I can get the whole core game for $1.
Apparently El Dorado lets players choose their own National Ideas, which would be nice. Otherwise most of the expansions add ore detail, detail, detail which doesn’t sound so fun.
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EU IV is a little more fun than Crusader Kings (yuuuuck) and probably great if you love spreadsheet/detail oriented games. For $1, it’s worth a grab, if only to play the A Song of Fire And Ice mod.
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Over the last couple of days, I’ve been watching some of @0TheFool’s Let’s Play videos of Warframe. That looks like so much fun! Unfortunately, I’m not sure whether or not my glitchy wifi can keep up with the game. (It’s good most of the time, but it briefly cuts out more often than I’d like.)
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I didn’t recognize it at first… I remember being blown away by this video, made 7 years ago as a proof of concept before embarking on the game. This video has no spoilers about the game itself, except that it’s just as intense as the game itself.
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I have tried EU II and EU Rome. They were both fun and interesting in their own way, but quite a bit of work to play well.
Rome seemed very focused on personalities - making friends and enemies and juggling what made them side with you vs trying to take the throne from you. I built up a pretty good sized empire in eastern europe from independent territories, but then had to deal with the big powers and tapped out.
EU II seemed more oriented to exploration, colonization, and fighting the historic wars that interfered with your plans. As Portugal, I did ok, not really good or bad, before it got complicated and time-consuming enough that I dropped it.
I didn’t finish a game in either. But they were good, interesting games to play. They definitely were more historically focused than Civilization at their specific time zones.
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I found myself frustrated with Warframe. On the second day or so I got to a point where I couldn’t successfully win the missions I needed to progress, and as far as I can tell, my only option was to grind missions I’d already completed. And that didn’t really appeal to me, partly because the game wasn’t really the more RPG-like experience I was looking for.
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I bounced off Warframe pretty hard after 150 hours.
Warframe is, top to bottom, a game about grinding.
Mechanically, character movement and combat is flashy, fun, and fast-paced. It’s essentially Dynasty Warriors… IN SPAAAAAACE. Wrapped around all that is a grindwall so big it dwarfs the empire state building.
I really enjoyed the stealth missions. The new open world areas are interesting mechanically and story-wise, completely overshadowing the rest of the game.
In my time playing warframe I racked up six frames. My favorite to play was Saryn Prime, but I played a pretty mean Exacalibur, too.
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Thank you all for the feedback on Warframe! Yeah, I don’t see myself starting it now. I can put up with grinding (to a point), but I’m still questioning whether or not the wifi can handle it. Plus I’m not done with Shadow of Death yet.
I haven’t really been focusing on getting any further in Adventure (story) mode for a while now; I’ve been more concerned with boosting stats and skills, leveling up armor, costumes, and accessories, and increasing Mastery. This strategy is finally starting to pay off…
My lowest ranked character, the Maximus (melee) build, finally hit Level 80. He’s not a bad build to use, if you like melee… but to me, there’s nothing all that distinctive about him that makes him very fun to play. My Mount’s a melee tank, so he’s got that hack/slash action covered (and then some.) So I just don’t play good ol’ Nightflyer (original, huh?) that much. But he just earned the devastating Demon Slash Skill attack, which is fun in Arena.
So much fun, in fact, that today he placed #10 in the Diamond One league top 10… and became the second of my fighters to reach Champion League.
(Yup, #9 Raventhorn is mine too. 
I’m not sure I’ve hit top 10 before. I usually forget to look.)
Followed shortly buy ranged-mage run-and-gunner Lyrica (Quinn build, who finished at #440.)
And then, for the seventh week, Raventhorn the melee tank hit Champion, finally rising to #180. (The highest he’s ever placed was #94-- Arena is tough, and there are many, many players with stats way higher than mine.)
