What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

Legomancer wrote: I'm replaying Dishonored on the 360. I really enjoy the game and was planning on a no-stealth playthrough just to see everything go to shit, but stealth is so much fun. Still, last night I got tired of waiting for people to go where I wanted and went nuts with the crossbow. .

I'm currently playing it for the first time. I passed on the game originally in spite of all the positive reviews because I don't, generally, like stealth games. I don't see what's fun about trying to judge whether you're visible to enemies or not based on uncertain criteria, getting it wrong, and replaying the same bits over and over until you're lucky enough to get it right.

Anyway, I picked it up for a pittance in a Steam sale and gave it a try anyway to see what the fuss was about. And it's generally well founded. The sense of atmosphere is top notch. And stealth-wise it works by the clever and intuitive method of giving you routes where you know no-one would normally look. Along ledges, behind barriers, through tunnels. If you're somewhere no-one is likely to look, voila, no-one spots you.

Legomancer wrote:

I'm replaying Dishonored on the 360. I really enjoy the game and was planning on a no-stealth playthrough just to see everything go to shit, but stealth is so much fun.

No-stealth (well, not much, anyway) worked for me. I think I killed every guard in Dunwall.

I finally finished Prototype this weekend because I wanted to play something else but wouldn't let myself start something new until I'd finished it. I was long past sick of it with no interest in any of the sandbox stuff or leveling up beyond what I would need to finish the game. The atmosphere is very GTA by way of "Hot Topic goth", and since I didn't care about the story I just mostly button-mashed my way through the combat.

So then I started 2013's X-Com and, man, what an awesome game. I've played hours upon hours of the original (no Terror from the Deep, it's original or nothing) and I'm continually surprised at how they've tightened up the design while retaining the core of what makes the original great. Playing the original and then the 2013 version is like listening to a really well-executed 4 minute radio edit of a 19 minute song.

Right now I'm a couple months in and I'm trying to research the Skeleton Key so I can assault the Alien Base. I'm really looking forward to that because, in the original, alien base assaults were one of the hardest, most tense parts of an already difficult and nerve-wracking game. I also ran into my first Chrysallids during a Terror Attack and lost a veteran to a Chrysallid Zombie after he rescued a civilian. Other than the three guys that died during the tutorial mission - which I don't count because the tutorial was telling me where to move everyone - I've only lost two soldiers. Right now I'm playing unofficial Iron Man mode where I only save at the beginning or end of missions and I never save/reload to save soldiers.

And be warned, if you join my X-Com team as a Rookie you will be used to trigger Overwatch fire from aliens so my Assault specialist can flank them and take them out with a shotgun.

Templar Battleforce

I fucking love this game. It is not just the best Space Hulk rip-off, I daresay it's also its best adaptation. The missions are just awesome. They are mostly (with some binary choices here and there) linear and scripted, but usually with an element of randomization (like where the enemies spawn, or where certain objectives appear). Like yesterday I was escorting some colonists to a safe area, and we get to that bridge - xenos on our left and right, my dudes are all wounded and overheated, that bridge is just a few steps away - and suddenly it catches fire, making it impassable for the colonists. We can either wait for the fire to subdue or find an alternative route. I decide for the latter option, but leave a dude called Hicks, equipped with some grenades, to cover the retreat. Hicks annihilates dozens of xenos while the rest of the battered group pushes forward. But, man, he's so overheated (and, I imagine, consumed by carnage), he can barely move. I like him, because he's been with me from the start and because Hicks, but enjoy his slow, painful and glorious sacrifice even more.

What's best, practically every mission descends into chaos of one kind or another, and when you make it, it is but barely. Very Aliens-like, which is what you want from the thing.

I even like the writing and the world, it is kind of a mix between Warhammer and Dune (leaning more heavily on WH), and there's a distinct coherency between the story and the level design. And then there's an amazing tech tree - very extensive, and full of cool abilities. For example, you can customize your scouts as snipers or infiltrators, or a mix of both. The engineers can be trained to put up turrets or buff your dudes. Your commander can be a ranged specialist or close combat. There's just a huge array of options. This is my second play-through and I have yet to find any serious imbalances or cheesing options. And, again, the missions are so varied that you need to learn to adapt to whatever the game is throwing at you. It is also quite polished, the guys behind it (basically, a two-men team, as far as I understand) have been steadily updating it for the last two years.

I have played a mission or two of that. I liked it.

My son and I have been playing new to us Burnout Paradise. Yes, I know that game is 8 years old. But, it was free with Xbox One Gold. So far it's been a lot of fun. I keep getting blown away by online players who have better cars than I do. I refuse to pay for DLC.

This years Xbox store sale brought me :

Borderlands 2 / TPS (Handsome Jack Collection) and Diablo III : RoS - Both for < $20.00

I ported over my important saves from the 360 and now I can hand over my the 360 to my daughter and she can wipe the HD and put whatever she wants on it. I fired up Borderlands 2 and ran around with my level 72- Maya and blew crap up for a bit - I still have the raids to do on that, as I haven't beaten Master G, Hyperion armor guy, or the Dragons on max level. If any of you all play, shoot me friend and I'd love to tackle one of those.

