BurningSheep

It's essentially GSC making a fantasy version of their Cossacks games. The twist here is that together with mass armies in a traditional RTS structure, there are also heroes. Playing with heroes and units in the campaign wasn't for me, but playing in skirmish mode with heroes turned off was exactly the right thing to do. The four factions are fairly well balanced with a good amount of interesting unit and upgrade choices, though it has to be said that two of them (the main campaign factions) are more diverse than the others. It has a decent look and some decent music as well.

I had to think of "Dark Reign 2" when I saw the title. Doesn't seem like a bad game at first, but the pathfinding of the units is awful. Throw in some mission and map design that really shows you just how bad and you have a recipe for disaster. The soundtrack needed some getting used to, but it's really good. Have a listen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcbMQCLYPyg&list=PLBdu840wOsp_8dsl0ad-IN3tI2pUsQjh9&index=2 "Maelstrom - The battle for earth begins" is a similar case. Pathfinding is also a problem, but units are also just awful at reliably engaging enemies, especially when it comes to melee. But the soundtrack is actually better than I at first gave it credit for. Also, it has some pretty good destructible environment. Lots of small details. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7enUbtUXQg&list=PLxyPT8_piocq5osJbv-MzpiI93HByIYjP&index=12

Only the eight bottom ones (excepting Manifold Garden). Some of the others aren't even out yet. Armored Head is an arena FPS as said. Simple but effective graphics and a good roster of fun weapons. Gameplay is surprisingly satisfying. You defeat 30 waves of murderous robots and then you are done. Fibrillation HD. Same developer, but it's an atmospheric walking simulator with horror elements and some secrets. Some surreal environments. Kairo. Kind of similar in terms of environments, but much more colorful and the gameplay is focused on puzzling instead. Wonderful soundtrack. NaissanceE. Kind of a similar deal as with the two preceding games, but it's more focused on a light-dark-dynamic and platforming, some of which was somewhat difficult. Massive scale much of the time. Bokida - Heartfelt Reunion. Open world with distinct style. Mostly it's just shades of white and grey and black with some color thrown in. Cool movement mechanics that make travelling quite a lot of fun. There was a good amount of puzzling, but I'd say it's mostly an exploration game. Vivisector - Enemy within. Linear FPS by Action Forms which later made Cryostasis. Bad first impressions since nature in this game looks awful. It's an arena shooter at first, but becomes more linear with cooler environments and it also just becomes more fun because more weapons get unlocked. You are empty. Another ukrainian FPS. Good atmosphere, linear, straightforward. Reminded my of Half Life 2, though it has some strong soviet vibes to it. The last two games are hard to find anywhere though.

I'm trying to avoid duplication here, so I won't mention games which are already on the Game List. Or at the very least I will try to avoid it. All of the games mentioned here are available on steam or will be once they are out. - Ravenfield: Battlefield-esque single-player FPS which has been in development for a long time. - Trepang 2: FEAR-inspired single-player FPS. - RIPOUT: Coop-Horror-FPS - Devilated: FPS with RPG-elements, calls itself a "boomer shooter". - Spirits of Xanadu: Immersive Sim (currently on sale for pennies) - HROT: Retro-FPS set in post-soviet setting, Quake-inspired - Selaco: Story-FPS based on GZdoom - Exocide: Retro-FPS apparently somewhat inspired by The Darkness - Brutal Fate: Retro-FPS, I think the creator was involved in some Brutal Doom-mod or so. - Vomitoreum: Metroidvania-FPS, Horror-themed - Ultrakill: Retro-FPS, mentioned by another user, but not on list. - GTTOD: Get To The Orange Door: "neon synthwave virtualscape FPS" - Peripeteia: "first-and-third-person role-playing stealth game taking place in alt-history cyberpunk Poland. Inspired by immersive sims from Ion Storm and Looking Glass Studios" - Fortune's Run: "high-octane first-person shooter with stealth and RPG elements" - Brigand: Oaxaca: "highly difficult post-apocalyptic RPG/FPS set in Mexico" - Cruelty Squad: "An immersive power fantasy simulator with tactical stealth elements set in a sewage infused garbage world" - Golden Light: "Survival-Horror FPS" - Post Void: "hypnotic scramble of early first-person shooter design that values speed above all else", very cheap. - Ad Infernum: Horror adventure - Armored Head: Small arena wave-based FPS - Fibrillation HD: Same developer as previous game, journey through dark and strange environments, Horror-elements. - Kairo: Atmospheric first person-puzzle game, abstract colorful environments. - NaissanceE: journey through massive, brutalist environments, platforming elements, light-dark-dynamic. (is free at this point) - Manifold Garden: First-person-puzzler with abstract environments. - Bokida: Heartfelt Reunion: First person-open-world-puzzler with unique aesthetic, easy travelling and environmental "destruction". - (not on Steam, basically Abandonware) Vivsector - Enemy Within: Arena shooter that eventually turns into a more linear shooter. - (not on Steam, basically Abandonware) You are empty: Short FPS in the vein of Half Life 2, takes place in postapocalyptic soviet setting

