This is a good thread.
Titan Quest: Immortal Throne - I never played the original game-seemed a bit drab when I played the demo for it
when it came out and I was busy playing WoW like six hours a day anyway. I went out and got the original + expansion last week for $35 (yay sales) and I'm just digging it completely. The thing I really like most is how well the expansion's features are tuned directly to improving core features most important to metagaming, which is all rogue-like games really are-one big loot and levels game with a lot of clicking in between.
Things like the caravan's transfer item feature makes twinking of other characters stupidly easy compared to Diablo 2-just throw the item in and grab it on another character. Similarly, the ability to unsocket out a valuable relic (think rune/gem from D2) to use it in an upgrade is awesome, as is the ability to remove a socketed item from an item without destroying it. These things fix the problem of "man I don't want to use this because something else just as good might be around the corner", now you just toss it in and go, and if you really need it later you can recover it.
My harbinger (dream+warfare) is fuck awesome. Dream mastery has this really cool ability called Phantom Stike where you blink out of the world, move to the target you want to hit, and then reappear and deal some BRUTAL area damage. It's on a decent cooldown (but Titan quest has items to reduce ability cooldowns at higher levels), but's it damn awesome. Also, Titan Quest looks like a modern game, where as Diablo 2 looked dated the minute it came out.
The multiplayer is pretty worthless but I don't care. If anyone needs some lower level blades, I've got about five low-level blues that would work really well for a warfare or rogue style character.
I give it 9 out of 10 Koreans befouling themselves in internet cafes while farming SoJs.
Supreme Commander - I'm still playing this a bunch, so I'll mention it here. I'm sort of souring over some balance issues online-basically, one side is pretty over the top in 1-vs-1 play and the technology levels break down after the first tier or so in competitive play. It's still really fun, I like the grand scale of the game and enjoy the fact that it is completely demanding of my brain to play. It's a game of intellect and wits, and that suits me just perfect.
I do wish the AI was a little bit better so I could have more fun pick up and go skirmishes when I don't have too much time to play, but I'm pretty sure the modders will fix that in time.
I give it 10/10 single-core CPUs crying in agony while trying to model a thousand units with complete projectile physics.
Rise of Legends -This really is a great companion RTS to Supreme Commander. It offers the complete complement to that game-Supreme Commander's intentionally sterile settings contrast greatly with Rise of Legends' fantastic art design. Rise of Legends has a terrific and very meaty single-player campaign with varied objectives, which, when played at the highest difficultly, require a lot of fast thinking and smarts to finish-this is in comparison to Supreme Commander's terrible campaign mode, which is really very boring and consists of "BREAK THIS TURTLIN HO AI". Skirmish is fast and fluid, and the AI is very good.
There's lots of micro, but it's easy to manage due to a good interface. Probably the best $10 I can remember spending on a game.
I give it 8/10
steampunk death stars.
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic- Just about done with this one, and I'm glad I didn't pay any money for it-got it free with my 8800GTS. It's doing some pretty cool things from a engine perspective-good physics, nice outdoor areas, etc, but I don't play an engine I play a game. Even on the hardest settings, the game is frightfully simple and the AI just can't handle some of the tactics that you can employ against it. The plot is really dull and the constant juvenile dialogue didn't do much for me either. Tom Chick's review is pretty much on spot for the game.
I rate it five out of ten slutty demons talking in your head, telling you to spam kick over and over.
I really want to play Puzzle Quest but lack any handheld gaming device to do so. If I had one, I'd buy the PSP version now and then buy the PC version when it came out for the online MP. I like the fact that the game is hard as balls, it's about time puzzling went beyond Chuzzle levels of difficulty. Not that I'm insulting Chuzzle!
I really enjoyed the demo for 1701 AD ( I was a HUGE fan of 1602 AD) and would like to get the full version at some point, but I am cheap and balk at the $40 price tag. I'll wait for GoGamer or Amazon reseller to get it to me for $25 shipped. This series sells like scat porn to the Germans ( I think this one sold 2.5m copies) and for darn good reason-it's probably the best city-builder out there (narrowly better than Caesar IV, which is also very good if you dig the setting).
I've given up on my Oblivion game yet again after going through a Linux-like mod install ( comparisons to Derek Smart's Desktop Commander are apt) experience only to find that the same bland, boring, uninteresting game is still there at the core and isn't going anywhere. This was my last try to enjoy it, but I did try to give it a shot. That being said, playing it on a console where you can't mod leveling creatures or the way that attributes level would be pure cock meet stapler gun pain.
I really wish Bethesda would actually put some features in to benefit metagaming in TES instead of doing whatever they can to avoid them (leading for people to use FAQs to determine how they need to metagame to be successful). This is a huge, opened-ended RPG with tons of levels, skills, and items, and yet they do nothing to let people figure out the best-ways to min-max. Some people might dig it, but given the game's completely dysfunctional narrative and mostly drab/repetitive environments, I can't see much value to this game beyond said min-maxing.
Fallout 3 is also going to suck hard. Much like Grandia 2 was really Skies of Arcadia, I can't help but think that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. ($30 at CC this week, picking it up in a few) might be the real Fallout 3, while the actual Fallout 3 might just be TES4: thermonuclear mudcrab edition.
Also picking up IL-2 1946 this week. I haven't played the series since the first expansion, so I am looking to renew my love for the game, which is really super-fun when you aren't playing it on the rivet-counter difficulty settings.
