We have song, TV show, etc… so why not a games one.
Recently I’ve been working through infamous second son. I’ve 100% the good path and am considering going through the evil path (is it worth it?).
I’ve been playing Torchlight II with my daughter. Actually, we’ve been smashing it. She still dies a bit, but she’s nine.
And for fun we’ve been playing World of Tanks inbetween. I think I like War Thunder a bit better, but my old laptop can still run WoT. And I think it’s hilarious when some Tier V tank gets killed by my daughter who’s in a tier III and has maybe 10 hours of play time. When she hits tier IV we’re going to team up as an Arty platoon. All she has to do is see them and I’ll kill them.
And I managed to resist getting back into Eve Online until the weather goes to crap. I’ll check it out again when I start to melt when I go outside.
I’m kind of been on a gaming sabbatical for the first time in decades. It probably started a bit over a year ago. Other than that, I was last seen causing chaos somewhere in the Los Santos and Blaine County areas.
I dipped into Borderlands 2 for a bit after my son bought it on a Steam sale earlier this year. He complained that I was hogging the “good PC”. He stopped complaining when that little stint I spent on the PC netted him a GTX 970.
Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition this morning. Enjoying the new “Siege of Dragonspear” DLC, which is effectively DLC for a game first released in 1998 (albeit the DLC requires the more recent EE release).
It’s got some bugs, but is enjoyable.
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I picked it up on sale for $5. That’s probably what I will do when I should be reading or doing online classes this week.
Other than that, mostly playing Minecraft with the siglets, although I did pick up the Wii Super Smash Brothers game this week.
Been on an Assassin’s Creed kick lately. Playing 2 right now. I’ll probably finish it and might go back to Fallout 4. Or do the London one. I will say the Steam controller has opened up the games on the big screen. It does make almost any game easy to use with a controller.
Oh and for mobile games, Crashlands.
Elite:Dangerous.
Currently 20kLY from home after visiting Sag-A*. I estimate my return trip will take several months because I’m exploring and mapping just about every system I jump into. If this trip doesn’t get me to Elite ranking for exploration I’ll be really annoyed.
What’s changed from the original?
Is Baldur’s gate similar to divinity or diablo ?
BURN THE INFIDEL!!!1!1!!1one!!!1!!Eleven!!!
But to answer the question, it’s Diablo’s grandpappy. Isometric party based, D&D, computer game with forking plot and good/evil choices. And Boo.
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That sounds great!
Im 22 so if its older than 2007 I probably haven’t played it. (got my first PC then)
Well, it runs on modern PCs without fighting the OS or running in a VM. The original EE release added a couple new NPCs (with quests) and a mode called “The Black Pits” which is basically a mini-adventure in which you make a half dozen PCs and fight in an arena. (I haven’t played through the entire Black Pits portion yet.) There’s also a ton of tweaks, some new Kits (class variants) and other changes. Many mods are compatible, at least those that mess with scripting.
The 2.0 releases are moving to a unified and modernized interface. This has been controversial as some elements do look a bit out of place: There’s “thermometer” health bars over party member’s heads to give a visual indication of HP, and labels “on camera” now use a clean san-serif font instead of Ye Olde Font used for other UI text. There’s also some differences in how character sprites are rendered.
The more controversial change is the new ‘Siege of Dragonspear’ DLC ($20 right now). It’s a new adventure that is supposed to be around 20 hours and is a partial ‘bridge’ from BG1 to BG2. I ran into some bugs when first playing it, like the Import of my BG1 save (it’s a different option from the game’s main menu) for some reason left my main character ($CHARNAME) naked. Not a huge deal, as he’s a gnome illusionist thief and had enough spells to level a small army, but one fo the missing items was a ring to give him more spells. This has been fixed, I think.