(All of this with reference to Enhanced Edition): It has great environments and atmosphere. The gore is well done as well and it's difficult. The AI of your buddies isn't great, but definitely serviceable, especially with some helpful commands from the player. They also tend to be much better with melee weapons. It has some balancing issues and some things aren't entirely obvious. Dedicated melee can be powerful, but isn't really for beginners. Otherwise Hellfire and Flamer are fairly easy to use and quite powerful. Though area-of-effect-stuff can be very dangerous to your own team when playing with Friendly Fire on in Multiplayer. Tl;dr: It's basically a horde shooter with Doom 3-aesthetics.

I have posted there occasionally. Perhaps I'll put together a small list soon and post it there.

Well, not everyone will like what they get equally. As said though, it's not like I started liking it immediately.

Ok, good to know, thanks for the quick answer!

Hello everyone, quick question: Where are we supposed to put suggestions for the list? Things that might have gotten overlooked, are forgotten, not out yet or simply obscure. Do we have a thread for that? Mostly asking since I recently stumbled across a bunch of new FPS' and immersive sims and wouldn't mind giving them some exposure.

I played it for maybe 20 hours or so recently and I mostly enjoyed it. Really unique with great art, weird music and characters. I'd say I still prefer Pathologic by the same developer, because it seemed more well-rounded and functional as a game. I didn't try to finish it in the end, because there was no chance I would actually have been successful. I did run into boss fights more often than apparently should be the case and these I really disliked. There were some indications that something about the story progression was bugged, but I haven't been able to find any info on it.

Petroglyph are an ok developer. That seems to perfectly describe my feelings about their games. "Universe at War" probably has the best factions and ideas, but unit supply is so limited that not a lot of approaches actually work (just 10 hours with Skirmish mode though). I found "Grey Goo"'s unit design a bit boring and was kind of weirded out how much they focused on having a cinematic story. It works, but never really felt inspired in any way. It's also surprisingly bland visually. Not just in regards to unit design and looks, but also as far as the landscape is concerned. Still rather high hardware requirements. "Forged Battalion"'s faction building system basically just encourages the player to unlock everything and then use the "best stuff" so to speak. Otherwise it was fun for some hours to try around with specific builds, but imho the trade-off isn't great. After all, there is no faction system, so everything feels very generic. On the other hand there are not enough faction building options to really be able to hone in on a particular idea.

"TehSnakerer" has done a review of it in case anyone's interested.

The art was certainly great, but the writing kind of mediocre unfortunately.

It took me a few hours to really get into it, but then I did quite enjoy it. It may be open world, but it's only about 10 hours long as far as I remember and the mix of exploration and combat supported by good atmosphere did work very well for me. The combat is a bit on the simple side so that gets a bit repetitive, but as said, it's not very long. Similar to the first game by the same developer, it feels a bit like Stalker. With Sir it was mostly the atmosphere and sometimes the sound, with this one it's the exploration and weird phenomena as well as the AI squads running around, battling it out. Would certainly recommend it.

It's some kind of experiment/small project by the same person that later made "35mm". I don't think Ross would be missing anything by not trying it.

Played through it some months ago. Have to agree with Ross here. The character building was fine and visually it evokes a good amount of atmosphere, but soundscape, soundtrack, feel of the world and world-building were flimsy. Neither in that respect nor in regards to the story did it leave much of an impression. It also was just a bit too long for my liking and the endless hordes got tiring to fight relatively quickly.

A lot of the personal moments in the plot are in my opinion the weakest part of the narrative. Learning about lore and such was supported by better writing. I tried to invest into the game's equivalent of the speech skill, but the game only uses it to let your character ask for more money as quest rewards. The Lore skill seems to be the most relevant outside of the combat-relevant stuff. The semi-open world is very limited and it is still too big for the game. Bascially, there are so few people that have anything of relevance to say that the relatively big maps feel all the more empty because of it. Gameplay was fun enough, but definitely not great. Also kind of grindy towards the end.

