What Game Are You Currently Playing?

Venusian Broon said:
alking about "management" games, I have seen (and been tempted by) Dave the Diver.

Dive and fish during the day, run a sushi restaurant with your catch at night....is sort of the basic loop, but then loads of other weird stuff happens. Mad as a box of frogs.
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I'm intrigued.

Dredge is another I've been thinking about buying.
Going by the bumf, it's more of an RPG but there's fish to catch and sell as well as exploration and dark secrets to uncover. One reviewer described it as Lovecraft's Deadliest Catch....hawd me back.

@Toby Frost Your description sound like it might be Dredge.
 
That's the one!
 
First the good news: Xenonauts 2 is out and I bought it (25% discount at GOG).
Now the not so good news. It's still in development (probably the reason for the discount).
I've played through the tutorial and it's pretty much what you'd expect. I'm going to hold off on a full-blown campaign until it goes through a couple of patches. It appears pretty stable at the moment but I've learned never to invest too much time until you're sure.:)
 
I recently made a big mistake. Because Xenonauts 2 is still in development, I've decided to wait a while for more updates before indulging in a full campaign. I've played it for a couple of hours and everything seems fine but I don't want to find I commit and then discover a stumbling block part-way through the campaign. With that in mind, I decided to re-install X-COM Enemy Unknown. It's a game that gave poor first impressions but maybe I was wrong.

Nope. I wasn't wrong. First of all, I really hate all the video cut scenes with all the blah blah blahing. As Vasquez said: all I need to know is where they are.

I also dislike the 'commander to this place, commander to that place'. This game leads you by the nose to every single thing and there's no way out.

It looks like a strategy game with a tactical combat phase but its not. The strategy side is welded to rails and there's very little room for manouvre. Proof positive that not everything that quacks and waddles is a duck.

There's no way to just go where you want when you want because once the caption telling you to go to a specific area comes up, you have no choice. For instance, I like to check out and equip my soldiers in the base and not at the mission screen but I can't do that because yet another caption has come up telling me to go to engineering or whatever. You can't overrule this caption and the only place possible is to go where you're told to go. I've even discovered that it's impossible to quit the game until the sequence has run its course.

I'd suggest the makers would have been better off doing away with the base side of things altogether and just releasing a tactical combat model with a number of scenarios but they can't even get the tactical side right.


Tactical combat has been dumbed down considerably. There are no time units to juggle. Instead you get a system that looks like it was designed by Fisher Price. That wouldn't be so bad if the thing actually worked well but it doesn't. Here's an example. I knew there was an alien taking cover up ahead and I couldn't get to a position for a clear shot. I decided to put a soldier on overwatch. Next alien activity phase, it stands up, steps out of cover and shoots my guy. What the hell was my soldier doing? Getting his thrills out of reading Xenomorph Monthly when he was supposed to be watching for this particular alien? The user interface is just a mess and there seems to be no way to set a comfortable perspective. Each turn I zoom out to the level I want and next turn the game zooms back in to its default. I have to go through this rigamarole every single turn. There are no options to fine tune stuff like this. All the options are extremely limited and I think it was a mistake to use the Unreal engine for this game because it has obvious limitations for this type of game.

Overall, I really, really, really hate this game now and the only good thing about it is I got it dirt cheap in a sale. Of all the X-COM style games, this is the second worst. I'd say the UFO games of a few years ago were probably worse.

The most important thing this game fails to do is to answer that age-old universal question: why does everybody seem to like this game?

I'm just really glad I never paid full price for it.
 
XCOM 2 is a definite step up. Worth noting, though, that XCOM: Enemy Undressed was originally going to be either a sandbox RPG or FPS (I forget which 'popular' gameplay style it was going to be) but the developers pushed for the combat style used and it helped spawn a very successful sequel. There was also a Divinity Original Sin game using a similar style that got canned/delayed for Baldur's Gate 3.

All that said, I've never felt like going back to XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The sequel's a substantial improvement.
 
Genshin Impact.

'Cos it was free. I have zero knowledge of this game, I have no idea if it's a series or if all the (many) characters in it are from something else and I don't usually like games where you switch between different characters in battle.

However I am now fully invested. And not even to the main quest lol. I've barely gone through much of it but my characters are massively leveled and I have explored many places I'm probably not supposed to have. But that is something I'm really enjoying about the game, is that you can go everywhere and climb everything and the game throws so much gear at you so you can continually upgrade, try new characters, buff them up etc. And I am really starting to enjoy the art of switching characters in fights and combining the elements.

I think the reason I'm not going through the quests much is cos I'm really not a fan of the cutesy anime style. This is certainly a game for people much younger than me and/or love that anime style. But aside from that, this is definitely a massive game with a lot to sink your time into.

And my favourite bit is that there are a lot of features, bosses, domains, challenges, that are genuinely tough, the kind where you are swearing and yelling and saying to yourself "I hate this, I HATE THIS" and yet you keep trying. Love those.
 
