The "I Got A New Game!" Thread

[Sonereal]

I recently bought SMAC on GOG. I remember I played that game like 10 or 12 years ago - and I failed miserably. Now it is 2014 and what can I say - SMAC is even better than I remembered it. The second I heard that heavy breathing of my Scout I was immersed in the game. The tech and building quotes are just amazing. The unfolding story is great. The UI is a joke, but the game itself is still a brilliant masterpiece.

Everything, including the UI bit, sums up my experience with SMAC/X.

 

[Daedwartin]

Everything, including the UI bit, sums up my experience with SMAC/X.

granted, The UI is also over 14 years old. I expect it to be bad compared to what modern day UI are like.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Yeah, thankfully the hotkeys are rather easy to memorize.
F, SHIFT+F, R, Q and my formers are good.

 

[Commodore]

I just bought Global Outbreak: Doomsday Edition on Steam Early Access. It is apparently a PC port of a mobile game. So far it seems pretty fun, and plays a lot like a discount version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown. At $12.99 it seems a bit pricey for a ported mobile game, but whatever I'm having fun with it.

 

[civvver]

Got Tomb Raider (the new one) and Sniper Elite 3 for free with my new graphics card. Now I just have to wait for the card to be delivered...

 

[PhroX]

Picked up Spec Ops: The Line as it was the Steam deal over the weekend. Jesus Christ its good. Not so much the gameplay, which is decent but unspectacular, but the story is amazing. I genuinely can't remember the last time I had to actually stop, walk away from my computer and think about the consequences of what I had done in a game.

 

[SouthernKing]

Ys Origin (as part of a humble bundle)

One of the few PC JRPGs in existance, it's apparently a prequel to a 25-year-old franchise I've never played, but I still quite like it. It plays much like a 16-bit-era action JRPG with much prettier-looking graphics, and does quite a good job of it.

 

[Double A]

Picked up Spec Ops: The Line as it was the Steam deal over the weekend. Jesus Christ its good. Not so much the gameplay, which is decent but unspectacular, but the story is amazing. I genuinely can't remember the last time I had to actually stop, walk away from my computer and think about the consequences of what I had done in a game.

This is exactly why I recommend SOTL to pretty much everyone I know.

 

[civvver]

Whoo! walking dead season 2 on sale for $10! This I think is the most expensive game I've bought in like 3 years. But it's fully released, all episodes are out, and even walking dead s1 is still over $6 so I'm not going to wait another year or more when season 1 was phenomenal.

 

[Double A]

Whoo! walking dead season 2 on sale for $10! This I think is the most expensive game I've bought in like 3 years. But it's fully released, all episodes are out, and even walking dead s1 is still over $6 so I'm not going to wait another year or more when season 1 was phenomenal.

This is the most relevant post to me in this entire thread.

 

[Commodore]

Picked up Spec Ops: The Line as it was the Steam deal over the weekend. Jesus Christ its good. Not so much the gameplay, which is decent but unspectacular, but the story is amazing. I genuinely can't remember the last time I had to actually stop, walk away from my computer and think about the consequences of what I had done in a game.

Just finished playing it in a single night because the story kept me that engaged. The moral choices really didn't seem all that difficult to me though.

 

[Zack]

Just finished playing it in a single night because the story kept me that engaged. The moral choices really didn't seem all that difficult to me though.

You may not recognize that some of them are even choices. For example,

Spoiler :

- how you deal with the angry mob that lynches your white squadmate (can't remember his name)

- how you deal with the two guys hanging down (you don't actually have to shoot one of them)

A more complete list is here (obviously there are spoilers).

 

[Commodore]

You may not recognize that some of them are even choices. For example,

Spoiler :

- how you deal with the angry mob that lynches your white squadmate (can't remember his name)

- how you deal with the two guys hanging down (you don't actually have to shoot one of them)

A more complete list is here (obviously there are spoilers).

I was aware of my choices throughout the game. I am just saying I was comfortable with the choices I made.

Spoiler :

I also chose not to kill myself, because it seemed like the game was trying to imply everything that happened was completely my fault. I refused to accept that because most of what I did was out of necessity, either for survival or to complete the mission. I also opened fire on and killed the patrol in the epilogue because I felt they would have arrested me for what I did and I didn't feel what I did was a criminal act.

 

[Zack]

I was aware of my choices throughout the game. I am just saying I was comfortable with the choices I made.

Spoiler :

I also chose not to kill myself, because it seemed like the game was trying to imply everything that happened was completely my fault. I refused to accept that because most of what I did was out of necessity, either for survival or to complete the mission. I also opened fire on and killed the patrol in the epilogue because I felt they would have arrested me for what I did and I didn't feel what I did was a criminal act.

Spoiler :

I let Walker kill himself because I felt like he was totally separate from me - he did tons of things I would not have done, if given the choice. And he was definitely in the wrong, mostly because he was insane and hallucinating stuff to justify his wrong deeds. So while I am comfortable with my choices as a player, I am not comfortable with Captain Walker's choices as a character, if that makes sense.

