General Gaming Megathread: What are you playing?

Playing Fable III. With another year in development by someone with a solid RPG experience, this could have been one of the greatest games ever made. There are some truly genius moments, and writing and voice acting are great and genuinely hilarious. Even the structure of the game itself is fantastic and has so much potential.

Yet, it's equally shit. It is a horrible console port, the menu system is infuriating, the simplest tasks are a pain in the ass, character interaction is retarded, map sucks ass, combat is tedious and repetitive, countless confusing little elements all over, enemy variety is crap, controls are plain stupid, bugfest, no dialog system, horrible lip-syncing, bloom and blur (read ghosting) will drive you blind and insane, quest journal is a joke, quest-trail (pixie dust) fucking trolls, nothing is intuitive, GFWL, bullshit DLC, annoying fucking dog, shit loot, etc. etc. etc.

Having said that, I will still replay it as an evil dude because it is just that funny. "Soon, you'll be one of us! Dead; not part of our social circle." Priceless.
 
With D3's May 15 release date looming on the horizon, time has slowed to an agonizing crawl (Which is odd, considering we've all been waiting for it for over a decade now) comparable to those final few days before Christmas when you're a kid.


So besides working on my tan (while the temp is still relatively cool, and not the scorching humid armpit it'll become soon enough) I've been burning through piles of "newish" games to kill the time.


First up was Mafia 2.

What a clusterfuck that turned out to be. Around 80% of the game is spent driving from point A to point B. That is not an exaggeration. It is some seriously tedious shit. The remaining 20% is divvied up between cutscenes (15%), and real gameplay (5%) which is a pop-a-mole cover shooter (albeit a rather decent one).

If they had just cut out all the mind-numbing driving, they'd have ended up with a two hour long movie with some interactive action scenes (Basically a Godfather themed Call of Duty) which wouldn't have been half bad, as the story is damn good.



Next was Bioshock 2.

I had heard that it was a heaping pile of shit; nothing more than a blatant cash grab that paled in comparison to the original (Which wasn't even that great a game, in my opinion). Needless to say, I went into it with very low expectations. After battling with GFWL for about 40 minutes, I managed to get the game to stop crashing on start-up. Turns out, it doesn't play nice with Steam. Big fucking surprise there, so after replacing the executable I'm finally able to get in-game.

I decided to play through the game in traditional Big Daddy fashion, completely foregoing firearms in favor of my drill, which was remarkably fun. It's rough-going in the very beginning, but then you're given the Drill Dash and it's smooth sailing to the end of the game. Flying from one side of a room to another, annihilating anything and everything that got in my way was a truly awesome experience, and put the original game to shame in terms of combat.

Story wise, I was just as impressed. There's a few plot holes and inconsistencies (Why didn't we hear about Sophia Lamb in the first game, as she had apparently become as high-profile a figure as Andrew Ryan himself before everything went to shit in '59?), but nothing big enough to ruin the tale.

For me, Bioshock 2 blows the first game out of the water in every way. I'd strongly recommend anyone who hasn't played it yet pick it up the next time it's on sale on steam (Not a bad deal at all for $5).


Then there was Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 1 and 2, which to be honest are barely worth mentioning. Certainly not worth providing write-ups for.



Currently I'm playing Darksiders, which is kind of like a Zelda game with Devil May Cry combat in an apocalyptic heaven vs hell package. The UI is probably in the top 5 for worst remnants of a console port ever, but the keyboard and mouse controls work surprisingly well, better than a gamepad in fact; so I can forgive them for screwing the pooch with that mess of a UI. Definitely a game worth checking out if you're a fan of action adventure titles.
 
^^ Agreed on all counts, except I am dreading May 15. Diablo has the sinister ability to completely take over all my free and some not-so-free time and there is not a damn thing I can do about that.

First up was Mafia 2.
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Friendly advice: stay away from the DLC no matter what sale Steam is having. I thought the game was shit but hey, the deal made the DLC a buck and what's a fucking buck? BIG mistake. Imagine Mafia 2 with more driving, no cut scenes, fucking text screens during missions and the most tedious, least fun achievements in existence (drive 1000 miles. wtf?)

Next was Bioshock 2.
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As I mentioned somewhere in this thread, I was as impressed by this game, which was a surprise. If there had to be a sequel to the first one, then this is it. I especially liked the ending where

[spoiler:82f8af02f4] ...bodies dressed in tuxes and night dresses start popping up in the middle of the ocean. What an excellent and fitting end to the Rapture story. [/spoiler:82f8af02f4]

Also, if you can manage to get multiplayer to work, check it out. It's no counter strike but can actually be surprisingly fun with a decent team.
 
