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STEAM- Announcements & Updates 2011 Edition |OT2|
- Thread starter ClovingWestbrook
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ohhthegore
Member
Exuro said:
hmmm not bad at all
Palette Swap
Member
And it's only 112.3MB, finally !
that changelog doesn't even mention what they were watching
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Just Cause 2
This is a much better game than Just Cause 1. It's an open-world blow-stuff-up game. It's got a much larger game world than most of the games you've ever played, probably twice the size of Burnout Paradise's Paradise City. It's okay, though, there's a quick warp button for already discovered locations, and traversal is really fun.
Basically, you have a grappling hook and a parachute. You can grapple from building to building, car to car, area to area. If you activate your parachute while you're flying with the grappling hook, you fly up into the air and can sort of slingshot your grappling hook on the ground to parasail around the world. You move incredibly fast (around as fast as the fastest car) and you can even sort of hop up mountainous terrain with this technique. Very cool. It was more fun to just move around in this game than any other game I've ever played.
The game takes place in a South-East Asian nation (it's a fictional blend of Sri Lanka, Indonesia, North Korea, Haiti, and a few other countries--actually I think the over the top way they mix things is one of the game's big failings). It's made up of several large islands. On these islands, there are hundreds of little villages and outposts. Each place, once discovered, has a clear percentage from 0% to 100%. You raise the clear percentage by either picking up items (weapon upgrade parts, vehicle upgrade parts, health upgrade parts, cash bags) or destroying military/government property (propaganda vans, gas tanks, oil silos, radio towers, construction cranes, and more). Clearing the areas is very fun and reminded me almost of The Saboteur, which was a very underrated game. The more you clear, the more "chaos" you generate. Chaos is the game's progression system. As you generate more chaos, you unlock more plot missions.
The main game is fairly short; 7 main game missions. But to unlock each main game mission you're encouraged to do side missions for one or more of three factions, who each have ~15 plot missions. So maybe 55 plot missions total? Missions are pretty well constructed. Some might involve basic assassinations, while others involve pretty long assaults on very unique areas. One cool mission involved fighting three generals on the top of a triple-skyscraper hotel complex. Another involved breaking into a military base and blowing up a general's 9 expensive sports cars. I don't want to spoil too many missions. I played for 18 hours before I saw the main credits, but I had an overall completion percentage of 25%, so that gives you a sense of how much post-game content there is to do.
Complaints
So far, I've been pretty positive. My recommendation is not unambiguous. The plot is terrible. It's a terrible mash-up of really low grade political conspiracy crap. It ends in an AMERICA FUCK YEAH nuclear explosion followed by a War-war never changes-war has changed feel-bad-about yourself monologue (frankly, this isn't a spoiler, the game is anything but subtle). But you're probably not playing for the plot. You're playing for the game.
I have two complaints about the gameplay. First, the guns are all terrible. Enemies are huge bullet sponges, even on Normal difficulty (the second difficulty of 4). They presumably do this because the actual variety of enemy types is super limited, but it's just not enjoyable to repeatedly shoot people like that.
Second, the actual design of the game progression doesn't make a lot of sense. Yes, there are these hundreds of little military bases and villages to clear. But first of all, it doesn't make any sense that blowing up these bases progresses the plot. It's totally disconnected. In The Saboteur, you blew up Nazi bases around Paris. Each base that was destroyed made a little bit of the city a little safer for you and civilians, plus it restored colour to the city. This was a good way of tying the side-game content into the main game. Here, you're strictly filling up progress bars. Blow up a military base and come back 5 minutes later, it's still blown up but there are plenty of soldiers there. In fact, the more bases you blow up the MORE soldiers show up everywhere, so you never get the feeling that you're actually clearing back anything.
