New titles that aren't awful!

[Rodin]

Well, it is a bit silly. But it's also charming and fun. The slimes have such wonderful expressions.

The most recent Prey, as I understand it, has very little to do with the older ones. It was produced by Arkane, in a similar vein to Dishonoured.

The new Prey is related in name only. They were working on a game as a new IP, realized it had similarities to the original Prey, and then realized that they actually had the rights to the name via Bethesda. So, they changed it to cash in on the name recognition.

I find this a bit odd since the original game isn't exactly well known. I guess some name recognition is better than none?

[5crownik007]

Foxhole
I suppose you'd call it an MMO war economy simulator. As long as you have a few friends (or join a clan) it can be a lot of fun. It's not a dexterity based game, really the side which can run the most supplies wins.

Kerbal Space Program
Probably my favorite game. Launch rockets. Land hard. Do science. Do !!SCIENCE!!. It does have performance problems, but I deeply hope KSP2 fixes those problems.

I wouldn't exactly call these "new" but they're definitely not "old".

[factotum]

DEEPEST LORE is that Pandora goes through massive shifts when the season changes; these seasons lasting for decades at a time. Spring and Summer are dry, hot, and when all the dangerous creatures like Skags come out of hibernation.
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.
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But the place was never colonized because it was nice (it was already Spring by the time Atlas got there), it was colonized because people thought there might be a Vault there. The Vaults are the source of pretty much every single piece of advanced technology in the setting, Eridian tech reverse-engineered by Atlas and then copied/modified by other companies, particularly Dahl (who were a huge reason for the colonization push).

But in "The Secret Armory of General Knoxx" there are large parts of the map that clearly had deep water there, so the planet must have been colonised during a "wet" period? And where does all that water go during spring and summer anyway?

[warty goblin]

That's so funny, because I always felt Borderlands got exactly one thing right - a cool, outback, hot, sweaty frontier desert world .. and then tacked on a pointless grindy weapon progression system for no reason =)

The fun part of Borderlands' weapon system isn't viewing it as progression, but as diversity + surprise. Progression has a strong tendency to bore me because it reduces everything to a binary "is the number bigger" evaluation, which is particularly disappointing in a shooter because a well-made FPS combat sandbox allows for substantial creativity based on the environment and situation. Having a large diversity of guns, and the possibility that a new gun does something different, can (in theory at least) enrich the combat sandbox. Once I'd seen most of the diversity in gun characteristics that Borderlands could produce, all that was left was slightly bigger numbers, and endless boredom.

(Of course the inherent flaw in this was that BL2's combat sandbox was really pretty narrow. This is an inevitable result of welding on RPG mechanics, which require that a diverse range of builds be viable. A good combat sandbox by contrast requires exactly the opposite; i.e. severe punishment of choosing the wrong tool for the job, necessitating the ability to determine what the right tool is.)

The setting was fine, the implementation as an open world was, at least to my eyes, deeply deficient. There was no sense of life or spontaneity because there wasn't random events or much in the way of AI interacting with itself. Just the same dudes spawning in the same places endlessly. It's like Far Cry 2, except without the extreme nihilism and high potential for emergent chaos.

[factotum]

So, Subnautica. Started playing it at 12:30pm and came off 20 minutes ago, 6 hours later. And I didn't come off because I was bored, but because it was getting late and I needed to make my tea! It could do with maybe explaining a few things better, especially the whole base building aspect of it--oh, and don't assume (as I did) that making Titanium into Titanium Ingots is a way of saving inventory space, because you can't actually turn the ingots back into Titanium once they've been made! Still, I'm having fun with it and I want to see where the plot goes.

[Sermil]

I'm playing Super Mario Odyssey right now. If you're looking for a mindless platforming game, it's really good.

If you actually think about it, it makes absolutely no sense -- to the point where the game seems to be actively resisting making sense. But if you want some mindless platforming action, it's good.

[Cikomyr]

So .. there's all sorts of threads for old games. I started one myself, focussing on roguelikes. But realistically, there must be people out there, even in this day and age, who make non-retro, brand new, shiny games that aren't utter drek.

Right?

