What game are you playing right now? #2

[Rawgrim]

Batman: Arkham City. Fun game.

[henkie]

Playing a couple of games off and on right now.

Installed the Complete mod for STALKER: Call of Pripyat and enjoying another run through the game with that setup. Quite enjoyable STALKER experience as always.

Going through Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the second time. Not actually doing much differently from the first run, because I just like to stealth a lot and there's not that many games that allow you to do so effectively, but where I used non-lethal force in the first run, this time I will use lethal force where the situation seems ok for it (so no killing all cops in the precinct, but if a couple of mercs happen to meet with fatal accidents, that's acceptable).

As always I have a couple of runs going through the BG series at the moment. Currently it's a solo Fighter/Assassin multiclass Half-Orc and a solo Cavalier who are still in the BGTutu part of the series.

Finally also picked up a little fun game from GoG, called Alien Shooter 2. It's basically an isometric shooter with hordes and hordes of aliens. Think Serious Sam / Painkiller type of big hordes which will overrun you if you're not quick enough killing them off. Your character can level up and get upgrades for different stats to make him/her more durable and/or kill stuff faster. Fun if you don't want to think and just have some insta-action.

[Rawgrim]

Hmm you just reminded me about Deus Ex, Henkie. I have it on my shelf. Still haven`t played it yet. Is it good?

[henkie]

It's pretty good. It has most of the same attractions that the original had - multiple ways to complete objectives, stealthy gameplay, upgrade mechanics for your character, overly elaborate complot theories and secret societies.

The story is not as good as in the original, but the gameplay works very well anyway. I don't really like the hacking mini-games, but if you look around carefully enough, you're probably going to find qutie a few codes lying for them so you don't need to do them.

The main flaw in the game is the boss fights en the rather poor ending. For someone like me who's stealthing through all levels, the transition to a boss fight can be rather jarring. I had this especially with the first boss fight, where I sneaked through a whole installation without being seen even once, and only occasionally knocking out a guard, bypassing most of them, you just encounter a cutscene in which Jensen just straight up walks right up to the boss and then you're left to figure it out by yourself after the cutscene ends. Most of the time it makes Jensen look rather dumb in cutscenes, which is a shame. In the original you could avoid pretty much all of the boss fights, or at least end them without fighting. In HR, it's all unavoidable boss fights.

But overall it's an enjoyable game to play and much closer to the original in terms of how good it was than Invisible War. Easily one of the best games of last year in my opinion.

[Rawgrim]

Sounds good. I will move it up on my list of games to finish. I have a few thats been lcollecting dust for awhile. Alan Wake, Crysis 2, The Darkness. Ugh. I buy to many games.

[henkie]

That's why I don't buy a lot of games. I usually just replay old games - if I buy three new games a year, it's already a lot.

Either way, I'd say to play HR before either of those three, but that's just me.

[Marceror]

Wrapped up a very enjoyable experience playing Shogun 2 Total War - Fall of the Samurai. Now I'm working on killing the devil for the third time, compliments of Blizzard.

[8people]

Not playing much at the moment, laptop is on the way out. Upside is my fully adapted setup will be compatable with a new desktop. So just a few short months of saving

[Vorona]

I'm replaying Baldur's Gate I. Hoping to actually finish this time!

[Rawgrim]

Broken Sword 1. Being a huge fan of point and click adventure games, I am ashamed to admit that the Broken Sword seires has allways eluded me. I am also playing Mass Effect 2 for the...dunno...5th time. I like almost any game genre, but I am pickyabout games within each genre, i guess.

[henkie]

I tried to play Broken Sword once, but didn't get very far into it (as in: not even out of the beginning part).

Playing some Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance at the moment. Still one of the best RTS's ever made, as far as I'm concerned, together with Red Alert 2.

[Gnarfflinger]

Mostly Diablo III, with periods of Civilization V and Bulletstorm. Will try SW:TOR this summer.

[henkie]

Long time no see Gnarff, welcome back!

Still playing a bit of Forged Alliance myself, interspersed with some more Alien Shooter 2. Trying some new things on the Alien Shooter survival mode, where the flamer+rockets is proving quite effective, more so than the rifles+rockets, it appears.

[Erod]

Velvet Assassin was on sale for 1,69 € on Steam so I am playing it now and so far it seems like a decent game.

[The Shaman]

I'm playing ME 2 again, I wiped my saves the last time I uninstalled it so now I need to recover them for ME 3.

I just heard one of my favourite quotes from the series - the one where you first come to the citadel and hear the gunnery specialist dressing down two privates. Both the Isaac Newton and the "We do not EYEBALL it" parts were pure gold. Informative, too.