Also, the number of types of random bases are surprisingly low. One common type is a radio outpost. It will have one generator, one radio tower, one pickup item, and the a central transmission tower. You will shoot 6-8 soldiers. You activate three computer terminals, the transmission tower rises, you blow it up. 100% complete. I did probably easily 10-15 of these exact layouts through the game. Basically, I guess what I'm saying is that there might be hundreds of locations on the map, but I doubt you're going to have enough appetite to clear more than 100-125, and there's no real incentive to besides increasing your completion percentage. All the place names are in Indonesian as well and they just look like identical gibberish to me, so you never get the feeling of having a "home base" or a "favourite environment". They're all absolutely identical. Only the main plot missions actually have well designed, original, significant, and varied levels. Given that you can only respawn at around 10 stronghold locations around the map, the other 350+ locations are all that more forgettable.
Despite these complaints, it's a great game. It's amazing to shoot a dozen guys, blow up a huge gas silo, grapple onto an attack helicopter, shoot the side-gunner, throw the pilot out the window, fly away, get blown up by a pursuit helicopter, parachute out the exploding corpse of your helicopter, grapple onto the pursuit copter, hijack it, ram it into the ocean, and finally get blown up when you accidentally drop your own grenade trying to kill dozens of pursuers. It's bad-ass, in a really authentic way, not some phony "press A to kill a God" God of War machismo. If you've ever wanted a game that made you feel like you were the man, this is the game you want to play.
I played with a wireless 360 controller. It has Steamworks achievements. Again, Steamworks, so you can buy on any site and it will be playable in Steam. I haven't tried any mods, but people tell me they make it a whole new gaming experience so I'll probably check them out for post-game play.
I posted a ton of screenshots on Steam. Some contain spoilers. 1680x1050 with all settings on high except medium texture resolution and AA/AF turned on. Triple Core 3.0GHz Phenom II, 8 Gigs RAM, 4850. The game performed fairly well. The benchmark said I got 45-60 fps at all times, but I turned v-sync on so I'm not sure if it's v-synced to 30. I didn't notice any drops.
Screenshots
Helicopter grappling into a mountain base, 1st mission
The main villain is a terrible, terrible parody of Kim Jong Il meets Baby Doc Duvalier (screenshot from near end, but no spoilers since the villain's identity is clear from the beginning of the game)
The game is... a little over the top. (late-mission spoiler, comical, no real plot spoil)
Bailing out of a tailspinning helicopter
An example of the terrible plot (mid-game shot, minor character spoiler if you've played Just Cause 1 but not Just Cause 2)
Unfortunately the gameplay is so fast and frenetic that I didn't get any awesome explosion shots.
Cool achievements:
- Base jump more than 1000 meters
- Stand on top of the world
- Kill at least 5 bad guys by grapple-attaching them to your car and driving off (there are many cool "kill guys in a neat way" achievements, your grappling hook is awesome)
Other neat stuff
The game got several mentions in the best easter eggs in gaming thread. There are other really cool locations than those mentioned, but I won't spoil them here.
Also Avalanche released this awesome infographic of all the cool shit players have done in Just Cause 2 so check that out.
Summary
End result, I'd give it an A. It wouldn't have made my top 10 if I had played it last year, but it's a pretty great game and I highly recommend it, especially for the $5 typical sale price. Even if you only play for an hour, it's worth $5 just to fuck around with the explosions!
This is a much better game than Just Cause 1. It's an open-world blow-stuff-up game. It's got a much larger game world than most of the games you've ever played, probably twice the size of Burnout Paradise's Paradise City. It's okay, though, there's a quick warp button for already discovered locations, and traversal is really fun.
Basically, you have a grappling hook and a parachute. You can grapple from building to building, car to car, area to area. If you activate your parachute while you're flying with the grappling hook, you fly up into the air and can sort of slingshot your grappling hook on the ground to parasail around the world. You move incredibly fast (around as fast as the fastest car) and you can even sort of hop up mountainous terrain with this technique. Very cool. It was more fun to just move around in this game than any other game I've ever played.