The latest actually new games I played, completed and liked are, sadly, Stellaris and Tyranny. Which is ironic, since I consider Paradox to be absolute villains (for their endless-expansions-money-cow business practice).

Can anyone do better, I wonder?

Let me get this straight.

Your beef against Paradox is that they keep supporting their game for a very long time after initial release, and they keep adding and selling new content to improve the play experience, in most case without removing the initial content?

That's the source of your objection to the business model of Paradox? "We stick with our games for a long time"?

[danzibr]

Star Control crashes on my machine (curses!!).

Oh noes!

Well, good news is it doesn't compare to SCII. Well, actually, easy comparison: SCII is way better. But if you walk in not expecting a game on the same level as SCII, you won't be disappointed. Or not as disappointed. Again, I truly enjoyed it.

[Rynjin]

But in "The Secret Armory of General Knoxx" there are large parts of the map that clearly had deep water there, so the planet must have been colonised during a "wet" period? And where does all that water go during spring and summer anyway?

It evaporates? I dunno. They may have been there at the end of the season, I just remember a cutscene in the first game that refers to a huge sea change in the planet's climate and ecosystem not long after people show up.

Let me get this straight.

Your beef against Paradox is that they keep supporting their game for a very long time after initial release, and they keep adding and selling new content to improve the play experience, in most case without removing the initial content?

That's the source of your objection to the business model of Paradox? "We stick with our games for a long time"?

Most of the additional monetization is tiny niggling little nothing DLC that buries the useful stuff in a deluge of bull**** so they can tempt people into buying $300 bundles a couple of years later.

[Cikomyr]

It evaporates? I dunno. They may have been there at the end of the season, I just remember a cutscene in the first game that refers to a huge sea change in the planet's climate and ecosystem not long after people show up.




Most of the additional monetization is tiny niggling little nothing DLC that buries the useful stuff in a deluge of bull**** so they can tempt people into buying $300 bundles a couple of years later.

And.. They force you to buy the superficial useless crap how?

I mean, I see these useless superficial DLCs like tipping. You can enjoy the full game experience without ever buys these.

Again, I hardly see what's objectionable about Paradox "let's make a long term commitment to our own games" compared to.. Fallout 76. Anthem. Mass Effect Andromeda.

[Rynjin]

And.. They force you to buy the superficial useless crap how?

I mean, I see these useless superficial DLCs like tipping. You can enjoy the full game experience without ever buys these.

Again, I hardly see what's objectionable about Paradox "let's make a long term commitment to our own games" compared to.. Fallout 76. Anthem. Mass Effect Andromeda.

Because it buries other stuff, I literally stated that in my post.

They purposefully make it difficult to determine which DLC add meaningful content and which one do not.

It is not a 'long term commitment to the game' it is a long term commitment to essentially duping people into giving them money by exploiting a combination of FOMO, brand loyalty, and confusion.

[Drasius]

Ok, based off of this recommendation (because I loved Diablo 2), I downloaded all 18 gb of this game. I didn't get to do much before I had to head to bed, but it looks so... PIXELATED. Like, painfully so. Please tell me there's some graphics option to make it look more like a game in 2019 instead of 1999. Diablo 2 looks better. I turned the resolution up all the way and all the graphics still look super blocky.

Now, I'm still totally willing to give it a go, if for no other reason than that amazing looking universal skill tree. But I'd love better graphics if at all possible.

Any ideas?

Turn off dynamic resolution is my guess. It's for people who bought a low end laptop in 2006 and refuse to upgrade and then complain that things don't run well, but it's tuned so that if you get even the slightest dip in framerate, out comes 600x480p mode. Hit Esc, Options, Scroll down to the bottom of the graphics tab and set Dynamic Resolution to Disabled. Adjust all the other stuff to suit your graphics card, but most mid-range or higher cards should be able to handle running everything at max or one level down.

If that doesn't solve your issue, well, then either you're playing it on a freaking huge TV-sized monitor or your standards are well above mine. To be fair, it was released in 2013 and has been using the same engine ever since, though it has been upgraded a billion times since then to the point where I honestly can't see why anyone would be complaining about it looking pixelated without some other problems.

