What video games are you playing?

[Dropbear]

I have been playing Minecraft with my son on a LAN. We download adventure maps and explore them together. It is great fun.

I've also been playing Arcarnum on a download from GOG. I do love the Steampunk aspect.

Dropbear

[crocoduck_hunter]

Man, Arcanum. Haven't thought of that game in a while.

I really hated that game- terrible interface, weak level-up system, ect, ect. The idea was good, but I hated the implementation.

[Richard W]

Originally Posted by erwins

GOG has it for download, and says it's compatible with Windows 7. There's a demo available here that you might be able to use to see if it will run on your system (assuming you can download it on that site from the UK).

Thanks, I might have a look.


I haven't bought any new games for a while - still playing through older ones.

I eventually got to the "open" part of Final Fantasy XIII - I persisted because the rhythm of selecting things from menus is quite relaxing; it's a bit like being at work except that instead of a save dialogue or a toolbox, the menu options make things blow up. (The cut scenes still break that up though). But I agree that it's an odd interlude and I might almost rather just get on with it - it's like the plot suddenly just stops and you can run about not doing much. I'm not tough enough to kill some of the second lot of marks yet, either.

I stopped to play American McGee's Alice and look for more achievements in Alice: Madness Returns. In the original game, I've got to the final area, Queensland, but it starts with a difficult boss fight - the rematch against the Jabberwocky, after it's taken down the Gryphon. I haven't worked out the right tactics yet. You seem to be able to hide under the Gryphon's wings to some extent, but when you move out it's hard to avoid getting immediately incinerated, and I'm not sure of the best weapon to use either. I only just realised that the Jabberwocky's Eye staff acts as a sort of laser cannon if you hold the right trigger down for a couple of seconds. It takes too long to charge, though - before that it just makes rattling noises, and you get killed waiting.

I'm trying to find all the collectibles in the main game before I look at New Game +. I've not been reduced to looking anything up yet...

(eta) Ooh, excellent. I just randomly got the achievement for finding the hidden shrink sense decal. (Well, not randomly, I apparently found it - I wasn't even looking for it though). That was one I thought I was bound to need to look up.

[Richard W]

I got Beautiful Katamari today, for something a bit different. Everybody seemed to be raving about it a few years ago (or was that just the original?)

It's pretty annoying for such a popular game. The colours hurt my eyes and the music is repetitive and irritating. Most of the difficulty seems to come from the way the unintuitive controls and bad camera angles mean that you're never quite in control and can never quite see what you're trying to do.

It's surprisingly difficult and jarring for something that seemed to be considered a relaxing alternative to more standard games. It took me about ten tries to complete the second proper level. You spend ages pressing 'A' to get rid of the annoying squeaky-voiced king who keeps popping up to block your view and wittering on for ten times longer than he needs to. When you do manage to complete a level, you get nothing but criticism and (eventually) a really feeble score, even if you've met the goals and collected plenty of the things you were meant to. I was meant to be collecting drinks. Drinks were the number one thing I collected. The planet was as big as it was meant to be. Yet I was still moaned at. Then I got 11 points. I don't know what the points are out of, but 11 points clearly isn't very good.

Eventually I got two achievements, after completing the second level, but they were only worth 5 points each. It's weird - it seems to be the kind of game that's designed to make you feel useless, irritate you and lower your self-esteem, yet it's (apparently) really popular. Unless everybody loved the first one but hated the second one, and I missed it?

Despite all that, it is oddly addictive though.

[chillas]

Aside from the aforementioned Grimrock, I've also been playing the indie MacGuffin's Curse, which is a sliding block puzzler wrapped inside a heist and mystery plot. The puzzles are pretty run-of-the-mill, but the text and tone of the game are pretty funny.

I've also been playing Children of the Nile. I'd actually gotten the urge to break out Pharaoh again, but I couldn't find my disks or find it anywhere for (legitimate) download, so I thought I'd give Nile a shot. Much more involved than Pharaoh was, but still quite entertaining.

[Lachrymose]

Originally Posted by Richard W

I stopped to play American McGee's Alice

I'm playing this now. Figured I'd play it first since it comes for "free" packaged with the Alice: The Madness Returns download.

I just left the mirror maze and everything I'm looking at is kind of pulsating at the moment.

