Octopus Overlords

I've been working on LEGO Marvel Super Heroes and edging my way to 100%. I'll likely get bored before I'm halfway through, but if I can manage it long-term, it will be the first LEGO game since Indiana Jones that I finish.

The Last of Us (Remastered). I was very hesitant at the beginning, as I don't like survival horror games. I nearly quit early on because of that, but I stuck with it. I'm very glad that I did. I haven't played a game with writing and atmosphere like this in a long, long time. It is absolutely fantastic.

Usually, by the time I get near the end of a game, I'm ready for it to end. Not so in this case. I'm almost to the hospital, and I'm loving every minute of this thing.

I'm playing it on the PS4 right now and I was pleasantly surprised by the stealth mechanics. It's pretty dang decent. I hope the sound mechanic finds its way into more games.

Blackhawk wrote:The Last of Us (Remastered).

I just finished it.

Wow.

The ending was unexpected and unique amongst games. It led to some interesting conversation with the kids (who have been following the story.)

I'll be playing the Left Behind DLC next.

Playing 4 games more than anything else right now......

WarThunder tanks
Far Cry 3
Deadpool
Bully

I have other installed waiting for me after this round.......

DeadSpace 3
The Bards Tale remake
Crysis 3

And I just purchased Lost Planet 3 on super sale so I have to to install. Finished the first 2 games.

Playing Forza Horizon 2 online XB1 mostly with a buddy. Been good fun.

I had been playing The Last Of Us but had to take a break from it. All that sneaking around and worrying about supplies got a bit stressful so I switched to Diablo 3 for some stress free stealthless killing. Quite relaxing.

I'm at 150/250 of the gold bricks in LEGO Marvel. I finished the first level in Free Play to get the minikit levels, which, of course, requires a walkthrough so you don't zone past one by accident.

I'm going to work on amassing 1M studs so I can start purchasing the stud multipliers from that merc, Deadpool. That should help with character purchases.

Over the last week, played a bit of:
Rome 2 Total War
Shadowrun Returns/Dragonfall
Xenonauts
Warhammer 40k: Chaos Gate (finally got it working after ten years of trying on and off!)

Rome 2: It scratches the same itch that Rome Total War scratched. They really reduced all the micromanagement BS that I had to do for my armies back in RTW. The individual units still look kind of stupid when you zoom in too close. I also like that the overall framer rate stays the same in large battles, although if you zoom in too close, the individual unit animations are, uh, slow. I also love the naval combat. The computer is awful at ramming, but ramming allows me to win battles even heavily outnumbered.

Chaos Gate: Take the tactical combat from X-Com, and pair it with Warhammer 40k, and this is what you get. Somewhat limited supplies, and fairly limited troop quantity on your side. I've gotten pretty far in the game, to the point where you get access to Terminator armor. For a recipe in mass destruction, pair a Librarian with "Quickening" with an Assault Cannon Terminator, and let the guy go to town.

Xenonauts: A fun take on the X-Com mechanism. Pretty damn tough, too, those aliens don't pull any punches. Don't round a corner with your last time units, don't leave your guys out in the open and don't bunch up because the alien bastards love chucking grenades and launchers at you.

Shadowrun: Good RPG times. I played through both of these a while back as a shooter/decker, but now I'm going through as magic-using characters. Boy, are the role-playing elements of these games weighted towards deckers. Dead Man's Switch doesn't even have a single "mage" conversation option. So far in Dragonfall, I've seen maybe two or three "mage" conversation options, but every other dialogue has something you can "computer hack" into. On the plus side, my mage can wipe the floor with the opposition much more efficiently than any gun-user type.

If you play the LEGO games, take a lesson from my idiocy. The first thing you should buy once you have enough studs is never an additional character. It's the stud multipliers.

After blowing 1.5 million unlocking characters and starting to explore and research for 100%, I realized that Deadpool has the purchase red brick/cheats/etcs for sale, and having a million for 2x stud collection would have helped greatly.

I finally broke out of my gaming slump. Until this past week, I had not played a game in over a month. I just got totally burned out after completing Far Cry 4 and lost all interest.

I decided to ease back into Dragon Age: Inquisition, and have been having a good time so far. However, I'm not overdoing it. 30 minutes to an hour a night.

The nice side effect of this slump is that it's kept me from spending money. Another reason I'm taking my time with the stuff I already own.

Spammity spam spam.

Gilda celebrity trader? Nice.

How much rep do I need to grind for a Kate Uptongrade?

Mount & Blade Warband has still got it. I reinstalled on a whim, and have put waaayyy too many hours into it over the past week or so.

I just finished Episode 4 of season 1 of The Walking Dead on the Vita. I'm really wishing that I'd played it on anything else. It is almost unplayable due to frequent freezes when transitioning between moments of action. It isn't a hard freeze, just a two or three second freeze while the system catches up to the game.

