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Xcom: UFO Defense - The Final Modpack

I enjoyed my first playthrough and this marks my first playthrough of any modded game ever, so I chose the biggest Modpack they had. The mod adds: New Enemies, New Weapons, New Ships, New Research and puts a greater emphasis on catching enemies alive as well as much more. I played on whatever the middle difficulty is called, I only made 1 change to make the game easier which was preventing the use of psychic attacks without line of sight which was the most frustrating thing about my 1st playthrough. I actually preferred my unmodded playthrough and all because of what I assume is a mod that restricts Alien Race based on territory, and so 90% of my missions were against Floaters, only experiencing other enemies during invasions or until late game when I had decent bases in other territories. This also makes it harder to progress as you can't gain Alien Electronics (Gained from certain robotic enemies), which are used to make certain spacecraft, decent armour and drones. The missions just became dull fighting the same enemies over and over. Anyway I'd recommend the mod if you enjoy the game.
Atom Zombie Smasher

An interesting mixture of tower defense and strategy. During a zombie apocalypse you have to capture different territories and you can do it by either rescuing all the civilians or killing all the zombies. You have different weapons (eg. dynamite, mines) and units (e.g. sniper, infantry) to do it.

Things are shown in a very simple top-down perspective (zombies are purple dots, civilians are yellow dots and once the mission starts you just have limited time (a countdown is ticking) before the night comes and zombies are swarming the streets (it's nearly impossible to win when it happens). During the missions you can save scientists who will help you to improve your weapons and your troops will get experience that they'll need to upgrade.

I think it was a very nice game, the only thing that I disliked is that you can't choose your troops and weapons at the beginning of a mission. Instead they get assigned randomly (or at least it felt randomly). Which on the one hand might keep the game exciting, but on the other hand will give you a very poor combination at times that will make it impossible to capture certain territories.

I've completed a standard campaign (normal difficulty, 6000 points needed to win), but there's a lot of ways to modify the campaign and so I think there's a lot of replaybility. Will probably return to the game to try some different modes and playstyles (e,g, casual mode or permadeath in which you can't replay territories).

Complete list of finished games in 2018
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magejake50: Xcom: UFO Defense - The Final Modpack

I enjoyed my first playthrough and this marks my first playthrough of any modded game ever, so I chose the biggest Modpack they had. The mod adds: New Enemies, New Weapons, New Ships, New Research and puts a greater emphasis on catching enemies alive as well as much more. I played on whatever the middle difficulty is called, I only made 1 change to make the game easier which was preventing the use of psychic attacks without line of sight which was the most frustrating thing about my 1st playthrough. I actually preferred my unmodded playthrough and all because of what I assume is a mod that restricts Alien Race based on territory, and so 90% of my missions were against Floaters, only experiencing other enemies during invasions or until late game when I had decent bases in other territories. This also makes it harder to progress as you can't gain Alien Electronics (Gained from certain robotic enemies), which are used to make certain spacecraft, decent armour and drones. The missions just became dull fighting the same enemies over and over. Anyway I'd recommend the mod if you enjoy the game.
Great to know thanks, I've finished both UFO-Defense and TFTD using Openxcom, and figured I should at least replay the original with a few mods. But now I'll be extra wary of these things you mentioned.

The xpiratez full conversion mod looks pretty incredible as well.
Just finished Battlezone 98 Redux. The base campaign, that is. It's sadly far away from being a masterpiece but it's still a really great game that I enjoyed helluva lot. In some ways it hasn't aged too gracefully, in others it holds up remarkably well.

To this day Battlezone stands out as a mixture of a first person action game and RTS because oddly enough there have been very few games that tried this kind of thing to this day. Back then it was a tad too complicated for me because the first person combat alone is quite hard and my teenage mind couldn't compute an RTS on top of that. Before I replayed this game now it was actually kinda hard to grasp what kind of game it really is. Turns out that it's quite simple: it's really a full-fledged if simple Command & Conquer style RTS where you also control one unit at all times. It's simple, really, and it works. With that kind of mix there's usually a big risk that one layer will break the other one (e.g. when the hero unit is too powerful) but in my opinion there's no such problems here. A skilled player can obviously do more damage than a regular AI-controlled unit but I, for one, still got my ass kicked whenever I had to engage two or three units of strength similar to my vehicle. When things went badly I also managed to get my butt kicked by a single enemy.

And the action gameplay on its own also works just right. The vehicles control very well (although some may consider the aiming too floaty), regardless of whether the player controls them or the AI. It's a great action game, which isn't much of a surprise when you consider that it was developed by the same team as Mechwarrior 2 and Interstate '76 and runs on the same engine, if vastly upgraded. Navigating the maps is fun, as is destroying stuff.

