WHAT VIDEOGAMES ARE YOU PLAYING RIGHT NOW?

Morrowind was a big mixed bag. Vivec aside(which really is a pain to navigate since every looks the same) the world was really cool looking. But yeah, the mechanics were terrible, you to grind to even attack successfully and successes were the only things that counted for experience. Which meant that the early game was really tedious. It also meant that the Enchantment skill isn't useful until it's maxed out since you were more likely to break a good enchantment than to have a successful one. You have to grind enchantment using cliff racers souls to get anywhere. So yeah, cool world, a lot of really bad design decisions.

Morrowind is a really great game, and at the same time a really broken one. I can't really recommend playing it without mods. But with the right tweaks, Morrowind is one of the greatest gaming experiences ever.

author=mawk
I really remember enjoying Morrowind when I stole it back in high school (since I couldn't run Oblivion, y'see), just for the fact that it was so easy to find hidden things while wandering around without any goal in mind. a lot of it is probably just that it was my first game of its kind, but exploring felt really tense and spooky and I enjoyed it a lot. no clue if it'd hold up if I came back to it these days, though! probably not.

I might play it again when the people doing the Skyrim conversion finish up, though. that's kind of a weird idea, but I really like the thought and I wanna see where it goes.

I'm also really looking forward to Skywind. I feel like Morrowind would be a lot more personally enjoyable if it was using the same engine/mechanics as Skyrim.

That, and the Morrowind environmental stuff (from Dragonborn) looks absolutely wonderful in HD.

Finally, after three years and five restarts, I got around beat Final Fantasy 7. Funny story: When I stopped playing about five months ago, I was actually about an hour away from the final dungeon. So I decided to have one last grindfest with the game over the weekend to get it done.

But... I still don't think it's good as everyone says it is. There were so many directions the game went, I wouldn't have had any idea who the real villain was if I hadn't had Sephiroth's name spewed out at me from every FF fan out there.

Oh, speaking of Sephiroth, I'm kinda surprised at how little of a presence he actually made in the game. He just kinda... stood in the background and looked evil for 60% of the game. Not really what I was expecting from the guy who was quoted a, "the best supervillain ever!" Again though, that was from more rabid fanboys, so who knows?

Despite everything I've said, I didn't hate the game. In fact, I probably would have joined everyone saying it's the best game ever had I grew up with it. As it is now, all I can say is that it's a really good game, and not much more.

I recently got back into Terraria. Oh man, I forgot how fun it is to just load up a game and mess around without having any clear goal at all.

Game Dev Tycoon is bizarrely fun and I have no idea why

my one big complaint is that the events in the world are very static and mirror the real-world history of games closely, so you always know to back Not-Nintendo over Not-Sega (for instance), but I'm sure there's probably mods to extend the campaign and reshuffle things by this point?

yeah, vacation time was always one of the most frustrating things to coordinate. Kairosoft makes a lot of simulator games in the same vein as Game Dev Tycoon, but employee fatigue is even harder to pin down in those ones as, being a phone game, the UI is a little more minimal. I really wanted to get into Game Dev Story as a small thing to play during breaks, but I wound up getting too frustrated with these hidden elements.

or maybe I'm just missing something! who knows

Installed the Pets expansion pack to my Sims 3 and started playing around with it.

Eh... It's not as awesome as I thought it would be, and some of the features that come with it are a bit clunky (why can't I walk more than one dog?), but I like the new town and other possibilities it adds, like seeing random animals popping up and being able to own a horse. I just wish there was a teensy bit more to it.

Most people have what many FFVII fans consider the wrong expectation to begin with. People expect Sephiroth to be a more 'in your face', confrontational nemesis to Cloud. But I figure that Sephiroth is supposed to be this awe inspiring, dangerous villain that you only see the damage he does when you just miss him, in his wake (i.e. the massacre at the Shinra tower, the impaled Midgar Zolom, the killings on the cargo ship), and the influence he has on Cloud's mind and actions.

He renders the party completely ineffectual and hopeless against him in every way up until the last leg of the game.

author=Feldschlacht IV
Most people have what many FFVII fans consider the wrong expectation to begin with. People expect Sephiroth to be a more 'in your face', confrontational nemesis to Cloud. But I figure that Sephiroth is supposed to be this awe inspiring, dangerous villain that you only see the damage he does when you just miss him, in his wake (i.e. the massacre at the Shinra tower, the impaled Midgar Zolom, the killings on the cargo ship), and the influence he has on Cloud's mind and actions.

He renders the party completely ineffectual and hopeless against him in every way up until the last leg of the game.

But I didn't see a whole lot of actual evil from Sephiroth. Just... badassery. Which is not the same thing. Plus, if I recall correctly, a lot of what you said Sephiroth did was actually the work of Jenova. Shinra tower and the cargo ship. The impaled Midgar Zolom was a symbol of badassery, not necessarily evil. Plus, Jenova took Sephiroth's form to do many of the major actions of the game, whittling down Sephiroth's already smaller list of actual accomplishments. I'll give you that last one, though. He really did mess up Cloud's head.

I think the real antagonist of the game was Jenova. She really scared the crap out of me. More than Sephiroth ever did. If the game was more about her, it would have been great.

author=Sooz
I assume that like 99% of "best villain ever!" opinions in video games are based on pure nostalgia, and possibly also that this was the first serious villain these kids had encountered after a prior diet of Care Bears and Disney.

Of Kefka from FF6, which I hear many people saying beats Sephiroth any day of the week. But he was pretty goofy.