What video games have you played lately?

[Geo Ghost]

a lot of MW3

2nd worst game I've ever owned and played in recent years. Bloody awful and a sorry excuse for a supposed 'triple-A title'.
If this is what is getting ranked in the "top games charts" these days, then the gaming industry is certainly dying.

[rbos86]

An oldie from 2005: GTA San Andreas Awesome!

[SquireJames]

And for a small update on my gaming activities, i've been playing Traffic Giant, Industry Giant II and Anno 1503 Gold recently. I forgot how much I enjoyed Traffic Giant and I am reminded why I felt let down by Cities in Motion. In Traffic Giant, sure a bus route might get busy but you make money (albeit slowly) and can buy more buses to cope with it etc. In Cities in Motion, buses make NO money, and even a small route will end up with thousands of people waiting, which no amount of buses (especially in 1930 when your bus carries 12 people) can carry. The only thing I do like about Cities in Motion are the way that Subways and Elevated Rail can be built, and that tramlines don't necessarily have to follow the road. Other than that, I greatly prefer the way Traffic Giant does things.

Ditto Anno 1503 really. I have 1701 which I never really liked; too cartoony, and 1404 which whilst good is almost too hard (you used to be able to grow certain crops anywhere, wheat being the big one, now you can't unless you plant seeds, and there are a limited number of "slots" on an island for what seeds will grow, so you either kneecap an island by being forced to use it for hemp or wheat or something else important but not exactly expensive and rare, or your people starve because you only have fishermens huts to feed them).

So, despite it's age and flaws, I stick to 1503. I've also learned through FAQs that i've been planning my towns wrong and such and that there are even now, new ways to do things and such.

[Emperor Jake]

I've been playing a bit of SimCity 4 again after a while.

[Purno]

And for a small update on my gaming activities, i've been playing Traffic Giant, Industry Giant II and Anno 1503 Gold recently. I forgot how much I enjoyed Traffic Giant and I am reminded why I felt let down by Cities in Motion. In Traffic Giant, sure a bus route might get busy but you make money (albeit slowly) and can buy more buses to cope with it etc. In Cities in Motion, buses make NO money, and even a small route will end up with thousands of people waiting, which no amount of buses (especially in 1930 when your bus carries 12 people) can carry. The only thing I do like about Cities in Motion are the way that Subways and Elevated Rail can be built, and that tramlines don't necessarily have to follow the road. Other than that, I greatly prefer the way Traffic Giant does things.

Ditto Anno 1503 really. I have 1701 which I never really liked; too cartoony, and 1404 which whilst good is almost too hard (you used to be able to grow certain crops anywhere, wheat being the big one, now you can't unless you plant seeds, and there are a limited number of "slots" on an island for what seeds will grow, so you either kneecap an island by being forced to use it for hemp or wheat or something else important but not exactly expensive and rare, or your people starve because you only have fishermens huts to feed them).

So, despite it's age and flaws, I stick to 1503. I've also learned through FAQs that i've been planning my towns wrong and such and that there are even now, new ways to do things and such.

It's a shame how I'm totally unable to fully enjoy games like Cities in Motion and Anno 1404 purely because the easiest difficulty setting is simply too hard/challenging for me. I wish those games had an easy difficulty settings which was, in fact, easy. I fail to see why game developers seem to think games need to be challenging, because what does it matter if people can enjoy a game in sandbox mode?

Is Anno 1503 worth trying out if I enjoyed Anno 1404 but horribly failed to sustain a good economy?

[XeryusTC]

How can you not sustain an economy in Anno 1404. I only got problems later on when I need to handle all the different supply chains.

You also might want to try out Anno 2070.

[SquireJames]

1503 is considerably more forgiving than 1404 I've found. 1701 was a bit dull because it was basically just pretty graphics but dumbed down to the point of being not worth playing. They clearly realised this with 1404 but went too far the other way and made it a bit stingy. As I said, needing to have a special seed just to grow wheat... However! 1503 can still bite you on the arse if you don't plan ahead.

