What are you playing?

Ah, yes. It would have been memorable if the box of stuff was resting on wet, bare, hairy legs while the people chatting and rowing the boat were decked out in full rainwear.
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Also lately I have been almost exclusively playing Minecraft and sussing out the new Diablo III update.

--Patrick
 
I needed something I could play and easily drop out from when needed, so decided to try a new game this weekend called "Banished". It's a $20 strategy game on steam, and nope, it's not some action packed RTS like the name implies. It's a medieval town simulation game in which you start up a village from near nothing and try to help it survive.

It's really fun, but JESUS CAN IT BE HARD. You never get attacked by other towns or anything, but you have to balance everything the village will need. The biggest thing I learned is to never over-expand. You have to take it really slow to be successful, otherwise you will mess up something because you focused on the wrong thing the town needed and get half of it killed.

Example, first game I started just building everything it seemed my resources would allow, since the game allows any building to be built from the start. Before I knew it my population grew enough that I couldn't feed them, since I used my resources to build special buildings rather then things that generate food.

Second game, I got the food down, but didn't realize my people could FREEZE TO DEATH in winter if I didn't build a woodworker to cut firewood.

I am on my sixth game now, pretty far along, but hit yet another issue. I was focused so much on making sure I had plenty of food, wood, stone, and iron that I didn't build a whole lot of houses, it seems when the houses get overcrowded, the population does not have kids. Having kids is really important, because all the people in the town age. I am now at a point where I have 10 kids in the village that still have awhile to grow, and about 25 adults that are about to kick the bucket. Going to try really hard not to restart and just see if I can survive the loss in productivity that is surely going to hit me.

This is not even getting into the disasters that can happen. Fire, Tornados, Pestilence destroying crops, all can happen at a moments notice.

For those that just like building a city and watching it either fall or succeed, it's a great little game.
 
Reading about Banished, I feel like it's a graphical version of Dwarf Fortress with more resource management and less drunkenness.
 
So I know I'm asking for it, but I continued onward in Castlevania, sorry, Lords of Shadow 2.

The game's story is beyond nonsensical.

SHPOILERZ

So, you run into a Belmont of the present day. He's scarred and shit. You want to chase him for some reason when he sees you and bolts. You chase him down and fight him, it's a decent boss fight and neat since he uses all of Gabriel's abilities from Lords of Shadow. After you beat him, you decide not to kill him and you find out he's the protector of the survivors of the super satan monster virus. Having found the antidote I give it to him. He then tells me he can lead me to the Satan kid's hideout. So we book over a bit and he leads you to a town square, where he promptly commits suicide.

WHAT THE FUCK? WHY, WHAT THE FUCKING JESUS HELL?

I just gave you the antidote and you have scores of defenseless people to protect you fucking idot. FUCK. YOU. MERCURYSTEAM.

All of the future stuff in this game is awful. Like balls out terrible. When you're in the past in the castle and it's actually kind of like a super simplified 3D Symphony of the Night (Metroidish connections between all the areas) it's a decent game. Then you're transported back to the present where the game looks awful and the art direction is beyond terrible. The cars that litter the street are taller than Dracula. Cars. Like 4 door sedans that are taller than he is.

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Just got a GTX780 and finally decided it's time to play Metro 2033.

Let's see how this goes.
Nice. Depending on how much Memory Express puts them on sale this week, I was thinking of upgrading to those. How overkill is it?
 
Finally got off my ass to finish Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon. How long has this been out, a year? I don't know how long I'd been sitting outside the last couple of missions. I'll give the game a "fuck off" for throwing in a timed ghost hunt padded mission as the penultimate one, but the last couple of bosses were fun, and the ending and credits were cute.

Really wish I hadn't bought it on download--I did so for the multiplayer, but the lobby is a piece of shit. I kind of doubt I'm going to play through it again, but can't sell it. So ... yay.

On stuff I am replaying, Shin Megami Tensei IV remains fantastic. Devil Survivor still has stronger characters and these ones' simplicity irked me the first time through SMTIV, but in coming back to it a second time, I see these don't matter. While I just want to do New Game+ for Devil Survivor and not really play the game, just do the story again, SMTIV's gameplay is what has me going through it with no New Game+, none of my old demons, levels, apps, etc. It's just a challenging, enjoyable RPG. And the story is still pretty damn good, just
 
Nice. Depending on how much Memory Express puts them on sale this week, I was thinking of upgrading to those. How overkill is it?
I actually found one on Amazon for $479 and went over to my local Fry's to price match it. Walked out with a brand new upgrade for under $500.
Dunno about overkill but, it is playing Metro 2033 at a solid 60fps (vsync'd)
 
Final parting thoughts on Castle-LAME-EA (!). They gonna have spoilers in them.

- The writing is David Cage levels of awful.

- Spider-Man is more of an anti-hero than Dracula. He's straight up fucking Jesus.

