Video Games

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sun Nov 18, 2012 6:21 am

Drox Operative is an indie diablo-like in a space ship where you're flying around and killing things while empires are playing Master Of Orion and you get to help or fuck with them as you choose. It's in preorder to get into beta at the moment for about 18 bucks..

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Nov 18, 2012 6:31 am

PC? Console? Steam? What're you looking for?

There's some retro Sierra adventure games up--A couple of King's Quest titles, and Quest for Glory 2. They've been remade, with permission, and they're up for free download.

If you can find it, Bastion's a good buy. May be 10 bucks or so now.

Also if you can find it, Overlord should be pretty cheap. Playing as an evil overlord in control of your gang of minions. Sort of an dark-themed Pikmin.

I just downloaded something for free on Xbox Marketplace, called Happy Wars. Evidently it's for free as a special promo. And I'll certainly try it out for free.

Apart from that, some mainstream stuff--Dragon Age: Origins and the like--should be down to ten bucks or so now. Whether it's worth it to you is another story.

K · Post by K » Sun Nov 18, 2012 7:23 am

PC games. I was tracking down the old X-coms and I realized that I haven't really gotten anything good in many years.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sun Nov 18, 2012 8:02 am

I'll definitely second the QFG 2 remake Maxus linked too. I've played it, and it's great.

http://www.indieroyale.com/ has around 5-6 hours left to go on the current bundle, which includes an RPG trilogy.

http://indiegames.com/index.html covers a lot of freeware.

Gemini Rue is a pretty good sci-fi adventure game. Not too old, either: http://wadjeteyegames.com/gemini-rue.html

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Sun Nov 18, 2012 4:08 pm

Avoraciopoctules wrote:Gemini Rue is a pretty good sci-fi adventure game. Not too old, either: http://wadjeteyegames.com/gemini-rue.html

Primordia will be out on December 5. Just thinking about it gives me fuzzy wuzzies.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sun Nov 18, 2012 4:21 pm

K wrote:PC games. I was tracking down the old X-coms and I realized that I haven't really gotten anything good in many years.

Get the new X-com. While I bitch about the two-move system and some of the geoscape changes and squad size, it's overall pretty damn excellent.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Nov 18, 2012 5:44 pm

@K, do you have any particular "sort of like ____" in mind to narrow suggestions?

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Nov 18, 2012 8:22 pm

Dark Souls: Abyss of Artorias first impressions

Just to find the DLC's entrance is a bitch. I had to go look it up.

1) The Darkroot Hydra had to be dead

2) Dusk has to be freed

3) Then you have to go the Duke's Archives and kill a crystal golem that shows up in the room after the first elevator to get a pendant

4) Then go to the cave behind the hydra where the golem imprisoning Dusk had been

5) There'll be a portal there.

Once in the portal, you'll be at a tunnel with a bonfire right in front of you. The tunnel opens up on a beautiful, broad circular place with ankle deep water covering it. It's very beautiful and peaceful.

Oh, and there's a lion with goat's horns, wings, and a longass scorpion tail shooting lightning at you as well as trying to claw your face off while it's trying to poison you with the tail. Evidently you can cut off its tail to use as a whip, but it's hard. I'll do it some other time.

Anyways. After that, there's a bonfire near a giant mushroom who says her name is Elizabeth and asks you to play the hero once again. And now there's gardening Ents and stone knights with bigass stone hammers.

And I've run into a black dragon already.

K · Post by K » Sun Nov 18, 2012 8:31 pm

DSMatticus wrote:@K, do you have any particular "sort of like ____" in mind to narrow suggestions?

Well, when I was tracking down the old X-Coms I had the dual realization that I am turning into an "old-man gamer" who plays things that are 20 years old AND that games that are not super-new are also super cheap or free.

So the only "new" game I have is Diablo 3 and I've stopped playing that full-stop because equipment grind is a young man's game.

The old man's games that I've really enjoyed are the X-Coms, the Diablos, the Neverwinter Nights (I and II and expansions), Baldur's Gate and expansions, Masters of Orion II, Alpha Centauri, Syndicate, Starcraft, FFVII, FF XI, various FF retroclones, FF Tactics, and Dominions II and III.

I've also enjoyed web-games like Monster's Den II and Adventure Quest, but for short times. Browser games seem made for "blow an afternoon, never come back."

So I know that I should buy Starcraft II, Skyrim, and whatever version of Civ is around(IV? V?), but I'm worried that I'll blow $150 and not enjoy any of them for very long since they are so like other games I've played and I'll be back in the old man gamer rut.

