What game are you playing right now? #2

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Sword of the Stars...its a Civ/Galactic Civs 4X like game with RTS combat, custom building ships and some nice random tech trees, research times, events and stuff. The AI actually noticably adapts to your tactics, and is pretty challenging.

Playing on the largest map, against 1 AI and met him around turn 150 and at the time I had a serious advantage (I had Dreadnaughts the biggest ships), but as the war has gone on (at about turn 290 now) I've started to lose the advantage and being forced to expand constantly to keep up with demand means my forces are becoming more stretched. I have 1 massive fleet prowling the AI's empire glassing 1 world at a time, its slow progress though. About to debut my "Ragnarok" Planet Killer, it launches Astroids at things (mainly planets) we'll see how it goes

 

Been playing a bit of Red Faction lately (the original, not Guerilla).

 

Enjoying my free "please-come-back-to-us" 10-days in Warhammer Online at the moment. Who knows, I might even sub for a while until Aion or SW:TOR goes live.

I was in 2 CB events of Aion, which looked very good. It won't add anything new to the genre, but it looked fantastic and was fun to play. Will keep me busy for a few months.

Starting NWN2:SoZ on a LAN with friends. Should be fun as usual

And to kill all the time that might be left over: GemCraft: Chapter 0. The sequel to the best "coffee-break game" ever, GemCraft. Google it if you don't know it, it is second to none.

 

Deus Ex.

 

KOTOR for the first time, fun stuff.

NCAA 07 (best football game ever), Markiokart, and Rockband with the roommates when we go for that on the consoles.

And really I only play for about three hours a week total, so not really playing anything much.

 

The only thing I've been playing recently is MLB '08 The Show on PS3. It is a great game, and the fun outweighs some of the minor annoyances (like the computer being able to rob homeruns twice a game, every game).

 

Siege of Avalon (anthology)


Also spent a few great afternoons playing IF (interactive fiction - formerly known as text adventures) - Dreamhold, Spider and Web, Photopia, Earth and Sky series - all excellent. I'm becoming quite a fan, tbh.

 

Photopia is amazing! I remember getting the Lost Teasures of Infocom ages ago and then finding out about IF-archives. Got into IF games and the time and tried a large number of them from the archives. There were some really good ones there. Try t-zero (insanely hard) and Adam Cadre's games (especially Shrapnel) if you can find them.

How is Siege of Avalon? I've been thinking about it for a while now, as it seemed really interesting, but I never got around to buying it and I don't know how easy/hard it is to get nowadays.

 

Siege of Avalon is not bad at all.

TBH, while I've seen it called "hack and slash" which has been infused heavily with RP elements, I's still put it down as a CRPG. It's a better cRPG then some "real" cRPGs, imo.
Some interesting writing and NPCs and a rather "responsive" environment - NPCs comment on completed quests, you can talk about completely irrelevent everyday stuff with some (example - showing one NPCs the sword another one gave you and asking them their opinion on it, talking about their pasts, home, etc.), their dialogues change somewhat - nothing big, but a nice touch. Also, things happen in their lives as chapters progress - they play cards, know each other, get promotions etc.
Things you do really make a difference in the keep - every side quest has a purpose.
The keep (Avalon) really feels like a real place. Immersion is excellent, imo.
You can equip a *lot* of items on the char and the design of the inventory is lovely (Da Vinci's man tribute).
One of the loveliest in game journals I have ever seen. Pleasure to look at/read, especially since it has three slightly different views on same events (Quests/Adventure/Journal).
Chapters 3-5 are class focused and probably optional (I'm playing through all, though, so not sure if you can skip them altogether.)

