Good games to buy?

[AntiochusIII]

King's Quest.

Okay, so I'm not very up-to-date about PC games anymore, but...

Huh? Is that the same King's Quest as what I'm thinking?

I ought to really check out CoH. Sounds like a great game. Although the news about Bioshock sounds disappointing...

I'm also looking at Galactic Civilization II though: like Bootsuiv, I loved Imperium Galactica II, but I'm not sure how these two games compare in substance and style.

Vampire: Bloodlines seconded. And TES IV: Oblivion if you haven't got it yet for some reason. The Elder Scrolls series is really its own thing.

I'll get my hands on the NWN2 expansion when it comes out. Having to buy it to get past level 20 is kinda annoying though *.*

[Bootsiuv]

I finally got around to playing GalCiv2 successfully last night.

It turned out to be AOL was screwing up every so often and sending me back to my desktop (I hate that program). GalCiv2 is apparently NOT alt-tab friendly, as going back to the game from desktop results in a black screen for a few seconds, and then a window saying this game will now shut down.

After finally having my a** handed to me as the Drath Legion on challenging mode, I turned it down to normal, and built a custom civilization.

Some of my initial reactions may have been a bit hasty....the planets and stars are quite beautifully rendered (I still wish they orbited at different distances and gave more scientific facts about the stars, planets, etc.), and the scripting has some interesting things happen every so often, much like the brotherhood of tears missions, treasure missions, etc. of Imperium Galactic 2.

Unfortunately, IG2 did have a superior combat system as far as I'm concerned. There are no more zooming in on space battles a la total war series and controlling your capital ships and fighters. All space combat apparently takes place from the strategic map viewpoint. A little disappointing.

Land combat is not much better. There is some graphics to show the two relative forces, but you don't have control of individual units like you did in IG2. You just sit back and watch, which kills the immersion yet again.

That being said, I don't have the expansion, so I'm unsure if any of those issues were addressed.

Overall, my initial impressions of the game have improved drastically now that I've been able to play a campaign. I'm still waiting for a Space turn based strategy game in a universe similiar to Freelancer i.e. completely 3-d rendered and massive.

For now though, GalCiv2 is a fun way to trounce around the galaxy, albeit a little abstract.

[Bob the Insane]

One of the key elements in GalCiv is the AI... On the higher levels it is evil nasty hard...

Actually able uses strategy, allying and backstabbing in logical order to win...

[Zenicetus]

I've found GalCiv2 to be unstable at best....It always crashes....I have XP SP2 with a VisionTek Radeon 1550x (256 MB), and 768 MB of Ram.

That should be more than enough to play the game, as, like you said, it's pretty low on the requirements. I've checked the site for any solutions, and have found that I should update my drivers. I have done so, and it still crashes after 30-50 turns.

Drat, sorry to hear that. I know the official system requirements are fairly low, but it does eat RAM when you get into the largest sized maps, or if you build ships with a zillion parts. It might still be the video card or driver, but the fact that it crashes after you're that far into the game makes me think it might be Ram-related. 768 mb is on the low side for gaming these days (IMO).

I suppose I'll have to wait for Sins of a Solar Empire before I have an enjoyable spacefaring experience.

I'm looking forward to that one too.

A few things about GalCiv2 irked me, anyways. The fact that the planets don't orbit the stars realistically takes away much from the immersion IMO. The colony build screen is also a little ridiculous....those are some MASSIVE structures you must be building, if you can only fit one in a few hundred thousand square kilometers.

I hear 'ya on the realism, but it would be tough to do realistic orbital mechanics for planets without complicating the game. With static planets, I can point an invasion fleet or freighter at a planet's map square, and not worry about where the planet will be when it actually arrives. Moving planets would screw that up, unless the game had some kind of prediction function for orbital mechanics. The distance and location within a planetary system would have some strategic importance in real life (read the chase scene at the end of Niven/Pournelle's "The Gripping Hand" for a great example), but the game just doesn't go into that much detail.

Anyway, I can accept the game map as a compressed, virtual display that discards unnecessary information, instead of something like a spaceship window where I'm looking at the physical reality of that galaxy sector. The same with the planet surface tiles. They're a simplified view of what would be the whole support network around something like a research lab: the worker housing, food production and distribution, transportation grid, power generation, all that. Not just a single building. It's an abstraction so I can focus on the big picture and major decisions.

I'm still waiting for a space Civ game that looks somewhat realistic. Give me vast distances when I zoom in close....I want to feel like I'm playing over light-years of space. Even the gigantic galaxies in GalCiv2 are far too close together, and bear little resemblance to reality. The same red and blue dust clouds in the background every game is also disappointing....they could have changed it up, and added more of the beautiful objects that we see in space. The entire game, while fun, is too abstract for my tastes.

That might work if the UI was very slick, and you didn't waste too much time zooming and panning to find something (I mean, space is big... really really big... and all that Adams quote stuff). At the "strategy" level you'd be panned out so far that a real-life view would only show tiny dots for stars and no planets at all, so you'd have to be using something that overlaid icons on the view to ID things. And that basically gets us what we have in GalCiv2: an abstracted representation.

Since we're getting into game design rants here, what bothers me more with games like this is the simplification of a 2D grid. There have only been a few games that flirted with true 3D strategy like Homeworld, and I really enjoyed that aspect. I think game companies tend to avoid this because they think some players can't handle it, or maybe it's just to simplify the AI. But it does occasionally break my immersion to be planning "space" strategy and conquest on a 2D map. Doesn't feel right.

