Spring RTS Engine

Relative wrote:I've tried to get into X3, but I just don't get it.

That's pretty much the whole X series right there.

Oh man i don't get it either.
It's suppose to be very complex and all but i don't really understand how to play it properly.

I got stuck when I couldn't get past the first X2 cutscene without laughing my ass off. They replaced the word "minutes" with "mazuras" to make it sci-fi and futuristic. Well, unfortunately, it just sounds like someone with a thick southern accent saying "Missouri".

Let me sum up X3:

Laggy insta-death combat.
Boring trading.
Some other shit nobody bothered to play.

gg X3, GG.

Sindwiller wrote:Now: Heroes Of Might And Magic 5 (yes, I'm late, I don't care)

homam3 is where its at.


Anyway, some of my favorite games I've played throughout my life in no particular order. Come to think of it, these are the majority of the games I've *ever* played, as I could never really afford any of the new stuff or waited until I heard people say they were good. These are all 100% worth playing, I would never recommend anything sub-par.

Commander Keen (4) (my very first pc game ) - played it when I was 5 or 6. I finished it when I was 9

Age of Empires - I learned so much history by playing this game I based an entire school report solely on one of the campaigns. (110/100 points for anyone curios of the grade)

Baldur's Gate - I can't recall how many hours I spent in this huge awesome game.

Exile III: Ruined World - Like BG, I spent hours playing this epic game. I loved the point-buy system as well. The world was just so big and epic and detailed.

Prince of Persia (both the old and first new one) - i love how fluid and awesome the combat and movement can be; its more immersive than most of todays newer graphics imo

Ocarina of Time - if you haven't played this you're missing out.

Scorched Earth (omg was soo fun, but only multiplayer, the ai's are too dumb) Scorched 3d is also quite epic, and the graphics are stunning.

Fallout - I heard about this from a friend who also played BG, and he said it was awesome. I didn't get it until a few years later when I was bored, and woefully regretted not having gotten it sooner, this is a classic.

Thief - You get to play as a thief. who steals things. The fighting is also incredibly realistic (again, compared to all other games) and its so *satisfying* sneaking around the hilarious enemies, perhaps to give them a good thwacking in the back of the head as you drag their bodies off to some dark corner.

Beyond Good and Evil. - wonderful, kid friendly as well.

Psychonauts - similar in its kid friendliness, and you get psychic powers. 'nuff said.

Nethack - Like BG, it reminds me of DnD with some good friends. It is also just as random as any player could have been

Homeworld - I wish I would've finished the campaign, at the time it was a little too difficult for me, but its so awesome.

CA - Much more fun than Supreme Commander, Its ever growing and improving (which is one of the many reasons why its so awesome)

maackey wrote:Exile III: Ruined World - Like BG, I spent hours playing this epic game. I loved the point-buy system as well. The world was just so big and epic and detailed.

Oh hell yes. I think spiderweb dropped the ball a bit on the avernum series though..they just don't have the same charm as their predecessors.

SCORCHED EARTH YEAAAAAHHHHH BABY WHY ISN'T THERE A NEW VERSION THAT ISN'T GAY 3D CRAP OK I'LL JUST PLAY WORMS

Also, I beat Commander Keen 5 on my own, when I was like... 12... or something. My sister beat Commander Keen 4 (or came very close) but I didn't enjoy it as much as 5. To be perfectly fair, it's just that damn dopefish level that I can never finish.

Homeworld... I played it for a while but eventually I think I got to the point where you realize you hadn't played l33t enough earlier so you're predestined to fail because you don't have enough ships. After that I just couldn't work up the motivation to play from the beginning again. I did, however, beat both HW:C and HW2, though I will readily admit that they were not as good as the original in many respects. HW2 in particular just.... really dropped the ball in a few places. HW:C did too but I wasn't expecting as much from it.

You have inspired me to try nethack again. I played it once previously and things....... went poorly.

