Author Topic: What are you playing right now?  (Read 613936 times)

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Offline Colonol Dekker

  • HLP is my mistress
  • 213
  • Aken Tigh Dekker- you've probably heard me
    • My old squad sub-domain
Re: What are you playing right now?
Yeah I liked it, unrealistic as can be expected from a game but fun and definitively different at THAT bit.............#smokybacon
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
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Offline 0rph3u5

  • 211
  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: What are you playing right now?
and definitively different at THAT bit.............#smokybacon

... moral outrage aside ....

It's actually not just a single set piece that set Spec Ops - atlhough, yeah there is one pretty famous one in there, it's also very much tonally different from your standard 2000s military shooter - e.g. next to no Call of Duty-style "gun porn" - its actually and paradoxically fair to call it an anti-war game.
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

  • HLP is my mistress
  • 213
  • Aken Tigh Dekker- you've probably heard me
    • My old squad sub-domain
Re: What are you playing right now?
It's called "the line", which i take as  an obvious statement on how far the individual would go (or not go) in a high stakes combat situation.
I don't view it as an anti-war game any more than apocalypse now was an anti-war movie.
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
http://badges.steamprofile.com/profile/default/steam/76561198011784807.png

 

Offline Col. Fishguts

  • voodoo doll
  • 211
Re: What are you playing right now?
During the recent May 4 Star Wars sale on Steam I bought the TIE Fighter special editions, which contains the original DOS version, the Collector's CD-ROM version and the Win95 remake version.
To my shame I never really played any version of it until now, since when I got a decent enough PC back then, XvT just came out and so I played that A LOT and then later XWA.
But knowing the reputation of TIE Fighter, it was on my todo list for a long time, and the Collector's CD-ROM version is said to be the best (having a SVGA flight engine while keeping the iMUSE system).

It required some fiddling with the DOSbox config to avoid CPU speed issues and to get the joystick properly working, plus I installed VirtualMIDISynth and a proper sound font to replace the pitiful standard MIDI synth of Windows 7.

But now I can enjoy it in its full 640x480 glory:


Having played through the first battle, I can see why its praised as one of the best space sims ever... the soundtrack, the voiced briefings, the cloaked figure, everything oozes atmosphere. The gameplay is solid, basically the same as XvT/XWA with very similar controls.
And it's funny to see that for XvT they didn't remodel most ships from scratch, but instead recycled the 3d models from TIE fighter and slapped some textures on it.
« Last Edit: May 20, 2019, 01:19:06 pm by Col. Fishguts »
"I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it." - D. Lynch

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Offline Det. Bullock

  • 29
  • Madman in a box.
Re: What are you playing right now?
Just stay sharp with some of the later missions, I don't know if it was a bug with the difficulty level I chose or DOSbox settings but a couple of them had some serious AI bugs the last time I played.
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor

 

Offline Rhymes

  • Galactic Mediator
  • 29
  • Fatum Iustum Stultorum
Re: What are you playing right now?
It's called "the line", which i take as  an obvious statement on how far the individual would go (or not go) in a high stakes combat situation.
I don't view it as an anti-war game any more than apocalypse now was an anti-war movie.

I agree with this. I think a more accurate characterization of Spec Ops: The Line isn't that it's an anti-war game, but rather that it's an anti-Modern Military Shooter game. The focus of the game is about tearing down the power trip action hero fantasy of CoD-style videogames, and the anti-war appearance is more a result of the Modern Warfare tropes than anything else. There isn't even an actual war until the PC shows up and basically starts one--the game begins as a rescue op.
If you don't have Knossos, you need it.

“There was a button," Holden said. "I pushed it."
"Jesus Christ. That really is how you go through life, isn't it?”

 

Offline 0rph3u5

  • 211
  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: What are you playing right now?
I don't view it as an anti-war game any more than apocalypse now was an anti-war movie.

