Quote from: nDervish;835889[1]  Yep, I'm aware of the bioelectric detection implants, but I'm pretty sure those don't become available until well after seekers start appearing, so there's still a substantial amount of time where you have to deal with a completely-undetectable-until-it-ganks-you foe.

A sniper's battle scanner thingy reveals them also.

Still playing a lot of indie games. I like the original graphic style they can have and the creative soundtracks. It seems to me indie games are more like what big games used to be like. Luckily there are still AAA games that have some character like Bioshock, Fallout or Dishonored. But a lot is generic and bland.

Anyway if you like X-Com and you like stealth why not check out Invisible Inc by Klei entertainment. They also made Shank, Mark of the Ninja and Don't Starve. So I will be playing that this steamsale and I will probably be getting my hands on Bastion and/or Transistor. I also love Machinarium by Amanita Design. So I will get my hands on their next game the crazy Botanicula. They are adventure games just like the old Goblins games.

We've been playing Smash Bros a lot.

I honestly didn't think I'd enjoy the game, but it is really fun.

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;836089A sniper's battle scanner thingy reveals them also.

Neat...i tried the scanner thing a couple times, and was so wildly unimpressed I clearly didn't experiment enough.

My recent computer games, in order of personal liking:

Dominions 4 – I've played all four editions of this series. They were all essentially the same great game, which although it's a world conquest game, is so detailed that it's part-way to being a RPG or world simulation. Although I've played for years, there is still content even from the first game that I haven't yet seen in play. Every soldier (or wizard or priest or snake) is detailed down to their individual experience, injuries, equipment, heroic and magical effects and items. And the values are consistent relative to each other, and the combat system is detailed and interesting and makes sense (in contrast to games like WoW or HOMM where there are hierarchical power levels based on game balance and whatever the devs wanted). Most of the creatures and magic derive from something in real-world history, mythology or religion (at least one of the designers is a professor of theology), with others from RPG/fantasy, Cthulu-ish mythos, or imagination. The different options for pretender god, nation/culture and magic can lead to very different strategies and game types. Gold and living population may be the standard economic base, but a hard-core undead necromantic empire may have little use for it, a blood magic nation may mainly want blood slaves, and as magical research and skilled wizards develop, sources of magical resources tend to become more important than gold.

Myth II: Soulblighter, using my "More Realistic Myth" mod that makes it play more like GURPS.

FTL – Very well done, but getting repetitive to replay now.

X-COM - I'd skipped X-COM when it came out, then several years ago tried X-COM Gold, but it kept crashing. I'm glad Steam has a version that doesn't crash, and I prefer it to the new X-COM in most ways since the gameplay and options are deeper and it's more simulationist. However the interface is clunky, it's steep learning and deadly, and I really don't like having to fight aliens with mind control abilities - I'd rather be killed with alien violence than get mind controlled and shoot each other. Despite all that, I like the simulation details more enough that I prefer it to the new version. But the mind control and higher end tech doesn't look that much to my taste, and it takes a long time to do much, and I'm probably losing my campaign, so I don't spend much time on this and may never finish a campaign (at least not successfully)

Fallout 3 – I'm new to this series, and it's beautiful and interesting and I like the freedom of exploration and so on... but I wish the combat system made more sense. It's better than most games, and could've been great, but I don't like that gun combat is about whittling down an opponent with multiple hits that tend to have no real effect. For example, a foe appeared suddenly at close range and I used the cool slo-mo target selector, shot first and saw a beautifully horrible animation of a bleeding bullet hole in her forehead ... which had not effect except to reduce her hit points about 20%... so we each had to stand there at close range, shooting and hitting every shot, but not causing any effects. I hit her once in the weapon arm and three or four more times in the (unarmored) head before she fell, while she shot me several times too, also with no practical effect. Researching the rules, I see that when someone's hit enough in the head, they suffer a slight reduction in Perception and Accuracy (which had approximately zero effect since we were at very close range). At least the head hits do do a bit more damage, but it's still disbelief-shattering nonsense to me that someone can be repeatedly shot in the head with 10mm bullets and suffer essentially zero effects. Also, although several times I've disarmed people and/or wounded them enough to cower or run away saying "don't kill me", they seem to always just come back in a minute or two trying to kill me again. So I appreciate all the great work and things that are done really well, but it's frustrating and disappointing to see how much better it could be with a few design tweaks. Also it's a savescum design (groan – see my comments on savescum under Skyrim, below), which I guess is par for the course – ah, I'm a jaded old grognard.
Fallout 2 – I'm also trying Fallout 2 for the first time. Apparently, waiting for the patches and mods was a good idea. Like Fallout 3, this has lots of great open-world content, and many things are well done... and I don't like the combat system much, which again is almost all about grinding down hitpoints, in a much more tedious fashion than Fallout 3, so far at least. According to comments from veterans I've read, several levels need to be grinded through to get to the better part of the game. This seems to be true as I'm level 3 and still spending hours slowly grinding through dozens of giant lizards using a knife... which is extremely tedious. Savescum too, though I haven't actually died.

