Been a while since we've done one of these... I think we're due.

Working on:

Hostile Waters - Antaeus Rising [Gamesdomain]

Got high marks from reviews in Europe - was out there quite a while back. As for me, I like it but I don't have a love affair going with it or anything. It's interesting, not compelling and by no means addictive. About half-way through the campaign at this point. Moderate frustration/reload factor.

Playing for fun:

Echelon - I want to like it, it wants to make me cry. Had it set on hardcore and I can't beat the first mission. Pure evil. I'm about to sin and turn on arcade mode to get by it. I suspect plenty of wasted potential awaits me.

Mechwarrior 4 - Some games refuse to die.

Halflife Blue Shift - Well, I find myself playing Opposing Force with the new graphics instead of Blue Shift. Halflife may never die.

"Halflife Blue Shift - Well, I find myself playing Opposing Force with the new graphics instead of Blue Shift. Halflife may never die."

Yeah, I played Blue Shift with the high definition stuff installed on Friday. Then I went back and played Opposing Force the same way yesterday. Now I'm doing Half-Life.

Reverse chronological order.

I need to get to Severance/Blade and Mech4. That reminds me..

You got Heavy Gear 2? If you don't then GET IT. Mine got "permanently borrowed" but I was pleased to find that I could score it for $9 at Babbages last week.

Blade of Darkness you mean? Well, you want mine? I played the first couple levels and was so pissed at the control scheme that it's currently keeping a 4"x4" area of my desk free of dust. No sidestepping?! What you say!?!

Working on

Sudden Strike Expansion (GamesDomain)- If anyone ever got to the latter missions in Sudden Strike, the new expansion STARTS out like that! Overall there has been some refinement of units (mostly with artillery), but little about the core game play has changed. My biggest complaint about the original is that too many missions turned into endless hours of skirting attacks rather than a straightforward fight! This made the missions puzzle mazes in the end, often with save and load if you hit too heavy a barrier! If this element annoyed you in Sudden Strike the expansion will drive you buggy! :)


Playing for Fun

101st Airborne- still love this game, especially post patch. I'm now really getting hyped up for Band of Brothers on HBO. I see myself sending Tim Brooks more love mail about this gem! :) Damn if he ever finishes the sequel now languishing with outsourced programmers!

Rebellion- my love/hate relationship continues with this one as I played it again recently. The interface is horrible but the mixing of heroes and fleet play elements is superb! Playing, as the 'rebels' is fun, playing as the Empire is a serious pain in the ass. Also poorly balanced, the Empire should have a bigger fleet but less support within its sectors. Still, hunting down the rebels just makes the game tedium beyond belief. I guess there WAS a reason it was called 'Rebellion'.

Tropico- just stopped playing. I really enjoyed this for a long time, more than most from what I've heard. However, I'm now really mad at it and probably won't play it for a long time. The complaint about lack of a transportation system or election snafu�s never bothered me. What finally did get my goat was that the game makes NO ATTEMPT to model a fear factor. The first dozen times I played it I loved playing as an enlightened leader. When I FINALLY decided to play as a tyrant, I discovered...I couldn't. The lack of fear being modeled or making psedu death squads made this once endearing game grate on me BIG TIME! Phil! TSK, TSK, Tsk!!!

Playing for fun:

Castlevania on GBA - The game is deep, deep, deep! Perfect control, great (if very dark) graphics, great sound...vintage Castlevania all the way. Lots of play time, too. I think I'm level 28 now.

Rayman on GBA - well, I WOULD be playing this more, if I wasn't playing Castlevania all the time. =) An almost-direct port of the PSX/Jaguar side-scrolling game, and great fun. Rayman is a very under-appreciated series.

Working on:

I'm not sure if it's appropriate to detail all that stuff here, necessarily (since I'm not a freelancer). I have two stories freelanced out, and some systems being delivered for review early this week, as well an interesting feature or two coming up.