Played through it 1-2 years ago and did like it. Nice art style and atmosphere with a fun "groundhog day"-loop. It's very short, so there is no excuse to not give it a try.

Merry Christmas everyone! Nice to see Ross coming back to this one and giving us his particular angle on it. It's always fun to see someone return to (or even play for the first time) a big title that basically no one is paying attention to anymore. Especially considering the clash of "weird scenario + Ross". I was somewhat interested in it at some point, but the online component and the narrative did turn me off. Just running around on the map to experience weather and atmosphere and such, would be quite cool though. It's another case of a game where I would like the game to leave me alone so that I can enjoy the open world.

Just in case somebody is interested: I posted this over on youtube before realizing that I actually had another option over here, where it won't just disappear among thousands of comments. So, repost: Nice to see somebody giving this some attention! I'm only at the end of Chapter 4 right now, so I can't comment beyond that. Just a few points. - Walking during narration: These bits are meant for narration, so it really doesn't matter if you are jogging or walking. You'll get there in the intended time, which seems like an agreeable outcome to me. Perhaps they could have integrated the narration differently, but I have seen way worse ways of doing it. Like when there is action going on and then you have voices trying to deliver narration at random moments, only adding to the mess. For some reason I have encountered that quite a few times recently. Both in Rage 2 and Fallout: New Vegas. - Gameplay seems fine so far. It's not easy, but that seems mostly down to not having a Quicksave. Instead one has to hope for Save Arches. Especially the levels in which one needs to collect enough blue orbs to activate the elevator can be frustrating because of that. The second time this kind of level came up I had to restart from the beginning a few times after carefully stealthing around for a good amount of time. I eventually stumbled on some Save Arches, but this just isn't very reliable. - Otherwise though I mostly like the gameplay. It offers a nice variety of gameplay-options and I have mostly felt so far that you just need to learn how to use the available options and how to string them together when needed. Personally stealth has mostly served me well and getting away after messing up isn't as difficult as I had assumed. Still a good bit of Trial-and-Error, but I feel like it's very much down to how the individual levels are set up. Also, doing a take-down in full view of a second clone and then just smashing a crystal ball into its face is pretty satisfying. Also not nearly as loud as the gun I think. - Number of clones: It's not as bad anymore, but getting mobbed by three or more clones is pretty annoying and then you'll probably use your gun and then they will come running. In most cases it seems to be a good decision to just run and hope that they will lose you. Sometimes you can pull them into a line for a good shot and oftentimes it's too far for the other clones to hear the shot. Just vaulting a few times also helps. I haven't tried it so far, but I have just seen the developers play one level and closing doors also seems to be helpful. - The Blackouts: I don't know, you can probably use them to your advantage, but I'm now mostly just sitting around and waiting for it to end. As Ross said it's kind of hard to see in the dark. Tagging would probably help and Area Scan could be useful, but I'm always loath to part with the energy. I found them somewhat annoying at first, but atmospherically they are quite nice and they are clearly part of the game's aesthetical and narrative identity - if there is such a thing. - The game is clearly too long. Gameplay-wise it did arrive at the standard-loop pretty early and then it stopped evolving. Now I have already done the collecting of blue orbs-thing twice and the getting of two rods-thing twice as well. Mostly stealthing around and occasionally messing up. There are some levels which mix it up a little, but it's still mostly just those two goals with the usual gameplay and the familiar AI-patterns. Pacing-wise I don't like it much. The narrative bits outside the palace help, but that's about it. In any case, Thanks for the Game Dungeon, Ross! If you like this kind of architecture, "NaissanceE" is also worth a look. It has been free over on steam for a while now. Other than that, there's also "Fibrillation HD" (cheap and short), which has the massive brutalistic architecture on some maps and "E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy", which is more cyberpunkish. Also, lots and lots of respawning ;-) Edit: I forgot to add one thing on the Blackouts: On a number of occasions they have saved me in tight spots. Surprisingly often in fact. Somebody farther up mentioned that you can influence their frequency and I think an increased frequency might be intended to punish the player for playing aggressively, but also to give them a chance to get away in tight spots. Just speculation, but it would make sense.

Yes! That's the most infuriating thing about the game. At the very least the class-specific equipment helps a little to give the world character. But there is almost nothing else. The characters are all extremely bland and don't have much to say on the actual world. And the only faction we learn anything about whatsoever, are the Templars. The Hunters and Cabbalists are basically just "there" and I think the Cabbalists have one or two characters where their association is at least noticeable. Ah no, it would be fine if he made it through once. I really don't know why he had so much trouble with it. Maybe it's just tougher with a Summoner? I didn't have much trouble with my Engineer and even less with a Guardian. I will try to report back once I get to my playthrough with the Evoker. Not quite the same, but at the very least the same item selection.