If you still think it looks grainy, come back when 4.0 comes out in about a years time and the engine has gotten a major overhaul.

Let's see if this works, I just grabbed a screencap of my character in my hideout, let's see how pixelated this turns out:

[Razade]

Because it buries other stuff, I literally stated that in my post.

They purposefully make it difficult to determine which DLC add meaningful content and which one do not.

It is not a 'long term commitment to the game' it is a long term commitment to essentially duping people into giving them money by exploiting a combination of FOMO, brand loyalty, and confusion.

Along with all of this (also the not-useless DLC are priced absurdly and alter the game in deep and totally game changing ways as to make the game I bought like EU4 not a game I want to play in its current state) Paradox is just awful at giving tutorials. It's an objectively worse experience playing a game that doesn't tell you how to play it. It's even worse when the tutorial of the game, due to tons of DLC, doesn't actually tell you how to play the game because of all the changes to the mechanics.

[Cikomyr]

Because it buries other stuff, I literally stated that in my post.

They purposefully make it difficult to determine which DLC add meaningful content and which one do not.

It is not a 'long term commitment to the game' it is a long term commitment to essentially duping people into giving them money by exploiting a combination of FOMO, brand loyalty, and confusion.

I am litteraly looking at the Stellaris steam page right now. All important expansions are at the top of the list with one recently released Story pack. All are priced 20+ dollars, as opposed to every other 7-10$ items tagged "pack" at the end.

It took me five second to figure out what's important and what's not.

Crusader Kings II is a bit murkier. But every *expansions* (which involves gameplay updates) are also clearly identified as such. Superficial stuff are tagged as Collection or Content Packs.

Also, Tyranny is not a game developped by Paradox. Paradox is merely the *publisher*, so their design philosophy is not really applicable. Putting games like Pillars of Eternity or Tyranny in the same bucket as Stellaris because they share a publisher is rather silly.

[Rynjin]

Monetization is usually decided by the publisher.

This is why people blame EA for microtransactions in games and not, say, Bioware.

[Kaptin Keen]

Let me get this straight.

Your beef against Paradox is that they keep supporting their game for a very long time after initial release, and they keep adding and selling new content to improve the play experience, in most case without removing the initial content?

That's the source of your objection to the business model of Paradox? "We stick with our games for a long time"?

No - how do you get that idea???

No, it's that they release half, or a quarter of a game, at full price .. then release the missing parts that should have been included from the start in bits and pieces .. at full price, no less.

[Silfir]

I think the assumption for the pricing is that only the hardcore fans who are playing actively and regularly (and have thousands of hours of playing time accrued already) will buy an expansion on release, and rest of the crowd will stick with the base game and only occasionally pick up some DLC on a Steam sale, if it aligns with their interests. It's what I did, at least - I have about half of the expansions, and I'm waiting for Holy Fury to go on sale because it sounds interesting, but I'm never going to buy Rajas of India or Sunset Invasion or some of the other nonsense I'm not interested in.

Now, suppose you have no common sense whatsoever, and you're going to spend $300 on the complete edition of Crusader Kings II without buying at least the base game first to see if you enjoy it, and you don't possess the wherewithal to do so during a Steam sale, which would rop it to $75... You'd still be out far less money than the people with a gambling problem that get lured into spending upwards of ten thousand dollars on your average microtransaction nonsense. You want villains? There they are.

[Kaptin Keen]

You want villains? There they are.

Your point seems to be that because others are worse, Paradox are ok? I do not subscribe to this point of view, sorry. Paradox are villains because their business practices are amoral - the fact that there are worse people out there relieves them of zero guilt.

[Brother Oni]

Off a Youtube recommendation, my son and I started playing Dauntless, which is a free-to-play, more potato-computer-friendly version of Monster Hunter. So far, so fun, although I can see where they're pushing the microtransactions.

Other than that, you could wait until the Empyrean expansion drops for Warframe, which will have plenty of new shiny stuff to play with.

[deuterio12]

No - how do you get that idea???

No, it's that they release half, or a quarter of a game, at full price .. then release the missing parts that should have been included from the start in bits and pieces .. at full price, no less.

