It’s not Elf lands - it’s Nurn. And it is rather pretty: especially after the bleakness of the starting half of the game.
The gameplay is identical, though. It’s just a second area.
Currently enjoying a little Banjo Kazooie on the N64 
Unapologetic ME fan here, and this sums it up perfectly. The trilogy actually sets up well as trilogies go. The first had a good story but it’s feeling out its way with powers and guns, planet exploration and so on.
2 comes around the improves on everything. Biotics actually MEAN something, combat is better, storylines are still good, characterization is FANTASTIC.
The thing that struck me most about 3 was that it’s GORGEOUS. I spend half my missions just looking at the sky/things in the background than I did fighting. Plus the camera work and CG is improved. The ending is what it is. Not the best in the world, but I found it satisfying enough.
It’s most fun to play from 1 and do all three with YOUR character (not all renagade or paragon…make it you ya know?)
I’m currently playing Endless Legend. I got Beyond Earth but the UI pissed me off (it’s way too difficult to see things). I’m glad I bought the latter, but I’m going to wait until there’s some patches.
I picked up Dreamfall Chapters. I actually had to get caught back up to The Longest Journey and Dreamfall, but though I never actually finished Dreamfall, I decided to simply watch the Longplay videos for both titles. Chapters uses the episodic format style that I believe was pioneered by Telltale, along with giving the player notes that some decision will have consequences. What’s new, though, is that you can hover over each choice and listen to the character give their own rationale about that choice.
Now of course I know that the game ended on a largely tragic cliffhanger 8 years ago. Can we really hope they’ll tie up loose ends rather than leaving even more flapping in the wind?
Farted around a bit with Saints Row 2. Not impressed. The series didn’t get good until 3. 2 has little to nothing in the way of humor. The characters are mean. A spirit of ugliness pervades the whole thing. My daughter tells me 1 is much the same and the only reason to play either is to understand some of the storyline-based jokes in in 3 and 4.
I think with 1 & 2, they were still trying to be a poor man’s GTA. By “the Third”, they found their own niche.
I have been playing a bit of World of Tanks Blitz on my iphone. It is not at all bad, however the lag issues become really frustrating, and pretty quickly you see the pay to win issues come out. It could be that there are not enough people playing to get a good number of tanks in the same category, but in the level VI and above tanks, it is tedious to be constantly OSK by tanks that “we just dinged them” , " that one bounced " etc . The PC version has had the same issues for me. Maybe I am just crap at driving a tank.
Elite: Dangerous may be the thing that gets me fired or divorced. Just signed up. X-Wing / Tie fighter at least would need me to buy a joy stick, so I will be spared wasting hours on that.
Not playing it yet but excited to hear that Just Cause 3 is slated for 2015. There were some initial reports that it would heavily feature microtransactions but the studio has squashed those and said that it would eventually get DLC but no in-game microtransactions.
I’m playing Fantasy Life, which is a great 3DS game if you like cute grindy things. And the new Binding of Isaac.
Saying it uses the episodic format is a bit much. By all accounts, they’re making a full game with kind of arbitrary chapter breaks. It’s not like Telltale’s games where each episode is more or less a self-contained story that also furthers a season arc.
So Valkyria Chronicles got released on Steam yesterday and I was just getting into the groove with that one when Humble Bundle launched a new bundle with Blackguard in it. Bought that and now I have two turn-based games to play - even if one is WWII-inspired and the other a traditional RPG, they are still both engage the same TBS part of my brains. Was seriously contemplating buying the upcoming Dragon Age but these two should keep me busy long enough that I can resist the temptation and wait for the price to come down, 60 euros is a lot of money for me.
Since my 360 went “kablooie” I’ve been on my 3DS and laptop. On my 3DS I’ve been playing Fantasy Life, which is addictive as hell. On Steam I’ve been playing Planet Explorer,Star Conflict,Starboard,and a few other.
But hey if anyone has steam look me up [ Frost Castle ]
oh and for 3DS heres my FC= 5172-1827-4933
If you add me let me know on here and give me ur FC so i can add u too 
It’s officially coming in December!!
We have to start a Straighdope alliance. Gotta keep some good guys on my wing.
I’ve been trying to get back into Banished with that Colonial Charter 1620 mod, but it seems like the game goes all crashy once my town reaches a certain size. It’s too bad; my latest town is on the brink of greatness. I don’t know if it’s the mod itself that’s causing the problems, or if it’s my video driver, or a hardware issue.
Regardless, WoD comes out tomorrow, and that will take up most or all of my gaming time for the foreseeable future.
Cool, I have been playing quite a bit, and still terrible. Took a while to figure out all the controls etc , although just found this at the forums, seams to explain things pretty well ( I had no idea what all the codes meant on the ship upgrade)
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=34437
Be warned if you go to the site to download, it is one of those sites that also wants to install al sorts of bloat ware on your PC. You can just read it on line or look at the scrib site and read online. So the link above is OK, just goes to the forums, the link on the forum , well care is needed.
Anyway, I am still running around in my basic spaceship, had failed attempts at mining and my early trading was a disaster. However once I realized there was a lot of cash to be made from taking missions for ferrying stuff around or picking up goods, I started on that.
All went well until last night when I missed a deadline for a mission ( signed up for too many at the same time) , so I returned to the originating star port to pay the fine , but as I docked I was fiend again , because th 2 tons of cobalt I was carrying was now classified as stolen, so what was supposed to be a 1900 credit paying mission came out to be a net loss of 4,000. Then I left and decided to dump the stolen cobalt, but did it too close to the station, so that was another 400 fine. I then picked up a very lucrative ;'get us 4 tons of silver ’ mission. I had 3 tons ( 15K investment) but was then attacked and destroyed.
le sigh
I dot think they will have guilds/clans on release.
Bought Saint’s Row IV (at 75% off) and Wolfenstein: New Order (50% off) recently. Played a bit of SR4, it’s pretty much more of the same from The Third, but with superpowers (which kind of takes vehicles out of the game, since you can run and super-jump around the city much faster than you could possibly drive). Haven’t gotten around to playing Wolfenstein yet.
I take it back, there are friends and groups, didn’t really look at that yet
Playing Alien: Isolation feels like a classic example of game stepping on story.
“Eep, alien! So scary… hide, hide, hide… ok, its gone. So, ummm… where’s the key to this door? WTF? How do I get past here? Ok, aimlessly clicking on desks and tables trying to find something. Click, click… ok, really? That’s what I was missing? Christ almighty… ok, through this door and… eep! Alien!..”
Interesting article on Early Access games and success in their release as full titles:
That’s about what I expected from Early Access. I despise it and would love to see it replaced with something less horrible. I get that the infusion of cash during the middle of the development cycle is tempting for developers, but Early Access seems to be designed to irritate consumers and ultimately kneecap the game itself.
It would be great if this data leads to an overhaul or abolishment of the system, but I doubt it. As long as devs need money and customers are willing to pay a premium to be beta testers, it will stick around.
For me, seeing that a game is Early Access is a strong strike against it. I expect lots of bugs and missing features, followed by a sloppy or no release.