I am still enjoying several other games...Mafia II continues to amaze me with the care and the detail of the street scenes, every small detail is done and done well, I love just wandering around taking in the atmosphere and the ambience...New York in 1946,  spring snow...., well February ...

The newspaper hawkers even shout out headlines that relate to the main quest plot line....

and i have finally made progress in Indiana Jones and the Emperors Tomb, it s a tough game in the parts where you have to jump and use ropes and stuff, but the settings are really fun and nice...

And here goes my first Steam winter sale purchase: GOTHIC bundle! They have two bundles, one is Ultimate (Gothic 1-3, 5 euros) and Complete (includes Arcania, 12.5eur). The catch is that you can't purchase Gothic 1 separately from the bundles (they are not allowed to sell it separately). I got the Ultimate bundle since I heard Arcania isn't that good

@Fnord

You asked me about Michael Jackson zombie from Plants vs Zombies - they replaced him with a "Dancing zombie" because MJ's people complained after his death, said it was disrespectful to portray him like that. Even though they game was made well before he died. Sigh. There is a workaround to put him back in, but the whole situation was really stupid.

that is sily, I am sure Michael would love to be in a game like that , he loved that sort of thing and the publicity too.

Glad you got the gothics, the early games are very nice, and have their own charm compared to III, which has the largest world. They sure did a wonderful job on the detail and the atmosphere and the RPGness of those all. Remarkable, and very beautiful in their own way.

Even tho you got them from Steam and can expect therefore for the offical patches to be included, be sure to check out the community patches that really make those games playable and improve lots of things including a major memory leak in Gothic III. The info is in the gothic Thread in this section.

That reminds me of when the movie Lord of the rings: The two towers was released, and one movie critic claimed that it was obvious what they were referring to (9/11) and that it was disrespectful... 

And I thought the dancing Michael Jackson zombies was a fun and cute homage to the old thriller music video.

Dona, hopefully you'll play Gothic 1 first.  The controls are very hard at first, but I know you can do it!  Feel free to ask anything you want about Gothic 1, hopefully I can remember some stuff.

I only got halfway through Gothic 2, when I restarted it to play NOTR rather instead.  (Gothic 2's integrated expansion). ...so if by somewhere next year you get to play Gothic 2, I'd be happy to join you about a quarter way into the game.  Just shout when you get roundabout the point where you could get an audience with the king.  (After you'd managed to join the militia or the paladins or whatever etc. )

Alright, thanks for the advice! I'll check out community patches and I'll definitely play the games in order. However, I might not start them any time soon because I'm going to be very busy from next week on and it will take me time to figure my schedule out. Plus I finally managed to get Thief Gold to run, so that one comes first... TBH I grabbed the pack because the series have been on my to-play list for a long time and I like having games on Steam if possible :>

Ah Thief...great series. I posted some enhanced texture packs and mods for them, if you are interested, with the community work on them it is possible to get greatly enhanced rendering for Thief 1 and 2, I also love 3, great games all of them. There is a thread on them somwhere here, or  i may posted it in this thread too.

Bought Total Annihilation from GOG, a game which I last played in ~2000. It still holds up really well!

I am playing and studying the latest and greatest of the Silent Hunter WWII submarine sims, Silent hunter V, and the graphics are literally stunning, i am at sea on a small submarine, early in 1940 and it is dawn in the North Sea....astounding detail...and with a number of mods that make it even better...the water looks and feels wet, the ships is rocking and swaying up and down and the watch  crew look very cold and wet.

Dawn in the Nord Zee

10 years and a whole series of generations of this sim has made this possible...and the huge work and efforts of dedicated community members and modders...a remarkable uniified effort.

I finally received my copy of The Witcher's Platinum Edition! Five years down the line (more or less) I can start again, this time on a proper PC rather than a laptop. I'm childishly excited about this and will have to abandon DA for a while.

Not enough hours in the day...

Congrats Maum, have fun, i know that feeling for I have had to wait on several major games to upgrade my computer to be able to play them, URU was one of the first and then Mass Effect...  i have Mass Effect II to play and look forward to. Congrats on your better system and enjoy! Witcher is certainly a beautiful and demanding game...an ambitious expansion of the medievil fantasy genre by a mile ....

