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STEAM- Announcements & Updates 2011 Edition |OT2|

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Sanic

Sanic

Member
I don't know if this has been the case for awhile, but Amazon has Supreme Commander 2 for $5.99 and it's a Steamworks title.

Link.
 
S

Sober

Member
epmode said:
So uh, any impressions about Star Ruler? I've had my eye on that since launch but never bit.
Click to expand...
Try the demo, it's fairly small. It seems quite a bit is in there but not everything. I only played about an hour.

Just think Sins but more 4X. I think the real highlight of the game is being able to customize your race (certain traits give you points because they give a plus and negative aspect, while other traits are pure bonuses but cost points) but the biggest feature is customizing your ship blueprints. It's not as detailed or visible like in GalCiv2's, but you can determine the scale of your ship, what weapons it has, other systems and subsystems (life support, crew quarters, emergency power modules), where weapons are placed, same with armour; plus you can scale the systems to meet whatever costs you think you can afford or whatever. If you visit their site I think they have a section where people can submit their own ship blueprints to download and use.

Planet Management looks pretty good; resources are fairly straightforward though it takes about a couple minutes or so of staring at it to make sense (as usual).

I thought it was pretty fun. Try it yourself, but you might like it, especially for 5$. I'm not gonna bite though. Not that I'm averse to buying a complex strategy game, it's just that I don't feel I have the time to learn these systems (yes I am a huge baby). Hell, everytime EU games are on sale for cheapo (like right now) I still pass on them. Maybe some other day. Blah blah instant gratification etc etc, or I just haven't been on a strategy high for a long while. I mean, I'm fine with playing old RPGs still.
 
A

Aselith

Member
Guys, I was thinking about picking up Divinity 2 but then I saw that Drakensang is the same price...which would be the better pick up and MOST IMPORTANT do they both have a lot of items with different LOOKS and which one would be better in this area. I love playing dress up in my RPG's. /blush Also, which is graphically better.
 
A

Aselith

Member
I decided to buy Drankensang because Divinity seemed like garbage except the turning into a dragon after jumping off a cliff part was kind of badass.
 
V

viewtifulsub

Member
Aselith said:
Guys, I was thinking about picking up Divinity 2 but then I saw that Drakensang is the same price...which would be the better pick up and MOST IMPORTANT do they both have a lot of items with different LOOKS and which one would be better in this area. I love playing dress up in my RPG's. /blush Also, which is graphically better.
Click to expand...
Haven't played Drakensang yet, but Divinity 2 is a great pickup.
Action WRPG that bases itself on 3 large hubs (+ an expansion area) to quest in. Loot wise, most of it is randomly generated gear you'll pick up, but there are around 12-15 major distinctive sets that can be collected.
Divinity 2 runs on gamebyro; but looks amazing (bloom overload aside), and impressively, runs really well no hiccups.

I had a blast with it a few months back, and found it be such an overlooked gem that nobody played. Oh yea, the soundtrack is phenomenal
 
N

Narag

Member
Now you're making me want to finally fire up Divinity 6 months after I bought it.

I need to stop buying stuff I never play.
 
A

Aselith

Member
viewtifulsub said:
Haven't played Drakensang yet, but Divinity 2 is a great pickup.
Action WRPG that bases itself on 3 large hubs (+ an expansion area) to quest in. Loot wise, most of it is randomly generated gear you'll pick up, but there are around 12-15 major distinctive sets that can be collected.
Divinity 2 runs on gamebyro; but looks amazing (bloom overload aside), and impressively, runs really well no hiccups.

I had a blast with it a few months back, and found it be such an overlooked gem that nobody played. Oh yea, the soundtrack is phenomenal
Click to expand...

TOO LATE
 
G

Gvaz

Banned
Aselith said:
I decided to buy Drankensang because Divinity seemed like garbage except the turning into a dragon after jumping off a cliff part was kind of badass.
Click to expand...
It's twice as good as Drakensang but it depends on what kind of rpg is your fancy. DKS is really damn good though.
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
Sober said:
Try the demo, it's fairly small. It seems quite a bit is in there but not everything. I only played about an hour.

Just think Sins but more 4X. I think the real highlight of the game is being able to customize your race (certain traits give you points because they give a plus and negative aspect, while other traits are pure bonuses but cost points) but the biggest feature is customizing your ship blueprints. It's not as detailed or visible like in GalCiv2's, but you can determine the scale of your ship, what weapons it has, other systems and subsystems (life support, crew quarters, emergency power modules), where weapons are placed, same with armour; plus you can scale the systems to meet whatever costs you think you can afford or whatever. If you visit their site I think they have a section where people can submit their own ship blueprints to download and use.

Planet Management looks pretty good; resources are fairly straightforward though it takes about a couple minutes or so of staring at it to make sense (as usual).