The game takes place in a South-East Asian nation (it's a fictional blend of Sri Lanka, Indonesia, North Korea, Haiti, and a few other countries--actually I think the over the top way they mix things is one of the game's big failings). It's made up of several large islands. On these islands, there are hundreds of little villages and outposts. Each place, once discovered, has a clear percentage from 0% to 100%. You raise the clear percentage by either picking up items (weapon upgrade parts, vehicle upgrade parts, health upgrade parts, cash bags) or destroying military/government property (propaganda vans, gas tanks, oil silos, radio towers, construction cranes, and more). Clearing the areas is very fun and reminded me almost of The Saboteur, which was a very underrated game. The more you clear, the more "chaos" you generate. Chaos is the game's progression system. As you generate more chaos, you unlock more plot missions.
The main game is fairly short; 7 main game missions. But to unlock each main game mission you're encouraged to do side missions for one or more of three factions, who each have ~15 plot missions. So maybe 55 plot missions total? Missions are pretty well constructed. Some might involve basic assassinations, while others involve pretty long assaults on very unique areas. One cool mission involved fighting three generals on the top of a triple-skyscraper hotel complex. Another involved breaking into a military base and blowing up a general's 9 expensive sports cars. I don't want to spoil too many missions. I played for 18 hours before I saw the main credits, but I had an overall completion percentage of 25%, so that gives you a sense of how much post-game content there is to do.
Complaints
So far, I've been pretty positive. My recommendation is not unambiguous. The plot is terrible. It's a terrible mash-up of really low grade political conspiracy crap. It ends in an AMERICA FUCK YEAH nuclear explosion followed by a War-war never changes-war has changed feel-bad-about yourself monologue (frankly, this isn't a spoiler, the game is anything but subtle). But you're probably not playing for the plot. You're playing for the game.
I have two complaints about the gameplay. First, the guns are all terrible. Enemies are huge bullet sponges, even on Normal difficulty (the second difficulty of 4). They presumably do this because the actual variety of enemy types is super limited, but it's just not enjoyable to repeatedly shoot people like that.
Second, the actual design of the game progression doesn't make a lot of sense. Yes, there are these hundreds of little military bases and villages to clear. But first of all, it doesn't make any sense that blowing up these bases progresses the plot. It's totally disconnected. In The Saboteur, you blew up Nazi bases around Paris. Each base that was destroyed made a little bit of the city a little safer for you and civilians, plus it restored colour to the city. This was a good way of tying the side-game content into the main game. Here, you're strictly filling up progress bars. Blow up a military base and come back 5 minutes later, it's still blown up but there are plenty of soldiers there. In fact, the more bases you blow up the MORE soldiers show up everywhere, so you never get the feeling that you're actually clearing back anything.
Also, the number of types of random bases are surprisingly low. One common type is a radio outpost. It will have one generator, one radio tower, one pickup item, and the a central transmission tower. You will shoot 6-8 soldiers. You activate three computer terminals, the transmission tower rises, you blow it up. 100% complete. I did probably easily 10-15 of these exact layouts through the game. Basically, I guess what I'm saying is that there might be hundreds of locations on the map, but I doubt you're going to have enough appetite to clear more than 100-125, and there's no real incentive to besides increasing your completion percentage. All the place names are in Indonesian as well and they just look like identical gibberish to me, so you never get the feeling of having a "home base" or a "favourite environment". They're all absolutely identical. Only the main plot missions actually have well designed, original, significant, and varied levels. Given that you can only respawn at around 10 stronghold locations around the map, the other 350+ locations are all that more forgettable.
Despite these complaints, it's a great game. It's amazing to shoot a dozen guys, blow up a huge gas silo, grapple onto an attack helicopter, shoot the side-gunner, throw the pilot out the window, fly away, get blown up by a pursuit helicopter, parachute out the exploding corpse of your helicopter, grapple onto the pursuit copter, hijack it, ram it into the ocean, and finally get blown up when you accidentally drop your own grenade trying to kill dozens of pursuers. It's bad-ass, in a really authentic way, not some phony "press A to kill a God" God of War machismo. If you've ever wanted a game that made you feel like you were the man, this is the game you want to play.
