I may be on an utterly crippled old rig that can't even run the Source engine, but in theory I might still get a decent framerate out of Arx Fatalis. Time to head to Good Old Games, and stoke the fires of my intrigue for Dishonoured. Who's with me?!

(Possibly filling the rest of the months with Deus Ex, Thief and Morrowind..)

What are you saying? You haven't played Deus Ex, Thief, Arx Fatalis, or Morrowind before?

Hell no! I've played them all. I think I've played pretty much every first person RPG and immersive sim - I've simply not played as much of Arx as I'd like, and discovering Dishonored seems like an ideal excuse to return to it =)

I′ve also started today my next journey into the dungeons. I hope I will finish Arx finally on this try...
I′ve finished Dark Messiah several times before, so its time for a real new challenge

what about Far Cry 2? people always tend to overlook that one when discussing immersive sims, even though it fits pretty comfortably within the boundaries. STALKER, too, but that's generally referenced to some degree.

i've been playing the hell out of Ultima Underworld over the past few days, and i'd like to get back to Thief one of these days so i can finish Craigscleft. i managed to find both System Shocks at a thrift store last week, which was [censored] insane, and i've never played either of them so i'm gonna give them a shot eventually.

i wish i could get Arx Fatalis working. i have it on Steam and it used to work fine but both times i've reinstalled it recently i'm suddenly moving at lightning speed and i can't find any fixes for it. i'm pretty sure the recent patch broke something for me.

Just got Wine to run Deus Ex on my Ubuntu PC!

PSYCHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Far Cry 2 doesn't fit the bill for me - ultimately it's just a sandbox shooter. At that, a horrendously broken one which makes me feel guilty for every man I am forced to murder because they never stop screaming and whining and accusing me of being 'a right bastard' when I kill their friends. Also they won't stop spawning right behind me. Also kamikazi trucks. Also respawning checkpoints. Also first person animations extend as far as re-setting my broken shin but inexplicably don't go as far as pressing the brake or accelerator in the car -at any time-. Also most of the animals weren't included in the original release.

Hm. Yes, I really [censored] hated Far Cry 2. I enjoyed the original, though.

How about Boiling Point: The Road to Hell? That game is basically what Far Cry 2 would be if it was trying to be Morrowind, and is even more broken; but far more worthy of respect. While stuck inside a wall because your car teleported upside down into an apartment block.

such is life on the savanna.

i understand and generally agree with your criticisms, they made a lot of really weird design decisions and i'm pretty sure it would've been a hundred thousand times better if they'd released mod tools for it, but i've always really enjoyed it. the intense firefights and constant struggle for survival made and having to stop and think about tactical approaches to an objective made me feel really good.

different strokes, though.


Boiling Point's fantastic. quirky as hell, though. i really wish they'd gotten a consistent STYLE down at some point in development - the plot seems kind of serious but there's so much in the game that's just really weird and goofy and detracts from the experience. i felt Precursors did what Boiling Point tried to do a lot better, as far as atmospheric consistency, though it lost a bit of the freedom.

Deep Shadows is/was a really good developer, though, and i'd like to see more stuff from them. it's unpolished, yeah, but they do so many things that no other developer would ever even imagine doing. it almost never works out well but it's still fascinating.

Ice Pick Lodge, too - i'd really like to see another game like Pathologic, instead of goofy [censored] like Cargo or crazy abstract stuff like the Void.

I won't hear a word said against The Void But I'm sure Icepick Lodge will give us some more sweet diseased cruelty soon enough. Perhaps by then I'll actually learn how to fight the Brothers...

I must register my gratitude to have finally found someone who like Far Cry 2 who doesn't want to murder me for disliking it.