System Shock Enhanced.
It took me a bit to get the controls down but as soon as I did I couldn't stop playing for a couple hours :P

Back to the Future - The Game

Just finished Murdered: Soul Suspect. It was okay I guess. Not bad, not great; just decent. *shrug*

I started playing The Saboteur right after. I only just finished the prologue. So far so good. Quite fun. I found it a bit odd that "accidentally" running over pedestrians elicited little to no response when a Nazi wasn't around. I also came across some minor distant graphical glitching out in the countryside section. No biggie. Those fake accents surely are horrible, but I'm kind of liking that kind of cheese. Looking forward to more. ;)

After finishing the main campaign of Two Worlds 2 I'm going to start the add-on today.

Neverwinter Nights 2 :)

Fallout 2

Enjoying this quite a bit. I played and finished the first one by looking at a walkthrough once in a while, in order not to miss any important quests or doing something very stupid. I've tried to play Fallout 2 more blindly, not looking at walkthroughs.

Then again, I don't want to make mistakes here either where I'll be kicking myself to the head later. For these kinds of games, I'd really like kind of FAQs that just list things you should consider when playing the game, without guiding you through the whole game. Like the tidbit how to get your Luck stat increased (apparently there are two alternative ways, one giving you +2 Luck, the other "only" +1 Luck).

One thing I HATE in Fallout 2: pixel-hunting hell!!! What the heck was e.g. that "find the book for Becky in The Den" quest supposed to be? You will be searching for a tiny book on the ground somewhere in the city, with no idea where it could be? In the end I had to read from a walkthrough where it is, but even then I had problems finding it as

a) there are apparently four different random places where it could be

b) even then, it is VERY hard to discern from the scenery.

In my case it was on the ground in the cemetary, but boy was it hard to see it! I moved my mouse slooooowly around the cemetery, trying to find that tiny book which you couldn't really see. It was mostly blocked by some grass on the ground so you couldn't really see it, the only way to find it was to move the mouse so that it would be highlighted.

Argh! And another one was killing the quest for killing that Rat King, there were a couple of goodies like a gun and money that were veeeery hard to find on the ground.

I don't recall having similar issues in the first Fallout game, why did they add such pixel-hunting hell to Fallout 2?

It's been a while but I don't remember pixel hunting to be a common feature much, or at all, after that damn 'find the book' quest. Or in the very least, I don't remember struggling to find something ever again in the way that I struggled to find that book. And yeah, those damn Rat King mine tunnels :P Imo Fallout 2 unpleasant beginning ends after you've killed the Rat King.

edit: groundhog42 raises a good point. For reference, I played, I think, 1367x768 or perhaps 1600x900

I've recently completed Fallout 2, so I know what you mean about the pixel-hunting. However, what we probably forget is that this game was designed to be played at 800x600 on probably a 15 inch CRT monitor. I started playing at 1440x900 on a 19 inch LCD but I reduced the resolution to 1280x800 to make everything bigger.

If you compare the PPIs (pixels per inch):
- 15 inch screen, 800x600 = 67 PPI
- 19 inch screen, 1440x900 = 89 PPI
- 19 inch screen, 1280x800 = 79 PPI

I'm assuming you're using the widescreen mod and your PPI may be far higher if you have a HD screen. Being able to see everything clearer far outweighed the very slight loss in picture sharpness caused by using a non-native resolution (and I tend to be very picky about image quality). Also for me, using too high a resolution changes the feeling of games like this and Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale etc, and makes them 'too detached'. I enjoyed being closer to the action, I felt more involved and connected.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the game as much as I did.

I completed Back to the Future - The Game and have now moved on to <span class="bold">Clive Barker's The Undying</span>, and <span class="bold">Wallace and Gromit</span>.

Actually, I am playing it at the 640x480 resolution on my 17.3" laptop screen. :) I think the GOG (Bethesda?) version first defaulted to 1024x768, but I felt even with that the text and user interface was too small for me. I prefer 640x480 where everything is bigger, especially the text. No matter if you can see less of the playing area on the screen, that's what the screen scrolling is for after all.

Yet, I still had big problems with those pixel hunting parts. I hate to think how they'd be if I'd play them on much higher resolutions. I am unsure why I didn't have similar problems in the original Fallout (which I also played at 640x480 resolution), maybe I missed lots of items in it then.

This was the quest: where's the book in the first picture? I've highlighted it in the second one. (You may need to zoom the pictures to make them full screen.)

I mean, come on. Trying to spot a hidden object like that in the whole city, having no idea about its whereabouts or even whether it is lying somewhere on the ground, or is in some cupboard or whatever? Were the Fallout 2 developers trolling the gamers?

Yeah, I hope rest of the Fallout 2 doesn't have silly pixel-hunting quests like that...

Wherever possible I prefer playing all games at my native resolution, and second to that at the highest resolution a game supports while preferably maintaining a 16:10 or secondarily a 16:9 aspect ratio. Finally I fall back to the highest 4:3 resolution. After that it comes down to gameplay visuals. Are the HUD elements sized large enough to serve their purpose adequately? Is the mouse cursor or crosshairs or similar large enough to see adequately without interfering with my game play? Can I read the fonts? All of the fonts throughout the various elements of the game where text might appear? Can I see the details in the game environment I need to see at a decent enough size, or might things be too small and possibly not noticed?

Sadly, after finding the optimal hardware resolution to use to maximize it to modern advantage I sometimes find I have to lower the resolution in order to scale the size of some of the various elements mentioned above up to be playable and enjoyable. I love the finer detail afforded by higher resolutions but not at the expense of needing a magnifying glass or squinting of course. :)

While testing Fallout and Fallout 2 a few months ago and trying to find the optimal configuration for my 30" display I ended up going with 1280x720 as being the best balance of higher resolution and visibility/playability. I didn't trial run it for a long enough time to be absolutely conclusive about that mind you either. Naturally, on a smaller monitor such as a 24" display or smaller a lower resolution might be more optimal though too. I suspect 1024x768 for a 24" and perhaps 800x600 for 22" or smaller, probably 640x480 on those tiny lil rinky-dink laptop displays... ;o)

Titan Quest Anniversary Edition and I'm having a blast :D

You won't be surprised to know that I didn't find that book on my playthrough!

I can only recall a couple of other hard to spot quest items, but both of them were fairly minor side-quests and certainly didn't affect the plot. To be honest I got into the habit of quickly sweeping areas with my cursor if it looked like there might be something there, or I thought there should be. Of course there could have been others which I missed (pun intended).

One other feature of Fallout 2 which I found slightly irritating was the fact that things remained hidden behind walls i.e if our character stood behind a wall, you can only see a very small area around them through the wall. So there may be, for example, a chest 10 feet away from them, which they can obviously see but you can't.

I certainly wouldn't let either feature spoil your enjoyment.