What are you playing?

Borderlands 1 - I've been playing this regularly with a bunch of real-life friends and we're into aroud hour 7 at the moment. We had the opportunity to start with the sequel but my friends wanted to start from the beginning of the series and complete the DLC. The game has been prety fun as a co-operative experience, although many of the levels are frequently reused and some enemies are just bullet sponges without enourmous HP. 

 

Getting an online experience to work reliably has been difficult - the game uses GameSpy to complete the online connections. It's less painful than it sounds in that you can create an account within Borderlands without exiting the game or visiting their website. However, we still get frequent problems with hosting, invitations and lag, even though we all live in London with good net connections. Is this improved in Borderlands 2's Steamworks implementation?

 

Torchlight II - Fun game that I'm playing with another real-life friend. We've probably spent around 3 hours playing through it so far. Combat feels generic and disappointing compared to how visceral and physical Diablo 3's combat is. Also, the number of skills and skill trees combined with the lack of ability to respec makes that aspect quite daunting. I'm quite worried about creating a character that'll be completely gimped by the time we get to the end-game.

Team Fortress 2 - Per usual, this is my game of choice. I'm nearing 800 hours in the game and still don't have an unusual hat. I main soldier and have been experimenting with different loadouts since the big balance update a few weeks ago. Currently, my new favorite is Liberty Launcher, Gunboats (can we combine those with the Mantreads please, Valve?), and Pain Train (or the Equalizer if there's no point to capture/cart to push). However I sometimes replace the Liberty Launcher with the vanilla Rocket Launcher since I have it in Strange quality and I'm used to it's physics.

 

The majority of you have likely already played this game and formed your opinions on it, but if anyone is interested in a PC FPS to start off with, this one is free to play and can run on nearly everything (with a bit of configuration).

 

DOTA 2 - My friends and I have been hosting LAN parties for the past 2(?) years now and we're slowly moving from Team Fortress 2 over to DOTA. I still prefer TF2, but I can understand the interest in the game. I still suck since I never play it outside of our LAN parties. The Linux version is all kinds of glitchy so I boot into Windows in order to play, something I do rarely. I think I'll probably get into this more as its problems are patched out.

 

If you're interested in the game it's free to play like TF2 and will also run on nearly everything. I'd recommend starting off by reading "Welcome to DOTA, You Suck".

That's awesome Nicereddy. I also wanted to say I've also been getting into Dota 2 as well, particularly with playing co-op bot matches and watching bits and pieces from The International 3, which has been some of the most exciting gaming I've ever watched.

 

 

Personally I prefer TF2 (I have around 250hrs with that game). It's just a more casual, drop-in and drop-out experience where the community is more friendly and you can always feel like you're contributing positively to the team. I enjoy Dota 2 as well, but it's not something I can play at the home with family around - my wife would never understand why I couldn't stop Dota for just a second to pass her something or to even just ask me a question (my APM will drop! I'll be feeding the other team!). When I play Dota 2 I feel very antisocial which is ironic for a multiplayer-only game.

Maaan... I played too many different games this week, so I'm going to limit that to 3.

 

Dead Space 3 since it was in a Humble Origin Bundle. Gotta say, I knew, that what devs said about PC Port was slightly exaggerated, but after solving a problem with Vsync - I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of PC port - especially presence of Borderless windowed mode, which made responding to people on Steam and recording a game extremely smooth (this week I got Avermedia Live Gamer HD - and this was pretty much a hardcore test for the device - recorded about 95% of my playthrough - no problems at all, even accidentally discovered an OOB (out of bounds) glitch). As for the game itself - I expected worse... much worse in fact. It's definitely more action oriented than even Dead Space 2 - it also is more linear at times, but from time to time, there is a pretty huge open area and side objectives. So putting it short - Dead Space 3 - surprisingly good.

 

I've played few more hours of Dark Souls. And there really isn't much to say about it - everyone knows how bad the PC port of Dark Souls is. Many know, how great the game is (currently 310hrs according to Steam). Crafted Smough's Hammer, explored the last area, which i hadn't properly explored before - Painted World of Ariamis.

 

Beside that - I thought, about playing something bad as well, so I've tried playing Shadow Harvest: Phantom Ops (no PCGW page - bought it for 0,99€ on GamersGate, using bluepoints). Man, I know my PC isn't really high end, but 15-30fps, mouse that stops responding when FPS drops below 20. Almost unplayable... so yes, avoid that.