I thought it was pretty fun. Try it yourself, but you might like it, especially for 5$. I'm not gonna bite though. Not that I'm averse to buying a complex strategy game, it's just that I don't feel I have the time to learn these systems (yes I am a huge baby). Hell, everytime EU games are on sale for cheapo (like right now) I still pass on them. Maybe some other day. Blah blah instant gratification etc etc, or I just haven't been on a strategy high for a long while. I mean, I'm fine with playing old RPGs still.
Click to expand...
This seems like a pretty reasonable assessment to me. I haven't played Sins of a Solar Empire though.

I spent 30+ minutes reading through half the tutorial. It's basically a table of contents menu system, rather than a hand-holding guided tutorial. I usually don't buy or play complicated strategy games (EU series for instance), but I went ahead and bought Star Ruler after part of the demo. It seems like it has decent graphics, relatively full-featured controls, good scale, and a lot of customization. You may even be able to do mods, edit config files, and so on.

The background music seemed pretty good to me, electronic space mood stuff.

Definitely give the demo a shot if you're interested. I figure even if I don't play it much, the product seems decent, and it has been updated multiple times on Steam since release.
 
S

Sober

Member
Blizzard said:
This seems like a pretty reasonable assessment to me. I haven't played Sins of a Solar Empire though.

I spent 30+ minutes reading through half the tutorial. It's basically a table of contents menu system, rather than a hand-holding guided tutorial. I usually don't buy or play complicated strategy games (EU series for instance), but I went ahead and bought Star Ruler after part of the demo. It seems like it has decent graphics, relatively full-featured controls, good scale, and a lot of customization. You may even be able to do mods, edit config files, and so on.

The background music seemed pretty good to me, electronic space mood stuff.

Definitely give the demo a shot if you're interested. I figure even if I don't play it much, the product seems decent, and it has been updated multiple times on Steam since release.
Click to expand...
I linked a set of tutorial videos earlier in the thread where someone shows it off, pretty much step by step. Not entirely concise but he did cover pretty much everything the table of contents tutorial. I almost fell asleep doing the actual tutorial.
 
A

Aselith

Member
Gvaz said:
It's twice as good as Drakensang but it depends on what kind of rpg is your fancy. DKS is really damn good though.
Click to expand...

I watched character creation and some of the first gameplay and the voicework was so cringe inducing on the first character she encounters that I decided it wasn't for me. Does that get halfway decent later in Divinity?

Here's the one I watched: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38LwQsGVLKQ
 
Sanic

Sanic

Member
One minor gripe I have with Steam is that free content isn't associated with your account. So if I boot up Steam on another computer, I won't have Alien Swarm or any mods in my games list.
 
C

coopolon

Member
Aselith said:
I decided to buy Drankensang because Divinity seemed like garbage except the turning into a dragon after jumping off a cliff part was kind of badass.
Click to expand...


I'm also pretty sure character looks don't change with equipment in Drakensang although I've only played the first one and it has been awhile.
 
F

Fredescu

Member
One of the things I loved about Divinity 2 was all the architecture and sculpture work around the place. A lot of effort went into making areas feel unique. Here's an early example:

u3eWM.jpg



YZ8Ja.jpg
 
V

vocab

Member
Pandoracell said:
One minor gripe I have with Steam is that free content isn't associated with your account. So if I boot up Steam on another computer, I won't have Alien Swarm or any mods in my games list.
Click to expand...


Go to the steam page of the actual game, and install it from there?
 
A

Aselith

Member
coopolon said:
I'm also pretty sure character looks don't change with equipment in Drakensang although I've only played the first one and it has been awhile.
Click to expand...

I was watching a video and the character was updating when the person swapped equipment so surely it must unless there is only one type of equipment per class.
 
K

Kabouter

Member
Keikaku said:
Kabouter
You certainly have a point about Vicky II being more complex then EU3, but I did make the point about needless complexity and I think it applies to both of those games. I didn't play a whole lot of Vicky II or HOI3 but it seemed like there was a lot more micromanagement of your economy and research not all of which was, to my mind, something that added to the game. EU3, in my opinion, allows you to feel like you're guiding your country without descending into the minutia of the day-to-day operations. I've got the HOI2 complete pack and I'm about to start playing that game so I'll probably feel different once I do.

You do have more hours put into these games than I do, so I'll bow to your knowledge of their systems and associated complexity :D=
Click to expand...
While I haven't yet put enough time into Vicky II to judge whether all its systems are relevant to the game, I have played well over a hundred hours of Hearts of Iron III, and I can't think of any functionality within that game that doesn't contribute to the experience. Thing is, while you do micro-manage in Hearts of Iron III, that is what the game is about more than EU3. It is a natural result of a game length of a single decade versus a game length of over four centuries, the focus is much smaller.

  • Alliance Cascades: This. This right here. I want to . . . sit down and have a very serious talk with the nutter who coded this "feature". To be fair, it really seemed to be an unintended problem that happened due to some change that was made in the diplomacy-related parts of the game but it was the biggest annoyance I had, especially since I play as the Old World European nations most of the time.

    For example, if I play as Castille, my first move is almost always to guarantee Navarre so that I can get a free CB on Aragon when they inevitably declare war on Navarre a couple of days from the start. This always worked out fine in pre-DW EU3 since I would get into a fight with Aragon, pick off a few provinces from them, force the release of Navarre and do it again later if I wanted to. Try this same thing in DW however and you're in for a shit storm.