What exactly makes you consider the initial Crusader Kings II only half/a quarter of a game?

It runs just fine and has plenty of stuff to do. Plenty of people loved it just the way it was when it came out.

[Grif]

What exactly makes you consider the initial Crusader Kings II only half/a quarter of a game?

It runs just fine and has plenty of stuff to do. Plenty of people loved it just the way it was when it came out.

Both CK2 and EU4 were perfectly playable at launch, yeah. It's Stellaris where they dropped the ball hard, and as of patch 2.2, still a half-broken mess of unrealized ideas and potential.

To contribute to the topic, I'd say Opus Magnum is pretty much my nomination for those of you wanting a modern puzzle game.

[Spore]

I really enjoyed Stories: The Path of Destinies.

It is a very simple adventure game that invites you to explore several different story lines. You basically decide your goal for each of four chapters and the resulting story decides the ending. The gameplay is tight, the story is in the foreground and it can be enjoyed in short bursts (a 4 chapter run takes about 20-30 minutes I think, less if you invest into dashing and run speed early). It is one of those games that doesn't take insanely long (any average Final Fantasy would have ended its prologue by the six hours I got our of it).

Sometimes the results can be cryptic - especially everything connected to the parts of the ancient artifact you decide to hunt - but I found it enjoyable that there is no real "moral high ground". You can't abandon the highly dangerous artifact because you're a smart cookie and know all the tropes because then the villain gets it. But relying only on the weapon is also ill advised. Do you trust your friends? Do you save the dubious allies (so they can betray you) or let them be (so they can backstab you later)? Do the rebel mystics know the solutions or are you better advised at improvising?

[Cikomyr]

Both CK2 and EU4 were perfectly playable at launch, yeah. It's Stellaris where they dropped the ball hard, and as of patch 2.2, still a half-broken mess of unrealized ideas and potential.

To contribute to the topic, I'd say Opus Magnum is pretty much my nomination for those of you wanting a modern puzzle game.

I have sunk hundreds of hours in Stellaris 1.0 when it was released. Just because *you* didn't liked it doesn't qualify it as a "half/quarter of a game".

Edit: and if it's acknowledged EU4 and CK2 were good games right off the bat, then it's hardly a "Paradox-wide issue" isn't it?

[houlio]

I have sunk hundreds of hours in Stellaris 1.0 when it was released. Just because *you* didn't liked it doesn't qualify it as a "half/quarter of a game".

I did likewise, but I think it's a pretty valid criticism of Stellaris that it took a lot of post-release work to fill it out. Stellaris at release had possibly the best every early game out of any space game, especially on your first few playthroughs. Eventually, you ran out of events and territory and the limits of the content in the game quickly became apparent.

I'd vote Factorio again, it's maybe the only crafting game I've played where the crafting is actually interesting.

I didn't see Night in the Woods mentioned, but I think it deserves one. It's one of the story heavy indie games that I didn't immediately bounce off of, and its story is pretty solid too.

I might have missed seeing Slay the Spire as well, but that's quite an excellent game for all sorts of reasons.

[Cikomyr]

I did likewise, but I think it's a pretty valid criticism of Stellaris that it took a lot of post-release work to fill it out. Stellaris at release had possibly the best every early game out of any space game, especially on your first few playthroughs. Eventually, you ran out of events and territory and the limits of the content in the game quickly became apparent.

And yet, you know that Paradox will invest significant resources to keep improving the game. Making significant tweaks following their player feedback, and add a lot of new features with every expansion, making about 50% of these features payable.

Thats a model approach to game development and community management in my opinion. You have developers who keep making their game better, are open about upcoming features, make some of these features freely available and request money for some more.

You can never say that Paradox spent development time on a feature at the date of the game release that they will lock behind a paywall. They put everything they can into their game.

[Silfir]

Your point seems to be that because others are worse, Paradox are ok? I do not subscribe to this point of view, sorry. Paradox are villains because their business practices are amoral - the fact that there are worse people out there relieves them of zero guilt.

Oh good grief, no, that's not my point. My point was in the first paragraph you elected not to quote or react to in any way at all.

