What are you playing now?

I really enjoyed Civ VI for a couple of months when it first game out, and then I started to question whether the game was "deeper" or simply more complicated.

The End-of-Game problem is one that they've never been able to solve in any Civ, as far as I can tell. Short of implementing some 'cheating' solution, I don't know how they can make up for compounded early/mid game mistakes.

 

City districts sounds cool; I always wanted more control over my individual cities in these games. I recall one of my keys to success in Civ IV was to micromanage the tiles that my cities drew resources from. You could become much more efficient since the default tiles that are chosen for cities' resource harvesting don't necessarily align with what you want to do. For instance when a city is small you want to grow it asap, so you deselect all the tiles that get you money and stuff and go ham on the ones that provide food. And once a city is big and growing it any further would be detrimental (due to e.g. poor health) you switch from food to other stuff. My friend never bothered with this aspect of the game and I always ended up the US to his Canada. (we played coop)

The changes to workers you described is most welcome! I absolutely hated having to wait 6 turns to build a fucking farm.

You should absolutely have a go at Civ IV. One of the best videogames of all time IMO. Civ V is very good, great even but there is something about IV that makes it special.

 

Civ VI is 33% off on Steam right now, btw.

$40.19 instead of $59.99 US

I don't have the plugin that tells me if that's the best price its been in a while on this computer, but take it for what its worth.

 

I can attest to that, the game got me totally hooked and I can't stop playing now. I am playing King's Bounty Crossworlds GOTY from GoG.

 

I've recently had the urge for some flight simming (used to be my favourite genre)
European Air War, Janes WW2 Fighters, Janes Fa/18, F22 Total Air War

Edit: just remembered ms Combat flight Simulator 2. Time to go disc hunting

 

I really liked the first few installments of Kings Bounty! Well worth playing for anyone who has enjoyed Heroes of Might and Magic or similar.

After my Mass Effect binge (which led to me deleting the trilogy along with Andromeda) I played a bit of Diablo Necromancer (polished but done to death already), some Tera (brief dip in Korean fetishes) but now started up The Secret World again.
Played it back in beta, came back to it once but dropped it quickly, and returned to it now in its Steamified f2p incarnation. I always liked its premise, it doesn't feel like a cartoon story for kids. At all.
Game play wise it doesn't have tons to offer, and often feel like a ridiculously intricate puzzle game rather than an MMO. Google saves the day. Hell, quite a few of the puzzles are designed for you to need to find real world sources! Not being terribly interested in the multiplayer aspect, the game still generally lets me progress nicely, with some multiplayer dungeons tossed in that I don't remember from way back and frankly would have preferred if they were absent or solo traversable at the appropriate level. What keeps me in so far is that the script keeps feeling directed to adults in a way no other MMO and few games at all do. It was worth returning to for another look.

Can't help feeling that it would have been a much better game as a single player RPG.

 

On PC, nothing for now since I finished Andromeda (I liked it)... But the big DLC for X Com 2 is coming... I must resist....

 

Anyone played Hellblade - Senuas Sacrifice?
It looks interesting

 

This game has a whole thread dedicated to it.

https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1995668/

 

tnx
A quote from that thread

 

Decided to replay Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 3D
And even after all these years its still fun to bring down an At-At with a cable

 

Playing the "old" stuff. Hardly buy new games these days. They are NOT providing what I crave (more realistic interaction with environments (unscrew lightbulbs, flush toilets, art, architecture, music, you know...BEAUTY, etc) even if it serves no "practical" mission purpose, more realistic options to approach missions. The stuff that requires WORK...tedious work (real work).

explosions....metal music...freakishly muscular (or sexy) character/players, frenetic click spaz panic "action"....doesn't do it for me. I realize it's cheaper to implement, and apparently the "candy brains" love it. The "suits" might KILL gaming...if my perspective is any indication.

I mean photo realism (not even close yet) is okay...but I've learned game play ambience, aesthetic, immersion, CLASS (not drama).

I would GLADLY pay $500 for a title that was TOTALLY realistic (destructible, moveable, collectible etc) along with some sort of RPG like mission/storyline.

Only newish game I'm playing now is SKyrim. Still haven't finished my first play through (level 39).

You can tell the "love" of the developer is MISSING in today's games, which pop culture does to EVERYTHING. JUST like they've done to TV and music....they RUIN it for people who aren't mindless in favor of those who spend on "command" and have the soul of a Jolly Rancher. It's like the world has been tailored for 8th graders (US, not Asia, maybe not Europe). Everything is chiseling..."business" (the most for the least, even if it's a lie).

 

We lost a ton of interactions just for not quite photorealistic graphics and bigger worlds, not really worth it IMO.
In Oucast (1998) you could ask any NPC where a major NPC was, they would either tell you the name of a province, or a quadrant (nort-east...) if in the same province, or point directly to him if within sight. I have yet to see a game that does that... Also all NPC had voices (not just text). Games just lost themselves in gfx tech instead of pushing for gameplay experience and/or story telling.
Gameplay is king, everything comes second.

That's why Zelda Breath of the Wild is so interesting, there are plenty of simple logical things going on, physics of course (but we know that since HL²), but also arrow igniting above a fire or in a volcano, bushes igniting with a torch,... More interactions. (I also like cooking in games since Guild Wars 2, so it's nice to do so in Zelda, albeit a bit too simple compared to GW2 ^^)

(There are also what I call "interactive novels" [also referred to as walking simulators for some] in which you unfold the story by moving/pressing a button pretty much which are interesting too. Like the Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Telltale games...)

 

Ultima IV from more than 30 years ago more is more advanced game design-wise than Skyrim, easily.

 

Every year or so I write a rant about the lack of interactive environments and how the ones that do even have some, barely incorporate those interactions into game play. For example, shooting out lights and then not having the AI be able to see you. Pretty sure I remember games including these things in the 90s.

All we've done is replace the classic invisible walls with buildings that have doors you can't open and windows you can't break.

It's one of the reason why I like VR. Because the tech is pretty much limited to "interactions with objects", the dev's have usually (not always) thought of all the odd ways people would attempt to interact with the game environment and built that into the game (if not made that the entire game in itself).

 

Batman Arkham knight.

What a vile piece of shit. Rocksteady can count themselves under the shittydevs. It's not even the crap performance or bugs but the total shitness of everything. Take the batmobile, it's impossible to drive that crap. It really isn't any better than a racing game made in the early 90's in an afternoon by two people. Absolutely no control and designer to be frustrating. You can't make something as shit as this unless you try.

The people that made this crap should be goddamned ashamed of themselves and never be allowed to work on games ever again.

 

GTA V, and it feels SOOOOO good!!!

 

I think I'm going to give up on Arkham Knight. It just such a shit game. Constant framedrops are annoying as fuck especially as there is no reason for the apart from shitty programming. The game looks the same as the previous three and those all ran smooth.

I don't know how made the batmobile controls but what the fuck? They are so shit I'm sure that however worked on them put in a ton of effort to make it shit on purpose.

The whole game feels as six steps down from the previous games. Obviously rockshitty and WD intended this as a cashgrab.

Should have know better after the reviews but still bought it because I loved the previous games but it's just so shit I can justify spending my limited free time on it.

 

I've been playing World of WarPlanes.
Had played a little way back but didn't enjoy it, neither did anyone else much (talk of only 200 players during peak times).
They've now brought out 2.0 which has dramatically simplified & arcaded it from what it had been, now is pretty fun pew pew pew.

 

Just tried NFS Payback trial in Origin. Wow that was uninstalled fast. What a huge POS.