It has a few quirks though.
You can't move the screen (always centered on the character and zoomed in rather close).
Inventory managment can be awkward and tricky to handle, especially between party members, which tend to have rather poor AI at times - running from enemies into unexplored map territory and *more* enemies, leading to "rargh!" and reloads. Saving often is a good idea - fights tend to go rather unpredictable.
While conversations are interesting, you don't really get different options/personality choices. The "role"/world view of your character is pretty much well established (medieval hero mood) (class choices aside) and different amount of optimism/sarcasm you can express when talking to NPCs rarely changes things. Some conversations do have Perception/Charm checks - which is snazzy, imo.
(Oh yeah, Space toggles combat mode on/off - forget that and you will be fist fighting big axe-crazed people. Not fun )

I'd recommend it - especially if you are going through a CRPG draught.

I got the Anthology CD (all six chapters) - I think the original chapter-by-chapter is no longer available for purchase.


As for IF - I'm dabbling . Plotkin's work is my favourite so far. IF archive has a good choice. (The promotional 2005 CD is a great starting place.)

 

Thanks for the review. Seems really interesting! I quickly checked and the individual chapters are no longer being sold, so I'll have to get the CD version if I want it. Amazon have it for pretty cheap, only $10. Fortunately the first chapter seems to be available for free (as a kind of demo I assume) so I'll probably grab that and try it to see if I like the game.

I'm really not going through a CRPG draught though - been knee-deep in the Elder Scrolls! Morrowind has me completely swamped, and I think it'll be another few months before I'm done with its, its expansions, and Oblivion and its expansions.

IF archive is great. Going for the competition winners for every year is a good place to start, they're usually all great (I think Photopia was either a winner or a runner-up). Oh and I just remember Photopia is one of Adam Cadre's. He's not made many games (half a dozen all told) but I think they've all been competition winners (deservedly so). Just went quickly to his website and thought his evaluation on Shrapnel was pretty funny.

It's so true, too

 

Vampires The Masquerade: Bloodlines

Once I sorted out my bug problem (OH GOD THE BUGS, THE BURN ME SO) I found myself wishing I'd played this game years ago.

It really is a brilliant title.

 

Right now I am playing Diablo II

 

The force unleashed, jedi outcast, and mass effect.

 

Heroes of Might and Magic V Tribes of the East. The might of Sinitar shall prevail!

 

PC - Dawn of War 2 cos I need to finish it
360 - Battlefield 1943 and finishing Dirt
DS - Animal Crossing Wild World
PSP - Dungeons and Dragons Tactics

I've been good recently and have managed to cut back on my gaming, so just taking it steady playing a couple of hours of something every now and then I had a bit of an addiction going before, determined now to atleast finish some of the games I have before getting anything new

 

Nearly finished the Britannia campaign of M2:TW - Kingdoms. I only need two more areas under my control to fullfil the objectives of the campaign, but might finish off the English anyway, they're the only other faction left and don't seem to have that many family members left either.

Finally got myself into playing BGTutu. Bought BG years ago, and even started it once, but the hardships of trying to stay alive when a single stray arrow can kill you put me off of it. Not too fond of the rigours of low levels. Managed to avoid the more difficult opponents for the first few levels this time around, and it's going pretty well for now.

I plan to take my Inquisitor through BG2 and ToB as well, and so decided to create a party that would have members that would appear in both games. With Jaheira and Minsc both being coupled to other NPCs, this pretty much fixed my party make up from the beginning. The banter added by the BG1NPC mod really brings the party alive, even though Imoen is a bit of a brat most of the time.

I always thought that BG had less content than BG2, but (with TotSC installed, I'll admit) there's a lot more locations in BG, although most of them don't add much in the way of content, offering only a lot more exploration and monster sweeping for the most part.

 

Batman Arkham Asylum

 

Lords of Magic, original and gold/deluxe. Warcraft 3:FT if friends are online, Perfect World very rarely, Guilty Gear Accent Core Plus when I feel like it.

 

I'm just reinstalling BG1 and BG2.. Time to start another playthrough and then give up half way to the FAI.

 

I have got Kev addicted to Black and White 2

Same happened with Overlord, also when I got him Bloodbowl when he had no internet...

I should stop getting games for people with addictive personalities!

Am currently playing B&W2 myself though, it's so gorgeous on my laptop