Sins of a Solar Empire for $3.99

Matrices said:
That game was on no one's list of anything other than "terrible games that could have been great."
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We both know that isn't true.

The only problem the game has is the baddies re-spawning too quickly, and out of thin air. Checkpoints should have to radio-in to the central city. After they go silent (which could be instant), the new baddies for the checkpoint should have to drive out from the central city. Not only would it keep baddies on the road, but it would also take a few minutes (proper amount of time) for the checkpoints be be re-baddied. It would also just plain be much more realistic.

It's its only flaw. Why the devs didn't see it as such, I dunno...

Perhaps they realized its utter perfection, and just couldn't stand the 100% reviews and GOTD/GOTC/GOTM (decade/century/millenium) accolades? :confused:
 
The best things about FC2 were the previews and the 'healing' mechanisms originally shown. then all of that got removed from the game. End result was just a mess in many ways.
 
The game got almost no awards from any place of any repute, and it is widely panned by gamers. There's a reason for that. Plenty, actually.

If you like the game, your imagination needs a lot of work. Forget about the respawning, which in itself made the whole open world theme utterly pointless. So much could have been done with the game - a moving storyline about war in Africa, different factions to play off of, stealth at nighttime, ways to upgrade vehicles...

They did none of that. Stealth was broken, and the AI was so fucking bad that the devs couldn't even make it so that your own "faction" didn't shoot at you - you'd work for one of two factions at any time, but everyone you saw would still shoot you. There were no civilians at all in the game.

And I don't know if you actually play shooters, but the shooting was terrible. It was heavily consolized and never felt right at all.

FC2 was a good tech demo, everything else was shit and it bombed completely. It was the worst $50 I ever spent on a game and the last time that I bought any game for full price.
 
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Tolyngee said:
We both know that isn't true.

The only problem the game has is the baddies re-spawning too quickly, and out of thin air. Checkpoints should have to radio-in to the central city. After they go silent (which could be instant), the new baddies for the checkpoint should have to drive out from the central city. Not only would it keep baddies on the road, but it would also take a few minutes (proper amount of time) for the checkpoints be be re-baddied. It would also just plain be much more realistic.

It's its only flaw. Why the devs didn't see it as such, I dunno...

Perhaps they realized its utter perfection, and just couldn't stand the 100% reviews and GOTD/GOTC/GOTM (decade/century/millenium) accolades? :confused:
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Matrices said:
The game got almost no awards from any place of any repute, and it is widely panned by gamers. There's a reason for that. Plenty, actually.

If you like the game, your imagination needs a lot of work. Forget about the respawning, which in itself made the whole open world theme utterly pointless. So much could have been done with the game - a moving storyline about war in Africa, different factions to play off of, stealth at nighttime, ways to upgrade vehicles...

They did none of that. Stealth was broken, and the AI was so fucking bad that the devs couldn't even make it so that your own "faction" didn't shoot at you - you'd work for one of two factions at any time, but everyone you saw would still shoot you. There were no civilians at all in the game.

And I don't know if you actually play shooters, but the shooting was terrible. It was heavily consolized and never felt right at all.

FC2 was a good tech demo, everything else was shit and it bombed completely. It was the worst $50 I ever spent on a game and the last time that I bought any game for full price.
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Holy fuck fellas, get your own thread. This one is about Sins.
 
Matrices said:
If you like the game, your imagination needs a lot of work.

the devs couldn't even make it so that your own "faction" didn't shoot at you - you'd work for one of two factions at any time, but everyone you saw would still shoot you. There were no civilians at all in the game.
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Since ADD was just mentioned in this thread, I wish people who pan a game would at least make slight effort to pay attention to the game they are panning.

You were a merc. No one really knew what side you were on. Only the few top guys of each faction even knew you were working for either side - and sometimes even they realized you had just worked for the other side - but other than the top guys, the others viewed you as not them just driving/running around, so their job is to eliminate you. The checkpoints are on a need to know basis, just like many wars. You never know who to trust. Checkpoint baddies are a dime a dozen. Why would they be aware of this merc?

And by the end of it all you realize none of your so-called friends/buddies were to be trusted. You're a merc in it for yourself, and it's a free-for-all.

No reason for upgrading vehicles - you're stealing them as you go along. You just carry weapons, which you have to earn access to better ones, or again, steal them as you go along, with limited ammo that way, though.

And it ending with a suicide mission (like Prey) made for an interesting storyline. Killing the Jackal only now causes you to become the Jackal. Time to end this war, which is what the Jackal wants.