- Satan's master plan was to summon an obese Bahamut and cast megaflare on the planet. Fucking seriously.

Skip to 18:30 in this video to see what I mean.



- This is a bad game.
 
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Diablo 3 post-Loot 2.0 is surprisingly fun. I'm getting much better drops, more gold, and more blue/named/unique enemies, plus you can mess with your build all you want now that Neph Valor is gone.
 
I needed something I could play and easily drop out from when needed, so decided to try a new game this weekend called "Banished". It's a $20 strategy game on steam, and nope, it's not some action packed RTS like the name implies. It's a medieval town simulation game in which you start up a village from near nothing and try to help it survive.

It's really fun, but JESUS CAN IT BE HARD. You never get attacked by other towns or anything, but you have to balance everything the village will need. The biggest thing I learned is to never over-expand. You have to take it really slow to be successful, otherwise you will mess up something because you focused on the wrong thing the town needed and get half of it killed.

Example, first game I started just building everything it seemed my resources would allow, since the game allows any building to be built from the start. Before I knew it my population grew enough that I couldn't feed them, since I used my resources to build special buildings rather then things that generate food.

Second game, I got the food down, but didn't realize my people could FREEZE TO DEATH in winter if I didn't build a woodworker to cut firewood.

I am on my sixth game now, pretty far along, but hit yet another issue. I was focused so much on making sure I had plenty of food, wood, stone, and iron that I didn't build a whole lot of houses, it seems when the houses get overcrowded, the population does not have kids. Having kids is really important, because all the people in the town age. I am now at a point where I have 10 kids in the village that still have awhile to grow, and about 25 adults that are about to kick the bucket. Going to try really hard not to restart and just see if I can survive the loss in productivity that is surely going to hit me.

This is not even getting into the disasters that can happen. Fire, Tornados, Pestilence destroying crops, all can happen at a moments notice.

For those that just like building a city and watching it either fall or succeed, it's a great little game.
Oh man do I feel your pain. I have something like 60 hours into the game and I have yet to really feel successful. I have one town to year 20 or so, but the balancing act is getting more and more precipitous. Plus, I finally got my town hall built, and now I have nomads showing up and wanting to settle in my town. It can be a good way to get around that whole "forgot to build houses and ran out of adults" issue; but it can also bring pestilence, disease, over-tax your food production, etc. Oh, and don't forget to leave yourself a good supply of laborers. I had 100+ people in my town and plenty of food for the winter, but a bunch of them starved to death anyway, because apparently they couldn't get the food distributed quickly enough.
 
With the announcement of the third one coming out soon, I thought I'd play Batman: Arkham Asylum. Unfortunately, it looks like the beating the game on Hard mode trophy didn't save when my hard drive was wiped a month or two ago. I was in such a bad mood from this that I decided not to bother playing.

Instead, I tried DmC which came fre on Playstation Pus. I lasted ten minutes with its stupid, overly long cut scenes, infuriating loading screen that keeps playing the same sound every two seconds, and uninspiring, boring game play and shit level design.

Probably doesn't help that I'm feeling pretty depressed today.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
infuriating loading screen that keeps playing the same sound every two seconds,
And then you tried to wind down with some Marvel vs Capcom 2.

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Protip for late game in Bravely Default. Level up the Salve Maker on your healer with a fully levelled White Mage as your secondary job. Compound Beast Liver with Dragon Fang equals Giant's Draft. Doubles HP, exceeding the usual HP cap for all characters. It's easiest if you've levelled up your item shop so you can buy the compounds.
 
Stick of Truth.

Wow.

This is amazing.

I'm losing hours.

Everythingelse currently on hold.

Wow.
Had to stop since it's my wife's bed time and she won't want to miss anything, but yeah--this game is fucking great. Since getting my class and past the tutorial, I've not seen a hair of the main quest. There's a lot to explore and plenty of side quests. I keep thinking "oh, I'll go down this road and it'll dead end, then get back to what I was supposed to be doing", but nope, the town just keeps getting deeper.

And on top of having good gameplay, it's also hilarious.
 
Protip for late game in Bravely Default. Level up the Salve Maker on your healer with a fully levelled White Mage as your secondary job. Compound Beast Liver with Dragon Fang equals Giant's Draft. Doubles HP, exceeding the usual HP cap for all characters. It's easiest if you've levelled up your item shop so you can buy the compounds.
Should be getting Salvemaker soon, I just unlocked Pirate and am about to start the Performer quest. Right now I'm running

Tiz Pirate/Spellfencer
Agnes White Mage/Summoner
Edena Time Mage/Black Mage
Ringabel Ranger/Thief (probably going to swap this the other way around until I open Ninja)

and haven't had a lot of trouble so far, save for the Red Mage boss.
 
One thing I will mention about Stick of Truth for those playing on the PC, you'll want to use a controller. The keyboard and mouse controls work, but they're kinda clunky.
 
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