What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

My wife's been kicking my ass in Terraforming Mars, so I thought I'd try my hand with the Steam version. I'm running the beta, since it includes drafting. It needs a little work. The AI is terrible. Neither it nor the retail version will run on my laptop - it crashes at startup. If I try to stream it from my desktop, it will freeze in about 5 minutes. The UI is a little wonky as well - You have to dig through screens to get game status. A quick overview for each player would be nice - just cash, income, and top tag count would be good. It's just a disappointment all around.

To assuage my disappointment, I wanted to have dumb fun killing mobs, so I started up Diablo III again. All the talk made me interested, and it's been a few years since I played it. I never played a Barbarian before, so we'll see if I like it.

Picked up Shadow of War over black Friday, finally getting to it. If you liked Shadow of Mordor, you'll like Shadow of War. They removed all the microtransaction stuff and added things this past summer. I'm not sure what the difference is, as its before I got the game, but supposedly its free content.

The nemesis system is still tons of fun. I think the difficulty is reduced from Shadow of Mordor. a big reason is that there's a separate group of orcs (chain of command? I dunno) for each area, so even if you run into a big baddy, he's not likely to totally outclass you. Building up your army and attacking fortresses is fun, but alittle underwhelming? There's definitely a lot of repetition to this whole process. It is neat to send your captains on spy missions and have them betray the overlord at an opportune moment. Calling a War-Troll who carries a freakin flamethrower on his back to back you up never gets old.

Ark - I bought this back when it was on early access, so it rolled over to the full version automatically. I played alittle back then...and the grind was too much for me. I mean...its a game where a major part of it (taming dinosaurs) can take several real life *Days* to finish. I understand they want you to have a 'tribe' and work together to keep these things going. but not happening with me.

But with the new menu updates, I've learned that you have sliders that change everything, especially the XP rates, tame rates, damage, harvest rates etc. So I've cranked them all to 'easy' mode, and my kids love it. Its got freakin dinosaurs that you ride and castles to build. And once we figured out the godawful xbox interface and how to tame dinosaurs......

Right now we play on local hosted files, which means that the '2nd' player is tethered. Really Annoying. But I think I'm going to start hosting a file on our PC downstairs, so we can play without that limitation. I believe its a "play anywhere" title, so I should have a copy already on windows. This might be the game that drives me to purchase a 2nd Xbox, so that all 4 of us can play at the same time on the same island. Since I purchase nearly everything digitally, there won't be a cost for games, just the hardware.

but so far, we set small objectives and just explore the island. One kid is working towards making a saddle to ride a Diplodocus (which means teching up to metal working), and the other we're on an expedition to explore the middle of the island, riding raptors and having a triceratops pack animal carry shit for us.

Kingdom: Two Crowns - well, this is surprisingly addicting for a side scrolling 2D RTS game. I had played Kingdom: New Lands alittle when that first came out, but dropped it when I got frustrated with the lack of new villagers. There's a difference between hand-holding and enough information to enjoy a game, and zero information is not enough information. Once I figured out that the 'vagrant' camps in the woods keep spawning people as long as there's at least 1 tree by them...the first couple islands are easy. It's fun building up your outer defenses and seeing the bad guys throw themselves against it. Not so fun is traveling to a new island in the middle of winter(when there is no income) and scrounging for several days until the attacks kill everyone in your kingdom.

I just beat that boss in The Messenger, and I'm glad I did. After you kill that boss, the *thing* happens that is really fucking cool.

I finished Vane tonight.

I took my sweet time about it, since I am a dirty casual player. As someone who adores games in the ilk of Journey, I thought this game was pretty good. One of the better games I have played in quite a long time, for me at least.

My play through was about 6 hours total.

It's gorgeous, and brooding. Not much to say about the story, as it is pretty abstract. I can say that you will get what you put into this game in return.

I did notice a few areas where camera visibility went slightly wonky, but not enough to tear me out of immersion.

In my estimation, if you fancy yourself as a hardcore videogames, you likely won't like it. The controls are not quite as refined as Journey, so it has that going against it on top of being an art game.

I think this is an admirable game. I feel a bit uncomfortable paying $25 for this, especially since other parts of the world get it for much cheaper. If I could buy this for $15 or less, I don't see much to complain about.

If you are a dirty casual ameritrash gamer who can sit back and enjoy a game for the experience it provides, and are open to novel abstract ideas if what a game can be by the agency this allows you to interpret, you may be the target audience for this.

After playing it, I went to read some reviews. As usual, my opinion differs to what professional critics think. But that's because I'm a dirty casual. Unapologetically.

Nearly two years of casually playing Diablo 3 on PS4, I have finally got my first (and likely only) platinum trophy for a video game.

Level 15 of the Labyrinth.



I'm not a trophy Hunter, but it's a good feeling to get a platinum.

I feel you. I found the dark souls 3 and bloodborne platinums oddly satisfying. I generally don't trophy chase but when they are some of my favorite games it is satisfying.

