Re: What games are you currently playing?/ The Games Thread
I'm one of the lead developers for Virtual Battlespace Systems, the military training port of Operation Flashpoint.
I do enjoy some RTS's, but more along the mammoth long-slogging scale of Total Annihiliation. Starcraft/W2/W3 are all like having your arms tied behind your back for the small map and army size.
BFME2 looks interesting, however it's unfortunately clearly intended for ranked rushes, while I prefer heavy C&H turtle leveraging. Plus it's made by EA.
Quake 4 was/is enjoyable, but I fear Quake Wars will not be sufficently epic enough. The Strogg invasion needs to be mind-blowingly devastating.
Settlers 3 is always an enjoyable time-sink, but the end-game collapses too fast playing random single player. That's the problem with most RTS's, they don't have a playable attrition and holding balance costs. Some Civilization related games (Colonization, FreeCiv, SM's Alpha Centauri) have sufficent battle attrition and occupation costs to avoid a catastropic debalancing during conquest.
I can honestly say that not buying BF1942 has had a profound positive impact on my life. True there's circumstantial reasons, but I just had to plug that in there.
I think there's a large growing market for small time-sink games as opposed to epic labels. Something of the solitare mindset that you can alt-tab back and forth from, and that doesn't require 40 years of your life. RetroGames Highway Pursuit and Sudoku come to mind, as does Darwinia.
HL/2 can be replayed as a random timesink, but the system loads are still pushing it.
Joint Operations : Typhoon Rising was interesting, it's a shame though that it was targeted to the DF audience who ran it into the ground. Then again, OFP's grabbed all the hard-core ex-SF and military types from JO, DF, GR, BF, and AA.
Close Combat : First to Fight ... shiney alley zombie plugger. Seriously, can it be that hard to make decent AI? You just fire a couple 'surpressing' shots, count off, and headshot them as they pop back up. Same with CoD2, which is why I won't be getting CoD2. Seriously, it's so bad the US Gov. should be sueing the Game Dev's for psychologically warping potential soldiers with idiot tactics.
SOF2 is nice, although and alley zombie plugger. Then again, anything with a half-way decent AS-12 automatic shotgun is pretty nice. Headshots far too easy, although the door gunner chapter is a pleasent diversion.
Soldner woulda, shoulda, coulda. A game technologically ahead of it's time, and of PC hardware requirements. After it imploded, the publishers turned it over to a community mod group. Hopefully they'll make some headway with rebuilding it's reputation.
Battle Realms is another forgotten quirky RTS. It's even more limited than the Blizzard factories, but it's interestingly different.
Oni is another sadly forgotten relic. The dev's did a half-ok job disguising the zombie alley plugger, but they did it via the 900lb gorilla of the storyline instead of letting the combo's speak for themselves.
DN : Manhattan Project is a cleverly done and worthy member of the DN stable. Plus it has a map editor that I've been too busy to abuse.
The last two on the list though are real classics :
Redneck Rampage. Ya'll be whackin space critters wid chainsaws and dynomite crossbows and chowin down on pork rinds.
Carmageddon. Three paths to glory : 1) solid granite car + gravity from Jupiter + hot rod, 2) bouncy-bouncy + pinball mode on the sumo map, or 3) the electro-pedestrian-bug-zapper-ray. 'Nuf said. The Plow pwn's, though the torque/weight ratio is a bit too high and it's easy to get a blowover since it doesn't have wheelie bars.
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