Unfortunately, the game keeps running during the freezes, and the transitions commonly occur just as a Quick-Time-Event is triggered. That means I'm frozen for 2.5 of the 3 seconds granted to push the button or line up the shot. I was stuck on the stairs forever because I died once, and there just wasn't enough time to react after loading back into the scene and going immediately to the QTE. In fact, I actually died a couple of times before the scene finished loading.

Of all of my hardware purchases, I've really begun to regret the Vita. Not only does the game selection stink, but I got it mainly to give myself the option to game when sitting in the van waiting for the kids. Little did I know that the Vita is almost unusable anywhere but in a dark room.

I keep replaying games of X-Com on Classic Ironman. I usually make it to the final battle, walk in the room, lose half my squad and my temper to mind control, lose the fight, and delete the game rather than try another run (mostly because I think being able to try another run breaks the spirit of playing Ironman). Last time I killed the main Ethereal who had my main guy mind controlled and it killed my main guy at the same time. I hadn't realized it would do that. That one really pissed me off.

That mechanic was discoverable in the tutorial.

Real-life Tetris.

Isgrimnur wrote:That mechanic was discoverable in the tutorial.

Who plays the tutorials?

Yeah, that sort of crap is why I never play Ironman. Too much chance of a UI error or a misclick ruining a whole game (remember those two-floor alien ships where you couldn't select the right floor no matter what?). My trick with the last room was to blind-fire rockets (or blaster bombs if I've got them) at the spot where the high ethereal guy always camps out every time.

I've been playing Rome 2 Total War quite a bit, mixed with some Chaos Gate to cleanse the palate. The ability to have combined arms naval and ground force fights is really something else. Normally, you'd be restricted to having to lay siege to a city and either starve them out or mount a costly assault. With a naval fleet present, I was able to take over quite a city with an amphibious landing inside the city walls. Used the catapult ships to bomb the crap out of the nearby arrow towers and provide fire support for my legionnaires as they disembarked, then used them to blast the poor AI saps trying to guard the victory point. Now, if the AI was smart, he'd have moved his guys away because there was only one way to get to that part of the city anyway. But instead, his guys stood there eating rocks and fireballs. I guess the other thing he could have done was block up the harbor with his garrison ships (I don't think there's a way to dislodge a landed ship), but instead we sunk them in the first thirty seconds of the fight.

Ships are also incredibly useful for fire support during town defense missions. Normally, the town garrison has no chance against a 20-unit army (+reinforcements). However, if the town's flag point is within catapult range of your ships, the AI really loves going for that spot. And then standing there. It's kind of sad actually, it probably thinks that that's a victory condition. Well, it is, for me, when my onager/ballista ships have a chance to score 200+ kills each on the infantry and cavalry that pile up in the town center. Except for the last battle where the AI bugged out and bunched its units up beyond catapult range. The battle timed out and the AI had to retreat.

As for naval battles, I think I'm starting to get the hang of them, at least vs the AI. I usually like to have a double line of ships, including a few assault ships in the front, then a bunch of catapult/ballista ships in the back. The AI tends to bunch up and try to board the nearest ship it sees, so my rock throwers get a bunch of free shots off without being threatened at all. And even if I spot an AI unit going for one of my rock throwers, they have rams too. Very versatile. Individual ship navigation is a little wonky when close to other ships/the shore, they tend to have trouble turning and so they just get stuck in place. Of course, one time, I thought one of my ships was being AI-retarded - I would order it to shoot at a target, and it just wouldn't turn. Wide open water all around and everything. Then, I take a close look and notice that the catapult in front is completely busted with bodies all around it. Well geez guys, a simple "I can't do that" would have helped.

I've tailed off on the 100% grind on Lego Marvel and shifted some to NHL '14 on 360. I've been called up a few times from Manchester by the Kings, but can't seem to stick. They're no slouch of a team, so it's a bit harder than if I was playing for Rochester or Oklahoma City.

Now I'll have to actually play a video game and put something here.

I'm up over 80% on Lego Marvel, having completed all the Deadpool missions for red bricks, have all the character tokens available, and just need to Free Play most of the missions again to free Stan Lee collect all the minikits, and put this one to bed.

I fired up Battlefield 4 for the the first time in probably close to a year. Played one long MP match where I went 1:2 on KD, then discovered that there's a campaign! Played through the first two missions, got the gold medals, and set the high score on my limited friends list.

Dragon Age: Inquisition. That game is taking me forever but I'm enjoying not being pressured to rush through it.

YellowKing wrote:Dragon Age: Inquisition. That game is taking me forever but I'm enjoying not being pressured to rush through it.

Took me forever but I enjoyed it.

On the other hand I am back to working my way through AC: Unity (on sequence 6 now)... man I miss Black Flag.

coopasonic wrote:

YellowKing wrote:Dragon Age: Inquisition. That game is taking me forever but I'm enjoying not being pressured to rush through it.

Took me forever but I enjoyed it.

On the other hand I am back to working my way through AC: Unity (on sequence 6 now)... man I miss Black Flag.

Yeah, once I learned that there would be no more pirate ship action, I was out. I mean, ok, the first two AC games were pretty good (with AC2 being far superior), but once they brought out the sailing ships, I knew that I couldn't go back.

