What are you playing?

[bobby 55]

Pre-OWB: http://steamcommunity.com/id/SeriousFre ... 4458662969

Post-OWB: http://steamcommunity.com/id/SeriousFre ... 4458670649

Awesome! The transformation is amazing. He kinda reminds me of a younger bearded John Ritter.

In Skyrim news: I tried my hand at Alchemy....hahaha! Wacky "cocktails" ahoy.

[AEmer]

I love the academy storyline.

I must admit, I only played a limited assortment of Skyrim quests. I played it for around 100 hours.

It's a lovely game, but I had broken the difficulty of it, so it made no sense to play more. If I play again, I'll get a difficulty mod that makes the game stay challenging somehow, or conversely, I'll institute limits on my playstyle.

I would only play again to see a wide variety of the (many) questlines I skipped.
___
In other news, I've been playing dead island with 2 friends.

This might be interesting to everybody here:

If you like borderlands, if you like zombies, and if you enjoy the melee combat of Skyrim, it's quite likely you'll find a whole lot to enjoy about Dead Island. If you can play it with 2-3 friends, you should actually go for it if those friends suit your playstyle.

The quality of many things in the game is sub-par, and it's kindof buggy, but the game can actually be really atmospheric...much more so than Borderlands. But underneath it all is an RPG, to the joy and detriment of various players.

But yeah, as I say: If you like picking nits, there's an incredible number of nits you can pick about this one. At the end of the day, though, I can only say I've so far played 75% through, and I've enjoyed it a lot.

[bobby 55]

I was tempted to grab Dead Island during the sales but I'm kinda sick of zombies in games, and vampires in movies. I don't doubt it'd be fun in co-op....but.

I can see why some rave about Skyrim, I'm not ten hours in yet, however I'm already enjoying the game. I can see that a couple of playings with different characters and skill sets might be best for the ultimate experience. I'll stay with Baldigar until it becomes boring, or he becomes too overpowered.

"Okay companion, you distract that mothertruckingly large spider while I fill it with arro.....ruuuunnnn!!!"

[AgentOrange]

J.E. Sawyer's mod makes New Vegas somewhat better, I must admit, but I'm still going to see if I can uninstall it and use Project Nevada's module instead. I dislike the lower "Level 35" cap.

If I want alcohol and soda to keep giving me hydration, I can mod it myself.

[AEmer]

One of my favorite things in games is when I get in over my head and I can't fight so I need to run.

It's like a horror game, except you trigger the encounter yourself. This really suits my style for some reason.

The hitman games do this for me too but they're too scripted; the solutions are too simple and the circumstances under which you get chased are too transparent.

But Skyrim...skyrim works pretty well for this. Outside there's rivers and hills and locations that give you large combat advantages, and there's rough terrain to navigate as you're giving chase to wild game.

And you never know for sure when it's going to be relevant to have a place to flee to, so you make note of things, you sense and explore the terrain in terms of possible battles.

What I wouldn't give to get that experience in COOP. Left 4 dead comes closest, but it's all urbane environments, and the enemies are all swarming idiots, with only the special infected giving rise to interesting circumstances, and party wiping in coop is a really tricky element to deal with because many players feel it takes the fun out of the game to be punished that harshly for their mistakes.

[DaveW]

I can see why some rave about Skyrim, I'm not ten hours in yet, however I'm already enjoying the game. I can see that a couple of playings with different characters and skill sets might be best for the ultimate experience. I'll stay with Baldigar until it becomes boring, or he becomes too overpowered.

I'm not sure I could manage more than one playthrough, I'm already pissed I'm going to have to start the game over because I lost my savegame about 30-40 hours in. Same reason I didn't play New Vegas - I always find the crippled gameplay at the start of those kinds of games boring.

[AgentOrange]

Been playing a bit of Civ 4 on the side and what the hell how did my war enemy get so many damn chariots and horse archers in just a few turns

[Kee715]

Been playing a bit of Civ 4 on the side and what the hell how did my war enemy get so many damn chariots and horse archers in just a few turns

The AI cheats since it can't really fight worth a damn.

[AEmer]

It doesn't need to cheat.

It just needs to exploit slavery and production retooling.

Trust me on this; I conjured up 30 samurai and 10 longbowmen over the course of a mere 10 turns with no more than 10 cities.

It utterly wrecked my economy, and I required significant loans from an allied player, so I doubt the AI uses that type of strategy, but trust me, if you have a mind for min-maxing your production output, you can make massive armies very quickly.

The issue is if you play on one of the quicker gaming speeds, the damage to your enomic and scientific growth is devastating. If you do wage an expensive war, you quickly fall behind by an era or more.

Of course, if you're against a greedy overexpander, you have no real choice.

[DaveW]

What I wouldn't give to get that experience in COOP. Left 4 dead comes closest, but it's all urbane environments, and the enemies are all swarming idiots, with only the special infected giving rise to interesting circumstances, and party wiping in coop is a really tricky element to deal with because many players feel it takes the fun out of the game to be punished that harshly for their mistakes.

Get Killing Floor and play on Suicidal/Hell on Earth.

[AEmer]

Does that have party wipe?

[DaveW]

Does that have party wipe?

I'm not sure what you mean by party wiping?

It's usually a ten-round game with progressively harder enemies each 'wave' - with a chance to buy weapons in between waves. If your squad is wiped out part way through the game though you all lose and have to start again (usually on a different map)

[AEmer]

That sounds a lot like horde mode.
That might be ok, but it depends. Like, the issue with horde mode is, what's the long term game. What are you playing to achieve. The issue with a static map that has static defenses is, you're not really progressing anything. There's no meta other than those 10 rounds.

Which can be ok, I mean I enjoy magickas arena mode.

If there's something like, well, we're slowly running out of ammunition, or if we have some other constraints to work around, so that we have a goal to not exhaust our resources till a certain time. That would be fun too.

Because I actually hate coop games where the players are in competition with eachother, especially when that competition isn't intelligent. I like competing against my enemies, not my allies. If I'm somehow in opposition to someone, I want to have it out directly, not by proxy of who's better at killing zombies.

[bobby 55]

Skyrim: I like how you're still able to lockpick "Master Level" locks even if your skill level is "Novice". I went through 5 lockpicks before success, then Lockpicking advanced a level and so did Baldigar.

[AEmer]

today I learned that Bobby is better at picking locks in Skyrim than Jonas.