I played with a wireless 360 controller. It has Steamworks achievements. Again, Steamworks, so you can buy on any site and it will be playable in Steam. I haven't tried any mods, but people tell me they make it a whole new gaming experience so I'll probably check them out for post-game play.
I posted a ton of screenshots on Steam. Some contain spoilers. 1680x1050 with all settings on high except medium texture resolution and AA/AF turned on. Triple Core 3.0GHz Phenom II, 8 Gigs RAM, 4850. The game performed fairly well. The benchmark said I got 45-60 fps at all times, but I turned v-sync on so I'm not sure if it's v-synced to 30. I didn't notice any drops.
Screenshots
Helicopter grappling into a mountain base, 1st mission
The main villain is a terrible, terrible parody of Kim Jong Il meets Baby Doc Duvalier (screenshot from near end, but no spoilers since the villain's identity is clear from the beginning of the game)
The game is... a little over the top. (late-mission spoiler, comical, no real plot spoil)
Bailing out of a tailspinning helicopter
An example of the terrible plot (mid-game shot, minor character spoiler if you've played Just Cause 1 but not Just Cause 2)
Unfortunately the gameplay is so fast and frenetic that I didn't get any awesome explosion shots.
Cool achievements:
- Base jump more than 1000 meters
- Stand on top of the world
- Kill at least 5 bad guys by grapple-attaching them to your car and driving off (there are many cool "kill guys in a neat way" achievements, your grappling hook is awesome)
Other neat stuff
The game got several mentions in the best easter eggs in gaming thread. There are other really cool locations than those mentioned, but I won't spoil them here.
Also Avalanche released this awesome infographic of all the cool shit players have done in Just Cause 2 so check that out.
Summary
End result, I'd give it an A. It wouldn't have made my top 10 if I had played it last year, but it's a pretty great game and I highly recommend it, especially for the $5 typical sale price. Even if you only play for an hour, it's worth $5 just to fuck around with the explosions!
Joe Molotov
Member
Palette Swap said:And it's only 112.3MB, finally !
that changelog doesn't even mention what they were watching
MLP
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Gvaz said:
that's why it was a 2 line complaint and a few other interjections in a 1+ full page review
Old Gimlet Eyes
Member
Just Cause 2 is the best $5 I have ever spent. The grappling hook mechanic is awesome. No other game does base jumping as well as this game. The missions, while repetitive, were fun, but definitely could use more variety and enemy types. Driving is almost a chore, when you have jets, helicopters and the grappling hook/parachute combo.
One of my favorite things to do in the game is to get a plane level in the air and just stunt jump out of it. Nothing like plane surfing and checking out the world below for a nice paradrop spot. Also, climbing skyscrapers with the hook is just amazing.
One of my favorite things to do in the game is to get a plane level in the air and just stunt jump out of it. Nothing like plane surfing and checking out the world below for a nice paradrop spot. Also, climbing skyscrapers with the hook is just amazing.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Darkshier said:
yeah, absolutely, the best part of the game is just getting around. So fun.
Dead Prince
Banned
highest with mods.legend166 said:
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
legend166 said:
I had the odd segment where it was just annoying when people were shooting at you from all angles, but you can always escape easily so I didn't really have too much of a dying problem. I had fun on Normal.
Stump your review brought back memories of how much I loved JC2 on 360 and is making me want to fire it up on Steam. I'm doing that awful thing again where I start like 7 games that I bought in the sale and end up not really playing any of them much, so I'm a little hesitant to start JC2. But damn that game was sooo good.
Palette Swap
Member
That's utter nitpicking but JC2 could have used a better environment destruction model. The overall sandbox is so perfect I kind of expected to be able to level buildings.
I hope the next one allows for more/better destruction.
edit: and keep the reviews coming, I love them !
I hope the next one allows for more/better destruction.
edit: and keep the reviews coming, I love them !
legend166 said:
I think I'll follow this advice when I get back to playing it (worked well for RF: G).
