What are you playing at the moment?

[Jesus_Phish]

I still enjoy Civ apart from the dumbshit AI.

In my last game (last week before I started a new game), Mongolia decided to start a 1,000 year war with me. My entire civilization was on an island and it was impossible to get past my fleet of ships. They threw wave after wave of frigate at me, and kept trying to send embarked land units over. After about 200 years of this, they decided to open their offer of peace. At this stage I had lost maybe 2 units to their 20+. Their offer was to give me a 10 turn peace treaty in exchange for 10 turns of peace, a city, 200 gold, 5 gold a turn and all my natural resources. I said no and the war went on. Eventually around the 1,000 year mark, when I decided I'd have enough of levelling my guys and sent some land units near their border, they settled for just peace on both sides.

So as far as I can see, the AI is still as mad/dumb as a bag of fish.
This is with the G&K expansion.

[Nalano]

Probably a dumb question but are you enjoying it? I keep wanting to get back into it but the AI was so poor a year and a half back that I got fed up. Do you feel like all of the potential paths to victory are viable? It just felt like everything devolved into a big military pile up the last time I played, and if I wanted to play a war game I’d play a proper one. I’m eager to give it another go on the grounds that it’s a more Civ like experience after the raft of patching and Gods and Kings (which I have, bought cheap in sale.) Would you recommend I return to it?

I almost never play a military victory. I much prefer cultural or space victories, and tend to choose large maps and long games so as to maximize the potential breakaway income you can get with sprawling, (largely) peaceful, well-run empires. Warlike cultures are still warlike even when they have no chance (though in my last game, Genghis Khan stuck to bullying city-states and only got into a war with Sejong because Sejong liked defending city states), but they tend to be more obsequious when you station a lot of units in their visual range.

If you've already got Gods & Kings, I'd definitely give it another go. The AI's not so irrational now, and is a fair bit more assertive.

[Sketch]

You guys should keep talking about this (seriously) there's something great about Civ that makes it interesting as hell to read about. I actually haven't played much at all since Gods & Kings but I think I might well do that.

[Nalano]

You guys should keep talking about this (seriously) there's something great about Civ that makes it interesting as hell to read about. I actually haven't played much at all since Gods & Kings but I think I might well do that.

What, like this?

[Sketch]

Wahah, time to lose all of my free time!

[Nalano]

Wahah, time to lose all of my free time!

I added pictures, just for you.

[Scumbag]

Time to clear out another item from the backlog, namely Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee
Graphics are low-rez, but that is expected for something made in 1997. Now to get into the nostalgia of something I played when I was younger and...
OH GOD CHECKPOINTS OF HELL!!!

[Voon]

I really need Shock Resist whenever I level up. Fucking Dung beetles *mumble grumble*

[Berzee]

Are you trying to immitate a spambot? :)

jim's story may sound incredable but my brother quit his job and is now making over four hundred thousand dollars to fire this weapon for twelve seconds

[Chauvigny]

I'm playing The incredible adventures of Van Helsing and OH BOY I like it so much.

It's a hack'n'slay which looks a bit like Titan Quest/the upcoming Grim Dawn and has a companion system like Torchlight but much more refined.
You can tell your companion (a female russian ghost) which stuff to loot, send her to town to sell the loot (and also buy heal and mana potions!)

The graphics are solid, same as music and gameplay.
There's plenty of loot and you can "charge" the attacks on your left and right mouse button with "rage" so that they will do AOE damage or just get a damage increase, etc.

It's 13,49€ on Gamersgate & Steam right now.

[Tritagonist]

Finished XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The final mission was far easier than expected, though an unfortunate combination of Mind Control and multiple soldiers on Overwatch resulted in the death of the Support Medic. I might load up an earlier save to finish it properly, just because. Pretty fun game all in all, if a bit repetitive. Definitely a nice take on the turn-based combat genre with pretty comprehensive overarching 'base' mechanics.

[Silgidorn]

My gaming computer is dead, so I play KOTOR1 on my laptop.
Plus side: KOTOR.
Minus side: my laptop is a mac, so barely any mod working (or too much fuss to make one work) and no KOTOR 2...

[Tikey]

My gaming computer is dead, so I play KOTOR1 on my laptop.
Plus side: KOTOR.
Minus side: my laptop is a mac, so barely any mod working (or too much fuss to make one work) and no KOTOR 2...

But the best part of Kotor is Kotor2!

[iridescence]

I've got into Risen over the past couple of days. I wouldn't go as far as to say it's a great RPG. There are certainly a lot of very obvious flaws. Basically I'd call it a poor man's Witcher (or an even poorer man's Witcher 2). But it sort of scratches my itch for that sort of game.

[internetonsetadd]

Played Sanctum 2's demo earlier. Two maps? I'm supposed to weigh a potential purchase based on two levels? And one tower slot?

Well, if you insist...

As I suspected, it didn't really do it for me. Sanctum was about planning and executing a strategy as perfectly as possible by preventing and containing chaos. Sanctum 2 wants to push you into open areas and the corridors of your maze for FPS action, where you can't keep an eye on your turrets to see what's happening or working.

Managing a tight defense and falling back to your planned attack points has turned into chasing enemies around. More than half the damage being done by the player kind of says it all. In Sanctum it was more like 20-30%, IIRC. Shooting well was crucial, but the game facilitated doing so while you were watching over what was happening on the map and planning future strategy--which is kind of the most interesting part of tower defense, no?

In trying to innovate they seem to have removed or altered much of what made the original what it was. Maybe it's a decent game in its own right, but it's kind of hard to tell based on two beginner maps. I'll keep my eye out for a good sale.

[Simo]

I have been playing The Sims 3 Worlds Bundle...ever since Sims first came out I just loved playing all the different games. Plus in my opinion it is one of the best games to play on a PC. I bought the game from <a href="http://shopto.net/video%20games/pc/P...worlds-bundle/" target="_blank">ShopTo</a> quite good price as well.