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Bit of change for me, what with school taking up quite a bit of my time now... So, it's Assassin's Creed: Black Flag and Guitar Hero: Metallica

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Bromsy wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:

 toasteroven wrote:
Getting towards the end of part of the Redcliffe section in Dragon Age Origins. These games always make you make the choice. It's always on you. I know that that's the way it's got to be, but I wish they would at least let the player character get angry about it sometimes.

I wish Bioware learned how to make choices. If to any problem, there always is a perfect solution, then the entire decision is worthless.

MMmmmm.... I disagree. There could be a way to come up with a perfect solution, I just don't think it should be easy or obvious.

My problem is with the arbitrarily attached morality inherent to the system. As if telling the truth is always a good thing and cannot be used in the name of evil or chaos. There needs to be some kind of mechanic created to establish motivation.

My problem is that if there is a perfect solution to a problem, it automatically makes all other decisions "worse" and not as valuable as the "perfect" one. And yes, I agree, if getting the perfect solution means having Coersion Rank 3 / 4, then that's horrible game design. Let's take the Connor case, for example. In theory, that's a good conflict. Kill the boy? Kill his mother? But this complication is immediately resolved by knowing that the mages might help him out. Oh joy, you would have to go there anyway and ask for their support! No prob, let's just go after them then!

hohoho, now, you might lose all mages if not using the Litandy of Andrella in time! Now, that might be a challenge if you could not pause the game and had tons of time to do so, again, making the choice arbitrary. Everyone wins. Bioware (tm).

The boy was tainted and had been having truck with a Daemon. Best to kill him now, to prevent the taint from spreading.

...

It's an RPG. Roleplay your Warden, dammit. Are you a hardliner? A liberal? Do you support the Mages? Do you support the Chantry?

I found in DA2 both sides sucked. Yes, the Templars were jerks but all the mages really were demon bombs ready to explode at any second anyway. It's was a real crapsack.

The Mages are the absolute worst. Even if you side with them, they go insane and basically backstab you anyway.

 Sigvatr wrote:
The Mages are the absolute worst. Even if you side with them, they go insane and basically backstab you anyway.

And if you side with the Templars, their leader goes insane and backstabs you anyway. The endings of DA2 were so grim and dark, I got the feeling Bioware was cribbing from GWs notes or something.

squidhills wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
The Mages are the absolute worst. Even if you side with them, they go insane and basically backstab you anyway.

And if you side with the Templars, their leader goes insane and backstabs you anyway. The endings of DA2 were so grim and dark, I got the feeling Bioware was cribbing from GWs notes or something.

They were, basically. While I don't think it was directly lifted, I found a lot of parallels between the Imperium and the setting of DA2.

Because, yes, the Mages (just like psykers) *are* just ticking daemon-bombs. It's part and parcel of their being. And, yes, that Templar Leader is a jerk, but I am led to understand that there's a way (fairly early in the game) to set the storyline to go down a path where that ending doesn't happen... I've never been able to do it, though, so it may be internet rumor.

No matter what happens, you'll get a Mage V Templar war, with both sides leaders going crazy. That's just how the story goes.

I've got to say though, I can't really think of anything in Dragon Age that seems particularly GW-ish (although the designers do play Fantasy, I remember them talking about a League for it once, probably started by the WAR guys), but instead Dragon Age owes a lot to Game of Thrones.

Oh, it's worth saying, even though it's mentioned in the actual Dragon Age thread right now. Dragon Age: Origins is now available for free this week on, well... EA Origin.

Downed normal mode Garrosh, finally!

Finding pugs accepting you without Curve is hard.

Prison Architect is strangely really addictive, unfortunately for me I have nearly no money due to 9 prisoners jumping the cooks and escaping out the Staff entrance when I wasn't looking

I've got a stable 'impossible' xcom: enemy within run going on and have gotten to the 4th month. One of my previous ones was pretty much screwed up from something else. I didn't need to reload many saves for the current game i'm in which is rather good. I still feel like i can't do an impossible ironman run or at least with my sanity left intact or remotely even still there. Oddly enough the enemies haven't been as accurate as they normally are though they do a lot of damage. I went for a more engineer and skilled soldier route this time whereas i normally try to get quite a lot of scientists.

Anyway i only lost 3 countries (japan, argentina and brazil) and i managed to keep all the other countries while being in the 4th month and having most of the remaining countries covered by satellites. A good run but i really need to get those interrogations and alien captures going if nothing else but to get equipment (plasma weaponry and such).

Started playing Alan Wake as alternative to Alien: Isolation, gakky combat aside, I'm interested to see where this is going. Plus, using Roy Orbison music is always a good choice.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Downed normal mode Garrosh, finally!

Finding pugs accepting you without Curve is hard.

I kill Garrosh daily.



In Hearthstone

That new steam Discovery Queue thing is kind of scary. Styx looks kind of neat.

