What are you playing now?

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Darksiders 2

picked it up as well. getting some background on our austin studio

Been playing so much over the last couple of weeks, so here's an opinion bomb:

Call of Juarez Gunslinger

Got it in the Steam sales, wanted to get it when it launched but never got around to it. Really great game. Solid enough shooter with a pretty cool story wrapper (It's being told as a guy telling stories in a bar, with the contents sometimes changing as you play it based on what others there interject with). Definitely worth checking out if you're in the mood for short but sweet shooter.

Antichamber

Haven't finished this one, but I first played it at a party while being pretty drunk, which probably helped a lot. It's got some pretty neat ideas with distortion your expectations. For most people it probably won't be able to hold their attention for more than an hour or two tho.

Starseed Pilgrim

Pretty peculiar 2D freeform platformy art game. You're in an obscure space where you need to plant seeds that then grow in different ways depending on which one you use, where you figure out ways of combining them to reach new places. It nearly tells you nothing about how you play to progress, but I still found myself coming back to it over and over.

Metro Last Light

Started out liking this one, but about 2-3 hours it just became a chore to get through it. Some interesting ideas from time to time, looks great, but it's a miracle that I got through it. Horribly told story, though admittedly I kinda tuned out halfway through.

Cart Life

Pretty cool art game. You choose one of three vendors and have to turn a profit while dealing with all kinds of real life issues. Manages to convey a real feeling of the stress and sadness that these characters go through. It's not really fun as such, but really interesting if you're in the mood for an "art" game

The Swapper

Awesome puzzle platformer where you have to clone yourself to solve puzzles. For the first time in ages I actually really liked being stuck in a puzzle game, and never once thought about going for a walkthrough even when I'd spent like 20 minutes trying to figure something out. Really cool art style and story as well. Highly recommend this one.

Thomas was Alone

Another really cool platform game. None of it never really gets very complicated, but thoroughly enjoyable. Also some pretty interesting character building of simple shapes

Company of Heroes 2

Still haven't played any MP, but the SP campaign was pretty uneven for me. I can totally see why they tried to go the StarCraft route of trying and mixing up every mission so it never becomes tedious, but it ends up feeling way too scripted as a result. Strangely enough then having a few missions with more of a skirmish approach would've really fit it nicely, though I guess you could argue that you can just playing skirmish mode then. Anyway, still wanna try out the MP, since that's the reason I got it.

Gunpoint

Terrific stealth puzzle platformer with some excellent writing. Really felt like the length was perfect, since I was just about to get a bit tired of the core rewiring mechanics just as it was over.

The Cave

Not super impressed with this one. Started playing it when it launched (like...half a year ago), and only just recently pulled myself together and finished it. There's some pretty good puzzles here and there, but feel of the character movement just made it feel way more cumbersome than it should. My main memories from this one is just walking long distances to get one item from an area to another, instead of doing something meaningful.

On iOS:

Kingdom Rush Frontiers

More Kingdom Rush, fucking rocks!

Dead Ahead

Played this one way more than I expected. Endless runner where you're on a bike with a gun and have to escape zombies, with upgrades to bikes and weapons. Cool art style~

Limbo

Played this in preparation for starting at Playdead, and I got say that I'm really impressed with how well it translates to a touch based control scheme. It obviously has the benefit of having a pretty simple set of mechanics, but it feels so natural to just place your finger anywhere on the screen and move it to move the character, and swipe up and down to jump. Definitely not as tight as an actual controller, at least when it comes to grabbing stuff, where you need to stand still next to things and then have it lock on them automatically, but still pretty great.

Icebreakers

Really cool Rovio published game. Swiping to cut ice and solve puzzles, easy to see some Angry Birds like influences in this, but where I never really got how Angry Birds became as huge as it is, then this is actually a genuinely good game.

Assassins Creed 3

So much potential, so unpolished.

Quote from Pampers

Assassins Creed 3

So much potential, so unpolished.

yeah... tried to play it, and omfg it's fail after fail. I also don't get it how every single action needs a different set of buttons. They need to learn the meaning of the word cohesiveness.

System Shock 2 CooP for the 100th time. Still feels as awesome as the first time. Giggity.

Quote from Mazy

Icebreakers

Really cool Rovio published game. Swiping to cut ice and solve puzzles, easy to see some Angry Birds like influences in this, but where I never really got how Angry Birds became as huge as it is, then this is actually a genuinely good game.

In fact, Icebreakers is a flashgame made by Nitrome done few years ago. I think rovio just published them with a reworked UI, levels, etc... But gameplay mecanics were just created before Angry bird got released. And Btw, angry bird was just a rip off of those classic flash games, but with a hipster layer.