The new X-Com does look interesting, but I can wait until it's cheaper.

I'm also never playing a MMO again. I promised myself that I'd only ever play one and that was FFXI. Time-sinks are for people without careers.

That being said, I'm more than willing to try something new and original coming out of the indie scene if it's $10-20 and really fun, original, or has a great story, but that scene seems to be full of Diablo-clones, MMOs, and tower defense games.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sun Nov 18, 2012 8:32 pm

I'd go with civ iv rather than civ v, personally.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Nov 18, 2012 10:48 pm

Hm. Well, it's a little hard to guess what you've already played, but here, have some stuff:

X-Commish:

1) UFO: Extraterrestrials Gold (10 bucks on Steam). It had a shitty release, then some dude named Bman compiled a bunch of mods for it and the game's developers put that on Steam and called it the gold version, and it's actually pretty good. Someone else started tinkering with it more after that. Can't testify to the quality of that, though.

2) UFO: Alien Invasion is a free X-Com-like that is perpetually unfinished, and I hadn't checked it in awhile but apparently it's updated some more since I last played. I have no idea what the singleplayer campaign is like at the moment, but I know when I played it last I hit a breakpoint that either I did not know how to get past because poor documentation or because the techtree/events past that were not done yet. That was probably... a year or two ago, though? But it was fun while it lasted, and if it lasts longer now that's good.

TBS's:

3) Civ IV is 20 bucks or so, with expansions another ten. It is both better and cheaper than Civ V, so like Whipstitch said, if you're behind on the series just get IV.

4) Warlock Master of the Arcane (20 bucks on steam) is kind of a cross between Civilization and... I dunno, I want to say Age of Wonders (which if you haven't played Age of Wonders, either, there's something you might want to grab since the series is old as dirt and correspondingly cheap).

5) Space Empires IV (deluxe or whatever, 10 bucks, steam) isn't too shabby for what it is, which is a very old 4x space game. Quite a few decent mods floating around to expand the experience, and some AI mods that are fairly essential in order to make the game challenging.

6) Sword of the Stars isn't too bad, either (the first one, mind you; 20 bucks on steam). It's fairly simplified on the economic/management side. The tech tree is randomized and ship design is fairly satisfying, though.

7) Master of Magic (6 bucks, gog), blah blah blah, another classic, predecessor to basically everything in the fantasy TBS genre. If you haven't already played it, here's a chance.

RTS's:

8) Supreme Commander (15 bucks on steam) is a fun RTS, but there's only one other RTS on your list so... yeah.

9) Total Annihilation (6 bucks, gog) is an absolutely fantastic RTS classic, and was a pretty big inspiration for SupCom.

It sounds like you don't want to play any equipment grindy Diablo-clones, and I can't blame you, but if for some reason you did Din's Curse(+Demon War) hit Steam recently, and it ate a decent chunk of my life in an enjoyable way. I think it's 15 bucks total. There are seven classes, three skill trees each, and you can either pick one class and get all three trees or take two trees from two different classes. For example, my current baby is defender (from warrior) + necromancer (from conjurer), and I set up a poisonous deathcloud around me and tank hits until everything is dead. It has a lot of procedural generation; you play a town and its dungeon until you clear the dungeon's bosses or the town is killed by raids, and then you move on to a new randomly generated town.

Anyway, yeah, I have no idea how many of these you've played, but hopefully something there you find worth looking into.

On an unrelated note: the talk about diablo clones has reminded me that I have a copy of Torchlight II leftover from the four pack I bought with some friends. It's been sitting in my Steam inventory for a month because we can't find anyone to give it to. So, does anybody just want a free Steam copy of Torchlight 2? If so, you can PM me your Steam ID or something.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Nov 18, 2012 11:12 pm

Dark Souls Abyss of Artorias Update:

Well, I fought Artorias.

They actually did it really well. In-game, the guy has a towering reputation. But if you beat him easy, well, that just sorta seems weakass and a divide between fluff and flavor.

So I was thinking about this as I watched the opening cutscene. And turns out he isn't a hard fight, as such. But it's also that he's been corrupted. He's gone crazy and corrupted by the Abyss, he's got a bum arm (I don't think he -ever- used his left arm for something) and he'll often lurch around in a circle.

