What game are you playing right now? #2

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Currently splitting time between BG and Mass Effect 3. I suppose it would *technically* be possible to be more of a BioWare fanboy, but I don't think David Gaider swings that way.

 

Finished Shogo recently, after picking it up on a GoG sale.

It's a game that goes for the japanese fighting in giant armored suits angle. I think that the whole giant humanoid robots/armored suits thing is kind of retarded, but it makes for fun gameplay in this case. Your suit can take quite a beating and energy and armor drops are reasonably plentiful. You'll still die quickly if you stand still while shooting the opposition, but if you keep moving it's not that much of a problem. It makes it so that the armor sections are basically just amusing settings in which to try out your surprisingly large arsenal of heavy weaponry.

This is in contrast to the sections where you're out of your armor. It's not that hard but it's entirely possible to get one-shotted from full health. There are very few actual health drops, but you can regain health through scoring critical hits on enemies. Critical hits will of course also damage your opponent significantly more, but what causes them is a mystery to me. You'd think it was by headshots, but I actually got better results shooting for arms and legs. You're not the only one who can score critical hits, however, and they can be the cause of many player deaths if you don't duck and cover.

Overall, the gameplay works quite well, even though in the sections where you're out of the armor, it seems that sometimes the AI can shoot through walls, which is not a fun way to get killed instantly.

I mentioned in the little write-up of Evolva earlier that its early 3D graphics had aged quite well. Shogo, on the other hand, has not aged that well. Or rather the human polygon models and animations looked very poor and spectacularly unhuman from the very beginning. The armored suits are modeled much better, though.

Overall, I'd say it's an amusing, though short game. It even has alternate endings to add to the replay value (of at least part of the game, anyway).

 

I second this sentiment. They've done one hell of a job with this one. The cinematic segments flow flawlessly into the game, and it is excellent all around. I am a sucker for reliving games of my childhood, but I'm thoroughly enjoying this one. I will warn those who are potentially interested about two things though.

1. Some are calling TR an "action RPG". It's not - it's an action game with some RPG elements included. While there is an experience points concept in the game, and upon gaining a certain threshold of experience you earn a skill point, the customization options are limited. There are a total of 27 skills in the game, broken down into three tiers. However, over the course of the game, you'll likely earn about 20 of these skills, so while the concept allows for some customization, it's not like one person's Lara is going to be different in any significant way from another person's Lara.

2. As with TR games of the past, there is a lot of finding hidden stuff that you pretty much have to do. Well, you don't have to do any of it technically - you can just go straight through to the next checkpoint - but the XP awards for finding stuff is signifcantly more than what you'd get from just going through the main quest. To give an example, killing someone earns you 10 XPs, but finding an artifact or discovering the treasure in a hidden tomb gives varying awards ranging from 25 XPs (for obvious and easy to find artifacts) all the way up to about 300 XPs (for finding a secret tomb).

And a lot of the stuff is really hard to find. To put things in perspective, my "percent complete" score is just over 40%, but judging from things, I'm about 75% through the story line. So I've missed a ton of stuff.

 

I'm an avid PC gamer, but I still say Persona 3 for the PS2 is the best RPG ever.
/flamesuit

I've been playing Persona 3 and StarCraft. I was playing Planescape: Torment for a while but I had to take a break from it.

 

My opinion of TR improves the more I play it. It's a much more mature depiction of Lara Croft. Let's face it, many of the earlier titles were objectifying, probably becauase the concept of a female hero(ine) was a novel concept. The story is great, the gameplay is spectacular, with seamless transitions between gameplay and cinematics.

The worst part of the game is actually the beginning of the game. I understand that the concept of the early part is to provide a tutorial, but I think it's kind of silly that they make you hunt for food early on, even though you are never actually required to hunt animals in the game. (In fact, there's no requirement to eat in the actual game, so unless you want a few XPs for killing a warthog (or whatever) there's no real point in hunting during the game.)

I've not yet completed the story, but I think I've enjoyed it enough that I may go through for a second time, simply to try and acquire the stuff I missed on my first go through, and find the other secret areas. I must have been really unobservant in the early part of the game, because while I've found the mid-game and late-game secret tombs, I missed all the early game ones, which presumably would have been easier.

I also have to re-assess my skill point allocation. For example, I loaded up heavy early on getting skills that increased my carry capacity so I can carry around additional ammunition. I'm not so sure that was a wise decision, simply because I've never come close to running out of ammunition... well... ever. Of course I do realize that this reasoning is somewhat circular. Perhaps the reason I don't have ammunition issues is precisely because I chose skills to mitigate that risk. Although given the prevalence of ammunition I cannot pick up because I'm already at my carry limit, suggests to me that carrying around more ammunition is perhaps less valuable than acquiring the dodge skills earlier.

