What video games have you been playing III: You're gonna need a bigger boat.

[warpus]

Maybe I'm thinking of another game. Far Cry 1 maybe?

 

[Phrossack]

Maybe I'm thinking of another game. Far Cry 1 maybe?

Maybe, maybe not. FC2 isn't for everyone, and even I have a lot of problems with it. The plot, the faction system, the so-called buddies, and some other things were lousy as hell. But the scenery and setting were wonderful, especially if you find modern African conflicts interesting.

 

[cybrxkhan]

I am sad (happy?) to report that despite my enthusiasm in encouraging my kids to bond with one another and form long-lasting, deep, life-long relationships, I actually spend the majority of my time in CKII playing matchmaker. That is, I spend half of my time finding terrible spouses for my terrible courtiers, and hot and virtuous wives/husbands for my nice courtiers. My most successful matchmaking in my current game as a Greek despot was setting up one of my young, hunky Cuman generals (later Counts) with a nice French girl, they fell in love and thanks in part to random events they had eleven kids or something, 'twas like they really couldn't keep it in their pants. I ended up setting up one of their sons withth another french girl (who kinda resembled his mom, I couldn't resist the Freudian implications) and seems like they're starting the cycle again.

Anyways, it's so exhausting trying to find the right spouses for everybody, the one they deserve. -_-

 

[warpus]

What does that aspect of the gameplay accomplish? The only people I ever married off in that game were my sons and daughters... and myself. I think. Does it just lead to better relations with other courts?

 

[cybrxkhan]

What does that aspect of the gameplay accomplish? The only people I ever married off in that game were my sons and daughters... and myself. I think. Does it just lead to better relations with other courts?

In terms of min-max gameplay, it doesn't do much, though if, say, you had a talented courtier and married them to another talented courtier, there's a good chance they might have a talented child, so you'll basically have more talented courtiers/potential vassals to hand out titles to, for the next generation.

But in my case it's more for RP reasons and just for the lulz. And it doesn't hurt that I get a fuzzy feeling when I manage to set up a successful marriage.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I didn't realize that I had Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon until I noticed it in my Steam library. It must have been bundled with FC3. The '80s action movie references are fun, but the game's color palette is damaging my retinas. I really liked the graphics for FC3, but Blood Dragon is just hard to look at. Played it for about an hour, and that was probably enough.

 

[Senethro]

I didn't realize that I had Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon until I noticed it in my Steam library. It must have been bundled with FC3. The '80s action movie references are fun, but the game's color palette is damaging my retinas. I really liked the graphics for FC3, but Blood Dragon is just hard to look at. Played it for about an hour, and that was probably enough.

They were probably a bit too committed to their aesthetic of imitating extremely poor stage lighting and overuse of dry ice.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Well, that's it, as Three-Dog would say, "kids". I finished the main Fallout 3 storyline.

I am still not sure if New Vegas is better or not. I certainly managed to get far more mileage out of it in one playthrough - compare 50 hours (without the DLCs. With them it's closer to 80) and 25 hours. Admitably, I did rush the Fallout 3 storyline, but still. 25 hours.

 

[Zack]

New Vegas is better in every single way.

 

[Quintillus]

I played Halo on the XBox One for the first time today. Prior to that, it was always on the XBox 1 (2001 version) or the 360. My primary impression is that it's still really buggy, and while it can be fun locally, if you want to play online you're better off just getting a 360 and playing it there.

Noteworthy bugs include:

• Poor netcode, leading to lots of rubber-banding. Halo was always poor in this regard, but it was much worse than usual with the One.
• Even when the graphics were fluid, it took a few seconds to notify of kills, which led to many situations of being unsure if you actually got the kill or not.
• Joining other peoples' games via XBox Live was quite flakey, much more so than on the 360.
• There were a number of times someone died, had a respawn timer, and the respawn timer stopped at 3 or 4 seconds for 10-15 seconds while the game kept going on.
• Turning off the console didn't really turn off the console; at one point Halo froze, so we restarted the console and it was still frozen. We had to unplug it to fix Halo. Perhaps technically not a bug, but not what we expected and inconvenient.
• The XBox didn't remember the WiFi password and it had to be re-entered every time we (completely) restarted it. On the plus side, we've got the password memorized now.

As for the graphics, I like what I've seen of Halo 2 Classic more than Halo 2 Anniversary so far. The former does a better job of setting the atmosphere; the latter has more details but for no real benefit in atmosphere or gameplay (if anything, it's harder to distinguish players from backgrounds). Switching back to Halo 2 Classic, it felt like you were playing Halo PC, but with split-screen and a console controller... which was a good thing aside from the above technical issues.

After awhile we gave up on XBox Live and decided to do co-op campaign, starting with everyone's favorite level of The Library. This was actually a lot more reliable and in some ways more fun, which is kind of bad since The Library is not actually everyone's favorite level, but the most infamous one in the series.

So on the whole, I can see how Halo and Halo 2 could be a lot nicer on the One than the 1, but currently there are enough issues that I'd recommend anyone new to the series buy a 360 instead, should they seek XBox Live multiplayer, or an XBox (2001) if they seek local multiplayer (the XBox has better performance than the 360 on Halo 1/2 since it runs natively rather than through an emulator). The new one may well be better in a year, but it isn't yet.

 

[FriendlyFire]

World of Tanks WZ111 premium tank mission
I just grinded out 46 Million credits and now to spent it all on new tanks and equipment.

Hearthstone
Just started since it got a few GOTY awards, stupid Match Maker keeps putting me up against people with epic and rare card galore.

 

[Takhisis]

Hmmmm. I am pondering installing DotA 2 on this here Linux machine. Any thoughts, O CFCers?

 

[cardgame]

Haven't played it, but many people seem to enjoy it.

 

[caketastydelish]

I've been playing some Assassin's Creed Unity lately. Is it as good as Black Flag? Honestly no. Although Black Flag is so close to absolute perfection that being less good than that doesn't necessarily mean much.

Unity has been a generally fun game. I'm playing Assassin's creed the way I usually play, which is to say I went and got all the viewpoints first at also got a ton of treasure chests and other stuff so I can be as maxed out as possible before doing the main story. I barely did any of the main story today because I was so busy doing Paris. I suppose that was ironic considering Paris was all over the news IRL today.

 

[Zack]

I tried playing Assassin's Creed II a little bit ago, which is supposedly the best in the series (I haven't played any other Assassin's Creed games). I think a nap might have been more exciting than those 4.5 hours.

 

[caketastydelish]

I've never played II but IV is serious tough competition, especially if you say II is boring.

 

[Takhisis]

And yet you spent four and a half hours playing it, Mr. Zack.

@cardgame: I enjoyed DotA, the problem is how the playerbase might have evolved.

 

[Kennigit]

Continuing my quest to beat Spelunky

Also continuing my quest to die in ever dumber ways the better I am prepared

 

[Zack]

And yet you spent four and a half hours playing it, Mr. Zack.

That's hardly anything. It's not like it was in one sitting or anything.

 

[gay_Aleks]

And yet you spent four and a half hours playing it, Mr. Zack.

@cardgame: I enjoyed DotA, the problem is how the playerbase might have evolved.

If LoL playbase is any kind of an example, then it's populated by psychotic and insane people.