What game are you playing at the moment?

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 was today's game, but it's a bit frustrating when you lose since the battles take so much time. It's probably going to take me a while to make any real progress.

After finishing up Sleeping Dogs the other day, I decided to head back into Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I initially bought it for 360, but never played it as Skyrim and school ate up my life.

Decently fun game. Boss fights are dumb.

I finished Dark Souls, to the extent that anyone can finish it, and moved on to Modern Warfare 2. Fun so far, just as silly as I'd have expected.

I'm currently messing around with a few different games with some seriousness:

Borderlands 2
Path of Exile
Asheron's Call 2
Dark Age of Camelot

I fiddled with and quickly put down:

Risen
Chronicles of Riddick

This is all over the last week, as being unemployed I have lots of free time.

You don't have to pretend to like that around here.


I'm back into GW2 a bit, and World of Tanks still. And Space Pirates and Zombies mods. Mostly just playing random shit these days.

And I'm back into League of Legends after five months off. What a horribly, horribly addictive game. Hopefully I can shake it in a month or three...

Diaper Change and Baby wash

Diaper change was sort of exciting in the beginning but I've come to realise it actually just stinks. All in all I find Baby wash to be far more enjoyable with better replay value.

My wife and I have sort of forgotten whether or not Nappy Change, Baby wash and Night Feed were any good the first time round, so we're installing the latest version. Gold master is due to drop in about 22 weeks.

The second iteration is typically better in most game series... Civ II, Age of Empires 2, Half Life 2, Borderlands 2, Sim City 2000... A small list of the ones I can think of immediately.

Mostly, good luck Dermot and Major Icehole. Hopefully you guys still get to fit in the odd bit of gaming time in between grinding levels to get new skill unlocks - first word, first steps, first day of school.

Haha, I didn't even think about that. It's another one like AC2, good for a nostalgia visit in small doses, I think. First time around I didn't get very far at all.

Tried a bit of F.E.A.R. 3, but it's pretty blah so far. Planning on working through the campaigns of Starcraft II and Dawn of War II this week. I haven't finished an RTS campaign in forever! I guess I should stop buying them. I could blame Steam sales...but that doesn't apply for SC2.

Dawn of War II doesn't have an RTS campaign.

Picked Harvest Moon: Animal Parade back up today. Currently watching Anissa violently shake her brand new baby. I am very uncomfortable because I have no option to step in and cease this behavior.

Her husbands just standing next to her, shaking the rattle, and she keeps lifting the infant up and shaking him in the air...

I'm getting through Dead Space 3 right now. The reviews have estimated a length between 13 hours up to as much as 20 hours. I'm hoping to finish it before Aliens: Colonial Marines comes out next week because I know my brother is going to want to co-op through it the entire way. That won't leave any time for Dead Space until it's finished.

It's cool, he's a doctor.

Then he ought to know to support the newborn's head, ought'nt he?

Nah, she just keeps raising him to the sky and shaking him around like she's taunting God himself.

He might want to consider prescribing her something for the post-pardem if this behavior of hers keeps up.

Actually, I came back into the house/clinic and searched it inside and out and found no baby. Just that baby-shakin' scene, then it was gone.

I don't even wanna think about it too long.

He's up on the top floor, I think. He's in there, they just crammed him in a corner. They're amazing parents.

I'm between games right now, myself - I have Journey and Assassin's Creed: Liberation waiting for me. Debating which of those to start next.

I'm playing Ghost Recon Future Soldier on the PS3 and, surprisingly, it's really good! It's not paced as slow as the old PC Ghost Recon games, but it's a more tactical game than most modern shooters.

Rolling around gratuitously in new toys now that I have the horsepower to run ALL THE GAMES. Just picked up Witcher 2 on the mid-week sale, bought Torchlight 2 and started it earlier this week, and Far Cry 3 and Anno 2070 are giving me the suggestive come-hither eyes so I'll probably end up going home with those two as well.

Dark Souls is on the horizon too, but I might as well wait for another sale before picking up the PC version.

Started up The Darkness 2 , nice prologue movie for people who never played the first.

I heard its short, like 6-7 hours , so should be done by tomorrow. :)

Another game to cross off the backlog!

Been digging into Crusader Kings II, since it's one of the few games that'll run on my work macbook. I just got outmaneuvered without noticing yesterday - I suspect this will happen a lot. Here's how to do it, playing as Sweden primary (with a very strong pretender):

1. Start marrying into the Norwegian family to strengthen alliances.
2. Have your king die, passing it onto the favored brother. Unfavored brother starts getting riled up and eventually challenges you, taking half the country with him.
3. Defeat him, take back your stuff, and imprison him, hoping for sense.
4. Nope! Have to execute him before his plotting goes out of control; plan to ply young child Duchess with gifts to lower odds of another succession claim.