BTW, I think there is a way to replace the background image with whatever you want. I think it has to be done manually, and can't cycle between different images with each new game, but it's still better than being stuck with one image. Check in the Stardock forums for more info.

On one last note, Freelancer was a very fun game. Probably the best space game I've ever played, with the most unique and entertaining locations.

Freelancer was fun, but it suffered from the same unrealistic "flight" modeling most games of this type have, ever since the Wing Commander games made such a big splash.... everyone tends to follow that paradigm. That's my personal bugaboo with space games. The flight physics are just ridiculous, and that makes the combat ridiculous too. It's designed to keep the ships very close together so combat is "exciting" and fast-paced at the expense of realism. Shooters in space. The only modern game series I know of that broke that mold, were the two Independence War games.

I really enjoyed how the ships moved and fought in those games, especially Independence War 2. If you cut thrust, you kept moving in the same direction at the same speed.... none of this "throttling down equals slowing down", turn on rails nonsense. There were all sorts of fun things you could do like high speed passes on a target while you spin and fire. It still wasn't perfect physics because they added some sci-fi elements that made it more playable (i.e. that meant you wouldn't wait hours or days to close on an enemy), but I think they did a good job balancing realism and playability for this type of game. The major flaw with Independence War was the mediocre plot writing and the linear, scripted missions. I'd love to see that flight model used in a more open-ended space game.

whew... well, that was a long one, but I do really like space games, and I wish there were more high-quality ones out there, both strategy games and cockpit-level tactical games.

[Bootsiuv]

Well, you'll be happy to hear that I finally got it working successfully, and it is quite fun. I'll give it a 3.5 out of 5....would have been a 4 if it weren't for the lack of battle sequences.

As to your above post....I agree on all of your points....

Space is very big, but if they're was a way to streamline interface....I've always wanted a game that made me feel like I was actually exploring space (well, the interesting part anyways....I suppose the light years of blackness would be pretty boring).

[Zenicetus]

Unfortunately, IG2 did have a superior combat system as far as I'm concerned. There are no more zooming in on space battles a la total war series and controlling your capital ships and fighters. All space combat apparently takes place from the strategic map viewpoint. A little disappointing.

Land combat is not much better. There is some graphics to show the two relative forces, but you don't have control of individual units like you did in IG2. You just sit back and watch, which kills the immersion yet again.

The developer has said he intentionally didn't pursue user-playable battles, because an experienced player always manages to find some trick or exploit to beat the AI. With the current design, battles are determined by the decisions you make on the strategy map, which puts you and the AI on a more even playing field. It also allows the programming team to focus 100% on the strategic map AI, which may be one reason it's as good as it is.

That being said, I don't have the expansion, so I'm unsure if any of those issues were addressed.

No major additions like playable tactical battles in the expansion, although if you end up liking the game I'd strongly recommend it. It has some changes to the way battles are calculated, there are a few UI improvements, and more customized sets of parts for the alien races. Their ships are more distinct, and you have more parts to play with when you design your own ships. There's one more "mean" militaristic race added too, but that's not so important since you can design your own alien opponents.

[Bootsiuv]

Hmmm....I guess I never thought about it that way.

I'll admit, it is very good at what it's designed to do....very likely the best out there, until we get some 3-d rendered games of this nature.

I would recommend it to anyone who is a big space geek...

[Lord Winter]

I suspect you will be out of luck. It uses the Half Life 2 engine, which I think is more demanding than RTW. There's a good website that checks if your computer can run certain games.

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

Thanks for the link econ,
hmm need a better video card but my whole computer is a piece of junk anyway, so maybe I'll wait until I can overhaul the entire system.

[edyzmedieval]

Oblivion is very nice, but since I only got to play it on a crappy computer, it ruined the fun for me. I advanced a bit in the game, I had to defeat that weirdo which was up that tower. After you go to the gate of Oblivion (after the mission with the monk), you go up a tower, and there you have to get rid of one guy who in like 3 spells gets you down.

And I also found the game very creepy, probably because I was like playing it at 12 midnight.

[Fragony]

Oblivian is a whole is rather unforgiving, I can see it's appeal but I quikly lost interest, it's a big but soulless game imho.

[Incongruous]

I can see that Oblivion may have let go fo some of the finer points of the RPG that Morrowind was. However I often found Morrowind so bland at times, there didn't seem to be any real life in the world. However it's story was top nosh.
However there is something about playing Oblivion, like Edy said, it is creepy, especially when you run into some friekish things during the night, real and Oblivion. I hope in the next installment that they re-introduce a very good storyline.
However I do have one major problem with these games. It's the frieken dungeons! Gah, I find them so annoying! like what the heck are they for? Gah!
I also really miss the Imperial legion quests...

[edyzmedieval]

Any other recommendations? Preferably new titles.

[Dunhill]

If you like strategy games, have a look at Birth of America and AGEod's American Civil War, both are very good. The AI is very advanced.

If you like single player tactical warfare have a look at Take Command 2nd Manassas. The game has a high level of immersions and features relatively large battle grounds, any some new maps are being produced as well as mods for other conflicts.

Conquest of the Aegean is an interesting game, but very high on the grognard scale. It has a bit of a steep learning curve.

GAL II also get a mention due to the AI and very good UI and gameplay.

In short, lots of good stuff out right now and more coming.

[Zenicetus]

Galciv2 will soon get its second expansion pack, maybe a few months from now. If you pre-order the expansion pack, you can join the beta testing for it (why doesn't CA do this?).

The expansion will have another mini-campaign, and a few eye candy things like updated graphics and Terror Stars (solar system destroyers). But the real change is that they're adding tech trees where some major elements are unique to each race. That should shake up the gameplay.