In defence of X-Com, first, I believe the cut-scenes can be skipped. Second, it is to a lot of strategy games what Warhammer is to those huge historical wargames that you see old guys playing at conventions: much simpler and probably quite superficial in comparison, but far more accessible, less intense and more fun to look at. There seem to be a lot of (weirdly expensive) wargames on Steam that look as if they were made on the Amiga: no doubt they're very engrossing, but the combination of insane complexity and awful visuals put me off immediately. A lot of the X-Com squad gameplay is about outflanking the enemy and surprising them, which I didn't realise until late on.

Also, you get to customise your men and give them silly names. This counts for a lot in my book. Basically, X-Com is a strategy game for people who usually find strategy (OK, tactics) offputting. The sequel is a lot better, but if you disliked the first, I'd avoid it.


HoopyFrood said:
And my favourite bit is that there are a lot of features, bosses, domains, challenges, that are genuinely tough, the kind where you are swearing and yelling and saying to yourself "I hate this, I HATE THIS" and yet you keep trying. Love those.
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I just hate this and would do something else. I don't get anything positive out of feeling like that.
 
It provokes me and I willing fall for it. Because I know what I'm trying isn't impossible, the game isn't locking me out, I just need to git gud or upgrade my stuff. And then I shall return and be triumphant and I shall cheer and laugh and feel incredibly smug. It's my only source of dopamine these days.
 
I really like those games where you find a boss/monster/level that seems way too difficult, but then you go away, build up your xp/stats/equipment, then come back later and whip it's a**e. Baldurs Gate is/was good for this.

The worst games are those who build up your enemies' stats at a similar rate to your own, so that even after you build your character up to massive stats and the best equipment, that rat/imp from the first level now has superhuman abilities, and is just as tough to beat as when you first encountered it.
 
I tend to dislike versions of hell, or labyrinths, or dream worlds in video games. They always come across as annoying to navigate, and an irksome departure from the main game.
 
I loved both XCOM games. Beat them both on Legend + Ironman difficulty. I think both games are much better with the DLC (Enemy Within and War of the Chosen respectively). And then there's the Long War mods for both.

Did I like them more than the original UFO: Enemy Unknown and X-COM Terror from the Deep? Not quite, but that's rose-tinted spectacles for you :giggle:


I succumbed and pre-ordered Baldur's Gate 3. I have too much faith in Larian.
 
I finished Vampire: the Masquerade. It ends weakly, with a succession of big monsters to fight. It feels as if the writers ran out of time or ideas, and I suspect that anyone who tried to make a charming, seductive character rather than a maniac with a hedge trimmer would be unable to continue. And then it just sort of stops.

However, in its current form this really is a very good game. If you can look past the dated graphics (which I think have a charm of their own) it's a decent roleplaying game that isn't set in a generic Tolkien ripoff. The atmosphere and characters are good. Despite the weak ending and some slightly odd mechanics, I'd recommend it.
 
Well, I'm back on Halflife 2 and Aliens Fireteam Elite. A lot of games leave me cold, but the ones I like I'll play several times over.

Fireteam and Halflife are both very slick and well-made. It occurs to me that they're also both really detailed, and that there's loads of excellent world-building in them. There's always something interesting to see and find. One of the problems with Aliens games is that the writing is often rubbish and the aliens are mediocre, so it ends up with a bunch of by-the-numbers tough guys fighting what might as well be angry dogs. Fireteam has its own little backstory and the characters are good, even if they're just someone who gives you missions. I really like the immersion of the settings, as well as the technical competence of the gameplay.
 
Halflife 2. I remember being pretty good. It didn't have all that annoying jumping, which is a plus in my book.

Haven't played many Aliens games but I do remember what I thought was the best part of the ones I did play (Alien Versus Predator 2). Playing as the marine, you go a long time without seeing an alien. Meanwhile, the tension is rising. Then, a loud thumping noise as the air conditioning ducting starts to deform and an alien breaks through to attack.
I nearly **** myself:)
 
I'm playing the game of waiting for Baldur's Gate 3. Which is out today on PC and a month from now on PS5, which is what I'm getting it for.

Revisited Age of Wonders 4 as Jiggly Spatterkins, leader of the Capitalist Snowtoads. Mildly annoyed to have a free city right next door.
 
Took me 8 hours to download Baldur's Gate 3 yesterday (it's a 100GB download) :cautious::LOL:

6 hours in, really enjoying it so far. Great characters, runs and looks fabulous on pc - the fans don't even rev up with it on the highest settings. It's very much Divinity Original Sin 2 set in the Forgotten Realms, which is pretty much as expected. I'm fine with that but purists might not like it so much.
 
I have been playing Commandos 2 (HD Remastered) on my Steam Deck. Finally getting around to completing the last three missions - it has only been 22 years since release. I have also been playing Wings for the hundredth time on my Amiga CD32 - love the retro gaming!! - this is one of the outstanding games of my life and I replay it every two years or so. Do we have a retro gaming thread?
 
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