What Game Are You Currently Playing?

Star Wars: Dark Forces has been given the remaster treatment, so i've bought that. I will try and play it over the weekend.
 
I started playing Endernal, a free mod for Skyrim. The quality of the mod is very high indeed. It looks fantastic and having the opportunity to wander around the landscape is fun, but damn, it's hard. Not dying is very difficult.
 
I last played Silent Hill: The Short Message, but you play as an Asian woman in Germany. It's got nothing to do with Silent Hill. You have to evade a big monster covered in cherry blossom petals in a building known for suicides, but there is a subtle link for the sake of having a minor connection to Silent Hill...
 
It’s recently had a significant update so I’m back playing Rule The Waves 3.
The new patch gives more control over hiring and firing commanders. It also improves some aspects of the AI and I’m feeling the pain.

As usual, I’m playing as Japan starting in 1890. Some studying of the gun data convinced me that decent quality 6, 7, and 8 inch guns were more effective than the much larger calibre guns found on pre-dreadnought battleships. I concentrated on designing and building a significant force of heavy and light cruisers. I applied the battlecruiser philosophy of sacrificing armour for speed and firepower to my cruisers.

When I went to war with China, I trounced them and sank all four of their old battleships with no cruiser losses.

An early war with Russia produced similar results but, now, in a second war in 1915, I’m up against a very different beast. I encountered an enemy cruiser force and, then, out of the fog appeared a Russian battlecruiser. I gained a pyrrhic victory, sinking the battlecruiser but losing 4 destroyers and a heavy cruiser. Another heavy cruiser limped back to port with severe damage and two light cruisers with medium damage. Another three Russian battlecruisers have appeared in the region since then and now I’m spending much of my time running from battle and trying to force the Russians to the negotiating table. I’ve allowed an exiled revolutionary safe passage in the hope that he can depose the tsar and force Russia out of the war.

This is war in .xls format and I love it:)
 
Enderal continues to be very good. I've turned the difficulty down somewhat, as that was preventing me from exploring the game. It's like another Skyrim, although harder and weirder. There are a couple of changes to the original gameplay that I don't overly like, but it's well made and, given that it's free, it's exceptional value.
 
I've just dipped my toe into Final Fantasy XIV. I can't say I love it yet after only a couple of hours, and the learning curve is a bit steep IMO - though a big part of that may be because I'm using a controller. I'm going to give the ole' keyboard & mouse setup a go this coming weekend. The few locations I've seen are gorgeous, the characters are fun, and I'm pretty confident this is one I'll end up spending a couple hundred hours in.
 
Having been watching the new version of Shogun I broke out Total War Shogun 2, of course it's the wrong era but it's still a good game.
 
After much hesitating, I bought a retro games console. It's a bit wonky, but there's a lot of good stuff on there. I played Tenchu Stealth Assassins, which might as well be called Tenchu Self Assassins, as I mainly rolled around on the ground as samurais murdered me. I also had a go on Wipeout for the first time in 25 years. It's awesome.

Basically, it's formula 1 without the boring stuff (cars, drivers, racing etc) and with hovering vehicles instead. (Owing to the poor graphics, they look quite like throat sweets.) You go extremely fast around the track, picking up equipment to knacker your rivals. It's insanely gaudy and very fast, and feels like being in a rave video from the early 90s. Which is handy, because the soundtrack is made by top 1990s electronic bands (Orbital, The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and so on) and is excellent. Great stuff.
 
Toby Frost said:
After much hesitating, I bought a retro games console. It's a bit wonky, but there's a lot of good stuff on there. I played Tenchu Stealth Assassins, which might as well be called Tenchu Self Assassins, as I mainly rolled around on the ground as samurais murdered me. I also had a go on Wipeout for the first time in 25 years. It's awesome.

Basically, it's formula 1 without the boring stuff (cars, drivers, racing etc) and with hovering vehicles instead. (Owing to the poor graphics, they look quite like throat sweets.) You go extremely fast around the track, picking up equipment to knacker your rivals. It's insanely gaudy and very fast, and feels like being in a rave video from the early 90s. Which is handy, because the soundtrack is made by top 1990s electronic bands (Orbital, The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and so on) and is excellent. Great stuff.
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I've been considering a PS1 myself. I had an SNES at the time and my friend had a PS1. It blew my mind. I skipped to N64 afterwards and never got to play those classics.
 
The second Tenchu game (think it's that one... might be the third) is better. It has three player characters, and Tatsumaru has some very cool finishers. Also, you can build your own levels in a very intuitive and fun feature.
 
Project Zomboid. I absolutely suck at this game. I just can't seem to get the hang of the controls. And yet, I keep coming back to it. It fascinates me.
Maybe these fan made videos might explain why.


 
I'm going to give Horizon Zero Dawn another play through. I loved this game, but only played it once, for some reason.
 
Playing old games has made me realise how much fun they are. You start up something like Wipeout, The Chaos Engine or whatever, and thirty seconds later you're right in the thick of the action. Part of this, of course, is that they're very simple, but it's also because they don't take themselves seriously (perhaps they don't have the space to do so). Even the old strategy games like Dune and Dragon's Breath don't have huge tutorials and don't dump loads of exposition on you at the first opportunity.

I suspect that some modern games try to provide a dramatic experience rather than just fun. Films like Carlito's Way or The Shining are good but not fun, and I suspect that some games are trying to do something like that. The most fun I've seen in a game recently is Sunset Overdrive, which actually tries to be a good laugh (perhaps a bit too hard) and, despite some bad mistakes, generally is. Further, the majority of computer game writing, especially the backstory to yet another Tolkien knock-off fantasy world, is not really very interesting in itself.

Some years ago, I played World of Warcraft with a friend. He observed that WoW wasn't interested in how enjoyable the time you spent on it was, just that you spent as much time as possible. Which, given that you pay for it on a monthly basis, doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but it must work on some people.

I continue with Endernal, but it's becoming a slog. It's interesting how just a few tweaks to Skyrim make it a lot less fun to explore: there's no fast travel, for instance, and the population density of low-level monsters is absurd (the main life-forms on Endernal seem to be grass, bandits and unrealistically rabid wolves). Like a lot of modern games, Endernal seems to equate "frustrating" with "good".
 
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I agree @Toby Frost
Sometimes I think the last thing many modern games designers think about is if the player will actually enjoy their creations.

I’ve re-installed Medieval 2 Total War. It’s been many years since I last played this and it holds up quite well. I’m finding the camera controls a bit iffy but, more importantly, I’m having fun playing it:)
 
I don't get the Helldivers 2 obsession. There's a crew of maybe 5 of my friends playing it nonstop since release. To me it just feels like a mindless wave shooter. Admittedly, I'm not as good at those style games anymore.
 
RDArmstrong said:
I don't get the Helldivers 2 obsession. There's a crew of maybe 5 of my friends playing it nonstop since release. To me it just feels like a mindless wave shooter. Admittedly, I'm not as good at those style games anymore.
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The media is pushing it as the big thing everyone should play and so everyone wants to play it.
 
I think it's more to do with people liking the Starship Troopers memes. Although I could be wrong, as I don't play it (not my type of game).
 
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