What are you playing at the moment?

[Heliocentric]

Holy hell on a kebab, I never knew about earth quakes, I thought the screen was shaking because a machine was exploding.

Earthquake are acceptable in tropico because you often want to build better things anyway (buy not enough to knock old one down), but in games where pretty generally you don't have changing needs you really react to by rebuilding earthquakes indiscriminate destruction is just obnoxious. Localised destruction of a fire or such is rectifiable more quickly and urban regeneration of your 'peasant farming area' into a 'farming community' as a result of a localised disaster is extremely satisfying.

Last night myself and Graever both played Portal 2: Cooperative for the first time. I saw a few wobbles in the level design but mostly when we were stuck it was because our wetware was lacking. Portal 2 was a great 'adventure' game, Portal 2 coop is an excellent 'puzzle game with adventuring'.

[SPOILERS FOR PORTAL 2 SINGLE PLAYER FOLLOW BUT YOUVE PLAYED IT... RIGHT? ] GladOS was back on form as vaguely sinister voice, I wish there had been a greater focus on Cave or Apatures past (especially in the, older areas) but the ending of the main course was satisfying and internally consistent both in content and narrative. Honestly its a crime how few people have played this, portal 2 is a husk of a game without it.

[Herzog]

Deus Ex: Finished this one for the first time. Played it with shifter-mod (not vanilla as some people like to play the games as intended by the developer) and some other eye-candy mods like NewVision. All I can say is, that it really is a great game. The choices on how you can play each mission are really nice. Truth to be told, I am not the sneaking kind of person, so when I first found a doubled barreled shotgun I tended to greet my enemies with it. But from time to time I took a stealth approach just because you can do it! My favorite part in the game has to be the Hongkong section, the one I liked least were the missions in Paris (especially the Catacombs).

Red Orchestra 2: Crossed the 100 hour mark there yesterday evening. Still enjoying this a lot, but I cant wait for Rising Storm update. Tripwire also announced a new map, but I looks like a more open map, like RedOctoberfactory or Fallenfighters which make me normally quit the game. Favorite maps: Apartments, Barracks, Commisars House.

Amnesia - The Dark Descent: Continued to play this and fixed an elevator to descend to even more dark places. This time I wont stop playing for some months!

[Ravelle]

Crusader Kings II

You're thrown in to the deep with these kind of games, so I didn't know what I had to to when I read all the tips they gave me.

[Mashley]

I'm playing through Rainbow Six Vegas at the moment. Old game, but it's alright... nothing speciable, enjoyable for what a payed in the steam winter sale.

[Sketch]

PC version or PSX? If it runs in ePSXe, I'd almost quite fancy turfing out the attic for my discs.

It was the PS1 version, I hear it's the better one.

I wouldn't call it any more cheesy than any other video game. And the fact that the game still feels fresh after 14 years speaks for itself. 2 is probably my least favorite game in the series, but it's still good in its own right.

I dunno...some of the dialogue at the end...

"I'm going to start living...for me...for someone like you" (not exact quote but along those lines).

That said, I wouldn't change it. Also apologies for the late response but I was viciously savaged by alcohol.

[alms]

If you're playing the advanced modes in Defense Grid, a lot of them require you to juggle, which is terrible because it turns it essentially into a twitch game.

Not yet. I've got within a few missions of the end of the story, realized it was getting too hard for my casual "let's put this tower here and that there" playing style and went back to the easier missions to get better. I did tackle a few of the challenges for the achievements - and that was useful too, so I'm going to try and get some more. But before that I want to get as many gold medals as possible on the Story missions and get to the bottom of it.

BTW I've grown to love the OST of this game and found out it can be had for free on the author's website:

http://www.duanedecker.com/DG_Soundtrack.html

[squirrelfanatic]

Played through "Rochard" in a few afternoons. Funny little time waster but nothing special. A few puzzles were good, but most of the time there is very little combining involved. Combat is pretty simple yet fun. Chucking grenades at people over half the length of a room doesn't get old. :) Story-wise the game is pretty daft.

[Ham Solo]

Kingdoms of Amalur. I had to kill a whole village by mistake.
Doesn't matter, we have reserves...

[Kodeen]

Beat Aquaria, what a great game. I got all of the achievements except for the King Jelly boss, but I don't know if I can do that one. Playing with the 360 pad is useless because of the auto-aim, which doesn't help when you have 50 enemies on the screen, and the M+KB controls don't feel right.

I also played a bit of Osmos. Very neat concept, but the difficulty sure does ramp up after the tutorial levels.

