What Video Game Are You Currently Playing?

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

While some of it is no doubt down to lack of interest (Q2 seems to be the second least popular Quake, after Q4), there's also the fact that the way Quake 2 handles mods that go beyond custom maps (with custom DLLs) turned out to be a dumb idea in hindsight since they generally have to have recompiled versions for nearly every port in existence (and separately for Linux and Windows, and I suppose Mac, versions), and ports are borderline mandatory due to the original engine's other failings on modern systems.

For a fairly decent (semi-)recent map pack, you could try Serge Jaeken's Zero Signal.

 

As for the thread topic at large, last thing I played was Star Trek Strategic Operations Simulator for VIC-20 (which I just recently acquired).  In spite of the title, it's much more arcadey than it is strategic or a simulation.

[Vermil]

Giving Dragooneer's Aria a go on PSP.

[Obsidian]

The Magic: the Gathering Arena closed beta.Because I'm a big nerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd.

[Marlamir]

@ETTiNGRiNDER tottaly agree with you about mods. The way you need to handle and then load single custom map is really dumb in this game. 

[Roofi]

I'm completing Serious Sam : The next encounter on Hard Difficulty. It was one of my favourite games when I was kid! It's not as good as the other serious games mainly due to the very bad graphics and the fact that's a spinoff only made for the PS2/gamecube. But whatever , that's a hidden gem among the FPS games on console. :)

 

 

 

[Chopkinsca]

I could now probably finish off Avernum 4 in 10 - 15 minutes, except for some bullshit. I hate respawning monsters in an RPG. Especially ones that respawn really fast and you can turn off, but only if you didn't neglect putting points into a certain skill. 

[CountArchvile]

Psychonauts,And its a pretty enjoyable experience I really like the level design every single one has its own look and play style

and It really feels like you're going into the individual minds of the characters you meet.voice acting is also brilliant it has this early 2000's touch to it.

[GamingMarine]

Just recently got Postal Redux on Steam about an hour ago. I'm close to the end of the Excess Postage campaign (On the Earthquake level, to be more specific).

 

EDIT: Just finished it within less than 12 hours (Several breaks were taken). I can understand where people are coming from when they say that the game's too short (Even with the Special Delivery + Super Postal levels added in), but it was fun while it lasted. Might come back to it at some point to try out the Rampage mode, and maybe even mess around with the Hatred easter egg Running With Scissors revealed a few years ago.

Edited September 24, 2018 by GamingMarine : Finished the game

[Vermil]

Giving Dungeons 3 a try; it seems very similar to Dungeons 2 on the surface.

[Avoozl]

I decided to give Wario Land Shake It another whirl after 10 years since I last played it only this time emulated instead of on the hardware. Personally I still don't enjoy it much unlike the Gameboy Wario Land games and Wario World but I'd sure take it over the Wario Ware games any day.

[Chopkinsca]

I finally finished up Avernum 4. I started up on Geneforge. I'm not very far into it, but it has some neat ideas. Something interesting came up. I was given a task to find a spy in the village. I go looking for the spy, thinking I can turn them in for a reward or something. I end up finding the spy, but he has some things to say that made me hesitant to turn him in. It's a moral choice, instead of just doing something for the reward of loot and experience points.

[KVELLER]

I recently finished playing Drakan: Order of the Flame, one of my all-time favorites. If you don't know about it, it's a third-person action adventure game with a medieval/fantasy setting. A lot of time had passed since the last time I played it, so I was interested to see if there was anything I could notice now that I have a more critical point of view, and I sure did.

 

First of all, Jesus Christ, that voice acting is horrible, and Rynn (the fucking protagonist!) shows no emotion whatsoever,

 

MAJOR SPOILER BELOW

Spoiler

even at the ending where HER BROTHER IS FALLING INTO A BOTOMLESS PIT, like goddammit, she went through hell and back to rescue him, you'd expect her to be losing her shit, but nope.

