth element, so you're shooting enemies when they're not even aware of where you are. And some differences are just bizarre, such as not being able to shoot from cars.

The minigames as well are also pretty cool and definitely not like anything I've seen in a AC game (Chess puzzles).

I'll grant that Spider Tank is fun, but gets stale eventually.

 

[Tahuti]

I've picked up LBA 2 again. One of the best games I have ever played.

 

[Darth Caesar]

Roleplaying as an assassin in Skyrim is tons of fun. Sneaking into Falkreath disguised as a beggar, kill the target. Dress up in fine clothing to sell the loot without arousing suspicion. Then back into street clothes to stalk the racist lumber mill worker before offing him as he begins his workday and sending his body through the saw to make it look like an accident. Then nipping off to Whiterun to wipe out the Battle-Borns.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Trying to finish Far Cry 3 reminded of how fire is to be respected in that game.

 

[azzaman333]

I started playing Crackdown. Feels like Assassin's Creed combined with GTA, except it doesn't do either of them anywhere near as well. Still, it's a bit of fun.

 

[Wrymouth3]

I started playing Crackdown. Feels like Assassin's Creed combined with GTA, except it doesn't do either of them anywhere near as well. Still, it's a bit of fun.

Being a crazy superhuman cop that jumps like a cricket from building to building was one of the funnest and most awesome things that occured in the early stages of the PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles.

 

[Commodore]

Being a crazy superhuman cop that jumps like a cricket from building to building was one of the funnest and most awesome things that occured in the early stages of the PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles.

Indeed. Crackdown 2 though...not so much. Of course that might not be the developer's fault if the rumors are to be believed.

 

[Spidernova]

Been playing mount and blade a lot. Blood and Steel is a pretty fun mod.

 

[Takhisis]

The Secret Maryo Chronicles is a great game.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Starting to play a bit of Rise of Legends to pass the time. I've played through the main campaign at least three times for the past 8 years or something, but don't mind playing it again.

I forgot how much I used to like that game. It was simple, quick, and efficient, compared to some of the other RTS' and played - I could actually wrap up a skirmish battle in twenty minutes, and the game just looked plain awesome and imaginative.

 

[Phrossack]

Finally re-downloaded the mod 1648: Der Dreißigjährige Krieg for M2TW. So far, so good with Switzerland. All my generals are somehow lousy administrators, but Bern is inexplicably making an absurd amount of cash from trade all of the sudden, and is gaining a huge population boost from the trade as well. I'm staying firmly neutral for now, partly because I like turtling, partly because I'm Switzerland, and partly because I don't understand the relationships between the factions, or even where they're located. Where the hell is Baden-Durlach, anyway? I've never even heard of it.

But it's glorious to see pikemen marching to a steady tattoo through a rainy Alpine forest to slaughter some brigands who thought they could invade the Old Confederacy.

 

[Civ'ed]

Finally re-downloaded the mod 1648: Der Dreißigjährige Krieg for M2TW. So far, so good with Switzerland. All my generals are somehow lousy administrators, but Bern is inexplicably making an absurd amount of cash from trade all of the sudden, and is gaining a huge population boost from the trade as well. I'm staying firmly neutral for now, partly because I like turtling, partly because I'm Switzerland, and partly because I don't understand the relationships between the factions, or even where they're located. Where the hell is Baden-Durlach, anyway? I've never even heard of it.

But it's glorious to see pikemen marching to a steady tattoo through a rainy Alpine forest to slaughter some brigands who thought they could invade the Old Confederacy.

Baden-Durlach *should* be North of Switzerland.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Sid Meier's Pirates has been my favorite diversion as of late, as all the sailing time gives me room to listen to podcasts. I enjoy having sea battles one minute and then plotting invasions the next. I finally broke down and paid a cent for Sid Meier's Colonization, the new one. I understand it's woefully unbalanced, but I want to at least try the game before operating systems no longer run it..

 

[Phrossack]

Baden-Durlach *should* be North of Switzerland.

Just about everything is north of Switzerland in this mod.

I'm REALLY starting to like it now. I tend to be a turtling builder in TW (madness, I know), and thanks to my loving attention and occasionally brutal taxation disguised by panem et circenes, Bern has become an incredibly productive center of trade. I've raised my first dedicated invasion army, gave it some supply wagons to last it for a little while, and used it to capture Bregenz, which had rebelled against Austria.