X-COM (new shiny) – I think it's great that they made a shiny accessible version of X-Com, although as usual, I prefer hard-core detail to gamey simplifications. I've enjoyed this a lot, but like X-Com, I'm not really interested in the late-game technology and challenges such as having my veterans get mind-controlled, or turning my men into bionic cyborgs.

Conquest of Elysium 3 – This is a fun simpler game by the people who make Dominions 4, with a somewhat differet style and different types of play, which is cool, but ultimately I prefer Dominions 4 for its vastly greater detail and more simulation-like approach.

Approaching Infinity - a new Rogue-like spaceship game with open-ended play. Nice and fun and interesting though not as simulationy as I'd prefer, and I'm getting too good at it and may start modding. I just made several shipwreck maps for it last night.

Planetside 2 - I've played a ton of this over the last few years, but may have finally licked the habit. It can be really fun especially when you're in (or leading) a well-led platoon. Giant FPS battles with aircraft and vehicles and buildings and various stuff. I like that the weapons are fairly lethal and much of it makes some sense so I can relate to it. However, there are some things that get me to ragequit and help me get out of playing it. My most hated thing are the ATV's than can have cannon mounted on them and even cloaking devices (!) and the exaggerated power of running people over (even in an ATV, even when you're in a battlesuit, little inconvenience to the ATV) that is just outrageously stupid and annoying.

Skyrim - Argh. So much beautiful work and detail in this, which is mostly wasted as far as my enjoyment is concerned, by the savescum design (which makes me find all such games pointless), clumsy UI and some ridiculous combat system elements (for example, stop time to eat several meals during combat to heal instantly) and random enemies appearing next to me while I'm trying to carefully travel in open terrain. I've only ever died from surprise and UI SNAFU, but it still leaves me thinking the challenge is pointless – it's just a grind with no tension since if you die you're just supposed to pretend it never happened and restore your last save point. No I'd rather just be dead. Ok I can start another new character... except then I have to endure the same scripted start and situation and grind... so again it's just grind till I've done it again, or cheat fate by saying "backsies – it didn't happen" and pretending I am "winning" having died an unrecorded number of times in the process. Also the the auto-levelling opponents including easy dragons alone is enough to have me think WTF and what's the point. I should be thankful I have such contempt for almost all CRPG's or I'd probably be addicted to playing them.

Tales of Maj'Eyal – I often like Rogue-likes and this has some good points but having just survived the first adventure, I'm concerned I won't like this. I don't like the thick spam of orcs and such who for some reason all have a blindness spell, the excessive/weird number of special abilities my beginner dwarf fighter already has, the not very sensible first dungeon layout and the several complex magic items I've already found that sound super-special but I expect are actually just mundane and going to be steadily out-powered by more random "special"-but-not magic stuff. I don't like universes that magically scale everything to my character's level in obvious ways. It really breaks my immersion and gives me the feeling of being railroaded through something fake rather than actually being in a world that makes any sense. ToME felt more internally consistent.

Gratuitous Space Battles - I want to like this more than I do. Giving tactical orders tends to crash the game for me. Was fun for a while but seems to kind of dead-end in terms of interesting things, for me, which is too bad.

Chivalry - Medieval whatever - First-person sword/axe/mace/bow/halberd/etc... I would be much more into this if I liked / believed the combat system more. Too much about timing and lag but I liked it a lot before I figured that out. I wish someone would have me reprogram the combat system. Pretty funny / spectacular to watch the mayhem.

Quote from: JRT;832824I'm so glad you think so.  I'm getting really sick of people blasting the so-called "Downgrades" over the past year.  A lot of these games are amazing but people get mad if a tech demo doesn't represent the final tested product--some of those advanced effects might be too much for a console.

Like these guys put it, there's so much involved in making these games and people shouldn't be getting so upset.

http://kotaku.com/the-witcher-3-downgrade-controversy-sucks-1705882405

Yeah. This has been a big issue for over 15 years. When developers focus on making things as beautiful as possible, it means as much work per item as possible, which multiplies the work needed for every unique thing in a game, which means less stuff in the game, compared to what could otherwise be put in in terms of gameplay and content.