Also Pokemon Yellow. Best. Game. Ever.

orly? Is it seriously? I was thinking about getting pokemon diamond... just for shiggles...

Mass Effect was quite fun, despite the annoying planet landings (every 'generic' planet is a bit of flatland and a ton of goddamn infuriating mountains. At least put something different like a river or some forests now and then for a change! Oh, and some variation on bunker/warehouse design would have been nice). Good RPG, with a well-done story. Being able to play a hot Joanna Dark-esque character who alternately sweet-talks and threatens people also helped

Hitman: Blood Money is pretty sharp. It's pretty creative in the ways you get to kill people (shooting out the bottom of a glass pool and watching the people inside drop 50 feet to their deaths never gets old ), and as a stealth game it manages to be less annoying than most.

Then there's I-War 2. Awesome space flight sim, even if it's one of those games which you can easily tell was rushed at the end. I really liked how they blended realistic flight behavior with manageable controls.


That reminds me, I probably should finish that DX:IW Realistic playthrough I started. The whole dumbing down and frequent level transitions for consoles thing keeps turning me off, though. Grr...

my wife buys yarn. i look at bullets and pc game boxes, i get nothing.

Scorched Earth, Worms, Slicks n Slide, Liero, multiplayer games i played as a kid were best.

ADOM

Caydr wrote:HW2 in particular just.... really dropped the ball in a few places.

Yes, Homeworld 2 seems kinda bland on first look, with it's two very similar factions (a lot like TA btw), but it is an awesome multiplayer game. It's one of the best tactical RTS games I know, it's all about the right unit choice and what tech tree to climb. Very well balanced. Most multiplayer fights drag on and on just with fighters, corvettes and a few frigates, and you rarely see destroyers or even battlecruisers. Which is awesome. Single player campaign is boring though, since all you need to do is plow through everything with your fleet on support limit and occasionally replace some losses with your infinite money.

More Nostalgia:

Doom 2
In my opinion, shooters just went downhill after Doom 2. Doom 3 was the biggest disappointment ever. I really don't get why the concept of huge waves of monsters coming at you never was expanded on, modern FPS are now all about "oh shit there are 2 bad guys in the next room, better quicksave!!11!". Srsly wtf. I love how Doom forces you to position yourself properly on the right spot between the monsters hordes, lure them in the right direction, use Rocket Launcher and Double Barreled Shotgun to full effect etc. Adrenaline and sweat, not "hurr I duck behind the crate lol". Also, the artstyle, sound, music, atmosphere and controls are incredibly good.
(protip: check out the doomsday engine on doomsdayhq.com, it's also great for playing the old megawads like Memento Mori or Hell Revealed)

SimCity 2000
Awesome - isometric ftw

Tie Fighter
Very atmospheric and great gameplay. Made you really feel part of the empire. Battles were great, seeing those typical star wars laser fights in the distance, hearing the pleas about critical hulls from your allied frigates, charging enemy fighter squadrons head on etc. I hated the expansion pack though, since the Tie-Defender was just too overpowered. I really started to to feel sorry for the enemy starting to lose huge fleets just by me.

Transport Tycoon Deluxe
Very charming, so nice to see the world develop through the century. Also "Yay may first billion$" and Jazz-Jukebox. A shame that the successor Locomotion sucked so much.

Command & Conquer (the first one)
Actually the first Red Alert was even better (it was basically the same, just with faster units and larger maps). Great multiplayer, played it a lot. Never played the other C&C games for more than a few hours.

Total Annihilation
"use your senses" :)
TA - still the most real and "organic" feeling RTS I know - even without blood decors and wood elves.

Alpha Centauri
Still the best of it's breed. Has so many things Civ4 doesn't have: The awesome social engineering, nice futuristic interface, interesting quotes, really different factions which were all cool as hell, fully customizable units. really different creative strategies possible, even in multiplayer. Punishment spheres and supply crawlers broke gameplay though, and the expansion pack sucked.