 

The writing is ok and there are some attempts at character development, but it never really gets there.

 

On the gameplay department, the aerial combat when controlling Arokh is pretty fun, if not particularly challenging. Now, ground combat... well... it's pretty challenging at times, but not for very good reasons. You take a fair amount of damage from enemy attacks, and they tend to hit you by slashing at the air in front of you, so the best tactic seems to be to jump around like a madman and try to stay behind them for as long as possible.

 

But the music... the music is just wonderful, and so is the atmophere across the board. And that's why I love this game so much, it's not because of its gameplay or its story, but because of the world it manages to create despite its numerous shortcomings.

 

---------------------------------

 

I'm now replaying System Shock 2 for the second time. The first time I played I focused on standard and heavy weapons, so now I decided to go for the exotic ones along with a lot of research skill, altough I'm still relying on standard and heavy weapons to do most of the work. I'm planning to go for energy weapons in a future playthrough (I think I dropped a tear when I found the Laser Rapier and realised I couldn't use it) and psionics later on.

 

As a side note, I've been playing an Android game called Magium. It's a text-based choose your own adventure game, and it's ridiculously well written. Seriously, I mean it! I encourage anyone reading this to give it a try.

[MortisCausaDonatio]

Finally got bored enough to give a try for Postal 3

 

 

I am a mazohist

 

 

[seed]

22 hours ago, KVELLER said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

even at the ending where HER BROTHER IS FALLING INTO A BOTOMLESS PIT, like goddammit, she went through hell and back to rescue him, you'd expect her to be losing her shit, but nope.

I'm now replaying System Shock 2 for the second time. The first time I played I focused on standard and heavy weapons, so now I decided to go for the exotic ones along with a lot of research skill, altough I'm still relying on standard and heavy weapons to do most of the work. I'm planning to go for energy weapons in a future playthrough (I think I dropped a tear when I found the Laser Rapier and realised I couldn't use it) and psionics later on.

 

I tried going for exotics in my first and so far only playthrough of SS2, but I found them too impractical. There weren't enough resources to use them as my main weapons, so I dropped them later and relied on standard and heavy weapons instead.

[KVELLER]

27 minutes ago, Agent6 said:

I tried going for exotics in my first and so far only playthrough of SS2, but I found them too impractical. There weren't enough resources to use them as my main weapons, so I dropped them later and relied on standard and heavy weapons instead.

 

Yeah, ammo is kinda hard to come by, but at the very least the Viral Proliferator absolutely annihilates spiders, which are one of the most annoying enemies in the game due to how many bullets to the face they're able to withstand. The Crystal Shard is also pretty cool.

[seed]

11 minutes ago, KVELLER said:

Yeah, ammo is kinda hard to come by, but at the very least the Viral Proliferator absolutely annihilates spiders, which are one of the most annoying enemies in the game due to how many bullets to the face they're able to withstand. The Crystal Shard is also pretty cool.

 

Ah, melee, that one thing you can literally rely on in this game until close to the very end, running out of ammo is ridiculously easy.

 

I like the shard but I found it less practical than the wrench, or whatever it was, because it seemed to have shorter range.

[KVELLER]

1 hour ago, Agent6 said:

I like the shard but I found it less practical than the wrench, or whatever it was, because it seemed to have shorter range.

 

Hm, maybe. I haven't really noticed since I run right up to the enemies' faces anyway :D Besides, the increased damage is well worth the exchange IMO.

[Nekr0s1s]

i started playing Need For Speed World with the offline server mod thing (probably not related to Soapbox Race World). i'm really loving the cars handling and the customization. though unfortunately i can't put certain parts on specific cars. (i'm stuck with the original spoiler for the Mitsubishi Eclipse GS-T, and the body kits are kinda ugly. i also miss some aftermarket brand stickers, so no HKS, Brembo, Sparco or whatever decals on the door.)