Quote from: Skarg;836787Yeah. This has been a big issue for over 15 years. When developers focus on making things as beautiful as possible, it means as much work per item as possible, which multiplies the work needed for every unique thing in a game, which means less stuff in the game, compared to what could otherwise be put in in terms of gameplay and content.

Actually, I have no problem with people reaching for the sky and making cutting edge tech.  While it is more work to get better graphics, the same can be said for any sort of technology.  I'm not one of those people who like to protest against "dumbing down" games or complaining that voice acting has simplified games.  

In this case, TW3 is probably one of the most cutting edge and sophisticated games today.  And yet people are complaining because a few of the bells and whistles from an early tech demo aren't there, probably because they would impact the performance negatively.

Nerdgasm'd out for a bit this morning since I saw 'E3 announcements' as a topic over on the Bethesda forums and jumped to the conclusion that it would be about TES VI. Missing my TES fix and playing text games instead.

Quote from: Elsalvador;836933Nerdgasm'd out for a bit this morning since I saw 'E3 announcements' as a topic over on the Bethesda forums and jumped to the conclusion that it would be about TES VI. Missing my TES fix and playing text games instead.

I think they're going to try to fix TESO first before trying to do anything else to rescue the brand.

They may also wait an extra year to get farther away from DA:I and Witcher 3,  as well as ME4.

I've been playing Town of Salem (http://blankmediagames.com/) a bit. It's a browser based version of Werewolf/Mafia with fairly short timers. Some of the people are really dumb, but it's still a fun little time waster. Maybe 20-30 min. per round. I also hear it gets better once you get out of normal mode into ranked mode. I'm running at about .500 average for wins and have gotten that 'one more game!' streak going. Then again Werewolf is one of my favorite games.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;836999I think they're going to try to fix TESO first before trying to do anything else to rescue the brand.

They may also wait an extra year to get farther away from DA:I and Witcher 3,  as well as ME4.

Makes sense, of course. Gap between Oblivion > Skyrim was 5.5 years so it stands to reason this would be fairly similar. The text game fix is helping though!

With Xbox One backwards compatibility that made my 8th gen decision for me so I'm currently catching up on some Xbox series I'll want to play on the Xbone.

Tomb Raider
Halo
Batman: Arkham series
Gears of War

Currently on Batman Arkham Asylum (assume the steam summer sale doesn't pull me away from my 360)

Just finished Uncharted 2 and absolutely loved it HOWEVER it seriously pushed me away from Sony hardware. I had at least 4 corrupted save files that made me lose progress,a dozen freezes and twice I had to delete all the updates and re-install them to fix it.

Loved the game but the experience with the PS3 was nothing but frustration.

I'd love to get back into Fallout but I can't do long involved games much anymore. I recently tried Dragon Age but it just doesn't work with my life at the moment.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;836999I think they're going to try to fix TESO first before trying to do anything else to rescue the brand.

Out of curiosity, why is the Elder Scrolls brand in need of "rescuing"?  It seems to still be very popular.

Because TESO didn't torpedo WoW, and steal all it's subscriptions.

More to the point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_Online

QuoteShortly after the game's launch, it was reported that some players were unable to activate the 30-day complimentary game time included with their purchase until a subscription had been set up and—in "a strange state of affairs" and "most likely a mistake"—after a full month had been paid for.[26] A serious item duplication exploit was discovered that allowed players to gain huge fortunes, which was patched shortly after release.[27] ZeniMax later announced that they had permanently banned thousands of accounts because of the exploit.[28]

QuoteThe game was mainly criticized for an excess of bugs, a phasing mechanic that separated players from groups, and its Veteran Progression System. Zenimax has responded to these criticisms by fixing many bugged quests, introducing a new phasing mechanic that did not separate groups, and is currently working on a replacement for its Veteran System called the Champion System, scheduled for completion later in 2015.

Quote from: Novastar;837633Because TESO didn't torpedo WoW, and steal all it's subscriptions.

More to the point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_Online

Yes, but there's nothing to indicate that less than stellar reception of the MMO has "damaged the brand", as it seems people are playing Skyrim today, people keep asking about the next ES game, and its success has influenced other games to be more open world.  If anything, the brand is stronger than ever, as there are a series of tie-in lore books, a new iOS card game coming out, etc.  So it doesn't seem like it needs any "rescuing".