I-war 2 have a few “puzzle like” plot missions. But from there to saying it’s a big puzzle game… no. It’s only some missions from the plot, and the plot is also only a part of the game, there is plenty of pirating, exploring, upgrading, assaulting, fighting in a cool universe.
OH really? Huh, maybe I should get farther in the game, I usually get fed up with the missions early on.
Pogo
4484
Would Freespace 2 be possible with a gamepad?
It’d be hard to manage. I don’t think the in-game interface for joystick/key management would be enough, because it wouldn’t know if you wanted to use the analog triggers as buttons, for one thing. I’m guessing the best way to go about it would be to go with a combination of using the in-game key binding and button binding system and also X-padder, which will let you bind things to the 360 controller that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
The nice thing about the in-game system is that you can change pretty much every binding. So you could unbind things like Firing from joystick button 1, and assign it to only a keystroke, which could then be emulated by xpadder.
I’d imagine the best way to do the basics would be:
Right Trigger - Fire 1 (guns)
Left Trigger - Afterburner
RB - Fire 2 (missiles)
X - Target Closest enemy (can be pressed again and again to target the next closes enemy, and the next, etc)
A - Fire Countermeasures
Y - Change primary gun
B - Change missile
Right thumbstick upward for maximum forward thrust override (‘A’ by default on keyboard)
Right thumbstick downward for maximum backward thrust override (‘Z’ by default on keyboard)
Right thumbstick click to match speed toggle with your target maybe?
Then you could use LB and the d-pad to set up some kind of system for raising or lowering power to engines, shields and weapons. On easy (defauilt) difficulty that’s not really necessary, but on medium and upwards, you’ll need it.
In the later missions, you also need a button that targets the missile or bomb closest to the target you’re protecting. That button could be mapped to the Left thumbstick click, or you could just use the keyboard for that one command, since there’s only about two or three missions in the whole game where you’ll need it.
Kalle
4487
There are a lot of keyboard shortcuts. You’d need to map the most commonly used on to the gamepad and take a hand off the gamepad occasionally to punch in the others, but it’s certainly possible.
Damn it, I want to try that now. But I won’t be home and have long access to my home PC for at least the next few weeks. If you give it a try, let us know how it works out. Xpadder used to be free, but it costs money now. I think it’s totally worth it personally. I even use it on my laptop to play games like Age of Wonders with the 360 controller.
I just thought of how it’s possible to do energy management only with the d-pad, if desired. I’d still recommend playing the game on the default difficulty the first time through, in which case you don’t need to mess with energy management at all, I promise.
But if you do want to assign it:
up on d-pad - more power to engine
left on d-pad - more power to shields
right on d-pad - more power to weapons
down on d-pad - reset power to default, equal power to all
with that you can manage power.
One thing missing is a good use of the LB button. I can’t really think of anything else really important you’d want to do in Freespace 2. I can’t remember if turrets were a big pain in Freespace 2 or not. They were in the first Freespace, so if you play the first one in Freespace 2’s engine, definitely assign LB or one of the other free buttons to target the next closest turret on the capital ship you’re currently targeting.
The beauty of Freespace 2’s (and the original Freespace’s) controls is that even though they give you a million buttons on how to target other ships, I only every had to use one 99 percent of the time, and that was assigned to Joystick button 3 by default, so I never even had to use the keyboard to target things except to switch turrets and target the closest bomb in those certain missions.
Pogo
4490
Maybe you could assign the yaw controls to the right stick, and you’d still have 4 buttons, 2 shoulder buttons, and the thumbstick button that you can use if you have to take your left hand off the gamepad to hit a keyboard shortcut.
Ha! That is brilliant. After all, I originally played with my left hand on the keyboard, right hand on a joystick with 4 buttons. So to do the same thing with the 360 controller should be pretty intuitive, yeah.
And on the keyboard, the only buttons you need frequently are Tab (afterburner), A and Z (maximum forward thrust, maximum backwards thrust).
The only thing I’d really miss on the controller is the joystick hat. I used it in Freespace 2 to look around. When you’re flying past a massive capital ship, it’s nice to be able to look to your left (or right) and see it flying past.
This is a FANTASTIC discussion, is totally helpful for my purchasing decisions, and is exactly why I love you guys.
So GoG has a couple of interesting releases:
Spellforce 2: Shadow Wars - Great game, though without the expansion included it’s hard to recommend not buying it elsewhere for a little more. They’re also selling the first game (which HAS all of its expansions) for 50% off.
Rayman 2: The Great Escape - Now I’m not a platformer fan at all…and I fucking LOVED this game when it came out. It’s like the platformer for people who don’t like platformers. It’s fun, challenging and insanely well-done. I’ll likely get it for the awesome gameplay as well as the great soundtrack.
A further note to platformer fans like me: I tried Rayman 2 because I’d heard so many good things about it, and I got repeatedly stuck in the beginning of the game and didn’t want to resort to gamefaqs because I was feeling lazy, so I never got much past the beginning of the game.
You got stuck? Huh, I finished the whole dang thing back in the day. Weird.
So is Age Of Wonders worth picking up? Don’t know too much about this series but after having a blast with HOMM 3 it’s piqued my interest.
Yes, they are. I love all three of them.
Chuck
4498
Just my opinion, but I thought the last two games (Age 2, Shadow Magic) were long, slow, tedious affairs. They lacked the up-tempo of the Heroes series and it took forever to complete even a single map.
Also the difficulty seemed jacked way too high. There was a patch for Age 2 that added an easier diffuclty level, but once the game required boat travel (slow, tedious, not-so-fun included) I gave up and donated them to a coworker.
I’d go with the King’s Bounty remake. Lot’s of fun included in that title.
King’s Bounty is awesome too, no doubt, but I also think the Age of Wonders games are totally worth picking up. You also might like Fantasy Wars too.
Age of Wonders was a lot of fun. If you like turn based fantasy games it’s well worth the price.
I liked Age of Wonders a fair amount and still will load it up and play from time to time. The biggest problem with it, which is made worse in the expansions and later version with more layers to the maps, is that the maps are so huge, it literally (would I keed you?) takes multiple months to finish some of them.
Oh, and the AI came to PLAY. They do not mess around.
