What games are you playing currently

[Scythe]

I've never been one to shy away from a p0rn game, so let me tell you a bit about the game I've been (re)playing these past few days while sick (again, grrrr, stupid indecisive weather).

Sengoku Rance, the seventh official Rance game, is a grand strategy game in which our bumbling protagonist decides to invade feudal Japan. Not for power or riches or something sensible like that, but because he wants to have sex with all the beautiful Japanese women. Along the way he unwittingly stumbles onto the Demon King's plot to basically annihilate Japan, and since that would mean no women for Rance, he reluctantly ends up becoming a hero to save Japan, even if his methods are often, hrm, objectionable.

That's the basic storyline for your first game anyway. In future games, you can make choices to enter three different "what if" routes, each focusing on a different heroine and playing out completely differently. There's also a "story free" route, where the Demon King never manifests and you're free to pursue Rance's own egotistical devices.

As for gameplay, you make strategic decisions on a map of Japan and command your generals in the many battles. The system is sound and the way the story is built allows for many surprises and twists and turns, allowing for many different games. Much of the game goes with recruiting and capturing the many, many unique generals, and each of these has his/her own storyline to complete. Not only does the game track your various exploits in a huge checklist that gradually gets crossed off, but if you collect all generals from a specific house, you unlock the option to start a new game with those generals already under your command. This allows for truly broken games, which help you maximize your score, so you can buy more stuff in your future games. It's not simple though, many generals conflict with each other, and completing their stories might not exactly be straightforward.

So, where does the p0rn fit in? Well, when Rance conquers a new province, he obviously samples the goods. Also, pretty much any unique female general must fall to Rance's affections as part of her story. There's a lot of questionable content, such as rape (the oh-I-don't-want-this-wait-this-is-great kind), but overall the tone is humorous, not creepy. Still, the option to quickly skip text comes in handy sometimes. The game is good because of its gameplay, not so much the sex scenes. Which is why I'm playing it again. Just a few more accomplishments to check off the list...

[Zyx]

Looks like Microsoft has a new flight simulator up, succinctly called Flight. There's lot to not love, Games for Windows Live sucks monkey balls and the "free to play" game has just one of the islands and just two planes, neither that can do certain missions. It is however fun to fly around Hawaii, just like it was fun to drive around it in Test Drive Unlimited. The game is quite simplified, which is to be assumed as the keyword "Simulator" has been dropped out. I guess it's possible to enable most of the "hardcore" options, though. Like in TDU2, you can step out of the plane and walk around - which is quite pointless.

The game is targeted to "casual" players, but I don't think flight simulators have a mass appeal. Then again, I did play the f*** out of Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0.

[Zyx]

I totally forgot about the lamest part of Flight. There are these things called Aerocaches, which are hidden points in the map that you can collect for XP and stuff. You are only given a pic and an obvious hint to each cache's location. Nothing special here. But this being Microsoft, there's a button you can use to make Microsoft Bing(R)(TM) search(TM) to find maps and stuff for the point. And yes, I found the places easier on the Other Search Engine, which will now advertise vacations in Hawaii for the rest of my life.

Oh, and this all being on Games for Windows Live meant that on the next launch, the game had forgotten all about my collected caches.

[Zyx]

Ah, f*** this. As much as I try to like it, MS Flight seems to be just that flying minigame from Wii Sports Resort with better graphics.

It doesn't help that collecting the Aerocaches is useless, because the game forgets I ever collected them upon restart.

[Chroelle]

Funny how I was thinking of the Wii-sport resort flight game before you mentioned it - and before this I was thinking that it sounded familiar, getting more and more familiar by the sentence I wrote.

[Pater Alf]

I started to play "Ultima IV". Interesting how fast you can get into RPG games from the past again (probably different if you never played them before).

I'd really like to go on playing, but I have a big problem. One of the most important keys (Z for stats) doesn't work. The game has problems with the German keyboard (on which Z and Y are exchanged with each other). No matter what I try, both keys don't work. I've changed the country code in Windows XP so far and also changed the language code in the DosBox file. No results so far. Any other ideas?

[Drasir-Vel]

I thought that it might register if you use Autohotkey. It is here: http://www.autohotkey.com/. And a script i've written, which sends the keystroke z when you press j. You can edit it with notepad if you want to use another key.

[Pater Alf]

Thank you! I will try if it works tomorrow.

[eMTe]

http://www.lemonamiga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9898

Yes, this is answer to the topic.

[Master_X]

Playing the following: TrackMania, Minecraft, TransForce, TDP4: Team Battle, Kongregate games, Space merchant Conquerors,CoD4(XBox360) and maybe a lot of small games.
Finished the following: Space Merchant Conquerors (even though I still play it), Flatout 1 and 2, and again a lot of small games.

[Pater Alf]

Who the hell did tell me about GOG.com? Now I get their newsletter with all the great old games in it and everytime I have the desire to buy some of the games. Yesterday I purchased "Dark Fall", "The Witcher" and "Duke Nukem 3D". Started to play "Duke Nukem 3D" right away and found out that it is still my favourite FPS game.

[Scythe]

Bwahahahahahahhh...

Another one bites the dust.

[eMTe]

Witcher is old game already?

[Scythe]

Not really. Which is why they're just "GOG" now.

[Pater Alf]

Witcher is old game already?

Depends on how you define "old". It was published in 2007, so for a 15-year-old, it might be one of the oldest games he knows. For me it's one of the newest commercial games I own.

[eMTe]

For me "old game" means a game with outdated visuals, sound, mechanics and system requirements. A game that isnt typical for what is released nowadays.

This applies to commercial games by big developers of course, because many freeware and indie games are deliberately oldschool. Afaik Witcher isnt outdated in any of the categories that I mentioned.

[Scythe]

Enhanced Edition of the Witcher is even newer. But GOG is no longer "Good Old Games", and they offer new as well as old games now.

[Zyx]

Enhanced Edition of the Witcher is even newer. But GOG is no longer "Good Old Games", and they offer new as well as old games now.

Well, they did offer both Witcher and Witcher 2 when they were "Good Old Games" still, but that had more to do with the same guys being responsible for both things.

[Chroelle]

I am considering returning to Minecraft again after I finish Mass Effect - which I am somewhat sure I might do tonight, as I am home alone, and there doesn't seem to be anything good on the telly nor on the recorder...

[Chroelle]

DAmmit - kids took forever to get to sleep and 5 mins after I could finally sit down at the comp, the wifey calls and says she will be home soon fromthe workparty as it is splitting up. Here I was expecting to be "home alone" until at least midnight...