Nope. You *get *to play *Morrowind *first. I really enjoyed it when I played it - it has some pretty unique locations and lore for a fantasy game. There are some mods that can really soup up the graphics and tweak all sorts of gameplay out there, but I had plenty of fun playing the vanilla version.
After another bad loss on Starcraft 2 vs. a human, I’ve decided to just install Bioshock 2 already. Back to Rapture tonight!
I’ve been replaying Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines again. And I just started Avadon: the Black Fortress for the first time.
My brother in law just gave us Rocksmith, which I haven’t heard much about but is a rhythm game where you plug in your actual guitar, and I’ve been home sick for two days, so I said, what the hell, I’ll learn how to play bass. (I’ve played a teeny tiny bit of acoustic guitar, years ago. Never picked up a bass. Thanks to my husband’s Guitar Acquisition Syndrome I’m spoiled for choice.)
I was doing really well, too. And then the game realized I’d gotten a little cocky and decided to correct it.
It’s an interesting sort of scaling - it NEVER lets you just rest on your laurels or perfect something, it’s always just a little titch harder than you can really handle. And if you do badly enough it drops down a difficulty level, which is sort of hilarious when suddenly the four colors of blocks heading towards you resolve into two. But I’ve actually learned quite a bit about, you know, playing the bass.
My fingers hurt like fucking hell, too. I was really doing well despite what I’m pretty sure are bone-deep blisters up in there and then it was all “Hey, girl, let’s play slides!” The minigame should have had you just plug in a cheese grater instead.
Thanks. I’ve been hankering to try the ES series for a while.
Going through withdrawal since the Company of Heroes 2 beta is over and the game isn’t coming out until the end of June. I tried firing up Total War Shogun in the mean time and considering getting Metro: Last Light when it comes out (next week I think).
Pinball FX2 has just been added to Steam. It’s free to DL the main game, but the pinball tables are $9.99 for a 4-pack(on sale for $8.99 currently). I used to play some pinball at the arcade near my school, and I’ve had that itch to play High Speed again for quite some time.
Anyone here into pinball on your PC, and if so, what game, & what tables do you play? FX2 is GREAT visually, but I think they might have gone overboard on the effects, and the ball gets lost on some of the tables. I’m also not wild about the 4-packs, as I’d prefer just paying $2.50, or even $3, per table rather than buying a four-pack for $10 just to get the 1 or 2 tables I really want.
Here are some tables:
Ghost Rider
Secrets of the Deep
I just finished Portal 2. It was fun. I recommend it for people who like puzzles.
Now I’m gameless. 
I’m looking forward to GTA V. I hope it plays as good as it looks.
Smurf village and zynga poker
I’ve been playing the remake of Avernum, by the same company.
I’m a little underwhelmed by Oblivion. It has the same “go anywhere, do anything” openness as Fallout 3+, but also the same slightly unsatisfying combat. Plus, there are no decent weapons to buy.
IIRC, all the best weapons in Oblivion are to be found by completing quests. There are quest-giving Daedra statues all over the countryside, and some of those reward you with good weapons on quest completion. The bit I always found pissing off about Oblivion’s weapons was that the magical ones always ran out of charge in very few uses, and refilling them was a pain.
Playing Metro: Last Light. Only part way in but it’s a safe guess that if you enjoyed 2033, you’ll enjoy Last Light since it’s essentially the same game.
I don’t mean that in a bad way and they did expand some things but the core game (corridor shooter, monsters, stealth, Russian despair) is still what you’ll remember. The plot is a direct continuation of 2033 with you continuing as Artyom.
How do I activate the statues? I’ve run across tons of them but they don’t seem to do anything much.
Hmm. I don’t think there ought to be tons. The ones I’m talking about are usually in some obscure countryside spot, with a few people standing around them or praying to them. Typically you need to bring the statue some sort of tribute, and usually (a specific) one of the worshippers will tell you what the tribute is. maybe just activating the statue itself also did this. I’m a little fuzzy on the details.
I’ve got this trainer for GTA IV on the PC. It gives you access to every variable in the game. You can unlock the whole map, add health, armor, lower wanted levels, raise wanted levels, set the weather, set the time, spawn vehicles and objects, spawn body guards, spawn rampaging pedestrians, play as any character in the game, etc.
And there’s these cool few physics features, where you can launch your character into the air, according to how you set the forces on three axes … and another where you can grab onto a car driving by, and when you let go - that launches you a hundred feet in the air, flying into buildings, bouncing all over the place … and another that speeds up your vehicle to, like, 100 times normal to the point that if you balance things just right you can fly a motorcycle around Liberty City.
I’ve invented a game, within the game, that amuses me. I call it Ricky Golf. I start by spawning as Ricky Gervais instead of Nico. Then I warp to the top of the Rotterdam Tower (Empire State Building). Then I see how many launches into the air it takes me to plunk Ricky into water around the big globe thingie, or into the pond in Central Park (or whatever it’s called).
I could play it for hours … watching Ricky going bouncing down Broadway, taking out pedestrians and careening off cars. It’s much more fun than playing the actual game.
(in response to Really Not All That Bright)
It’s been a long time since I played Oblivion so some of this might be inaccurate.
If you are looking for the Daedric shrines scattered across Cyrodiil, remember that Daedra worship is illegal, so the shrines are usually a bit off the beaten path. You can find them all by exploring, but you can also learn some of their locations by asking around for rumors. These shrines should have some worshipers milling about, with a big statue of the Daedric god nearby.
As an aside, Oblivion has this weird leveled-item system, where you’ll find better items and harder enemies as you level up. This system is meant to give you a challenge as you progress, but the actual effect is that you never get to feel like a total bad-ass because you’re always fighting tougher and tougher enemies.
Likewise, chests will have better items, enemies will use, and drop, better gear, and shops will have better weapons, armor, and spells, but only when you reach higher levels. If you complete a quest when you are at a low level, and receive a unique weapon as a reward, it will be a lower-leveled version of that weapon.
So that cool sword you get at level 5? That will become increasingly weaker compared to the stuff you find later in the game. If you do the same quest when you are at level 35+, you would get the most powerful version of that weapon. Of course by that time all the bandits will be using glass and daedric weapons and armor so you could just loot high level gear off of them instead.
Other than this ridiculous system, Oblivion is really fun, and I should probably actually finish it at some time! Skyrim is really great, too.
Well, you can since the magic/enchantment system is hilariously broken and it becomes trivial to create gear that will let you destroy everything.
I’ve been playing Metro: Last Light. Normally, I wouldn’t go in for a shooter, but this game whose predecessor I had never heard of came free with a video card I bought recently, so I figured it was a showcase piece for the abilities of the card. So far, my 660 GT is purring along nicely, with no slowdowns. Seems to take longer these days for new games to make my system obsolete.
Anyway, I was drawn into its gloomily Russian sense of doom, but I was frustrated by a number of things, including the fact that there’s no quicksave feature and that some levels are designed so that you have to just put invisible barriers in front of places it looks like you should be able to get to. But I was pretty well into the game playing on Easy when I realized that I was supposed to be making moral choices, like in Deus Ex, because otherwise it hinted that the creature that I was chasing would learn bad lessons.
So, I’ve restarted in order to go through all the human-occupied levels doing non-lethal takedowns. At first this was frustrating, because you couldn’t drag corpses away and you couldn’t quick save. But eventually I got the hang of the idea that you have to break or disable lights. And I’m getting swifter at repeating successful patterns up to the point where I screwed up. Still, I’d rather have a quicksave.