blonde poker forum

Had a browse through the lounge and taking inspiration from Tommy Bingham talking about retro gaming in his thread I thought it might be cool to see if there was any interest in a general gaming thread.  We're talking anything from PC/XBOX/PS3/NINTENDO/SEGA and any other form of computer gaming old, current or future you can think of.  Not sure if there are many gamers on Blonde but theres only one way to find out.  Although I don't get much time to play these days (and am not particularly great at computer games when I do play) I do still enjoy sitting down and playing some PC/XBOX from time to time.

Lets do this.......

Other than on the mobile, I don't do gaming anymore. Used to be an absolute Nintendo nut.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8BS4Pbo22A

Many moons ago, I knew every move for every character. Would struggle to tell you one or two for each now.

Street fighter 2 tourney would be epic

A retro gaming tournament would be sick!  I quite liked TB's idea about perhaps doing it for charity, but can't see it taking off in the immediate future (I hope I'm wrong).

In more recent gaming news, I purchased the newish Tomb Raider game for xbox and have to say I was very impressed.  The graphics are amazing and the story line certainly made me want to carry on playing.  It wasn't the longest game I've every played, but there is a multiplayer online Halo style that I haven't had a go at yet.  For those of you who enjoyed either Hit Man or the original Tomb Raider games, I would defo recommend giving it a go.

I also bought Formula One Stars (or w/e its called, the karting one) about 10mins ago and I am hoping its like Mario Kart / Crash Team Racing.  Another rubbish review to follow no doubt!!!  For those of you with xbox live, pretty sure I'm tomsom87 on there too!

a long long time ago...i used to be very good at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_%28video_game%29  possibly the first online game ever of that sort. Was GB captain, fun while it lasted..

Just getting back into indi PC games, from sites like Humble Bumble, where you get cracking games for a price u decide to pay..

http://www.humblebundle.com/

worth a gander.

Great Thread.

I used to absolutely love PES, but now I'm a FIFA nut and have absolutely done my conkers on their ultimate team.

Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat/Shinobi reminds me when it was 10p for a game at the arcades.

Not played video games in years but I was the boss on Tekken 2. My friends and I played a game called 'Tekken Flick Nose' where the loser of the game got a painful flick on the nose from his opponent. I had a run of about 72 games unbeaten in that, and when I finally was defeated, my mate missed my nose trying to set up a elaborate flick.

Life went downhill after that.

I used to play video games all the time in my youth. Still do a fair bit but nowhere near as much as I used to.

Currently I'm playing through Ni No Kuni. Anyone who is in to RPGs might want to take a look.

As far as Tekken goes the ones I remember most were 2 and 3. My favourite character in 2 was Michelle. In 3 it was Julia. How happy was I when Tekken Tag came out and I could play as them both at the same time!!

Just looked at this and I'm not sure that I dare download it!!!!  I think if I do I might be saying goodbye to many hours.


TY.  I only really played the first PES, I think the whole R. Lacros, D. Backhim thing put me off!!!!  Really enjoyed FIFA 12 and spent a lot of time playing that.  FIFA 13 didn't really catch my attention that much and although I have played it a bit, I've played it nowhere near as much as I did its predecessor.  I imagine it wont be too long before FIFA14 shows up now.

I completed Bubble Bobble on 3 lives.......................... that's all

Impossible!

Surely?

The later levels just get daft with no room for error whatsoever.

it did not happen over night!

i played 4323 rounds of micropose golf on the amiga...jesus i lost money on that game

I played it loads and loads when I was younger.

In fact, I still have my PS1 disc which works in my PS3. As far as I'm aware it's pretty much the closest port to the arcade version.

My least favourite levels as I recall were 63 (you had to bubble up the sides with space invaders raining fire down) and level 99 (which was just evil full stop).

deus ex bitches <3


(http://www.gpforums.co.nz/attachment.php?s=&postid=7917801)

+eleventybillion

Human Revolution was pretty decent I thought - helped purge the turgid posh that was Invisible War.

yeh I played it through but throughout I just mmmed and arrrred then found my A4 piece of paper from my original deus ex playthrough, reinstalled deus1 and spent a week pissing about on the opening level again rotflmfao

yes i'm one sad sad little man :D

also PES 1998

so sick there are basically no screenshots from it sigh

(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uwvYLD15FPs/UI3DkNKF-NI/AAAAAAAAGo8/HOAFFh0_cLQ/s640/internationalsuperstarsoccerpro98ntscfrontqy6.jpg)


absolute best bit was how they did penalties, with the small and bigger boxes for where you are aiming, that you could choose to hide if you wanted to be all hardcore. brilliant idea and methodology so much better than modern ways of doing it.

pre 2k games ftw.

