What games are you playing and why?

I discovered an Early Access 1st person roguelike game called "Malevolence: Sword of Ahkranox". It's quite playable, and I have yet to discover a bug, and so far I'm having some fun with it. The graphics are not great, but that's not usually why we play roguelikes. It claims to have an infinite world, which is not necessarily a good thing (it means that it's far too easy to get lost in it lol). Playing smart in the game pretty much consists of figuring out when to run away, and also figuring out how to know if the next square is trapped. Leveling is INCREDIBLY slow, and at least at the early stages of the game, fights are quite draining on your resources. Apparently there is a skill system, but I have not gotten a chance to experience it yet (I've played for over an hour without dying and I'm still at level 1, but then again that hour consisted of about a half-dozen fights, with me running away to lick my wounds when I was out of heals and mana.

As I said, it's early access, which means that there's not a lot too it yet. It starts by you talking with an npc and deciding how you will start the game (what booster gear you'll get to start with, and whether you'll start in the middle of nowhere or close to a town. Your first quest is to find that town but you get an arrow to help you. Towns have shops, and a tavern and guilds for mages, warriors and thieves, as well as a quest kiosk. Dungeons are literally littered all over the place. The map system is kind of weak at the moment: The immeciate mode is the only mode that actually shows you your orientation, local mode is good enough to show you if there are any dungeons, towers, cities or farms nearby, and world mode is totally incomprehensible (I'm not even sure what dot is me in world mode, let alone where anything of interest is).

So yes, it still needs work, but it is also still playable.

 

I have been playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Lost Alpha. It is pretty good, if ridiculously hard.

 

If you are in the credits, def put it on your resume! Amusing conversation point should anyone ever ask. At least, I'd find it amusing...

Anyway, on topic: Desktop Dungeons. While the first levels/maps were fun (got a few classes and races unlocked, ect) this game is currently in the "go die in a fire" category with me. I have tried to beat the Beginner Brigade Quest with the Wizard three times, and each time I fail. Two of the three were very frustrating because I have no idea what I could have done differently, aside from "guess which tiles to randomly explore at the start" better.

Apparently that is too much RNG for me.

So I went back to a nice builder game called Craft the World, which has a biome/world I haven't played yet. While some of the patch changes caught me by surprise, it continues to be a super polished experience. The fact that it is still being sold as an Early Access title-as opposed to a full release- surprises me.

 

You know, I'm much the same. The easy maps are actually hard.

 

Well, thanks for your post. The main thing I have been doing is sometimes killing enemies that were the same level as me. However, I've already rec'd the Popcorn Medal or achievement/whatever. And potions are something I only use for bosses, like 95% of the time.

On the Fighter I can do fine, likewise the cleric. The base wizard class has been the one that is a huge useless sack of crap for killing that level. Maybe I should stop being an Elf, and try a different race? My problem has been finding monsters that are level 4 or higher for a good third of the map, wasting all that potential healing and mana regen with no viable targets.

Should I just burn mana potions on level 4 creatures in the beginning? I tend to be level 9 when I hit the boss with Mage. I miss the fighter!

Edit to Add: I mean, phrases like "very, very low-rng game" are like red flags! I should rofl-stomp this game then!

 

Sadly, I was already doing the combat-fireball as last-hit thing. I don't have any extra glyphs unlocked yet, but have been spamming the byssps and endiswall spells as possible. I had not thought about exploring to save corners where possible yet- thanks!

I suppose I will have to try the game again tonight, now....

Edit: And I did, and I think I was able to win by regarding "wasted exploration tiles" as the lesser of any evils. Thanks for the advice, Moom!

 

Played some more of Crypt of the NecroDancer tonight. And I recorded some too. I locked the frame rate at 30FPS on FRAPS to keep sizes down, but I'll play around.

Have a look:

 

Been playing through Dragonfall a second time, with my str/throwing/charisma/shaman/control chromed out troll...

I think you're misremembering this mission. I say this for the simple reason that there's no matrix jack-in points in the entire mission.

