What game are you playing at the moment?

Still playing Sleeping Dogs, but also bought the DX collection the other day so I've been playing DX:HR. I never made it very far the first time 'round on the Xbox, so a lot of the game is now new to me. I've also been playing it in a way I never play DX games: by killing as many people as possible. Normally I play sneaky and stun only those that I seem absolutely necessary. It's like a whole different game. The relative ammo scarcity early on means every shot has to count.

Two things.

Hey Mortal Kombat - if you're trying to assign actual buttons I'm supposed to use to combo to the right stick, you might need to consider that you don't have enough buttons. Doing swap combos with a back swipe instead of a right stick wiggle would have been nice. I also somehow have managed to suck even worse at this game on a smaller platform. Can't figure out if that's because there's a little too little throw between the digits on the D-pad or just me being terrible.

Mutant Space Blobs Attack from Space whatever? I have blisters on my fingers because, like every single video game with score ranked success tiers, you went and made at least one of them too narrow (the second one in the game, actually - scooping up all the blue stuff on top of the refrigerator while the red laser chases is much, much, much harder than any other gold in the first three zones).

Bought Gundam Extreme Vs.

I'm not sure how they got Third Strike and MAHVEL BAYBEE alumni doing a Gundam fighting game, but holy shit I'm glad they did. Really fast 2v2 game with strong influences from Virtual On.

No, seriously, buy this. Like, right now. Lightning-fast, highly technical, and exceptionally balanced. I don't even care if you don't like Gundam - this is a fantastic, if unorthodox, fighter.

Plodding my way through Mass Effect. I'm currently in the thick of destroying the Thorian, which is an exercise in frustration because Wrex and Garrus have very little health left, I've no medi-gel and there doesn't seem to be any forthcoming. Also, it's sort of stupid that I can't kill the Thorian creepers until they actually stand up and start moving.

I haven't touched Dead Space 2 for a few days now, which realistically is likely its death knell. There's been a couple neat setpiece environments, but otherwise it's not keeping me engaged.

For a palate-cleanser, I've plucked Anno 2070 from the backlog pile and have started putting time into it. The campaign/tutorialish missions sure have some terrible voiceacting, but I think I'm starting to get through the learning curve on interface and deeper systems. My biggest triumph recently was finally figuring out how to adjust my tax rate.

All MMOs all the time for me right now. WoW, LOTRO, PlanetSide 2 and Secret World on any given day depending on my mood.

Although, my coworkers have been talking card games for the last few weeks which put me in a mood for some Magic: The Gathering. MTGO now has cheap phantom sealed deck games -- you don't get to keep the cards afterward, only any prizes you might win. Only $4 to enter, and I still have some event tickets on my account so I played in one. Lost my first two matches and won the last on a forfeit, but both my losses were really close and I enjoyed myself so that's what counts.

It's Bioware. It is mandatory that all protagonists stare blankly at the villain until they complete their power-up/transformation/emergence/monologue. MANDATORY.

Apparently it even extends to lesser villains. :)

I thought I'd continue this whole crazy "finishing games" thing after my second completed Dark Souls run followed by wrapping up Prototype 2 ... nope. Back to Dark Souls, take 3, this time with bonus sorcery and PvP.

Yeah, but I like how you have THE ONE counter example. :D

There's more.

Anyway, I've been playing Spectromancer. Thanks to kerzain for putting me onto it, it's pretty damn nifty.

It's nifty until your opponent Tornadoes the fuck out of that 12 point-cost card you just laid down. Then it's not nifty at all. Not at all.



And fuck you Astral Guards.

Currently on my bi-yearly attempt to play Company of Heroes online.... Think I may take up self mutilation instead--seems to have a brighter future.

Fuck I suck at this game. It'd be one thing if I could even put up a fight, but it so obvious that my opponents are just toying with me.

You're doing better than I am. I can give most of the AI's a knuckle sandwich in DoW. With CoH, I get absolutely steamrolled.

I've been down with the flu for a week and a half now, my head is fuzzy so I haven't quite been in the mood for Dark Souls. The whole family ended up resubbing to Rift, which has been surprisingly entertaining. the low level areas of the server we've rolled on are actually quite busy, and rifts seem to be doable on your own now as well. They've also added "dimensions" to the game, which is similar to housing only then it's more of a pocket dimension. At the moment I'm the proud owner of a hill, yay me!

Yeah, when they have a lot of points in air, and you don't know what their top card is, you really have to be cautious.

UI could really use some work though, for example: hotkeys. And I don't think the unlocking of expansion content could be more count-intuitive if it tried. Wait, so I only need the one expansion? Why advertise all three then?

