What are you playing? (Redux)

[Josquius]

I'm enduring with watch dogs.
The controls still annoy. Steering is quirky and aiming is hard (how anyone manages fps on consoles I'll never know).
Nonetheless it gets fun

[celedhring]

Fired up Expeditions: Conquistador again these past few days.

I seem to play it in small bursts several months apart. The gameplay isn't varied enough to hold my interest past a few hours, but the story and the setting are quite well done, so I always come back to it.

Plus as a Spaniard, that game just gets my imperial juices flowing...

[Scipio]

Still frustrated as fuck that I can't get Fable 3 to work on my PC.

[Syt]

Spent about 3.5 hours in American Truck Simulator driving across California and Nevada while listening to an oldies station from the Reno area. The game is as soothing and as relaxing as always. 

Though driving through San Francisco and along the winding paths along the Oxnard ocean front drove me slightly insane (sure, it makes for scenic driving, but would a 16 wheel truck really take those roads?). Fun moments include driving through the desert from Las Vegas to Fresno while the sun set behind the mountains and crossing Golden Gate.

Driving at night between San Francisco, LA, and San Diego: "Hey, there's a lot of traffic at 2 am!"
Driving at night in Northern Nevada: "Hello? Anybody there? Oh, another abandoned farm."

I also like the speed limits in Nevada a lot better than the ones in California.

[Grey Fox]

Is the driving real time?!

[PDH]

  Can't drive across I-80 in Wyoming.

[Syt]

Is the driving real time?!

I believe it's similar to ETS2 which would be ca. 19:1 outside cities. And of course cities are represented by a few roads and intersections, though I feel they're a bit larger than in ETS2, esp. in LA or San Francisco.

For a better map with more detail you might want to look at The Crew instead.

[Grey Fox]

I like that 19:1 ratio.

[Syt]

A bit disappointing at the moment is the size of the map.

ETS2 has this map: grey are the vanilla destinations, teal and green are expansions. Vanilla game had ca. 70 cities:



(Not to mention that mods have added France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, North Africa, plus Balkans and Russia.)

By comparison, this is the current US map (with a bit of the not yet released Arizona map already showing roads):



On the other hand, European cities in ETS2 are pretty generic. Your trucking missions will usually take you to an industrial/business area on the outskirts with a few landmarks visible in the distance. In ATS they try to make the cities feel more different. Partially by recreating landmarks (The Strip in Las Vegas), partially by changing the flavor of the streets. San Francisco feels different than San Diego feels different than Reno. IMHO they're not so much aiming at accurate depiction and more at capturing the flavor of a location.

Similar, the landscape between North and South, East and West is much more diverse IMO than in ETS2.

[Syt]

I should add that the environments and simulation at no time reach the level of fidelity that GTA5 has.

[Josquius]

I bought kingdom.
Not what I expected. Very simple game. I'm not very good at it. It's nice though.

[Scipio]

Darkest Dungeon has turned out very nice indeed. Very happy I kickstarted this one.

[Grey Fox]

American Truck Simulator using Keyboard control is HARD.

[Grey Fox]

I crashed into a cop car. Luckily the game only fined me for the speed.

[Maladict]

Picked up This war of mine. It's pretty intense.