If you miss Doom 2, you've got to play Serious Sam (1st and 2nd encounter, not Serious Sam 2). The first quarter or so of Sam 1st is terrible "bad guy teleports behind you" crap like a low-budget Doom 3, but then it really picks up into insane carnage.

I always thought that the X-Wing/Tie Fighter games are at their best when the ships have low health. Pounding blaster after blaster into a Y-wing is just painfully dull. Tie Fighter was the best of the series to avoid this, but even Tie Fighter loses a lot of gloss in retrospect when you play it now.

SimCity 2000 was a miracle of awesomeness, I agree. Yes, it had it's flaws - covering the shoreline in pumps just seemed silly and unrealistic, but it was the way to go.

As for 4X games, I have to give it up to Master of Magic instead of Alpha Centauri - Centauri was good, but some of the game was really tedious. MoM is one of those games that never got the loving it deserved. One fun thing for 4X fans: Civilization Revolutions on the DS is a pretty good Civ experience. It's not without it's flaws (hyper-aggressive AI and no civilopedia) but it's nice to go portable with Civ.

Command and Conquer was a mediocre game for multiplayer, but as an RTS it's single-player campaign was second only to StarCraft. Still, I played the hell out of a PalmOS 4 clone called Warfare Incorporated. Really, though, if you talk about classic RTS titles, there's basically Starcraft and TA and everybody else is on a lower level... not to say that there weren't good moments - I played the hell out of Z, but it was more of a frantic puzzler than a deep game like TA or SC.

Oh, and Battlezone 1 was farking awesome (if buggy). Perfect fusion of RTS and FPS without being overcomplex or requiring you to have a huge team of players.

Laggy insta-death combat.

X2 was laggy insta-death combat with my machine back then. X2/X3 were decent once I bought a new machine... Plus you don't go in combat with IRE's basically. If you had a (i.e. M4) ship with enough shields to get you through a rough time of 10-15 hits if you're maneuvring well and you don't have to fight more than 5 enemy ships, you can take them all out with some maneuvring tactics. Except if one of your oppponent's a M3 with too much shields on it. And you should definitely run if someone has a rear turret, that is, if you don't have the shields (guts). Owning an M3 changes the thing a bit. Wingmen can be pretty useful if you install decent fighting software... The last time I checked, there were some nice fighting software scripts made by the community, too :)

X does really have many flaws though. It is not complete (at all, seriously). But I have to admit that the first X (- Beyond The Frontier) had atmosphere and it was a big leap forward at the time. X2 had a shitty story, shitty everything and was even buggier than X3: Reunion when it came out. X3: Reunion was meh, but better than X2. Lastly, I torr***** *cough* X3: Terran Conflict, which really surprised me. It has missions, it has an even more global AI events than X3: Reunion had and it has something you'd call campaigns (like a guy flying around in a sector inviting you to go on a huge Kha'ak kill rampage. That was fun :) ). If you're not a die-hard spacesim fan though, it's not something for you.

KingRaptor wrote:Mass Effect

it helps if you love elevators.

for the love of god, why do the elevators take so long?

after the first elevator, i was dying for a loading screen.

cool game though, besides the elevators.

elevators.

Mass Effect was one of the worst games I've ever played. The decision aren't even decisive.

"You're not supposed to be here"

"Why not?",[ "I'm sorry, I'll leave." ], "Fuck you motherfucker"

"SHOOT THE HERETIC!!!!"

Liero beats u all ! its probably best game EVER... someone remember Dark Colony ? its like 12 y old game but still cool to play between spring games

Wombat wrote:Liero beats u all ! its probably best game EVER... someone remember Dark Colony ? its like 12 y old game but still cool to play between spring games

Iirc, Liero has gotten some loving in re-makes. I played Liero XTreme for a while, and now there's an open-source version of Liero XTreme.

found this looking at some lame radio thing. any one play it, any good?

http://www.hiverise.com

some one download and give us a report!