[Phobus]

Still on Wolfenstein 2, as I had a week off of it. I'm really going places in it now. Like Venus. It's really grown on me on this play through. The wheel chair and power armour sections don't really do what the game becomes justice, I think. Too miserable and defeatist, up until the dream sequence. Then it turns back into what I thought I was getting into.

[Firedust]

The New Order was way better than the sequel, which I found a tad disappointing. It just became a tad repetitive, and there were no missions as cool as that space one in the first installment. Hopefully, they will rectify the repetitiveness in Youngblood.

 

Currently playing Borderlands 2 :D

[OliveTree]

I finished Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs. Not nearly as terrifying as The Dark Descent was, but I was surprised by how interesting, surreal and macabre it was, plot-wise. It was good! I dunno why people give it such a bad wrap.

[Maser]

Grand Theft Auto 4: The Lost And Damned

[Phobus]

2 hours ago, Firedust said:

The New Order was way better than the sequel, which I found a tad disappointing. It just became a tad repetitive, and there were no missions as cool as that space one in the first installment. Hopefully, they will rectify the repetitiveness in Youngblood.

 

I can't help but wonder if part of that is because The New Order felt really bold and different, which seemed to carry on through my experience of The Old Blood, whilst since then we've had Doom 2016, which ramped things up even more. I say that mostly because I wanted to hype myself for TNC by playing TNO again and lost interest in it quite quickly... Although to be fair, I have very thoroughly beaten TNO, achievements (bar the grenade returning perk) and everything, so I didn't need to go through it for yet another time.

[Firedust]

I think that there was more meat to the story in TNO than there ever was in TNC. And there was enough variation in the combat settings and encounters, which kept me interested throughout the entire campaign. In TNC, I felt that I was literally going through the same encounters over and over again, without things changing much at all. I also felt that there weren't enought different kinds of enemies either. It could also be that I got better at FPS ever since I started playing competitive CS, because I found "Bring em on" to be hardly a challenge.

 

Also, the grind to access the secret mission is annoying. Why isn't killing all the captains in the campaign enough to access it? I literally collected every code piece from everyone I killed, but that still wasn't enough to unlock all the generals' locations, so I had to replay certain parts several times to unlock the secret missions.

[Philnemba]

Been playing a lot of Destiny 2 on PC a LOT more often than usual thanks to a recent expansion that help made the game WAY better than the dumpster fire it was a year ago.  

[Phobus]

I let the timer run out a couple of times whilst I was working out the Enigma machine and wasted some Enigma Codes, but even then I only needed to do the Penthouse District about four extra times to have enough codes to do everything. Hell, after the final story mission and side quests I had some spare. I beat the game last night with 97% completion. The outstanding thing seems to only be the perks, which are sitting at 73%. I did miss four readable items, but they don't seem to count.

 

That last Überkommander mission through the abandoned bunker was a bit long compared to most of the others and rather dark and atmospheric to go with it, but it felt like a reasonable enough final point to play. I know there's higher difficulties, the Wyatt timeline and the Freedom Chronicles I could do (plus the Challenges, but fuck those), but aside from the DLC, I feel pretty content with missing those. Maybe I'll come back and do Wyatt on a higher difficulty some day.

 

My next game to play until I beat it is Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration. Before that, however, I'm going to try out Forza Horizon 4, as I got early access starting yesterday with my pre-order and, apparently, the game has a 5-hour introduction of sorts, so that you get a good experience of the seasons and whatnot before you do the Horizon festival proper.

[[McD] James]

I've been playing through a few Thief fan missions, along with Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball. 

 

 

[Yuki Senmatsu]

Hallow's End (Earthbound Romhack)

 

I forgot how fun that Romhack is. I didn't play it that much until as of recent

[Phobus]

Rise of the Tomb Raider is taking surprisingly long to get through, but I'm having a good time with it. I'm at 70% completion, having 100% everywhere I've had access to so far (aside from Syria, as I can't get back there yet to collect what I've missed), aside from the one side mission in the geothermal valley that asks you to take on all of the challenge tombs. Apparently the last tomb is in the Lost City, which I can't get to until I rescue the guy I barely remember from the start of the game and definitely don't remember from the previous one. Still, it's plot and I'm sure it'll all work out...