Cities in Motion, I will confess I use money cheats. However, even with the problem of "I need more buses but the ones I have make no money despite always being full so I am losing money hand over fist" resolved, it's still a flawed game. Crap loads of subway lines, regular trains and trams, doing everything correctly as far as I can tell, I still cannot shift the gargantuan number of passengers, which leads to disgruntled travellers, who then go back to using their car, and my rating plummets. Then since there are less people, I can carry them all, so then my rating soars, and all the people formerly driven off by the low ratings come back, and then the situation repeats itself.

As you've said Purno, it's a source of much heartache that despite loving the concept of CiM and adoring Traffic Giant, I just cannot get to grips with it either because I am a total smacktard and just can't grasp it, the game was badly balanced (although even with a mod that gives realistic vehicle capacities, I STILL hit a limit to how many passengers I can actually shift, it's just a higher limit) or it's some kind of unintended bug that the developers had not encountered and I shouldn't be saddled with throngs of permanently peeved passengers.

[Purno]

How can you not sustain an economy in Anno 1404. I only got problems later on when I need to handle all the different supply chains.

Your attempt to ridicule my failure in a game you seem to master does not amuse me.

1503 is considerably more forgiving than 1404 I've found. 1701 was a bit dull because it was basically just pretty graphics but dumbed down to the point of being not worth playing. They clearly realised this with 1404 but went too far the other way and made it a bit stingy. As I said, needing to have a special seed just to grow wheat... However! 1503 can still bite you on the arse if you don't plan ahead.

Hmm... seems 1503 might be worth trying, if I can obtain a copy somewhere (considering the Anno 1404 demo really wasn't giving enough gameplay to get a good idea if I like the game or not). And if I fail at 1503 too, and probably entertain Xeryus even more, I could always attempt 1701.

As you've said Purno, it's a source of much heartache that despite loving the concept of CiM and adoring Traffic Giant, I just cannot get to grips with it either because I am a total smacktard and just can't grasp it, the game was badly balanced (although even with a mod that gives realistic vehicle capacities, I STILL hit a limit to how many passengers I can actually shift, it's just a higher limit) or it's some kind of unintended bug that the developers had not encountered and I shouldn't be saddled with throngs of permanently peeved passengers.

I'm not agreeing that you'd be a total smacktard, but even a total smacktard should be able to enjoy a game. Some people seem unable to realize some people may have no intention to "master" a game and rather just enjoy themselves in a sandbox game.

And cheating only exists in multiplayer. Cheating in singleplayer mode is just a manner of changing the difficulty or adjusting the playstyle in a way the game doesn't offer in the UI-options

[Pyoro]

As I said, needing to have a special seed just to grow wheat... .

You really feel it makes that much difference? I always produce most of my food on a colony island, space is limited after all. Of course, you'd better carefully protect such an island and your ship if you don't want to starve your main island to death

In other news, played a bit more WKC2 and was defeated by the same boss t-w-i-c-e. In a jRPG. I'm not sure that has happened to more before, and that's just the first real one Guess there are still surprises out there ...

[SquireJames]

Anno 1503 Gold is for sale on Gamersgate for I think it's £3 or £4 at the moment. I believe they have 1701 too for about £6.

And Pyoro, I do find that it makes a difference Making a game more difficult just "because" and doing it in a way that runs contrary to common sense and reality, such as arbitrarily deciding that bog standard ordinary wheat and such can't grow on an island because it doesn't possess a magic bean, tends to ruffle my feathers. Yes, make the game challenging. The North and South island thing is a staple of Anno, they had even more types in 1503 but that was a tad overwhelming at first, and it makes sense. Grow cold climate stuff in the North, and warm tropically things in the South. So yes, by all means make sure I can't grow wheat in a desert, but randomly stopping me doing so for an arbitrary reason just to give me a n other supply route to protect is just annoying.

It's like someone not letting diesel trains run under OHLE on our fair game here. You ask "Hey why can't my diesels use electrified track?" and the answer "because!" is given. It's arbitrary, it makes no sense and it's apparently there just to make the game more harder because apparently difficulty = fun. (Although Nintendo did milk that concept for years!)

