General Gaming Megathread: What are you playing?

PainlessDocM said:
Crysis 2 pc: "Press start button to start." I beg your pardon?
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LOL I saw that. What fucking start button?? I lol-ed and wtf-ed. Not the best first impression.

Supposedly a lot of the demo lag is because of crappy Internet connectivity. That's what I head anyway. I can't even connect to compare performance to *that other* version of Crysis 2 I've seen.
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Don't even get me started on the connectivity. Trying to get into a game is fucking torture. After figuring out that I had to triple click on a server to connect, I received about a dozen "lost connection" and "server is full" messages even though it showed 9/12 or 10/12. Then I get into a server and the game doesn't start for... ever. Crysis 1 multiplayer sucked so I didn't expect much but come on.
 
Crysis 1 multiplayer sucked so I didn't expect much but come on.
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Well yeah, but... They've release a freaking MP demo. That's like saying "we think MP this time around is awesome, have a bite!". Except that they have us biting on a PoS. Hell, I STILL can't even log on. This just killed the smallest chance of me buying the game - if that's the kind of online stability we're looking at.
 
I found the graphics to be... acceptable, but not really an improvement over the first
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Well, that's because the demo is DX9 ONLY. Another "why in the world would you do that??!" kinda thing. The beta looked on par or slightly better than Crysis 1 with DX10 compatibility in it. Except for the excessive OMGmotionbluurrrr.

Thanks for letting your marketing team replace the design team and ruin another franchise, EA!
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Wouldn't be so bad if it were a GOOD marketing team, at least. As it stands, they're only making themselves look bad.
 
Ausdoerrt said:
Well, that's because the demo is DX9 ONLY. Another "why in the world would you do that??!" kinda thing.
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If I heard correctly, the final game will be DX9 out of the box, and will be patched later for DX11 support. "Later".

And again, I don't remember my source. So feel free to ignore me on this one.
 
Serge 13 said:
Started playing Darksiders today. Seems to be quite enjoyable so far.
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It is, horse riding is at it's best too :)

Been playing ME2 for a while, with all the DLC. Seeing Wrex again makes me feel great, and watching him talk to Grunt is hilarious and fun.
 
Uninstalled The Witcher, which was a huge letdown after all the hype and praise I've read (What the fuck, guys?). The graphics are straight out of 2004 and the game runs like crap, which would be fine if the story was interesting and the combat was fun. Unfortunately, the swordplay is nothing more than a really simple version of Simon says; and the story had me completely disinterested by the time I got to the first town and was assailed by goofy green demon dogs.


Guess I'll give FO:NV another chance to wow me (In a good way this time, not in a "Well shit, I didn't know I could simultaneously break that many quest lines at once" kind of way).
 
Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude said:
Uninstalled The Witcher, which was a huge letdown after all the hype and praise I've read (What the fuck, guys?). The graphics are straight out of 2004 and the game runs like crap, which would be fine if the story was interesting and the combat was fun. Unfortunately, the swordplay is nothing more than a really simple version of Simon says; and the story had me completely disinterested by the time I got to the first town and was assailed by goofy green demon dogs.
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I mostly tend to agree. I thought the combat was repetitive as shit and the story was very stock. The action heavy sequences were a tedious chore to go through and I hate having unwieldy characters who take time to do anything.

I didn't hate the game though. Some locations were really well done and some quests were quite interesting. It was nice to see some consequence to my decisions as well.

It's a mixed bag: quite good in many ways and crap in others. Could have been a great game though and the developer seems to be a decent bunch. It gives me high hopes for the sequel.
 
Witcher has many bad stuff in it, but it has an awesome atmosphere and the consequence system is very good.
Graphics - are ok. I don't find anything bad considering graphics.
Combat is kinda lame, true, but I find such combat better than, say, Bethesda's.
What I mind in that game is a dialogue system - I simply click on one of the choices (which I don't really get what it means), adn Geralt starts a whole conversation, and I'm just sitting and watching not knowing where the hell is this conversation going.

But atmosphere in game is priceless, no RPG, or any game these days has something like that.
 
The Witcher has a good athmosphere, and the choice and consequence regarding the conflict between the Squirrels and the Order are very well done mechanics-wise.

That said, the combat was uninspired to me, even on Hard, where it's just a matter of knowing what to do rather than how to do it, the sexual content was kinda over the top, and most side-quests were just about killing X and taking Y stuff from their corpses, and you even had to read damn books before you could figure out that well, yes, the head is here (it is justified a bit by the fact it's Geralt's job, but still).

