[Aptorian]

I played through The Stanley Parable yesterday.

It's fantastic. It's sort of like playing a mix between Anti-chamber and Portal, with out the puzzles. Or maybe I should say that chosing your path is the puzzle. You're basically just walking through a story. It's sort of a "chose your own adventure", where you resist what the story wants you to do.

Pretty short though. I am sure that there are more elusive sidestories that I may have missed, but after 3 hours I had exhausted all the avenues I could think of.

It's funny, I actually think this game would work better as a movie. Or even some kind of insane book. Like a mix between "The Truman Show" and "Stranger than Fiction" if the character could actually react to and argue with the narator. Imagine if the Narrator was telling Will Ferrel what to do and he started rebelling against the voice in his head.

[worry]

Not Brent Weeks, on 31 December 2013 - 12:23 PM, said:

I played through The Stanley Parable yesterday.

It's fantastic. It's sort of like playing a mix between Anti-chamber and Portal, with out the puzzles. Or maybe I should say that chosing your path is the puzzle. You're basically just walking through a story. It's sort of a "chose your own adventure", where you resist what the story wants you to do.

Pretty short though. I am sure that there are more elusive sidestories that I may have missed, but after 3 hours I had exhausted all the avenues I could think of.

It's funny, I actually think this game would work better as a movie. Or even some kind of insane book. Like a mix between "The Truman Show" and "Stranger than Fiction" if the character could actually react to and argue with the narator. Imagine if the Narrator was telling Will Ferrel what to do and he started rebelling against the voice in his head.

Sounds awesome. I don't know if this is anything like the game (and I haven't done either yet) but I did get this book for Xmas: http://www.amazon.co...e/dp/0805010882

[Loki]

I'm totally addicted to The Secret World at the moment. First MMO I've found that I actively enjoy playing.

[Mentalist]

Inspired by the fact that I was finally able to pick up Thief , get past the level where I've stopped playing for 3 or 4 times before and get through the entire game, I've gone back and been playing "The Nameless Mod" for Deus Ex

Having gotten past the first "Hub", which was a bit of a drag (starting an exploration-shooter RPG with no guns and no money is never truly "fun), I'm now enjoying the game quite a bit, curious to see where the rabbit hole takes me, and already imagining how drastically different a replay would be.

[tiam]

My Dark Souls replaythrough is soooooooo much easier this time.

Not just because I know a bit more about the game but also I used a guide for some things like weapon/armor improvement rather than trying to fight late game bosses with level 1 gear. I only have to fight Gwyn now but am making my way through the DLC. Beat Manus though he was very tough probably the toughest this play through. Just got khalameet to go now then can beat Gwyn. Much more fun with a bit more knowledge and ive barely grinded at all this time whereas before I would grind and boost my level very early in the game due to my lack of knowledge about the gear you can get.

A much better experience this time round making it a much more enjoyable game.

[Obdigore]

I picked up Starbase DF-9, and I'm loving it even in its Alpha stage.

[Tapper]

I pimped the shit out of Skyrim with mods and it finally looks godly good and plays smooth as a baby's bottom even with the occasional required F4 to keep my graphic card from melting.

[Ukjent]

Just played through Brothers: A tale of two sons and wow..The controller is something new and it actually gives you a deeper emotional impact and the story is very good. The game is short 2.5-3 hour, buy it.

[Avatar]

Finally finished Planescape Torment last week! Got stuck in Curst my first time through, cause at that moment, the game seemed a bit less interesting. But I always wanted to finish it, so have now. Great game! One of the best ever.


And right now, playing through Baldur's Gate 2m the other great game I didn't finish before ;-)

[Aptorian]

I've been playing Too Human today.

It came out in 2008 to mediochre reviews but I thought I'd give it a try, mainly because I love to play AAA that bomb. It keeps coming up in discussions about the legal battle between Silicon Knights and Epic Games and apparentlty, at least in the US I assume, all copies of the game have been ordered to be destroyed. So I thought I'd play it before it disappears into a landfil somewhere.

It's a frustrating experience. Apparently it went through a 10 years Development hell and you can feel it when you're playing it. It looks like a PS2 game and the controls are abyssmal. Many of the gameplay mechanics are antiquated and downright broken and the level design is lazy and cheap. Worst part is that because of its broken nature, you keep dying and have to sit through a 20 second death cut scene over and over and over again.