But when he attacks? He's fast, he's strong. He has some wild-ass moves. It made me glad that he isn't on his A-game, when I blocked a one-handed sword-thrust that took off three-quarters of my stamina bar. Or when he does a flipping vertical sword spin and lands on you from halfway across the room.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Nov 18, 2012 11:17 pm

Artorias was fun as hell, and I enjoy wearing his armor because it is kind of pimp. For an SL120 build, I wasted 10-15 points or something in extra END just so I could wear it with havel's and ninja flip. Nobody expects to see you ninja flip in real armor since the patch, and it looks fairly badass in that particular armor set.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Nov 18, 2012 11:29 pm

I noticed it's a lot lighter than my normal Paladin Armor getup (which I have +5'd across the board. Need to do that for Artorias), but also a good bit weaker. But yeah, it does look badass.

Now I need to decide what to do with his soul. Make a weapon, trade it...or kill Ciaran.

I normally don't like killing NPCs, so, huh.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 12:10 am

The Abyss Greatsword has stupid stat requirements (only weapon you can make) but pretty good damage if you keep your humanity up to 11. It's not super competitive, but I made it because I am a collector. Trading it to Ciaran gets you the Dark Silver Tracer (highest crit bonus in the game) and the Gold Tracer (super fast with massive bleed). They're both really good PvP weapons for dex builds (mostly the gold). But you can kill Ciaran, and she'll drop them anyway plus her armor set, which honestly isn't bad for its weight (I think, little hazy). Sooo... yeah. I killed her. Again, collector.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 12:17 am

I'm much the same. I want all the toys to play with.

Though killing Chester won't be such a chore. Jackass is offended that I kicked his ass when he tried to invade me? C'mon now.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 1:06 am

I tried playing Dark Souls a week or so ago, and I was actually kind of disappointed. None of the environments and enemies seemed very exciting, and I couldn't make myself care about what was going on. I watched some Let's Play videos, and few of the bosses later on looked all that fun either. The final fight with flaming sword guy was especially underwhelming, since he just got riposted 3 times in a row and fell over.

It's a little surprising, since I actually thought Demon's Souls was really cool. And I certainly like 3rd person action RPGs in general.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 1:53 am

Fair enough. Except the videos thing. Fighting a boss yourself is a -lot- different from watching it happen.

Riposting in general is high-risk/high-reward. Believe me, whoever did that video knew what they were doing. It usually isn't nearly that pretty a win.

I like the organic growth. You start off able to handle most normal enemies one-on-one, if you pay attention. Going three-on-one is tough for you.

Then you have to swing back through the starting area and realize you're steamrolling stuff that used to give you trouble.

But yeah. You're more or less playing a D&D Murder Hobo. You just roll around, exploring and getting stronger until you go fight something and open up more places to explore/get stronger. If that isn't your cup of tea, fair enough.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 2:13 am

Maxus wrote:But yeah. You're more or less playing a D&D Murder Hobo. You just roll around, exploring and getting stronger until you go fight something and open up more places to explore/get stronger. If that isn't your cup of tea, fair enough.

Other games provide the same thing. But they do it in a less samey and grindy way.

It's not that it is not some people's cup of tea, it is that it is a really grindy samey flavor of that tea.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 2:22 am

DSMatticus wrote:9) Total Annihilation (6 bucks, gog) is an absolutely fantastic RTS classic, and was a pretty big inspiration for SupCom.

That was an awesome game. TA: Kingdoms wasn't very good, but the original was certainly enjoyable. That said, if you're goot at RTS games you won't find it that challenging - I won pretty easily (mainly by turtling until I could launch ALL THE NUKES) and I generally suck at them. Contrast with Dark Reign (released around the same time, you could probably pick it up for tuppence somewhere), which punishes you for daring to exist after the second or third mission.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 2:28 am

Kaelik wrote:
Maxus wrote:But yeah. You're more or less playing a D&D Murder Hobo. You just roll around, exploring and getting stronger until you go fight something and open up more places to explore/get stronger. If that isn't your cup of tea, fair enough.
Other games provide the same thing. But they do it in a less samey and grindy way.

It's not that it is not some people's cup of tea, it is that it is a really grindy samey flavor of that tea.

Fair enough. To use to the really weird/strong weapons, and pretty much any spells, you do need to grind up some stats.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 3:09 am

Avoracio wrote:None of the environments and enemies seemed very exciting, and I couldn't make myself care about what was going on

I rather like the environments and the minimal storytelling (but that's totally subjective, and I can't say you're wrong to disagree), and I found the combat had a weird bell-curve effect where it starts frustrating and repetitive as you learn (and mostly die), a mid-point where it is genuinely fun, and then a downward spiral as you reach proficiency and it goes back to grindy as you lose the engagement that challenge brings and you just want them to go away so you can fight the minibosses/bosses you need to.