I started playing when it was for the achievement ticket last autumn, but quit when I had to assault some hotel and kept dying. I know it's an awesome game, but just never got back to it. But it seems like it would be more fun with the enemies toned down and not impeding my mayhem.
Stumpokapow said:
I guess I'll give it a second go before changing the difficulty. Maybe I just got pinned in a position that wasn't normal.
Well now that I've had time to digest some of the games I bought during the Steam sale, I definitely am regretting picking up the C&C games when they were on sale. (I should be probably be arrested for buying C&C4) I fired up C&C3 and the campaign even on easy is a bit frustrating, which is strange to me because I more or less played the series quite a bit when I was younger. Maybe it's because I haven't really sat down to play an RTS for a while now, or maybe I'm just no longer used to that style of RTS (StarCraft 2 wasn't too taxing for me however) seeing as the most recent RTSes I've played were the Dawn of War games. That being said, something feels off about it, it feels like the game is too fast and frantic (they tried to do that to make it more e-sporty, but I can't seem to keep up) and the UI and controls are just cumbersome more than helpful in that case.
Maybe I'll have more luck with RA3, seeing as I was more of a fan of that series than the Tiberium stories.
Maybe I'll have more luck with RA3, seeing as I was more of a fan of that series than the Tiberium stories.
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
I liked RF:G's punishing difficulty. It made every mission feel like a caper.legend166 said:
SapientWolf said:
I felt like the complete opposite. Until I turned down the difficulty, RF:G was horrible to play.
Speaking of those two games and the destruction model someone mentioned above - a Just Cause 3 with the destruction aspect of RF:G would almost be the perfect game.
PixyJunket
Member
Aquaria finished, second ending obtained.
I had to look up the last few recipes fr that, I don't know why (or if, I guess), they're all not just findable in the game.
So yeah, I think Aquaria is deserving of all the awards and such that it won. It's a massive accomplishment for indie games and for such a small team. It's also extremely pretty and a real showcase of hand drawn graphics. But I don't know, I don't think I could really recommend it. Yes, it's got that "Super Metroid" thing going for it. If Super Metroid had the exact same amount of content and secrets, just in a world that was roughly six hundred times the size of Zebes. And Samus was slow. And the combat was not good. And you had to go to a menu and enter a command every time you wanted to be able to fight something.
The game's pacing is its biggest issue. My game clock ran just over twenty hours. I would surmise that sixty to seventy percent of that was just empty wandering. The game world is massive. But it's almost entirely empty. That's just not fun, as a player. And without a direction, when you received a new ability, it could take an hour to comb portions of the map looking for that one new path (although the game does have a degree of non-linearity to it and it seemed lots of things could be done in random order).
I love the concept of the different forms, but it was really obnoxious to have a single form for combat. Especially in The Abyss when you had to go back and forth between forms to light your way and to shoot things. And then there were like, a dozen costumes for your character, but they were only visible when in the default, mostly useless form.
I generally play games without the need for guides and whatnot. If I needed a guide to play it, it's not worth my time. But Aquaria had one thing I had to look up, a music puzzle. Now, maybe it's just me (and it's embarrassing as I'm supposed to be somewhat of a musician) but I can't really tell different musical tones by ear. I mean, I actually knew what the game was asking of me and there were some clues on what to do, but unless you have an ear for tones I can't imagine anybody figuring it out.
I'm usually not this critical of a game. I have been playing video games for almost thirty years, I'm at the point where I can pretty much tell if I'm going to like a game or not by a few small factors. And Aquaria is a game that would typically be right up my alley, so it just hit harder to have a game that was almost incredible be held down by a couple of extremely prominent design decisions.
But it's not a bad game, don't get me wrong. It's incredible in a lot of ways. I don't want to steer anybody away from it too much. Just, don't go in expecting Super Metroid or pretty much any other game of its ilk. It's a very, very, very slow game. And right now, I'm just not really into something with that kind of pacing.
I had to look up the last few recipes fr that, I don't know why (or if, I guess), they're all not just findable in the game.