[Richard W]

It took me a while to get used to it because there aren't any very clear instructions. This might be blindingly obvious, but it took me some time to realise:

You can cycle your weapons (when you have more of them) by pressing LB and RB. Each has a ranged attack (LT) and a close attack (RT). The attacks use up the blue bar, and when it gets to the bottom, you revert to the vorpal blade and have to select your weapon again when you get more blue stuff.

The ranged attack is very useful but I didn't know about it for several levels and died a lot every time those banshee things appeared. These attacks tend to have a recharge time too - you can tell when they've recharged because the weapon reappears in your hand.

(XBox 360 instructions - but I imagine other systems are similar).

There was one place (climbing a waterfall with ants dropping rocks on me) where I got stuck for ages and thought I was missing something, but it turned out I could jump up this one rock after all - I had thought it was too high, because you couldn't get up it if you were standing too close. Jumping from a bit further up let me get to the top.

By the time I'd worked those things out, I thought it was great. It's a bit harder than the new one so save a lot...! I've completed it now, but I'm sure my technique for the last few fights would be called 'save scumming' by purists.

[Psihala]

Pinball Arcade for the Xbox. Wherein I reaffirm my hatred for the Black Hole table.

Again and again and again.

~Psihala

[Lachrymose]

Richard W:

Yeah, I figured out most of that on my own. But one thing that tripped me up a bit was the control instruction on the help screen say that 'Y' is to climb up. But every time I used it after grabbing onto a ledge it didn't work. You just push up on the D pad or analog stick.

I didn't realize that you HAVE to use it to climb up a vine. Took me forever to figure that out.

Also, it seems the game gets really hard with almost no transition between 'very easy' and 'really hard'. Until I found those jacks, or whatever thay are, those stupid robots gave me quite a beating. It's longer than I thought it would be, too.

And I save almost every step I take.

[Richard W]

It's longer than I thought it would be, too. It might even be longer than Madness Returns. It certainly took me longer to play through, what with dying far more often. At one point I thought I'd never make it...

(eta) The last couple of boss fights, I saved almost every time I managed to get a few hits in, find a safeish place to stand, and either recharge or not lose too much health. Probably three or four saves per fight, and I died ten times at least between each of those saves. It would have taken forever to try to do it in one go.

[crocoduck_hunter]

I'm just finishing up another ME2 game, this time with a romance with Tali. I've completed the main game, now I just need to do The Arrival and Project Overlord.

Once again, I was unable to get the dialog option to keep both Jack and Miranda's loyalty. I'm wondering if there's a necessary conversation I'm supposed to have with each beforehand, since even with my Paragon level maxed I can't get it. Doesn't really matter, both survived the Suicide Mission and there wasn't any effect on ME3 last time it happened.

I just wish I could just download saved playthroughs with the stats I wanted, though. I've beaten ME2 plenty of times already, the only reason I'm playing through it now is because I lost all my saved games when my XBox 360 had failure issues and I decided to simply convert over to my PS3 so I wouldn't have to play through ME1 multiple times as well.

[Lachrymose]

Originally Posted by Richard W

At one point I thought I'd never make it...

I hope that point was before where I am now.

Probably three or four saves per fight, and I died ten times at least between each of those saves. It would have taken forever to try to do it in one go.

I saved like mad during the hatter fight. (c wut i did thar?)

I think maybe ten or fifteen times.

I'm a little past that now. Just got through the lava cave.

ETA: I guess we should just be glad it doesn't take as long as Skyrim to reload once you die. I think at one point I died 30 or more times in Skyrim, fairly quickly in between each death. Having to reload takes about 40-50 seconds for me. Bleh.

[Richard W]

... Well, when I said "ten times at least" it could easily have been twenty or thirty times. I'm not sure. I just thought that might make me sound a bit rubbish, so I had mentally revised the statistics in my favour.

I can't remember the Mad Hatter fight. I was playing it on and off for months - I just finished the last few stages this week. I actually got through them more quickly than some of the earlier bits, perhaps because I'd finally realised how to use my weapons effectively.

I think what we're trying to get at is that it's a bit hard in places...!

[Richard W]

Grrr. Assassin's Creed: Revelations just annoyed me again. I'd not played it for ages, but I was just looking through my list to see which achievements I could try to get to improve my average, and decided to give it another go, as there are a few that should be do-able.

