Jump to content
Please support this forum by joining the SH Patreon ×
Sturgeon's House

General PC games master race thread. Everything about games. EVERYTHING.


LoooSeR

Recommended Posts

   Started Rainbow 6 Rave Shield. Managed to win 1st mission without casualties after 4 attempts, did not took control of any soldier (AI only, acting according to my SUPERIOR plan). Will see how it goes futher. Liked controls of door opening and body position system is also not bad (although it is a bit clunky in extreme positions).

   About several months ago finished original Ghost Recon. Pretty good for such old game, although the plot about Latvia.... Why americans so crazy about those small countries that nobody here really cares outside of their stupid old Nazis parades. Part about Georgia and Russian internal conflict because of failed war were pretty realistic/believable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So I bought a pack of games from the last Steam sale. Some quick views on the ones I've played:

 

Enter the Gungeon: Rogue-like twin stick-style shooter game. Starts out really frustrating as it pulls a lot of cardinal sins of Roguelikes like not explaining what pick-ups do or how basic controls work, but a few minutes on the wiki and getting further along the levels start to make the game shine. Also have to say this game has hands-down my favorite pixel art ever.

 

Grand Theft Auto 5: Pretty damned good. I was honestly thinking of refunding it during the first few missions because they had the GTA 4 problem of just being a flood of tutorials and taxi missions. Once I got into the meat of the story, the game got much better. I wish there were more of the heist missions because they were damned fun, and it feels like they wasted dev time on listening to Michael and his family yell at each other that could have been focused on some more fun action pieces. I'm curious about the online, but it all just seems like a hassle to me unless you've got a group of dedicated friends. Overall, though, I'd still take any Saint's Row game over this.

 

Gunpoint: I picked this up after my friends begged me to, and I'm glad I did. A really fun take on stealth/puzzle games with a good sense of humor about itself.

 

Red Faction Guerilla: Kind of cheating since I played this on 360 years ago, but I've had the itch to play it again since not a lot of games have done good destruction since it. It's a surprisingly good port. It runs and plays well on PC, and it's still as fun as ever to collapse buildings.

 

Thief (2014): I originally was just going to buy Thief 2 and 3 on the cheap, but I saw videos of this one and got intrigued. I have to say I don't understand why it pissed so many people off. Sure there are weird bugs and the story is really bad, but the game feels about halfway between a classic Thief game and Dishonored, and that's not bad. The stealth works well, I actually like that rooting and picking up stuff has individual animations, and having extra side missions makes the game actually feel like you're a thief for hire as opposed to a dungeon crawler and dinosaur hunter like in some of the older games. The open world is kind of badly laid out in that transition zones are not clearly marked and quest markers don't point them out for you so you have to go around poking and prodding to try to figure out how you're supposed to go from the docks to the market or whatever. I'd say get this on sale and don't worry about the hate. 

 

Ultimate General: Civil War: This was the golden boy of all of my purchases. If you're not familiar with the Darth Mod series of mods for Total War games, then be aware that they were known for adding very substantial improvements to the game as well as tweaking AI to be more challenging and thoughtful. It turns out that the guy in charge of those mods has working on the Ultimate General series, and it shows. The previous title, Gettysburg, had scary-smart AI. Unfortunately, a lot of its mechanics were not conveyed well, and the AI could get really cheaty, showing up out of the fog of war with 8,000 soldiers pushing against your weakest flank. While people argued that it was a smart move to do such things, it often took me out of the Civil War setting to have to fight such a zerg rush. It also felt like you weren't rewarded well for pulling off a good flank attack. The sequel takes the best parts of Gettysburg and perfects them into a game that feels really good. I feel like I'm well-rewarded for pulling off a proper maneuver, the AI fights in a smart, yet immersive way, the new campaign system with its between-mission army building feels really good, and historical battles are actually multi-stage and engaging (unlike Total War's).

 

XCOM 2: I really hated Enemy Unknown. Whenever I get into debates, I tend to couch my subjective opinions as being just that and everyone has their personal views, but I was genuinely perplexed as to why people liked a game where you could perfectly arrange all of your soldiers to be in full cover and to flank and miss four 99% shots in a row on a shitty little alien who would then somehow destroy your team on the next turn. It felt like one of those strategy games that hated that someone with a mind could beat it, so it through in gamey bullshit to extend time and please the "stomp on my balls please daddy" people who conflate number of reloaded saves with good difficulty. I still stand by my opinion that it is mediocre at best. I gave XCOM 2 a shot because a friend who put a ton of time into EU then ended up agreeing with me said 2 was a massive improvement. 

 

He was right. This game feels better, plays better, and has much less frustrating elements. I like the risk/reward of having a Ranger just be able run up and chop an alien in order to free up a flank or to safely coup de grace an enemy squad. I like the menus and base better. I love how the game doesn't jump up your ass about using explosives this time around. The battles feel like they understand how stupid the random chance thing gets and are scummable or have less projectile-based enemies than EU. This has to be one of the biggest turn-arounds I've ever had on a franchise since I went from Metal Gear Solid 2 to MGS 3. At this point, I feel like it could destroy every other turn-based tactics game out there if they pulled back on the RNG dependency a bit more, but at least in this game they tone down its importance.

 

I also got Scourge of War: Waterloo, but haven't gotten to launch it yet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2nd mission in Rainbow Six Raven shield is for some reason much harder to complete without any casualties for AI-only runs... I re-planned this mission like 8 or 9 times.

 

Example of this mission:

Several mistakes in his plan, BTW. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...