Ask Slashdot: What Games Are You Playing? 669
An anonymous reader writes "We haven't had this discussion in a while: what games are Slashdotters playing these days? We've recently seen the latest generation of consoles arrive on the scene. Almost exactly a year ago, Valve brought Steam to Linux, and they've been pushing for stronger Linux adoption among game publishers ever since. Mobile gaming continues to rise (for better or worse), MMOs are still sprouting like weeds, and Kickstarted indie games are becoming commonplace. For those of you who play games, what ones have struck your fancy recently? What older games do you keep coming back to? What upcoming releases are you looking forward to?"
FTL Faster Than Light (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't recommend FTL enough. You're basically trying to pilot a ship crew through space, from one side of a universe to another, while being chased by enemies. It's fantastic! It runs on old and inexpensive hardware, and it's coming out with a big-time free update soon. It's a great game with lots of varying gameplay depending on your ship, luck, etc. and has lots of achievements and unlockable ships to keep you replaying it over and over. http://www.ftlgame.com
There are several good indie titles (Score:5, Interesting)
There are some good indie games these days, like Gone Home; Papers, Please and Sir, You Are Being Hunted.
Gone Home does a very fine job of interactively telling a story by searching through an abandoned house.
Papers, Please is a puzzle game about ethics and paperwork, which is much more interesting than it sounds.
Sir, You Are Being hunted is a procedurally generated stealth/survival game, in which you're trying to sneak under the noses of armed gentlemen robots.
MMOs take the main part (Score:3, Interesting)
Tablet, stationary: Clash of Clans
Tablet, mobile: Ingress
With friends in Steam: Killing Floor (Linux), Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Alien Swarm
Solo in Steam: Star Conflict, War Thunder
Would play if had more time: Sid Meier's Civilization IV (Linux)
I have loads of Humble bundles bought, waiting to be discovered. They have been a great catalyst to release more games on Linux.
Game types are mostly co-operative FPS shooters with friends, tower defence with tablet, flying with planes or full 6 degrees freedom when solo. A mouse is a pretty essential controller in most games.
Fez (Score:5, Interesting)
Just started playing Fez. On a Steam Linux client. Nice game, and very clever. I like the twist it gives to 2D platforming.
Also, playing Sine Mora on my Vita, when I'm travelling on the train to/from work. Tough side-scrolling shooter! Only a few chapters in.
Nethack (Score:5, Interesting)
Kerbal Space Program! (Score:5, Interesting)
KSP, which is quite fun.
Civ V, which I just can't seem to take the needle from my arm.
EQNext, which I just started; and very looking forward to.
It is payday (Score:5, Interesting)
Dungeon Keeper, which GOG.com gave away free the other day. How did this ever manage to fly under my radar? Love it!
Guild Wars 1 (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes - still playing the first one. I prefer the game mechanics - not so much of that skill tree and gear grind stuff you get in many other MMOs (including in a way Guild Wars 2).
I find Guild vs Guild fun even when my team loses (as long as I don't make too many stupid mistakes :) ). Just don't take it so seriously like some - after all nobody is handing out huge prizes for winning anymore.
Nowadays there's even a group starting Fort Aspenwood matches at about 10pm EST. But not enough players for round the clock nonstop matches so it's far from a full blown revival.
But who knows - the game is still decent for an 8 year old game, so more old players might come back and maybe a few new players join too.
Maybe there might be more players if Anet sold a more affordable and sane PvP package with full PvP unlock (e.g. you get to play all the PvP matches/missions, no need to grind faction to unlock skills, weapon modifiers etc).
compare: http://www.guildwars.com/produ... [guildwars.com]
with this:http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/PvP_Access_Kit
https://secure.ncsoft.com/cgi-... [ncsoft.com]
https://secure.ncsoft.com/cgi-... [ncsoft.com]
So getting everything unlocked for PvP will either cost you a fair bit of $$$ or a lot of time.
Or you could go instead play games like TF2 where you only need to spend money for silly hats ;).
Old N new. (Score:5, Interesting)
Of my new games, the ones I play the most at the moment are both in paid working status (with free options)
Kerbal Space Program $27 (Free Demo link) [kerbalspaceprogram.com] (now teaming up with NASA officially) [kerbalspaceprogram.com]
A fantastic rocket sim builder/sandbox, now working on the career mode side of things, if for some reason you haven't herd of this then give it a shot, learn about orbital mechanics and have fun at the same time, or just see how many Kerbals you can crash into the moon in an hour.. This game will remind you just how hard real physics for your tiny CPU to crunch.
Factorio $13 (Free Demo link) [factorio.com]
You have been sent to a new world to establish a colony and start industrializing it for settlement.. unfortunately your ship crashes and you are isolated from any other survivors, using you ''advanced'' technology you will be mining resources, researching technologies, building infrastructure, automating production and fighting enemies so that you can reach the final goal of building a defensive space port. An ever improving 2d world with 3d models for a fantastic effect.
Older games, warning these are older games.. If you cant stand to do retro games, don't bother.
Master of Magic $6 @ GOG [gog.com]
Fantasy 4X game, that once some of the bugs where sorted became one of the best fantasy 4X's ever.. Others have tried to copy, non have succeeded. All Green magic FTW!!
Master of Orion 2 $6 @ GOG comes with number 1 as well [gog.com]
Space based 4X, AI is unfortunately lacking a bit, but still quite engaging, Silicods FTW!!!