Instead, yet again, when I put the disc in it downloaded an update which added several new achievements for some DLC or other, thus lowering my average before I'd even done anything. What's more annoying, all these new achievements are for on-line play, so it's not even a piece of DLC I'm interested in, and since I don't play on-line, I'll never get those ones. Stupid thing.

[Richard W]

I should stop posting in this thread - three posts in a row...!

I got Driver: San Francisco because I'd been looking at it for a while, then I happened to watch the Zero Punctuation review and he actually recommended it, which is a bit unusual. It's got a great premise for the game mechanic. (Sort of spoilers but not really) - it's like a cross between Life on Mars, Quantum Leap and Grand Theft Auto. You start off with the main character being put in a coma by the bad guys in a car crash. This then gives him the (hallucinatory) ability to fly about the city and jump into the body of any driver in it, thus taking over their car. Which is fantastic for gameplay - if you see a car you like, you just jump out of your current body and jump into it. Like GTA except without the hassle of having to chase it and hijack it. If you're trying to take down bad guys, you can jump out of your own car into an oncoming one, and cause head-on collisions with the baddies.

Also, in GTA, if there's a passenger, they've just seen an armed maniac pull their partner out of the driving seat and kidnap them, so all they do is scream and beg to be let out. In this case, the passengers don't know what's happened, so they say things like "Mother, don't you think you should slow down a little? Mother? Mother!" ... and your own character really doesn't give two hoots - he makes sarcastic comments like "I'm not your mother any more... get ready for some action" (made up example, but it's close to the real comments). You can get random people into police chases, then crash, jump into another passing driver and just leave them there to deal with it. It's much funnier.

I also was wrong about AC: Revelations - when I looked more closely, I realised that those achievements had already been there, and were nothing to do with the update. I'd just forgotten how many multi-player ones there were that I couldn't get.

[Mad Jay]

Richard, Driver: San fransisco sounds very interesting. Based on your post, I think I'll get it in the next few months

[Mickey Blue]

Been playing Fate of the World again (got it a while back, picked up up again), its still quite fun (of monstrously hard) with a bunch of nice new features.

Its a card game (sooooort of like a magic the gather type thing, but quite different) where you are put in charge of a UN-like organization (except concerned primarily with environmental policy) called the GEO. Your task (though the specific goals change between levels) is basically to pull the world under control and bring global warming and/or handle other problems associated with climate change and dwindling fuel sources.

A lot of people label it a 'liberal' game, and I guess it couldn't be called a 'conservative' game given the stock line for a lot of conservatives is either "Global warming is outright fake!" or "Global warming is technically real but not a problem", the game doesn't necessarily say its all people's fault (you do get problems from volcanic eruptions and other natural events) but it is real and humanity has impacted it.

I also like how if you want any prayer of winning you cannot just stick to typical 'green' policies, if you want to win you need to move your technology forward. One thing I don't like about a lot of real-life 'green' activists is their aversion to technology, recycling and rain barrels and all that may make ok band aids, but if solving the problems of the environment are gonna happen its gonna be through technological breakthrough (sustainable solar/wind/etc, 'fusion', improved desalination, etc) or massive disaster that kills off most of the population.

There are also more underhanded moves you can take to help things, some overt (one child policies, mandatory vegetarianism, etc) to subversive (you can force regime change, fund terrorism, sterilize societies, even kill people via secret biological weapon attack). Of course if you are caught doing any of the latter you will pay a price, possibly losing the level.

All in all its a very different game, both in theme (seriously when was the last time you played a game that dealt with any kind of real world social policy at all?) and in style (though card games are more popular these days, most of those are puzzle-style games, this is more "cards represent policies and you pay to put them in place").

And most important, IMO at least, its fun!

[chillas]

Has anyone else been messing around with the Portal 2 Perpetual Testing Initiative?

It's a simplified level designer, and I've been having tons of fun with it. Much simpler than the normal Hammer editor, though naturally not as full-featured as Hammer either.

[Jenn]

We took nerdism to a new level and played Artemis with a bunch of friends late into Saturday night. It was quite a bit more fun that I thought it would be and occasionally got legitimately stressful.

[Darth Credence]

I've been playing Minecraft. I don't even know why I like it, but I just can't stop playing. I think I keep making my shelters too big, because I go to sleep and keep being woken up by a monster attack.