 

[Commodore]

Spoiler :

I let Walker kill himself because I felt like he was totally separate from me - he did tons of things I would not have done, if given the choice. And he was definitely in the wrong, mostly because he was insane and hallucinating stuff to justify his wrong deeds. So while I am comfortable with my choices as a player, I am not comfortable with Captain Walker's choices as a character, if that makes sense.

Spoiler :

But the blame was not completely his as Konrad's ghost seemed to imply. He never would have had to use the white phosphorous mortars if the Radioman had just told the 33rd to stand down like Walker asked him. Hell none of this would have happened at all if Konrad had just followed his orders and pulled out of Dubai before the storms got that bad. So while what Walker did was deplorable, it was absolutely necessary given the circumstances. He also didn't start having the hallucinations until after the white phosphorous incident, which is what broke him.

 

[Zack]

Spoiler :

But the blame was not completely his as Konrad's ghost seemed to imply. He never would have had to use the white phosphorous mortars if the Radioman had just told the 33rd to stand down like Walker asked him. Hell none of this would have happened at all if Konrad had just followed his orders and pulled out of Dubai before the storms got that bad. So while what Walker did was deplorable, it was absolutely necessary given the circumstances. He also didn't start having the hallucinations until after the white phosphorous incident, which is what broke him.

Spoiler :

His mission was simple reconnaissance. So if Walker had "just followed his orders" then "none of this would have happened." It's completely his fault.

He also didn't start having the hallucinations until after the white phosphorous incident, which is what broke him.

IIRC, didn't he start talking through the broken radio to "Konrad" much earlier than the white phosphorous catastrophe? One of the problems I had is why neither of your squadmates stop following this obviously insane man, or at least say something about it.

 

[Commodore]

Spoiler :

His mission was simple reconnaissance. So if Walker had "just followed his orders" then "none of this would have happened." It's completely his fault.



IIRC, didn't he start talking through the broken radio to "Konrad" much earlier than the white phosphorous catastrophe? One of the problems I had is why neither of your squadmates stop following this obviously insane man, or at least say something about it.

Spoiler :

Now that you mention it, I kind of wish the developers would have made "following your orders" a choice. Choosing that would obviously make the game very short, but it would have been nice to choose to just conduct recon and pull out.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Spoiler :

He also didn't start having the hallucinations until after the white phosphorous incident, which is what broke him.

Spoiler :

Walker is suffering from his mental disorder from the very beginning of the game. However, at that point it is still rather subtle:

- The first radio you find in the very early game (the broken Army vehicle with the dead soldiers inside) is broken (iirc you can see busted cables or an empty battery slot), but walker clearly hears the radio chatter from it.
- He also suffers from altered perception in the hostage situation at the airplane. I am not 100% sure anymore what it was (it has been a while), but something did set me off. It is also one of the cutsences that fades to white - and those seem to indicate situation where Walker's suffers from hallucination / altered perception of the reality around him.
- The candles in one of the buildings during the early game are *probably* imaginative, too. Iirc they did not react to Walker's squadmates, but whenever he came near them they were blown out (a nice idea, btw!).

Apart from that there is another possibility for the story:

Spoiler :

Walker died in the in-medias-res chopper scene at the very beginning of the game. Iirc that is what one of the devs reserved as his view on the story. Walker is dead - and the game you play is just the flashback of his last few days he has while dying (plus a potential imagination of what might have happened).

As for Konrad's speech:

Spoiler :

I think it is not really aimed at Walker, but rather the player. And while the game is really meta in that regard, I think the design itself is quite ingenious.
The player experiences the same dilemma that Walker does: You do things, follow orders and feel terribly uncomfortable with that. You know something is terribly wrong. And just like the mentally unstable Walker you continue, because that is the right thing to do [in a game] even if it feels wrong. Yes, some parts are obviously forced and scripted - but even after I accepted that, the game got me to bombard that pile of bleeps in the phosphor scene.

In regards to the actual topic: I did get "Hand of Fate" via the Humble Bundle. Nice game concept, really enjoyed the time spend in it so far.

 

[Commodore]

Apart from that there is another possibility for the story:

Spoiler :

Walker died in the in-medias-res chopper scene at the very beginning of the game. Iirc that is what one of the devs reserved as his view on the story. Walker is dead - and the game you play is just the flashback of his last few days he has while dying (plus a potential imagination of what might have happened).

Spoiler :

I remember thinking Walker was dead at several points throughout the game, although my theory was a little more out there. I started to think Walker died in Afghanistan when Konrad supposedly "saved" him and the whole Dubai thing was some sort of purgatory. The whole situation seemed too surreal to be actually taking place. I also thought it was weird that the unit you fight throughout the game was called "The Damned", which I thought was a subtle hint that it might be comprised of other soldiers who died and somehow failed the test of this purgatory.

Of course this theory turned out to not be true, but at the time it seemed valid and was kind of messing with my head.

 

[Quackers]

Whoo! walking dead season 2 on sale for $10! This I think is the most expensive game I've bought in like 3 years. But it's fully released, all episodes are out, and even walking dead s1 is still over $6 so I'm not going to wait another year or more when season 1 was phenomenal.

This is the most relevant post to me in this entire thread.

Ahh I came into the thread to ask for confirmation of this! Didn't have too. Will pick it up in the sale.