Another bad part for me were the characters. Not a single one was interesting, starting by Geralt whose voice actor sounds like he smokes a hundred cigarettes a day (well, English version at any rate) and who can declare undying love to Triss/Shianni 5 minutes before and after boning another woman. Special mention to the dwarves with exagerated Scottish accents and beards.

Finally, the game tries way to friggin hard to be ''dark'' and ''mature'', it's even worse than Origins. Every single person is a murderer, as rapist, a drug dealer, or just a plain ol' monster in disguise, and the leader of every factions just want to kill as much people as possible. It's very difficult for me to care about somebody or their cause when they and their opponents just murder people for teh lulz of it. There's a neutral option, but I felt like it was my only choice because the two others didn't attract me the slightest. I certainly would have stopped playing had I been forced to choose between the two.

Wow, didn't think I disliked that game so much :o It's still not bad per se, but these things held back my enjoyment enough for me to force myself to play once and then free up 14 GB of drive space the hard way.

On topic: Still playing DOW2 Retribution, and boy did Relic deliver this time. I like Steamworks more and more (goodbye NAT failures!) and the campaigns are just so well done, Orks being an especially fun ride. Get this if you liked the original in any way, shape or form.
 
Ilosar said:
Finally, the game tries way to friggin hard to be ''dark'' and ''mature'', it's even worse than Origins. Every single person is a murderer, as rapist, a drug dealer, or just a plain ol' monster in disguise, and the leader of every factions just want to kill as much people as possible. It's very difficult for me to care about somebody or their cause when they and their opponents just murder people for teh lulz of it. There's a neutral option, but I felt like it was my only choice because the two others didn't attract me the slightest. I certainly would have stopped playing had I been forced to choose between the two.
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That's a shallow opinion. The game does not try too hard to be dark and mature, it simply shows that there are no innocent people. A drug dealer may be just an undercover city guard, working to undermine the drug trade, a seemingly just and honorable knight can degrade into a simple killer, but not because he is a monster, but because of being locked in a fight for survival with another faction, who's leader is a person too scarred by life to control his lust for vengance. I don't remember a single person who killed his or hers enemies for the lulz, that's just plain ridiculous statement. You simply wasn't paying attention at all to what was happening. *Every* character had a reason to behave the way they did and that's the best part of the Witcher - a coherent, believable world. Of course some stuff was done wrong, but hell, I never said the game has no flaws.

And to those who found combat too repetitive, but only made it to Vizima's Outskirts or so - sword sequences are very liimited at the beginning, but improve later on. Also, complaining about using your head to win in combat, instead of .... what exactly? Skill? This is an RPG damnit, not a hack'n'slash, you merely point your character to do some stuff, not do it for him.
 
Read the book too. The Last Wish, worth it.
I was bothered with high praised reviews on choices and how "cool" they affected the game progress. Just making them possible doesn't improve the fact that nothing drastically changed in game world. Well, nothing to make you say like "Holy S*** i have a Rachni Brood at my command now". And that's mainly because they took the first book as a source to work with on the game. It's a short story collection of his adventures with no real progress in it, but a very good book nevertheless. Next in the series are more worth while as they have continuation.
But in the end in the game it gets down to the same as everything else, kill the big bad guy, no matter the choice.
Time displacement also bothered me. By the time i got to those woods before civil war in the city i sorta felt some heavy time shift, like the game story suddenly developed ftl drive and pushed fast forward. Everybody else gives you the impression like a couple of years passed but you felt like you were sitting in one place all that time. That kid talks a lot more for instance and his !SPOILER! have been rather hastily developed, like he got 5 years on him suddenly. And only thing he could still do at that point was teleport. That's the only real big issue i had with the game though. It has great graphics for it's time, combat was very good with all those styles at your disposal and who can forget Igni :)
But it's implied on combat mostly, don't go to Javed without any combat skill.

And for the first time i actually felt like reading the "codex", that was awesome on their part and very interesting. The whole bunch of Slavic-kind legends and myths in game left me in awe.


Btw Wrex is seriously the only guy who is openly glad too see you in ME2, everyone else except Liara is like "meh hello". I was seriously surprised the first time i played, i didn't think they would make him more likable than the others. When i get my krogan army in ME3 it's going to be awesome...
 
Seems like I talked a bit too fast here. My point was that, while it's true that it differs from usual good/evil fantasy stuff, it makes me, personally, unable to sympathize with anybody in the story. Oh look, this guy may or may not be a murderer, or this witch may or may not be evil and sorcerous. But I didn't care, because I was never interested with the characters in the first place. I am supposed to talk to Abigail twice (in her hut, then in the cave IIRC) then decide if she must be hanged or if I have to slaughter a whole village to save a person I met a few hours ago, tops, and whose only real interaction with me was trying to bribe Geralt with sex. My problem is that the characters are treated as if they were sacrificial lambs and you must choose which ones die because it makes the choice sadistic and dark. They have no other reason to exist, seemingly.

