Lately I have been playing some more obscure titles, recent and older games.
I'm gonna share some of the gems I 'think' I have uncovered:
X3 - Terran conflict/Albion prelude - pc
This game is unbelievably difficult to explain, I first started playing this coming in from Eve online/Freelancer so I thought that it would be your standard space, mission, story kind of campaign. I am now a couple of days in and I have to say this thing has surpassed my every expectation. I don't care that it's not a multiplayer game because quite frankly the game universe and depth just totally blows me away.
A brief overview of what I have in game to give you some sort of idea:
- A light shield production complex with my traders supplying my factory and selling my world to the games economy.
- Mining operations including silicon and ore used to support the local economies and earn me profits.
- 8 automated universe traders that seek out goods for the best price and sell to make me profit.
- Various fleets of ships that I can control from anywhere in the universe serving different purposes from protecting some of my trade lines to invading certain territories.
- Assisting the development of the re emerging Terran economy.
- Stock market investments.
The game has a steep learning curve but if you read the forums and take the time to learn the game it is amazingly rewarding. It really feels like Egosoft are going to make a LOT of money with future iterations of this game, it seems like the TRUE evolution of what the dream of Elite was back in the 80's.
With the complexity of this game and the evolution of the engine, it is hard to imagine any other company really moving in on this market as the barrier of entry is to high.
Gradius 3 - Snes
I am not the biggest fan of 2d shooters but this game has rocked my world in the last couple of weeks. I keep playing it in small bursts of 15 - 20 mins. I have played many various shooters and bullet hell simulators but to me this game just feels so great.
The powerups seem to compliment the game perfectly, you collect energy that fills up a power up scale. The scale has different levels of powerups, the more you collect before spending your powerup energy they better the powerup you generally get.
You often have to take the risk of making decisions such as increasing your arsenal over increasing speed, ship speed is essential or you can just find yourself overwhelmed very quick and without it you can start missing out on other powerup energy.
There is real difficulty in the game, if you die you lose your equipped powerups which can be devestating to the whole campaign, to really power up to your ships true potential it takes quite a lot of time, but when you get there you are pretty much unstoppable.
It's a fantastic game, challenging and when you finally start nailing it, really great fun.
Darkfall - PC
Many of you probably have played darkfall but to some it's a relatively unknown game.
I came across this game Years ago when it was in development and what a frustratingly long development cycle it had.
The game is an MMO, it is a sandbox with full loot when you die. I played it when it was first released and was dissapointed, the game was buggy, people were heavily exploiting and to be honest there wasn't an awefull lot to do.
I recently tried the game again and I have to say that I was really impressed the game has come a long way it seems. Graphically also it seems to have improved, although I have upgraded my computer so not sure how much this has to do with it!
I rolled a new character and started off on my quest, to start with I met a random guy in the starter town who started talking to me, suspiciously he asked me if I wanted to go and help kill some of the starting area mobs with him (as soon as you leave the starter town you are basically "fair game" to anyone), I said "ok". I thought to myself even if it's a trap, ive basically just started so don't really care if I lose what I have on me.
He kept to his word and we quested a bit together, he explained that this was an alt of his and he was part of a larger guild that had there own town that they had built as there base of operations. Because of how I got on, he asked if I wanted to join, I was like sure :)
From that moment on the game totally opened up for me, there was some grinding yes but for the most part I was being boosted around, helping with some group activities. Maybe I got lucky but it is probably the best MMO experience I have had since the beginning of Eve.
I heard that the game was dying but the eu realm that I am on seems pretty active also.
anyway, there's a few games I have discovered lately and reasons why I think they're awesome!
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