Loved all the GTAs and a big COD 2/4 fan. Not played many of the recent ones. Oldschool GTA birdseye view were excellent games.

Most traumatic moment of my life was having the cleaner turn off my megadrive having finally convinced my mum to leave it on. Best ever Sonic save down the drain. FML.

Resident Evil 4.

Best. Game. Ever. I could still probably complete it all tooled up in just over 2hrs!

Toe jam n earl
Bonanza brothers
Gunstar heros
X men vs street fighter
Dragon force


 The memories

Fuck yeah

Football manager... I've played this since 1992 when it was championship manager... I think I actually may have lost a % of my life to this game...

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x9pBTmPEqY

Lol - we'd need a separate CM/FM containment thread to document the lives ruined.

PC

Championship Manager 97/98 - The version where Rob Taylor was a boss

^^ Have this on my PC now


Atari 520ST

Speedball 2
Solomon's Key
Magic Pockets
Rockford
Arkanoid 2 - Revenge of Doh
Thundercats
Army Moves
Navy Moves


Playstation/Playstation2

Time Crisis
Metal Gear Solid
Max Payne
Syphon Filter

Playing Time Crisis anywhere other than at an arcade, a service station or an airport is against the law.

Sure is

+1

-2


(http://eatdrinkandbemarysue.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/haters-gonna-hate.gif)

My uncle had a games room upstairs in his pub with a decent TV and it was incred!

I actually think I might be selling out somewhat by remembering that I had the Time Crisis gun and game at home.  That been said, still nothing beats paying what is becoming an increasingly stupid amount of money for 3 lives in an arcade!!!!

Obv nothing as good as the arcade, but if you had a decent setup it great fun. However, I will concede that it was garbage if you tried playing on a small TV.

I was just looking for a similar setup for the xbox, with these large flatscreens all over the shop I thought it would be quite cool.  Unable to find anything :/

ok bitches


duck hunt


YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWnYe6Mw7dE

Never played it, but cool video and incred tekkers from chalkyboy!

Duck Hunt was on the same cartridge as Super Mario Bros.

Quality game.

duck hunt was incredible, absolutely incredible. gun + tv screen + how the fk does that work + stupid laughing dog when clearly the gun isn't set up correctly. what a brilliant game. <3

Is it sad that I watched it all?

It's only sad if you admit to it.

(http://i43.tinypic.com/2i6qa0.jpg)

Was only a matter of time before someone pulled Sensible Soccer out the bag!!!

£429!

I bought F1 stars for Xbox thinking it would be a decent replacement for Mario Kart on the WII.  Its alright, but not really as good imo.  CSB.

If anyones playing and decent Xbox games atm then please lmk.  Apparently you can currently download Fable 3 on Xbox live for free.  Gonna look into that now.....

it's ok microsoft are letting us play on consoles only when we are connected to the internet.


utter fucking plebs.

I think I can hear the laughing from inside Sony headquarters from here.

pss consoles aint real gaming...

Gaming, gaming, gaming. Great inspired thread mate! :D

(http://4playernetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Final_Fantasy_VII_Front_Page2.jpg)

FF7 is just amazing.

I took up a hobby a while back, but never turned into anything special as I was never good enough. And the time needed to train is unreal.

Speed gaming and Speed Runners.

This is actually a sport, big events in American/Japan for it and really commercial.

Basically, it is completing a game in the quickest time possible. Amazing skills.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBMQhKK3Ctk

FF9 has a speed run challenge built in. Get to the final dungeon within 12 hours to get the Excalibur II, the games most powerful sword.