 

Anywhoo, I've been playing (aside from NecroDancer):

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
It's taken me about 5/6 months to get around to this, and I've been pleasantly surprised by how much fun it can be. It has the vast majority of the same flaws that have plagued this last generation - obvious fighting 'arenas', shoot-the-coloured-person, etc. - but it is pretty compelling and rather fun. I'm struggling with the controls a bit, and I don't know if that's due to the DualShock 3, my own DualShock 3 or something else, but on the whole? Yeah, liking it.

Minecraft
More the PC version than the PS3 one, at least at the moment. The PS3 one cramps my fingers due to the poor triggers on the DS3 controller. But I got to the Nether in one of my longer saves, got lost, died and basically gave up, so I started a new save. Which I'll probably abandon and go back to the earlier one at some point.

Animal Crossing: A New Leaf
I know. I've upgraded my house a few times and I'm working on getting the costumes from the fortune cookies, but I have little desire to do anything than my daily run around, get the fossils, sit through Blathers' overly-long dialogue for the eight billionth time and then that's it. I really don't have much drive to sit down and do more.

Mario Kart 7
Wondering why this exists, truly. It's an okay racer but I prefer Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. Aside from the larger cast, it's just more fun. Plus one thing I hate about MK7 is how pretty much every homing weapon is unavoidable, and it's pretty much a miracle if you don't get hit with a Blue Shell at some point. But I still want MK8. I don't know why.

 

I'm still addicted to Malevolence, and still haven't gotten to level 2 lol. This is the very first roguelike where I've been really tempted to disable permadeath just so I can experience leveling up for once. (but I still haven't). An update -- they pushed out a small patch yesterday and my game started crashing at random -- no error messages, nothing to indicate what was wrong. I posted it in the Steam forums and they seem to have fixed it overnight. So bonus points for their (tiny) dev team (from what I hear, it;'s mainly one person).

BTW, I hate zombies. In the game, they can poison you, and I've been through entire fights where I was not poisoned even once. But my last zombie fight, the poison stacked on me 3 TIMES!!!! I think that next time I meet a zombie and I'm low on resources, I'm going to run. On the bright side, I did kill my first Ogre. It was probably dumb of me to try to fight him, but as it turns out, fireballs seem to work a lot better against them than melee. I've been told that until the magic system gets redone (which is coming soon, I hear), that magic is underpowered at higher levels. Like that's an issue if I can't even get to level 2 lol.

 

Yesterday I started playing Hero of the Kingdom a little game that I got in a bundle. It was a fun little game but I do mean it was little, I finished the game last night and played 6 hours. I am a very slow gamer, I hear that a game has 20 hours of play and I will still be playing it after 40 hours so this is a very short game. There is basically no replay value to the game as it is quite linear. Maybe in a few years I will have forgotten most of the game and might be willing to try it again but until then, why bother? I did complete all of the achievements for the game so no reason to continue playing for that. Still, all in all, I found the game to be fun. The game is very hard to describe, it has RPG elements but they don't let you assign points or anything. I would almost liken it to an adventure game that is mainly point and click.

 

I'm back into DOTA 2, especially now that the regional qualifiers for the 2014 International are going on. Man, these guys are good.

Me? I play against bots. And cheat. So there's no way I'm on that level, but at least I have fun!

 

So... Daynab pointed me towards Factorio. And then I found an LP of the hardest setting (presently, anyway) in the game. And this game looks like a grittier Anno to me, without any of that "magic" warehouse good teleportation bullshit. You actually HAVE to move all the components to the next part of the item creation process. With things like conveyer belts, trains, or logistics drones (may not be implemented yet). It is a crafting-cum-logistics game, with some RTS elements (power supply, tower defense, build robots to help you defend your base).

I've seen their trailer and later game bases... part of me just marvels at teh complexity of it all.

It isn't out on Steam yet, but you can buy a (very polished) Alpha direct from the company store. Steam is supposed to be coming soon.