"The Insurgent" and "Countdown" from the Protoss campaign were hard back when I was an inexperienced turtler, but they actually turned out to be rather fun (by endgame standards). The last time I played "To Chain the Beast" from the Terran campaign, it offered a nice challenge. Having to wipe out certain Cerebrates to eliminate their special threats was a neat gimmick, so my persistence paid off. As for those two aforementioned Zerg missions, I remember them being almost nightmarishly frustrating. I've always been really clumsy with hotkeys, so lacking twitch reflexes probably made defending that much harder. Since attacks were nearly constant in "Omega", the challenge was finding a good moment to go on the offensive. It's all a blur to me now; I just remember going after Mengsk's base since his Ghosts kept deploying nukes.

I putzed around with a few games on my SNES Classic. Bad reviews be damned because Starfox 2 is fun as shit. The original still holds up as well.

After finishing Dungeon Siege (Legends of Aranna), I've been trying to decide in which game to concentrate next. The most potential ones:

- Divine Divinity (already started it a bit)
- Deus Ex (with the GMDX mod; already playing the tutorial)
- Dungeon Siege 2 (probably have to dig my retail version as the Steam version is missing the expansion, again)
- Gothic 2 (I liked the first Gothic)
- Fallout 3 (would make sense as I've now finished Fallout 1-2 and Tactics)

Anyway, while trying to decide between those, I continued playing Delta Force. It is kinda enjoyable in small doses, trying a mission, making more and more progress with each retry as you tend to learn where the enemies might be coming and shooting from. The game has generally lots of sniping, which I really enjoy.

I just don't quite get it how it seems that the first campaign has like 6-8 separate missions, but all the other campaigns have only like 1-2 missions each? Am I missing something? Why is the first campaign so much more longer than the other ones? EDIT: Or will there be more misisons revealed in other campaigns after you have finished the first missions? I don't recall if it went that way in the first campaign...

Oh no all of then have that many missions, you just have to unlock them first. I finished DF1 and DF2 earlier this, uhm, make that last year. I was very happy to finally be able to cross both off of my backlog :)
By the way DF2 is a very nice sequel and well worth checking out if you enjoyed the first game. Can be a bit buggy though. Graphically it is almost identical (the grass looks nice though) but the missions and enemy bases are far more interesting.

Any tips on how to detect enemies? Only recently I figured out "hey, I can use binoculars with B! And I can see some of the enemies on the map with C!", but quite often I end up in a case where I hear someone is shooting at me from afar, but I can't quite detect from which direction. Well, sometimes I may see some bullet trails, but only sometimes.

It is kinda stressing to look around you with binoculars and hoping to detect the enemy before they finally get a kill shot at you... I am just thinking if I am missing something obvious, like how in Far Cry you could detect and mark your enemies with binoculars.

Also it appears sometimes some patrolling enemies appear, and sometimes not? Does the game randomize those patrols with each retry, so that you can't learn by heart where all enemies are, but have to keep on your toes all the time?

The other game I am always playing is Team Fortress 2, but now I am thinking if I should try to abandon it, at least for awhile.

The reason is those damn "cat bots". They are computer AI bot players made by someone that join games, have of course perfect aim and can even shoot invisible spies. They just make the game not fun, which I guess is the point of the asshat who has made them.

I always report and votekick cat bots that I see (hoping that in the end the accounts running them get VAC banned), but more just keep coming, usually several cat bots in both teams. At first they were usually just in the Harvest map, but now I've seen them at least also in Turbine, Suijin and possibly others.

Is Valve really so unarmed against these cheaters and bots? Frankly, I think Valve should require some sort of ID verification (credit card or whatever) for creating new accounts used for F2P games like TF2 because now the problem appears to be that even if a cheating account is VAC banned, they just create a new account automatically, or something.

Or alternatively, Valve should hire an army of TF2 players who have the power to manually VAC ban any player account that is clearly cheating.

Anyway, I may have to stop playing the game for now, using most time reporting and votekicking cat bots isn't just fun. This is the reason I am reluctant to pay anything for multiplayer games, other gamers (or lack of them) can really ruin the game.

EDIT: Since cat bots claim to be free, I wonder if they install some malware like bitcoin mining software to the users' computers? At least I hope they do.

Oh yes that's difficult. I don't think it's possible to play the game in an as 'safe' way as in Far Cry. For detecting enemies, I like getting a good vantage point and then keep the camera still. Any enemy movement no matter how far should catch your eye. Then you can zoom in to check how many they are. Searching immediately with binoculars while under fire I wouldn't recommend. Just look normally at the direction you think it's coming from and look for any movement or anything that stands out. If there is nothing then get to cover asap and move to another position from where you can have a second look.
Other than that try to move as fast as possible. Don't stay in one area too long. I believe the enemies converge on where they think you are and once they get too close you'll be in trouble. A lot of my deaths were from staying and sniping from one position for too long.

Do the patrols randomize? Uhm that's possible but I can't remember for sure. Most patrols I remember were the same each time. But for some reason I think that some might switch between 2 or 3 different routes on a restart.

Now I feel even less like playing against other humans but I guess one can form a team among friends and play on an invitation only server.

Deadly Premonition: Director's Cut (GOG version)
with DPfix
-> It's really Twin Peaks as an Action Adventure
-> I'm playing it with a wireless XBOX 360 controller - too bad they didn't do a better job converting the controls to keyboard+mouse...

Did you use any mods? I'm thinking about going back to the series, but I haven't tried neither Fixt, nor Restoration Project, although I've heard good things, especially about the latter. I usually install just the child patch for Fallout.

Back on topic... Hard work, witcherin'. About to cross the Pontar after many hours spent in Velen. Tense moment (and hilarious at the same time) inside Dragonslayer's Grotto when a level 20 leshen dropped right on top of a level 12 Geralt. Luckily the beast seemed somewhat confused and decided to turn its back to Geralt, allowing him to grab certain diagrams just in time. I wonder if the leshen still watches over witcher George.:D

Playing Sword Coast Legends, which I picked up on sale just before its removal from sale altogether. Actually enjoying it, but I'm a sucker for D&D-based CRPGs. Definitely has some rough edges and there are things that could have been done better but it's overall a fun game and more than worth the few bucks I spent on it.

Oh its great! which C&C?

right now #3 but I've played all RA and C&C 1-3

I've got to give that a second playthrough sometime. Great game and much easier than SC :)