The adventure so far is essentially themed as an intro dungeon where characters talk about their plans now that Sarevok (the BBEG of BG1) is dead. After that, everyone goes home, and $CHARNAME and Imoen hang out at the Ducal Palace for a few weeks until they’re attacked by assassins because, hey, why not. The assassins are sent by Caelar, who has taken Dragonspear Castle and is apparently on some sort of crusade to wipe out what she determines is Evil, but her Crusaders are being general asshats and such. Your characters go to give her a much-needed smackdown and start a new adventure.You get some old companions back (they did get the original voice actors when possible!) and some new ones, including a goblin shaman.
The controversy centers around four things:
- There’s some bugs, especially in multiplayer. Some other bugs may also be caused by breaking compatibility with old mods.
- Minsc has a line about, “It’s about ethics in adventuring.” which may have provoked certain crowds.
- A minor NPC (at least so far) in what I believe is a sort of ‘hub’ camp for the expedition from Baldur’s gate to Dragonspear mentions when you first talk to her that her name is weird. If you rpess her on it, she suggests that she might be transgender. Or, possibly, that her parents really wanted a boy. No real details, and it’s a pretty generic “cleric NPC store” offering healing spells and a chance to pay to raise your reputation like almost every town in the original BG has.
- There’s been accusations of lazy/bad writing, especially around 2 and 3.
The bugs are valid concerns, but I feel like there’s a crowd blowing 2 and 3 way out of proportion. They’re minor issues and easy to ignore in a game that has tons of dumb jokes hidden in it. But it’s a huge deal to some people. It’s perhaps not the best thing to have in the game, but it’s far from “in your face” or obnoxious.
I’d consider it more like Divinity from what I know… It’s whatever the proper name is for “real time with pausing” as opposed to being a click-fest. I know people that sacrificed mice to Diablo.
well crap sound like i may have to pick up a copy.
my current PC( a laptop) is an i3 with 32mb of video ram so I will need to get something better (preferably still a laptop simply for portability.)
Just don’t expect to be blown away graphically. The game came out when you were 4. 
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dude i was just playing adventure, and trying to figure out Zork. There is something so satisfying about being so confused and unsure of how to move on in the puzzle. I really would like to expand the games i have played with more OG games.
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Confusion with Baldur’s Gate is mainly because it uses the 2e AD&D RPG rules, which are a bit opaque if you’re not at a point in your life when you can spend far too much time wrapping your head around it.
- Armor Class should be LOW
- Hit Points should be HIGH
- Saves should be… High? I think? It’s been too long.
- Thief Skills are percentile based, and you want them high.
- THAC0 should be low. Oh, THAC0. You’re just misunderstood and not actually terrible.
Seriously, I have fond memories of 2e AD&D for the settings, but the rules have not aged well. BG1 is very punishing at first, especially if you don’t have the brainpower to internalize the rules and track stuff. If you try it (I think it’s on sale!) I recommend picking a tough class for early play (like a Fighter) so you aren’t insta-gibbed by getting in a fight you can’t win.
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I’m sorry, that’s a perfect line for Minsc. I think it says something about the game that I still remember Imoen and Minsc, and a couple of the other characters. I don’t think another game has done as good a job of connecting you to your meat shields.
BG, BGII, then Neverwinter Nights. Then NWN II. Then all the clones… Then Pillars of Eternity.
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You point, I punch.
Butt kicking for goodness!
After three false starts, I’m finally giving Dragon Age Inquisition a go. It’s difficult because it’s the first bioware game I’ve ever played where it’s truly impossible to take a completionist approach—I really, really want to knock out every side quest, but I think I’d go literally insane.
Once I was able to get it into my head that I couldn’t do everything, I relaxed and started playing it like a normal person. It’s good—I’m enjoying the pacing and flow of the story, even if it doesn’t actually make a lot of sense. You have to know a lot about the lore of the Dragon Age universe to get much of the big picture stuff, but the small picture stuff is fun.
I’m at about 12 hours of game time and I’m just starting to feel like the training wheels are coming off. Assuming there aren’t any timed sections of the game and I can keep playing it at my leisure in the way I want, it looks like I could easily sink 100+ hours into chasing down all the sidequests.