What games are you currently playing?

[Riot]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwZtt4Q9CxY

Sound Shapes looks really creative and is getting great reviews! I like weird quasi-music games where stuff in the world makes phat beats. Seems fun to make your own levels/songs and share them/play others' as well.

[Fluffyumpkins]

Retro/grade comes out today. Looks neat-o.

Also going to pick up Dust: An Elysian Tail. Looks really cool, but I wish wish wish I didn't have to play a rabbit man.

[SoDeepPolaris]

CS:GO is out now.

[Riot]

CS:GO is out now.

Yeah I wasn't going to get it but for $13 bucks I figured why not. The beta was okay... I much prefer Source, but it is partially nostalgia and experience talking. CS:GO is a bit too CoD-ified but if it helps breathe a little life into the competitive community just because it's new, then maybe I'll try to play in ESEA for a season or two if I can get the ol' team together.


Buuuut Guild Wars 2 comes out next week so that'll keep me busy.

[Riot]

Guild Wars 2 is the prettiest online game I think I've ever played oh my gad. The main human city Divinity's Reach blew me away. Soooooo good looking.

Game is smooth and awesome so far! I love how unlike most MMOs lately where seeing other players makes you wince because they're going to be competition (stealing kills in hunting area, etc.), now everyone is so cooperative because area-wide quests are all public and you can just contribute and get a ton of rewards without having to squabble with party invites and crap. Even if someone helps you kill a mob or your kill theirs everyone gets credit. Plus the combat/skill system is super flexible.

The world v world v world has a very grand scale to it as well and there's a lot of server pride since the scoreboard updates every few minutes and you can see what keeps you need to go protect, or build trebuchets for. Everything just flows so nicely between the storyline, combat, quests, transportation, etc. that it's refreshing to play after so many buggy and rushed MMOs in the last decade.

My character looks just like Mila Kunis lol. I didn't like any of the male haircuts on any race so I HAD to make a hot babe. Here's some screenies of me just running around the newbie zone (the world is MASSIVE by the way and there's a huge emphasis on exploration with all these vista points you can unlock. A lot of them involve platforming and it's a lot of fun poking around). These screenshots don't do the actual game justice but here you go:













Even the map looks pretty. The whole aesthetic of painting brush strokes that is consistent throughout the game is gorgeous.

[Potter]

why do big online games like that still use texture sizes from 2004 and use diffusion and glow to hide it

[SoDeepPolaris]

why do big online games like that still use texture sizes from 2004 and use diffusion and glow to hide it

My uneducated guess is load times, larger customer base and the general server/client interaction of mmos.

[Riot]

MMOs are just so massive in scale that a lot of the trees/random buildings have slightly blurry textures so people with midrange PCs don't have like 10fps. I honestly think this has some of the best textures I've seen in any online game (i.e. not small mapped single player games), and like I said these screenshots don't really do it justice. Like in the first picture, the house in the left side of the picture looks pretty damn good and detailed from a pretty far distance away from it, and the main city's draw distance is pretty impressive.

edit: and yes, like SDP said, there are hundreds of people running around on a server in each zone, so they have to achieve a balance of graphics vs. performance. It looks pretty damn amazing for most MMOs I've seen, and I kinda enjoy the lighting effects throughout.

[Riot]

7 months. Over. Until Ultima Online 2 is announced.

edit: you butt I posted in response to your post and now you baleeted it

[SoDeepPolaris]

7 months. Over. Until Ultima Online 2 is announced.

edit: you butt I posted in response to your post and now you baleeted it

Ha, now this post looks dumb.

[Merk]

If I can't poop sock and camp a spawn for 12 hours straight in a non-instanced zone in order to increase my intelligence stat by 5 points then I don't want to play this game.

[ImuyumI]

I'm currently working on getting all my records back on Geometry Wars. I have Sequence still to go and that'll be a true bastard to go through and relearn all the spawns again.

[Ho]

I know I beat your King score. Who beat your other scores? I had already granted god status on the game as you sat atop all of my leaderboards. I want to know: WHO OWNS GOD?

[SoDeepPolaris]

Got into the Smite beta. It's pretty fun.

[ImuyumI]

I know I beat your King score. Who beat your other scores? I had already granted god status on the game as you sat atop all of my leaderboards. I want to know: WHO OWNS GOD?

I had a friend who wanted to put some full on effort on beating God. I told him I'd gladly accept him beating any of my other scores (He beat my Deadline [which I took back] & Sequence) and would try and improve on them if he beat any of them.

And, as I have said time and time again, I will bow down to anyone who can topple my Pacifist score.