But the best part of the game is Lara's evolution and how it does a 180 in the course of the game. The first half of the game you very much feel like you're the hunted. That there is danger in every encounter in that you're outnumbered and out-gunned. The tranisition takes place almost exactly at the mid-game with the infiltration of the temple. And by late game, you are now the hunter.

 

I haven't finished TR yet either, due to Heart of the Swarm being released (I can see me sinking all my spare time into this for a bit), but I definitely intend to.

 

Holy crap are the samauri at the end of the game tough. I died repeatedly to them. It's not that any enemy is tough individually, it's just the sheer number. I can't reasonably take on 6 at a time, when they all close to melee as soon as they can. I can take out two, sometimes three with the shotgun before they get too close, and then it's a dodge fest. The problem is that they wield katanas and can often one-hit kill you. So one mistake is fatal. (And this is on NORMAL difficulty - there is a harder game setting.)

I eventually worked my way through it, and while the end-game boss isn't super tough, the 12-foot tall samauri you have to get through to get to him is. To be fair, it's not so much him, it's the fact that there are always two regular samauri with him, and if you kill them, another one shows up to fight. So you have to essentially dodge them along with not getting one-shot by the big man.

All told, I've played this game after my son went to bed for about 2-3 hours every day since I got it, so one play though encompassed about 20 hours for me. I'm sure it can be done MUCH faster than that, as I took my time, and actually looked for stuff. (Final completion percentage was 70% btw.) If I go through again, I think I will improve considerably upon that. For isntance, I obviously won't miss out on the secret tombs a second time.

 

finally got IWD 1 & 2 in the mail and am gonna be starting them shortly. been a long time since I have played either one. am glad that this site has forums for them that I can get ideas and mods from. I just wanted to say thank you for allowing me to share this awesome place with you all.

 

The one game that I picked up quite a while ago, and have recently become quite addicted to is MTG 2013. There are still a lot of people playing online, and with 20 different decks it represents a ton of variety in games. While I did complete the campaign to unlock all the decks, I typically get more enjoyment playing against human competition than the AI.

I have especially taken to the Two Headed Giant matchups. It's not that I don't like the 1v1 matchups, it's just that the way certain decks are composed, it's very much a rock-paper-scissors type of thing. There is no singular deck that does very well against all others, but certain decks just beat other decks consistently while losing to others consistently. Once you go 2v2, the chances of such a pairing go down substantially, especially considering you can't have the two people on the game team playing the same deck.

 

Jade Empire. Very fun, highly addictive, lots of cool customization. But as a warning for future players, for the love of god, DO NOT PICK LEGENDARY STRIKE! You would be better off using harsh language to defeat your opponents.

 

Planetside 2, but not sure how much longer, once the novelty wears off there isn't much there to keep you going.

 

@damedog: Whut? Legendary strike rules! I've always found it's balance of reach, power and speed fits my counter-punching style perfectly, especially once upgraded. Although the claw-attack one is also pretty good, since the power attack is more difficult to interrupt than the other styles', making harmonic combos easier to pull off -- Storm Dragon FTW!

On topic, this week I've mostly been playing BloodRayne. Because sometimes it doesn't matter if there's steak at home, you just want a damn burger.

 

Maybe it's just a matter of play style, but for me, i've found that speed and reach are what is most important. Legendary strike *sucks* in the latter department- you barely move from the first hit of the combo whereas the rest of them move forward with each attack. I actually restarted the game because I could barely kill ghosts with that style. Speaking of martial styles, you can mix Thousand Cuts with Leaping Tiger into one huge combo to awesome effect.

Storm Dragon, oh god lol. The cheese is endless. The final bosses never hit me ONCE because I used Storm Dragon to freeze them, hit them with thousand cuts, rinse and repeat. I almost feel guilty with how easy it became when I started using it.

 

Just finished BG Enhanced Edition solo run with my halfling fighter/thief couple ours ago. Now I'll start Fallout 1 with melee char.

 

I found a bunch of REALLY old games (Commodore 64), so I've been fooling around with them in my spare time. Otherwise, I'm still going back and forth between Dragon Age: Origins (just started the Landsmeet) and Skyrim (just started).

 

Playing Fallout 3 for the first time. I’m at level 11, and playing a stealth-based character. Having a great time, but not exactly role-playing it very well, as evidenced by this:

http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/showpost.php?p=790539&postcount=180

 

Just finished the new Tomb Raider. Great game. Now I am playing Baldur`s Gate 2 on and off, and Might and Magic VIII.

 

Playing a Massive 12 player game of Age of Wonders. Orc Warlords are awesome melee units. Their Round Attack is so powerful when they are srrounded, it reminds of Sauron swinging his massive sword through the Elves and Gondorians in the beginning of the Lotr movie.

 

Still on Crusader Kings 2 with a bit of Unreal Tournament 2004 when I'm in a mood to shoot or blow something up.

If there were a Dawn of War option for Macs that didn't involve wrapping it in software I would be quite temped to use that as a replacement for Unreal.

I've also run through a play a Tropico as well.