It was a nasty little siege. Musketeers in this mod have extreme range and accuracy to make up for the AI's braindead tactics... with unintended consequences. They can arc their shots like archers and nail people from half a mile away, and God help you if they're defending the walls. They killed off my mortar battery real quick, plus the poor militia I'd used as human shields for it. I managed to place ladders on some unguarded sections of the star fort's walls. Lost a unit of musketeers to some burly axe-wielding miners who showed up (why do miners have axes?), but some halberdiers just managed to capture another section by force and opened the gates to let my army in. The battle ended in a fierce fight in the square, where pikemen and zweihander infantry earned their sold for the day. And all the while, epic music was playing.

I'd converted most of Bregenz's population to Protestantism before taking it (the Old Confederacy is Protestant in this mod), and after the siege, I got an event that let me pass an edict of toleration, which prevented unrest but cost me money in "donations" to Protestant clergy to tolerate my tolerance. Prior to this, I'd had lots of riots between Catholics and Protestants that cost a lot of money to put down. Maybe this will change things, but I dunno.

Meanwhile, Burgundy rebelled against Spain, so I might be able to grab that. I have a pretty healthy economy, so I should be able to raise some proper armies. Mainz, Baden, and some other little principalities nobody cares about are actually quite large, rich, and powerful, so my whole neutral-state-with-only-militia shtick might not last long.

 

[salty mud]

I reinstalled Chaos Theory and I'm having a great time with it. The pinnacle of stealth gaming I think. It's a shame the Splinter Cell series went down a more action oriented road this generation.

 

[Civ'ed]

Just about everything is north of Switzerland in this mod.

I'm REALLY starting to like it now. I tend to be a turtling builder in TW (madness, I know), and thanks to my loving attention and occasionally brutal taxation disguised by panem et circenes, Bern has become an incredibly productive center of trade. I've raised my first dedicated invasion army, gave it some supply wagons to last it for a little while, and used it to capture Bregenz, which had rebelled against Austria.

It was a nasty little siege. Musketeers in this mod have extreme range and accuracy to make up for the AI's braindead tactics... with unintended consequences. They can arc their shots like archers and nail people from half a mile away, and God help you if they're defending the walls. They killed off my mortar battery real quick, plus the poor militia I'd used as human shields for it. I managed to place ladders on some unguarded sections of the star fort's walls. Lost a unit of musketeers to some burly axe-wielding miners who showed up (why do miners have axes?), but some halberdiers just managed to capture another section by force and opened the gates to let my army in. The battle ended in a fierce fight in the square, where pikemen and zweihander infantry earned their sold for the day. And all the while, epic music was playing.

I'd converted most of Bregenz's population to Protestantism before taking it (the Old Confederacy is Protestant in this mod), and after the siege, I got an event that let me pass an edict of toleration, which prevented unrest but cost me money in "donations" to Protestant clergy to tolerate my tolerance. Prior to this, I'd had lots of riots between Catholics and Protestants that cost a lot of money to put down. Maybe this will change things, but I dunno.

Meanwhile, Burgundy rebelled against Spain, so I might be able to grab that. I have a pretty healthy economy, so I should be able to raise some proper armies. Mainz, Baden, and some other little principalities nobody cares about are actually quite large, rich, and powerful, so my whole neutral-state-with-only-militia shtick might not last long.

Might I actually ask where you found the mod? I'm having trouble locating it.

 

[Phrossack]

Might I actually ask where you found the mod? I'm having trouble locating it.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?1965-1648-Thirty-Years-of-War

It requires Kingdoms, and I had some trouble installing it, but sheesh, if I'm not having a good time playing it now...

You may want to read some of the stickies like the tactical manual and other things. For the most part, they tried to keep it reasonably historically accurate within the limits of the engine, so musketeers have ultra-long range muskets, cavalry is mostly weak and pricey, and artillery has a fairly short range and is ineffective against the immensely think sloped walls of star forts. Pikemen dominate the battlefield until later in the game, and are mainly anti-infantry.

Be warned that the mod can be fairly unstable, so I keep two saves of the same campaign and alternate saving between the two, so that if one gets corrupted or crashes, the other is saved before it and is still good.

 

[Ajidica]

I tried getting that mod working, but it was too unstable for me and felt too 'moddy' with how they structured the campaign map and heavy use of very temperamental scripts.

I picked up X3: Terran Conflict yesterday on a friends recommendation (and a day before it went on sale on Steam :headbash: ) and as I'm slowly sinking into it is appears quite impressive.