Doing that at the minute! So difficult. The Movie sequences take up alot of time during the run and they count towards the timer. The way to get around it is play on original Playstation One and open the disk tray during the FMV. That way, it skips them and gives you more time. :D

Really difficult to do tho.
Got two files going since last week, one running max - collecting everything, and maxing players. other is speedrun. :)

(http://www.finalfantasykingdom.net/9/ffixexcalibur2.gif)

If it wasn't for hero's like this, there would be Vile Red Falcons running about all over the shop!!!!

lol you're mad!

I've never really done any special run throughs of the FF games. A low level run in FFVIII hardly counts lol as it's the best way to do it.

I did go the stat maxing route in FFX and beat Penance. Lost that save now but looking forward to doing it again when the HD version comes out later this year :)

Me and my brother had a search for it last week and was gutted it isnt out yet! FFX I never beat penance, o ly a few dark aons as its so tough! Penance is probably the hardest boss ever, that or Ozma from FF9

Before poker came along I used to play a lot of battle strategy games; think a strategic mind has helped a lot with the tournament poker. From Chess through to candc, and a fair bit inbetween. Nowadays its xbox footy games with the 12 and 6 year old..

Did anyone have Utopia or Mega-lo-Mania

I think Im the only person ever to have these

Haha, never heard/played these.

Did have a dabble years ago at Populus.

yeah long time ago tho

oh yeah, probably 20 years ago at a guess  -still incred games

(http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Jim-Halpert-Shrug-and-Leave-The-Office.gif)

Having donated to the Kickstarter project, I'm eagerly awaiting the early access to Elite: Dangerous next year.

Time will tell whether or not it lives upto the original, which was so far ahead of it's time that it redefined the entire gaming industry.

It will either be awesome, or a total failure.  There's no middle ground with this one!

Torchlight free here:

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/torchlight

excellent game for both pc and mac.

I was f5'ing the kstarter page the second it went up. gogogogooooo

WTF, where is all the track and field talk? Socks off, boom ready to rub those buttons.

I think I still have all the track and fields from PS1 to 3, used to have sick battles.  Swimming and javelin were my events. Still got war wounds from all the blisters.

This was my fav era of the game: (http://cdn2.spong.com/screen-shot/i/n/internatio12897/_-International-Track-and-Field-PlayStation-_.jpg)

Great thread. A few from memory.

Vic 20
Amok
Jelly monsters

Spectrum
Gilligans Gold
Match day2

64
Outrun

Mastersystem
Wonder boy in monster land

Megadrive
Super Monaco GP
Revenge of Shinobi

Snes
Legend of Zelda

boom. after 6 hours of grinding. i finally beat Ozma from FF9 today. :D

6hrs????  Fish.

awesome sale on Steam again :)

Deus Ex: Human Revolution £7 :)

I got Borderlands 2 for £5...

ORLY.  Defo wanted to give Borderlands a go, best get to it.

Congrats on ruining my grind this week :D

lol, with young kids my days of 4-5hrs a night playing mmorpgs have gone but i love borderlands 2 so far as you can pick up and go for the odd hour here or there, i liked it so far. ~Very fun and challenging.

 Deus Ex the original tho :o

https://www.humblebundle.com/weekly

awesome games in this weeks bundle, pay as little as a few bucks for them all :)

Great bump!!!  GTA5 anyone? Thoughts?

Probably the best game ever made for just how intricate it is. Bit morally wrong to force us to torture someone in a mission though. And the public execution of a Steve Jobs like person at an iFruit keynote presentation is messed up too.

I agree on the intracacies of the game, absolutely amazing just how big the map is and how much detail is in there.  I'm only about 50% of the way through the story so far though so no spoilers ;D

For me though, the keynote assassination and the the torture part didn't seem as bad as the Call of Duty mission in the Russian airport.  And the end of the day though, it is just a game and I don't really mind as long as it's in context.

YES!!

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/grand-theft-auto-v-coming-to-pc-in-early-2014-report/1100-6415514/

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmPjsBDN9Xw

I played this on the Atari, this WAS my child-hood!

Funny (not at the time) story; I had the Atari magazine, and it this feature it has World Records for some games, River Raid being one of them.  I was convinced, I'd beat the score indicated and the magazine prompted you to send a picture in etc..

So next time, duly beat the score!...My game ended, and asked my Mum for the camera (oh the joy of the world before Camera phones!)  It turned out we didn't have a camera!, so I asked several neighbours, without success.  Unfortunately my Mum didn't think it was a good to take up the TV until Monday when I'd ask my school or friends for a camera!