Here it is, for your pleasure. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tIk-vUtLBs

Also, you can buy a space hamster. That game was pure gold.

[Rawgrim]

Gears of War 3. Mostly horde mode. Not a fan of shooters at all, but this one i like. The setting and the whole feel of the game is just great.

[henkie]

After owning a copy of IWD2 for over 5 years, I finally managed to start a game. I tried to start playing it before, but the daunting task of creating an entire party without even a good idea of what classes, feats and skills would be good or not, was too much for me each time. This time, though, I picked up Sir Rechet's JUPP2 and just picked a couple of his example builds that looked interesting and just rolled with it.

Funnily, when I read this in the JUPP guide, I just had to have at least one nearly pure class cleric:

The 3rd level cleric (and 5th level wizard) spell Animate Dead summons various skeletons and zombies. Why would this be a problem, as there are many summoning spells that summon other types of monsters? The catch is that the "skeletons" and "zombies" just happen to be Apocalyptic Boneguards and Festering Drowned Dead at 17th caster level! If you've never seen those before, just believe me that they're quite easily amongst the strongest, most durable and most dangerous creatures in the whole game - and you get to control them as you please, and they won't even vanish before a whopping 8 HOURS have passed!

What can I say, I just love breaking the game. I always use a project image to summon me 5 planetars if I don't feel like trying too hard to have to win a fight (most of the time, that is). So I can hardly pass up on this kind of cheese, now can I?

So I started the game with a drow cleric and a human sorcerer and am planning to add new party members at the suggested points in the guide - provided I can recognise these points, that is. I'm only at the Shaegarne Ford, but so far it's been quite enjoyable. The combat seems much better balanced than in for instance BG1 - which could be quite unforgiving at lower levels - or BG2 - which was generally quite easy.

It's a good thing too, because there's also a lot more of it - combat, that is. This could be a game that finally warms me to spell casters in D&D, whom I've always thought required too much micro-management for regular fights and I used mostly as a win-button for the tougher fights. But here a few well chosen buffs can help you out for a long time and the pacing of the fights seem to make it seem less like micro-management to me.

So far it also seems quite linear, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Overall, the many ways to build characters and the possibility to combine them in different parties already makes me think this game will have a lot of replay potential for me.

[Fuzzzeeee]

Since we got it over a year ago, my fiancée and I have been working through Borderlands with any spare time we've had. Last weekend, we finally finished it (it's not even that long of a game ) and so now we have all the expansion DLC which will probably last us until September 21st when Borderlands 2 comes out. Honestly though, despite it's fairly flimsy plot and occasional questionable AI, it has to be one of my favourite new IP's of recent years.

[chevalier]

Crusader Kings 2, meanwhile finished ME3 (and ME2 again just before, to complete the DLCs). And Dirt 2. I use car racing games as destressers.

Believe it or not, I think I've lost it with RPGs.

[Splunge]

Playing Dead Space. Awful mouse/movement controals until I found a little program called D3DOverider. Now it's just fine, and rather enjoyable.

[Darion]

Currently hooked again on: Thief 1+2 and System Shock 2.
There is much awesomeness in those. Haven't played Thief 1+2 in ages.

All games tuned to wide-screen and some fancy post processing. Along with sharper textures.

Atmosphere makes you head spin.

[Gnarfflinger]

Making my first true run at Star Wars: The Old Republic. I'm finding that I like playing Imperial better than Republic.

I'm still getting time in for Diablo III and the Mahjongg game that came with Windows 7 as a time waster...

[henkie]

Playing BG and IWD2 at the moment.

Got my solo half-orc F/Assassin through BG and into BG2. Interestingly, this was actually pretty much the easiest time I've had of it to beat Sarevok. Three invisibility potions later and he was gone. Fighter/thief combinations are one of the easiest to solo, but I already knew that. Being an assassin, skill points are kind of scarce, which makes stealthing a bit more difficult, but at least soloing makes my level increase fast.

BG2 has been pretty easy so far as well - got most of the liches in Athkatla already, went to the planar prison which was kind of hairy for a bit, picked Bodhi's side and am now visiting the Underdark.

In IWD2 I've only just gotten passed the Shaerngarn Bridge. I've only got a team of two at the moment, and so my cleric already got to a high enough level to cast animate dead before getting to the bridge. That really made my life a lot easier - those are some powerful summons, especially for a third level spell.

[Gnarfflinger]

Borderlands was on special on Steam over the weekend, and I went for it. I'm enjoying it so far. For $7.49 US it was a good buy.

[Rawgrim]

Just finished Lord of the Rings: War in the north. Co-op split-screen with a friend. GREAT fun. Allthough i don`t think its half as fun single player.