The discussion about on subject of Apocalypse Now being pro-war or anti-war is one over authorial intend (i.e. whetever what the author put into the finished product is supreme over what the audience takes away from it); Coppola himself did however state that the movie should be considered against the glorification of the Vietnam War, not against war itself. But he did not deny that an anti-war reading of the material was accurate.

It's called "the line", which i take as  an obvious statement on how far the individual would go (or not go) in a high stakes combat situation.

Which is a typical anti-war story narrative throughline and considering the ending(s) of Spec Ops: The Line -
Spoiler:
Turns out the commanding officer of the unit you were supposed to rescue has been dead for weeks. Every of his taunts over the radio was imaginary, the protagonist creating a villian in his mind as to allievate his guilt over the events as the unfolded. Meanwhile your superiors, or at least elements in your chain of command, have been coverly engaged in operations that to rather kill everyone than letting it get out that an American military unit basically turned into a totalitarian police state when left to its own devices (you known the whole buisness with the CIA stealing the water trucks).

For there it procceds depending on whetever or not you fired on civilians in previous missions and a few other triggers I don't recall, but then you have the option to either a) shoot yourself, b) surrender to the next group of US forces, c) murder the next group of US force to become the next dictator of the city. (and maybe I am forgetting something)
Anyway, the stress from the events and combat have damaged the protagonists psyche to the point on non-functionality
- I find that it comes very much down on the side of a common Consequentialist anti-war stance.

I agree with this. I think a more accurate characterization of Spec Ops: The Line isn't that it's an anti-war game, but rather that it's an anti-Modern Military Shooter game. The focus of the game is about tearing down the power trip action hero fantasy of CoD-style videogames, and the anti-war appearance is more a result of the Modern Warfare tropes than anything else. There isn't even an actual war until the PC shows up and basically starts one--the game begins as a rescue op.

Uhm actually -
Spoiler:
After the first encouners with the hostile US troops, it is revealed that they are basically operating their own little police state and oppressing the locals under the guise of controlling and rationing the essential supplies. You actually come across them during a raid on civilian housing at one point, as well as intel on the "Insurgents" that they are actually a local resistance group against the US forces, not a pre-existing terrorist group as which your team originally identifies them.



As to make adaptation of Modern Warfare-tropes a game more or less anti-war or pro-war, let is just be said that several lines of though on how to write "subversive" texts consider using the narrative motives and devices used to express the an idea in support of "authority" a valid method, e.g. by telling a fairly convential pro-war story but then denying the usual pay-offs as the story concludes.
« Last Edit: May 20, 2019, 03:05:10 pm by 0rph3u5 »
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

  • HLP is my mistress
  • 213
  • Aken Tigh Dekker- you've probably heard me
    • My old squad sub-domain
Re: What are you playing right now?
As with any subject, the opinion held by the beholder is true to themselves ;)
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
http://badges.steamprofile.com/profile/default/steam/76561198011784807.png

 

Offline 0rph3u5

  • 211
  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: What are you playing right now?
It's not a matter of "true", it's a matter of plausibility.

As the old saying goes: "the name of most dangerous, yet useless concept in the world is 'the Truth' "
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

  

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: What are you playing right now?
As with any subject, the opinion held by the beholder is true to themselves ;)

I mean if Apocalypse Now isn't an anti-war movie, what is?

 

Offline Novachen

  • 29
  • The one and only capella supernova
    • Twitter
Re: What are you playing right now?
I mean if Apocalypse Now isn't an anti-war movie, what is?

Dafur?  :)
Female FreeSpace 2 pilot since 1999.
Former Global moderator in the German FreeSpace Galaxy Forum.
Developer of NTP - A Multi-Language Translation Library Interface, which allows to play FreeSpace in YOUR Language.

Is one of my releases broken or not working? Please send a PM here, on Discord at @novachen or on Twitter @NovachenFS2, a public tweet or write a reply in my own release threads here on HLP, because these are the only threads i am still participating in.

