Anyone playing anything good?

[Tai]

My current game is http://www.pathofexile.com/. It's an aarpg (diablo style), free to play in open beta. I'd rate it at 4/10 (Myth being the only known 10/10.) The PvP is an afterthought and it frankly blows. It's balanced for coop, which is 6/10 if you happen upon a group with "clue", 1/10 if you don't. Solo's 7/10, in an "omg I do not believe you did that to me!" kind of way.

So I'm playing a game that is 7/10 at best. Save me?

[Tai]

Well alrighty then. The "good" games that I've played post-myth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Age:_Origins - very good game. Tactical as hell, but solo. You assemble a team, can use 4 of them at a time, can do some fairly fancy programming for the team, can pause the game mid-combat to issue orders to each character in the team. The sequel (dragon age 2) wasn't so hot imo.

http://www.sinsofasolarempire.com/ - another great game. It's an rts in space, some very nice features. Version I've got has the original, entrenchment and diplomacy. Haven't played the latest one. Always something happening somewhere, but the pace of the game is pretty majestic. I can push on three fronts without a lot of fuss: urzooked could probably push on 10 (He's the guy who spent his myth career unigaming ctf gimble, planting small squads just out of sight of every flag until sudden death. Hardly ever won, but he did some amazing micro on three or four fronts at a time.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_ ... _V:_Skyrim - I'd imagine you've all seen/heard of this one. Very immersive,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Goo - Puzzle solving game, interesting and diverting. The humor is a bit camp, but fine after a cup of coffee or two.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plants_vs._Zombies - Tower defense, feels a lot like an old school video arcade game to me. My dad plays it on his cell phone now. Humor is "small doses only."

[Frumius]

Hey, Tai! Great to hear from you!

The good games I've played post-Myth have all been iOS games, primarily combat flight sims on the platform. I was participating in forum threads on the TouchArcade.com site for the flying games F.A.S.T. (jets) and Skies of Glory (WWII) by Revo Games back in 2009 when I met one of the game company's representatives who was looking for feedback. Apparently mine was very good, and the company's owner asked me if I'd like to check out pre-production versions of upcoming games so that I could give ideas to them with enough time for them to implement any they liked. I was the first in their Beta Group!

Their current games are in the Sky Gamblers series, and have been featured at Apple events and on the front page of the iOS App Store. The series comprises three games, a WWI game called Sky Gamblers: Rise of Glory, a modern jet combat game called Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy, and the most recent and current one called Sky Gamblers: Storm Raiders, their second WWII combat flight sim. The latter is my favorite.

Currently I'm in the Revo universe's oldest Squadron, Sgarrista Air Brigade, and fly by the call sign [SAB] Frumius. I have a fake Facebook profile with the name Sab Frumius and participate in the "Revoverse" on Facebook. The various squadrons have their own private pages, and pilots gather on the Facebook Fan pages for the three games.

I've always loved flying, and now I can fly like the wind in these games. If you like combat flight sims, they are the best on the iOS platform. Rise of Glory is also on Android, but not the more recent ones of Air Supremacy and Storm Raiders due to too much fragmentation and hassle making such high-end things available widely on Android. But Rise of Glory is pretty nice, so if you do have Android I'd check it out.

[Frumius]

Oh, I recently found out that Marathon, Marathon II: Durandal, and Marathon Infinita are all out for iOS. I knew about Marathon from a few months ago and had fun with that on the iPad, but the Mara 2 and Infinity are recent. Free, too. Gotta check it out.

[Tai]

Heya Frum! Nice to see words from you

Flight sims are fun, but I Haven't played one in forever. Last one was WW1 era (I got most of my kills by flying into balloons.) These people almost sold me one a couple years ago http://riseofflight.com/en. The reviews are good, but my joystick/peddles don't work (driver issues) on anything I own anymore.

I'd lost track of the fact that so much of Myth happened on Apples. Ween used one, and so did Xylene (I think). Cross platform games seem so rare now, modable PC games rarer still. I'm running a PC rig of the "max all settings" variety, but Skyrim's the only game that's really struck me as benefiting from the horsepower. The last Apple that I bought was a "Mac classic", which I needed for a development project. Perhaps I'll get another one someday. I miss having the creative people around.

[vinylrake]

Tai, in case you didn't notice - the games Frum mentions playing aren't Mac games, they are for iOS - meaning iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad.

[Tai]

Hello VR!

Thanks for the clarification. I've not payed much attention the latest generation of portable gadgets. I've more or less assumed that there are desktop emulators to run MS (Windows Mobile), Apple (IOS) and Google (Android) apps. This was true for the first generation of portable OS's (Palm, Blackberry, MS). How else could anyone develop programs for them?

So ... I'm looking for a worthy successor to Myth. Something with a similar blend of think/twitch and solo/coop/pvp. I don't care much about era, but giving people guns (ala FPS) pushes the needle too far towards twitch for my tastes. I don't think I care about the difference between operating a single unit (like an MMO) or a squad (like Myth) either.

Frum's FS would probably be good, but there's not a lot of chance that I'll pop for a portable device just to play a game

[vinylrake]

Agreed. I've never been enough of a hard-core gamer to buy a device just to play a game - though when the xbox 360 came out and the price on original xboxs dropped to < $30 used, I did pick up an original xbox just so I could try out Halo. Don't think that counts as 'hardcore' gamer though.

Well, until you find a successor to Myth, check out the latest release - Myth II v1.8. It's in public beta right now - there's even a new game type 'King of the Map'. As always it's a free download from ProjectMagma.net

[Tai]

$30 ipad? You have your receipt for it? Yeah? Sold! (It could happen, but ... not soon.)

After years of distillation, the Myth player base is now far too toxic for me. Not all of it, of course, but enough of it that I can be sure that logging onto Myth + 2 or 3 games = sorry I logged onto Myth. I think that it's the same for Frum. Just took me longer to notice.

I've got many elaborate and complex theories about why the player base followed the trajectory that it did, but they're all bullshit so I'll keep them to myself.

[vinylrake]

I log on to mariusnet a few times a month, but unless I recognize friendlies I don't bother joining in games.

I wish there were common times when friendly players could get together on a semi-regular basis.

Speaking of which - Saturday night might be an OoH game night. Milt and I will be around - at least in theory. Maybe we can pick up one or two players more for some fun FFA games.