What have you been playing recently?

Gah! One thing I would advise against is the Alien Hunters DLC, at least until you are VERY good at the game. Or possibly I shouldn't have gone after the first mission when I did...

Got rid of The Division. Just never liked it. Sold it for $25 to Gamestop and got Doom.

Finally put Battlefront down long enough to play other games. Just finished Batman: Arkham Knight. I know the game was out for a long time but I would like to give a very big "FUCK YOU" to Rocksteady and whoever else thought it would be cool for Batman to have to solve 243 Riddler puzzles in order to fight Riddler. I hit 100% on every single other mission except the Riddler one. Just no. Not going through that.

Addendum: I'm much of the way through the campaign now on Easy, got full Plasma weaponry and top-tier armour. The suits from Alien Hunters DLC are OK for mid-game but are locked at only 1 utility item, whereas the top-tier Warden armour allows two - the suits do have integrated wrist rocket launchers though. They also all have some special abilities - the Viper armour lets you freeze enemies for a turn, grapple about and - supposedly - bind enemies but I can't find the option. Berserker armour gives you a one-use massive melee attack and a boost to speed. Icarus armour is probably the best - a two-use per mission ability to jump ANYWHERE on the map (that you could normally occupy) and still shoot afterwards. Slap it on a sniper and they will always be able to reposition on a foe that's out of LOS. Plus you don't need to worry about leaving them at the back of the map on timed missions when they can just jump to the evac point. All of the suits have a chance to panic the aliens they're based on if they see you, since you are basically wearing the corpse of one of them.

I thought Sectopods would be my bane - they really pissed on your chips in EU/EW (especially after EW effectively gave them double health AND nerfed your anti-mech ammo). Here, there are many ways of dealing with them - EMP grenades, Bluescreen Ammo (does extra damage on robots AND reduces the Sectopod's chances of resisting a hack) and Hacking - unlikely to seize control, but likely to shut 'em off for a couple of turns while you whack 'em. Instead, it's Gatekeepers - the new version of the Cyberdisks. These are psionic now and have a big AoE attack that will put a lot of your squad in the infirmary.

And that's the big point I want to make - apparently the XCOM devs were big fans of the Long War mod that was produced for EU/EW. So they slowed down the tech trees - you'll be looking at 20 days on Easy to get magnetic weapons, another 20 for tier 2 armour - and REALLY upped the injury recovery time. I've seen soldiers who've taken a mere 3 damage (when they have 15 health available) end up with an infimary stay of 25 days. They really want you to build at least a full A and B team for this rather than relying on a squad of six badass colonels. OK idea, but promotions are also harder to come by. You can use a base facility to train a Rookie to Squaddie level in the class of your choice, ensuring you won't go short of a particular class, but it'll still be a juggling act keeping a good squad mix active... good luck if you get a mission full of armored enemies without having a Corporal level Grenadier (who gets the Shredder ability that reduces enemy armor). The Advanced Warfare Facility can half the healing times but even so I've downloaded a mod that modifies the chances of getting Lightly Wounded/Wounded/Gravely Wounded to be a bit better balanced.

I'll complete the campaign and proceed to Normal difficulty. The main issue I see is not winning ground missions but stopping the progress of the Doom Tracker - in the previous game, it was a case of reducing panic in council nations, so you could rush satellite coverage. Here, though, you need to raid ADVENT blacksites - and if they are in a nation you don't have resistance contact in yet, you need enough comm space AND intel to get in touch. By the time I was ready to raid the first site, the Doom Tracker was at 8 out of 12.

I've just reached level 126 in "Skyrim" while not having finished the main quest. I think I should start playing Fallout 4 instead.

The Game of Thrones adventure by Telltale Games. Not as good as the TWD games by the same company. It seemed kind of unfinished, and the story was far from being interesting. Worst Telltale adventure I ever played, and I love their products. The Wolf among Us was fantastic!

TWD season 3 with Clementine will be finally released in October! There is hope Telltale Games will return to old glory.

I played Minecraft for awhile and now am into Stardew Valley.

I'm retired so I have lots of time. I played for a month now am playing a game that I intend to go through with. Learned a lot from those failed attempts. If you want me to explain how to spend the first days to get your game rolling real good let me know.

Bought SimCity (2013), EA had it and all the expansion packs for $14.99. It's okay I guess, I'm still getting adjusted to it. It's definitely different than SimCity 4. So far I still prefer SimCity 4, probably because I'm not used to the interface, layout, and graphics. It does have more in depth controls, so there's that. Still have to play more to make up my mind.

Picked up Battleblock Theater for three bucks in the Steam sale. Watched someone play it in the last GDQ and it looks like the sort of crazy-fun game I won't mind not being very good at.

We've enjoyed Battleblock Theater so far.

Got a Humble Bundle so I have finally joined the rest of the world in playing Spelunky. The graphics are a little more sophisticated than I expected. Not a fan of time limits in general but I'm sure it works well in this context. Other than that, it seems a fun, well-designed game so far.

Skullgirls is a fighter, which genre I'm not a fan of and am not good at, full of cartoony bouncing female anatomy. The character designs are all good otherwise and distinctive -- I like the short, old-cartoony girl -- but, uh, yeah. It looks imaginative and again well-designed, as far as I can judge based on scant knowledge of the genre, but not for me. I'll probably uninstall it.

Roguelands looks fun, I'm looking forward to playing that and Golf With Friends with some other people over the weekend.

I got a whatsit eye on one run, the "treasure radar" effect was fun for the stage and a half I lasted.

I bet it is.

So, Roguelands.

It's a sidescroller with jetpacks and you can play with up to four buddies.
It's like Realm of the Mad God in that your pixelated character is probably going to die a lot, but you get to stash shinies and unlock classes.
There's also a crafting system that you don't have to be super-grindy about to have fun with. You're probably going to get enough drops while playing to allow you to always start out with at least some basic gear.

If that sounds interesting then you'll probably want to keep an eye on it. It's playable right now, but still in development and it shows. The major problems we found were:
- Lenny
- Lenny
- Lenny Lenny Lenny
- There are two factions with quests to Lenny follow. The very first quest of the 'federation' faction, Lenny without any forewarning at all, when completed Lenny generates a huge unkillable boss in the Ancient Ruins, and the only way from Lenny that point forward to do anything in the Ruins is to either be super-good, maybe? or just everyone plays as the rebels. This is bad design. Lenny

It's still playable, nothing super-amazing but fun, but you're gonna wish for a "shut up, Lenny" key or option. Hopefully something happens on that front soon.

We're planning on playing this 6 PM EST tomorrow (Sunday) if you want to join in. I'm nahtmmm on Steam.

It was fun, but a few of us got . . . a little frustrated with the game.

I think I had a higher tolerance for the game than some others did, because I am all about making things bounce around in ridiculous ways -- I got excited about a couple of "Plinko"-style holes, and I love Galactic Gravity Golf 2 or whatever it's called whereas Gravitee doesn't do it for me. But the friction physics needed work for sure, and there should be a bird's eye view so you can see the whole hole at once.

Does anyone play Civ?

Baldur's gate enhanced edition.

Got story mode for bgee and bgee2 which is god mode for the game.

We were looking to play Evolve 2 -- it's free now -- but my computer can't handle it. It looks okay for a gun-and-run, with jetpacks that also let you climb and dodge to add some dimension to movement.

Spaceplan, a little idle game with enough story and weirdness to keep me around to finish it. Cute.

Elite Dangerous a game with epic space battles.