What are you playing this weekend/these days?


although some games really try
In my eyes immersive sims are the crown of gaming. Ultima Underworld, Deus Ex, Arx Fatalis, System Shock, Vampire Bloodlines, and especially Dishonored and the new Prey are the best games ever made. I could play through Prey a third and fourth time - there still are skills I haven't used on my first two runs. Finishing Prey in survival mode and without using any of the available powers was one of the best experiences I've had in gaming.
It makes me a sad boy that Arkane's latest two titles range from meh single player to flat out bad co-op multiplayer.
Guess the highly unconventional looking Cruelty Squad, and Ctrl Alt Ego are next on the immersive sim list for me.
 
Model based engineering feels like a concept solving this problem, but I'm not sure if it 100% fits. It at least is big step to a more efficient way of working.
Well in software design we have HighLevelDesign and DetailedDesign. So we still have the descriptive "lone tree in a grassy meadow surrounded by a stone fence, with a small passage way; it's summer." and the detailed "The stoneblocks are an armslength wide and semi-regular, the color is grayish. The stonefence is half the protagonists length, etc". Both are still descriptive. And both can serve as test criteria for the result.
So in your example, let's say we have:
Program "add tax".
Input is a single number.
To teach the software, we give it some inputs and outputs, so it knows the amount it needs to multiply the input and calculate the output. But this input can also serve as testcases to verify the algorithm learned correctly. And as new learning data is fed, the previous results still serve as verification.
 
RWBY: Grimm Eclipse

After having watched the 9th season of the show, and the movie crossover with the Justice League, I finally started playing this game.
It's a minimalistic Hack&Slash, with a forced path to follow, there are some boxes around containing some experience points (or money depending on the game mode), there is a very little interaction with level elements, and consists just in pushing something to open or trigger something.
In story mode the narration doesn't "lock" the game, when you start to play you are actually already able to go around and smash things... I found that "unexpected" the first time, got me unprepared, then I realized that its actually something that I missed a lot, because most modern games needs a lot of "skipping" to do at every play session... here you just select the character and that's it, you are playing !!
I liked the original show with 3D graphic (I prefer a lot more that in comparison to the latest ANIME remake "Ice Queendom"), and this game is exactly as the show, it has the same graphic, so it's like to interact with the show, it has also the same music and the same dubbing.
The combat system is not so basic, normal attack / special attack / jump / counter / evade / shoot, some of these can be combined to perform combo, also there are many differences between the attack style/type of every of the 8 characters at disposal... every one of them can be "upgraded" on an ability or another, and because it's not possible to select all the upgrades, you have to choose what kind of combat style you want to obtain with every character, there are many combinations possible.

Even if the game is old there is always people to play with online, and the "survival" modes are pretty fun in group, because there are also combat moves that can be performed together and some characters have skills to support and enhance the other players.

I think that this is not a recommended game for who knows nothing about the serie, but at the contrary, if someone watched and liked it, it's a cool way to pass the time while waiting for the next show season ;)
also, there is still Pyrrha, if someone is missing her

There is only a thing that I don't like, except for Single Player mode, all the other types of games can be played online only, even if you want to play them alone, you must be online, or you can't even select them.
 
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I thought about my old favorite. Voiced by the seiyuu (EN voice) of Ayanami Rey. Lots of hack and slash. And one level where you can climb walls so high (probably not intended), but you can then look down and it looks... well, it looked good, but the graphics are dated. Still, I'm fond of this game



If you have a CD, also install the mods:

 
Ashes 2063, Ashes Afterglow
Doom total conversion mod running on GZDoom engine, inspired by S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Fallout. A must play title for fans of old school FPS.

You are a scavenger in postapocalyptic USA following a mysterious radio transmission. Your path leads you through various dilapidated and irradiated environments infested by mutants, or roamed by gangs of raiders. Apart from hostile locations there's friendly towns and outposts with talkative NPCs, some of which buy and sell ammo, weapons or medicine, some even send you on side quests. You get to collect - and in Afterglow even upgrade - a bunch of realistic weapons. There's a survival mode available, making you as well as enemies take increased damage, and halving the ammo pickups. There are many well-hidden secrets to be found in the sprawling levels. Finding at least a few of those is necessary to top up your ammo, meds and armor. The mod even comes with a completely original soundtrack that greatly adds to the atmosphere. There's humor in the dialogues, and many references to movies and other games can be found throughout the game. A few passages are downright eerie, GZDooms lighting does a great job here. This is the best mod I've played so far.


Edit: Finsihed it. What a game. A little hint for the very ending of episode 2: shoot the bitch when she's down.
 
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I started playing Superfluous Returns, a Monkey Island like adventure game with a useless superhero. Very funny and all home made by a single person (game engine, graphics, musical, story, puzzles, etc.). I really like it so far but my point of view is biased as the author is a friend of mine ^^
 
Peony has been messing about in Wild Life's sandbox mode.

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I've finished Dreamfall Chapters, the sequel to Dreamfall, itself the sequel to The Longest Journey.
TLJ was a classic point and click with some difficult puzzles. It was also very very long and with a deep story but still funny and with great characters.
Dreamfall was lighter on puzzles and had some action sequences (stealth and fights). It still had an interesting story and great characters but at some points it felt like you spent most of your time moving from one cutscene to the next. And even if there were some funny moments, it was a bit more serious and grim.

Dreamfall Chapters is closer to Dreamfall than TLJ, same kind of puzzles (maybe a bit more emphasis on them than in Dreamfall, though, and less "fetch quests"). The biggest change is that there are now "choices that matter". The game heavily insist on them with a logo to tell you when you're making one of them (which is most of the time where you have to make a decision, even when it's 'what to eat for dinner') and plenty of situations where the game shoves into your face how some of your past choice had an impact. In the end, only a few of them change the game in a meaningful way. Hopefully, the theme of choice and consequences is integral to some parts of the game which gives it a purpose other than "show the player that they can make choices".

The story is a bit of a mixed bag. There are some good themes that are handled pretty well but the game had a lot of loose ends to tie and it doesn't do it in a really satisfactory way. TLJ hinted at complex schemes from draconic beings, Dreamfall pursued them but centered the story on the main character so many things were left unexplained or hidden deep. It feels like Chapters just throws away most of it to simplify the story and replace some parts with a new layer that screams deus ex machina. Hopefully, they still know how to write great characters. The pacing is a bit off sometimes, there are some really polished atmosphere pieces, some uninteresting fillers that drag for a long time and some parts where it feels like they have to rush through the story.

They also still know how to design outstanding environments. The cyberpunk city of Propast is excellent, both in how it looks and how you can navigate inside. I was a bit disappointed by the Marcuria part.

In the end I didn't dislike it, but it clearly felt like a game made by a team that had a tight budget but wanted to deliver quality content. It felt like it could have been so much more. But at least the series didn't end on Dreamfall's cliffhanger ending.
 
I remember that "The Longest Journey" had the most complete set of tools available I ever seen for an adventure game... the most useful thing was the fast-forward function, that saved me hours of re-gameplay because of a corrupted saved game !!
 
got my old acer AOA150 netbook out and installed winXP. popping som GOG's on it. now to find out what works and what doesent...
I once got Crysis running (as fast as showing powerpoint slides) on an Eeepc 701 4G, using an external disc-drive and network storage. After updating it with 2GB RAM and installed Win XP on it.
Regular older games ran fine though, so pretty usable.
 
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