What are you playing?

[sam vimes]

Mount and blade warband, sword of damocles mod... it apparently did a better job of balanacing the units... like feth as there is something wrong when 297 (counting my 11 heroes) knights on horse back are VERY comfortably beating four armies that number 1500 over all, Swadian knights such a broken unit both on the charge and in melee, expensive to get but worth the cost.

[David Earle]

I'm taking my last chance to play P.T. Huge shame what happened to this game.

[Mossy Toes]

Broken Age Act 2.

It's... got a fairly good plot, but... well, I'm honestly getting kind of tired of Tim Schafer's tortured, convoluted logic, since it ends up with players running around mashing every item they have into every possible person/interactable location waiting for a random chain of events that just happens to get them what they really want: there's little driving logic to so many of these puzzles it gets... frustrating.

[Athelassan]

Broken Age Act 2.

It's... got a fairly good plot, but... well, I'm honestly getting kind of tired of Tim Schafer's tortured, convoluted logic, since it ends up with players running around mashing every item they have into every possible person/interactable location waiting for a random chain of events that just happens to get them what they really want: there's little driving logic to so many of these puzzles it gets... frustrating.

Sounds like a 90s puzzle game.

Ath

[Mossy Toes]

Oh aye indeed. The "resurrection of the spirit of those games" was the whole idea behind the Broken Age Kickstarter, after all. Schafer is sticking true to form. And now-a days we have Google and, quite possibly, shorter patience spans.

[sam vimes]

playing Sryth very good text based rpg on the web

[Mossy Toes]

"Royals" a pay-what-you-want little mini game that is cutesy and deliberately vague--the idea is "that old game you vaguely remember you found on a floppy again but lost the instruction manual to."

Every move is a year, and you're aiming to be crowned queen/king/royal before your dirt poor peasant life expires on you. Some interesting depth of play for what is essentially a free game with arrow keys and 2 other keys to use. Almost bloodily cut my way to the throne on one life, then silver-tongued demagogued my way to charm the realm for success another. Expect to die dirt poor most of the time though, having made a single mess-up... then starting over for another several-minute game.

[David Earle]

Finished P.T., but only because my son started yelling for the controller and triggered the ending for me. So, thanks little man!

Now on to Bloodborne, which is awesome and clicking with me in ways Dark Souls never did. Love the aesthetic, love the sound design, love the switch to aggressive combat. Not so much loving the giant axe fiend that guts me every time I come his way (in a dead end with nothing in it).

[Vivia]

Back on The Sims 2. I'm really not feeling playing TS3 ever again, it's laggy and just not the same.
The Sims games are one of the few, if not the only one, that calms my anxiety and keeps me focused rather than adding to the problem. PushingupRoses was talking about experiencing the same thing. Very cool.

So many things to discover after so many years: Plantsims. I haven't played anything with a plantsim and then one of my sims had a house with a green house and I discovered that it was fairly fun to plant and care for them. In Blomdalen I'm playing with the Grönlund family which consist of one plantsim.

I made the misfortune of adopting a child after handling a toddler with the Grönlunds and well, that was a terrible idea. I locked it in a room until social service came for them, the toddler sim made my teeth gnash in frustration, the feeling of wanting to push through walls was another one. From what I have seen real babies aren't that annoying, the sims are usually terrible parents and it all adds to a sour experience. And here I thought pets could be frustrating.

[Chun the Unavoidable]

Had a bout of playing Diablo II with friends over the weekend - very enjoyable once firewalls were sorted. The only other problem was resolution: does anybody know a way to get it to run full screen?

[Dorian]

Not sure if it's been mentioned yet but

Warhammer 40k: https://www.eternalcrusade.com/

Warhammer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i4d3ignBNQ

[Athelassan]

Not sure if it's been mentioned yet but

Warhammer 40k: https://www.eternalcrusade.com/

Warhammer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i4d3ignBNQ

There is a thread!

Ath

[Vivia]

I saw that one the other day!

Time makes fool of us all. I went back to The Sims 3 only a few days after I wrote about not playing ever again.
I wanted to give the game a last try, took the time to search a solution for the lag and it worked, darn it. From what I read in the article, sometimes the game runs like a charm and sometimes it lags to death, regardless of system and specs. The game is problematic. But since I'm restricting my internet time I need other stuff.

In all, I'm getting maximum enjoyment from the game: collecting isn't as simple as I took it for, there are nuances to the collectibles, bugs and butterflies aren't anything to sneeze at, they can garner quite a bit of monetary reward. One of my biggest frustrations with my first sim Leslie Knopf (yes, that Leslie from Parks and Recreations), was the lack of funds and annoyingly hard way to level up at work. Main reason was the energy level that dropped so fast it became such a pain and made life very limited when it came to social aspects and levelling up. I began a new game with in Bridgeport with a vagabond sim, who leaves in squalor, and from collecting I have gained so much it's surprising. He hasn't even done that much collecting either.