Meanwhile, I've been pounding away at Rome 2. It's got its hooks in me big time, kind of like the first one and Medieval. There's just something special about beating the crap out of hordes of barbarians with my Roman legions.

I've been playing X-com: Enemy Within on classic difficulty. WHEW!

Demonix wrote:I've been playing X-com: Enemy Within on classic difficulty. WHEW!

I can finish a game on classic in a matter of a couple hours...

I think he's trying to win though.

I imagine that would take a lot longer. I only imagine because I am not foolish enough to try it.

100% complete on LEGO Marvel Super Heroes.

Forza Horizon 2 has a fast and furious DLC out for free, so I downloaded it. It's not actually part of FH2, in fact it is completely separate. I played it for a couple of hours and had a blast playing it. Almost finished it but it has been tons of fun, and you don't need to own FH2 top play it. I would suggest anyone with an XB1 pick it up and have some fun with it. It's short, but really fun and free.

Also been playing some Rise Of Nations on my PC, that's a game I just never get tired of to be honest.

On deck is some EXPLOSIONS! Probably from Borderlands 2 in the Badass Crater and in the World of Warships open beta.

I didn't have a lot of gaming time this weekend, but I did pick up Fantasia: Music Evolved (XB1) at Best Buy's "Black Friday" event. With my GCU discount it was $8, so I figured why not.

It's a really great game. Terrific mix of songs - classic rock, modern pop, classical. The Kinect recognition works much better than I expected. The mechanics are neat - when you really get good at it you truly feel like a bad-ass conductor. It's also fairly challenging right off the bat - don't let the Disney trappings fool you, because this certainly isn't a kid's game.

The game so far is also structured really well. It gives you a lengthy tutorial, introducing new concepts slowly before turning you loose into the world. And once there, you have ample motivation to replay songs and unlock new remixes.

It's really too bad titles like this weren't more abundant to really show off what the Kinect is good for, as this is certainly the best Kinect title for the XB1. I played for a couple of hours this weekend and enjoyed every second. Definitely looking forward to playing more tonight.

Assassin's Creed Rogue... it has almost completely washed away the bitter disappointment that was Unity. Before playing this I was considering skipping Syndicate altogether. Now it depends which way they went with Syndicate.

Isgrimnur wrote:On deck is some EXPLOSIONS! Probably from Borderlands 2 in the Badass Crater and in the World of Warships open beta.

Right on target. Plenty of work in the crater. Axton is in the low 40s.

Only got three missions in last night on the deck of my St. Louis. I need to put more time in to catch my buddies. I wish the game would actually group parties together at launch, so I don't spend the first two minutes tacking across the map to join with my friends.

Baldur's Gate 2: EE

Spent the weekend romping in Watcher's Keep. Pretty sure I never tackled it in the past. I'd remember. Some of those fights are insanely difficult. I did a LOT of reloading.

And I still have three really nasty ones coming up.

TheMix wrote:Baldur's Gate 2: EE

Spent the weekend romping in Watcher's Keep. Pretty sure I never tackled it in the past. I'd remember. Some of those fights are insanely difficult. I did a LOT of reloading.

And I still have three really nasty ones coming up.

I've been playing some of BG2, as people have talked it up a lot, plus with the excitement of Pillars of Eternity, I decided I would check it out but haven't gotten too far in (I just got through the Circus Tent area).

I'll start off by saying I don't tend to finish a lot of RPGs (Oblivion was probably the last one I finished), but I'm not all that impressed so far. My main gripes:

1. While admittedly it was probably good for it's time, I'm annoyed by the interface (eg, having to press a button to reveal what buttons do, rather than just give the name when your mouse is over them) - and its not as if I haven't been fine with the interfaces of other games in the era. Couldn't they improve the interface for the enhanced edition? (or was this one improved?)

2. I haven't been impressed with the story, that which there is, so far, but I assume that's because it's early yet, and it gets better.

3. I don't like the fighting at all. Admittedly, fighting is the part I least enjoy about RPGs, and with little/no fighting I'd probably play/finish RPGs more (of course, then they would almost be adventure games), but I don't like the fighting in BG2. I'd rather play the turn based fighting of Blackguards.

Been playing a little Half Minute Hero. The concept just kinda cracks me up. You have thirty seconds to save the world, over and over, in a variety of different ways. Just the fact that you can blow through the credits each time in less than a second amuses me.

Defiant wrote: 1. While admittedly it was probably good for it's time, I'm annoyed by the interface (eg, having to press a button to reveal what buttons do, rather than just give the name when your mouse is over them) - and its not as if I haven't been fine with the interfaces of other games in the era. Couldn't they improve the interface for the enhanced edition? (or was this one improved?)

I haven't played BG2 EE, but I've played IWD EE. I'm not sure what you're talking about, but I'm guessing the lack of tooltips. If so, they're there, but there is a huge delay before they pop up. If you go into the options, you can change the delay. It has been that way with the Infinity Engine since the beginning.