Friday, December 25, 2020

PC games I played recently, Christmas 2020 edition

 In the last week or two, I've been playing:

Genesis Alpha One -- a first person game where you are the leader of a starship assigned to explore the Alpha One sector for a planet that humans can settle and start Genesis, thus the name. You need to jump from system to system, salvage wreckage, harvest minerals and plant life on planets, but also shoot hostile aliens (over a dozen species) that will invade your ship (brought in or up as hitchhikers), attack your landing party, and more. And you need to plan your defenses with energy barriers and autoturrets, and periodically go on bughunts yourself to make sure the enemies don't destroy your ship from within. Keep in mind that space is hazardous, asteroid fields, solar storms, cosmic spores, and worse. And there are rogue captains who decided to not report back and attack any newcomers... What's really interesting is you play this in first person. And you can even raid the derelict vessels... or even LIVE enemy vessels. 

Not to say this game is perfect, as it has some problems. Like while your crew can chase down enemies in the corridors, it can't control the critters if they escaped into the access tunnels. The world is procedurally generated so it is random, and moving around does give you a feeling of exploration, but also a bit of boredom, unless you want to just fly around and explore the place and use that to outfit your ship.  

Rover Mechanic Simulator --  In this new "Mechanic" sim, you are a mechanic on Mars ready to fix all the components on various Mars rovers as a part of the Martian colony. The rovers used to be NASA, but now there are quite a few more of them and you need to fix them all, from the simple Sojourner class to the medium Spirit and Opportunity (The "Twins") , to the big boy Curiosity (size of a small car). Learn to take them apart, replace the parts necessary, fix circuit boards, 3D print replacement parts, and if you want, do it under a time limit. 

After a while, after you mastered all three classes of rovers, it does get a bit boring. 

The Pit: Infinity -- an old 2D survival dungeon game with procedurally generated levels, with a sci-fi twist, gets turned into a full 3D first-person shooter with multiplayer support (up to 4 total) so visuals are interesting, Can you survive all 20 levels of the Pit in order to secure the cure? 

The game is EXTREMELY difficult and should probably be played multiplayer as one person can't solve all the problems alone. 

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Games I've played in the past, but deserves a mention

Wasteland 2 (Director's Cut)  -- Think 3rd person Fallout, where the desert rangers deal out justice against wrong-doers... but the commander's a radio away... You can be as good... or evil as you want. And there is not really a "right or wrong" decision... Director's cut is an improved version with a few extra features not available in the original 2014 version. 

Eterium -- basically a Wing Commander remake without the sync'mouth tech, and characters that look like they came out of anime. 

Stable Orbit -- you are in charge of a new private space station with a backing of a couple hundred million bucks. Keep the operation going by building lab modules in order to conduct research projects to earn big money, but you also need to keep the station in good repair, all the astronauts supplied with oxygen, food, and water, the lab supplied with power via solar panels and batteries, nobody overheats via radiators, and only expand at a rate you can sustain without overreaching (sorry, no loan here). 


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I think I'll try these games next:

Learning Factory (demo) -- assembly line / AI learning game

Damnation -- 3D adventure shooter

Skyhill -- 2D survival horror


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