. 

Hopefully, you'll get a chance to play LA Noire and some other new games before too long, Trav. 

Meanwhile, my summer gaming dance card just got even fuller with all the recent deals at Steam, Gamefly, GOG.com, etc.

Just downloaded The Witcher 2: Enhanced and the Two Worlds II EP as well as the original Titan Quest and Crysis 2: Maximum Edition. 

Add the other titles on my must-play list and that makes for a very active season of crime solving, monster bashing and general interactive fun. 

Also, on the passive-entertainment front, the London Olympics are about to start and I can't wait to watch a full menu of great real-world competition by the best athletes on earth. 

See you on the other side of summer....

Cheers, Terry 

I thought about playing LA Noire too, but since i've been playing Saint's Row the past few days, i feared it would be a bit too similar.

So i chose Batman: Arkham City instead, another brilliant game so far, very cinematic and detailed, and some refreshing gameplay mechanics. 

damnit, it seems i should've bought batman: Asylum first, the storyline seems to continue in Arkham City and now i'm completely confused what's happening :\

Originally Posted By markornikov (21 JUL 2012 4:41am)

damnit, it seems i should've bought batman: Asylum first, the storyline seems to continue in Arkham City and now i'm completely confused what's happening :\

Asylum is in today's daily deal.

Also, currently playing New Vegas & Civ 5 with myself, and Killing Floor, Dawn of War Retribution, Company of Heroes Operation Market Garden (mod) & Warlock: master of the arcane in multiplayer. Warlock is great, by the way.

Originally Posted By Fnord (21 JUL 2012 6:27pm)

Originally Posted By markornikov (21 JUL 2012 4:41am)

damnit, it seems i should've bought batman: Asylum first, the storyline seems to continue in Arkham City and now i'm completely confused what's happening :\

 

Asylum is in today's daily deal.

Indeed, and guess what i'm playing right now... 

Both games play exactly the same, i was a bit afraid Asylum would look older, but it still looks better than most games today like Skyrim for example.

Now that i know what's going on the storyline is even more compelling, i'm having a ball at this 

I just got Spec Ops: The Line (on amazon sale, it is 50% off today, and I had a gift card). Normally I would not pick up a shooter for anywhere near this price (gift card or not), but this one did manage to catch my eyes. The reason is the tone of the game, it is supposed to be almost the direct opposite of today's modern warfare-style shooters, instead of war being portrayed as macho and "cool", it is supposed to portray war as being something horrible, something that you are not supposed to enjoy. So somewhere along the line of the many Vietnam-war movies that shows the dark side of war, and how it affects people. 

Only getting 4mbit/s from steam right now though, so downloading it seem to take forever

I'm playing Trine 2. It's an improvement over the first in every way, as puzzles are more varied and somewhat more difficult, levels are lenghtier, and the graphics are even more beautiful and charming. For anyone that liked the first, a must play.

At least i've now reached Freeside in New Vegas.  ...but then i got bored of the game again.  This game is really boring to me compared to FO3.  I don't know, it just seems to lack something, and it's not grey/brown dull and ugly environments that i'm talking about... i think it lacks the personal interest i felt in my FO3 character perhaps?

Originally Posted By Traveller (29 JUL 2012 11:18am)

At least i've now reached Freeside in New Vegas.  ...but then i got bored of the game again.  This game is really boring to me compared to FO3.  I don't know, it just seems to lack something, and it's not grey/brown dull and ugly environments that i'm talking about... i think it lacks the personal interest i felt in my FO3 character perhaps?

Have you talked to the settings inhabitants? I found the setting as a whole to be a lot more interesting, not only because your choices matter a lot more, but also because they added a whole lot of "pointless" fluff to the game, dialogues that did not relate to any quests, but instead was just there to add more flavour to the setting.

I've also reached Freeside and done some of the quests there. Make sure to talk to the male doctor in the Follower's camp. Get to know him. He is one of the most fleshed out & interest characters in any Bethesda-sponsored game. Though like many other characters in NV, he won't just share his life story and inner feelings with you from the get go.

Also, Spec Ops: The Line just managed to make me feel really bad. The game got to me, just like the developers intended. The story is very mature, and not in a "look we have gore & nudity in our game" kind of way, but in a real mature way.

. 

Originally Posted By Traveller (29 JUL 2012 11:18am)

At least i've now reached Freeside in New Vegas.  ...but then i got bored of the game again.  This game is really boring to me compared to FO3.  I don't know, it just seems to lack something, and it's not grey/brown dull and ugly environments that i'm talking about... i think it lacks the personal interest i felt in my FO3 character perhaps?