Only one character got left out… but thanks to a lack of Arena Quests this week, my hybrid melee/mage Nocturne is stuck down in Diamond Four. I do not have the energy or concentration left for the 15 or so bouts it would take for her to make Champion, and that number’s assuming she doesn’t lose more than a couple along the way. And she probably would lose more than I want, because I’m struggling to find the right strategy and stat balance for her build. There’s always next week to try again (starting at midnight tonight. 
) I’m just amazed I managed three Champions this week!
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World of Tanks is having a thing now where you can buy stuff with in-game currency (credits) that would usually only be available for real money (gold).
I started playing again over the holidays and was surprised to see I’d been given multiple tanks, garage slots, etc. I get to play in higher tiers now. And I got invited to a clan. The fun part of that is we get to play battles where someone is actually calling the shots, telling us where to go and what to do. Even when we lose, it’s fun because we worked together as a team in a way that doesn’t really happen in the random matches. (Clan IDG if you want to join me.)
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Magic the Gathering Arena.
I played the card game back in the 90’s, I think. I still have a couple long boxes of cards squirreled away in my office somewhere. But when I downloaded a game I posted about earlier, I was forced to also download Epic Games downloader, and was enticed by this online MTG game that’s free to play. It started me off slowly, letting me warm up with a bot, and it reacquainted me with the game play. And eventually, I got good enough so I could beat the bot 98% of the time. So then I graduated to playing against other players.
I was hesitant at first with that experience. I’ve never gone in for PVP on any platform, but I eventually warmed up to it.
The game gives you a basic deck, and it offers ways to win new cards, or if you are rich or impatient, you can purchase virtual packs of cards for actual money. There are several pre-built decks, combining all of the singular and dual color deck combinations. They also provide you with a deck editor so you can construct your own decks.
The caliber of player is wildly various. The game only offers you 5 different phrases you can flash, so you only have limited interaction with them, besides through the cards. I’ve been trounced in record time by people who have obviously played and refined their decks for awhile, and I’ve run into players who conceded just when the game was getting interesting.
I have come across this one player who has a deck of 168 cards – no more, no less. (A standard deck is 60 cards, but there’s no rule about having too many cards.) When I get connected to this guy, I just concede before throwing my first card. I played him twice, and he eviscerated me both times.
There are daily quests, and there are more structured ranked play modes, but I haven’t looked into them at all. You can even direct connect to other players instead of relying on randomness. If you’re interested and end up playing, let me know and we can try playing a few rounds.
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This is kind of interesting…
I used to invert, don’t anymore as far as I can recall…but only ever in 3rd person games, never in 1st person…
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I invert if it happens to feel right and stick with my first impression. Usually, flight/underwater means stick forward = nose down, everything else is forward=up.
Most of what I play with a controller now is either racing games (where hopefully accelerate/brake are triggers rather than a stick), or puzzle games on the Switch, or WASD.
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Ah, but when do you invert left/right?
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Being a little more serious…
Generally if I’m playing a flight game with a gamepad, I kind of waffle back and forth… it seems like whichever option I choose, I end up moving the wrong way at some point. On a joystick or on a keyboard, nose down/nose up makes sense to me, but gamepads throw that all out of whack.
Yes, I play flight games on keyboard sometimes. Don’t come at me in Descent on a keyboard unless you’re ready for a fight. 
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Same. I can reconcile inverted controls when they mimic flight controls, but when I’m controlling a camera it needs to match where I’m pressing.
I think this is because of a mental model that I’m controlling an object versus controlling my view.
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Does anybody invert controls while using a mouse?
It seems daft to me, but it is an option in Mechwarrior Online.
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I don’t - and I find it super jarring how Google Maps’ Street View inverts my mouse. 
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I’m pretty sure I’ve inverted mouse controls on something or other because the default just felt backwards to me. Not really sure what, though.
Maybe a giant robot game that was sufficiently big and stompy enough to feel like a vehicle rather than just a big suit, or something along those lines? Hmm.
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They have the nerve to call that “natural scrolling” too. Screw that.
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