Dipping my toes back into my Baldur's Gate game that I started a couple months ago. A couple more thoughts:

• Once you understand the vagaries of quite literally translating D&D to a video game, it kind of meshes together. The squirrely aspects of AD&D2e are there, but they aren't much trouble for someone who has played any other version.
• It was tough as nails in the early going, but now that I'm through the Nashkel Mines and most of my party has gained a level, it really has opened up. I no longer fear wilderness encounters and I have to reload saves a lot less often. Everyone said this would be the case, but I'm not sure I believed it. But here we are, it definitely is true.
• At the front end I think I underestimated just how much the RTS-style interface would draw me in. Even though I didn't play BG in 1998, the games I did play, mostly Command & Conquer and Starcraft, were very much in this wheelhouse in terms of gaming language. I find myself weirdly nostalgic for a game I never actually played in my adolescence. I like the game on its own terms, but my background definitley prepares me to approach it on those terms more than a lot of other games.
• I really do feel like the things I do have an impact on the world. A lot of RPGs are pretty illusory that way, but I'm pretty invested in this one, even as I've been spoiled on some of its bigger plot reveals.

So in case you haven't heard in the last 20 years, Baldur's Gate is a very good game.

Still Diablo 3. The game keeps on giving. I only play on weekends. Two weeks ago I was in Torment III. Last week Torment VI. And now Torment X. The numbers are crazy. Billions critical damage now.

Started up another Fallout 4 play. First time I was Jenny Biscuits, and did my usual sneaky-sniper thing, which I love. Then I started a game as Oslo Norway, who was essentially Superman. Walked around in power armor all the time, hung out with a lady reporter, mostly just did melee attacks. I got about halfway through with that and then lost interest.

Now I'm Livingston Frost, a distinguished gentleman. All his points are in CHR, LCK, and INT. No armor, just nice suits. Only uses a pistol (and now a cane, since I found one.) He dies A LOT. This is probably a bad idea. I've tried to give him some perks to up his survival chances without armor but he still gets pasted pretty easily.

I like the sounds of Jenny Biscuits. That’s how I play Bethesda games usually too.

RobertB wrote: My wife's been kicking my ass in Terraforming Mars, so I thought I'd try my hand with the Steam version. I'm running the beta, since it includes drafting. It needs a little work. The AI is terrible. Neither it nor the retail version will run on my laptop - it crashes at startup. If I try to stream it from my desktop, it will freeze in about 5 minutes. The UI is a little wonky as well - You have to dig through screens to get game status. A quick overview for each player would be nice - just cash, income, and top tag count would be good. It's just a disappointment all around.

To assuage my disappointment, I wanted to have dumb fun killing mobs, so I started up Diablo III again. All the talk made me interested, and it's been a few years since I played it. I never played a Barbarian before, so we'll see if I like it.

I was in on the Steam beta for Terraforming Mars don have it now as I'm waiting for it to his iOS. My suggestions if you want to get a better feel for the cards is to try the solo mode.

Everyone talking about Diablo III has me bummed. My Internet isn't stable enough to play it anymore I'm pretty soured for any game that requires an always on, stable connection even when played one player. WTF developers!

mtagge wrote: Everyone talking about Diablo III has me bummed. My Internet isn't stable enough to play it anymore I'm pretty soured for any game that requires an always on, stable connection even when played one player. WTF developers!

There's a saying - "The client is in the hands of the enemy." The first Diablo got unplayable in multiplayer, except for friends. People hacked the shit out of it. Apoc rings, town kill, all sorts of fun stuff.

IIRC, Diablo 2 addressed the problem by letting you run a solo character and an online character, but they still had that same sort of problem. Again, someone ran the 'server' on their machine, and once again it could be hacked. Feel free to tell me I'm full of shit on D2 though - it's been 15 or so years since I played it or cared about it.

So for D3 they said the hell with this. The client is going to be much thinner as far as gameplay goes, and they'll take the headache of running heavier-duty gaming servers. It'll be easier and cheaper than dealing with screaming customers wanting their stolen shit back.

Personally, I think you're right - it's my game and I should be able to hack what I like. But I sort of get where Blizzard is coming from.

That's a pretty accurate summation. I think they overstated the case for D2, though. Their assertion was that they were protecting people from being scammed... from going to third-party websites and handing over a credit card # for duped items! Guess who dug their own damn hole?! No. The real reason that D3 is on their servers is that the auction house was going to be an intrinsic part of the game. That would make Blizzard a party to any transactions involving money changing hands over the auction house with items that were potentially duped and copied into the game. That's way too much exposure for any company. Once they finally listened to/realized what most of the Diablo fan base had been warning them about (that the auction house removed any motivation to actually play the game, since you could find exactly the loot you wanted and simply buy it, rather than play the slot machine of Jay Wilson's LOOT EXPLOSIONS(!!!!)), they removed the auction house and we're still stuck with a single-player game that requires a network connection. Yay.

D3 on Switch is a little different, I think. You don't need a persistent connection for single-player outside of Seasonal characters, I think. I know I have been able to run Grifts from the parking lot here at work, but it does tell you you "aren't on the Diablo network" when you start it up offline. You might need to be online to make a character? I haven't checked, but it's definitely not as persistance-requiriing as some other Blizzard titles like HEARTHSTONE (iOS) and OVERWATCH (console), which won't even start unless they can phone home.

@Jackwraith - yeah, I'd forgotten about that real-money AH. By the time I actually bought D3, it was dying out.

@mtagge - I'd recommend Torchlight 2. Combat alpaca ftw.