[0rph3u5]

Oh! You didn't use the branch he gave you did you? You have to keep that. If you get rid of his token of friendship, he'll become hostile again.

That must be it... doesnt matter anymore because thanks to the Warriors of Sunlight I've left two more bosses in my wake

Spoiler:

Undead Legion &  Deacons of the Deep

[Det. Bullock]

Finished House of The Dying Sun, since I'm lazy I'm copypasting my Steam review:

What can I say?
Single player mission-based spacesims (as opposed to the open world trade 'em ups like Elite or Privateer) are what made me a PC gamer in the first place, I think I've played every game in the genre except Starlancer and it's nice to finally see a new one released.
Nostalgia aside, while I can see the inspiration from Freespace 2 and Tie Fighter this game does its own thing and does it well.
You have only one fighter but there are plenty of upgrades and weapons to unlock as well as ships for your own fleet which have their own upgrades and weapons, weapons and ships are unlocked after completing certain missions while the upgrades must be purchased with favour points awarded after accomplishing bonus objectives during the missions.
The missions rather than Tie Fighter or Freespace 2 reminded me a lot of the first X-wing, most of the are hit & run missions in which you come out of hyperspace, hit your target(s) and then hyper out before the incoming enemy flagship warps in and starts pelting you with torpedoes.
The missions have three difficulty levels, each difficulty level has a slightly different design rather than "changing the rules" (like for example changing the AI or the damage rate of the weapons), either by changing the number and strength of the enemy (like having a frigate instead of a destroyer for example) or by making the objectives a bit more challenging like having two transports to kill instead of one. Also replaying each mission and completing the bonus objectives on each difficulty level is essential to obtain enough favour points to purchase the aforementioned upgrades.
While there is no energy management, there are plenty of tactical options once you get other fighters and some capital ships for your fleet, both from your fighter's cockpit and by using a tactical view and you maneuverability is influenced by your speed: you will have to slow down if you want to keep that pesky enemy interceptors in your sights.
There is also a glide function that allows you to rotate your ship while going on a fixed direction like in Tachyon: The Fringe and some Wing Commander games, or the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. However the flight model remains stylized like in the best games of the genre, many would say it's "arcade" and while it may be compared to Elite with flight assist off it's the typical way old school spacesims worked: enough complexity to be deep but not too much as to require a flying license like some fighter jet simulators.
The game is made to work primarily with a gamepad or keyboard and mouse but after a bit of fiddling in the options it works very well with a HOTAS as well, though at the moment the CH Pro Throttle acts a bit weird (the throttle axis is detected as centered for some reason). The gamepad-centric nature of the controls actually works very well with a HOTAS as the orders and some targeting and weapon functions are accessed through radial menus instead of the incredibly numerous keys of older titles in the genre, though there are optional hotkeys for targeting and weapons. To cut it short: no matter if you have a gamepad or the latest super expensive Thrustmaster army-approved metal replica of a fighter jet stick and throttle, you won't have to reach for the keyboard EVER.
The art style of the game is minimalistic yet striking, the music and other aspects are inspired by the Battlestar Galactica reimagining, with the sound of drums intensifying during battles and the muffled explosions, and I liked the minimalistic narrative choices as well and I won't say anything else because it's better to go in blind as I did.
The campaign is short but intense, while a veteran of the genere it took me something like 7 to 8 hours to complete the game, while some people said it's possible to beat it in two hours I guess they didn't unlock all the upgrades or played only one difficulty level for each mission, if you want to unlock everything you might need a good five hours if you are very good.

Now the tech-y stuff: the games runs very well on my Radeon HD 7770 1gb card on a i5-3470 with 8Gb of RAM (windows 7) with frame rate problems only in the last two missions at 1280x1024 (yes, my LCD monitor is old) with full bells and whistles as well as 4x anti aliasing but nothing gamebreaking.
The game feels very polished, rather different than the sort of things you hear about early access titles, no game breaking bugs, the achievements work and the meat of the single player is all there, there will be a "wave clearing mode" that will be added later if you want to just scratch that space dogfighting itch.