Step 5 is where it all pays off. Someone assassinates the now-well-groomed child; line of succession passes to Queen Mum, who ... in the meantime married the King of Norway to improve relations. And now he has a claim on half of Sweden. ARGH.

He really likes me but ... that's a lot of land for him to win if he pushes that claim. Friendship only goes so far where land is concerned. Dammit mom!*

*of course it's my fault for not realizing she was in fairly direct line to half of the country. Still. Outmaneuvered by mom.

After all the excitement of the Age of Wonders 3 announcement I'm playing Shadow Magic again with the super-cool Brave New World mod, a ton o fun.

I got the urge to get into an MMO again, so picked up The Secret World. The modern-day horror/conspiracy wackiness/Lovecraft/Unknown Armies setting is making up for clunkiness. Also, a recent quest I turned in had my faction handlers respond with a "Tentacles do not come from heads without reasons. Please provide information on reasons." Which is delightful.

I've been slightly hooked on Pokemon Black 2 for the past few days. Late, I know, but I have the excuse of already having played it once when the Japanese release came out. Except that time I just played through once to see how it was, so now I'm spending all my time in front of a guide aiming for 100% completion.

And a bit of L4D2, but I'm always playing that.

Finished DX:HR. All in all, pretty good. Mostly captured the DX "feel" (mandatory boss fights not withstanding), while being a bit slimmed down from the original. I didn't bother reloading my final save to push button to see ending 2, 3 & 4, will probably just youtube the others.

Up next is a replay of The Longest Journey, because fuck yeah Dreamfall Chapters kickstarter!

I'm finally playing Fire Emblem: Awakening. Which is great fun! I love the art, the voice acting is good (and not excessive; I don't want every single line voiced, thanks), I like the character design both visually and in character--there's no one I hate yet, even among the obligatory "comedy" characters--and the mechanics seem neat: not too complex to grasp the basics, but with potential for a lot of depth. (I'm a little frustrated in that most discussion threads of the game assume you already know the series and game well enough to not mind any spoilers at all, but that's to be expected; I wouldn't go into a Final Fantasy XIII-2 thread expecting a lack of spoilers for Final Fantasy XIII, after all. So it's not them, it's me.) And I really do like that attacks are always two-way; it ends up feeling a little silly, even within the turn-based aspect of this type of strategy game, if I can go punch someone in the face, and they have to just stand there and take it.

With any luck, it'll keep ramping up the difficulty slowly enough that I can actually follow along. I find it a little frustrating that some systems still aren't explained--there are numbers on the screen that I don't understand the meaning of, and since I bought it as a download, I don't have a manual to reference--but, y'know. Overall happy. (Especially since I've paused my Atelier Totori playthrough on account of discovering that, yet again, time-based pressure drives me into a frozen panic where I don't want to make any decisions at all because if I make the wrong one I will be TOO LATE for something vital.)

When you have the icon selected on the menu, there should be a "manual" option right next to the open button. You can also access the manual during the game by pressing the home button to suspend the game and go back to the system menu.

Finally getting around to playing Mass Effect. Enjoying the game so far, in spite of its boxy level design, incredibly static environments (is the world populated entirely by mannequins?) and wonky console interface. The story's compelling enough to make me want to play, though. Scratches that grand space opera itch.

OHO.

Thank you. This is the first game I've actually bought as a download, so I didn't even think to look for something like that.

I picked up Wargame European Escalation on one of those bargain sales. Despite the blandest of names, it's fun, plays a bit like Company of heroes, but from a much higher strategic layer, as I am no longer telling my troops to use specific bits of cover. The unlock system is a bit wonky, but at least it's not a F2P one.

Ni No Kuni. So much Ni No Kuni. Possibly too much Ni No Kuni....

Nah.

Seriously though, it's everything I love about Level 5 games... the Ghibli aspect's one hell of a bonus, but I bought NNK because of Level 5.

I'm happy to see a return to form, too, ever since White Knight Chronicles 2 disappointed me... though, to be fair, part of that disappointment was due to the fact the publishers gave absolutely no fucks about the US and EU markets. There was so much DLC content we missed out on because it was never localized.

Glad to hear you're liking it! I've been flogging that game to anyone who'll listen - probably my single favourite RTS, and also the one time I've ever seriously gotten into the multiplayer scene for a strategy game. I'm really looking forward to the sequel coming out this year, which changes the part of the game I liked least - the single-player campaign - and adds fixed-wing aircraft.

I played the demo and it was gorgeous! Holding off a little while, though - I already have a huuuuge RPG backlog (currently about 20 hours into each of Fallout:New Vegas and Xenoblade, and after that I have Skyrim and Dragon's Dogma). I'll probably pick it up when it's cheaper. :)

Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis (thinking about doing a LP)and Jurassic Park: Danger Zone because even though the franchise as a whole has long since gone downhill these two games are pretty sweet.

