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X-COM 2: War of the Chosen:
I’ve played this game off and on for years. Fondly wishing I could get back to it and just not having the time. Then I caught strep throat and literally couldn’t do anything but just play games.
Honestly? Finally. I felt like crap, but I was so happy to have an excuse to just enjoy myself instead of being obsessed with what I “had” to do.
The game changed a lot since I last played so I had to start a new save, and I’m having a blast. I love this game so much even with some of its flaws. Do your squaddies miss a 90% shot sometimes? Yes. Infuriating.
But when they make that hail-Mary hit that saves a teammate, or you sneak through a compound to break out an imprisoned comrade and exfil, it’s ADDICTING.
Also, not gonna lie…the game hits a little different in 2025, seeing as it’s about being resistance fighters waging insurgency and a propaganda war against an alien occupying authoritarian regime that is kidnapping people and hauling them to blacksites. Man, that uh, is a little uncomfortably close. (But it’s only a game…The aliens are actually competent.)
The custom voice packs are incredible too. (My sniper with a Bob Ross voice calmly saying “Let’s do a little painting today.” Or “Let’s get a little crazy.” When setting up a shot from across the map never gets old.
This game’s complete version I’ve seen on Steam for like $5 before. This is one of the best tactical experiences there is, and at first I hated the “pressure” this game puts on you, but I’ve come to enjoy the urgency and being forced to weigh difficult decisions rather than just sending my “A-Team” of snowflake OCs to clear every single mission at a leisurely pace haha.
And the soundtrack. Oh man. Once that “Ready for Battle” track hits where you select everybody’s loadout, you really feel the weight of assembling the right squad when you never know 100% what you’re about to send them into.
From the trailers it honestly looked really cool, but then I saw and heard about the all draconian user-disrespecting stuff like the online-even-for-campaign requirement and highly invasive kernel level anticheat that requires TPM 2.0?! That part felt bonkers to me.
Like is that gonna be a thing now? “This game demands to register a cryptographic key with your bootloader to make sure you’re not up to funnybusiness.” (I’m not 100% sure how it works, so my ignorance is filled in with LOTS of suspicion…)
Also EA just got bought by like…Saudi private equity? That’s pretty spook to me, too.
I dunno. I just wanna play Titans on Battlefield 2142 again. And BF 3 and 4 were nice too…
Also a Linux gamer. (Shrug)
Don’t wanna be a downer or scare you off too much! Just things to consider, because £60 certainly ain’t chump change! :)
I got one I’m betting we won’t find on here yet…
Alone in the Dark 5, an incredibly ambitious game that fell short, but had some great ideas.
One of which was how that incredible soundtrack by Oliver Deriviere drove this particular playable sequence, 59th Street .
The whole soundtrack done in conjunction with “The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices” is absolutely stunning for an action-horror title.
It was the best part of the game and an incredible example of meshing soundtrack with cinematic gameplay.
. . . actually? All the stuff he does is freaking awesome, so see/listen to his other titles like:
- Remember Me (Awesomely underrated!)
- Obscure
Other (lesser known / thought of?) good soundtracks off the top of my head:
- There Came an Echo (by Big Giant Circles. So good they used the theme in Stranger Things! Season…2?)
- Anything by Supergiant lol.
- Oni (bungie / rockstar)
- FTL
- Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light, Metro: Exodus
- Deus Ex: Human Revolution
- X-COM: Enemy Unknown and X-COM 2.
- King’s Quest VIII: Mask of Eternity
I’ll probably add to this if I think of any more. :)
I miss that feeling a little bit. My undiagnosed-ADHD highschool self with like 18 characters hovering around level 20, never maxing one out because the ~30-40 slog was real, just chatting up strangers for fun while hopping around various towns’ mailboxes and occasionally actually doing game content. (Remember when Barrens chat was a meme for basically being like the /b/ of WoW? LOL)
… And it didn’t feel like impending doom or that I was somehow wasting my life away. It’s just what I did after school and that was alright.
It’s how I met my wife though, so it all worked out. :)
I could go on for days but WoW’s peak was a neat way to build social skills while being behind an avatar kept you from being too vulnerable.
I feel like online gaming now has gotten so anti-social and that the mere fear of potential toxicity just has everyone locked up and suspicious; Afraid to talk to anyone they don’t already know. Thanks to, what, basically Discord? Game chats are completely dead.
I remember trying Guild Wars 2 and thinking every other player might as well just be a bot because nobody interacted. :(
That’s cool! Always cool to read when someone finds an entry point to broadening their gaming horizons!
I’d highly recommend
- Enter the Gungeon
- Nuclear Throne
- FTL
The top two are fun frantic top-down shooters where you can feel yourself getting better between runs, barring terrible RNG luck of course. (But fighting against the odds is cool too.)
FTL is just a very “tight” experience. I’m sure other games have perhaps improved on its principles but it’s focused and knows exactly what it wants to be.
All the Deus Ex games go for ridiculously cheap and are such a great fun-per-dollar ratio IMHO.
Yes, even Invisible War, if one embraces its weird consoley quirks. XD (bias: I enjoyed it on my OG Xbox back in the day. Universal ammo is so stupid though.)
Still gotta play Mankind Divided. I hope they finish the series one day. They absolutely nailed it with the iconic aesthetic, and Adam Jensen is just so freaking cool. :)
Absolutely. I’ve seen plenty of devices where self-repair was an “eh” afterthought at best.
Apple offensively attacks your attempts to fix the thing you purchased yourself with your own hard-earned money. They’re positively evil.
Which is why it’s so annoying watching all the other mainstream companies feel compelled to just ape them in every way.
Point 2 is incredibly frustrating. That the ewaste problem has become so much better understood and yet the trend is to keep creating more of it.
I think Pine64 is making Bluetooth earbuds, but like their other stuff it aims to be super hackable and fixable. Wish that was the norm instead of solvent welding.
Workplaces ban possession of Bluetooth headphones? Yeesh, lofi beats in one ear is the only thing that kept me from strangling some people as they took 15 minutes to explain “I can’t send an email and I forgot my password and I lost my phone what do I do.”
Half the appeal of Bluetooth earbuds (without the silly stems) was the secret agent appeal of giving your brain something to fixate on in stupid jobs where you stand around all day.
Unless it’s literally around dangerous machinery or something I guess?
Anyway sorry this isn’t antiwork but still lol. I like my Bluetooth earbuds, but I think headphone jacks should be standard too.
Oh that’s a lovely game! We really enjoyed that one too! The voice acting was sublime and the characters were so loveable. It was so endearingly quirky without going way over the top.
Exciting to hear that there’s a sequel coming!!