Epicgames Freebies

[6810cf02ebd26JML]

Dandara is the next free game on Epic. If your a lover of Metroidvanias (like me) then be sure to grab it:
Link

Ohhhh nice, I played a lot of Kingdom: Two Crowns (and the Kingdom series in general) lately. It's by the same studio publisher: Raw Fury.
Kingdom is a very nice, small game. Basically 1D.

[6810cf02ebee5Gawain]

Metro: Last Light & For the King

[6810cf02ec0a1icemann]

Rage 2 amd Absolute Drift are the latest games offered for free.

Rage I've played. Good game, bad engine and not enough content. Absolute Drift can't speak on as not played.

[6810cf02ec230JDoran]

Wasn't Rage 2's engine made by id Software? I know John Carmack is no longer with id Software, but I'd have thought that they would still make good game engines. What is wrong with it?

[6810cf02ec37aZylonBane]

I didn't realize Rage 2 had even been released. All I remember about it is that pink and yellow teaser ad.

[6810cf02ec600icemann]

Wasn't Rage 2's engine made by id Software? I know John Carmack is no longer with id Software, but I'd have thought that they would still make good game engines. What is wrong with it?

Rage 1 I was more referring to. Had really bad texture pop-in. Even after numerous patches they never managed to fix it.

[6810cf02ec8a2JDoran]

I didn't realize Rage 2 had even been released. All I remember about it is that pink and yellow teaser ad.

Yeah, it came out. I've not played it, because the first game felt so bland to me, but GmanLives did a review of it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDpFD-FyYmg&t=11s

[6810cf02ec995icemann]

It was one of the early Epic exclusives IIRC. Much to the games detriment.

[6810cf02ecaebKolya]

Alien Isolation is currently free at Epic Games: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p/alien-isolation

[6810cf02ecbc6icemann]

Fantastic game

[6810cf02ecd25baumer]

I already had it a year ago but haven't tried it yet. Is it really a good one?

[6810cf02ed170voodoo47]

not terribly impressive.

was actually talking about this to a game developer (browser rpgs, mostly), he also sees the concept of a completely invincible monster as a failed mechanics. to make it work, the player needs to have at least a few options, for example;

-hide and hope the monster will not see you. cheap on resources, but will only get you "rid" of the monster for a short while.
-fight the monster. lose quite a lot of resources, but after "wounding" the monster enough, it will retreat for a notably longer period of time. maybe give the player an extra reward for taking the chance.
-use the environment/homemade traps to wound/trap the monster. will disable the monster for a variable period of time, while consuming some of the player resources.

or similar. you need something like that to make exploration/resource hunting viable - without this, it's basically just "take the shortest route to the end of the level and hope the game won't spawn the monster right into your face". a pretty good example of a working invincible monster is resident evil: nemesis.

[6810cf02ed30dNameless Voice]

I haven't played the game myself, but the above sounds like it exactly describes what I've heard about the game?
You can hide, or drive back the alien at the cost of resources, but can just never actually kill it.

[6810cf02ed433voodoo47]

I have to admit I would have to go play the game again, don't remember the details anymore.

//and I did not finish the game. maybe I should have.

[6810cf02ed65aicemann]

It's the above. The AI for the Alien is some of the most advanced stuff so far in FPS territory. The Alien has a sophisticated AI behaviour tree that starts off basic, and unlocks new stuff as a combination of response to player tactics and progression.

So tactics like hiding under tables or in lockers will work fine early on, but later on not so much. Has some metroidvania aspects to it as well, where you'll gain access to previously unreachable places as your equipment improves. I HIGHLY recommend the game. The only bit I did not like was:

More aliens + a hive show up later on. Speculation is that it goes off some non-canon stuff from deleted scenes in the original alien film of the Xeno being able to use the dead bodies of the humans as organic matter (System Shock 2 style) to create new eggs and thus more Xeno's over time. As that does not feature in any other Alien film or game I'm strongly against it.

However it is also completely possible that the first birthed alien on the station was a queen. Though that does not explain why there is only 1 Alien for a very long time. If there was a queen there'd have been eggs and face huggers everywhere.

[6810cf02ed7d7Kolya]

The game is hard, but not impossibly so. And yeah, the alien can be driven back with a flamer that you can craft out of found resources. And of course you can hide. But if you hide too often in the same place the alien may get suspicious and rip you from your hidey hole.
The main point is that Alien Isolation fathfully and lovingly recreates the environments of the orignal Alien film and the paranoid fear of being hunted by a nightmare. I don't know how often I threw the mouse around in sudden shock, but it happened a lot. I highly recommend this game.

[6810cf02ed8daicemann]

And it does retro future tech quite accurately to that of the first film.

[6810cf02edb63Dark-Star88]

I freely admit to slurping up almost every Epic giveaway-game for months. That and 80% or greater sales on Steam is literally the only way I've been able to afford newer games in a *ahem* legal manner.  Sailing the seven seas isn't what it used to be after a certain website fell from glory.

Pine had potential but the puzzles range from non-intuitive to bang-head-on-wall-repeatedly.

Frostpunk is literally nobledark SimCity even before you get the option to send children into coal mines.

The Stanley Parable is very notable for breaking the fourth wall to pieces. It joins a short list of games such as Undertale that actually made me stop and think about life and the choices I make.

Figment is "Inside Out: the game"