In conclusion: what are you waiting for? Buy it!

[RangerKarl]

Getting a lot of mileage out of this WASTED game. It's like a love letter to the 3D Fallouts, especially New Vegas, but with a more roguelike action-oriented perspective. Characters drink weird glowing booze to get new attributes, everything's real 80s, there's a sequel to GORILLAS.BAS...

[LaineyBugsDaddy]

Weird glowing booze to get new attributes? Sounds like Bioshock Infinite.

[Mammothtank]

Started Amnesia, stared a professional difficulty level run of RE4 and still waiting for that partch for Homeworld Remastered so I can play mods again.

[Blue Lion]

Thinking about getting Stellaris. Is it a good game? Haven't seen too much hype about it.

[deathspeed]

I was considering picking up something from the Saints Row franchise, as it appears that everything except the original is on sale on Steam.  But then I remembered I don't get far in open world games before getting bored or frustrated.  I do better with mission-based campaigns.  I've spent hundreds of hours on games like FreeSpace, MechWarrior 3, Crimson Skies (PC), Command & Conquer 3, Burnout franchise, and Unreal Tournament 2004 (single player).  Games like GTA: San Andreas and Fallout 3, not so much.  I spent too much time grinding to buff up, rather than just playing the game.

[Det. Bullock]

I was considering picking up something from the Saints Row franchise, as it appears that everything except the original is on sale on Steam.  But then I remembered I don't get far in open world games before getting bored or frustrated.  I do better with mission-based campaigns.  I've spent hundreds of hours on games like FreeSpace, MechWarrior 3, Crimson Skies (PC), Command & Conquer 3, Burnout franchise, and Unreal Tournament 2004 (single player).  Games like GTA: San Andreas and Fallout 3, not so much.  I spent too much time grinding to buff up, rather than just playing the game.

I don't either but the Saints Row games have undoubtedly their own charm, they are essentially self-aware GTA, in the sense that doesn't pretend that their characters are anything but comedic sociopaths and runs with it, the second especially isn't shy about showing the protagonists being explicitly brutal.
The second however it's better on GOG.com, the game came out broken on PC and GOG.com fixed some of the worst problems it had, it's also a bit more serious than the rest of the series.
If you have to get them on Steam, start with the third like I did, it's a bit smaller than the second but the PC version is very polished.


The first game was only on consoles.

[0rph3u5]

Dark Souls III, after a weekend marathon to "Link the Fire", now proceeds into NG+ ... one ending down, two to go

[deathspeed]

I was considering picking up something from the Saints Row franchise, as it appears that everything except the original is on sale on Steam.  But then I remembered I don't get far in open world games before getting bored or frustrated.  I do better with mission-based campaigns.  I've spent hundreds of hours on games like FreeSpace, MechWarrior 3, Crimson Skies (PC), Command & Conquer 3, Burnout franchise, and Unreal Tournament 2004 (single player).  Games like GTA: San Andreas and Fallout 3, not so much.  I spent too much time grinding to buff up, rather than just playing the game.

I don't either but the Saints Row games have undoubtedly their own charm, they are essentially self-aware GTA, in the sense that doesn't pretend that their characters are anything but comedic sociopaths and runs with it, the second especially isn't shy about showing the protagonists being explicitly brutal.
The second however it's better on GOG.com, the game came out broken on PC and GOG.com fixed some of the worst problems it had, it's also a bit more serious than the rest of the series.
If you have to get them on Steam, start with the third like I did, it's a bit smaller than the second but the PC version is very polished.


The first game was only on consoles.

Well, now you got me considering it again.    Steam has the ultimate franchise pack with 2, The Third, IV, and a ton of other stuff (48 items all together) for US $12.49.