I picked up Hostile Waters and Evil Islands yesterday. Did the first four missions of HW and then put it aside to sample EI, and only stopped playing to get a little sleep. I was looking for a non-D&D RPG fix, and despite all of EI's flaws I'm enjoying it enormously. The guys who made it really love their work, and it shows. Well-crafted, bug-free so far, and it's got one of the most thorough game manuals I've ever seen. Out of the two I expected to be returning EI, but it looks like HW will be going back on Tuesday in exchange for Startopia.

Also working my way steadily through Peoples' General which I picked up for $6 as part of some game pack, and in the next few days I should get Desperadoes and Flying Heroes (as per QT3's recommendation) delivered from Compuexpert, so I've got my leisure time cut out for me.

Working on -- An appellate brief for a poor shlub who got his body torn apart and his girlfriend killed in a motorcycle accident and is facing reckless homicide charges. Er, sorry, don't think that's what this thread had in mind, but that's what's taking up all my out-of-the-office writing time these days.

To take my mind off it from time-to-time, I visit these forums and try to chip away at the final chapters of BG2 so I can pick up Throne of Bhaal.

i've been "working" on a game that was pretty much demised er despised by Gamespot (nominated for worst game of 2000)... Demise Rise of the KuTan... its a Wizardry/Nethack clone in (imo) pretty good 3d graphics. This game feels alot like a souped up Eye of the Beholder/Dungeon Hack with character development akin to Angband. I like it alot. If you're into hack n slash (and more hack n slash) this is youre game. plus the multiplayer is surprisingly not bad, and the community is very friendly (albeit not very large)... made by the guy who is making that hugely ambitious mmrpg... Horizons.

anyway, besides that I've been playing more Operation Flahspoint demo missions just to get ready for the full UK release.

Not much else ive been playing or want to play, the dev patch for B & W really hasn't gotten me interested in it anymore... anyway, wish there was more than just the diablo 2 expansion coming out this summer... it seems pretty dry.

etc

"The guys who made it really love their work, and it shows. "

Thats whats missing from alot of Evil Islands reviews... theres also a spark of originality to the game that is hard to describe. Despite its faults i really like it alot. Its not exactly perfect (Tom Chicks review at Cdmag is dead on with some of the problems), but it still captures something that seems to be missing from alot of current crpgs. a sense of originality. Evil Islands could be a very good game with just a few tweaks imo.

I tell ya people, those russians are onto something... next up from them is Etherlords, which might be the game that finally does a original makeover to the HoMM franchise (AoW, Disciples, etc weren't too original imo)... i hope its great, because these developers, like you said, seem to "really love their work." Another game akin to Evil Islands is Sea Dogs, made by another Russian developer that i really liked, a semi rpg with a flavor of Sid's Pirates. great soundtrack to Sea Dogs as well...

etc

Change of opinion on Hostile Waters. There are 21 missions and it doesn't really start to rock until about mission 11-12 or so. Then it abruptly turns from fighting against tanks and helicopters into bio-morphic aliens. Story is kinda weak on that, but it does make sense on it's own terms.

It also gets mammajammin HARD too. Jeebus. I wanted to know how many missions there were, so I cheated through them without really looking at anything but the map... then went back and played a couple in the mid-end area. WOW, truely beat my ass.

Basically, anybody who got wood playing the first battlezone game will like this one. It ain't exactly the same by any stretch but there's a similar vein here.

I've heard it compared to the old Carrier Command game (Atari ST days, although maybe Amiga too?). Any thoughts on that?

Now playing on a monitor in my apartment:

WW2OL: the patch this weekend really made a differance. I went from 3-8 fps up to 20-30 fps regularly. I play a rifleman mostly, and it can be instense. I was in the city of Anhee last night until 4am, and it was so intense watching tanks zoom by while I was hiding in an ally. The combat is so opportunistic, random, and nerve shattering that one kill is a huge sense of accomplishment. Of course, waiting 10 minutes to respawn makes the desire to live that much stronger.

