General Gaming Megathread: What are you playing?

Come back after spending $120 on Mercenaries 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company and you will understand the meaning of pain (of wasting precious money on shit games).

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I'm a little bummed out that for whatever reason the Community Guides/Builds section of Dota2 isn't syncing for me right now (I'm not sure if it's global, or just me) so I can't implement the latest updates to my guides. =( I thoroughly enjoy playing heroes that don't get a lot of love (Phantom Lancer, Necrophos, Drow Ranger) but are in fact really powerful, so writing those guides to help friends and random joes realize their potential was really fulfilling. Hopefully the error is global and it's one that Valve will address soon, cause my "Master of Misdirection" guide for PL is in DIRE need of updating!!! Uh... no pun intended.

That irritating difficulty aside, I'm actually not finding much time for Dota2 lately, though that'll change without doubt once I 100% GTAV (again). I'll have to find another title to pop into my system when I'm exercising, and unlike GTAV, it's unlikely that I'll find myself wanting to plop myself on the couch for hours at a time to plug away at it. With that time freed up, I'll be able to return to Dota2 in earnest! =D

 

I've played Mercenaries 2 before. I was alright, I liked the over the topness the game had. But I found it alright probably because I didn't experience the game breaking glitches everybody talks about. Except that glitch where the game crashes on the main screen because EA took down the servers. That was bullshit, I thought I needed a new copy before I found out that was a legitimate problem.

 

Just got me a PSvita, I am playing Persona 4 Golden.

 

Finally picked up Deus Ex GOTY and I'm loving it

But I think I'm playing too much because I'm feeling they are everywhere, controlling everything behind the curtains...

 

Just finished Persona 4 Golden, some good nostalgia, the game has been rebalanced and there is enough new content to make it wort purchasing.
The Vita is a pretty sexy device I have to say, too bad it has about only 5 worthwile games and it's so expensive..... I am glad I bought it second hand.

Now to practice on KOF, got myself a PC controller just for it.

 

I already spent 180$ for pre ordering Simcity, South park and Bioshock infinity which are totally trash for me.
oh, and I spent more than 60$ bucks for frauds at Kickstarter.


Playing Wasteland 2 and third run of Risen 3.
Risen3 is actually good game but underrated too much..
and WL2 is totally disaster for me..
OMG.. I can't sleep thanks to WL2..
and I feel restart game to make better choice would be fun.
or keep playing current game also good choice.

 

Started playing SMT:Nocturne, never played a single SMT before. Im about 4 hrs in and seems interesting. Graphically its pretty... minimalistic i guess, but it does have pretty good atmosphere and empty corridors fit here.

 

Grinding Greater Rifts in Diablo 3, WL2 waits patiently in line

 

4 hours in? Wait until things get weird, yeah the end of the world by turning inside out is not the weird part.

 

Finished playing Deus Ex, a fantastic game indeed. Now I'm between ( serious) playing System Shock 2, Divine Divinity, Geneforge 1 and Wasteland 2. Meanwhile I'm only casually playing Civilization and Wasteland 2.

Reminds me that I need to continue playing SMT IV but that damn Pluto kills me in mere turns

 

Well, isometric, green goo ui, graphics are colorful and the sound is great. It's science fiction ( a bit) with fantasy, three factions to choose, have hubs like fallout, you can lead an army of monsters and I'm quite liking the story, it's interesting and there's a lot of reactivity ( really, watch what you say in this game). Overall, I recommend it.

 

Attempt at burn FAILED!

Seriously though, GTAV and Dota2 are both masterful games, as well as Ninja Gaiden Sigma (1) and MOST games that I play. Mercs 2 and BFBC were sadly exceptions because I allowed myself to get caught up in the hype that the store guy was selling me. They sounded fun by the way he explained them, but GTAIV was simply infinitely more fun than Mercs 2, and BFBC was liquid shit next to just about ANY other shooter at the time (which was rightfully dominated by COD4 then). But most of the time I hold out for the really, really good games.

GTAV is just an amazing, amazing game. Like many of the best games (in visuals) it takes the latest titles and a retrospective to be able to look back on it and realize that its graphics could be improved upon, because otherwise it looked THAT good. It never takes itself too seriously, yet its story is grounded and not flighty and ridiculous (the mission "Did Someone Say Yoga?" alone is a perfect mix of sincere and absurd, symbolic and literal). The voice acting is top notch, the characters are distinct and vivid, and the gameplay makes words like "intuitive" and "fluid" and "responsive" feel totally lacking. Not to mention INCREDIBLY fun, and always colorful. Coming back after nearly-a-year hiatus to the game and reading up on many of its details, I'm STILL finding out new things that I never noticed, like all those alternative ways to approach a quest in FO1/FO2 that you never knew about, you learn new things that were hidden in GTAV all the time. I'm only JUST now beginning to play something else when I sit my ass on my exercise bike for an hour a day, as I've neared the 100% mark in my latest run of GTAV, only this time I've endeavored to make it the "biggest payoff" run, unlike my first, where my characters could not afford every property in the game without some SERIOUS grinding. This time they're all gonna be billionaires! =D And the road to those virtual riches, unlike many other games, won't be tedious and boring. It'll be filled with entertainment AND delightful gameplay the whole way through.

