What are you playing now?

[Jules]

[Tawmis]

I am currently playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 for the second time through, this time on Legendary Mode, when I get the chance to use the television when the wife isn't watch the DVR... About to head into the last fight. Paced myself for Dragon Age: Origins next... which I will probably beat by Mid-Jan 2010 (if I am still alive!) which will be just in time for Mass Effect 2.

I love it when a plan comes together.

[BBP]

Murphy's Gesetz, where some dweeb is going to have a nice day and it's up to the player to be mean and ruin everything for him! Lots of fun, but it does help if you speak German.

And I've managed to install Muppet Treasure Island. It beats the movie!

[Datadog]

I beat "Day of the Tentacle" for the hundredth time the other day, and now I'm on "Lemmings 2." Dear God, were they ever merciless when they designed some of these puzzles. It seems like most of the solutions revolve around using game glitches to get the lemmings through. Even walkthroughs don't help if I don't have the reflexes to make all these split-second mouse clicks.

[Tawmis]

Dragon Age: Origins, when I have the time... but that should not be a surprise to anyone.

[Maiandra]

I've been slowly working on Dragon Age: Origins and really enjoying it. The characters and story are great so far and the graphics are really appealing. I find the combat a little challenging, if I'm not careful with strategy, but I often find that with a rogue lead. On the other hand, I was able to waltz undetected into a room of hostile Mabari War Hounds and take several items without them noticing. I don't like fighting animals, if I can avoid it.

When I'm not playing Dragon Age, DPX and I are often playing Team Fortress 2. It's pretty much the only online multiplayer game I'm interested in. I love the cartoony graphics and humour in it. I think it makes everyone more light-hearted. I could definitely use some more practice, but I don't do too badly as an engineer.

[Datadog]

I just bought "Brutal Legend" last night. I am 30 minutes in, and it's exceeding everything I could have ever hoped for. Last night, I even stopped following the story for a bit so I could drive my vehicle around the landscape listening to the soundtrack and taking in the sights. It caused my headache to go away and it's gotta one of the most visually creative games I've seen since, well, Tim Schafer's last game. I swear, this guy is the rock 'n roll Tim Burton of video games.

[DeadPoolX]

I'm playing Dragon Age now. I really like it and that says a lot since I normally dislike fantasy-based games.

Maia and I are still playing TF2 at night together. Here's a screenshot of my best game score so far and here's one of Maia taking the top spot one night.

For reference, Maia's name is "Virtuelle" in TF2. My TF2 name is probably familiar to you all.

[AndreaDraco]

Nice medallion, DPX

[Maiandra]

...
Maia and I are still playing TF2 at night together. Here's a screenshot of my best game score so far and here's one of Maia taking the top spot one night.

That was kind of a fluke, since in the previous round, which was probabaly my best ever, I was 5th. I think the people that did really well in that round quit after it and I was top by default. I'm a decent engineer, but I could do better.

[DeadPoolX]

I ordered a bunch of games on Steam. They were having a "Holidays Sale" and I took advantage of it. Maia did too, but less so. She wanted to download a bunch of older Adventure games (which we did) and we got an amazing deal on them, too. We made a "joint account" on Steam for games we both would like to play and that's where we stored the Adventures. Other than that, we both have our own Steam accounts.

I bought Batman: Arkham Asylum (along with a bunch of other titles in the Eidos Collection Pack which included Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief: Deadly Shadows), Rainbow Six: Vegas and both the first and second Bookworm Adventures. Believe it or not, BWA is extremely entertaining. Maia and I have played some of it together as well.

I don't understand why some games claim they need a dual-core processor. As far as I knew, dual and quad cores had relatively little effect on games. But titles like Prototype, Red Faction: Guerrilla War or Assassin's Creed seem to demand dual-core processors under their system requirements. Contrast that with Fallout 3, BioShock, Dragon Age and Batman: Arkham Asylum, all of which have amazing graphics and gameplay and yet, NONE of them REQUIRE a dual-core. In fact, with my single-core machine, I can play ALL of the four previously mentioned games at the highest graphical settings.

...
Maia and I are still playing TF2 at night together. Here's a screenshot of my best game score so far and here's one of Maia taking the top spot one night.

That was kind of a fluke, since in the previous round, which was probabaly my best ever, I was 5th. I think the people that did really well in that round quit after it and I was top by default. I'm a decent engineer, but I could do better.

Don't sell yourself short, my dear. I kept trying to back stab you and for the most part, I couldn't even get close. Between your sentry, your dispenser shooting off heat-seeking rockets and a sniper covering you, I was not in a position to reveal myself.

[Collector]

I don't understand why some games claim they need a dual-core processor. As far as I knew, dual and quad cores had relatively little effect on games. But titles like Prototype, Red Faction: Guerrilla War or Assassin's Creed seem to demand dual-core processors under their system requirements. Contrast that with Fallout 3, BioShock, Dragon Age and Batman: Arkham Asylum, all of which have amazing graphics and gameplay and yet, NONE of them REQUIRE a dual-core. In fact, with my single-core machine, I can play ALL of the four previously mentioned games at the highest graphical settings.

The last I heard almost all games were single threaded. There are too many problems making a game multithreaded. Writing a multithreaded application is hard, and for many things, too little benefit. The subject has come up numerous times on the DOSBox development forum, but has been rejected. Even though with as many things that are simultaneously emulated in DOSBox, such as audio hardware, graphics hardware, CPU, etc., SMP processing could potentially yield huge benefits, but it introduces some sync nightmares that are not easily, if not nearly impossible to solve. The same thing applies to games, but with far less benefit. Most of the load of modern games is with the graphics, as you were alluding to, which is, of course, handled mostly by the GPU, not CPU.

[MusicallyInspired]

Got Oblivion for the 360 for Christmas so I've been slaving away at that. Currently doing Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood quests. Never got near this far on the PC version and since my video card is dying it was perfect timing. Just starting to see some glass weapons now. I made a custom class favouring sneak and marksman. Finding the skeleton key made the whole game much easier.

[Rath Darkblade]

Where-ever did you find that? I searched and searched and never found it...

[Tawmis]

Where-ever did you find that? I searched and searched and never found it...

Oblivion for the X360? That's what I have it on also.

(And am probably the only person in the world that doesn't care for it...)