Soulbringer is a good suggestion. It's heavy on (non-party) combat, but it does care about its story. The latter isn't anything to write home about, but the game has a particular, unique feel to it. Not least because of the dark snowy wasteland early on and the interesting exploration around there when the story is still mostly a mystery, but also since the combat system is a bit unusual. Later on magic is added and it is another aspect of the game which is fairly interesting. Basically, your character can only be good at one element at the expense of the others. I'd recommend it just for how unique it felt to me as I was playing through it some years ago. A warning though: I had issues with the game running too slowly which only was fixed once i switched to a different Direct-X renderer (gog-version). Other than that, it also seemed like a good idea to point out Dawn of Magic, which was made by the russian company Skyfallen Entertainment. It's a Diablo-like, though one which doesn't have a class-system, but rather a spell-combo system. In some ways it's fairly similar to other ARPGs, but certain things like the character building system are handled a bit differently. Same goes for the large maps and large cities. Good music, though the story is - again - nothing to write home about. It's not available on the digital services for some reason. Dawn of Magic 2 is, but that one is just a shorter stand-alone expansion that is lacking in comparison. Simply get a used copy off of amazon if need be. And third, another Diablo-like: Restricted Area, by a german company. Another case where you would have to get a used copy from somewhere. It takes place in a postapocalyptic scenario mixed in with a dose of cyberpunk. However, the world only consists of basically one street and randomly generated maps. Some good music and overall ok atmosphere I'd say. Try it if you are interested in mixing guns, cyberware and bioware (but also swords in one case) into the usual formula. The story in this case is kind of painful at times, but it varies somewhat based on the chosen character. Edit: I just remembered that the most recent patch for Restricted Area was giving me trouble with mini freezes during inventory interaction. Once I went back one patch the problem disappeared. And another thing: Perhaps somebody has played Abomination - The Nemesis Project more extensively than me and can comment on it. I only played the demo many, many years ago, so I can't say much about it, but it always looked fairly interesting. Group-based tactics in real time or something like that.

I was quite turned off by the constant shift-holding to see additional info, the tiny script in which it is depicted and the many many - mostly unexplained - numbers that the game shows for spell components. The game is very unhelpful in introducing almost anything about the system. I also feel like the way in which the information is somewhat messily portrayed as a mix of text and numbers in a way where each bit of info is not clearly delimited, is also a problem. However, not paying too much attention to all the numbers and focusing more on functionality has helped me enjoy it more. As Chris points out, some of the Sigils that get introduced after a while also make things more interesting. I have only played a few hours and I'm currently messing around with Delirium and Corruption (on top of Fire), which is quite interesting.

Well, the only thing I have tried in the Hitman series was a demo for Contracts. And it honestly was a bit Trial-and-Error heavy as far as I am concerned. I haven't really run into that problem with The Slater so far. And that's even though one cannot save during a mission. The Slater is indeed pretty simple, but I am currently enjoying how aesthetically appealing it is and how it has pretty good atmosphere. Mainly one can choke out people or shoot them with the silenced pistol. To get where the player needs to go to eliminate the targets and such, one needs disguises and there is also a good bit of exploration to get access to certain areas and so forth. Some issues I have noticed are with how weak many of the animations are and how often comments from guards and such repeat. Voice-acting seems ok for the most part, but the story writing is pretty silly.

I did play through much of "Boiling Point - Road to Hell" (Xenus) a while back and did rather like it. Nice quirky atmosphere, especially because of the weird people. The shooting was nicely tactical and deadly. I did also like the faction system and the way the balance shifted and how that influenced how you played the game. Unfortunately the story can only be advanced by throwing ungodly sums of money at people repeatedly. At first I liked it, but it never stops, so I stopped playing instead. But I put about 20 hours into it and I definitely enjoyed most of it. And Precursors more recently. Liked it for some of the same reasons (charming people, atmosphere), but other aspects seemed weaker. Specifically the less tactical shooting and the less complex faction system. But the atmosphere in Tamerheim and on Goldin was surprisingly strong. Obviously subjective but I really liked the mix of the music and the russian language and the charming people. Though in that regard I think it's worth pointing out that Boiling Points english voice-acting managed to retain that charm, so it's not just the language.