The choices themselves, the mechanics of putting you in those difficult situations, that was well done and I said it in the first paragraph of my post, and was ahead of what many games do, including mah beloved Bioware. But what the game failed to do from my point of view was that I just didn't care. I could have cared for the Squirrels easily, but as the game progresses I see absolutely nothing that proves their cause is just other than their leader who insists that they are the good guys. Really, what I see is that you are killing people and holding them hostage, not that you are creating anything like a new order. Hell, if you side with the Order or the Squirrels, the other side does all the atrocities that they opponent would have done had you chose them (the hospital comes to mind). There's no difference other than the uniforms between them. If that's the point, I would say it is a poor decision to make the player choose then (again, the neutral option is very welcome).

For an example of such choices well done I would look at Alpha Protocol. The game makes (or at least tries much harder to) you care about the characters before bringing up a situation that puts them in danger, so there is more of a dilemna, and choosing between mission (greater good, whatever) and person is better to me than choosing between possible asshole A and possible asshole B.

Maybe I missed the entire point, it's possible, but I wasn't moved by most of the choices and just ended up choosing the ones that might lead to less tedious combat.

And my problem with the combat is that it feels more like a checklist than anything else. Do you have the style you need, the poison/enchantment you need, and the Sign that your foe is vulnerable to is leveled up? Do you have ingested the potion that allows you to survive the foe's paralysis/bleed/stuff effect? Then just click away to victory. Do not have these things? go grind them, you loser.

Again, I think the game was ambitious to do these things, and that's good, but it just fell flat o me in the end. I will probably buy the sequel someday if I hear good things about it, but it's not a day 1 purchase for me based on the first game.

EDIT: yes, LinkPain, that was a complaint of me too. Wrex is like ''Shepard, my friend!'', the reunion is great with the ME1 music in the background, but the Virmire Survivor is like ''OMG Cerberus! RAAGE!!'' even if you calmy point out that you we frigin dead and that the Alliance has it's thumb so much up it's ass it's replaced it's tongue. The fanbase was not pleased, I can tell you that.
 
Hahahaha, damn straight. Wrex is a badass :D
Reapers need to know one thing:
"When a Krogan is close to you, he will charge. You don't want that."


That potion making in Witcher was almost the same as in DA:O. You get the ingredients and even potions sometimes in the story, but you usually need many live targets to experiment, or dead in Geralts case. And some really do have great results. Also those sex cards became almost like a checklist. Compared to Sookie from True Blood, here we have Geralt, the number of females he can sleep with just because his daddy bags don't have ammo. It's going to become complicated later, in game story when he meets his sorceress. As most players will think = "Another sex card more to go!"
 
though I found the alchemy in the Witcher to be pretty well working and quite usefull. Particularly if play in higher difficulties. I hope the alchemy will become even MORE important in Witcher 2.
 
Me too. I don't have a problem with alchemy, infact, I find it interesting. Hope it'll stay in Witcher.

@ LinkPain

Where did you get the book?
Online, or some Serbian publisher?
 
@Atomkilla
I accidentally found one while browsing books at Mamut store in Belgrade in Serbia, but they don't exist anymore, only Vulcan now. It's English translated Gollanz version and has great cover. It was on third floor where foreign writers and mostly English translated books were. The next one, Blood of The Elves i think, is translated, couldn't find an English copy. I hate our Serbian translations, they have too many stupid and obvious mistakes and charge a lot of money for their crappy work. Paper is ok and durable, but i prefer recycled. Although some translations of ours are good, like Game of Thrones.


Recently finished Lair of The Shadow Broker and it was awesome, very combat challenging. Boss was a little funny for me, his get up is all gangsta style and i like it. Most interesting turning point for the story.
But Bioware, again...
I mean, why the hell do i have to click buttons when there should be a cutscene without interruptions?!
Since i'm with Liara it was rather embarrassing because they made you do things like : click>"aaaah Shepard" click faster>"yesss Shepard" and stuff ...
I get the point and i like how it turned out but no need to dramatize so much, Bioware just loves doing this. They should make cinematics where they are needed more, not in every goddamn intimate moment ugh!
"blue babies" that's where i fell off my chair...but what the hell, he's going on a suicide mission anyway so anything goes.
Anyone knows when is Arrival DLC coming?
 
Replaying Baldur's Gate with an evil party. Already played a good one and although there isn't much reason too I will play through once more with a neutral party just to pick up the few characters I missed with the two previous playthroughs. In fact I hear it's worth if only to have Minsk in my party who I skipped with my good party.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
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