On the other hand the story is actually quite good, especially considering the manuscript was probably made back in the 90s. You're playing in a futuristic fantasy setting where techno viking marines are battling robotic flesh eating trolls and goblins. You are playing as Android Balder, who was killed by Cyborg Loke, who has returned from the death after the Post-Human Aesir invaded Zombie borg hell and brought you back from the dead. The Norns are AIs exsisting inside some kind of Quantum Cyber Space structure that is connected to the tree of life. The World is enveloped in the nuclear fimbulvinter that resulted when man and machine launched atomic bombs at one another.

I ended up playing all most half way through the second chapter before I was forced to give up and I only played that far because I really wanted to see what happened next. I wonder if somebody has made a compilation of the story clips on Youtube. It feels kind of tragic that such a weird and inventive setting was squandered like this.

This post has been edited by Maybe Apt: 11 January 2014 - 04:53 PM

[Macros]

Back to Rome Total war.
not as pretty as Rome 2, but I still love it

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

I've got Heroes of Might and Magic VI (not great but passably entertaining), Skyrim (142 hours and nowhere near done, but who needs to stay on the main quest line anyway?) and I'm replaying Icewind Dale for nostalgia value.

[CowboyYojimbo]

Torchlight 2

- That free weekend on Steam ensnared me. Such a time sink game too haha.

[tiam]

Just throwing this out there for any who havnt played either. Dark Souls is on sale on the Xbox live marklet place for 4 quid and Witcher 2 is on there for 6. 2 excellent games for a tenner.

[Jakovasaurus]

Oh man. I beat Guacamelee over the three day weekend. So much fun. It made it onto various "Best Video Games of 2013" lists. Give it a go if you are jonesing for something to play during this slow quarter of the video game release calendar. It's worth it!

[Aptorian]

I really liked Guacamelee as well but those last two bossfights were bullshit. It took me hours to get past Jaguarman and then I found out that the end boss had an ever more bullshit attack pattern. Sure, I could probably have spent some hours trying to memorise the pattern but that would have sucked balls

[Gothos]

Just popping in for a question for those who bought Rome 2:
Is it any good? I've seen mixed reactions to it, actually... Is it worth buying at all? After Shogun 2 I'm reluctant to even think about TW games...

[Tapper]

Gothos, on 22 January 2014 - 12:24 PM, said:

Just popping in for a question for those who bought Rome 2:
Is it any good? I've seen mixed reactions to it, actually... Is it worth buying at all? After Shogun 2 I'm reluctant to even think about TW games...

It had a hard time consistently capturing my attention, all in all - but maybe I am just not that much of a gamer anymore that I like 20 minute battles and can play multiple of them.
I haven't played it with the Caesar in Gaul expansion, though.

From good to bad:
I love the province/ building system,
liked the diplomatic system - which actually worked,
the techs are quite ok,
the new army tradition thingie is cool
it looks pretty as a picture
the strategic map features far fewer chokepoints than Shogun
units are nicely developed and while sometimes quite alike, they're not bad


pretty damning factors:

battles were mostly sieges
getting money is very easy later on
faced cheap units for some reason for most of the game
did not like the Politics mechanic at all (and not because of ZOMGWTFBBQ NOOOOOO FAMILY TREEEE?!) but because it is feels like an afterthought more than a game element (with historically incorrect consequences... a Julius appearing as a rival faction's head when you play the Julii, for example).

[Gothos]

Did you play any of the barbarians (most importantly those guys in Germania)?
Does diplomacy really work? Like, really? TW games have always had retarted AI in strategic map. I'm reluctant to believe they fixed it. They're not Paradox....

[Tapper]

Gothos, on 22 January 2014 - 01:13 PM, said:

Did you play any of the barbarians (most importantly those guys in Germania)?
Does diplomacy really work? Like, really? TW games have always had retarted AI in strategic map. I'm reluctant to believe they fixed it. They're not Paradox....

I wouldn't say 'fixed' but it is possible to actually get an alliance with the AI contributing to fights.
I didn't play barbarian - my campaigns were around 50 turns of Macedon, 30 as Rome and under 10 as Egypt. Pretty much early stages, as you can see.