What are you playing right now?

Users who are viewing this thread

Spurred by some nostalgia trip post about old RTS games I was encouraged to install Battle Realms, which I got from GOG at some point, but never gave it a fair attempt.

Got to say, it hits a lot of right spots at a time when I've been aching to play a couple of skirmishes and listen to some podcasts in the background, and kept bouncing off of the titles I already had in library. It reminds me a lot of Praetorians, another one I spent way too many hours in, though couldn't get back to lately, because there's many similar designs, but executed better. I could say it aged poorly, but it has a certain charm and I do enjoy the overall art direction. Between CoHs and Iron Harvest, I do miss the more intimate feeling of their predecessors, when you had less units that lived longer. Even when we get more medieval/fantasy setting it tends to be squads against squads, rather than cool, little dudes having their cool, little adventures. And then whole merry group getting wiped because you overextended.
 
I found a custom server in Battlefield 1, with bullet damage set to 200%. Oh, and the "kill cam"(?) is turned off, so the game doesn't show you your killer after you die. This is some of the most fun I've had in this game in a while. On this server I've been playing scout/sniper almost exclusively, with this little plinkster rifle called the Carcano M91 carbine. Sometimes it's like a different game. Regular BF1 often seems to consist of trying to do as much damage to the enemy as quickly as possible, either before you lose sight of them, or before they kill you, and I'm always trying to find the weapon that will do that at the range that I'm fighting. On the 200% damage server, though, that quick-firing, accurate little Carcano can kill people with one shot from just about any range. That takes the game-y-ness out of it and makes it all about marksmanship, which is down to me. I know It sounds OP but I don't believe it is, it's still a bolt-action rifle in a game filled with SMGs, LMGs, and shotguns, and I still die enough, but it can be so much fun to get one guy after another who never saw it coming, the sort of thing I don't often get to do in a typical BF1 server. Or couldn't do, period, like kill a guy at point-blank range who ran around corner at me with a shotgun. I just have to hit them.
 
Sounds like it's taking shotgun's niche away? Or deleting people vaguely within area you clicked at close range remains useful with those settings? Seems like if you can aim at all any other weapon would be better.

BF1, even if being Steampunk take on Great War, had some moments, and I still think that both V and 2042 seem like graphical downgrades. Maybe tech got better, but they didn't pay much attention to details that made experience immersive.
 
Spurred by some nostalgia trip post about old RTS games I was encouraged to install Battle Realms, which I got from GOG at some point, but never gave it a fair attempt.
Battle Realms is a blast! Its mechanics are inovative and the overall feel (owing much to sound direction) were unparalleled at the time. When I was a child, whistling to call horses, as one of the heroes does, was probably the coolest thing on Earth.
 
Sounds like it's taking shotgun's niche away? Or deleting people vaguely within area you clicked at close range remains useful with those settings? Seems like if you can aim at all any other weapon would be better.
Well, for close range I'd probably still go with the shotgun or SMG, because they're more forgiving in a close-quarters mess than a bolt-action rifle, but I'm hardly an expert player, and tbh I haven't played the assault class very much on this server. You could be right. When I'm playing scout I'm still trying to stay at at least medium range, but it's kind of an amazing feeling to know that I'm not guaranteed dead if I'm playing scout and a guy comes looking for me with a shotgun. And to be honest if I have an advantage over the assault players, I don't mind very much: The run-and-gun guys with SMG 08/18s, Annihilators, and shotguns seem to do fine on the normal servers. They sure kill me often enough no matter what class I'm playing. :lol:
 
Shotguns pump faster than bolt action rifles re-chamber, in my experience in servers like those, so their niche is safe ish. But tbh? **** shotguns, they were always frustrating in those games, being those weird-ass 1 hit kill weapons when others should do just as well, so I am glad they get kicked down a notch.
 
AI War 2 hit its last expansion and entered the maintenance phase of development, so I figured I'd give it another shot after doing most of my playing with the first expansion only. The end product is really good, as it turns out. The fleet mechanic does make me miss being able to unlock exactly the ships I want, but it feels different instead of a strict downgrade to Fleet Command. Randomized planet sizes are also a cool addition, and so many factions interact with each other in some way, I'm getting that familiar setup screen paralysis again. I do want to beat that basic 7-difficulty game, though.
 
That looks really cool, but good Christ it looks like a nerve-wracking game to play. One little mistake and you'd be in the ditch. Or I would be, anyway, every time.
 
That looks really cool, but good Christ it looks like a nerve-wracking game to play. One little mistake and you'd be in the ditch. Or I would be, anyway, every time.
Not necessarily. Yes, most, if not all SIM racers can be quite stressful, when played in a competitive way, but you'd be surprised how relaxing the experience can be when you download a few mods (tracks and cars) and just drive around, by yourself. I often do is as a form of therapy, mostly with GTL mods (cruising Bauers Moor and Nordschleife with a muscle car is bliss).

Still, having 20s cars in Assetto Corsa? :razz:
Shameful way of wasting the game's engine. You can download the HD mod for GPL, have some 20s cars and tracks in there and it will look good, even for the game's age.
But Assetto Corsa looks fantastic, it needs more modern vehicles, with lean curves and reflective surfaces to look that much extra. Not rustbuckets that do vroom vroom noises.
 
