What I’m Playing in October

Here’s a quick look at what I’m playing. I’m not playing as many games as I was this time last month, so this’ll be brief.

Dungeons and Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited.

D&D 3.5 edition has a certain charm—it’s a complex, deep role-playing system that doesn’t have the gamist sheen and gloss of 4th edition. DDO uses the 3rd edition rules as a basis for all aspects of gameplay. Directly harnessing D&D rules leads to a deep character creation process that’s actually quite fun. Planning out character builds is enjoyable in itself, but the dungeons aren’t as distinct as I’d like, though I can have fun for an hour or two a night without getting burnt out or bored.

In the future I’ll be writing a to-the-point pseudo-review of DDO in a similar style to my Aion pseudo-review.

Spelunky

Procedurally generated levels make this platformer very replayable and obscenely difficult. It’s a fun game to load up and play for ten minutes during spare moments.

Red Faction: Guerrilla

I’ve put four hours into this game and I’m having a great time. It’s a fun open-world FPS. Fully destructible buildings lead to unique, evolving combat scenarios. Enemy AI is good enough to make the game fun, though there are some gaping flaws (they’ll outright refuse to flank me around a building for no apparent reason). Sometimes buildings will stay up even after all support beams except for one are knocked out; Sometimes they’ll fall down realistically. The fact that I can drive a dumptruck through a building, literally ripping the building apart, and come out the other side never ceases to be awesome.