Keep meaning to replay Bioshock 2, give the ol' collectors edition a good airing. I think they passed of not knowing about Sophia Lamb in the first game by Ryan pulling the old Soviet trick of wiping people from history as well as you visiting areas she didn't have an impact in. Pretty weak but it works, Bioshock is mostly about the visual and physical feedback rather than the story anyway. :P

Waiting for Torchlight 2 myself, Diablo 3 doesn't interest as much.
 
Alphadrop said:
Keep meaning to replay Bioshock 2, give the ol' collectors edition a good airing. I think they passed of not knowing about Sophia Lamb in the first game by Ryan pulling the old Soviet trick of wiping people from history
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Didn't she outlast Ryan though? She had to be present during the events of the first game. She even talks about PC from B1 at some point. Plus, they had at least one public debate if I remember correctly. Someone had to mention her at least.
 
I'm really enjoying L.A Noire! Great dialogues and conversations, awesome recreation of 40's L.A, purdy graphics, great story etc. However, I really don't understand why some people call this game repetitive. You're a detective. You search for clues and you hunt down suspects. What else did you expect? Go bowling with your partner?!
 
I was really shocked to see they used actual actors for their characters, like the detective guy from Heroes and that engineer dude from Battlestar Galactica. Huh.

It's a damn solid game to be sure, overall. Love the little, subtle pop culture references throughout it.
 
Ausdoerrt said:
boer_kameel said:
Hope to start NWN, been trying to start it for years.
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If you mean Bioware's NWN (not Obsidian's NWN2), I'd recommend skipping the original campaign, since it's mostly boring. The continuity basically goes expansion 1 => expansion 2, with only one cameo from the OC which doesn't matter much anyway.
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I mean Bioware's. I launched it, and seems I have played it. Did take me about half an hour to realize that, a good indication of how memorable the experience was.
Thanks for the tip, I'll try that!
 
Temple of Elemental Evil, at last! I'm ecstatic.

[spoiler:c42797e8dd]
5n7hnm.jpg
[/spoiler:c42797e8dd]

1. This is how I stare at Bethesda games.
2. .. and playing ToEE. :)
 
maximaz said:
Didn't she outlast Ryan though? She had to be present during the events of the first game. She even talks about PC from B1 at some point. Plus, they had at least one public debate if I remember correctly. Someone had to mention her at least.
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Yea but she was locked up in jail at the time and no one was allowed to talk about her. It's a really shaky excuse.
 
Currently on a D&D kick playing Icewind Dale. I missed it during original release and am trying to catch up on PC games.
 
I've been playing a ton of 1830 - Railroads & Robber Barons lately - not sure if it qualifies as anything other than casual gaming since it's essentially a board game you play over and over again.

ToEE and the Bioshocks are definitely among the games I could see myself playing on my 486 some day.

I can pick up Gothic 2 for a dime, is this a good idea? BN cannot stop gushing about it.
 
Alphadrop said:
maximaz said:
Didn't she outlast Ryan though? She had to be present during the events of the first game. She even talks about PC from B1 at some point. Plus, they had at least one public debate if I remember correctly. Someone had to mention her at least.
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Yea but she was locked up in jail at the time and no one was allowed to talk about her. It's a really shaky excuse.
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Maybe. I think they did the best they could storywise either way.
 
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Replaying Morrowind reminds me just how awesome TES used to be. The variety of weapons, the complex political landscape of Vvardenfell, the philosophical, social and other themes included in the game...

They don't make 'em like they used to.
 
One of my all-time favorites. Fell in love as soon as I saw the Strider.

EDIT: the Silt Strider. Yes, that's it.
 
wtf i always read it as "stilt" :I

ive wanted to re-install morrowind for a long time, but im struggling a bit with disk-space.
ironically, my dad gave me morrowind, some guy at his work gave it to him. my dad hates games, but is too much of a commie to just throw them away.
the disk looked boring, so i let it collect dust for like a year before i tried it out, and needless to say, found it quite awesome
 
Morrowind has a ton of nice "enhancement" mods, cups, plates, books, sky's, armor, weapons, etc. I'm not sure if they slow the game down dramatically or not.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NX-MvnYUEs[/youtube]
 
Playing some rayman origins as co op with sister, fun responsive and fast paced game that puts a smile to your face every now and then.

Hasnt been too challenging yet though, hoping the difficulty goes up at some point.
 
.Pixote. said:
Morrowind has a ton of nice "enhancement" mods, cups, plates, books, sky's, armor, weapons, etc. I'm not sure if they slow the game down dramatically or not.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NX-MvnYUEs[/youtube]
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i added the "tamriel rebuilt" maps to mine, where they magnify the entire game map by several times.
google it, its still on-going i think, in the same spirit of the restoration project, they seek to re-create the entire province of Morrowind, which surrounds the Vvardenfell island, completing it with lore and quests.
it added absolutely no strain whatsoever to my old dusty computer. man i miss it :(

i would also use the editor, and write epic books about myself.
"i wanna write a book. about meee!"
 
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