Still, having 20s cars in Assetto Corsa? :razz:
Nonsense! Pre-war race car are for real men who do not need such needless things as auto rev-matching, sequential transmission, traction control, quad turbocharged nonsenses, ceramic brakes or negative camber to add some additional grip. Hell, we don't even need brakes or the ability to reliably turn the car! All we need is an engine on four bicycle tyres :razz:
 
I prefer older cars too. Better looking, more challenging to drive, and no faffy extras to worry about. I remember enjoying GP Legends, though I considered it an achievement to simply complete a lap without coming off. I can't remember if that was with M&K or a wheel, but nowadays I only have M&K, and recently bought Assetto Corsa. I've been considering a racing wheel but boy they are expensive. I've been considering getting a Ferrari 458 Italia, which is supposed to work on the PC, though I've seen some comments on Amazon that it isn't fully functional on PC.
 
Been playing Arma Reforger for the past few days. The game is fairly bare-bones in terms of content, and has huge multiplayer stability problems, but when it's working it has to be one of the most immersive games ever made in my opinion.

The new engine is a big upgrade over the last in terms of graphics, physics and controls, and almost every item you interact with in-game will have a corresponding animation. The main 'Conflict' mode which is a PVPVE game mode was really slow at first, but after people are figuring out how it works now it's really starting to grow on me.

In a bit of time, with some more weapons or vehicles added in by BI or by modders, and with the multiplayer issues fixed up, this game will be well worth it even just to keep you going until ArmA4.
 
I was extremely excited as it looked like a remake of OFP with Cold War, Everon and all that. Then it tourned out to be a multiplayer demo. I still hope some crafty modder makes an OFP campaign, though.
 
What's the best way to play HOI4 if you are into HOI3-level realism (but not masochism-level realism beyond that)?
I heard that 4 was too casual and easy, and I'm thinking of buying it, but I don't want to go Wehrmacht glory steamrolling. I want to play as Italy and win despite being Italy. HOI3 was disappointing with its clumsy scripting - when I as Italy broke through the southern Soviet front and rolled it up northwards for the Wehrmacht to have its fun, I didn't expect that, on Soviet defeat, the scripts would gift the entire country to Germany.
 
HoI4 peace conference system actually does prevent that. Which is a blessing. I still remember my Darkest Hour ww1 campaign in which my glorious k.u.k. multicultural circus finished off Greece and then made an offensive in Italian alps with such a tempo that I stood on the edges of Marseille and Rome when it finally ran out of steam, only for some stupid event to kick in for Germany that made Italy go to status quo ante. Which not only prevented us from exploiting the one road to France that did not have hundreds of divisions in endless trenches but also teleported all my units back to Vienna which completely overwhelmed my transport capacity in the process, ruining any chances of good fights on the eastern front.
 
Finally took the plunge and bought Bannerlord. Been waiting for it to release, but my wifi hasn't been up to playing any multiplayer games lately and I was always going to buy BL eventually, so why not now. I played for an hour last night, just messing around with custom battles to get the hang of things. I've put so much time into the old M&B and Warband, I thought it would feel like being home again. It doesn't, at least not yet. My first issue is with performance: I've got the graphics settings cranked way up, and obviously I need to lower some settings, but I haven't been able to isolate which one(s) are causing the problem. Even with just a few units per side the game isn't running as smoothly as I'd like. It was really noticeable in a siege with ~130 or so troops per side. "It's a M&B game, how demanding can it be?" I'd thought. My other big gripe is that the textures are grainy as ****. Frankly, it makes it hard to see things. Anybody know a way to improve that?

Things just felt disorientating in general last night. I couldn't always see as well as I'm used to in WB: I never had a hope of seeing incoming arrows, and in that siege I couldn't even see where the archers were that were shooting at me. I love playing as an archer in WB, I'm good at it, but in BL last night I was struggling to hit people, too. Sometimes I'd get a good hit in and feel like I still had it, and other times shots that should've hit for sure went nowhere near the target. And, I couldn't find the setting to reduce the damage I took (is that not a feature in BL?), so I kept dying, which didn't help when I was trying to learn that game. It was a rather disappointing introduction. I'll try again for 45 minutes tonight, and see if I start figuring things out. Meanwhile, since I know I'm late to the BL party, if anybody's got any advice for the newbie, I'm listening.

edit: created a character in sandbox mode, and jumped into some arena fights. Okay, this is more like it. This is fun. The animations are better than Warband's, the combat is more visceral... A couple times I even spawned with a bow, and I was able to shoot a few people in the head just like in Warband. Hurray!
 
Last edited:
After leaving it at the UC reactor level the first time round sometime in the previous decade, I finally sat down and played Deus Ex from start to finish. Some graphics problems (switched out to a third-party OpenGL rendered to get the brightness slider working) and minor bugs aside, it really does still hold up as a shining gem of turn-of-the-millennium game design.

I think going into it with a modern mindset was what eventually bounced me off the game originally. In more recent games, that conversation with Paul at the very beginning of the game would have been a signal to the player: There's a lethal and nonlethal way to play the game, and just like with the Paragon/Renegade system of Mass Effect, you pick one and stick with it. This time I had the sense to ask myself why I'm not simply killing the obvious bad guys once I was past the NSF business, and the game clicked with me much better. 10/10
 
Back
Top Bottom