In my heart I know I'm the champion of the world.

Currently most of my gaming is now playing war thunder..can't tell you how good this game is and free...obv. pay to win element with some planes and accelerated exp gain but the games brill for flying

(http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17m1hcmrgmyvrjpg/original.jpg)

Epic Game. Kindom Heart II was amazing also. Just so sick as a kid to be able to me Mickey Mouse and co. and battering the hell out dragons and 'the darkness'

Massive fan of the KOH series, some of the scripting got a little shit in places, but those games where so well thought out and so cool...

Anybody getting COD Ghost

Any one played Stick of Truth? Thoughts?
Messed about with it today and seems incredible for a fan - is it worth picking upan old 360 just to play?

seems incredibly hilarious having watched people play it on youtube.


brilliantly unpc  ;tightend; ;tightend; ;tightend;

Currently playing blizzards Hearthstone, cracking card game along the lines of magic the gathering.

(http://lytherus.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/hearthstone-game-sshot-1.jpg)

Its free :) and easy to get into if anyone fancies it.

Currently rank 10 EU, which sounds good but god knows how many other ranked the same.

Never played a game like Magic.  Worries me that I might never come back!!!

MTG rocked.

It was easy to be the cool kid in the group, too.

I have just recently got into MTG!

The gf doesn't like my aggro red deck that can kill by turn 4 :D

This is quite good fun, I've played a few of these.

I'm not that good.

I'm playing Hearthstone atm too and I'm pretty bad at it  ;D  That being said it's surprisingly enjoyable.

Anyone have any Titanfall experiences they wish to share on xbox360?  I heard its not that great unless you have an Xbox1, thoughts?

titanfall seems pretty meh for all the hype that they tried to surround it with.


bf3 is currently free on origin if anyone fancies trying that.

Played Cod4 competitively to top10 in EU standard on PC. Anyone else have experience playing competitive / going to competitive events?

http://www.wipido.com/video/PW4d2FqNwBkH

^ Is a little video montage of a few of my better bits in competitive matches.

I've played soggy biscuit to a very high standard indeed.

That's how it works these days. Pay $400m developing game. Realise it's not very good. Spend similar amount in marketing and to reviewers to try and convince people it's good and still not sell anywhere near what you needed to to prevent $100m+ loss.

rofl

yeh took ea/dice months to take their abortion of a bf4 release down the right direction. and wait for it *gasp* listen to feedback from the community of players. zomg intelligence.


still nowhere near as good as the game could have been, still so many basic basic problems. gotta love the peter principle and how endemic these problems are in any kind of big business. such a shame as the game had such potential.

I couldn't believe the number of adverts for titanfall all over normal tv schedules, kinda put me off tbh. Especially with how they are trying to move so many of the titles over to incremental rape rather than an upfront payment.



twats  ;tk;

The reason they went OTT on Titanfall was because it was the first big XBox One game - it kinda has the hopes of the console resting on it.

Has anyone played Dayz, the zombie survival game? It's a totally different experience as you spend 99% of the time trudging through forests or looting houses then, out of nowhere, some fucker shoots a hole in your head and you have to start all over again.

I played CoD multiplayer for about 2 minutes. Spawn, run 5 seconds, die when some Russian you haven't even seen kills you, repeat ad infinitum.

I haven't got into it but it seems absolutely brilliant, the maps are so huge and the tension is all created by yourself. As you start as a survivor and have nothing it matters not if you die, but once you've found some nice kit, got a good gun etc the tension ramps up as you're desperate not to lose it. There are some really well followed youtube channels that post long gameplay from it and it's actually very enjoyable to watch (mainly because they fast forward and just show you on the map how they ran through a forest for 15 mins to go round a dodgy looking village or w/e).


In one clip a group of well kitted out people with vehicles and everything, round up some freshly spawned noobs on the auspice of helping them. They coral them all onto a bus drive them to 'safety' then when they get to their camp, they put 2 inside a fenced off area, lob in one axe and say 'who wants to live'. absolutely hilarious, or at least it was to me.

similarly watching some bandits come up upon someone, get them to put down their weapon then..... 'take off your trousers' just always makes me laugh.

