Capum15

For something like No Man's Sky or Minecraft, I don't need something playing but I usually put something on. Podcast or longer Youtube series tend to be my pick. That said, I still end up focusing on the game and only having a vague idea of what's said in the podcast/video. It's just nice to have something in the background for them. I do keep the game audio on though, even the music, but it usually never overpowers the other thing playing.

I started playing again during the last big update for a while, but then I mined too much in one spot and my game crashed, and I had parked my ship next to the mined areas so it kept crashing. Been meaning to hop back in and either try and fix it or just restart - wasn't too far in anyway, and this seems pretty cool.

@casepb: I hadn't really played it in a year or so even though I grabbed Path of Fire when it released, and I never got super far into Heart of Thorns, but last weekend a friend wanted to get into an MMO again so we decided to pick GW2 and go through the story including the expansions (not sure if we'll try for the Living Story seasons yet, though), since he never did, and I only did parts of the story here and there with another friend.

Turns out it's still an excellent game. I've also decided to keep on trying to craft The Legend for The Bifrost and it's still the most intimidating thing. That said, our schedules only line up during the weekends, so the weekdays are still utterly devoted to BattleTech.

I jumped back into Guild Wars 2 a bit this last weekend and it's still a great game.

But mostly I spent the majority of the weekend deep into BattleTech. It's like a Mech XCOM. A MeXCOM. I knocked down a Mech and then stomped it to death with 3 other Mechs. Another time I precision struck at the core of a light Mech and almost every single shot hit it (a few missiles hit other bits) and instantly cored it. That felt awesome. Another time I spent multiple rounds having everyone attack a single Mech and it just won't die but everything on it has exploded off or is almost gone. The story is alright from the one story mission I've done, but the gameplay and management parts are extremely good.

Also you can Death From Above things. Jump jet into the air and come down as 20+ tons of hate on something. Sure you'll almost blow out your legs, but if you manage to hit the enemy, they go down hard, letting you just lay into them with everyone else. Also the Mechs and people's outfits have some pretty dope looks to them.

I kind of wish they had general hard points instead of specific ones, because I would absolutely stack an absurd amount of missiles on things, because that seems both hilarious and amazing.

And lastly my pilot's backstory is being betrayed and losing everything including family, and then finding a new family in the form of a mercenary crew, losing said new family in a real bad mission, and then finding a third family who are also mercenaries and trying very hard to not have them all die too.

In short, BattleTech is fantastic.

Almost every single character in Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair (except the Tactics Officer because she is literally the only seemingly normal person and is far more competent than everyone else), but especially Dr. Ohara. Oh my god, Ohara.

"Does this mean that the progress of the giant insects exceeds human wisdom? Progress faster than science is impossible!" - upon seeing the giant web-crawling spiders. That he entirely forgot existed 7 years back in EDF 2025. Also, "We were preparing for another attack by the Ravagers, but they prepared more than us." and "From mankind's point of view, the giant insects are just bugs, but from the Ravagers' point of view, it's the other way around. To Ravagers, mankind could just...be a bug, that...gets in the way of spreading giant bugs."

Ohara's the best.

Though I will say that HQ is a huge ham, but he mostly either states the obvious or has various ways of saying "Attack them!".

Your support allies are also pretty normal-ish, but Whale (pilot of what seems like a super modified AC-130) can be pretty hammy ("Hoo boy, you owe me a drink after that one!"), and the Captain of the Fortress Aircraft Carrier Despina (a 1.4 kilometer long ship) is in Stoic Commander Voice mode 100% of the time ("As long as I'm alive, those aliens will have to answer to me.").

I love everything about that game, and actually really got into the story after a certain event, but boy is it filled with entirely terrible/amazing over-the-top lines.

I'm excited to see what it really is, though if it's any Battle Royale / Rust-like survival MP game, count me out. Still, I love Fallout so I'm willing to go with it for now.

According to wikipedia the only two games that have something vaguely to do with the US State of Idaho are Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and the mobile version. So "probably a single mission, or something, somewhere in the State" is as close as it gets for me, hah.

It feels like there are more quiet stretches than last year so far and honestly it's great. After my 220ish hour addiction to Monster Hunter World I've been able to play a good bit of other slightly older games. For instance, I just picked up DBXenoverse 2 off of Humble's spring sale a week or so ago and it's great. Only downside is State of Decay 2 is hitting now and I need to decide how to split my free time with those two games.

That all said, I am pumped for E3. I'm thinking everything, everything, is now Battle Royale. Steep 2? Shoot dudes while snowboarding towards a zone. [insert racing game series]? Add rockets and a zone. Halo? 100 spartans parachute onto an island.

Oh god please don't let there be a dozen BR games.

@the_greg: Oh man, Conflict: Desert Storm was fantastic. I tried to play it a while ago but cannot for the life of me remember if it aged badly or not. I do remember the graphics being pretty bad, but can't remember the gameplay at all.

Enter The Matrix was a fun time but I don't think I ever got very far. I loved the hacking stuff or whatever it was. I just remember lots of text and stuff that seemed like secrets but I can't actually recall.

I can't really think of any "bad" games that I loved. Even Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, my second-favorite video game out there and a very buggy mess, is still 72/100.

Just searching random games I can think of and they're all like 70 or above, review score-wise. I also just want to state that I love Vigilante 8 and Vigilante 8: Second Offense, as both are great games and also have fantastic names, especially the sequel. Also I remember a giant EDF-looking motherfucker of an insect appearing on one map and scaring the hell out of me at the time.

I loved everything about it as an idea, and most stuff about it as an actual game. Fuck Malaria and weapon breakdowns. They're an interesting idea for a game, but god they suck as actual mechanics. Brand new weapon and three magazines later it's rusted and jamming. Malaria was more just annoying than bad - oh hey cool now I get to stop experiencing this game and go find a bus or drive to a thing to get more pills, yay. Though it did create that joke of "I gave them $60 and they gave me Malaria" which is still pretty funny. Other than that, it was great. Couldn't really tell you a thing about the story though, it was so long ago.

Also fire propagation was fantastic and I used that a lot. I clearly remember throwing a molotov over a big rock towards a locked camp thing, and about a minute later both guards had separated by walking away from it, letting me take them down way more easily. That was rad, back then.

Oh yeah and the checkpoint respawns were just so goddamn fast. That was annoying. I ended up just blowing by them in a vehicle like 95% of the time. I'd usually be gone before they could mount up and chase me. I got pretty good at learning the layouts of the camps so I could just blast right through them.

Still the other game parts - finding diamonds, doing missions, the old (magical) physical map, clipboard/journal thing and GPS unit, ambushing convoys, etc, were all fantastic. The healing animations were painful the first few times, but then quickly became kinda just background stuff for me. Also the buddy system was awesome. Every time I'd get rescued, it'd make me fight just that much harder afterwards because I didn't want them to die as well.