What are you playing at the moment?

[Alarra]

Two things I've been playing recently:

- Pokemon Moon. There are a lot of improvements over previous games in the series, and the story is quite a bit fresher so far.

- Watch_Dogs 2. Only played about an hour and a half, but I'm liking it. The world feels a lot bigger, the cars are finally much easier to handle, NPCs actually ride motorcycles now so it's not so freaking obvious that another player's in your game, and I like the characters. Lot more complicated too, as far as controls, different types of hacks, etc. (And there's dogs! Awww!)

[ProphetDragon]

I started playing today... The Lord of The Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth II.

Soon I will down the Edain mod, and then Dagor Dagorath submod and wreck havok with Ancalagon the Black.

[KingFeraligatr]

Been doing lots of Halo 1 modding, mostly getting my prized creations, the Awesome Marines! (yes, the exclamation mark is part of the name......), into Halo Custom Edition compatible single player maps. I've also started work on the Regular Marines, Marines that are not so dumb as the regular Dumb Marines of Halo, but not intentionally overpowered like my Awesome Marines!.

I've also been doing some Morrowind and Pokemon on the side. It's really hard for me nowadays to get into any games I'm not already well acquainted with.

[BetaB17]

. I've also started work on the Regular Marines, Marines that are not so dumb as the regular Dumb Marines of Halo, but not intentionally overpowered like my Awesome Marines!..

Oooh, Average you do say? Please do tell. No seriously, I want to know the improvements and general combat prowess (I have a bit of a soft spot for the halo Marines <3 )

[KingFeraligatr]

. I've also started work on the Regular Marines, Marines that are not so dumb as the regular Dumb Marines of Halo, but not intentionally overpowered like my Awesome Marines!..

Oooh, Average you do say? Please do tell. No seriously, I want to know the improvements and general combat prowess (I have a bit of a soft spot for the halo Marines <3 )

General Improvements: longer bursts, more health, shorter time between bursts, more aggressive, better "defensive" AI, more awareness, better grenade use, no more panicking, move around more, more overall damage output, harder to shutdown, more cover usage, more accuracy, better combat distances, etc.

Regular Marines (RMs) in particular: a general improvement on the Marines without being too broken (I hope), don't berserk as easily, etc.

Awesome Marines! (AMs!) in particular: a significant improvement on the Marines with only a care for being fun and overpowered with little care about their brokenness, far more aware, super sight ranges and hearing, high accuracy, immortality, much better defensive AI, infinite grenades and better usage, no more flinching after every hit they take, modified weapons with higher accuracy and no reloading needed, move around a lot more, darkness vision, much more aggressive and defensive, long bursts with shorter wait times in between, no more beserking, more base damage with much higher damage output, much better engagement distances, and more.

To be quite frank, the RMs and esp. the AMs! more than redeem to stupidity of the normal Halo Marines. I loved putting the AMs! into maps, and now I have the RMs to supplement them. My effort to redeem the Marines all those years ago has come far I guess and keeps succeeding IMO. There was an issue for a long time where the AMs! couldn't really see anything, but I fixed that a bit ago.

[sinister]

Playing some Dragon's Dogma. Really fun game, and the magic is amazing.

[Unionhack]

Bro, if you like magic in DD, definitely go Magic Archer. Most fun class in the game IMO.

[sinister]

Hah, I'm playing Magic Archer right now, after switching from Mage. I felt I needed some physical damage attacks. Might try out Mystic Knight later.

[Will Zurmacht]

Recently finished a second playthru of Enderal, the best total conversion mod I've ever played. That a mod with this breadth and richness of content (including full English voice acting and passable text translation from the original German) was released for free truly boggles the mind.

As for future entertainments, 20 USD spent during the Steam winter sale yielded:

Borderlands 2 GOTY
Dishonored
Mirror's Edge
The Bard's Tale (includes the three original games from the 1980s; good preparation for InXile's forthcoming Bard's Tale game)
Lords of the Realm II

[Crawldragon]

Dusted off my old PSN account to play my first proper game of Rocket League with some cousins today. Found it to be very fun. I scored a whole one goal and two very close saves, but I confess my brain isn't quite adjusted to the insanity of playing soccer with rocket-powered cars If I ever get around to buying a PlayStation myself I'll almost certainly be playing Rocket League more often.

Also gave Guns Up! a go, which is a fun little strategy game involving a combination of tower defense and a very loose real-time strategy element including the ability to attack other players' bases. I had a bunch of fun with that but was annoyed at the micropayments, a gaming holiday tradition if ever there was one.

I also briefly got to enjoy some Anki Overdrive action, which was more fun than I was expecting, but while I did enjoy that I couldn't help but wonder if it would have worked better as a proper video game, or if they had done some cool augmented reality thing with a virtual race track in the phone/tablet used to control the cars, but as a kid who grew up loving Hotwheels I found Anki to be an absolute delight, and I had a lot of fun imagining how cool it must have been to build the toys and software themselves. However, I do not recommend playing Anki on a floor that a dog is likely to walk on because it will trod all over your race track.

Here's to another year, ladies and gentlemen!

EDIT Oh, and lest I forget I also played a game called Tricky Towers. Again, very fun. If you haven't played Tricky Towers a general idea of its play style can be gotten by imagining trying to build a tower using as many Tetris pieces as possible. There's a bit more to it than that, but for a simple concept it's surprisingly fun, engaging, and tense, and lead to numerous moments of me screaming "Why am I so bad at video games!?" to the amusement of my fellow players. That's another one for the "must buy' list.