I even got an adopted child for two siblings living together, it's less high maintenance, the baby-sitter does much of the work anyway. From TS2 I became aware of the low ambition level on toddlers, it can affect them negatively, TS3 is the same. Investing time in your children. Bah.
I'm not enamoured with children in TS3 either, they look like dolls, really stiff and uncanny valley therefore they set my teeth on edge. Their mimics are much more limited than adults, they repeat things over again, and with synthetic shrill voices, TS2 was a bit better in this regard. Ugly is the key word. Kill them with fire!

I'm really missing a vacation expansion, thinking of the World Exploration EP, or whatever it's called.

[Mossy Toes]

Hotline Miami. Not exactly a new game (I got it cheap because its sequel just dropped recently), but still one worth mentioning. A lurid, fluorescent, top-down pixel shoot/bash/masher that is up there with Spec Ops: The Line in terms of its self-hatred of its own pointless, stylized hyperviolence. It's... seductive and hypnotic, where I the player fall into a constant stream of kill/kill/kill/die/respawn/kill/knock-down/curb-stomp/kill/kill/throw weapon to knockdown/decapitate with machete/shotgun 2 enemies/die/repeat. It's unforgiving, but levels are the perfect length: you're going to die many, many times and leave blood-strewn hallways behind you, until you iterate to that one, perfect success of seamlessly flowing murder. The entire game feels like that scene from Kill Bill where Uma Thurman slaughters her way through the 99 Eyes, or whatever they're called: dozens of faceless identical mooks dying by your hand in a gory, pixelated fashion. There's no down time, not even when you die from a single tiny misstep: you hit the restart key within a fraction of a second and are back into it, the gore, the sprawled corpses.

Then the hallucinations, the shuddering, warping screen, the contradictory versions of events, the hypnotic trance-beat of the music pounding beneath your skin. Then the looming figure of the chicken-headed man, who haunts your dreams, who derisively hates you, and who asks you--

"Do you enjoy hurting people?"

[David Earle]

Bloodborne: Stuck in a sewer full of rats. Seems to be what happens to me with every Souls game.

The Last of Us Remastered: That prologue was, um, harsh. This could be a rough one.

[Mossy Toes]

Finished up Beyond Good & Evil. I know, I know, only a dozen years late to the party.

And... *sigh.* What a tragedy/travesty there was never a sequel (& almost certainly will never be).

[sam vimes]

The witcher 3... bloody challanging but good

[Major Rawne]

The witcher 3... bloody challanging but good

Made a little start on this last night. I started on super hard but kept getting killed in the first fight so wussed out and lowered it back down to default. It is excellent so far though.

[Mossy Toes]

Have returned to The Long Dark. Recent updates have... increased the complexity (to say nothing of the sheer number of maps) of the world by a large degree, really making it feel like you're living off the land. Top notch game, well worth it.

I know, I know, I can't help but throw up screencaps whenever I talk about it, but... the game is just plain beautiful.

[Vivia]

That's some beautiful graphics. I love when game developers try to do something unique in graphics, CGI and realism leave me cold.

The Sims 3 reigns supreme.

Instead of buying a vacation EP, I went on with Drömjobb, ambitions, and it's so much fun. I wanted the World EP, but LGR had better things to say about DJ.
DJ adds five more jobs, one being ghosthunter, and yes, it's the Ghostbusters. I love it. My Liz Lemon is a ghosthunter and she rocks.

I should have seen this happened: the adopted child didn't grow up all amazing, she might be insane. Oh, what a cruel existence. It isn't so bad, I like her better now as a child.
I don't think it's fair that I should be taking care of a doll-like pest infant and toddler, they're freakish. From what I have read they don't get better with the Generations EP, so that's a bummer. On the good side, the animation and emotions of children are adorable. My sim child is a winner in my eyes because she managed to be the first winner of an eating contest in any of my families. Ha! Not even the athletic Duke Nukem won and he tried a few times. She has an adorable "winning" mood. Just because of this I'm considering getting Generations next. I also want I Rampljuset, the showtime EP to add more jobs.

Sour things:
The hairstyles for the sims are so lacking. Men get an awful Justin Bieber hair, and not the classic cuts. WTF. If it wasn't for my three expansion I wouldn't have anything good. I don't like how Maxis really go out of their way to add trendy stuff when trends fade away and become silly really quick. It's the same with decorations, it's better to create your own stuff than copying existing fads and celebrities.

Riverview is a free town. Thank you, EA, for not promoting free content. It's a small rural town, really not very exciting, no bars, or anything sophisticated which is a bit annoying when the sims want to go clubs. Only Bridgeport has that.

Duke Nukem reached super stardom and it's pretty lame. Endless promotions and parties for all eternity. Is this how celebrities live in real life? It's so disheartening and artificial, I get this cold feeling inside. And because I have played with him so much I now want children and a cosy town, and with family I mean siblings with adopted children and single parents. What have you done to me, Duke?