Got an AMD voucher for 2 free games.

[Rob]

I now have a decision to make and have no clue what would be worth my time, any suggestions? Or experiences with these game?
The last 5 options are 2 for 1 games.

• Tomb Raider
• Hitman Absolution
• Sleeping Dogs
• Deus Ex Human Revolution
• Dirt 3
• Thief
• Darksiders 1
• Darksiders 2
• Alan Wake®
• Titan Quest Gold Edition
• Supreme Commander Gold Edition
• Dungeon Siege III
• Just Cause 2™
• Murdered: Soul Suspect™
• Company of Heroes 2
• Total War: SHOGUN 2
• PayDay 2
• The Banner Saga
  Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack
• Guacamelee!
  DYAD
• Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack
  DYAD
• The Banner Saga
  DYAD
• Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack
  Guacamelee!

[Fret]

If you like strategy shogun 2 is a good choice. Best game of the total war series by far. It's a lot like the other total war games though and 90% of the battles are sieges. However if you never played total war before and like strategy, politics and history I would really recommand it.

[FlowerChild]

If you like strategy shogun 2 is a good choice. Best game of the total war series by far. It's a lot like the other total war games though and 90% of the battles are sieges. However if you never played total war before and like strategy, politics and history I would really recommand it.

Yikes. Them's fighting words :)

I consider Shogun 2 to actually be the worst in the series (haven't played Rome 2 yet, but from what I've seen it may have taken that crown). My personal favorite being Empire, but that's largely due to the subject matter, with Rome 1 or Medieval 2 probably being the best overall games.

I've been following every game in that series since the very first 20 years ago or so (Shogun 1), found Shogun 2 was way too dumbed-down for my tastes, and I utterly despise the whole forced ending when the emperor turns on you no matter how you play.

It's pretty, but that's all I really feel it has going for it. Seeing as how it seems to be following the same trends, I don't think I'll even be purchasing Rome 2, which given my history with the series is a pretty strong statement.

To the OP: none of the games in that list jump out at me. There are some decent ones in there, but none I'd consider "great" with the possible exception of Supreme Commander, which is so old now that you can probably get it real cheap almost anytime.

Also, with Supreme Commander (the first...the 2nd basically wrecked the series and is rubbish) I primarily consider it a multiplayer game as the single player campaign gets tired real quick. The problem with trying to pick it up now then is that you either likely won't be able to find people to play against, and if you do, they'll be such hardcore fans that have been playing for years, that you'll be brutally outclassed.

[Wafflewaffle]

Shogun 2 is a hard game to play. Mainly becouse its such a vast game with nothing populating it, all factions are the same and therefore all the battles play the same.

Darksiders 2 is an open world RPG but would play a lot better in maps similar to Darksiders. It was also developt and released during THQ's worst financial troubles so the end product is not as polished as its predecessor.

If i were you i would chose one Solo game and a pack of the Indies. Heard good things about The Banner Saga and Guacameele!. Company of Heroes 2 is pretty awesome and so is Sleeping Dogs. I would avoid Murdered Soul Suspect at all cost!

[FlowerChild]

Company of Heroes 2 is pretty awesome

That's another one I've avoided despite loving the original due to dumbing things down in pursuit of the mass market.

As far as I understand it they went in the direction of heavily scripted action-heavy stuff rather than traditional RTS style design, much like they did with Dawn Of War 2. Any Relic game used to be an instant buy for me but nowadays I tend to assume the opposite in terms of quality in that I think I won't enjoy it unless I see heavy duty evidence to the contrary. After the travesty that was Space Marine, and the turning of one of my favorite games of all time (Dawn of War 1) into some kind of action click-fest that I couldn't love no matter how hard I tried, any benefit of the doubt I used to give them has largely evaporated.

[Gormador]

OP : Definitely Deus Ex Human Revolution. Great if you like choosing which way you want to play through a game.

[MaxAstro]

Titan Quest is way more fun to me than Diablo ever was (heresy, I know), especially if you find and drop the superlative Underworld mod on it. However, it's old enough that it would probably be pretty cheap to buy.

Dues Ex, Tomb Raider (assuming it's the new one), and Supreme Commander are also all great games. Although the warning above about Supreme Commander definitely is true.

