What Game Are You Currently Playing?

[thaddeus6th]

It does, Toby, but that's because Bioware were seriously rushed. I do like quite a lot of DA2 (not just making Lady Hawke walking around in her underwear).

I hope DA4 is good but I'm less than confident.

In Stellaris, I currently have two games on the go. I have discovered Captain difficulty in German is easier than Commodore difficulty in English.

 

[Toby Frost]

I quite like the sense of doing small missions and returning to base to collect a reward, but I suspect it will get a bit boring after a while. A lot of the streamlining of the game seems good to me, but I can see why people might miss the micro-managing of the NPCs' armour and the reduced options as to what you can be (I was surprised to find that you're a human and that's that). Of course, this being Bioware, there's the question of who your character is going to end up with (a) in the party and (b) in the sack. I've already forgotten what the main story is, but I don't think it's "shack up with the Welsh elf".

 

[thaddeus6th]

The human angle is because you've got family, I think. And to reduce work on armour and the like.

They did fix, alas, the fun Origins 'bug' where you can play as a black human noble. But with an entirely white family. Which does raise the question of what the lady of Highever was getting up to...

 

[Toby Frost]

Fallout 3 had an interesting bug where you were occasionally attacked by mercenaries, who were a (presumably randomly generated) mixture of white, brown and black men. However, if you stripped the bodies for armour, the bodies often didn't match the heads, so it would look as if the mercenaries had detached their heads and stuck them back on the wrong bodies. That said, given that Fallout works according to the rules of 1950's SF, maybe they had...

 

[thaddeus6th]

In an exciting reversal of fortune, things are now going better with my Commodore difficulty game. I'm in a federation with the two (discounting Fallen Empires) most powerful empires in the galaxy and have just one strategic strongpoint to defend.

Meanwhile, on Captain (auf Deutsch) I've been subjected to two separate yet simultaneous declarations of war by different empires and am currently losing to both.

I do like that the neighbours you have affect things a lot.

 

[.matthew.]

I love strategic chokepoints. I used to play with all modes of FTL active but switched to hyperlanes only just before they patched it to be the only way to play. I don't miss the others. Strategically taking systems is so much more fun than being able to warp anywhere

 

[thaddeus6th]

Yeah, I'm a fan of seizing chokepoints and thereby effectively claiming territory you can formally take later on.

Unfortunately, with the bad luck of the Captain game wars I'm spread too thin even so. Likely to lose both wars, I think, though it's just humiliation and losing one system (annoyingly, one that affords access to a three crystal system and that contains a fairly well-developed starbase). Not great, though.

Does remind me a bit of a very early game, maybe my second, when I did everything I could but even so just got steamrollered by an ultra-warlike opponent. Early game can be rough.

 

[.matthew.]

Yea, my favourite early game is to run rampant as far as I can to create dead zones that I can claim later without the need for war. It does tend to leave me with a much too small military budget though. On the plus side if you go far enough even warlike opponents can't actually push you too far back because of claim costs.

I do miss the old stations though. Used to love heavily bunkering a system to the point of slowing or even stopping late game crises. I remember once when the portal spawning ones destroyed 2/3s of the map and I was frantically throwing resources into constantly building and rebuildings stations.

 

[Toby Frost]

Dragon Age 2 continues to be very entertaining. I had to lower the difficulty a bit for two big fights (boss fights really aren't my cup of tea, and the game feels weaker at these moments), and the overarching plot seems to be hardly there, but the missions are good and the secondary characters are all well-written. The lack of a saving-the-world story means that I don't know where it's going to go, which is interesting.

I find it amusing how the companions have various concerns and worries - and some seem downright insecure - but are all hardened killers as soon as the fighting starts. After a shaky start, it's really grown on me.

 

[.matthew.]

@thaddeus6th I hereby curse you... making me start playing Stellaris again

Yes, the snaking mess of border gore is clearly me. Successfully manoeuvred to block access to more total systems than I actually control.

I'm playing with the Real Space mod (amongst others) and that tiny purple dot of a star in the bottom right of my territory is the single best system effects I've ever seen for a chokepoint...

Ships come in, but they won't get out... at least not with many ships left.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Ha, that's the galactic real estate equivalent of ****-blocking. And I do exactly the same.

That mod looks very nice.