 

I have noticed that, in gating some areas off with equipment requirements, the game brings to mind Batman: Arkham Asylum and Darksiders. It's kind of like a Metroidvania set up, but it makes me think even more of The Legend of Zelda in this instance, probably because the game is quite bow-oriented.

 

There's been some incredible views in this game, particularly in the Geothermal Valley. The contrast with the opening Syrian area, the Siberian set up of the majority of the game and the warmer climate in the Valley (and Wicked Vale in the Baba Yaga expansion) is very nice and makes some areas feel much more hostile and dangerous. The optional challenge tombs are often game play highlights for me, adding in puzzles that require some thought.

 

Interestingly, this game occasionally slows down for me at 4k with everything maxed out (aside from FXAA, which is off, and MSAA, which is only at 4x). In particular it seems to hate the cut scenes (I think it might be the hair animation that's doing it) and in large areas using the Hunter Instincts causes a visible performance dip. I find aiming at rabbits also seems to suffer some kind of lag. But then most of the combat heavy sections, even taking place in burning buildings and the like, have been silky smooth.

 

The 20th Anniversary Celebration version includes a load of survival stuff I don't care about, but it does have the aforementioned Baba Yaga expansion, which I've 100% completed, and Blood Ties, which is playable separate from the main game as it takes place in Croft Manor. I'll play the latter once I've 100% completed the main game, then I'll move on to my Halloween horror games plan. Probably starting this weekend, as I have no plans.

[Chewyninja69]

10 hours ago, Phobus said:

Rise of the Tomb Raider is taking surprisingly long to get through, but I'm having a good time with it. I'm at 70% completion, having 100% everywhere I've had access to so far (aside from Syria, as I can't get back there yet to collect what I've missed), aside from the one side mission in the geothermal valley that asks you to take on all of the challenge tombs. Apparently the last tomb is in the Lost City, which I can't get to until I rescue the guy I barely remember from the start of the game and definitely don't remember from the previous one. Still, it's plot and I'm sure it'll all work out...

 

I have noticed that, in gating some areas off with equipment requirements, the game brings to mind Batman: Arkham Asylum and Darksiders. It's kind of like a Metroidvania set up, but it makes me think even more of The Legend of Zelda in this instance, probably because the game is quite bow-oriented.

 

There's been some incredible views in this game, particularly in the Geothermal Valley. The contrast with the opening Syrian area, the Siberian set up of the majority of the game and the warmer climate in the Valley (and Wicked Vale in the Baba Yaga expansion) is very nice and makes some areas feel much more hostile and dangerous. The optional challenge tombs are often game play highlights for me, adding in puzzles that require some thought.

 

Interestingly, this game occasionally slows down for me at 4k with everything maxed out (aside from FXAA, which is off, and MSAA, which is only at 4x). In particular it seems to hate the cut scenes (I think it might be the hair animation that's doing it) and in large areas using the Hunter Instincts causes a visible performance dip. I find aiming at rabbits also seems to suffer some kind of lag. But then most of the combat heavy sections, even taking place in burning buildings and the like, have been silky smooth.

 

The 20th Anniversary Celebration version includes a load of survival stuff I don't care about, but it does have the aforementioned Baba Yaga expansion, which I've 100% completed, and Blood Ties, which is playable separate from the main game as it takes place in Croft Manor. I'll play the latter once I've 100% completed the main game, then I'll move on to my Halloween horror games plan. Probably starting this weekend, as I have no plans.

Have you tried/played the newest Tomb Raider? I'm about 20% through (according to the game) and it's pretty cool so far. It's a gorgeous game, as well.