Very much seems a good game to play with a group of friends though meeting up with the maps being so huge and spawns being random can be a real ballache.


cod is for kids imo. unfortunately bf4 promised so much and delivered so very very little. really glad their share price dropped so harshly they really did balls up the release it's untrue. it's ok though the games still not fixed or even been massively overhauled but they have brought out two more bits of downloadable content (obv not free) and are in the works on more all the while whilst the current game is in a mess.


YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci_6CQ5R558

annnnnd titbeam is playing dayz now. should be cheaper than pokers lol


anyone else played it from here at all? first go lasted 2 hours till I met my first human player and he tried chopping my head off with an axe whilst I was trying to work out how to use the inventory!! I bested him in the axe fight tho so screw him :D

DLded BF3 for free

now my wife shouts at me for being 41 this year and still a child!!!

Haven't been able to catch up with this thread but has any played watchdogs yet?

Think it's more of a console game but I played it for a while on my friends PS4 and it's awesome! Really worth the purchase if anyone has a PS4 or Xbox One.

bf3 was great except for suppression, really surprised at how many servers are still running.

Jumping off the helipad on damavand peak rush is just immense  ;tightend; ;tightend;


really enjoying dayz already played it for ages today. watchdogs i've seen lots about but haven't even considered buying it tbh doesn't seem like it's for me. seems all rather gimmicky over substance.

Anyone got Mario Kart 8? It's good fun. Currently trying to get my online score up :)

Who plays the most popular game in the world, League of Legends?

Tried it could never really get into it, didn't see the massive appeal to be honest.

I bought it for my boys (5 and 3 yr old) but I've played it more. It's ace.

is it only for the wii u?

wow dayz is fking brilliant. absolutely loving it i'm such a chump at it but really getting into it. if the dev team continue how they have started it could easily be the best most playable longterm game of all time   ;tightend;

Could be, but they do seem to be really fking slow at adding stuff in when you consider it's sold 2 million copies at £20 a pop.

it did start with 1 guy on his own with the original mod, and from what i've heard having not been involved since the beginning bugs are getting fixed extraordinarily quickly if you compare it to any of the other games on the market at the moment. battlefield 4 being an absolute shining example of how not to produce a game.

given that this is released as an alpha I cant see any reason for fuss, bf4 was released as a 'finished product' and wouldn't run for the first 3 months on 99% of the worlds machines, it still crashes regularly 6 months down the line, and they've produced 3 pay to play addons whilst failing to fix nearly any of the original issues, they've also now announced a brand new battlefield game already before they've even finished the last dlc for bf4. absolute farce!


finally met other human players on a server who spoke to me rather than shooting me or beating me in the face  ;applause;

Who remembers The Sims?

You can download for free now - http://help.ea.com/en/article/how-to-get-the-sims-2-ultimate-collection/

sims 2 may be free but sims 3 cost all of 75k to buy it all and sims 4 seems to have been taken down the same route, it's disgusting   ;tk;

DayZ on the other hand has given me 250 hours of play already for my £20 and the games barely been developed  ;tightend; ;tightend; ;tightend;

I'm properly obsessed with Clash of Clans atm.  To the point where it's becoming a problem.

I was for a bit before realising it's a completely pointless game.

When you start paying 1m a piece for walls comeback to me.

I think it was about 10 years that I managed to go cold turkey from Championship Manager. It had just got too complicated and seasons took far too long to complete.

Then I saw they'd released a cut down version for iPad - gg life (again)

yup i'm staying away from it. same with civilisation ipad app  ;tk;


used to love champ man when it was just purely words and numbers, flashing for interesting stuff during the match. now you've got a pitch to watch the ball ping about on and sooo much depth it's just too much hassle. especially once you get really deep into a career and pressing continue takes naffin ages  ;tracet;


Did you purchase DayZ sir or just responded about it from reading up about it? It's fab  ;cupcake;

i've also stopped watching pretty much anything but youtube and twitch now. great way to assess a game before you decide to buy and a great way to get better at a new game. some of the channels on twitch get ridiculous numbers of views, especially all the LoL stuff!

