Forum Thread: What are you playing May 2011 Edition

Current playing: Tera Online, Minecraft, Kane & Lynch 2

A level 6 warrior so not that many skills! You can also play with the HUD off for some really beautiful game play.

How does it feel to play an MMO in an entirely different language? Well it's not so hard after all. Not really interested in what is currently out there, I started playing the Korean version of Tera Online. The game just launched a few months ago in Korea and will be coming to the rest of the world later this year.

It's surprisingly simple to play, but a little convoluted to get started. First of all it's illegal. You can't just play in a Korean server. They check your IP and you need a verified Korean social security number to get an account. Once you have that then you need to buy a time card and apply it at their Korean website. There is no monthly subscription, you must buy a time card of either 30 hrs a month, 30 days, or 90 days. After this, then you have to navigate their website again to download their updater and install the game. It took a bit, but once it was all done it was worth it.

The game play is fantastic. You can customize your controller in-game to all kinds of configurations and the action is fast and addicting. A few days ago I tried Rift again and couldn't believe just how much better Tera's game play was. It's something you don't notice until you actually go back to a game where you thought it was fine previously.

Getting around isn't hard, quests are of the easy type: Fetch this, kill X of that. Markers tell you where to go and you're off to the next quest. Currently in a clan with other fellow Americans and Europeans, we help each other out when we are stumped. The average level is 30 and the clan leader has already reached the level cap. I think the fact that we all need so much help here and there has made the clan stick together more than if it was in a regular environment.

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Out of curiosity I've overclocked my i5 to 4.9

Waiting for that familiar burnt cpu smell any minute now.

On idle the cpu sits at 31C. At full load it goes up to 69C max. I have no idea what that means. Some people say that over 60C is too much while others say under 80C is ok.

The games have definitely benefited from the OC. Tera now runs at a locked 60 fps+. Before, it would average somewhere in the low 50's. Rift now averages 50-60 fps, before it was around 30-40. Minecraft went from 213fps to 213fps. Other games I can't really tell the difference because they always ran at 60fps+ in the original setup. For some reason it's the MMOs that tax my system.

May 13th 2011

Currently playing: minecraft(!), TF2, SC2.

Minecraft has never ceased to be entertaining to me, but in the past few weeks i have come to a conclusion. I need to mod this sh*t up! so i have been modding, texture packing (hand designed variety of the painterly pack) and just chopping my minecraft game up!

TF2, woah, never thought it would be this good! just downloaded the orange box and moved on to TF2 after completing portal. I love it :-).

SC2, always a fan of the series and will never ever stop playing.

We just started playing minecraft two or three months ago so everything is still new. Just yesterday I was building a railway and was trying to figure out how the buttons work to activate the gold rails.

MC mods I'm looking forward to are the ones were you can add npcs and towns. The Civil Wars mod sounds like a lot of fun too. I want to wait until the game is officially released though, so that i can finally settle on a version.

TF2 is really timeless. First I played a medic all the time because I was too lazy to aim properly so I just ran around behind someone all the time. Then I discovered the engineer.. omg best class ever. Building those sentries in just the right places and the help machines for my teammates was a lot of fun.

For SC2 I think we overdosed on it when it came out. My wife actually became a better player than me and my uncle got pretty good on it too. We used to do 3 or 4 vs AI and have a blast. I don't like to particularly play against others in SC2, because it's stress that I don't consider fun (but i'm fine with it in games like TF2). My other friends can't get enough of SC2 PvP though, so it's just me.

Played a couple of more cases in LA Noire. Some more impressions:

Playing in black and white without subtitles is a lot more fun. It really adds to the atmosphere and the era you're playing in.
Having the remote vibrate when you're near a clue is better than having the feature off. What ends up happening when you have this turned off is that it turns into an RPG where you are pressing A on every square inch of a location/house, making the whole search for clues very unnatural and tedious. It's better to just find the clues and focus on the questioning.
Breaking the game into episodes was a bad decision. Because the cases are broken up like levels, it's easy to stop playing once you solve a case and not feel like starting a new one.
If this game has day and night cycles I have not seen them. If during a section of game play it starts out at mid day, it says at that time until you get to the next section of the game. I actually like this feature because it means I can drive around, do other things, and never be late to the next section of the game.
There are mini crimes you can attend to while working a case. It's a mixed bag, I don't think they are worth the time as of right now.
The action sequences in the game are great. When chasing on foot you only have to press forward to climb fences or go over obstacles, you don't have to press any other keys, keeping you focus on the chase. With car chases there are a lot of scripted cars getting in the way at just the right moments to make it a challenge to the player.
Digital Foundry has declared the PS3 version as the best performing version of the game. 360 version is still playable (that's the one that I have), but if you have both systems the PS3 version is better.

Kane & Lynch 2 is surprisingly good. Actually, it's a blast. I thought part 1 looked awful and even the co-op did not save this game from being deleted. Part 2 is like a completely different franchise.

Graphics and atmosphere are top notch. Most of the locations I'm in awe at how great everything looks.
It's great in co-op games where they don't split you off into different directions, those sections are always a pain. If i wanted to go in a different direction than my partner, I'd play single player. Gears of Wars 2 was terrible in this respect.
The locations are varied and the story moves at a very quick pace. You can't call a game stale when you're running through the streets of China naked, still bleeding from the mutilation of your enemies (click on the picture for a larger screen).
While the graphics were great, there were some glitches. The game freezes once every hour.

We are almost done with the story mode. If the game goes on sale, I would say it's definitely worth getting if it's 7 bucks or less.

Edit: eh? May is over? lol.

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