I have picked up Dishonored last week. Started playing and didn't really like the direction my play took after the third mission (too easy, not stealthy enough) so started over again on hardest difficulty and now try to play through without killing anyone except mission targets.

Really nice game so far tho.

I've been booting up all of the old steam games that I never got around to playing but bought in previous sales.

I've completed Portal 2 co-op now and it was pretty awesome, cheated on 1 level that I got really stuck on. Would recommend to anyone.

Finally playing Fallout New Vegas and I'm having a hard time really getting in to it, I'm not finding it as good as Fallout 3 story wise, I'm trying to avoid the main quest line like the plague so this might take me a while to complete.

Started playing Lord of the Rings: War in the North which I picked up in the steam sale and had been waiting to buy for quite some time as it came highly recommended as a decent co-op game. I was disappointed to find out I can't play as any of the major story characters and they're just generic human, elf and dwarf guys. The game play is also just endless waves of monsters and this tends to get boring real fast. It's a pretty good looking game though and easy to play if you just switch off and slash through enemies.

Just finished Blood Dragon. Really fun game once you get the upgrade that makes your AR not suck ass.

Moving on to Gunpoint now. Quite a fun game so far.

Tried to pick up Max Payne 3 again where I left... but damn, what a chore this game becomes about 2 thirds into it. Gameplay is really lame and predictable as most of the levels follow this basic rule: Max gets to a new area, something bad happens, Max kills 50 guys, Max moves to a new area, repeat. The amount of enemies you kill is so ridiculous that I got an achievement for killing over 1000 enemies and I'm not even finished with the game.

Anyway, after forcing myself through a super boring ass level (

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the boat in the panama canals

) and dying several times because I could never tell which direction enemies were coming from, I decided to switch to easy mode just to get to the end asap because honestly I don't care anymore... And what happens next? The game breaks and restarting to the last checkpoint doesn't fix it.

I probably wouldn't be so pissed off if I hadn't paid full price for this game when it was released :ubermad: :ubermad:

Super Mario 64.

Nah! It's way complicated, I'm mad because I can't get enought stars to open some doors, I didnt't get the point of this game so far. Stars to open doors? The stars should be used to get more powers, like speed. The game models are not so good too, some enemies are just some 3D primitives linked to each other =( For example, you can count the number of polys of the main character (Mario).

Also, the game has no direction. It just give to you a loose goal and from that point you are on your own. No tutorials, no hints, you can't use cheats and so on. I'm really frustated.

roflmao

Mario 64 was great but going back and playing basically the first 3D platformer probably isn't going to go so well.

That said, I did briefly return to it at one point and was surprised by how well the gameplay and camera movement, etc hold up — shamefully better than some modern games at times.

The gameplay is pretty standard fare for 3D platformers: you complete quests in worlds to get items that're used to access more levels in the overworld. Granted it was basically Mario 64 that invented the idea but it caught on.

If you're looking for something similar from the same era but better: Banjo-Kazooie. Rare took everything great about Mario 64 and made it better, prettier, funnier, and it is just a fuckin' classic. Probably my favourite 3D platformer of all time.

O Thrik... He was being sarcastic.

lol. The possibility had occurred to me but the criticisms are pretty valid if you go back to it now. The game hasn't aged very well at all.

It's kind of weird to think that such influential, classic games will probably be seen as a piece of shit by future (and even current) generations. If you asked any kid to look at Half-Life 1 who's grown up with the 360 the reaction would be hilarious, yet that's like having a similar reaction to Blade Runner or some shit.

I'll be able to show my kids the films and TV shows I grew up with and they'll probably enjoy them, but the games they'll be like 'wat. fuck off dad'.

Finally got around to playing Thomas Was Alone since I got it in an indie bundle a while back. I didn't have any expectations going in and I was very pleasantly surprised by how fantastic of characters those rectangles are.

At my parents place. Even though I have internet access and could download any of the indie games I bought during the Summer Steam Sale I'm playing Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 instead like there's no tomorrow xD Yups, brings back my childhood.

Getting back into Dota2 and SF4

My Makoto is still not as good as my Chun but it's getting there. Gonna branch into a 3rd character soon. Maybe one of the shotos.

As for Dota2. People are insulting my mother less in the last few days so I think I'm getting better.

Quote from AlexM

Getting back into Dota2 and SF4

My Makoto is still not as good as my Chun but it's getting there. Gonna branch into a 3rd character soon. Maybe one of the shotos.

As for Dota2. People are insulting my mother less in the last few days so I think I'm getting better.

I think I'm finally starting to get matched with people who play just a bit more serious than I do. Who knew auto attacking a creep twice was grounds for me killing myself.