Flashpoint demo missions: now if we could only merge these two games...

-Rob

ps. Tried EQ for the first time Sunday. HUGE dissapointment. Horrible graphics!

After being on vacation for 2 weeks, I just finished Soldier of Fortune.
Now playing Blade of Darkness.
Also planning on picking up NOLF again. I was on the safecracking mission - the one with all the lasers - when my hard drive crashed. Hope I can find a cheat so I don't have to completely start over.
Still play MOO2 and Civ2 occasionally.

I have a bunch of stuff on my desk for the next little while. Emperor: Battle for Dune is probably my top priority. I've got a beta copy of MechCommander 2, which I'm going to be working on next week probabably...I think I've got Blue Shift coming (I wasn't around when UPS stopped by), and I also have Tony Hawk 2 and Pinobee for the GBA waiting for my gaming time. It's crazay. Just finished my review for MS Train Simulator last night.

Latest finished: Rune, Serious Sam co-op
Now playing: CS, Urban Terror for Q3, Diablo 2, NHL 2001, AO Beta 4 (thanks Jason!)

-- Xaroc

Latest finished: UT
Now playing: Civ2 - The English are pissing me off, so tommorrow the nukes fly. HOMM2, Diablo2, Unreal, Alpha Centuri....Heck, I've got a bunch of games I'm playing at once.

I'm really looking forward to a good single player turn-based game.

I have just finished completing Wheel Of Time. Great game and concept initially but it runs out of steam as the game grinds on in later levels.

You can tell it is rushed as it has a shockingly crappy ending.

I've been playing Sacrifice mostly, with bursts of "Matrix-Style UT": speed as low as possible, low gravity mutator, and TacOps weapons. There is always some Combat Mission in the mix, too (Where my attack with Crack British infantry against Volksgrenadiers just stopped dead when it ran into three StuGs - I've got six Crack PIAT teams left, though, so the StuGs should burn soon. "Bring up the PIAT!").

However, today I was in Fry's and found a copy of Flying Heroes for only $4.90. I haven't installed it yet, but it is next on the list.

Currently playing:
Starcraft.
I'm just getting around to it. My parents got it for me for Christmas and it has been sitting on the pile. Went looking for some strategy tips yesterday and was amazed to see that it came out in 1998. I think I'm getting old, because time seems to be moving much faster. I'm on the final terran mission-- spent hours last night on it and finally got locked into a battle of attrition with the second computer player. I think humans always lose a battle of attrition. I know I did.

Many PBEM games of SMAC and SMACX via Gone Gold. Just started two new ones yesterday. These are fun because they're basically a turn a day and one turn takes less than five minutes to do, so you can wing through a bunch of games everyday. Of course, I suppose once the games get more mature this is going to bite me in the ass, but I've been playing two of them for about two months now, and no one has more than three cities yet (AFAIK). This slow pace might be maddening to some, but it's comforting to me. All the time I want to study the map, plan strategy, and even jabber with the other players via the diplomacy. Ever open the commlink just to chat with Colonel Santiago? I have.

Pharoah
I started this a couple of months ago, but got bored somewhere in the second or third age. I had just built my first medium Mastaba, I think. I dropped it because starting a new city from scratch _again_ just seemed so... repetitive (ironic, considering most games are all about repetition.) After I stopped I went to Descent: Freespace (yes, the original one, not Freespace 2) and now Starcraft so all the frantic action has kind of gotten me yearning for the steady flow of the Nile again... I'm thinking when I finish the Terrans I'll go back to this.

For work:
Trying to figure out Unreal editing to do some projections for a show this fall.

Trying to come up a good idea for a short, funny Christmas play, which is due July 1. Having done the Santa thing for a number of years, I've learned to hate David Sedaris (Santaland Diaries) for stealing all my material.

And for being a successful bastard.

So there.