The game does have issues, though. For starters, this RTS hidden behind the first person action is really shallow. There's not much more to it than harvesting resources and holding off enemy attacks until you have a force big enough to accomplish the objective, which is often the destruction of the enemy's base. And while there's quite a few units, most of them are pretty much meaningless. I quickly figured that regular tanks are a very universal and strong unit for its price and those were the units that I mostly produced as they almost always got the job done. Base building is also very simplistic. There's just a handful of buildings and you're further limited by the geysers which you need for powering the most important buildings. On some maps I had to build up some solid defenses but many of them could be finished without building any defensive structures at all. The game really could have used some more depth, at least some rock-paper-scissors kind of model but oh well... the strategic aspect generally gets the job done.

Also, being a unit on the battlefield limits your perception and options a bit. You can construct a building that unlocks a radar view that gives you an RTS interface but I found this view very confusing and unnecessary most of the time. A limit of ten offensive units didn't help. So in the end I would usually just have my whole force follow me or have half my force defend my base while the other half follows me around. The UI is a bit of a mixed bag. Selecting units is generally a hassle, giving orders and producing units quite easy. But there's an unnecessary amount of micro like ordering your units to replenish ammo and get repairs which was the most annoying part of the game. They certainly did very well for the time but I can't shake the feeling that they could have made it even better.

And the game wouldn't be a 90's game if the difficulty curve weren't all over the place. Some of the first missions are already as hard as it gets, some of the last missions are laughably easy. Once in a while there's a frustrating mission that bends the rules and puts you at a serious disadvantage (e.g. missions where you don't have a base but the enemy does). Then there's crap like time limits, some of which are very obscure and unjustified. While there's visible countdowns for some of them, others are undocumented and can really bite you in the ass. One mission I only managed to finish by using a dirty exploit.

What I did love on the other hand was the setting with a secret war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union going on in space with pretty rad unit designs. It also sends you from one planet or moon to the next, offering tons of diversity. Story-wise it's okay, with some extinct aliens stuff going on, but the delivery is pretty meh. You will never see a human face in this game, you only get radio messages, some of which are hard to follow. In the U.S. campaign you also have narration on the loading screens and this is obviously the main experience. The Soviet campaign is shorter and doesn't really expand the story, although the missions are pretty cool.

Oh yeah, the graphics, at least in the Redux version, hold up very well, in my opinion. The audio is pretty bad. The soundtrack is pretty good but its production quality is disappointing. They really should have improved the audio in Redux.

And pro tip: read the manual. Not the "quick start guide" but the full manual. There's many undocumented keys that do stuff that makes life much easier for you, like selecting all offensive units at once, linking weapons, hopping out of your vehicle etc..
Post edited August 10, 2018 by F4LL0UT
SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR UNAVOWED

Unavowed


The newest adventure from Wadjeteye games, released on Wednesday, just completed it. Some impressions:
- The rpg-like elements where you can choose your companions for missions are pretty nice. I only did one playthrough so far, but it does seem that depending on who's on your team, there are somewhat different solutions for puzzles. I found all the companions to be interesting characters, also lots of entertaining banter between them and interesting backstory. I'd like to see another game with those characters.
- One thing I didn't like about the rpg-like elements was that on several occasions you have to make decisions about whether you spare a monster or not...decisions that are often depicted as morally grey. But in the endgame a merciful approach gets rewarded, even though in some cases there were good reasons for killing some of those monsters...seemed a bit lame and one-sided to me.
- While the game does have quite a bit of replayability, I have to say it felt a bit shorter than I had expected. Not that it's short (probably about the length of the later entries in the Blackwell series), but I'd have liked a bit more. Apparently the focus was a bit more on ensuring replayability. If you're a person who only plays games once, this might be a negative, otherwise it might work in the game's favour.
- Difficulty of the puzzles was about the level of the fourth/fifth Blackwell games, that is a bit too easy imo. Your inventory is rarely that full, and you're mostly limited to a few screens. I never got stuck for long and could solve it all on my own, and I'm not that good at adventure games. Dave Gilbert's design philosophy lays more emphasis on storytelling, not on hard puzzles.
- There was one "shocking twist" in the mid of the game which I didn't like at all and which made the protagonist you're playing as far less relatable imo. Somewhat soured the gaming experience for me.