[sacrife]

Tomb Raider and Sleeping Dogs are both two great games. Sleeping dogs is an asian styled GTA clone-ish with melee oriented fighting. And Tomb Raider is well. Tomb raider. It's fun.

[FlowerChild]

I think a lot of these games are last-gen THQ titles, so you'll see a lot of common themes here.

My theory on what happened is that as THQ neared bankruptcy it was pushing most of its studios to make more mass market games in order to try and bail them out. Hence, you had companies that excelled at making certain kinds of game suddenly compromising their design values in order to try and make that happen. If anything, I think this probably hastened the end there as it wound up alienating the fan base these companies had built up over the years, and it's still having impact on some of the games they are releasing to this day because they started development before THQ went down for the count.

I'm really hoping that those same studios turn that trend around, but yeah, it resulted in a lot of disappointment overall. I fear a lot of developers may have flown the coup during those dark days though.

[RandomObj3ct]

Dues ex:Human revolution is great.
Hitman is worth a go too.
I seem to be in the very massive minority in hating tomb raider, if you enjoy movie like games it's great, if you hate; QTE, cut scene, action sequence, repeat design where the game needs to blow something up every 5 seconds stay well away.

for some of the older titles it might be best to just wait for the next sale and grab them for a few dollars.

[HavokSCOUT]

Alan Wake is good for the story, and the combat system is fairly novel, but it has little to no replay value.

[DaveYanakov]

[quote="FlowerChild]...Also, with Supreme Commander (the first...the 2nd basically wrecked the series and is rubbish) I primarily consider it a multiplayer game as the single player campaign gets tired real quick. The problem with trying to pick it up now then is that you either likely won't be able to find people to play against, and if you do, they'll be such hardcore fans that have been playing for years, that you'll be brutally outclassed.[/quote]
Or you get someone from here who hasn't had it installed for years but is feeling nostalgic to fire it up with you...

All of these titles hit dirt cheap prices for most of the major sales. Of them, Sleeping Dogs, Deus Ex, Darksiders 1, Titan Quest, Sup Comm and Guacamelee are all fairly good. Payday2 and Just Cause 2 are plain old fun. Tomb Raider, Thief and the new Hitman were very disappointing. Blood Money is still the best of the Hitman series and can usually be had for around $5 if you wait for it.

[FlowerChild]

Or you get someone from here who hasn't had it installed for years but is feeling nostalgic to fire it up with you...

Yeah, that's a fair point. We should make a date of it sometime :)

[MoRmEnGiL]

Yeah, personally I'd grab Supreme Commander without a second thought.

Then it depends. Deus Ex HR is a good game, though for people like me who were massive fans of the first game it had it's ups and downs. Titan Quest is probably the best Diablo style game that is not named Diablo 1 or 2. The Banner Saga is interesting but short. I've never been into the total war games, so can't comment on that, but Alan Wake was kinda fun for atmospheric games fans. The others are not my kind of games so yeah.

But grab SupCom and find forged alliance too if it is not included ;]

In contrast to FC, I loved the campaign in forged alliance. Absolutely loved the massive stages and epic scope. So much so, that I played it 2 times in a row. I think it's the best RTS campaign other than maybe starcraft 1 :]

[FlowerChild]

In contrast to FC, I loved the campaign in forged alliance. Absolutely loved the massive stages and epic scope. So much so, that I played it 2 times in a row. I think it's the best RTS campaign other than maybe starcraft 1 :]

The FA campaign was a lot better than the original (well, it seemed so, I only played a bit of it before stopping), but the expanding maps still bugged the shit out of me.

While there are certain advantages to that approach, having the player lay out their base with certain terrain features around them, only to have the map arbitrarily expand and suddenly completely change the overall context is rather lame IMO. It invalidates a lot of long-term planning, and had me swearing under my breath pretty much every time it happened.

