…the stuff I forgot yesterday. Whoops.
There are:
Company of Heroes 2
Evocron Legacy
System Shock Enhanced Edition
Naval Action
All first impressions, all behind the break.
Company of Heroes 2Mostly squad-based WW2 real time strategy. Main campaign this time with Mother Russia.
Holy crap, the main menu of this game is AWFUL.
Besides that, it’s a good game. It’s got the run-of-the-mill rock-paper-scissors-RTS mechanic where any weapon is insanely effective against some (MG vs infantry) and gets overrun by some other (tank vs MG), and it’s got some quite interesting new stuff – first and foremost the attrition-by-cold, where troops in the open lose health when not in cover and recover when inside buildings or near fires.
Medium difficulty, at least in the first few missions, draws the difficulty mostly from splitting the action to several spots, making the demanded micromanaging insanely hectic.
All in all a solid game, as far as I can tell.
Evocron LegacyA game that made me scream my fanboy-scream. A game that made me throw my wallet at my screen and my surrendering yet another piece of my souls to the Great Lord GabeN, Giver of Gifts, Taker of Money, Bringer of The Glorious Light Of Gaming.
I will probably not score many hours in here.
But first things first. This is a six degrees of freedom 4X space sim. The controls are about thrice as complex as it looks on the screenshot, and that’s a conservative estimate. There is EVERYTHING in there from “scale the main engine” (1x for docking up to 9x for long distances) to “full newtonian flight model”.
Gameplay seems to be X-like: exploration, trade and combat.
And it’s all been made a single dude. Which only adds to the awesome.
However: during the last combat tutorial, we’re pitched against several AI fighters. Combat is also fully newtonian, read “hard”. That’s not the problem. The problem is that when our ship is hit the camera shakes like it’s a Michael Bay movie. And for All That Is Holy In The Light Of Lord Gaben, I cannot keep my orientation, fly a fully newtonian spaceship and kill bad guys while my view is shaking like crazy. This game literally becomes unplayable for me as soon as the shit hits the fan. And that is very, very sad.
System Shock Enhanced EditionIT IS EFFIN’ SYSTEM SHOCK!
WITH FULLSCREEN!AND MOUSE SUPPORT!
SYSTEM SHOCK!!!!111one-eleven!
And ohhhh boy the soundtrack.
Naval Action
Naval Action is for Age of Sails naval combat what War Thunder is for WW2 air and ground combat.
Anyone who understood what I’m saying here, hands up.
Okay. Naval Action is an Age of Sails MMO with an emphasis on realism. The game models – or aims to model, I have no idea due to my massive lack of knowlegde regarding the behaviour of sailing ships – everything from direction and strength of wind over the configuration of the sails up to full manual control over the sails. Tacking is one of the things the wikipedia can tell you much more about than I. The there are priorities for the crew, e.g. if we prioritize the guns, we get a faster reload.
It also aims for a realistic-ish damage model, which is kind of a problem. On lower tier vessels, and I didn’t go far up the tech tree, we can easily circle around our opponent for prolonged periods of time, shelling each other with 8 (if we’re lucky) cannons per side until one of us get’s his ticket punched. Tedious.
Also tedious is the grind: gaining access to new ship models and earning the gold for them takes ages.
On the other hand: it offers PvP- and PvE-servers, it offers opportunities for merchant gameplay… and it’s an Age of Sails-MMO. So if this is – or might be – your thing, give it a go.
One last thing: the game is in quite early access. Expect a VERY basic UI in port.