There are a few other games I am considering as well, but I don't like to spend more than $12 for remakes of 18 year old games or for games still in early access.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Steam has the ultimate franchise pack with 2, The Third, IV, and a ton of other stuff (48 items all together) for US $12.49.

Now that is one hell of a deal. Anybody who doesn't have the entire series already should seriously consider that.

[Rodo]

Thinking about getting Stellaris. Is it a good game? Haven't seen too much hype about it.

It's good, quite good actually. IF you like strategy and diplomacy games... something like civ franchise but in space, with mean aliens, customizable ships and a TON of awesome scy-fy story-like mini quests.

That said, this game has unlimited potential for replays, but the content might get "old" once you play a few times. The good thing is that the studio producing it does really come forward to deliver awesome content, and it was promissed the game would get improvements (some of which have already been released, for free) that will make it a far superior experience.

I personally LOVE IT, but this is a game that might not entice all gamers out there.

I'd recommend watching some of the stream vids paradox has published on their youtube channel. Look it up as "the blorg".

[Det. Bullock]

X-wing vs Tie Fighter: Balance of Power
Boy, two missions in a row in the rebel campaing on medium instead of hard.
One was a reconaissance mission in which you had to destroy the occasional transport with warheads, on hard my wingmen got obliterated too quickly and the Tie fighters gang up on me, which wouldn't have been a problem if I didn't have to stop to destroy the aforementioned transports, once I was done with that I turned off the laser cannons and hurtled at the various capital ships I had to indentify at such speed that the squadron of Tie Advanced dispatched against me couldn't catch up.
The other mission was a trap for two Star Destroyers, the problem is the same on Hard the AI is unbalanced in favour of the enemy so the B-wings that should have torpedoed the crap out of the Star Destroyers often fired when the enemy interceptors were already in range which means that they were able to launch only half of their payload at best.
On medium the mission was already more fair, though having a squadron of Tie Advanced singling you out will always make you lose a wave or two most of the times.

[Kobrar44]

War for the Overworld. It is exactly what I thought it would be. Kind of Dungeon Keeper, but nowhere near as good.

[Mongoose]

Just played through Lifeless Planet, a really atmospheric little indie title about an astronaut crashed on an, er, lifeless planet.  A YouTuber I follow featured it a few years back, but I stopped watching his playthrough pretty early on because it looked intriguing and I didn't want to spoil myself.  It took longer to finally get around to than I wanted, but I'm glad I kept it a fresh experience.  Also Trackmania: United Forever, which I played around with aaaages ago when I had a GameTap subscription (remember them?) but never actually owned until the Steam sale.  Fun stuff.

[Mammothtank]

War for the Overworld. It is exactly what I thought it would be. Kind of Dungeon Keeper, but nowhere near as good.

I was wondering what that was like. See I've felt this itch to go back and play Dungeon Keeper Gold lately.

[Turambar]

Beat Witcher 3, happy ending! :-D

Continuing on to Witcher 3 DLCs

[Black_Yoshi1230]

Doing the side-scroller Metroids (happy 30th Anniversary, franchise), First Encounter Assault Recon, and practicing Star Fox with a joystick.

[Det. Bullock]

Tachyon: The Fringe
I had to partially mod it to make it work on win7 64 bits (I didn't install the glide wrapper, I played in direct3D then, I'll play it in Direct3D now, screw stupid monopolistic closed APIs) and rather than playing it I've been trying to map my HOTAS, but unfortunately having an Italian boxed copy means that whoever translated the refcard and manual didn't take into account the differences between the Italian and American layouts which means I'm having problems figuring out what does what which is only further complicated by the CH Control Manager reading italian keystrokes like Yank Keystrokes which only adds to the confusion.

[LaineyBugsDaddy]

Halo CE, Bungie Classic Campaign, and the little bastard that Wheatley in Portal 2 is clearly designed to resemble just tried to trick me into wiping out all life in the galaxy.