What are people playing lately?

[wobblysauce]

.. addon or DLC.. but ok

[Rots]

An online rally game that could auto generate tracks would be awesome

[AstrO]

An online rally game that could auto generate tracks would be awesome

That would be awesome. Just image a rally game on the scale of Just Case 2 (or even GTA4) where it could randomly generate tracks.

[petey]

It wouldn't be an impossible task...just need to get a developer to come up with the idea haha. Because you could just use the same physics engine they already have in games like richard burns and dirt, then just create the track generator around these and have some way of implementing online.

[Mr.Ferret]

remind me in 5 years when im somewhere in the games industry and ill make it so :P

[petey]

Write yourself a stickie note...

[DarrenM]

I had 52% completion in JC2 when I put it down. 35-40 hours or something ridiculous. Controls were better on PS3, but for $50 on steam I went PC instead.

Finished Assassins Creed 2 the other day. Good fun, but seemed a fair bit easier than the last one (I couldn't get past the 12 templar fight at the end).

Now tossing up whether to finish off Brothers in Arms hells highway or play Akham Asylum which I bought in the Christmas steam sale last year and played for about 5 mins.

I've also ordered Heavy Rain and pre-ordered Red Dead Redemption (for $60 from zavvi.com) and Demons Souls.

in my opinion were in another golden age of gaming. Too many AAA titles to get through.

[Santaria]

I had 52% completion in JC2 when I put it down. 35-40 hours or something ridiculous. Controls were better on PS3, but for $50 on steam I went PC instead.

Finished Assassins Creed 2 the other day. Good fun, but seemed a fair bit easier than the last one (I couldn't get past the 12 templar fight at the end).

Now tossing up whether to finish off Brothers in Arms hells highway or play Akham Asylum which I bought in the Christmas steam sale last year and played for about 5 mins.

I've also ordered Heavy Rain and pre-ordered Red Dead Redemption (for $60 from zavvi.com) and Demons Souls.

in my opinion were in another golden age of gaming. Too many AAA titles to get through.

I disagree with the golden age bit. I think maybe 4-5 years ago was golden age, now it seems it's all about sequels and re-hashes. Fair enough I'm back playing World of Wankcraft, but it's actually fun again for me. I find it very hard to play a brand spanking new game for 10 minutes and the try to justify to myself, that it's $100 well spent, when rarely it is.

I believe developers need to start stepping outside the square again, or maybe it's reached a wall and this is all it is until there's a new interface/control system? Project Natal?

[ysu]

You're just getting older, Santa. After a while there aren't really brand new games out there, nearly everything is a re-iteration of something.
It can still be done very well, tho.

Oh, I think it's the simulation area which could actually soar ahead, very soon. The power in the computers nowadays is really reaching the insane levels...and that could be used for accurate AI and other simulations, like the rigsOfRods-sort; kinda 'brute force' physics, using the insane computer resources rather than a clever modelling of a small part of reality.

[petey]

Your not wrong on the cpu, this i7 is insanity compared to the pc's I've been using for the last few years. rendering times etc. are ridiculously quick.

I use a guitar amp simulator called "Guitar Rig", on my old pc running two of these on high res would max it out, I could run possibly 4 in low res. But would often get glitches and spikes.

So far I've run 6 just for the sake on high res and it doesn't glitch at all. I think usage went around 40% cpu at worst.

[DarrenM]

You're just getting older, Santa. After a while there aren't really brand new games out there, nearly everything is a re-iteration of something.

Yep, there are rarely new genres created and when there are they get copied to death. We've had era's of platform clones, RTS clones, FPS clones. Now we have God of War clones, open world clones etc. There have always been plenty of sequels, so not much has changed there.

The difference for me is the number that are done well and stand out enough to be compelling in their own right, but maybe it's just that there are a lot that appeal to me right now. I think the late 90's early 00's on PC was the last time there were more games I wanted to play than I had time for.

I don't think I've ever payed $100 for a game. Aus RRP is a joke. Between cdwow, zaavi, sendit, steam etc I rarely find myself spending more than $60-70 for a new release. If I can't get them cheap then I just wait for a price drop.

[DarrenM]

Started on Demon's Souls last night. I'm loving it so far. Reminds me of exploring forts/Ayleid ruins in Oblivion (which was my favourite part), but with a better combat system.

Having some difficulty makes for a nice change after the stupidly easy RDR.

[ysu]

pc?