Avoracio wrote:The final fight with flaming sword guy was especially underwhelming, since he just got riposted 3 times in a row and fell over.

I found the boss fights... frustrating for the first two or so, but fighting those same monsters later is considerably more fun, and I can't say the bosses bored me (edit: let me say that more positively. I really enjoyed most of the boss fights). About that particular video, you need to understand that that guy is running a build optimized for just that; critical bonus weapon for huge multiplier + one of the best magic buffs in the game, and he's fought that boss god knows how many times to get the timing down on those parries. The Super Mario 64 speed run record is, what, under 20 minutes? That's not what it's actually like when you play Super Mario 64. Youtube challenge videos are a pretty bad way to guess what your play experience will be like.

Kaelik wrote:Other games provide the same thing. But they do it in a less samey and grindy way.

Dark Souls has a level, but it actually punishes you for raising it if you are at all interested in PvP (like I was). You can and should beat the game well before reaching SL100 on first game. That said, getting the stuff and souls to upgrade your equipment can be grindy, especially if it's your first time and you aren't really planning ahead on what you should upgrade, which since it's your first time you won't be. It's a game that should be played with a wiki or two open to hold your hand and think ahead, and you should probably scrap your first character before you bother finishing playthrough one because you did everything wrong.

That's bad. Dark Souls is in dire need of a respec option and some item downgrade with material returns. But it's not particularly more grindy than anything else that comes out of Japan or even your standard western Diablo-style item grinder. I'm not seeing how it's out of place in the genre, though I totally agree that the grind is one of the worst aspects of the genre as a whole and we need to cut that shit out.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 3:37 am

Koumei wrote:
That was an awesome game. TA: Kingdoms wasn't very good, but the original was certainly enjoyable. That said, if you're goot at RTS games you won't find it that challenging - I won pretty easily (mainly by turtling until I could launch ALL THE NUKES) and I generally suck at them. Contrast with Dark Reign (released around the same time, you could probably pick it up for tuppence somewhere), which punishes you for daring to exist after the second or third mission.

Oh yeah, TA was the bomb, so much there that other RTS games just sorta forgot about. Infinite queues and Walls (unlike StarCraft). A resource system that at least made some sort of sense. And a "king" piece that the game revolves around. The thing it lacked was everything exploding in blood, which is what StarCraft did well.

There are a few expansions, too, brining in air units and sea units to go with tanks, mechs, and whatever else (I think the game ended up with over 500 different units? Something ridiculous). It was also way ahead of it's time in that it was pretty moddable.

Yes, the basic AI was pretty beatable, but I'm pretty sure there were skill levels...or failing that, just not play for 1-5 minutes giving the computer a head start.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 4:02 am

I didn't mind it being easy - it meant it was merely challenging to me, because I obsess over unlocking stuff and making the perfect defensive base and building super units, and am bad at multi-tasking in the game (hardest RTS I beat without cheating: Warcraft 3 before the expansions).

After a few plays through I started to find it actually easy though, yeah, so mostly played around with setting things up. Multiplayer was also fun - the first time I played was multiplayer, and I didn't just get flattened because the learning curve is pretty simple. Also, it sort of does reward turtling and setting up huge resource producers - I teamed up with someone who built a dozen mega vulcan towers, and kept donating electricity and metal. Then when he turned on me... bzzt, out of resources, can take no action!

It was totally fun. But I recognise that people actually good at it - who can beat Starcraft and War Winds - will want to go multiplayer for the challenge.

On that note, War Winds was loads of fun, and has four armies (and thus, campaigns) back in an era when every game had two. Sadly, it's very similar - each army has The Worker, The Cavalry, The Melee Guy, The Ranged Guy, The Psion and The Leader, with 2-3 Special Things. But it's still pretty cool, and has varying difficulty levels based on the faction you play. Don't know about the sequel, only got to play a demo of it but it seemed pretty cool.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 4:16 am

Koumei wrote:I didn't mind it being easy - it meant it was merely challenging to me, because I obsess over unlocking stuff and making the perfect defensive base and building super units, and am bad at multi-tasking in the game

I have tried so hard to break that habit. I want to be competitive at strategy games, but I always end up playing OCD perfectionist base/city/empire manager and going for the coolest things I can.