The unofficial "So what are you playing?" thread

I've gone back to GTAV on the X360... because I'm lazy the PS4 still sits gathering dust without a working fan.

Just passed the first heist the other day, got 'Gold' with a spiffy clean-sweep... although I've done the bloody thing enough times!

Unfortunately when I first installed the game, I installed it to the default location under Program Files (x86). If you install it there NMM won't even launch for it, comes up with some error about permissions.

Might be fixable by turning off UAC but I might end up just reinstalling the whole game. Otherwise mods have to be manually put into the Data folder for the game, which I've added one mod already like that, Unofficial Oblivion Patch. Not even sure if it does anything but I installed it after encountering a crash while exploring. Haven't seen any more crashes since, though the game always crashes on exit. There's mods to fix that too but I haven't tried any yet.

As for the game itself, I'm kinda finding that I can't sit through it for long periods of time but I feel that way with any similar Bethesda game. After 1-2 hours I just have to stop playing for a bit. As much as I like open world games, they tend to put me to sleep at times.

And that's Episode 1 done. Installed and configured Episode 2 so I can start playing tomorrow. Hope Alex Vance fucks off soon because I hated dragging her around in Epi1.

Oh, I played it before, I know about the ending (and the end battle), I just can't remember specifics along the way.

I guess they felt they couldn't innovate anymore in Episode 3 and they didn't want to rehash earlier stuff, because playing through the games, you really feel like tried to make every set piece have a certain originality. They probably bumped into some limits either of their imagination or of the hardware at the time and rather than do a quick cash-in they left it open...

Episode 3? Are you trolling or talking about Lost Coast?

I downloaded the fan remake last night. Looks like a lighting and texture polish job but it got high marks anyway. All Cop's chatter has me ready to fire it up. I never did beat the last boss...

I as well started playing Black Mesa (took some time before I managed to download a free one that didn't have a corrupted .zip... ...and I wasn't going to pay €20 for the Steam version just yet). With the original so fresh in my mind I can say it's more than just some replaced textures. The basic layouts are the same, you ultimately work towards the same goal, but the levels are vastly different in design with lots of added details, extra rooms and puzzles even. There's also a lot more dialogue between characters (if you take the time to listen to them at least). I certainly don't feel I'm just replaying the same game I played last week...

I played a couple hours of Oblivion but back to PUBG lol. We chased some dude in his car forever today and ran himover when he hoped out. lol

Civ 5 is really good, so is Civ 6 but not sure if it's as good as 5.

Still playing Oblivion, played a mission where you have to kill a bunch of vampires in a cave, ended up catching the vampire disease so I'll be a vampire after I sleep probably. Made me remember being a vampire in Oblivion felt a lot more genuine compared to Skyrim. In Oblivion, you can't go out in the daylight at all as a vampire, it drains your health and kills you. In Skyrim, daylight won't kill you but your health and stamina don't regenerate unless you use potions or spells. Being a werewolf in Skyrim is great though.

My character in Oblivion is a dark elf battlemage, got Finger of the Mountain spell (shock spell that can kill lots of weaker enemies instantly, can also hit multiple enemies) and using the 2-handed katana you can find at Cloudruler Temple. Also leveling up sneak.

Unfortunately, my 12 year old Logitech Z-5500 speakers quit working. Upon being turned on, whether they're getting audio or not, they just cut out after a few seconds and sometimes there's a lot of static or popping before the sound cuts off. I'm hoping replacing the fuse will fix them, it's the only thing I could find on Google. The control pod doesn't turn off or anything, it stays on and the display shows as if it's still getting an optical signal. I also tried connecting them with regular analog cables, even tried connecting them to the motherboard onboard audio, but still the exact same thing happens. In the mean time I'm using some crappy stereo speakers that are not nearly as good. May be looking at buying another set of 5.1 speakers, anyone that can suggest a good set with optical? I was looking at the Logitech Z906's but I don't like how they put all the input connections on the subwoofer. Still, may be the ones I end up getting if I can't fix the problem with the Z-5500's.

I am intrigued by PUBG but I tend to stay away from those big multiplayer shooters.

So Stalker Clear Sky is kinda the odd man out game that most people don't like of the 3.

I decided to load it up with a huge mod people rave about that combines a bunch of other graphics mods. Clear Sky already runs the worst of all the Stalker games but looks the best.

The starting town has the worst performance. I loaded up the mod that further improves the graphics and even on my 1070 I was seeing 90-99% GPU usage at certain angles. Holy fuck.

That is without supersamping or anything else. Now keep in mind you can fix this by dialing down a couple of settings and you will never even notice but jesus. Game is like 9 years old.

I got the Unofficial patch, it claims to fix lots of things but I don't know if it actually does anything noticeable. There is an item it adds to your inventory (looks like a key) that brings up a UI menu that lets you change certain things too.

There is one problem I have, every time I exit the game it crashes and I had to use the "saveini" console command to get the in-game graphics settings to stay.

I was gonna get that OOO mod but it requires other stuff, and I was too lazy to get it all. Espeially cause I have the Shivering Isles expansion, there's other stuff just for that when it comes to a lot of mods. There's even an Unofficial patch specifically for Shivering Isles.

*edit* Oh yeah, I got my speakers working again. Not sure what fixed it exactly, I changed the fuse but was still having problems so reinstalled soundcard software and drivers. Optical sounded all distorted so I switched to analog connections and they have been working ever since. I think it was a software issue and optical cable is bad. Optical sounds noticeably better than analog but I'm not in a hurry to get a new one.

Not wanting to quit HL just yet but having run through everything, including Black Mesa, Lost Coast and a user mod called Downfall (good but short, first time 1 hour, second time 30 minutes), I decided to replay Portal yet again. Finished it in 1 go (the story part, don't care for the puzzles) and remembered I only played through the second the one time, so that's next on the list. Hell, I might even give the Left4Deads another go if I still feel like playing after Portal 2...


And on the PS3 I've been racking some decent time on another 'classic', well the latest installment of one at least: Ridge Racer 7. Bought that years ago but only barely touched it before. Working my way through all those races at a decent pace. Only now, in the extreme challenges, do I have to start restarting races on a regular basis because I didn't win the first time around...

I just got these recently:

Prey
Alien Isolation
Rise of the Tomb Raider

Played the first few minutes of Prey and it's good so far. Haven't tried the other 2 yet but looking forward to em.

*edit* I think I played Portal 2 but can't remember much about it TBH.