[Unionhack]

Once I redownload my library onto my new computer, I am going to play through XCOM: Enemy Within again! Last time I basically got to the end but my machine crapped out on me before I could finish it, so this time it's for real.

I'm gonna miss my old characters though. I might use a trainer and remake some of my favorites.

[The SheoDovah]

That's rather harsh of XCOM. Even Impossible rarely pulls the "Brick the player's entire machine" card. But that's XCOM for ya. One minute, it's going well, the next minute? all misses, mass panic amongst troops and you can do nothing but watch as your favourite colonel badass is killed by a panicing rookie. Ah, XCOM, it giveth and it taketh. Or it decides that the 90% shot misses when you really need it to, your most useful squad member dies and then the mission turns into a squad wipe.


I'm taking a month-two month break from Dragon Age Origins. Literally put over 100 hours in. Kinda debating what game to play. Either XCOM EW(Which incidentally, I think I purchased with the first two months of 2016 so would make it one of those games that i'm literally playing a year later), Demon Souls(did what I call a trial run to see if i'm in the mood for Souls) or Far Cry 4.

[Unionhack]

No, no, you misunderstand, XCOM didn't brick my machine, my machine was just dying. 4 year old lil netbook couldn't take it.

From the looks of it though my new one will suffice just fine.

[The SheoDovah]

I was joking. Though I wouldn't put it past XCOM to brick a machine if it was in a very foul mood. Got the Long War mod?

(I've decided to play XCOM as well.)

[Unionhack]

I will run Long War this time I think, yes.

Also going to try out XCOM 2. Got like 10 things downloading right now so it's slow going.

[The SheoDovah]

Cool. I've heard it's excellent and adds a ton of new features.

Kinda dislike that the tutorial offers a few exclusive stuff. E.g. Argie Delta, a few maps but tis just nitpicking. I'm going to do Normal Ironman with all Second Wave options enabled(I deleted the saves thus it's Game 1 with the tutorial on for story purposes) then maybe, Classic.

I hope to play Long War in the next few years.

[MetaCthulhu]

So I just finished SOMA. Lots of hard decisions.

[Kerr]

So I just finished SOMA. Lots of hard decisions.

I played it in October, absolutely loved it.

Spoiler:

Killing that little bloopy robot made me feel like a monster.

The decision I actually spent the most time trying to figure out what to do with was the WAU. Ultimately I killed it so it couldn't "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" people. But yeah, there are arguments to the contrary. Like the WAU was getting better at it's job, what if it would have ended up becoming better and another last hope for humanity?

I do love how anyone is going to assume you're playing as a simulation of Simon running one of the tests the professor mentioned which turns out to be wrong, but is what most people are going to assume. I really loved Catherine. Also she's right, it's not her fault Simon doesn't understand what's been explained to him and he personally experienced twice already. A 50% chance of survival is better than 0, a coin flip is the right way to think of it. Better a you lives than no you lives. I mean Cathrine doesn't like being the her left behind either, nobody would it's horrible, but Jesus Simon how do you not know how it works by now? And even if no version of Simon or Catherine were going to make it into the ARK, launching it would still be the right thing to do. There is literally nothing in the world more important than launching the ark. Literally nothing. So even if she did manipulate him it would still be the right thing to do.

[The SheoDovah]

Cool. I've heard it's excellent and adds a ton of new features.

Kinda dislike that the tutorial offers a few exclusive stuff. E.g. Argie Delta, a few maps but tis just nitpicking. I'm going to do Normal Ironman with all Second Wave options enabled(I deleted the saves thus it's Game 1 with the tutorial on for story purposes) then maybe, Classic.

I hope to play Long War in the next few years.

Play XCOM, I said. Do Normal Ironman I said. Why did I listen to myself!? On Game 3 now. Lost the bleeping lucky as bleep playthrough where I got good rookies, got plasma and won most battles due to te Alien Base killing most of my best men and then the game going "Yeah, I like using Sectopods. You shot down a battleship huh? Well here is 4." 4 freaking sectopods!? 4!? THAT's....... I'M ON NORMAL! WHY?! XCOM!? WHY!? WHY DO YOU HATE ME!? I don't know where you are going. The sadness in me is flowing. The Sectopods are rising. The men are a-dying. DOVAH IS FACEPALMING! The Base was Invaded and everyone died.

Also, I swear Ironman causes a lot of bugs for me. Literally had no issues with it then Ironman and bugs happen. :-/ Shame but oh well, I'll just have to do "Ironman but really, i'm not allowing myself to reload saves apart from if it's NewFoundland as I ain't tackling that until I've got the firepower as I do not want to do a Starship Trooper's drop."

[Unionhack]

>gets to 3rd mission in Long War
>"Oh hey a long path with no cover, obvious ambush"
>Skirt along the path to the woods, stick to the trees
>Accidentally run across downed UFO
>1 outsider, 9 Thin Men, 6+ Sectoids swarm the location
>every one of my soldiers dies in the span of one turn
>Mfw I got ambushed for avoiding an bush

That's XCOM, baby.

[The SheoDovah]

Yep.

"Oh, I know, I'll move the shiv ahead to get the meld and see if anything is ahead."

*Activates 3 Sectopods, a mectoid, cyberdisc and drones*

"Well, [&@%!]. That just made this impossible."

*Barely gets the sniper back after sectopodmania runs wild on the rest of the team*

That's XCOM, baby! It giveth and it taketh.

[MetaCthulhu]

I am, without a doubt, screwing up my KOTOR character.

[Unionhack]

Just max out force speed and the game has been won.

[dremorababe]

ESO finally. But it does get lonely since nobody I knows plays the game.

[Unionhack]

There is a UESP guild on ESO where you can find friends!