Edit: Nevermind. As I was typing that I thought about using the end-game Dual form, which is mostly useless but has a massive AoE attack. Took me less than a minute to beat him.

[Nalano]

Kingdoms of Amalur. I had to kill a whole village by mistake.
Doesn't matter, we have reserves...

They're only NPCs. It's not like they have feelings...

[Scumbag]

Beat Aquaria, what a great game. I got all of the achievements except for the King Jelly boss, but I don't know if I can do that one. Playing with the 360 pad is useless because of the auto-aim, which doesn't help when you have 50 enemies on the screen, and the M+KB controls don't feel right.

Volcanic rolls and veg soup, and lots of it. The suit you get from the boss is possibly the best in game imo.

[coldvvvave]

Limbo

What I liked about it: atmosphere, sound, music, style. What I hated about it: everything else, mostly "gameplay"( I'd say it's far more an ungame than CoD and I don't even like CoD). Seriously, for a short platformer game it has some annoying puzzles. There is always one solution and it's rarely something smart, most of the times "harder" puzzles are based on something annoying like long backtracking and/or using objects you never used before so you are not sure what to do. Also, a giant spider. Well, nothing is flawless, I enjoyed it mostly, especially some random "action" bits( running away from spider, catching a flying insect) and levels with revolving cogs.

[Ian]

Finished Mass Effect at the third time of trying. Yay!

Moved straight onto Mass Effect 2. Not having a gap in between makes the differences in mechanics/control scheme all the more unsettling, but I like what little I've played so far.

[coldvvvave]

Moved straight onto Mass Effect 2. Not having a gap in between makes the differences in mechanics/control scheme all the more unsettling, but I like what little I've played so far.

I really hope you chose a Vanguard, it's pretty much the only fun character class to play.

[Heliocentric]

I really hope you chose a Vanguard, it's pretty much the only fun character class to play.

Pfft, vanguard is fine on easy useless on anything else. Personally engineer+assault rifle training and rend/warp ammo later is my personal bag of tricks. The drone (even a bomb one) boosts your effectiveness as you can have warp bullets coming out of your gun(or rend) for barriers and health, overload for shields and incinerate for armour and, health while your drone interrupts,distracts and hurts your opponents(either by zapping on medium and easy or exploding on higher difficulties).

The Vanguard whoooosh ability is pretty, but it's not much use.

[Casimir Effect]

The Vanguard whoooosh ability is pretty, but it's not much use.

You mean Charge? It needs to be combined with Barrier and a good shotgun to become effective (& a lot of fun). It's great for flying all around a map, as it moves you through obstacles, and then you alternate unloading a clip of shotgun into someone with punching them.

[Ian]

I've gone with a vanguard purely because that's what I was in the original and I imported the save.

Not really tried charge much yet (having only done the first bit of fighting) so I'll be having a go with that when I get into the game properly tonight. It does sound appealing to charge into the middle of a bunch of people and then start shotgunning their heads off, though I imagine in trickier fights it'll need to be used more carefully, or at least with proper coordination of your squadmates' attacks/abilities so you don't get bogged down.

[Nalano]

I still prefer Infiltrator. The SMG you get in Kasumi's DLC negates the need for assault rifles, and everything else is BOOMheadshot.

[Kadayi]

On the final stretch of Limbo (beat on a friends 360 but wanted to clear on the PC as well). Initially started playing using M&K but have reverted to the controller now. It's a lot more responsive for the jumping I find. Also fired up Mass Effect to pick where my default look xenophobe Paragon male shep was. Had hours of fun getting the game to work because I needed to install the BDtS DLC which I apparently no longer had the code for (seemingly Bioware have removed the old Mass effect account registration records..GJ ppl) however managed to get it sorted eventually, then had late night fun landing on a planet to storm a mercenary base just trying to figure out how to exit the vehicle (F apparently), so, so rusty. Also still putting some time in Katawa Shoujo however (I'd like to do all the story lines) I'll be honest enough to say that Misha's story is pretty tedious Vs the others I've played so far. I'll be happy to be shot of it and move on to Lily or Hanakos sooner rather than later.

[Heliocentric]

I still prefer Infiltrator. The SMG you get in Kasumi's DLC negates the need for assault rifles, and everything else is BOOMheadshot.

Pfft again. If I wanted to spend 60 hours clicking on heads I'd play CoDBlops, seriously sniping as a primary weapon in a game where stealth is not an option would get old fast. That SMG was good, in fact I upgraded to snipers rifle on my first (and only complete) playthrough and despised using it so the SMG was all I used.