What are you playing now? [2007-2018]
- Thread starter digitalwanderer
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Starcraft for the first time, I'm not a big RTS guy but I wanna play the first one before I try the second.
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
Dawn Of War 2 (just the first one, not Chaos Rising yet). I quite enjoyed it, and it was certainly trying something new in that base-building was replaced by a RPG/loot/levelling dynamic.
My biggest problem is with the low level cap. Given that many of the optional mission are repetitive, there's little incentive to play any of them once you've got to level 20 and have all level 20 gear and spent all your character points. It seems pretty dumb to me to remove the levelling/loot dynamic and expect people to keep playing the same few missions over and over.
After you hit level 20 and gone as far as you can, I just went to the final mission and completed the campaign.
My biggest problem is with the low level cap. Given that many of the optional mission are repetitive, there's little incentive to play any of them once you've got to level 20 and have all level 20 gear and spent all your character points. It seems pretty dumb to me to remove the levelling/loot dynamic and expect people to keep playing the same few missions over and over.
After you hit level 20 and gone as far as you can, I just went to the final mission and completed the campaign.
Stalker Call of Pripyat. Damn fine game with some mods and custom config. They really captured the SHOC athmosphere that was partially lost in CS. My first day in the game and they storm is making it dark wet and creepy. Seen some white dots move fast at the distance. Not sure what it is but pray for me and hope that my shotgun still works...
SC2.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Yeah the low level cap was a bit of a bummer, but not enough to ruin an otherwise fine game.
Chaos Rising is a worthy expansion if you liked the first one. It introduces the possibility of becoming Chaos space marines as well as 3 different possible endings. Pure Space Marine, Pure Chaos Space Marine and Mixed... Level cap only goes up another 10, and they removed the random defend missions. A few other minor changes, but it's definitely worth it.
Regards,
SB
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
I've just played the first couple of missions of Chaos Rising, and it certainly seems that the missions are more structured and adventure-like. Moving the level cap to 30 helps, but I don't think it's enough. I'd like to be able to eventually max out all the characters. You can't do that, so you feel that you missed out on something because you never get all the skills and powers. Accessory slots seem to be very tight, and having to choose only four teams can be frustrating, though it's probably simpler to handle just four groups.
It also seems a bit bizarre that they have this cover system that modifies your hit/defence, to the extent that you use it all the time for positioning, then as soon as you get Terminators or Dreadnaughts, it's almost impossible to use cover because they just smash everything they walk through. There's almost a very obvious line where cover is important, and then it becomes pointless as soon as the heavy team members arrive.
The inventory system seems a bit bonkers too. You level up some of your team, so you equip them with better gear and donate what you don't want to the library. That gives you more XP, so some of your other teams level up and you go and upgrade their gear too, get rid of their old stuff, and find that your first teams have levelled and so you need to go back and re-equip them again. I've probably spent just as much time in the load-out screens as playing the maps, but it is weirdly satisfying. It's probably why I was so annoyed by the level 20 cap that puts a stop to all that.
So it's not without it's faults and weird gameplay design choices, but you're right, it's generally quite a bit of fun to have your marines facing down hordes of enemies, crashing through the maps, setting up firezones from cover, finding better loot, and (my personal favourite) calling in orbital strikes.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Actually, Terminator armor isn't always the best choice.
As well whether you use the dread or not. Even when you have enough Termie suits for all squads, sometimes it's still best if all/most of your squads are in regular armor. And a couple of your best squads in higher difficulty levels can't ever equip Termie armor. Cyrus for example makes all maps that aren't time limited a piece of cake. Oh and not the best on defense missions. But makes higher difficulty levels easier.
So, at first glance you get Termie armor and you're like whoa, I've got to use this. But you lose the use of cover and more importantly you lose access to heavy weapons and commander slot items for the commander.
Yup, tons of fun, and the harder difficulties can also be fun in that they force you to REALLY heavily use strategy, covering fire, all abilites, etc.
Regards,
SB
The game as a whole is pretty big yeah, but the main campaign is... pathetically short. Is that what you're working at? Because if so, you're probably closer to the end then you might think.
One of the first things I did when I came back to Oblivion after playing it the first time was to find a mod that made all of the Oblivion gates randomly re-open... For some reason people hated the Oblivion gate realms - I LOVED them. They could set a whole game in one of those realms and I'd be all over it.
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
Well I only ever put Tarkus' squad in Terminator armour, with level 20 storm bolters and power fists, and they seemed to do a pretty good job of steam rollering over everything. I kept the commander in standard armour with a heavy plasma rifle and for calling in air/orbital strikes, with Avatus providing heavy weapon support with heavy bolters, along with Davian Thule to do kill/crush/destroy on anything big. It seems that as long as you have a mix of long and short range to cover each other, there's not much that can go wrong.
I found that Cyrus and Thaddeus became kind of redundant once I'd settled on a heavy assault setup. I don't know if that will change as I go through the Chaos campaign.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Cyrus with focus on Stamina and Will + Remote detonation pack, Demolition pack, and your choice of Accessory slot weapon can clear many of the maps solo. For weapon choice, something with either +sight range or +move speed are my favorites. Sniper weapon probably the best for non-combat Cyrus since snipe is useful and stays at long enough range that he can recloak.
He is probably by far the most power squad when used correctly. Well except as I mentioned on Defend missions and Time limited missions like the Space Hulk in the expansion.Ooops just remembered in the Expansion it's also useful to get Demolitions Expert in the Strength line. But that comes with some tradeoffs as then you won't be able to get both Remote Teleport and Covert Leadership which are both incredibly useful when using all 4 squads.
Thaddeus is hard to use, he requires a lot of micro. But again is incredibly useful if you can manage the micro necessary for him to do well.
Regards,
SB
Just started playing BFBC2 (single player) as I found a box copy ltd. edition on sale for $29 and couldn't pass it up. Took some real PITA effort to get it running right though. Initially only forcing DX10 would get it to stop freezing every 3-10 minutes; DX11 just wasn't an option. Finally resorted to slightly over-volting my 5870 (XFX XXX edition which is factory overclocked) and the freezes stopped. Fun game so far.
No. BFBC2 has been notorious with causing troubles for overclockers. I think the stock-overclocked card was just conservatively volted by XFX. No other game - including DX11 - has this issue so it seems BFBC just asks for more than the card can give without a voltage bump at that frequency.
I kind of feel that same way, my OC 5850 seems to be working a lot harder than the stock card was in BC2.
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
Simplest way is to start your own local game and see if the Titan mutator is listed as a mutator option.
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