I haven't really managed to get into the last 3 or 4 of them, the iPad game is really good though.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/01/27/riots-league-of-legends-reveals-astonishing-27-million-daily-players-67-million-monthly/

Halooooooooo

Love high level Hearthstone. So intense. Its a shame the draws are so important, just means x% of games are pretty much a lock one way or the other. Both guys (d2 vs number guy) at the Blizzcon match I just saw looked like they were going to be sick.

Anyone tried Prismata? Like a cross between Hearthstone/Chess/Starcraft. No grind to win, no pay to win, free to play, no RNG, all skill. Super addicitve, really fun. Just launched a Kickstarter at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lunarchstudios/prismata-a-new-hybrid-game-of-pure-strategy

Currently in Beta so to play you have to either wait for promotion or full release (or you can buy a Kickstarter level).

Been playing it a bunch with Timex (obviously he's like #3 in the world), dropped hundreds of hours into it already lol

http://www.prismata.net

Well I've applied for a Beta key, don't know how long it will take to get one though, says I'm on a waiting list.

Think they are planning a big wave before the end of the year, they just want to make sure that server doesn't die etc. You can buy an instant-access from the Kickstarter but it's $69

i've followed it for a while, just worried that i'll get too into it so swerving for now.

Was going to start a computer games thread but then thought 'I'm sure there must be one already' and, lo, the search thing on the forum actually worked and here we are.

Last night I played Firewatch, the latest game in a genre which gets pejoratively called 'walking simulators' but are really more interactive stories. You play a guy who takes a summer job acting as a forest fire lookout in deepest Wyoming, essentially cut off from the outside world save for a walkie-talkie link to your boss Delilah, in a lookout tower several miles away.

You potter about, doing various tasks around the forest, and then things happen that drive the story along, strange things that suggest some sort of mystery.

However, that's not really what the game is about - it's really about the relationship that your character has with this disembodied voice across the forest. The way the script is written and the voice acting, really makes these characters believable. I couldn't go to bed last night until I'd finished it (it's only about 5-6 hours in length) and whilst I thought the end doesn't quite live up to the promise of what went before it's a still a really involving little game.

I'm going to have a look at other games like this (Dear Esther, Gone Home) as it seems like a really nice change from the huge, sprawling open-world stuff I usually get consumed by (over the past few months I've put in over 130 hours each on Witcher 3 and Fallout 4).

What else have people been playing of late?

Timed well!!!  I have been playing chunks and chunks of Hearthstone recently and absolutely love it. 

Bought Fallout 4 and didn't really get into it.  I like games with direction and I sort of lost my way a few hours in and every time I try to play I just seem to wander round aimlessly for a while and give up on it.

Also bought Rocket League and like it a lot (like football with cars), really simple concept but strangely addictive.

Fallout 4 took me a little while to get into, but then I went all completey (if that is even a word) and was determined to find all the locations and get all the bobbleheads.

Whilst it's still really good, it suffers in comparison to, say, New Vegas as the missions just aren't as good - most of them are just 'go to this place, kill all the creatures/people then come back' or 'go to this place, find this thing (killing everyone along the way), and then bring it back'.

I liked the way the companion thing worked (some great characters like Codsworth and Nick Valentine), but the major new thing they put in (settlements) are just lolshit.

Next up on my list to get are The Witness and XCOM 2, though I have also been looking at Rocket League as I don't really have a game which is a 'have a quick play of this for 20 minutes' kinda thing - everything I normally do I play all night.

Was talking about Speedball on Amiga last night , loved the Bitmap Brothers.


YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvN6ezkr624

Speedball looks like and reminds me a bit of NHL 94 somehow.

Rocket League is a great play for 20 minutes sort of game.  Controls are really intuitive, gameplay is good and the game is surprisingly hard to master.

Did you play Until Dawn?

The huge need in me is so excited for Warhammer Total War. Should be an amazing game. Last few games I've played are Blood Bowl, which was mildly amusing but never quite hooked me in and the online games were full of bitching by players way better than me.

Excited for the hearthstone changes too. I try to avoid it but inevitably it gets me for a few hours a week

Most of my time lately has been spent on Super Mario Maker. Very addictive!

Found a terrific little game on sale for £3 , simple but very addictive.

http://www.11bitstudios.com/games/16/this-war-of-mine

Hearthstone is absolutely fantastic.  Much easier to become vaguely competitive than Magic the Gathering, so doesn't require a ridiculous investment of money.