Also, if it had always been that way in the series it would make sense, but it seemed with 1404 that they had received complaints that 1701 was too samey compared to 1503 and 1602 and just started changing stuff just for the sake of it being different. Half-Life 3 is released, but now you can't jump. Why? Because difference that's why!

Changes to a games core concept can be good. But, changes for the sake of changes are just annoying. You ADD features, not remove them.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Simcity Social and Sims social. But theu sucks if you don't have many friends playing these games.

In the meantime, I play German truck simulator, where I made map of Serbia, all-time MS Flight simulator X and Bus driver.

[Pilot]

MS Flight simulator X

I too play FSX, do you have a Yoke/Joystick for it?

[Wile E. Coyote]

I use simple joypad. It's not appropriate for this game, but I play with it for years:

[Pyoro]

After all that talk about Anno I decided to play some 1404 Venice Addon (hadn't done that before); turns out I forgot about the more annoying aspects like the Orient/Nomads and (very important!!!!!) those new fields instead of the old tile-by-tile mechanism Basically the game just feels a bit convoluted, even if the ideas for themselves are nice.

Just playing a game on basically "hard" settings but with no PC competition (expect for those Corsairs of course, but their AI is rather stupid) and I have to say that so far I'd rather say it's a bit easier than the old one to just keep your city running. It's quite possible to have a positive income from basically the beginning which was next to impossible in the older ones and one of the main challenges. It's more difficult though in therms of planning ahead, I for example totally forgot about spices and hit quite the unplanned wall there In the old ones of course you'd just go and build the respective buildings, but here there's (a bit) more to do before this can happen thanks to that Orient-system.
Doesn't of course matter when just playing like this but usually losing all that time would've probably cost me, probably. ^^

[Jacko]

a lot of MW3

2nd worst game I've ever owned and played in recent years. Bloody awful and a sorry excuse for a supposed 'triple-A title'.
If this is what is getting ranked in the "top games charts" these days, then the gaming industry is certainly dying.

Still better than Black Ops.
some of the new online modes are fun though.

[Badger]

Jetpack Joyride on the PS3, a freebie on the PSN. Very more-ish.

[Zakos]

Nothing, I have exams next week

[Bad Hair Day]

Last played Mount & Blade: Warband, using the 1257 AD mod. Currently a vassal of England. We recently conquered Ireland, partly through me taking Donegal on my own via hit and run tactics. Because of this, the town was awarded to me. Now we're at war with France again, and because Donegal currently has a weak garrison (still building it up following its capture), the French went straight for it. My calls for aid were ignored by the marshal, so I had to defend it myself.

I had my garrison of 300 plus my party of 100, mostly composed of Welsh Archers and Irish and English heavy infantry against 1,400 French troops, largely composed of peasant levies backed up by a few knights and crossbowmen. They won with only 100 of their men still alive.

At this point I rage quit.

[Pyoro]

Warband does this kind of thing sometimes - it's a fun game until it gets too repetitive (die, bandit scum #6801!) though. I definitely look forward to the next M&B.

Meanwhile I switched from Anno 1404 to something called "Aoi Umi no Tristia", which is remarkably similar except that it's completely different. Basically you play a young genius girl engineer send to an island town to save it from an economic crisis (after-effects of a dragon attack or something) by inventing wacky things with "lost technology" (it's set so far in the future it might as well be set in the past ^^). Unlike Anno you're not directly building anything though, rather you're selling your inventions to the town folks who then proceed to produce and re-sell them, thus generally improving economy, which in turns makes people move into town, upgrades buildings, unlocks new materials etc.
Obviously the scope of the game is much smaller than with Anno and there is a bit of repetitiveness with the tasks, but it's playable. And there's some nice comedy with inventions like for example anti-cockroach-land-mines. I quite like the idea

[Louie Armstrong]

Ive been playing the XCom Enemy Unknown Demo

Cant decide if i like it enough to buy the full game, opinions please?