SW: The Old Republic. Yes, I'm just as surprised as you are. Having a reasonable amount of fun with the various storylines and I like that the game fully recognizes my altoholicism. My Jedi Sage is at 24 while the others are in their mid-teens.

What doesn't come as a surprise, I suppose, is that they all belong to the Darksoul Legacy.

My new laptop arrived at the end of last week. It came with a dedicated graphics card, so I wanted to get out a demanding 3d game to test it out. I picked Anno 1404, which I liked but hadn't gotten very far into when I first got it. I thought it would make a good game to play lazily on the sofa while staying at my parents'.

That was... Saturday, I think? I've done nothing else since then. "You've been playing for six hours straight", the game said to me last night, "Maybe you should take a break."

"Huh. That does sound like a good idea," I thought, "I should probably do that."
I then continued laying down vineyards.

Skyrim. I am level 50 and about 200 hours in with right now no end in sight.

I've been playing a little Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, and thanks to a fan patch that makes the dialog (which is the only thing that so much as hints at what items do or what you're supposed to do in the game) somewhat less completely useless, I'm actually enjoying it, although I'm not very far into it yet. Like all of the proto-Metroidvanias of the era it has a lot of interesting ideas and a lot of deep flaws, but I do enjoy playing these as a fan of the genre. Also, this is a really stunningly gorgeous game, far better looking than either of the other two NES Castlevanias. It's been a really cool surprise to just take in those visuals.

Here's what's not surprising about it: the awful controls. Just terrible. I like these games but every time I play one I'm just amazed that one of the biggest game companies at the time let one of their flagship franchises out the door with controls in that state.

Tropico 4. This is my first foray into the Tropico universe, and what fun it's been. Now I'm wishing I'd picked up a few more DLC packs for this game during the December Steam sale, especially the one that gives you a building which speeds up construction.

Great game, and punishing (when it comes to balancing my economy) while I'm still learning it. I think I'm up to campaign mission 5 or 6 so far, where I'm stuck dealing with both rebel incursions and an active volcano. I'm really enjoying their take on the city builder genre and have already put a couple dozen hours into the thing.

Did you pick up the Modern Times expansion as well, or just the base game?

As others here noted when I started it, it's not particularly challenging once you learn the fundamentals and build some good habits that tend to carryover regardless of game conditions (like building multiple Docks, for example) but it's still a lot of fun.

If you do decide to pick up some DLC on the next sale, I'd recommend the Plantador pack as well as the Constructor one. Having the Plantation building as a relatively cheap way to produce larger amounts of cash crops is really, really helpful for early-game cash flow.

Yea, I picked up the base game, plus Modern Times, Megalopolis and Pirate Heaven. I haven't actually tried the dlc missions yet, still working through the vanilla campaign.

I wasn't sure I'd like the game, and I wasn't expecting to like it nearly as much as I do so far, so I was a bit conservative on the DLC, only picking up those three because they were so cheap during the sale.

Right, I did the same thing - just bought the base game at first and have steadily added DLC through subsequent sales. I haven't tried the Megalopolis or Pirate Haven content yet, though; those were just released fairly recently, I think. The two I mentioned above are definitely worthwhile for the buildings they add (Cement Factory and Plantation) and the included scenarios aren't too bad.

What a horrible night to have a curse!

I tried to go back and play that once. I couldn't get past the tediously slow text bubbles or how annoying it was to climb stairs.

Great music though.

Try it with the patch! In addition to making the text more helpful it speeds it up a lot, and it also speeds up the day/night transitions. There's nothing to be done about the stairs or any of the rest of the bad controls unfortunately, but not making you wait around while text s l o w l y appears makes the game a lot less irritating.

I'm back to Skyrim (I haven't completed the main campaign or DLC yet, for shame). Somehow I've managed to get myself shacked up in Lakeside Manor and married to Claudia Christian (Aela the Huntress) and my current follower is my female Protagonist from Saints Row 3 (Serana, Laura Bailey aka Female Voice #1).

I'm am very ok with all of this.

I've finally started Atelier Totori, and it's this weird mix of cheap-ass production and awesomeness. The English voice acting is good enough (if not spectacular) that I haven't fled back to the Japanese, the dialogue and writing are decent-to-good so far, I love the alchemical crafting, the zones for adventuring in look very pretty (though they're tiny), monsters are cute and fun to fight, the combat system will presumably get more complex and is decent right now... But the completely static backgrounds with static portraits for dialogue seems downright out of place in a PS3 game, the combat sound effects are dreadful--I swear, most of the attacks and monster deaths sound like farts--and my character runs like she's got lead weights attached to her ankles.

