It's Friday! Are you STILL off?!

[MetalDog]

I envy all you folks who have had this week off.  I went back to work Thursday, so, it's the weekend for me.  Had some time last night and just stared at my screen before deciding on Warlock.  Played some CKII during Christmas.  We shall see what this weekend brings.

[Staggerwing]

Misery loves company- I had to work yesterday and will be going in today. Everyone else has the week off but someone has to be there to keep the lights on and answer phones. No one else would do it so I allowed myself to be 'volunteered'. That better get noted somewhere in my file for that day when we might have an office purge.  8)

[republic]

I've been making my family watch the Horatio Hornblower A&E series.  :)

I haven't been gaming as much as I'd like...I can't get into a rhythm.  I powered through Bioshock Infinite and was keen on X-Rebirth for awhile but here lately every time I have time to play I just end up going to bed early.  Dammit Jim!  (<-My 4 month old)

I promise you this...when he is a teenager and trying to sleep in...I am going to take an unnatural pleasure in waking his ass up....

[Staggerwing]

I didn't know about the A&E series. when was it released?

[JudgeDredd]

Having just completed the ArmA III Campaign (which is superb) it's just simulations this weekend and all weekend.

I have F1 2013 (picked it up for a snip (£12) in the Steam sale) which seems to me, from my limited play of it last night, considerably better than 2012. The cars are much more twitchy. Also - LOVE the classic cars (when are they going to realise there's a HUGE market for older F1 simming?)

Also some DTM Experience which is also superb.

Sim driving hasn't been sooooo good.

Also - I do plan to complete my AAR for RAF:Battle of Britain Eagle Scenario - so anybody who was reading can expect that to be completed on Sunday and see me get my ass handed to me as ze Germans. Again, I apologise for my tardiness - real life at Christmas and all!

[bayonetbrant]

Misery loves company- I had to work yesterday and will be going in today.

I was *at* work yesterday.  Amount of work being accomplished yesterday/today may vary with the levee of attention being paid to my Civ V game as the Shoshone and a little multiplayer CardHunter action :)

[Jarhead0331]

I'm dangerously close to buying in on the IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad early access...yes, I know, its $94, but it looks soooooo damn good. Really, the only thing holding me back is that I believe you can only play when the developer's servers are up and they only host them in bursts of activity.  I would find not being able to play when I want due to this issue seriously irritating.

Otherwise, my campaign in XCOM Enemy Within is getting seriously interesting. I've also been playing through the campaign in CoD: Ghosts and it has improved somewhat.  While definitely playable, its still overall a pile of unrealistic, over-the-top, implausible dog$hit.

[Tuna]

This is the first time I've had Vacation days left at the end of the year.. So I took Xmas through New Yeas... I'll be giving FSX another shot at repairing.. If it does not go well, I"ll be playing (wait for it...)

Other Games!

[Slick Wilhelm]

I have F1 2013 (picked it up for a snip (£12) in the Steam sale) which seems to me, from my limited play of it last night, considerably better than 2012. The cars are much more twitchy. Also - LOVE the classic cars (when are they going to realise there's a HUGE market for older F1 simming?)

Judge, are you a fan of rFactor or rFactor2? I'm thinking of buying a Logitech G27 Racing Wheel and getting back into racing.

I hear you about older F1 simming. I prefer the 60's and 70's era.


As for me, I worked yesterday but took today off, and I'm taking Wifey to see "American Hustle" today. After that, it'll be more time spent playing Wings Over Flanders Fields. Still trying to get my joystick sensitivity & deadband worked out.

I'll also get in a bit of Steam and Iron: RJW and some Ageod Civil War 2.

[Grim.Reaper]

I am still on vacation through January 2nd......so still have some time left.

For me, this weekend will be about exploring my new purchases, without likely getting very deep into any of them....

- Football Manager 2014
- Tomb Raider
- Splinter Cell Blacklist
- Sword of the Stars: The Pit
- Wings Over Flanders
- Front Office Football 7
- Left for Dead 2
- Aliens
- Walking Dead
- World in Flames (finally got for xmas, but not sure I am going to dive in right away...lot of reading to do and seems like they have issues over there)

Still possible purchases include:

- Combat Mission Market Garden
- Not a game, but the skin pack for WOFF

And of course any cheap sale that might come along:)

[JudgeDredd]

I'm dangerously close to buying in on the IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad early access...yes, I know, its $94, but it looks soooooo damn good. Really, the only thing holding me back is that I believe you can only play when the developer's servers are up and they only host them in bursts of activity.  I would find not being able to play when I want due to this issue seriously irritating.

Otherwise, my campaign in XCOM Enemy Within is getting seriously interesting. I've also been playing through the campaign in CoD: Ghosts and it has improved somewhat.  While definitely playable, its still overall a pile of unrealistic, over-the-top, implausible dog$hit.

Watch yourself JH...CLoD looked amazing too...remember that...You could crash and burn. I know you know...andI know that particular horse has been flogged...just sounding off.

slick...yes I have rfactor2 and it is also amazing. I'd highly recommend it.

[MengJiao]

I'm dangerously close to buying in on the IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad early access...yes, I know, its $94, but it looks soooooo damn good.

  It's horribly tempting.  The only thing holding me back are that, once I'm playing that, I won't play much in other flight sims (currently playing CLOD, DCS World and back in RoF after a brief relapse into the old IL-2 -- (after CLOD it is hard to overlook clunky graphics -- CLOD still looks better than DCS world and Rof -- which is promising for the BOSS (battle of stalingrad system)).
  Actually, I'm not playing anything currently since I have one more day until my father-in-law moves out of my manloft.  Even on vacation he works about 14 hours a day when he isn't meditating or sleeping or watching sports.  Apparently he runs a company, a church and a small exclusive elite private school and gets about one email every 5 minutes.
  Be that as it may, the day will come -- in fact tomorrow -- when I will regain my quarterdeck and play some games like Rome II, CMFI, DCS world etc.

[MengJiao]

I'm dangerously close to buying in on the IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad early access...yes, I know, its $94, but it looks soooooo damn good. Really, the only thing holding me back is that I believe you can only play when the developer's servers are up and they only host them in bursts of activity.  I would find not being able to play when I want due to this issue seriously irritating.

Otherwise, my campaign in XCOM Enemy Within is getting seriously interesting. I've also been playing through the campaign in CoD: Ghosts and it has improved somewhat.  While definitely playable, its still overall a pile of unrealistic, over-the-top, implausible dog$hit.

Watch yourself JH...CLoD looked amazing too...remember that...You could crash and burn. I know you know...andI know that particular horse has been flogged...just sounding off.

  CLOD is the best Flight sim available at the moment (with the Team Fusion mods).  BOS should be roughly, CLOD done in a more robust fashion within a version of the RoF world, but with significantly less hyperdetailed (CLOD level) stuff going on.  A recent post in the Il-2 BOS forums mentioned that CLOD models the entire internal structure of the aircraft so that a CLOD model takes maybe 3-4 times the development work as a BOS model and most of that extra work does nothing in the game but take up processing time most of the time.  The BOS flight models should be at least as detailed as the CLOD models, but probably slightly more accurate since the useless complexity impacting the models is being reduced.
   I don't think BOS is likely to be as fragile a system as CLOD has been.
   

[JudgeDredd]

^You could be right...and both of you are definitely right that it looks amazing...but once bitten and all that.

I'll wait see.

By the way - just a question...how does DCS World WWII impact on Battle of Stalingrad? Or doesn't it? They are the same development teams are they not?

[Bison]

I didn't know about the A&E series. when was it released?

It's an excellent series.  It aired late 90's, early 2000's.