As for Dota2, there's just no measurement for its greatness. You gotta be real sour to try and lump it up with bad games. =P Graphics have never been a must for me, but they've always been icing on the cake of a good game that I thoroughly enjoy, and Dota2's visuals are just breathtakingly spectacular. The framerates are so smooth and the animations are so crisp yet filled with character and the models themselves are simply jam-packed with detail and life! When I first played the beta back in late 2011 coming off of the earlier Dota clone Heroes of Newerth, I somehow mistook the models for simplistic and bland, but then I watched a stream that had the visual settings maximized for display and literally drooled at the presentation. EVERY animation was just so beautiful! I came back to Dota2 off of other clones (yes, including LoL, so my distaste for the game is grounded in experience) for the gameplay, the high-end skill cap, the masterful level of balancing and patching, and just the superb gameplay in general, but damn if the visuals weren't some SERIOUSLY sweet icing on an already fantastic cake of unspeakable exquisiteness. I watch the pro games because they're that entertaining and strategically involving enough that they always keep you guessing what's gonna happen next. I play the game at the upper-end public level because it's always fun. I follow every patch release note because its so refined and meticulous that it's incredibly exciting to me on a mechanical level. It's a wonderful game, and one of the very, VERY few that can keep me entertained again and again, year after year.

That being said, I'm STILL taking a tiny break from exercising to GTAV and currently doing so to Sigma. I never completed the game on its highest difficulty setting (because I was adamant that every attempt would net me higher and higher scores, so I became increasingly demanding of my own performance and too perfectionist to continue) so I felt like I'd give that a go at long last this time around, but I'm not a lofty or impractical man, so I figured I'd do a dry run on Hard, first. Well, that didn't go so well (I felt), so now I'm replaying it on Normal, and working my way up. Yep, gonna beat the game from the very beginning, then again on Hard, and AGAIN on Very Hard, and at long last get around to beating Master Ninja, and hopefully end with a respectable karma score. I'm in the top several hundred in the world for my VH run, so given the sheer level of demand the game makes of its players, who knows? I may crack top 100 in MN! =D Or well, I can dream, anyway..... I will be returning to GTAV before I undertake all of this, to wrap up the 100% completion and all-billionaires statuses.

 

Started playing Hearthstone to see what the fuzz was about, but I'm not digging it. Feels entirely luck based, even for a card game, so far all the cards only have inmediate effects and at times I won at random a fight I had to repeat twice just because I didn't get a completely shitty hand, I don't feel like I am setting anything up at all. Maybe when I unlock more cards it'll get better?

 

I can't speak from personal playing experience with HS, but a bunch of players I like watching have made a few HS videos, and at least one of them went into great detail explaining everything, and from that it looks to me like the answer to your quandary is: "no". It seems that assembling your deck will be either a matter of clever strategy, or seriously gay and gimmicky cheesiness. Meanwhile, you're always going to be subject to the randomness of your cards. If you start with a shitty hand, and your opponent starts with a great hand, you're fucked pure and simple. If they (or you) setup a deck with a really cheeky strategy that involves just getting 2 particular cards out of your whole deck at the same time, you're subject to the randomness of your card draws anyway, and you can waste time holding onto one of those cards while waiting for the second one to come up, fucking over any "strategy" you could've otherwise attempted.

It seems like even still it's a game that lends itself to tons of ingenuity, but it's still cripplingly stifled by your luck of the draw. I'd stick to Caravan over it any day. =|

 

It seems luck-based when you begin, yeah. But once you get to know the ins and outs of the game, you realise luck becomes a distant third factor to strategy and deck building. Building a good deck is absolutely vital; if your cards don't synergize and/or are just bad, no amounts of luck will make you win games consistently.

Now, there is luck involved; many cards have RNG elements, and you could have a good deck but draw all your late-game cards at the beginning and get stomped. That's part of the game, next time you could also draw all your best combos and end the match by turn 5. But a skilled player with a good deck will beat a bad player with a cobbled together mess of cards 99% of the time. If you need help, try websites like Heartpwn, but netdecks often suggest legendaries or cards you can only get from the Naxxramas expansion. Use them as a baseline, not a gospel.

For myself, I've been toying around World of Tanks and Hearthstone in between sessions of Wasteland 2 or Rome 2 Total war (the Emperor Edition free DLC makes the game much better). But I'm basically on a slight gaming hiatus until Dragon Age: Inquisition comes out. Albeit I've hear good things about Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, and Torchlight II is on sale. Anyone recommend either of these two?

 

I have played Halflife 2s.
Fxxx... this game is really sucks.

story? zombie apocalypse by head craps? miserable life under combine's repression?, revolution against combine? or SF?
wrong.
it's all about Gorden is god.
every moment, everyone praise Gorden.
who the hell praise HL2 to have a great story?

shooting is really not funny.
well, after episode 1, double shot of shotgun makes it little better though.
but repeating wave battle gave me a cancer.

stage designs are actually good.
puzzles of HL2s are enjoyable.
but it's far from the masterpiece comparatively to HL1 or Deus ex 1 and 2.

while HL2 and episode 1 give me a cancer, episode 2 was fun for me.
it's defense against strider situation is fun and challenging and it have good stage design.

 

HalfLife 2 sucks? What copy of the game are you playing? I'm pretty sure it's a very ignorant view to think the game is all about Gordon being a god exclusively.

Anyway, I've been playing Saints Row 4 lately, I love the superpowers in it and the wildness of it all. Although, I definitely see were people are coming from when they say it's not like the first two at all. SR2 is probably my favorite in the series along with thousands of other people. SR2 had things like FUZZ and Septic Avenger, I never got why they didn't put those side games in the later additions to the series.

I like this guy on YouTube called Flippy, he's a Saints Row fan and he's pretty much hit the nail on the head about the franchise. It's also pretty disturbing (and a bit funny) how similar the Saints Row franchise and the Fallout franchise when it comes to both of the series's problems.

 

Some online game. I've gotten bored with the majority of my games.

Decision: Medieval

Zombie invasion..... in the Middle Ages?

For an online flash player game, it ain't that bad.