So yeah, I think Aquaria is deserving of all the awards and such that it won. It's a massive accomplishment for indie games and for such a small team. It's also extremely pretty and a real showcase of hand drawn graphics. But I don't know, I don't think I could really recommend it. Yes, it's got that "Super Metroid" thing going for it. If Super Metroid had the exact same amount of content and secrets, just in a world that was roughly six hundred times the size of Zebes. And Samus was slow. And the combat was not good. And you had to go to a menu and enter a command every time you wanted to be able to fight something.
The game's pacing is its biggest issue. My game clock ran just over twenty hours. I would surmise that sixty to seventy percent of that was just empty wandering. The game world is massive. But it's almost entirely empty. That's just not fun, as a player. And without a direction, when you received a new ability, it could take an hour to comb portions of the map looking for that one new path (although the game does have a degree of non-linearity to it and it seemed lots of things could be done in random order).
I love the concept of the different forms, but it was really obnoxious to have a single form for combat. Especially in The Abyss when you had to go back and forth between forms to light your way and to shoot things. And then there were like, a dozen costumes for your character, but they were only visible when in the default, mostly useless form.
I generally play games without the need for guides and whatnot. If I needed a guide to play it, it's not worth my time. But Aquaria had one thing I had to look up, a music puzzle. Now, maybe it's just me (and it's embarrassing as I'm supposed to be somewhat of a musician) but I can't really tell different musical tones by ear. I mean, I actually knew what the game was asking of me and there were some clues on what to do, but unless you have an ear for tones I can't imagine anybody figuring it out.
I'm usually not this critical of a game. I have been playing video games for almost thirty years, I'm at the point where I can pretty much tell if I'm going to like a game or not by a few small factors. And Aquaria is a game that would typically be right up my alley, so it just hit harder to have a game that was almost incredible be held down by a couple of extremely prominent design decisions.
But it's not a bad game, don't get me wrong. It's incredible in a lot of ways. I don't want to steer anybody away from it too much. Just, don't go in expecting Super Metroid or pretty much any other game of its ilk. It's a very, very, very slow game. And right now, I'm just not really into something with that kind of pacing.
PixyJunket
Member
Still up and connected here.Snakeyes said:
morningbus
Serious Sam is a wicked gahbidge series for chowdaheads.
Well, looks like I'm eating crow for dinner tonight.HBroward said:
I already ate a patty melt, so like, I'm just gonna pick at it a bit and then excuse myself from the table.
DualShadow
Member
kadotsu said:
What?
Yes there are, there are no crusades anymore.
Gvaz said:
AC1 had some monumentally retarded design decisions. They've been ironed out for the most part in the sequels, but at this point I've grown tired of the semi-automatic parkour and combat. I love the presentation of the games but they can be so damn boring. For that reason alone, I have no interest in buying Assassins Creed 2.2 when it launches this Fall.
bloodydrake
Cool Smoke Luke
I had that to get around playing singleplayer games while its flaking out just unplug your nic or disable your nic then launch steam it will then give you the option to run in offline mode.Snakeyes said:
Jay Shadow
Member
About 30 seconds into demonstrating the game for a friend he said "so this is what that new Bionic Commando would have been like if it was good"Darkshier said:
Sober said:
I actually found C&C3 frustrating as well. I got a decent way into the GDI campaign and I eventually got to a mission where I knew how I was supposed to beat it, but it was just such a pain in the ass and I kept on screwing it up that I eventually just gave up. I was playing on normal. I probably should have dropped down to easy, but some stupid ego thing kept me from doing it.
Schmattakopf
Member
Sober said:
Despite the production values, the age old adage, "Don't play RTS campaigns," should still be followed.coopolon said:
Sgt.Pepper
Banned
Tomb Raider Anniversary is the best $2.50 that I've ever spent. My only complain so far is the camera, but otherwise it is a great game. I've actually missed a bunch of relics and artifacts, they are pretty well hidden.
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