I also related much more closely to the setting and story in Fallout 3, Trav.

But that was due to growing up in the exact same geographic location during a bygone era when many of the same nostalgic elements and cold-war sentiments existed. 

However, the setting, story and characters in New Vegas are much more akin to the original Fallout games, which are amongst my all-time favorites. 

So I enjoyed both titles very much, but for distinctly different reasons. 

What in particular is turning you off in New Vegas?  Is it the lack of a childhood back story and a more personal mission to discover what happened to your parents? Or is it the mostly empty, wide-open spaces compared to a more densely packed urban setting full of recognizable, internationally famous landmarks? 

Cheers, Terry 

.

After Freeside, things will finally start to become interesting.

The trouble with NV is that the start of the game is really slow and the first towns you see aren't that special. Whereas in F3 the story immediately takes you to Megaton and downtown DC where the real action takes place.

Overall NV has a more complex storyline though, because the story branches after freeside, so I advice you make a save before entering actual vegas, so you don't have to play through the boring part again if you want to do things differently.

Thanks for the NV comments, guys.  I think it's a combination of the factors that Terry and Marko mentioned.  My character in FO3 did feel more 'personal' ;- i could somehow connect with him  more perhaps because, like Terry said, you 'grew up' as him and had his family background from the start and so on.  But also the fact that the desert in NV feels more uniform and "cookie-cutter" from area to area.

I'll take your advice about moving on to Vegas soon though, and won't tarry in Freeside too long.

Thanks for the tip about the male doctor, Fnord, I actually didn't speak to him much, though i had an extensive conversation with both the ghoul and the lady in one of the towers there, both of which generated some new quests.

Been playing a tiny bit of Total War Rome, but it's quite hard, i find..

. 

Hi Trav - 

Once you get started on the main quest in New Vegas (proper), also explore Freeside and the immediate outlying areas more thoroughly as there are other interesting missions to be found.

Doing some jobs for The King in Freeside can be fun, plus you get a cool canine sidekick named Rex with his own little questline connected to a mountain resort full of reasonably friendly mutants. You can also recruit escorts and entertainers for the minor casinos, which activates new dialogs for several more NPCs around town and across the desert. 

So keep plugging away and hopefully soon, you'll begin enjoying the game more. 

Cheers, Terry 

P.S. Several of the official DLCs are quite good too, with whole new areas to explore that offer some variety to the landscape.

Thanks Terry!  Maybe i should move on with the main quest a bit then (to the next step) and then come back to Freeside again later. 

Originally Posted By markornikov (11 JUL 2012 3:48pm)

Tried a demo of Risen 2 today and i'm not really enthuisiastic about it. Environments look pretty and combat seems improved. (improved for me = dumbed down for everyone else 

)

But what's with the terrible character  models and animations, especially during conversations they kill the realism.

Especially the female sidekick is an eye-sore.

Risen looked much better 

 

I'm afraid i won't be playing this anytime soon.

It's a German game so the character animations will line up with the original German dialogues. Didn't bother me in the slightest in the English version but I can see how it might for some.

I finally made some serious progress in Assasins Creed II Brotherhood, am back in Roma finaly and loving exploring the city but it is very confusing as there are no instructions in the manual about how to move around, hoiw to find where you are supposed to go, no markers appear for current quests and the only hint is a marker for the Next Memory, but the map does not show direction of the player avatar, so you are literally stumbling around in the dark unless you want and have the stomach to climb every dizzying high tall building to "orient" with the E key. I guess it was created for console sure is a pain for PC but the historical accuracy and the detail and the living dynamic world are among the very best i have ever seen for any historical game. this game should be used to teach Italian History and about the Reinassance, you can actually do missions with Leonardo Da Vinci and see some of his inventions in action and i am mostly looking forward to Venice.

I ran into an impossible level, Nero's Catacomb or something like that and plan to use a save game to get past it, i have no wish to spend hours in fruitless frustration....but it is a fun game once you get your way round.

Sadly some of the keys just dont work, the "tackle" key needed for two missions just wont work most of the time, so it is porrly designed, but the visuals ars stunnig.