Still, very cute animation when they actually bother to animate things. Overall I'm liking it, but...it feels a lot more like a $30 game than a $60 game. (I got it for $40, but that was the used price.) I'll probably get the sequel anyway, once the price drops over there a bit. There's a lot to be said for a JRPG where I'm not saving the world, there are a lot of female characters having plausible friendly relationships with each other, and crafting is at least as important as hitting things with sparkly sticks.

Hey, I went and got her yesterday and I'm in love! She basically mows down whoever she focuses on, as I've made her a stealth/backstabbey rogue. So now, romance wise I've got upright warrior woman, needy elf mage, or saucy pirate babe who has already propositioned me!

But this is Bioware, so I know if I just go for quick sex with Isabella then the relationship can't last. I'll get my one night of ya-yas and she won't want to talk to me anymore, so I'm holding out to learn more about her, see what makes her tick, and have a "real" relationship with her.

Of course, I've now exhausted all the side quests so I have to go back to bringing the dwarf along as we head into the Deep Roads.

There was only one individual worth marrying, and that was Anwen the priestess of Dibella. She's the only one where it felt like you were with someone you weren't walking all over.

Installing Rules of Engagement 2. On an Amiga 500+ emulator. Using DirOpus 4.

OLD SCHOOL FOR THE MASSES, BABY :)

Hey Brian Rubin, you said you had the manual for this, right?

Aela definitely has more spice than Lydia but man the romances in Skyrim are lame.

I've been trying to whittle down my backlog of modern-day military shooters, so this week I went back to finally finish off Battlefield 3 (and now that I'm done I won't really have any reason to load up Origin for a while) and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (which ended up being more enjoyable than BF3 due to the cheesy camaraderie of your squadmates.) I also started and finished two games I was interested in mostly for how they explored their premises/settings, Homefront (dreadful and ham-fisted as expected although I enjoyed the final mission) and Spec-Ops: The Line (Some idiot website carelessly spoiled one of the twists for me months earlier, but I still found the story very worthwhile and I expect the images of a desolate and ruined Dubai will haunt me for quite some time.)

I don't mind corridor shooters in concept, since I tend to alternate them with open world games. After finishing Saints Row 2 and 3 a few weeks back I was quite ready for a few quick, tightly-scripted experiences. Now I'm considering whether to work on my RTS backlog or tackle that mound of RPGS that are sitting there waiting...

Spent a few hours teaching a friend about MMOs. Ether Saga Odyssey is cutesy, which she liked, but empty, which neither of us liked. Also it crashed on her frequently. Might try showing her something with a storyline you can follow and actual players hanging around next time, like Vindictus.

Or join us in SWTOR!

I want this in my life. Or, at the very least, in my PS2. I don't suppose it's available through PSN?

Anyhow, I haven't been doing much game wise... been playing a bit of Oblivion and Way of the Samurai 4 while waiting for my copy of Ni No Kuni to get here.

My GF, however, bought Skyrim yesterday... it was quite fun listening to her over Skype; I became convinced her Khajiit was going to steal the entire town of Riverwood.

It's not on PSN, but it's had a budget re-release, the PS3 is region-free, and the menus are mostly in English*, so...

* Assuming that you can read katakana.

Fighting games are remarkable import friendly, in general.

Oh, and you can download the Hi-v Gundam DLC for free off the Japanese PSN store. Which is cool; it's 3000 points and not as good as Crossbone Gundam X-1 Full Cloth the better 3000-point units, but the funnels make it interesting and different.

I reinstalled SimCity 3000 yesterday and have been sucked right into it. I haven't played it since SC4 came out, so its interesting to go back and see the differences. I can say that it kept me up until 3AM last night, so it still has that magic.

Day 6: I am still playing. Send help. I have finished the campaign, finished the 'Master Builder' scenario, and am now continuing on with that world post-completion in order to destroy the AI player, take over all his islands, perfect the efficiency of my production chains, cover an island in noblemen, and build a Sultan's Mosque.

There was a job application I was halfway through filling out this time last week. I just discovered I've now missed the submission deadline.

...
I guess I'll just get back to tweaking my marzipan trade routes.

Hey, remember how I'm playing Mortal Kombat on my Vita? Just figured I'd let everybody know that the latter parts of Story Mode still suck ass. If you're going to invest me with, like, five dragons up my butt, the least you could do is make Shao Kahn interruptable. Actually, it'd be neat if I could switch Ladder around so that the last two weren't uninterruptable bosses, because then I could play at a more significant difficulty than Medium.

Proteus. You'll hate it, I love it.