Until recently Fallout 3, but currently Europe Universalis 3 w/ the In Nomine expansion on top of the Napoleon’s Ambition expansion( necessary ), beta patched and with the Magna Mundi Platinum 1.4 mod. Bit of a mouthful :). But if you’re going to play EU 3 at all ( and it’s definitely a niche game ), I wouldn’t recommend any other way.
I adore the EU games and Paradox games generally, for all their flaws. As the duchy of Burgundy just fought a nearly 7 year war with France 1462-1468 and won big - a rarity ( France is generally a dangerous collossus ). Quite a bit of luck on my side, but still very satisfying.
yea I know they’re not about graphics, but I only have a laptop in this country (would have cost more than the price of my desktop to have it shipped to me) so I don’t really bother installing any new games. If it can’t run smoothly I’d rather just not play. Running smoothly at super low graphics settings is acceptable, just so long as it runs smoothly!
Any particular thing bug you? They have a steep learning curve to be sure and they’re fairly heavy on the micromanagement as such things go ( better than Victoria, though ). Beyond that they certainly aren’t flawless, the fact that I use a ( pretty major ) mod is proof enough of that.
But IMO nothing else comes close to their depth as historical strategy games.
Well, other than all DRM being horrible, not really – as far as DRM goes, ME was a pretty painless install/play for me. There’s a small percentage of people whose configurations + DRM completely trash the game for them, so you might want to check the official tech support forums to see. Great game, by the way!
I’m almost done playing it for the first time. I never played the tabletop VtM game, so I can’t really compare the two, but…well…it’s a game by Troika, therefore it’s good. I’m not thrilled with the combat (I like turn-based combat), and once you get into missions they tend to kinda be on rails, but it’s still well worth playing.
wow, that sounds pretty good. Loved the only Troika game I ever played (Arcanum) and was a huge fan of the first two Interplay Fallout games. I’d definitely be willing to give VtM-bloodlines a chance. It’d probably even run on my laptop, hehe (didn’t realize the Source engine was almost five years old already)
Oh, I should note that apparently the released version was buggy as hell. I’m running it with the official patch and the most recent unofficial patch put out by Wesp.
linky? I live in Japan and usually can’t wait for things to come, so I order games online, then just download a pirated version and play that. Come to think of it I did that back in the States, too. I have a binder full of games I’ve never even put in my disc drive… Actually, that’s not technically true. I uninstall the game after I play through it, then if I ever reinstall it (like, say with NWN2 or Black&White2) I just grab the disc instead of redownloading. Does that make me weird?
My two newest games (all on PS3): *Call of Duty: World at War *and Shaun White Snowboarding. Also in the not to distant past, I’d been playing Midnight Club: Los Angeles.
Mostly, my time lately has been with an old favorite – *MLB The Show 08 *… I like it so much, I’m not sure if I’ll pony up for the 09 version.
I’m still waiting for Fallout 3 mods to come into their own (some of the stuff is really good already, though) so I started up a new game of Oblivion. With FCOM. My god that was a pain in the ass to set up but it is such a huge improvement.
I’ve also been playing a bit of the Quake Live beta. Ah, playing good 'ol Quake 3 brings back memories of my high school computer lab.
STILL playing Dragon Warrior 3…man, it’s a long one, and DW4 is even longer…it’s all part of my NES-a-day challenge, which is why I usually stick to games without passwords or saves.
also replayed through Castlevania: Symphony of the Night earlier this week. My favorite game of all time; perfectly constructed.
Also been dabbling around in Portal, another great game.
I’ve been playing FIFA '09 for the Nintendo DS. It’s probably the best soccer game I’ve ever played, a huge improvement from FIFA '08 and FIFA '06. '06 moved smoothly, but it had a very video game feel to it, as players could immediately turn in any direction without transition time, and steals were basically one player slamming into another. '08 was more realistic, but the animation was very choppy, which made for a sloppy playing experience. '09 finally gets it right, as the players move realistically as they switch directions, they confront each other realistically for the ball (approach angle matters a lot now), there’s an option to do fancy moves to try to maintain possession, the touchscreen is used only for PKs and corners, and the animation is pretty much smooth as silk.
I don’t think they can improve much on this version, as they’re probably pretty close to the NDS’s hardware limit. I’d love to be proven wrong, though!
(as a random note, I find it vaguely amusing that soccer games are my favorite video sports games, even though I never follow professional soccer outside of the World Cup and haven’t played the sport myself in 10 years or so)
I’ve just started playing EVE Online again, after giving it a brief try a few years ago. I’m rather intrigued by the shakeup going on in the game right now, even though I’m way too new to worry about getting mixed up in all of it right now.
( France is generally a dangerous collossus ). Quite a bit of luck on my side, but still very satisfying.