Other than that some replay of Shadow of the Colossus, Cooking Mama World Kitchen, and some WiiFit. Normally I'm just a casual gamer if Cooking Mama didn't outright scream it to anyone. This lets me multitask my games though at least.

I really need to go back and play Operation Genesis and confirm that it's actually the fun theme park sim I recall and not the result of drug-induced gaming that a lot of games I go back and play turn out to be. The most I remember is feeding other dinos to the carnivores to appease the tourists, which was pretty batshit awesome.

I always designed the park so that the visitors were effectively inside a high security fenced in area with some viewing platforms to see some events happening in what amounted to a safari park outside. Or so that the tourist AI could actually understand that I was letting harmless dinosaurs (homalocephale) walk alongside them, instead of completely ignore the dinosaurs right next to them. I would allow my visitors to go out into the safari in a jeep, and I would drive (since all the dinosaurs wander off if you let them roam in herds/T.rex thinks the vehicle must die).

Makes the game more interactive.

I decided to sit down and play Skyrim for a bit recently, especially seeing as I never managed to finish the game. This isn't my intention though, I'm just happy to cruise the world cleaving an axe into some thug's head, or a giant fireball into a dragon's vast body. So, with about 6 hours before my shift started on Sunday night, I update the mods I had installed and..... downloading 5GB update. Yep, there's a new texture pack to be downloaded. No way around that either near as I could tell. Here I am silently cursing, willing 5GB to download in mere seconds when I know it will be much longer.Out went any gaming plans that night, I just had to play Skyrim. Instead I watched the cricket on TV.

The second night I finally achieved some success. Got the game going, mods are making the game stable, and the enhanced atmosphere is perfect. Note to self, don't lose the current iterations of Sounds of Skyrim that I have installed... After a few hours, I ended up giving the mightiest fuck you to the Skyrim Monster Mod. Out of lore characters are fine, but the whole super deadly HP sponges are bloody boring. I might reinstall it once I get to a higher level, perhaps, but it rendered some areas of limits, or having to just away and come back another day. Needless to say, following nightshift I have a routine - go to gym, do housework, go to bed early. Instead what happened is I went to gym, did minimal housework and then went to bed around 2 in the morning. And here I am now disgusted with the fact I lost most of my day having only gotten out of bed at 11. Slept well though!

Before Skyrim, I was playing Tropico 4. Good game, but then I look at what modern times did and feel disappointed. Mandatory upgrades for buildings stinks. Having a marketplace become a supermarket is fine, if I wanted a nice upper class area. But for my lower class burbs, it looks completely out of place. Not to mention I prefer the older apartments which give a more Caribbean vibe than what the new look modern apartments do. The new ones feel out of place, especially contrasted against what will be a fairly lousy looking palace in comparison. I think I understand why the new buildings have to overwrite the old ones, based on the size of the list probably not able to be scrolled up or down. But the illusion was broken with all these out of place buildings.... unless I go with a look not at all dissimilar to what Just Cause 2 achieved? Or just suck it up and give everyone the same look modern apartments mixed with tenements.

Heh, I used to have quite the few mods for JP:OG. Perhaps I'll install it again sometime?

I've gotten to a climax in Dragon Age II. I don't think it's the end of the game, but it might be.

For the entire game I've been really switching off party members and have used pretty much everyone that's available. I've built some good groups, and I've built my wizard to be primarily crowd control. I've taken Force Wizard and put a lot of points into it, so I'm constantly throwing whole crowds of people around, or slamming them into the ground, or slowing them down. Everyone else does much more damage, but while I'm throwing people around they're not attacking. This is a good thing.

Now I've been challenged to single combat. Fuck me. I hated this in Dragon Age, and I hate it here. I've built parties to work together in combat, not just me. I can't do much damage to this guy, and I mostly have to slow him down and run around, keeping out of range of his swords. Of course he charges me, and then I'm toast.

And you can't save right before the battle, only in the room before the encounter, so every time you have to fight this guy's elite guard first. It's not a big deal, they go down easy because I'm throwing them around, but it's like having to live through the same 2-minute boss cutscene every time. Oh wait, you have to do that too.

Playing Sleeping Dogs on the PC now. It's pretty good and a hell of a steal for the $10 I paid for it on Steam. The story is cliche, but it's competently told while the combat and driving are good enough to keep me interested. I've gotten to the point, though, where I'm burned out on all the side mission stuff and grinding so I'm just mainlining the main story missions.

I HATED that part. It was practically game breaking. I was playing a rogue character, and I totally cheesed my way through that fight by running around and plinking him with arrows, I think. At any rate I made it through in some way that was totally unsatisfying and lame but still the only way I could do it.