New Video Games

[Spider]

I played a little bit of Dust 514. Had more fun with PS2, honestly. I just wanted a way to get into EVE a little without it taking over my life.

[Professor]

[Professor]

[Kane]

Got the Cities game for $21 on green man gaming. It's....pretty f**k cool if all you want to do is build cities. Game runs silky smooth on my rig and the land mass is...beyond comprehension. I'm still in my first f**k tile...

The game has a steep learning curve though, stuff isn't as self explanatory as it maybe should be. Feels like SimCity had more polish but less ambition - this game just needs a couple patches and the steam community to make a bunch of custom shit. Oh, did I mention you can also make your own f**k maps?

If you at all love the SimCity of old...this game is for you.

[Spider]

I've heard really good things. Luckily I avoided Simcity completely.

[uebermann]

I doubt EQ Next is going to be released. It most certainly isn't this year but I wouldn't be surprised if it gets completely cut soon. Still not even an alpha build when it was originally supposed to be released by this point.

I was able to read a post on the SOE forums right at the changeover by someone claiming to be a former employee before the post got deleted and it was very, very concerning. Basically, if EQ Next ships, its going to be lacking pretty much every feature they have claimed will be in the game so far. Daybreak is looking to either cut the game and having them just keep the status quo, or if they do end up greenlighting the game, the Devs are going to have to cut a lot of corners to keep the deadline and come in at budget.

I am not going to hold my breath.

[Spider]

MMO's are such a huge undertaking. Way bigger than even a major summer Hollywood movie. Years of work by massive teams for games that require an enormous amount of ongoing support and content creation...and the monthly pay model has unfortunately gone away. Only WoW can still pull it off. (I don't know how Guild Wars 2 does it). All other MMO's seem to be able to do no better than a small dedicated community after an initial spike in interest. I don't know if its WoW sucking up the market so hard, or if WoW really did just happen upon the only magic formula that people are going to support. Next is probably dead. It was such a cool idea, but such a massive overreach. I hope someone does something interesting with voxel environments going forward.

[exploited]

GTAV Heists are amazing when they work. A truly cool experience.

[uebermann]

[Spider]

Cities Skylines is a 9/10.

Its what SimCity should have been. Runs beautifully, even with massive amounts going on onscreen. Mostly its about thinking ahead and designing the correct traffic systems. So...its basically a Spider's Job simulator. Really solid game. No online BS, no mulitplayer nonsense, and the scale is amazing.

Time sink. Beware.