Traveller good to see you about here, Total War Rome is indeed hard but if you get the Roma Surrecum 2 mod it gives you a much much better environment, i may have misspselled that, and there are some amazing mods that give new eras including Civalry, with castles and all, Napoleonic, and more, but mostly there are about four very very good Roman era mods that greatly add to it all. TWR was the first of the series that really got serious, the best is the latest version of Total War Shgun for they have added a lot of the things learned by the community over the years, as well as developments by the creating company.

ooops my bad, i take back my criticism saying there is no arrow or direction, i had removed the directional cues from the GUI in the optoins

I'm just about to start the second DLC for Fallout New Vegas, Dead Money (technically speaking the first one, but it is the second in terms of recommended minimum level). Honest Hearts was a bit too linear in its design, and the environments in it were rather repetitive, but at least it had a different feel to it compared to the main game (also, the two did not mesh together at all, Honest Hearts was an entirely separate side story).

By the way, playing a melee only character is a lot harder than playing a character who uses guns in Fallout NV. Not only does good melee weapons seem to be relatively rare, but it is a lot harder to avoid damage when you need to get up close & personal with the enemy. And fighting Deathclaws, well that is an interesting experience. 

I see Trav was thinking of LA Noire, it is a remarkable game, a bit tricky at times, and may not appeal to all but i love the amazing ambience and immersion. Sadly they did not allow modding which wouild have greatly enhanced the replay, for now, it is like Mafia II, a beautiful world, a somewhat linear game (more like a interactive movie in some ways) and in the end, a dead end for game development, no matter how wonderful the world, if the game story does not allow real interaction it is just a emhanced vamped up Download content string....and i am getting tired of that

we need beteer writers.

actually the complex game play and chances to restore thingx in Assasins  Creed is quite intriging for me and the historic locations are amazing. Hope to enjoy all of the ttles, i just bought the entire series and when i am done will try the latest which is set in the American colonial era of all places.

I'm also playing LA Noire right now and indeed it the setting is wonderfully done.

I didn't expect it too be that linear though, but i'm not complaining.

so far the storytelling is quite good, which is a step up compared to previous rockstar games.

...

AC II and brotherhood have very accurate recreations of their historical settings. I've visited San Gimignano, Venice,... in real life, it's amazing how realistic they made the game

I got nostalgic for Morrowind and played a bit of that.  Quite different with all the graphic enhancements i put on on and quite pretty, i must say.

Hmm, i really think i should try out LA Noire this week still.

And Dead Money is now done. Far too linear for a Fallout DLC, and while forcing the player to scavenge might have been a good idea, stimpacks were far too easy to come by, and I walked out of the DLC area with over 100 extra stimpacks. Also, I never found this DLC's plot to be very interesting. Overall, this is one that you can ignore. Good length for a DLC though. 

I tried LA Noire, but i hate the driving!  Such a waste of time, (not to mention that i suck with it

Why can't one just use a map to navigate and drive "off-screen" or automatically? 

I guess coz it's a Rockstar game, but the driving is one of the reasons i never enjoyed the GTA games either.

I'll probably get back to Skyrim again, tho i'm tiring of it now.  I love Markarth, btw.

. 

Originally Posted By Fnord (8 AUG 2012 4:14pm)

And Dead Money is now done. Far too linear for a Fallout DLC, and while forcing the player to scavenge might have been a good idea, stimpacks were far too easy to come by, and I walked out of the DLC area with over 100 extra stimpacks. Also, I never found this DLC's plot to be very interesting. Overall, this is one that you can ignore. Good length for a DLC though. 

I agree, Fnord. 

Dead Money was by far my least-favorite Fallout: New Vegas DLC. 

Cheers, Terry 

. 

Originally Posted By Traveller (11 AUG 2012 11:02am)

I tried LA Noire, but i hate the driving!  Such a waste of time, (not to mention that i suck with it

) 

Why can't one just use a map to navigate and drive "off-screen" or automatically? 

 

I guess coz it's a Rockstar game, but the driving is one of the reasons i never enjoyed the GTA games either.

 

I'll probably get back to Skyrim again, tho i'm tiring of it now.  I love Markarth, btw.

Yep Trav, the driving in LA Noire really sucks as it does in all PC games that force you to use clumsy WASD vehicle controls with no mouselook for steering.

I assume it is much easier with a gamepad or console controller, but who cares? 

Borderlands is one of the only PC action titles that got it right.

On another front, I'm having a ball running back through Titan Quest on the Legendary difficulty with an eye toward the new Hades chapter added by its Immortal Throne EP. 

My fearless, little lady warrior is reaching amazing levels with epic gear and maxed-out abilities.  She has also accumulated mega millions in gold plus a great cache of alternate equipment in the caravan drivers' storage units. 

Otherwise, Divinity 2 is going well...

Cheers, Terry