And no civilians? You obviously are panning a game you never finished.

Hint: in the end the soon-to-be refugees escape the area.

Hint hint: These were the guys supplying you malaria medication. If you played any of the game, you had to have ended up on one of those missions.


Basically, I doubt you've played the game that you are panning.


krylon said:
Holy fuck fellas, get your own thread. This one is about Sins.
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This ties in with the ADD sentiment. If you can't be bothered to pay attention, you won't understand any game.
 
I personally didn't enjoy FC2. I didn't find the driving component enjoyable, as it was annoyingly difficult to navigate, and the respawning checkpoints kind of killed the open world feel for me. Crysis was much more enjoyable on the FPS front.

But Sins is a great game, and I picked this up on Impulse along with the xpacs and Galactic Civ 2. Thanks OP!
 
:rolleyes:

The presence of the random medic stations (another half-baked idea that could have been good - the malaria angle) and a few civilians running away at the end of the freakin' game does not mean that it incorporated civilians in any meaningful way.

Anyway, I digress...

I'm going to give Sins a proper spin tonight. The one downside as I understand it is that there is no SP campaign, per se, but hopefully the mechanics are tight.
 
Well this hot deal thread sure got derailed quick. Good deal for a fun game :)
 
Yea I'm sorta regretting mentioning FC2 but at least my point should be clear now:

Sins is like FC2 in that there are a couple die-hard fruits that love it but most people can't stand it ~ people should be aware of this before they spend their coffee money willy nilly.

I will say again that I didn't give the game much of a chance ~ 25 minutes ~ so I may be entirely wrong.

However, based on what has been said, no matter what perspective I look at the game from I can't see it as being fun at all. To me the MP has been described as a pointlessly drawn out version of Galcon Fusion, and the single player is a storyless half-retarded sloppy tutorial.

When a multi-player game has rounds that last for over an hour on average the game is almost always terrible. The only exception to that trend was Natural Selection (hl mod), which, keep in mind, evolved into a terrible game through its updates.

/FC2 rant ~ there was so much hype around FC2 that some reviewers were simply in denial about how bad the game was when they gave their rating
 
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flegg said:
Yea I'm sorta regretting mentioning FC2 but at least my point should be clear now:

Sins is like FC2 in that there are a couple die-hard fruits that love it but most people can't stand it ~ people should be aware of this before they spend their coffee money willy nilly.

I will say again that I didn't give the game much of a chance ~ 25 minutes ~ so I may be entirely wrong.

However, based on what has been said, no matter what perspective I look at the game from I can't see it as being fun at all. To me the MP has been described as a pointlessly drawn out version of Galcon Fusion, and the single player is a storyless half-retarded sloppy tutorial.

When a multi-player game has rounds that last for over an hour on average the game is almost always terrible. The only exception to that trend was Natural Selection (hl mod), which, keep in mind, evolved into a terrible game through its updates.
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I don't think you can even come close to understanding the game in 25 minutes. My first skirmish on a small map on easy was over 3 hours.

Most of everyone I talked to enjoyed the game. For $4 dollars, you'll definitely get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
 
flegg said:
Yea I'm sorta regretting mentioning FC2 but at least my point should be clear now:

Sins is like FC2 in that there are a couple die-hard fruits that love it but most people can't stand it ~ people should be aware of this before they spend their coffee money willy nilly.

I will say again that I didn't give the game much of a chance ~ 25 minutes ~ so I may be entirely wrong.

However, based on what has been said, no matter what perspective I look at the game from I can't see it as being fun at all. To me the MP has been described as a pointlessly drawn out version of Galcon Fusion, and the single player is a storyless half-retarded sloppy tutorial.

When a multi-player game has rounds that last for over an hour on average the game is almost always terrible. The only exception to that trend was Natural Selection (hl mod), which, keep in mind, evolved into a terrible game through its updates.

/FC2 rant ~ there was so much hype around FC2 that some reviewers were simply in denial about how bad the game was when they gave their rating
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All I see is a wall of text containing unsubstantiated opinions.
 
Thanks OP, always wanted to try this, didn't want to spend the cash. Great deal.

And Impulse isn't like Steam, as in, you only need it once to install, not to run it regularly. For that matter, if Impulse goes away some day and you can't use your backup to restore your game (one of my issues with Steam) you could use your registration key with a retail disk (since they don't need Impulse to authenticate).
 
If a few of you guys pick up this (and the first expansion, which is a must IMO) we can get together and play some multiplayer.

