homepage Forums SimHQ Community Community Hall What are you currently playing these days?

Just now started "Titan Quest II - Early Access Game". Playing "Normal Difficulty". Titan Quest II is not expected to a finished product for a year.

Price marked way down for Early Access buyers. Nominally, they are automatically taking our play data and will use it to modify the game over the next year.

Haven't cheated yet (as frequently mentioned, I like to "mod" games using mods I make "with my own hands").

So far, so good. The Graphics are far advanced over the original Titan Quest (I have hundreds of hours in original Titan Quest).

Had to take a break due to work, but I'm back and jumped in to Battlefield 6. I was originally gonna wait for reviews, but got gifted a copy. It's alright and has some fun maps and modes, but I always seem to end up on teams that don't want to win or use any coordination/teamwork. It's a problem with most games these days.

War of Rights has an October event where it's just a zombie wave survival game. Try to fortify Burnside's Bridge, if you fail that you have a fighting withdrawal to Pry House and one more chance at Pry grist mill. So it's the same maps as the regular game, but nighttime and they're all connected, so you have to run from one location to the next.
Something about a horde of zombies coming after you while trying to reload a slow muzzle loader really gets the heart pumping. A Sharps rifle is faster, but still not fast enough and eventually someone has to fix bayonets and advance to slow them down so everyone else can continue to pour on the fire. It's hectic and chaotic fun. Runs into the same problem as BF6 though where often people don't seem to want to coordinate to win. Had one round where it looked like everyone pulled together and we had a great plan for the first several waves, then some artillery joined and decided we were easier targets and they just TK'd everyone and wrecked our fortifications.

I commend you for playing something new. I am just playing my usual sims, XPlane, Il2 1946, Falcon 4 BMS 4.38, WOFF.

Still playing Stalker 2 and Borderlands 4 in addition to my long term installed games like DCS and IL-2 Stalingrad.

DCS

MSFS 2020 (mostly)

MSFS 2024

Stalker 2 pisses me off.

Every time I go back and try to play the game, something else gets on my nerves. This is _NOT_ Stalker 1: Shadow of Chernobyl quality. Is SOC one could clear an area, and be pretty sure the area was going to stay clear for a reasonable amount of time.

NOT SO IN STALKER 2.

I'm on a mission where I have to find something in the Slag Heap, and I can sit in a spot and shoot for an hour, ice 50 enemies, and they continuously respawn. This is disgusting and stupid. This is NOT a Stalker game. This is arcade garbage.

If I want to camp a spot and waste everyone, they should stay dead. Not get back up, like zombies rising out of the ground, next to their former body. What the hell?


Medkit spamming, respawning enemies, AI that ignores underbrush and has perfect aim...


Seriously. Why does this game suck so much?


The first games were so much better.

Commandos: Origins.

I was a massive fan of the original Commandos games: Behind Enemy Lines, Beyond the Call of Duty, Commandos 2 (the jewel in the crown) and Commandos 3. C:O is a great continuation of the series, with enough added elements to make it feel fresh, while still being familiar enough for an "old hand" like me to jump straight in. Graphics are good enough, and the maps this time around are huge. I see people completing the game in around 85 hours, which is great for a single-player game today. It is hard enough to be challenging at times, too. I'm having lots of fun. Sure, some of it is because of my nostalgic attachment to the old games, but this is still a good game. It's a great counterpoint to the extremely fast-paced shooters most younger people seem to be playing today. It requires more thinking and runs at a much slower pace.

The much touted “A-Life” enemy generator is far from perfect but hopefully it will be improved. It was actually much worse when the game was released last year.

Yeah, A Life isn't what it was, nor what I was expecting, and this is the number one thing I want at this point. they have tweaked it so it's better than at release, but still more smoke and mirrors than an actual A Life system. All in all I really like Stalker 2

Some time has passed and this is what has been in my rotation

-- Borderlands 4. Eagerly anticipated and picked up at release. Have dropped 272 hours and that's one hour more than I dropped in to BL3. Has it's flaws, but the game play is the best in the series for me.

-- Call to Arms Gates of Hell Ostfront. A real-time tactical wargame in the mold of Company of Heroes and Men of War. Has a number of modes, some really good historical missions, and a sort of dynamic campaign. Extensive order of battle, interesting mechanics. My Combat Mission replacement.

-- RaceRoom Racing Experience. This one makes it's 412th straight appearance in my list haha. Ranked leaderboards mostly. Love this stuff. Zoom zoom.

-- Automobilista Motorsport Simulator 2. Picked up some recent DLC. This racing sim is great, and especially for drivers like me who love classic Formula 1 and open wheel in general

-- Le Mans Ultimate. A relatively new sim, hiding out in early access. Feels great to drive, looks superb, but has limited content at this stage. Some of us in the racing forum are attempting to run a co-op race, where each driver runs a stint, saves it to hand to the next driver, who runs his own stint, but we haven't actually done it yet.

-- Way of the Hunter. Good hunting game, which I prefer in most ways to Call of the Wild. Recently picked up some new DLC rifles and spending time hunting in beautiful Finland

Purchased Arc Raiders and must say I'm really enjoying it.

Extraction shooter, which really isn't my cup of tea at all, as this is the first I've played, but I think they have really scored a hit with this one, well with me at least.