I'm tempted to abandon the initial German-Captain game as it's early on, and I'm playing life-seeded which already has me at a disadvantage. That, coupled with no allies/federation and two independent but equally antagonist foes as neighbours isn't great.

 

[.matthew.]

Yea, Real Space is a nice set of visual and slight gameplay tweaks (in maybe a dozen mix and match mods). This is my first game playing with a lot of them but definitely makes the galaxy look more alive. I've got those combined with More Events and some other event-based mods to mix up the stories that the game generates. Definitely recommend both sets to revitalise the game if you play it a lot

Go ahead and abandon it then... or my preferred approach... declare wars and go out in a blaze of glory...

Then install some pretty mods and restart.

 

[Toby Frost]

Hmm. Dragon Age 2 is beginning to show its flaws. It's not so much that the scenery is repeated too much (although it really is - it uses the same generic cave more often than the original Star Trek) but that every notable achievement involves fighting through several unnecessary waves of respawning baddies. At one point, I was attacked in a deserted mansion by more people than could realistically have fitted into the building. I'm tempted to drop the difficulty, but I think that won't really help. It's a good story - well, lots of little good stories - with a lot of tedious fighting.

 

[Foxbat]

Saw Ticket To Ride in a GOG weekly sale for less than £3. Bought it. Installed it.Tried it.
Distinctly underwhelmed. Don’t think I’ll be playing it again. At least it didn’t cost much.

Why is this game getting great reviews?

 

[Venusian Broon]

Awww, I never realised that Fallout 4 did something special for Xmas.

That is Xmas, Fallout 4 time, not ours. Yet everything feels so chrismassy this year, hence me noticing it!

 

[Venusian Broon]

So I'm doing a 'this time I'm going to finish as much as possible' survival run of Fallout 4 at the moment. Given that lockdown has suggested that this might be a good time to do it. I've never got to the end of the main game or even started the big DLC's. (Also, although I've got 1200+ hours on Steam on Skyrim, I've yet to finish one of the main factions in that game, so technically I haven't finished that either, so I have form!)

Currently I have played ~450 hours of Fallout 4, mostly other runs before this one, FYI only a couple of real days into this one.

And yet....

....I have been surprising myself by finding stuff: missions, locations, characters that in the past 400 hours I never came across. Even in the 'safe' North-West corner of the map. This world is so stuffed with things to discover and find out.

Sure, it's story doesn't really make sense, blah blah blah, but I am so enjoying just looking into nooks and crannies and discovering all sorts of stories, tales, jokes and secrets. Just love being the lone wanderer, I suppose.

 

[Rodders]

I thought i'd download and replay Black Mesa. I should really get back to playing Star Wars Squadrons.

Kinda getting bored with HL2 and i can't workout how to play the Mods outside of those available on Steam.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Gone back to Monster Hunter World, wherein you do nothing but...hunt massive monsters. It's just one big mega grind to take each one down. It's the type of game where, while fighting something stupidly tough and I keep getting steamrolled and hit and stunned I'm yelling 'I hate this ****ing game, why am I playing it??!' but once the monster is finally down I'm all 'YES, I love this ****ing game!!'

Finished the storyline, just literally smashing monsters to make gear now, with the intention of maybe buying the Iceborne DLC eventually but wanting to keep ranking up and see what happens first.

 

[Foxbat]

Why hasn’t somebody released a monster fps? I’d like to play Godzilla and fight all the other monsters....or maybe Gypsy Danger from Pacific Ring and take down some kaiju (and beat them over the head with a boat, just like in the movie)...

 

[Toby Frost]

There's always Rampage! There was a game called Giants: Citizen Kabuto, where you played a huge monster, but only in a third of the levels or so. It was very odd.

Fallout 4 is a really impressive game. It doesn't make perfect sense, but that doesn't really matter. I loved the sheer detail of its world, the way that you could open a door and not just find some stuff to take, but a skeleton, and a sort of visual story about why everything was where it was. I bought the art book for Fallout 4, partly to help in making models, and it shows that the sheer amount of work involved in creating the game must have been huge.

Dragon Age 2 continues to be compelling, despite the repetitive nature of the missions and the near-lack of any overarching plot. A lot of the appeal comes down to defeating the short-term challenges and seeing what happens to the companions, who are very well-drawn. There's still no real story to it, but it's drawing to an end. It's a strange game with blatant flaws, but still very enjoyable.