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

  • HLP is my mistress
  • 213
  • Aken Tigh Dekker- you've probably heard me
    • My old squad sub-domain
Re: What are you playing right now?
A war movie ;)
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
http://badges.steamprofile.com/profile/default/steam/76561198011784807.png

 

Offline Det. Bullock

  • 29
  • Madman in a box.
Re: What are you playing right now?
Heart of Darkness was an anti-colonialist novel that argued that the sense of superiority of the European colonial powers over the "savage" people they oppressed was only an illusion, Apocalypse Now arguably has a similar message but applied to the war in Vietnam and US imperialism.
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor

 

Offline AdDur

  • 25
Re: What are you playing right now?
Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius and Equestria at War - mod to HoI IV.

 

Offline 0rph3u5

  • 211
  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: What are you playing right now?
Still Sekiro...

... while I found nice spots to farm Sugars (= consumable buffs) and slowly farm XP, I am still stuck at Long-Arm Centipede Giraffe or Genichiro Ashina.

Against Genichiro, its a matter of skill, I think - as manage to go through his first stage well enough but at the second stage I am always out of healing consumables, spirit emblems and resurrections. (Before you ask, I found the lightning reversal skill)
Against Long- Arm Centipede ... I don't know.
« Last Edit: May 23, 2019, 06:09:24 am by 0rph3u5 »
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 
Re: What are you playing right now?
I've slowed down on gaming a bit this past month, so now I'm mostly playing through Neverwinter's latest expansion, Undermountain. Which is actually keeping me quite busy.

I've got to admit I think Cryptic did a rather impressive work with it, it's essentially a soft reboot of the game that addresses a lot of long standing issues:
- outright ripping out some broken-ass stats & replacing them with others entirely (goodbye life steal, recovery, etc.)
- reworking virtually every class in the game - sometimes to a rather radical degree, and by extension properly flagging tank/dps/heal builds when queueing
- adjusting level/item scaling so that you don't roflstomp older content simply by being at the new max level
- making some dungeons & skirmishes actually require tanks & heals is refreshing
- rebalancing overpowered artifact powers
- the new campaign and areas are quite pretty and diverse, at least by Neverwinter standards
+ a bunch of other quality of life stuff here and there

Considering how disastrous the first level-bumping expansion was, I had some *serious* reservations, but the more I've been playing it, the more I like what I'm seeing. Getting rid of life-steal - and to a lesser extent recovery, was probably their boldest and wisest change due to how (if you'll forgive the pun) life-changing it is. Due to gear stat inflation, stacking these two was trivial and turned you into a perma-healing war machine that popped utlimates every 10 seconds.

 

Offline Det. Bullock

  • 29
  • Madman in a box.
Re: What are you playing right now?
Finished Red Faction (PC)
A rather nice B shooter, the geomod isn't used really that much and the protagonist is way too fragile whcih makes boos fights either frustrating or underwhelming (I ended up using rush & flamethrower on both of them hoping not to be one hit killed before getting in range).
It's a rather average game compared to what I expect from Volition, even the story is very throwaway which is kinda strange from the same people that made Freespace and Saints Row.
Funny that they recycled Ultor for Saints Row.
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor

 

Offline 0rph3u5

  • 211
  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: What are you playing right now?
More Sekiro

Managed to beat my roadblocks - spring-load axe FTW.
Now grinding the Ashina Dojo for Divine Confetti to defeat the Headless
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline DefCynodont119

  • 210
  • Ascended GTSC-Faustus Artist
    • Steam
Re: What are you playing right now?
(Kerbal Space Program)
Hey look what I made: MTV-Styled KSP Flags!




Link:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1740101814
« Last Edit: May 29, 2019, 01:21:04 pm by DefCynodont119 »
My gift from Freespace to Cities Skylines:  http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=639891299

 

Offline Det. Bullock

  • 29
  • Madman in a box.
Re: What are you playing right now?
Quake 4 (PC)
After the frankly disappointing Soldier of Fortune 2 it's nice to play the kind of polished Raven Software shooter I'm used to.
It's very no frills compared to their Star Trek and Star Wars games I grew up with but it's polished to a sheen visually and the gameplay is good enough.
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor