Navigating the waters of another insane Steam sale – Part 2

Still lost amongst the chaotic turmoil of hundreds of games at discount prices? Start reading here for my Action and Adventure recommendations, as well as the beginning of the Strategy section. Part 2 here will finish going through Strategy. Yes, that’s it. Hey, this is my wheelhouse when it comes to gaming!

But first, something that was a daily deal on Thursday, but is STILL a great deal at its ‘normal’ sales price.

Overlord II 66% off – $6.79

The first game is also marked down, but the second one is tighter…not nearly as many weird glitches and annoying issues. You’re that big badass in the armour. Those dudes riding wolves are your minions…use various minion types to slowly take the world back from the Roman empire. The best part about the game is the humour. Minions will feast on food and chug beer until they’re stumbling drunkenly and pissing themselves. They’ll loot houses and take whatever they can find for themselves…like a vicious whisk melee weapon. They might raid a pumpkin patch and don a hollowed out gourd as a helm. Or they might kill some seals and immediately craft hats from their corpses. Funny stuff, funny dialogue, fun game.

Strategy (130 in total on sale)

Space Empires IV Deluxe 66% off – $3.39

Welcome to a large scale Space 4X game. If you don’t know what a Space 4X game is, you do not want this. Tech research, planet development, ship building, diplomacy, rebellions, tactical combat…everything is in here. Lots of mods that bring the game in to the universes of Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5 and others. Not so much with the pretty pretty, much more with the details.

Tropico Reloaded 66% off – $3.39

Tropico is one of my all time favourite games, and though I will be mentioning Tropico 3 later on, this is a good budget alternative. The island of Tropico is your domain. As a dictator, you can choose whether to be benevolent or cruel. Crush dissent, assassinate possible problems, or try to win over those against you by building structures and industries that benefit them. And be sure to regularly pull money from the national coffers and sock it away in a hidden bank account! Not too much…the military might find out and take you down. This package actually includes Tropico, the Paradise Island add-on and Tropico 2…a game that sees you as a pirate, running industries and producing consumer goods…? Yeah.

Men of War 75% off – $3.74

Oh look, a WW2 RTS game! How original! This one features a lot more small unit actions in battles that normally don’t get all the glory. I found it a bit micromanagement intensive (sometimes individual troops don’t grab ammo unless ordered to, for example), but overall it’s a well done game. The skirmish mode might actually be more fun than the campaigns, and I’m told that multiplayer is a ton of fun as well. Also available is the Red Tide standalone expansion, focusing on the campaigns of the Soviet Black Coats marines in the Caucasus. Like I said, not exactly spending a lot of time on the usual ‘Been there, done that’ battles.

Take Command : 2nd Manassas 50% off – $4.99

It’s certainly not graphically up to par. It’s a game taking place during the US Civil War, a subject that I’m sufficiently well versed in to be able to say with some conviction that “Yes, it happened.” Awhile back, I decided to branch out and get out of my comfort zones when it comes to gaming. I had heard this was an interesting game, and it was on sale…so what the fuck, right? What I found was a very interesting command sim. See, you don’t actually directly control all of those units…in the bigger scenarios, you can’t (unless madness is your goal). You issue orders to subordinates. Those subordinates then execute them…that is, if they understand them properly…and if your horse messengers carrying those orders aren’t killed en route. It’s a refreshingly different kind of game, and because of that I’m willing to recommend it even in the face of nearly worthless artillery.

Grand Ages : Rome 66% off – $6.79

Another one where I need to give it a try, but it sounds a lot like Tropico set in Ancient Rome mixed with a 4X RTS game. You’ll build up your cities, build up armies, and explore the world around you. Conquer and befriend to expand your territory and reach. And any game that claims to have removed micromanagement from the economy has my attention. It starts as a city builder, but it can grow well beyond that. This is the sequel to a game called Imperium Romanum, which was solid.

Jagged Alliance 2 Gold 66% off – $6.79

Though an older game (cause, you know, you couldn’t tell that from that screen shot…), this is still one of the best, if not the best, tactical squad games around. Hire your mercenaries, gear them up, then head out. Missions all over the place, firefights everywhere, money to be made. Your mercs can leave of their own accord, be wounded, train up skills between missions. Buy weapons and gear from dealers…gear that might not turn out to be as good as advertised. You need a solid force mix, but a lot of these guys don’t exactly get along…enjoy dealing with personality conflicts as your best shooter and your explosives guy start bitching at each other. Okay, you probably won’t enjoy that, but you will like the rest of it.

AI War : Fleet Command 66% off – $6.80

Tens of thousands of ships under your command. 16 billion different maps possible. Play alone, or with up to 8 players co-op against the AI. Sounds like a management nightmare sufficient enough to give people a stroke! But it isn’t. The whole point is a lack of micromanagement. It’s you against a rogue AI in a war for the universe…only this is a different kind of game AI. It’s reactive…it acts based on what you do. Hit too hard too fast and you’ll attract big enough attacks that you’ll be wiped out of existence. So you have to pick and choose, sort of like you’re leading an intergalactic guerrilla war. Very good game. Also worth checking out if you grab it is the Zenith Remnant expansion for $3.40.

Knights of Honor 50% off – $7.49

Like Birth of America, this is a fantastic ‘starter’ strategy game. You’ll lead your nation in development, construction and military operations. There’s no micromanaging of various segments of the economy or anything like that…just worry about a positive cash flow. Resources are in the game, but they aren’t complicated. And the tactical real time battles aren’t going to overwhelm many, though they do seem to suffer from outrageous casualty rates at time. And if you manage to sneak a spy in to the employ of an unwitting rival…oh the fun havoc that you can wreak! Very highly recommend this one.

Gratuitous Space Battles 50% off – $9.99

See that crazy battle going on? Yep, all that you ever get to do is look at them. You will give initial orders to your forces…formations, targeting, priorities and the like…then you start and watch what unfolds. Different scenarios deliver different goals, enemy vessels, and restrictions on your forces. As you play, you’ll unlock new technologies you can use when building ships. The shipbuilder is almost a game unto itself. You have to balance weight vs. engine power, weapons and armour vs. overall mass and everything vs. the amount of power generation you can load in to that hull.

Tropico 3 – Steam Special Edition 66% off – $10.19

It has clearly gotten a graphical coat of paint from the days of the original game. Beyond that, the interface has been cleaned up and made easier to navigate. Balance your standing amongst the Americans and Russians or face an invasion. Perhaps you could afford to set up the East end of your island as a nuke test site? As with the original, you can play the campaign missions, or just play a free form game. Every single Tropican’s beliefs and desires are now measured by the game. And enjoy shouting political speeches from the balcony of your mansion to the proletariat! Will they cheer, or will you be dodging sniper fire? Also check out the Absolute Power expansion for $6.79.

Sword of the Stars : Complete Collection 50% off – $14.99

Another Space 4X game, this one is much more streamlined and focused on tactical combat. You’ll explore the galaxy and colonize planets, but that’s virtually all there is to managing your empire. So if you like really diving in to planetary management and economic balancing, this isn’t the game for you. The real time tactical battles are the star here. Not only can you give orders to each ship, you can target individual parts of enemy ships. Hell, you can target different weapons systems on different parts of enemy ships if you want to. Also really interesting are the tech trees…though core techs remain in place, the rest of the tree is randomly built around them every time you start a new game. That means you can’t just blindly follow the same strategy every time. One more thing…you can spend extra money to ‘force’ harder research. This also risks an accident, though. Depending on what you’re researching, that can mean an explosion that wipes out an entire world, or maybe a Rogue AI that creates a race of Terminators that wipes another one’s populace out.

Majesty 2 50% off – $14.99

You start with a castle, and must fulfill scenario objectives to ‘take back’ different provinces for your King. How completely unoriginal, right? Well, yes…but there’s more. You can build up your town, with citizens automatically settling and building houses. Build guard towers to try to hold back the hordes of enemies. Then build guilds for Rangers, Mages, Thieves and the like. Hire heroes and send them on missions. The twist here is that you don’t actually directly control anyone, including the heroes. What you do are set bounty flags…to attack an enemy lair, defend an area, escort a caravan, or just explore a section of the map. Now attach a bounty to that flag and find the sweet spot where a few heroes are willing to do the job for a price that avoids bankrupting your treasury. My only complaint about the game is that the difficulty level is very uneven. There isn’t a gradual build up here so much as random peaks and valleys from mission to mission.

King Arthur – The Role Playing Wargame 33% off – $26.79

Breaking both my price rule AND minimum discount rule here. Too damn bad! This is the game that has been the basis of my Arthurian story…one that I will be getting back to as soon as my short story is done and sent off. Anyway, what else to say? You run your kingdom as you see fit, choose what paths to follow and recruit armies. Fight the tactical battles in real time. Use magic and special attacks if you can. Go on ‘choose your own adventure’ style text quests with one of your knights. It’s all in here.

As a post note, I would also like to note that Paradox Interactive has a number of EXCELLENT strategy games, but I am extremely hesitant to recommend them unless you have experience with strategy games. They aren’t loaded with micromanagement, but they don’t have the most welcoming interface (Attention, Paradox…it’s 2010! Hotkeys, maybe?), and the Tutorials tend towards the useless.

The next part hits RPG’s, Indie games, and perhaps gets in to Casual and Family stuff.