Whats the deal with space engineers? Is it something I could have fun with playing for 15-30 minutes at a time? Maybe 2-3 hours a week max? It looks fun and I'm DLing for the free trial but I just wonder at the build time for making cool stuff in short order.

Playing Spess Mekboyz. Fun times are to be had in building gak in space, like if you combined minecraft with kerbal somehow.

Survival is a bit tedious though, and needs a lot of work.

Do you mean it's just some kind of big free for all where you're liable to get run N gunned, or you mean running out of oxygen etc?

I haven't been playing on pvp servers.

No, my complaint was mostly on how short life support is compared to how long you have to work to get the resources necessary to expand from the Lone Survivor starting setup. Especially with all the back and forth trips.

Eventually I just gave up with that and instead started a new game withi things sped up and multiplied carry capacity.

Ahh gotcha. Thanks. I'm assuming, like most things, without a significant time investment it's going to be less than amazing. Gotta find something a little actiony but not too deep, don't really wanna fuss around with skill trees but my nostromo is MIA and I don't really want anything as demanding as an FPS or similar.

Magicka would be good but I'm terrible at it with a keyboard.

I'm awesome at it with a keyboard myself, but I'm awesome at everything with a keyboard barring fighting games (which I rarely play anyway).

Yeah, Space Engineers isn't an action game. It's a building game, primarily, unless you find some buds and play downloaded 'maps' designed for multiplayer stuff.

I'd prefer Space Engineers more if there were planets and actual enemies to fight on the ground as opposed to the artificial difficulty of meteor showers. Currently I don't see the point in having wheeled vehicles outside of "this is neat once I've built something I can actually use it on", and unlike Minecraft, it feels mind-numbingly empty in single-player.

Imagine what could be done with planets, though. Huge industrial drills, somewhere you can actually make use of a wheeled vehicle, neutral or enemy bases and settlements you can raid or trade with (imagine landing on a planet and driving a trade buggy into the local town to flog resources you mined and re-supply anything you couldn't otherwise) to eliminate the need to first find, and then catch up to, enter, disable, and fly back the empty ships that occasionally float into your system.

Imagining all the potential, and then trying to play in the emptiness (and quite frankly, utterly repetitiveness) of survival is a hell of a buzzkill. It was fun to try and get started the hard way the first few times, and whilst I enjoy the fact that effort needs to be put in to achieve anything, in my opinion trying to play on base settings requires too much effort. Once I've gathered enough uranium to keep my tiny ship's generator going for lights, gravity, the various other machines, and the med bay, and I'm gathering stuff for my first mining ship to speed up the process, I've already been on it for a good while with little to no physical progress to speak of.

Playing Styx. Loving it. It basically is the Thief 4 we always wished for. I already like him in Orcs and Goblins.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Once I've gathered enough uranium to keep my tiny ship's generator going for lights, gravity, the various other machines, and the med bay, and I'm gathering stuff for my first mining ship to speed up the process, I've already been on it for a good while with little to no physical progress to speak of.

I gathered resources for solar arrays as soon as I could... right now I have fifteen of them, arranged in five rows of three right now.

This setup really only works without meteor showers because they basically are fake difficulty created to penalize players who want to use solar panels.

I hope they add in concrete someday. So I have a use for stone ore and gravel.

Actually, that'd be pretty cool. Especially if it let you seal those little gaps that always form when building a station.

And it'd be a great way to create large floorspaces without using up more iron than tank brigade.

Every so often I pick up Victoria 2 and try to figure out how it works. I'm trying right now.

It's still not working.

I got awakening. I cn't stand some of the character models, but the actual portaraits are still relatively shadow-dragony. so far, loving it.

Finally beat my I/I Xcom: Within playthrough and, yeah. That last fight was pretty epic, and overall I give the game a 8/10, an argument could be made for 9/10. Great game, I definitely recommend it.

Now, back to Homeworld 2, here's hoping my dumbass capital ship captains stop shooting at the starbase I'm supposed to fething capture.

Also, fired MWO back up on a whim and have been grinding through matches; gotta say, it's a terrible grind. I'd really love to play with people, but I can't be bothered joining a unit and doing all the beginning bs you need to do in order to earn your place in said unit.

 BrookM wrote:
Started playing Alan Wake as alternative to Alien: Isolation, gakky combat aside, I'm interested to see where this is going. Plus, using Roy Orbison music is always a good choice.

It does have a fairly interesting premise. I have to be one of the few people who liked the combat though :/
The dodge mechanic is pretty bad, I have to admit.

My quest for 'actiony but not too deep' ended in my own library with Mini Ninjas. So far it's relatively entertaining.

Assassins Creed: Black Flag
Final Fantasy 4
Batman: Arkham Origins

And when not playing them or watching anime I'm playing Sonic Dash on my mobile haha.