The game goes on 75% sale something like eight times a year, every year, at least twice for two weeks at a time. That's on Steam; I'm going to assume it goes on sale on other platforms about equally as often. That's when everyone browses and buys the expansions they're potentially interested in. The full price is only ever paid shortly after release, typically by fans who've played so much CK II they've easily recouped their investment several times over already.

Anyway, both Crusader Kings II and Stellaris were complete games on release - I loved Crusader Kings II on release, played a full campaign from 1066-1453 and everything! The worst thing I can say about Stellaris is that wasn't very good, so they've decided to try to fix it ever since. It requires a bit of a conspiratorial stretch to assume that that was intentional from the start. Nobody sets out to develop awful games, they just turn out awful. Even Imperator: Rome, I'm going to assume, wasn't intended to require a massive overhaul to quell immediate and widespread discontent by the player base, and it's only right for Paradox to take flak for screwing up development.

Maybe they've gotten complacent, maybe some key people who knew how to design good strategy games are gone or asleep at the wheel, but a developer making games that don't quite live up to the example of their predecessors is a far cry from an evil developer.

[Kaptin Keen]

What exactly makes you consider the initial Crusader Kings II only half/a quarter of a game?

I never played it. Nor EU. But I can find you a thousand quotes from people who disagree with you, if you like (no, I'm not going to do that).

Can we drop the Paradox discussion? I consider them villains, I don't ask you to agree. And this is not the thread for that discussion.

I really enjoyed Stories: The Path of Destinies.

I've completed Path of Destinies, and it's excellent. I'm less thrilled with the sequel, which lies in that giant pile of ok games I lost interest in and never finished.

[deuterio12]

I never played it. Nor EU. But I can find you a thousand quotes from people who disagree with you, if you like (no, I'm not going to do that).

For each of your negative quotes, I can find many more positive quotes. As they say you can't please everybody, there'll always be a small percentage haters even if Paradox's next game cured cancer, but Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis got a very welcome reception.

I consider them villains, I don't ask you to agree.

Now I'm curious, why do you consider them villains after playing a single one of their games and never trying out their other good stuff that's been critically acclaimed?

[Grif]

I have sunk hundreds of hours in Stellaris 1.0 when it was released. Just because *you* didn't liked it doesn't qualify it as a "half/quarter of a game".

Edit: and if it's acknowledged EU4 and CK2 were good games right off the bat, then it's hardly a "Paradox-wide issue" isn't it?

I did likewise, but I think it's a pretty valid criticism of Stellaris that it took a lot of post-release work to fill it out. Stellaris at release had possibly the best every early game out of any space game, especially on your first few playthroughs. Eventually, you ran out of events and territory and the limits of the content in the game quickly became apparent.

Houlio answered my point perfectly. Stellaris nailed the early game. I have absolutely no complaints about that part. Like you, I probably put in dozens, maybe a hundred plus hours in it. It spectacularly falls flat once you reach the mid-late game, and the limitations of their design/content became felt very quickly. It's widely agreed they pushed the 1.0 release half-baked because they needed it out in time for release before they ran out of budget. Which is where my description of "half-finished game" comes to play. Contrast that with EU4, which even at 1.0, presented a functional early (initial conquest/survival), mid (colonization/conquest) and late (empire-building/AE management/paint the map) game to play in.

Do not mistake my criticism for DISLIKING the game. I love Stellaris. I wish the dev team all the best in trying to actually complete the game as it's meant to be played. But I will not hesitate to call a spade a spade in that Stellaris 1.0 was a mere skeleton of the game that frontloaded all its content and only raced to fill in the gaps in subsequent DLCs.


Now that, with my part in derailment complete, I'll put up another contender. Endless Space 2 and its related titles. If you like 4X games and beautiful aesthetic design, you cannot go wrong with Endless Space. The first game doesn't run very well on modern systems, and has been superseeded by its second iteration, so you should just grab ES2 instead. Endless Legends is a Civ-like spinoff that takes place on a planet instead, and has a unique take on combat. (YMMV on whether or not its actually engaging).

[Rynjin]

Endless Legend is probably the best 4x I've ever played.