    Not only will you be fighting against Aragon, but if they entered an alliance midway through your war, you would now be at war with their new ally and all of the allies of their new allies. It was beyond retarded. I would end up in a perpetual war with Aragon, Sicily, Navarre (since Aragon would conquer them), France, England, Burgundy, Bohemia . . . and the list goes on. And this would happen in almost any mainland European war when playing as any country. This was an acknowledged problem on their forums and, at least a couple of months ago, there was no fix out for it and it totally killed my interest in the game, especially since I can't just install the game up to HTTT again. Maybe the beta patch fixes it, I don't know.

The alliance cascade thing really upset the balance of the game for me since it left my country so torn apart from either stability loss, war exhaustion or inflation that my tech would lag and I would almost inevitably lose the race to the New World. It also made wars needlessly protracted.
Click to expand...
This has been 'fixed' partially in patches, wars don't cascade nearly to the same degree that they did in vanilla Divine Wind. That said, they do still cascade to a degree and that's a very good thing. You have to be sure of yourself before you start a war, have to maintain good diplomatic relations with other powerful nations (so they will choose not to join the war for instance). It still won't stop you from doing extremely well anyway, I've united Germany with such nations as Ulm and Frankfurt.

Anyway, my advice is, go to their forums, head to the EU3 > Tech Support subforum, and grab the latest beta patch (June 21st one). Over the past few beta pathes they've improved a heck of a lot.
 
C

CoffeeJanitor

Member
When do you guys think the next big sale going to take place? I've been waiting for SMB to go on sale for a few months now so I was wondering if it would be soon.
 
G

geeko

Member
OMG, I actually have extra money and the sale might or might not happen.

STEEAAAAAM!!!!!

Damnit Gabe, let me know, I NEED TO KNOW!!
 
V

Visualante

Member
I didn't try that stuff but I had fun just flying about in Just Cause 2. I didn't even do any missions.

Install everything is free mod it's a blast.
 
B

BolognaOni

Member
Cipherr said:
Anyone know if TM United Nations has a soundtrack feature to race to my own music instead of server music?
Click to expand...

Turn off the in-game music and run winamp? And you don't have to re-do playlists!
 
S

Symphonic

Member
theusedversion said:
Hypothetical: If there is no sale, does Valve have an obligation to inform gamers that there won't be?
Click to expand...

No? They never promised a sale, so there's really no reason for it to exist except for people's desire.

Does that mean Valve fans won't complain about it? Of course not.
 
M

Maddness

Member
scorpscarx said:
Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast multiplayer > all things before it and all things yet to come.

I never even played the single player since it came out, but I'm definitely in the cult that still plays it ultra competitively today ;).
Click to expand...



holy shit that game is still played online? Man my friend and I LOVED the multiplayer. Do they still have the winner stays 1 v 1 duels where you bow before you fight to show your honor? HONOR!

So many awesome mods for that bad boy too. Before Jedi Academy and you had to mod for some of the lightsaber options.
 
C

Card Boy

Banned
Jedi Academy was weaker in SP but had way better online. Alot of the maps from Jedi Outcast where in it. Really loved all the new moves they added to the game.
 
M

Mr_Zombie

Member
SalsaShark said:
Worms pack bought
Click to expand...
Not worth it.

It is only worth buying if you can't run WWP or Worms Armageddon at all (I can't :(). If you can, just skip it, because WR is IMO a disgrace to the 2D Worms series :/
 
S

Symphonic

Member
Mr_Zombie said:
Not worth it.

It is only worth buying if you can't run WWP or Worms Armageddon at all (I can't :(). If you can, just skip it, because WR is IMO a disgrace to the 2D Worms series :/
Click to expand...

I enjoyed Reloaded immensely, definitely worth it.
 
Nabs

Nabs

Member
Reloaded is fun if you have 3 others to play with. I've been playing W:A since forever, but my Steam/GAF friends don't have it.
 
M

Mr_Zombie

Member
Not if you can play WWP or WA instead.
WR with its small team count, tiny maps and godawful GUI (whose idea was to replace old option panels, that mainly used icons and symbols, with thousands of menus using huge font?) can suck those games' dick. There's also much less options and variations than in WWP; the whole game feels like a huge step back on every front. The only saving grace is pretty graphics and gamepad controls.
 
C

camerooni

Neo Member
Mr_Zombie said:
Not if you can play WWP or WA instead.
WR with its small team count, tiny maps and godawful GUI (whose idea was to replace old option panels, that mainly used icons and symbols, with thousands of menus using huge font?) can suck those games' dick. There's also much less options and variations than in WWP; the whole game feels like a huge step back on every front. The only saving grace is pretty graphics and gamepad controls.
Click to expand...

They would have changed it to the words to suit the console makers trc's.. this is definately the case if the game has a 'help and options' menu item :p and a 'how to play'.. would require effort to make a ui comfortable for the pc - signs of a shoddy port that was targeting consoles first.
 
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