I realise there is a lot of hype surrounding it at present as it has just been released and I usually wait untill all the fuss has died down before I purchase a game, you know, checking it out, doing a little YT watching an the like but I was looking for a new game to get into, especially an open world type, which I enjoy, and this looked good with the general research I'd done.

The game looks, plays and sounds fantastic, which is pretty rare these days.

Gameplay is sound, with a clear goal set in mind, eg: Missions to do, loot to find, goals to check off. Maps are big enough, but not so big that you get lost in them and it leaves you to explore and find stuff at your leisure.

Sounds are exeptional, from the enemies (Arcs) to footsteps, people shooting, distant world sounds are just so great and puts you right in the world, especially with headphones on.

PvP, I realise it isn't everyones bag, me also, but mostly you can avoid that and TBH the most encounters I've had have been amicable, most folk are just picking their way through missions and gathering items to craft a specific item. Obviously it has PvP elements so always tread with caution, which, I think makes it all the more exiting to play.

I picked the base game up for £26 on CDKeys which you activate on Steam, for that price it really is a no brainer.

Mick.

I wish they'd make these extraction shooters first person view.

Third person really kills immersion for me with a shooter.

I haven't bought a new game since the Ghost of Tsushima PC port when it came out last year. Consequently, I played the crap out of it for a good while and went back to alternating with various Total War historical games. I bought a new custom rig from Cyberpower back in April since the previous 2020 rig I ordered from them could not be updated to Windows 11.

I got nervous that prices would go up with the tariff wars, but I should have waited since they actually went down for a while. I loaded Ghost back up on the new system and have been playing it for a week or two with the goal of getting through the main game without dying once on normal. My sword fighting got better since I figured out a mouse/keyboard setting that worked well enough to get by.

Then, just this weekend, I got the urge to go back and play Medieval War II TW, which I haven't touched in probably over 10 years. I still had the original disks, but at some point, I went ahead and bought the digital Steam version just to have something I didn't have to search for patches and could be sure would run. It came out in 2006, and I had forgotten how clunky the controls were compared to the newer TW games, so I had to force myself to put up with it for at least 20 turns. However, once I had done that and gotten used to its idiosyncrasies, I started having a blast playing it. I've had a couple of those "just one more turn" sessions that went to 3 or 4 AM in the last few days.

I keep hoping that Creative Assembly will come out with a Med III before I die. I have no interest in their fantasy games nor bronze age stuff like Pharaoh. The last TW game I bought was 3 Kingdoms, and I put in maybe 3 or 4 hours of playtime, but then never touched it again.

Cheers

Why do you think Three Kingdoms failed to grab your interest? Was it the ancient China historical setting?

Yes, it was the period and the setting plus the fact that since the 14th century novel "Romance of the 3 Kingdoms" had a lot of fantacy elements that get mixed in with real history, the developers decided to allow the player to play the game in either a straight historical mode or with the overdone fantasy elements of hero characters being able to defeat hordes of soldiers. That's mostly what CA featured in all the preview videos. Even though I chose the historical mode to play, I just couldn't shake the feeling of playing a fantasy game. Maybe I'll give it another try someday. It certainly was a pretty game visually.

Cheers

As previously mentioned, Sudoku Universe. One or two puzzles per day most days. Its for brain health, not for fun. Steam shows 22.5 hrs last two weeks in this version of Sudoku. I take no notes, use no hints, etc. I just "look" until I see the next number in my mind and enter it. If I make a mistake, I clear the board and start over (my punishment). I'm still on "Medium" difficulty -- which is hard at times (for me ).

RPGs I'm skipping around. Replayed Fallout 3, 4, and New Vegas (previously reported). Did half of Baldurs Gate 1 (towards doing BG2 and BG3) and lost interest in BG1 a week ago.

Now a fresh start (last played years ago) on Neverwinter Nights "Enhanced Edition". 8.3 hours last 3 days. As usual, Wife is Heroine and I am the "God" watching over her. Being her God justifies my "cheats".

Of course, fantasy elements in TW games is nothing new. Remember the elite “hero” units in the original TW Shogun? You could mow down hundreds of standard ashigaru with a small unit of 4 ninjas. lol.

I finally bought Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 yesterday since it was on sale and I’ve put in about 2 hours so far.

You shouldn't have told me that... now I have to battle my impulse to grab it before the offer ends

I sometimes buy an off-the-wall game to see a particular feature that I am interested in. A few weeks ago I bought Death Stranding because I was interested in seeing how the landscape is in gametime. (It is excellent, some of the best I've ever seen.)

The game is heavy on the cutscenes. In the first two hours (typically two hours is allowed before your opportunity to refund the game disappears) I reckon I watched more than 1 hour of cutscenes. Very heavy on cutscenes as I said, however I wasn't too interested in that, as good as it is. I wanted to experience the environment and I was not disappointed with that outcome.

As far as the game goes, it is very, very strange. The second time I went out into the gameworld to accomplish a mission, I had a bottle strapped to the front of me that contained a pre-natal baby. Strapped to my back was the body of my dead in-game mother.

The fetus is there because it is sensitive to the dangerous ghosts that haunt the landscape. My mother had to be taken to an isolated crematorium before the body became one of the ghosts.

Very, very weird.

Yeah.... we got that with the previous two sentences....