On the whole: good game in the vein of previous games by Dave Gilbert, with some nice ideas, but not as revolutionary as one might have hoped. I'd give it a 4/5. Recommended, if you like point and click adventure games.
Post edited August 10, 2018 by morolf
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PaterAlf: Atom Zombie Smasher
One of the games I mentally labeled as "trash" in my Steam library, tried just to put it on "dropped" list and then I was extremely surprised how nice it was. A few long hours of great entertainment.
Oxenfree (2016) (Linux)
(thank you GOG for the giveaway!) ;)

What. A. Game!

I actually planned to remove it. I installed it long time ago and never even launched. Now I was trying to free some HDD space and was going to uninstall, but, oh, "just let's check if it works and how it looks". I launched it and found it intriguing. After 15 minutes I just coudn't put it away.

The game creates fantastic characters implying extreme emotions - from love to hate. The game is - as I heard later from the creators' interview - the walking-taltking game, but it's made so incredibly well! Dialogues are just perfect and drives the whole story. I don't remember if I ever played the game in which the dialogue was so well-written and users' actions were so smoothly connected to the plot. The visuals, the atmosphere, the music. Wow, it's just really unique experience, emotionally engaging and definitely worth the ~4 hours to complete.

List of all games completed in 2018.
Semblance - time needed 15 hours and 56 minutes

Devs said on steam this game needs 3 to 6 hours most, but I was brutally bad at this game. Nonetheless, it's been quite a journey to play this one and I enjoyed and rage quitted and been very happy for buying this one. Money well spent. Didn't get all achievements though, very sad.
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Ghorpm: Tangledeep
I got it from GOG community giveaway, donated by DampSquib

It’s a very good Roguelike with tons of replayability, decent story, great number of skills, items, enemies and locations. Each job is significantly different and my require using different approach. I finally beat the game with Hunter and had a lot fun. My biggest complaint is that the game is very grindy at the beginning. You have to level up fast without spending your resources so grinding is your only option. Training and upgrading a pet can also be a boring chore but after that you can start going up to see new levels. I wouldn’t say the game is perfect nor innovative but it’s definitely a well-polished Roguelike so if you like the genre you should have tons of fun. Recommended!

Full list
Deserved a +1
Unavowed - fantastic point & click adventure, but I didn't like the main character not being voiced. There were also some decisions made by characters which were illogical.

Weird Park Trilogy - An all right HOG trilogy, but some of the (non-HOG) puzzles were just ugh. Maybe I wasn't smart enough for them having resorted to "just keep clicking until you get lucky and it works".

Lost Castle - A fun roguelike beat'm'up in which I beat the Final Boss, and the Final Final boss, and the Final Final Final boss, but that's it. As far as I can tell, the Final Final Final Final boss is only available in the Nightmare mode, which I kept banging my head against and after many many hours only managed to reach the twin pre-Final Final Final Final bosses (or perhaps that the twin pre-pre-Final Final Final Final bosses) at half health and virtually no consumables left. Didn't last long. So this must be geared for co-op, and I'm a solo player, so I think that's it for me.
Post edited August 13, 2018 by kalirion
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kalirion: Unavowed - fantastic point & click adventure, but I didn't like the main character not being voiced. There were also some decisions made by characters which were illogical.
SPOILERS




Which decisions were illogical in your opinion?
The main issue I personally had with the story was the twist mid-game which turned the protagonist into someone (or something?) I had difficulty relating to.
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kalirion: Unavowed - fantastic point & click adventure, but I didn't like the main character not being voiced. There were also some decisions made by characters which were illogical.
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morolf: SPOILERS

Which decisions were illogical in your opinion?
The main issue I personally had with the story was the twist mid-game which turned the protagonist into someone (or something?) I had difficulty relating to.
Unavowed illogical decisions (spoilers): https://pastebin.com/7d0TwRua

I didn't have a problem with the twist about the main character, other than how the name I selected for him wound up being used.
Post edited August 13, 2018 by kalirion
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kalirion:
SPOILERS FOR UNAVOWED








I didn't take the same decision as you in point 1.), the other two didn't bother me (I assume Eli is going to keep an eye on his great-grandson somehow).
I was somewhat annoyed by how it turned out in the endgame that the "correct" choice was always to spare the "monsters" you encounter, no matter how depraved they are (the forest dryad and that child-snatcher Roy Fellows certainly asked for being killed imo). Renders those morally grey situations kind of meaningless imo when you're rewarded only for total goody two shoes behaviour.
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morolf: I was somewhat annoyed by how it turned out in the endgame that the "correct" choice was always to spare the "monsters" you encounter, no matter how depraved they are
What part of the end game made you think that was the correct choice? Not like you can't beat the game even after killing them all. Myself, I killed 3 IIRC ("Air","Art","Water") never regretted it.
Post edited August 13, 2018 by kalirion
DOOM (2016)
Unpopular opinion but I honestly hated this game