I've started to play Hacker Evolution. It is basically a more story driven/less sanboxy Uplink and it is quite fun. The entire game is text-driven, you type in your commands as if you were typing them into a dos promt, which fits the game quite well. It is not a realistic hacking simulator though, as the game is more based on movie-style hacking than real world hacking (so it is not like try 2 hack it, which at least borders on what a real hacker might be doing. Try 2 hack it is by the way a fun game, though I've not been able to finish it). 

i continue to be amazed by the visual quality of Mafia II, the only reason i can imagine there is not more raving about it is that it possibly appeals in subject to a small audience and the younger set who play it may have no idea of the amazing graphics they are seeing, i find it one of the most fantasticaly realistic worlds yet..and beautifully made...

and there even trains! whcih i love!

Just finished the British campaign in Wings of Prey, and am now starting the Stalingrad campaign. Not playing on full realism though (mainly because that would mean that the ground texture would be the thing about this game that I would be most familiar with if I did). The game looks really nice, even on this old machine, and it has a good feel to it. I guess real WW2 flight sim connoisseur would tell me that IL-2 Sturmovik is a better game, but this one is still fun. 

Bought Assassin's Creed II a few days ago, 5 minutes in i realised that i hadn't finished the previous one because the story seemed to continue.

So i restarted the  original and quickly found out why i had abandoned that one in the first place, it gets boring rather quickly, same kind of missions over and over again 

I went back to the second installment and i'm loving it. This is one of the few sequels that is waaay better than the original.

No more repetitive missions, gameplay has improved a lot and there's a lot of different things to do and a big game world to explore. 

Also i'm amazed how much research the developers put into this game, the cities of Florence, Venice, San Gimignano,... really look exactly like the actual cities back then.

Since i've visited all of these cities, it really adds to the magic, the monuments you get to visit bring back memories.

And when i'm done with this one, there're 2 more installments in the series i've yet to discover 

I'm playing Assassin's Creed Revelations and batman: AC.

Revelations is great, also Mark, I'd suggest you just youtube some "lets plays" of the previous games and watch the story, so you odn't have to do the filler stuff.

I have wondered about the Assasins Creed game that has Venice, as i love Venice and no game yet has done that beautiful city justice..i will give it a try thanks Stiller and Mark

Assassins creed games have some of the best cities in a game. There's a ton of detail in them (though you normally can't go into most buildings or such) however the sheer scope of the entire city and things is quite nice.

When you stand atop a huge Cathedrial overlooking a city it can be quite breathtaking, especially the first time.

Here's a comparison between the real Basilica di San Marco of venice and the one in-game, i know these pics are low res but you'll get the idea.

You'll be able to climb the church and also see its interior in AC II

I'm in the Sicily campaign in Wings of Prey right now, just near the end and this is the second mission in a row that I'm forced to fly a P-51 Mustang. Darn thing just falls apart as soon as a German pilot glares at it and I have trouble keeping a high altitude with it as well. This is the first plane that I have had such problems with, even planes that were supposed to be outdated gave me better results. 

Originally Posted By Maum

I finally received my copy of The Witcher's Platinum Edition! Five years down the line (more or less) I can start again, this time on a proper PC rather than a laptop. I'm childishly excited about this and will have to abandon DA for a while.

Not enough hours in the day...

Cool, Maum, you're currently playing 2 of my fave games!!! 

Re Assasin's Creed 2:  thanks for the news, Marko and others. I too, didn't pick up any of the AQ sequels because I found the first one boring.  But now I'll definitely look out for a good price on the sequel. Btw, the similarity in those shots of the Basilica looks amazing!

Wow that looks great thanks, i look forward to seeing Venice, my copy of the game arrived today!

Here is a painting I did of San Marco Cathedral in Venezia in 1986, I love that city very much.

I'm being quite "productive" today. I just finished my second game, and it is just past 13:00. First game was Wings of Prey (which was quite good, it had a lot of variety in its missions, and allowed you to fly a lot of diferent aircrafts, from smaller fighter planes to large bombers), and Zombie Shooter (which had a very descriptive name, you shot a lot of zombies in it... Short, and that was probably a good thing, because it was starting to outstay its welcome by the end of the game)

That is good to hear Fnord, Wings of Prey was one of the flight sims that i decided not to take a look at, i got the other four main ones but havent had time to do more than find out what the game specs were, browse the collect the mods and fixes and study them a bit, and try a few out. Glad you got to finish WOP. Zombies i try to avoid in general

Wings of Prey is actually a part of the IL-2 series (known as IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of prey on the consoles). I doubt the console version(s) supports the same level of simulation though, fewer buttons on the controllers means that they needs to be a bit more streamlined. 

*edit*
Next up: The classic SRPG Jagged Alliance 2