What'cha Playing?

[SniperHF]

The new Age of Decadence extended beta and Splinter Cell Chaos Theory.

[Arcanix]

Guildwars 2 and abit of Guildwars 1. If i have the time ill play Neverwinter Nights 2, got some toons i theorycrafted. A spirit shaman, a toon talking to dead people...how about that. Played Fallout Tactics on ironman mode being away for a few years and was killed on the first map. What happened to this World?!?! Scrubs!

I have one weak spot for CoH (Company of Heroes).

[TΛPETRVE]

Risk of Rain. Cool kashizzle.

[Drool]

I reinstalled Minecraft the other day.

God help me.

[Revolucas]

I reinstalled Minecraft the other day.

God help me.

I remember when I first heard of that game. Someone suggested it in an off-topic forum just like this. I looked it up and was hooked on it like crack for a while. With that said, I'm glad I stopped and I never want to play it again.

[Drool]

I was doing fine, but a friend just discovered it and wouldn't shut up about it, so I figured, "Why not?" Luckily, I'm working crazy overtime, so I just don't have time to get sucked in again.

Although, seriously game. Would a little coal be so difficult? I feel like I've leveled an entire mountain looking for the stuff.

[GodComplex]

You've got to find a mountain biome for near limitless coal. Canyons are also a fantastic source of materials. If I can't find coal before the first nightfall I restart.

Plus, I love having a mountain stronghold.

[Crosmando]

I played Minecraft once, I feel down a crack in the ground into a cave and then into a river underground, but I couldn't jump far enough to get out of the river so I was pretty much stuck, might of been a bug.

[GodComplex]

Not really a bug. You have to start smashing things until you get to a point where the water level drops.

[Drool]

I broke down and hit the Minecraft wiki. Since I have plenty of trees, I'll just make some charcoal to light my delving.

Although I'm always tempted to switch to peaceful mode. I like Minecraft more a LEGO-on-my-computer than an actual, well, game.

[GodComplex]

Peaceful is a lot more fun, especially if you plan to spend any appreciable amount of time spelunking. You'll find that not spending your entire pit crawling trying to find that spider you've been hearing for 20min to be much more enjoyable. Trying to mine around lava to get that diamond is challenge enough.

[MrMoe]

X-COM Addon whatsitcalled?

[TheHarpoMarxist]

I'm super tempted to get The Enemy Within... But I'm trying to clear my docket to I can sink into a beta based flurry once it launches .

On my commutes I've been enjoying Inkle's new installment of Steve Jackson's Sorcery! Good stuff, if any of you ever read the books. If you haven',t its basically IF with some basic RPG elements. Good stuff, definitely worth checking out.

[edmondo]

Right now, wasteland 1 on Linux.

Other than that "The Bard's Tale" and "Mark of the Ninja" (all running great on Linux).

Ah, oh yes, I play with Linux itself, quite a lot of fun

[ffordesoon]

Assassin's Creed IV on my new PS4. I wasn't expecting to like it nearly as much as I do. It still has many of the legacy flaws of the series, but it's the first AC game I would recommend without a single caveat. And considering that I would count what little I played of ACIII as one of the most infuriating experiences I have ever had with any piece of entertainment, that's saying something.

[Lucius]

Assassin's Creed IV on my new PS4. I wasn't expecting to like it nearly as much as I do. It still has many of the legacy flaws of the series, but it's the first AC game I would recommend without a single caveat. And considering that I would count what little I played of ACIII as one of the most infuriating experiences I have ever had with any piece of entertainment, that's saying something.

Considering how the storyline in the AC games are, is there any issues skipping from Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood straight into Black Flag? I mean, will Desmond's storyline make any sense at that point since 2 main games have been skipped over?

[ffordesoon]

Desmond's not in this one - as far as I know, anyway. It's more or less a standalone title. In the modern-day sections of ACIV, you play as, essentially, a QA tester at Abstergo Entertainment (a surprisingly biting satire of Ubisoft) who is there to test out the new Assassin's Creed game. It's in first-person, and your character is completely silent and presumably never voiced. And it is fantastic.

The best part is that it allows AC to make fun of itself. For example, there's a famous landmark in the game's version of Havana that wasn't there at the time the game takes place. How do I know that? The game itself told me. If you dig into the Animus Database, you see it's because a dickhead producer told the developers to fudge the facts and put it in anyway so they could sell more copies. It's awesome.

That being said, there probably are some spoilers for previous AC titles in there. If you're dead-set on finishing out Desmond's story... Well, first of all, I'm sorry, because that means you have to play through the godforsaken seven-hour tutorial at the beginning of ACIII, and nobody should have to suffer through that monstrous motherfucker. And then you have to play the rest of the game, which is apparently all of AC's worst qualities in a bloated, overlong, minigame-collection-strapped-to-a-two-star-movie nutshell.

And, it should be said, this is still a game that gives you eight kabillion OCD-friendly things to do. It's still a game that forces you to tail dudes, then autofails you for getting more than thirty meters away from them, even if doing so would be stealthier. It's still a game with a combat system you can largely sleepwalk through, and that only becomes difficult when you're so used to sleepwalking through it that you're not prepared for enemies which pose any challenge at all. It's still a game where the context-sensitive parkour system occasionally gets confused and glues you to the top of a three-foot wall while the dude you're chasing legs it the hell away from you.

What Black Flag does better than any other game in the series is to mitigate all of those flaws to the point that they're annoyances rather than fun-killing flaws.

[Drool]

But is it 90% tutorial?!

[ffordesoon]

A few minutes in, you're stabbing motherfuckers in Havana, and even the stuff before that is enjoyable enough. They gate off a couple of things for the next hour or so of story, but the amount of stuff you're allowed to fuck off and do even then is so crazy that you don't feel like you're in Tutorial Jail at any point.

What the ACIV team pulls off in the tutorial missions is exactly what the ACIII team failed at. Which is to say, they're designed around making the player feel like they're in control and doing shit they would want to do eventually anyway. There's none of the hostility to player input and desires you feel in ACIII. What might perhaps be even more important is that you're living the fantasy promised on the box from the moment the curtain rises (so to speak).

The first thing you do is pilot a ship and fire cannons at an enemy fleet. You get to sink just enough ships to feel like a badass before the inevitable shipwreck happens. Then you're washed up on a beautiful tropical island with a few chests full of treasure scattered about. Then you get a ship of your own and steer it towards Havana. You're out of the Animus for a couple of minutes, and then you dive back in. There is a mercifully short walky-talky mission, and then Havana is your playground. The following tutorial missions are built around giving you more toys to play with.

If ACIII's tutorial is a stern headmaster at a boarding school forcing you to finish your homework before you're allowed to leave your room, ACIV's is a bowl of ice cream with vitamin chunks you can barely taste shoved inside it. Which, er, still sounds kind of disgusting, but you see my point.

[pseudonymous]

I'm playing Cleanup After the Tornadoes. It's an incredibly dull grind-fest, but the ending of a comfortable heated house in near freezing weather is well worth it.