Half-Life series is something that I have not touched until it recently came to Linux. I'm quite enjoying it, although since I did not play it around release I don't think I can appreciate it as much as others have back then.

 

Mirror's Edge. I was quite curious about this game, never got around to getting it and now it's in a bundle. I absolutely love the focus being on movement and not fighting in the game.

 

I'll be honest here, the majority of my gaming lately is catching up on whatever was the popular thing in the last 5-10 years. I seem to have missed everything!

 

Unfortunately my PC can't really handle Mirror's Edge all that well, so I've only played the first level so far. Despite this, I love it.

 

DICE is one of a handful of developers that I will buy just about anything from. From what I can tell their company is clearly filled with very intelligent people who actually enjoy what they do, while at the same time taking it very seriously. If it was given more freedom I think Mirror's Edge would have been even more universally praised. If Mirror's Edge 2 is a proper PC port with the gunplay removed (or improved, I suppose), then I'd probably buy it.

I've played few more hours of Dark Souls. And there really isn't much to say about it - everyone knows how bad the PC port of Dark Souls is. Many know, how great the game is (currently 310hrs according to Steam). Crafted Smough's Hammer, explored the last area, which i hadn't properly explored before - Painted World of Ariamis.

 

You are a braver man than myself. I can't get over the frustration of being sent back about an hour and having to beat every single enemy over and over. There's challenging, but for me Dark Souls isn't challenging, just irritatingly hard. I guess it just depends on how much you get out of playing a hard game, but then when you do finally get past another checkpoint and onto another section, there isn't enough of a reward to keep me interested, other than your own sense of achievement, which for me was dampened by the amount of time I had spent trying to get past a small section of the game. I only ever played it on Xbox, and for about 12 hours, but that was enough for me to realise I wasn't going to get on with it. At 310 hours though you seem to have done substantially better than myself!

 

Anyway, this week I have mostly been playing the Saints Row IV Press Build. I have had a lot of fun with it and although a lot of elements (including the engine) have clearly been borrowed from the third game, the story is unique and crazy enough to keep you more than interested. Definitely worth your time pre-ordering if you are a fan of the series. If you haven't tried Saints Row before, might be worth waiting until its in a sale and then bagging it at a low price.

Dead Space 3 I've only cleared the first chapter of DS3, but its been pretty enjoyable so far. A little more action oriented than the first two, but not so bad so far. Once I finish that, It'll likely be off to Saints Row 4 and then GTA5 for me.

Crysis 2 I used to play multiplayer on 360 when it came out but die quickly so now i have a chance to play it again

Battlefield 3 I grabed this game during the humble origin bundle and loved it instantly. I also picked up premium which was 70% off. I have played 20 hours already.

Just beat Saints Row 4. That was fantastic. It really is 3, just even more amped up, silly, and fun.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Can't get enough of it. The competitive scene is fantastic. Playing at least 3 hours a day and watching a lot of matches of pro players. It's fun!

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Can't get enough of it. The competitive scene is fantastic. Playing at least 3 hours a day and watching a lot of matches of pro players. It's fun!

I played this a bit on Windows. I definitely think it's the best Counter-Strike game, but for now I'm just playing Counter-Strike: Source since GO doesn't have Linux support. Looking forward to its release, I think I can definitely get into it!

I've got several games I've been rotating lately, it's not just been one or two games.  I've been working on a second playthrough of Deus Ex Human Revolution since I finally got around to getting the DLC for it, but I'm taking my time with it.  Dying to see what the Missing Link DLC is like. 

 

I've been having a lot of fun with XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Crusader Kings II.  I just downloaded a bunch of CK mods this morning and haven't had time to use them yet.  But it seems like a good way to spend a quiet Sunday afternoon, too much going on tomorrow. 

Final Fantasy VII (2012) - I decided to play this game after seeing all of the hype about the PlayStation release and hearing some of the awesome music from it. When I bought it, I quickly changed the music files from the MIDI's to the original soundtrack, because I heard that the MIDI's weren't as good. It's been an enjoyable RPG so far and has major differences from the previous games in the series that I really liked.

Final Fantasy VII (2012) - I decided to play this game after seeing all of the hype about the PlayStation release and hearing some of the awesome music from it. When I bought it, I quickly changed the music files from the MIDI's to the original soundtrack, because I heard that the MIDI's weren't as good. It's been an enjoyable RPG so far and has major differences from the previous games in the series that I really liked.

 

FFVII's music has now been patched, thankfully :).