No, I'm not thinking I stomp you because you're new, we go against the AI with the benefit of an experienced player on your side.

Just hit up my contact info page in my profile, can add me on steam with the same MSN, though most of those contact methods should work. Grab a six pack and join me, what better way to kick off the weekend?
 
good stuff. just bought this wednesday for $10..not usually my thing (strategy type stuff) but this title is a lot of fun and is quite easy on the eyes :D
 
Is a 3'rd party program, like Steam, required?

I like buying from D2D because it supplements Steam - and there's no 3'rd party software. I've already got Steam cluttering up my system. One third party program is enough.
 
WabeWalker said:
Is a 3'rd party program, like Steam, required?

I like buying from D2D because it supplements Steam - and there's no 3'rd party software. I've already got Steam cluttering up my system. One third party program is enough.
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I think I mentioned it earlier, but not really.

Impulse is *only* used to install and patch the game - you can run the game standalone without involving Impulse.
 
DeadSkull said:
Dangit, this game is just like crack but in software form.
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Exactly. One of the best sales ever.

One of my games went 3 hours before getting pwned by two enemies at the same time. It could have easily gone 6 hours or more if I didn't suck :p
 
I picked up the game, but are those games SP or MP? Because I can't imagine playing a single MP that long.
 
jiminator said:
I picked up the game, but are those games SP or MP? Because I can't imagine playing a single MP that long.
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SP. You can increase the speed of the game if you want, but I keep it on normal
 
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Sigh.... I checked this deal out like 2-4 days ago and it was gone. :(

Or at least I couldn't find it.

No way am I paying $20 for a game that was just selling for $4....

Which is too bad, since I actually wanted to get it, a few of my friends play it. Oh well.
 
I have used both Steam and Impulse in the past. Impulse is very benign and primarily serves as a patching medium for the games you have purchased.
 
I've been using Impulse now for nearly a year and really like it, especially after the new cluttered Steam version (don't the Valve designers realize they've just crossed the line into having a clusterf$#k of a UI?). They don't have as many deals as Steam, but when they do they're usually very good (case in point here).

The only issue I had was re-associating my Dragon Age DLCs with my Impulse copy (I suspect EA was more to blame on this than Impulse...). A re-installation of the game and an update to Impulse fixed it.
 
Having both the expansions adds a lot to the game that was originally lacking. Had a 6 hour SP round the other night, probably would've been a lot shorter if I didn't have to take a break every hour and a half or so.
 
Crispy002 said:
Having both the expansions adds a lot to the game that was originally lacking. Had a 6 hour SP round the other night, probably would've been a lot shorter if I didn't have to take a break every hour and a half or so.
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Now they need to put those on sale :D

What do they add? Just some new ships and the defense tech tree?
 
TIWizard said:
Now they need to put those on sale :D

What do they add? Just some new ships and the defense tech tree?
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Entrenchment fixes some of the issues in vanilla by adding a lot of defensive options the chief of which is the ability to construct starbases at your planets which are basically like orbital superfortresses.
If you haven't played the game it can easily take 10 minutes to move your fleet from one side of your empire to another so if you are fighting enemy A on the west, enemy B can attack you on the east and its a pain moving all your stuff just to defend one planet.

Don't know much about diplomacy but at a glance its more Cold War oriented by granting you options to manipulate your enemies etc without doing as much head on fighting.
 
TIWizard said:
Now they need to put those on sale :D

What do they add? Just some new ships and the defense tech tree?
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Entrenchment adds a new section to the tech tree for defense. It allows upgrades to existing defenses from the original and adds the previously mentioned star bases (which do not use tactical slots). One fully upgraded star base can pretty much kill anything in seconds. Its main use is to defend your outer planets from raids while your fleet is off dealing punishment on the other side of the system.

Diplomacy adds a new section to the tech tree for negotiations. You can research ways to interact with other races for various benefits. Essentially it allows you to complete missions and trade with other factions for reputation bonuses and mutual upgrades. For example: I might upgrade my diplomacy tree enough to be able to do missions and trade with other factions. I complete a few missions (kill x player's units/buildings, give me x resources, etc.) and trade agreements or cease fire treaties can be offered. After relations improve quite a bit, mutual technology upgrades can be shared. Both sides could get a 15% shield gain, or +20% weapon damage, or +50% jump recharge time etc.
 
I never got into this game, it seemed like a cross between a strategy game like Homeworld and a 4x game like Space Empires IV (and was half-baked in both categories).

Maybe I just didn't give it enough time...
 
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