For Diablo, I haven't even fired it up yet, but I;m looking forward to going down the rabbit hole and figuring out this greater rift thing. The 360 version was stale after the RoS patch with no new updates, so it's going to take me a while to digest the skill changes and new armor sets.

I also picked up Dragon Age : Inquisition GOTY Edition - I'm about 4 hours into the game and I think I'm getting sidequest fatigue. Maybe it's just Ferelden and maybe it changes later, but 9/10 of the gameplay outside the story line is:

Go check on this person or place.
There's a body
There's a note on the body
Go back and tell someone they are dead

Also on my gripe list is the crafting system in conjunction with the incredibly bad inventory and equipment management menus. It's really clunky. I don't know if I;m going to finish this one.

I'm still playing Destiny - The Dawning winter event was fun. I like the new scoring system for the strikes - I hit Light level 395 on my hunter without raiding. I'm still horrible in Crucible but it's fun now.

Burnout Paradise may be the best car game of all time, IMHO.

I had BURNOUT 3: TAKEDOWN on the PS2. I haven't played PARADISE, but man, if it's like TAKEDOWN I bet it's fucking sweet.

I've been playing KEEP TALKING AND NOBODY EXPLODES. Anyone else got this?

Paradise is the best Burnout, no question. I don't have Keep Talking, but will get it at some point.

As for my favorite car game of all time, that has to be Test Drive Unlimited. The first one.

Burnout Paradise is great, and I don't care about car games at all. I probably still have an Origin code for it if anyone wants a copy.

jeb wrote: I've been playing KEEP TALKING AND NOBODY EXPLODES. Anyone else got this?

I do, it's a lot of fun. Haven't gotten to play it much lately though.

Spintires has been punishing my hubris. Something like five times now I've tipped over the truck and lost all the logs, three times within actual sight of the lumber yard objective. It's the world's slowest crash with no backing out when it reaches a certain point . Of course I could stop, and bring out the Kirovets tractor to winch it back, but this game keeps telling me I can make this happen if I just push a little more, and then laughing at me as I fail. I've hit the menu option to recover the truck (teleport it) back to a garage like some worthless game-playing scum, twice now. The only time that's truly necessary that I've found is when you've completely drowned a truck in deep water, and other time you can usually bring another truck to tow or drive back after recovery.

On the subject of racing games, Forza 4 on the XBox 360 was probably my overall favourite, for the sheer amount of nerdery available, and a really nice decal/painting aspect. I just installed DIRT Rally last night, and did a couple of rallies. It may show some weakness later but right now I'm really impressed with it. My favourite rally game of all time was Richard Burns Rally- Colin McRea Rally (DIRT Rally's great grandpa) had stages that looked like four lane highways and it left me feeling kind of sad when I played it, because these were not the country lane rallies I grew up watching. DIRT Rally stages look tight, and it's tougher than I expected, which is great. I miss the simulation/realism of games like iRacing since I tore my racing sim rig down, but for a joypad game this feels pretty great to play.

Burnout Revenge was incredible. I downloaded Paradise but haven't played it.
I hear that Forza Horizon 3 us supposed to be amazing

I actually like Burnout Revenge better than Paradise...the open world thing, eh. It's still really good because those guys did probably the best racing games ever.

Nier Automata demo is NUTS. It's SUPER DUPER. It is 100% Platinum Games, so fans of Bayonetta, MGS Revengence, Vanquish, etc. will feel right at home. I really liked the first Nier and think it is hugely underrated, but this is definitely going to be a superior design. It has some elements of it, the weird shooting/danmaku stuff in particular and odd mechanical designs, but it's also not as balls out crazy or bleak. So far. Anyway, I'm going to buy it day 1

Really in the mood for a fighting game...and in particular a Guilty Gear fighting game. Amazon has Revelator for $20, couldn't pass it up.

Kids are obsessed with Overcooked.

The little differences in X-Com are beginning to mess with me. I guess satellite coverage reduces panic in countries but, having never had to manage satellite coverage in the first one, it's not intuitive that I have to build Satellite Uplinks in my base to support satellites, and then you have to build the damn things and they take days whereas armor/weapon orders are instantaneous. At least I was able to get my shit together enough to build and equip laser cannons on my Interceptors.

My next unpleasant discovery was that I need certain kinds of alien corpses for manufacture/research only after I'd been selling them like crazy. So now I can't make Chitin Armor (from Chrysallid corpses) nor can I research better Medikits (Thin Man corpses required).

But all that stuff's part of the learning curve and I'm muddling my way through okay for a first attempt, but the damn game up and crashed while I was partway through the first Alien Base Assault. I'd taken out three Floaters with no casualties and had just encountered three Chrysallids by a doorway. I knew how fast those things can move so I had everyone hunker down in Overwatch behind cover and that was enough to take out one of them, and regular activations killed the second. The third retreated but it screwed up and was still in almost perfect line of sight so my guys were taking turns shooting at it when the game crashed.

Since I'm pseudo-Iron Manning the game my last save was back in the base so instead of starting the Alien Base Assault again I just goofed around for a bit and did some research and a few missions without saving.