[DarrenM]

Sorry, should have mentioned. It's PS3 only.

[youtube] [/youtube]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/ ... mons-Souls" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Dan]

Just scored a free xbox 360 from Tofuboi so I grabbed a copy of Forza 3, a bunch of fun online!

[richo]

Back to Team Fortress 2 , been playing some version of team Fortress for the last 10+ years, you would think i would be sick of 2Fort after all this time but i likes what i likes.

[Rots]

I've returned to playing Neverwinter Nights. 10 years later I still enjoy it.

[DarrenM]

some difficulty

HA

Getting into it a bit further I think a better description would be a 3rd person RPG Ghosts & Goblins. It's all structured in stages with big boss battles at the end. Die and you go back to the start with the stage reset. The stages are all FPS style point A to point B with multiple paths, hidden areas, doors to unlock to form shortcuts for future attempts etc. You can redo the stages after completing it to collect souls, but without the boss demon.

The difficulty is that there is no XP based leveling. You pay for stat increases (and equipment repairs/upgrades) with souls collected by killing enemies and the cost goes up a lot every point you upgrade.

Trouble is, you have to go to the central hub to upgrade and you can only do at the start or end of the stage. When you die you lose all souls collected unless you can get back to the spot you died without dying again. Of course, if you died in a certain spot there's a fair chance you'll die again because having no souls you can't improve your stats before making the next attempt

[Bauer]

I've returned to playing Neverwinter Nights. 10 years later I still enjoy it.

The best of the lot even though I never finished it. Tried Dragons Age Rots? That was good too from what I played.

Im still into DIRT. Im loving the career mode and the most fun so far was doing Pikes Peak A/B in a Mitsubishi FTO. Combining all 3 Pikes Peak in to 1 hill climb will be awesome when I unlock it as I did "C" the other night in an Audi Quattro but not A,B & C as one run yet.

[Mr.Ferret]

Bought the new arma expansion, played a little yesterday, definitely an improvement, in single player terms at least. Dunno if ill find time to go back to my usual online like i did in vanilla arma...

[Rots]

I've returned to playing Neverwinter Nights. 10 years later I still enjoy it.

The best of the lot even though I never finished it. Tried Dragons Age Rots? That was good too from what I played.

Im still into DIRT. Im loving the career mode and the most fun so far was doing Pikes Peak A/B in a Mitsubishi FTO. Combining all 3 Pikes Peak in to 1 hill climb will be awesome when I unlock it as I did "C" the other night in an Audi Quattro but not A,B & C as one run yet.

Yep, got it for xmas. It's what stopped me playing Neverwinter for a while. I finished DA once with an elf mage and am about half way through my second turn with a noble human warrior.

Boy was I disliked being an elf and a mage in that game! But I turned the world around to my point of view by the end of it.

[NeilPearson]

Been playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadows of Chernobyl the last few days. today i downloaded a mod called "S.T.A.L.K.E.R complete 2009 mod" which updates the game quite heavily, better A.I. fixes alot of ingame bugs, changes the weather, completely changes the gfx of the game. more detailed textures plus a whole heap of changed effects for the anomalies. its pretty decent. just hangin out to try it on full settings, it runs well on the 7600GT i have atm.

Also before i was playing GTA4 before, its good on PC now, it ran really well on mine. Updated the weather and a few other things. looks amazing. Maybe schuey should try it now :P

and of course iRacing

[Rots]

I modded my copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R last year and was impressed. One mod had random nuclear blowouts which, if you didn't find shelter, would kill you. They look and sounded awesome. Also unlocked a lot of different mutated beasts to fight and made the game more of a sandbox type of RPG/FPS.

Oh, it also unlocked vehicles so you could drive them which was cool.

[ysu]

...we were walking past ps3 sales every week and were asking each other with my better half "shouldn't we buy one?" ...so we finally thought: it seems we worry too much and in fact we'd like one; we should just buy one

So I'm playing Red Dead Redemption now It's really good, great atmosphere, good fun so far.
I'll prolly think about that DemonSouls now Seems a bit old-school eh?

by the way my biggest gripe is the controller; it's useless compared to a mouse

Question about it tho; it runs in half-HD only, while the ps3 itself (main screen) is full HD. Is it a config somewhere? Or it's set in concrete as-is? Or game dependent?

[Shaun]

some games dont run full res but in the main ps3 options you set the optimum res i think it is for your display, think its display settings