[Sarudak]

Yeah that was the one thing that really turned me off to the campaign also. That plus the fact that it seemed to discourage moving quickly since you want to build a lot to make sure you can be prepared for whatever random map expansion the game will throw at you and you don't want to accidentally trip a map expansion trigger when you're not ready.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, exactly. I get the impression that they did it to try and reduce the gaminess of arbitrary map edges acting as impenetrable fortifications or what have you, but instead upped the gaminess substantially with stuff like "guess what? There's been an entire enemy base sitting right next to you this whole time which for some unknown reason not justified by tech or the back story, was completely invisible to your sensors and which you were completely incapable of dealing with before now! SURPRISE!!!!"

Seriously hated that shit.

Planetary Annihilation's approach of spherical maps is a lot more reasonable way to handle this kind of thing. For SC I think they should have just accepted the inherent limitations of 2D maps until they made a game that handled things differently.

[MoRmEnGiL]

Hmm personally I liked that feature, because you had to be on your toes with your base defence, and cover all possible weaknesses from every approach. Then again I love turtling, teching up and steamrolling with experimentals :P

I see where the problem would be if you prematurely triggered the map expansion, but that usually meant you went out of your way to rush the specific objective, which is never a good idea in my book. I like slow and methodical, won't move an inch if my base is not soundly defended with shields and AA covering EVERYTHING.

The main reason I liked that feature though is because it gave me a sense of immersion (large area of operations) without knowing where and what I would have to do next, which would be obvious in a static map. It gave me a sense of progression and that this is really a war I'm fighting, chaotic and unpredictable.

[lostone1993]

I like forged alliance campaign cant remember if I finished though

I think the best times I had with supcom was playing with friends with some restrictions put in place ie no tech 3 radar, only tech 1 mechs .etc

from a long time Hitman Fan dont touch absolution especially if its your first Hitman game, go for blood money or codename 47

Deus Ex Human Revolution is properly one of the better games out of that list I have played

[ThePowerofTower]

I'm a huge stealth game buff, so I would recommend Hitman: Absolution and Deus Ex. Absolution was my first game in the series, and I loved it, but lostone1993 may be right, I can't say for sure. I loved Dishonored, the Metal Gear games, and Splinter Cell, so if you liked those, you might like Absolution too. It's just a little toned down on the action compared to those other titles.

Thief was disappointing as a game, and doubly so if you enjoyed the Thief titles that came before it. They turned Garrett into Batman, and that decharacterization doesn't sit well with me. The gameplay is also very slow, and the 'Open World' exploration of the city was just tedious.

Sleeping dogs is pretty cool, and I'm with FC on Shogun 2. Friends whose opinions I trust on open world RPGs (We're kind of in the Skyrim/Morrowind but not so much Oblivion camp) gave Darksiders 2 a horrible review, but if you're hardcore into open world games, it might be worth a crack atleast to see how it is. It seems like it might be one of those games that if not good, would atleast be interesting. Those were my considerations when I decided not to buy it.

[lostone1993]

I'm a huge stealth game buff, so I would recommend Hitman: Absolution and Deus Ex. Absolution was my first game in the series, and I loved it, but lostone1993 may be right, I can't say for sure.

maybe a bit of clarification on my post is required Absolution is not a bad game, its a bad Hitman game.

payday maybe be worth a look if your into multiplayer games, I have played it a couple of times at a friends place and was quite addicted until I realised it would be unplayable on my internet connection

just cause2 was pretty fun as well, but from memory you have to sorta make your own fun if you want to get the most of it

[devak]

Yeah, exactly. I get the impression that they did it to try and reduce the gaminess of arbitrary map edges acting as impenetrable fortifications or what have you, but instead upped the gaminess substantially with stuff like "guess what? There's been an entire enemy base sitting right next to you this whole time which for some unknown reason not justified by tech or the back story, was completely invisible to your sensors and which you were completely incapable of dealing with before now! SURPRISE!!!!"

Seriously hated that shit.

If i recall correctly -been a while since i played Supcom- the map would indicate which direction it was going to expand. (by a black border rather than the nice grey-ish texture border). Might just've been the FA campaign.


Supcom 2 had it's faults, but as a casual game was way better and way more played by me and my friends. Simply because it doesn't require quite the tactical baggage the first Supcom requires.



As to the list, pretty much every single one of them seems to be a game commonly in some sale (steam or otherwise). supcom will work if you have plenty of friends to play it with. so no real recommendations.