Populous $6 @ GOG [gog.com] :P [youtube.com]
How the Sequels for Populous missed the mark so much is anyone's guess.. Damn it, update graphics, tweek sound a bit, keep the game play/spells the same.. pure win for all!! And I shall put this out there for all, the DOS Roland theme music is the best of the old school versions
Evil Genius $10 @ GOG [gog.com]
Build your evil lair, send your minions out into the world to plot, teal money and recover cool artifacts, and finally take over the WORLD!! Why Despicable Me has not cloned this is totally beyond me..
Nothing modern, that's for sure. (Score:2, Interesting)
Via DOSBox:
- Crusader: No Remorse
- Crusader: No Regret
- Command & Conquer '95
- C&C: Red Alert '95
- Raptor: Call of the Shadows
- Duke Nukem 3D
- Quake
- Descent
- Descent 2
- Fallout
- Warcraft 1 & 2
- Star Wars: Dark Forces
- Mass Destruction
- System Shock
- Syndicate Wars
- Pro Pinball (Big Race, Timeshock, The Web)
- Grand Themft Auto
- Earth 2140
- Simcity 2000 Special Edition
Via VMware Workstation (Win95, 98, XP):
- Expendable
- C&C Tiberium Sun
- Total Annihilation
- Descent 3
- Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel
- Fallout 2
- Diablo 1 & 2
- Starcraft
- Dune 2000
- Simcity 3000 and Simcity 4
- Homeworld 1 & 2 (I like to pretend Cataclysm never happened)
There are a few modern games I've enjoyed (Borderlands, Metal Gear Solid, Mass Effect, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, etc) but they tend to be few and far between these days. I'm kinda getting tired of the whole idea of "experience" and "grinding", hence the huge nostalgia trip. It's amazing how much gameplay a lot of those older games offered (especially the Crusader games), considering they were built by a handful of people and a five digit budget.
Re:Very old games (Score:2, Interesting)
Considering its stratospherical replay value, Alpha Centauri has long been my dark horse nominee for best game ever made. And another oddity: after 15 years and (easily) thousands of games, I still learn something new about the gameplay every time I play.
Recently I also dusted off two old PopTop games, Railroad Tycoon 3 (~2003) and Tropico 4 (~2010). Loads of fun, check them out if you haven't already.
Re:There are several good indie titles (Score:5, Interesting)
My pc can't handle Gone Home so I watched a let's play video to check it out, and damn, that was one touching story. Major nostalgia trip for me. I'd say it's more of an "interactive nostalgia storytelling" than a game though.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Score:4, Interesting)
Over the last month or so I've really been into Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I've been a huge fan of the original Deus Ex (and, to a lesser extent, Deus Ex: Invisible War) and still go back and play it about once a year.
DX:HR is a worthy successor to the original.
I'm also a big fan of the Mass Effect and Fallout series. I'm working my way through the Fallout:New Vegas DLC (in the middle of Old World Blues, having finished Lonesome Road and the main game itself), though I really prefer Fallout 3 over NV.
After finished the NV DLC I'm looking at Skyrim, though the fact that I'm working on a PhD and my wife and I are expecting a daughter in mid-June might cut into my Copious Free Time.
Re:My WoW replacement (Score:5, Interesting)
Why I like Rift:
Rift has had some issues with chat and ability lag. So they've overhauled their chat server. Predictably, it's been broken a lot. But Trion being Trion, this meant that we had actual devs (not "community reps", actual people who work on code) posting on the forums saying what was wrong, what they had fixed internally, and that they might try that if they had another crash, then putting that live, then reverting when it had problems... Actual information about what was wrong.. They seem to have fixed the worst of it now, so of course they are sending out freebies to all the players. Note: Not all the paying players. All the players, period. They are pretty good about compensation for problems.
Also this patch, they decided to make some mounts account-wide; if you get them on any character, all your characters get them. This will, of course, be retroactive, although it'll take a day or so for the updates. And of course, people asked what happens if you already bought one of these for two characters. Answer: They already thought about this, they checked the logs, this will affect very few players, but if you're one of them, file a ticket and customer support will make things right.
Basically, they are a company whose devs are active and engaged, who talk to people, and who try to make things right and are not afraid to admit their errors. They have consistently gone far above and beyond what you'd expect if you were familiar with more traditional MMO customer service. Excellent company in general. And they do make mistakes, but because they're willing to fix them, I am okay with that -- and I find I actually prefer it a lot to companies that refuse to take risks, and then don't fix things that were just bad ideas to begin with.
Re:The only one for me... (the real new Elite) (Score:4, Interesting)
Have you seen the new Elite from David Braben?
It's in Alpha at the moment (testing of limited scenarios), Beta is expected after another 2 Alpha rounds (6-8 weeks?) and a launch later this year.
http://elite.frontier.co.uk/ [frontier.co.uk]
Videos etc of real gameplay are up on the site.
Personally, it's enough that I've actually bought and installed Windows for the first time in 15 years...
Re:Nethack (Score:4, Interesting)
My best NetHack story: had a cat that got polymorphed into a succubus. Since my character was chaotic (elf class from old version) i could gain alignment points by sleeping with her. also got to walk her around on a leash. It's great when B&D comes from emergent gameplay.
Dwarf Fortress is one to check out too. City building and Adventure modes. the next version looks like it's almost ready. Should be a _big_ feature update in a month or two.