I can only speak for the first 3 paid dlc, since I still haven’t played the castlevania one. The first 3 essentially add an alternate route to the game, so about 6ish levels and 5 bosses between them. With the exception of the queen and the sea*, the DLC content isn’t that much harder than base game stuff, and it’s all accessible in the games easiest difficulty (generally they’re easier than stuff from the free updates lol). They’re pretty good at adding a bit of extra variety in what routes you can take through the game, and add some extra items. Compared to some other games I play (stellaris), the DLC do feel pretty optional which is nice to see, and to the best of my knowledge they were also partially intended to support the creation of the free content as well.
*the bosses in that dlc are rough ngl. Queen boss fight is really fun though.
I actually only recently picked up some of the dlc’s cause they were on sale for like $2.50 a pop. Though they really are just cosmetics. I’d also put in enough hours into the game, where I felt pretty good about essentially donating to the dev’s.
Battlebit has replaced Mordhau (for now) as my brainless relaxation game. The FPS mechanics are surprisingly solid and it’s just good, chaotic fun. I do think the netcode feels a little last-gen, but you’re not playing this game to be a CS:GO master.
It looks pretty fun! I’ll look more into it but I l’ll probably buy it! My main problem is that I read somewhere that they are planning to use faceit and I use linux and as far as I now faceit doesn’t work on linux.
I should add that it isn’t perfect, it’s early access so expect some weirdness albeit a whole lot less than you’d think.
My favourite, for example: if you’re hiding behind cover make sure it is THICK, else a body part might clip through the model making it able to be shot. Mostly happens when prone making legs and feet stick out.
Instead of BF, I would try out BattleBit. It’s an Indie game that’s very similar to BF and got very popular recently.It’s supposed to be BF but actually good.
Hunt Showdown is on offer at the moment. It’s quite a learning curve but once you get the hang of it it’s fantastic. I’ve clocked 2.4k hours and it’s still got me hooked
They did shake up the economy but it was nothing serious. There were a bunch of cry babies like this on Reddit and discord.
At the end of the day you only need Blood Bonds to buy some legendary weapons/hunter/tool skins which are purely cosmetic and have nothing to do with the main game loop.
Some skins/cosmetics can also be earned in game without using premium currency.
I bought most DLC and blood bond skins because they cool and I want to support a game I love
2400 hours of fun for the €20 I paid for Hunt is damn good value
Hunt is like a more accessible version of Tarkov, without the loot Tetris, gun modding, and crazy detailed ballistics, set in a cool Lovecraftian late 19th century iteration of Louisiana’s swamps. Strongly recommend! (To anyone concerned about monetisation, outside buying the game, everything else is entirely cosmetic.)
Since you mentioned New Vegas, there’s Menace of The New West and Titans of The New West 2.0, they change Super Mutants and Power Armor respectively to resemble the ones in FO1 and FO2, purely aesthetic but adds a lot of flavor especially for Power Armor.
Generally I try to keep my Freelancer obsession under wraps until I’ve known people for at least a few months.
I love this game and have put thousands of hours into both the online and campaign (I speedrun it) and into online server play. If you’re a fan of Everspace, Elite: Dangerous, or other games in that vein, I very much recommend giving Freelancer a look as it still hasn’t been beat 20 years later.
The world is set roughly 800 years after the Alliance has left the Sol system during the Alliance-Coalition War. Following the events of Starlancer (not at all necessary to have played, just tangenting off that universe) five sleeper ships were launched as part of the escape. The five ships named for their home countries - Liberty, Bretonia, Kusari, Rheinland, and Hispania, headed toward the Sirius sector and each landed on separate planets and funded their own governments mirroring their Earth counterparts.
The story picks up as you, Edison Trent, arrive on Planet Manhattan. You and the survivors of Freeport 14, which has been destroyed at the hands of some mysterious and seemingly alien force, are just coming to terms with what has happened and you’re trying to pick up and move on. You meet a Liberty Security Force agent Jun’ko Zane, who has some contract work for you to pick up and outfits you with your first ship. Not two minutes out of atmo and the incoming diplomatic delegation from Rheinland is attacked and destroyed, and you, Juni, and her partner King find yourselves unraveling an investigation that goes to the highest levels of all four major Houses.
The rest of the game is pulling on those threads and unraveling a political conspiracy as you, King, and Juni track down leads. The main structure is alternating story missions and free roam periods, where the story missions expand the area you get to play in and push out to new systems, and then the free roam is you being the titular freelancer and picking up off jobs to earn credits and purchase better equipment and learn more at your own pace.
While the story is interesting, the true hooks in this for me are two things:
The World - There is so much love and lore tucked into every corner of this game. Loads of environmental storytelling, but then nearly every selectable object has an infocatd with additional detail fleshed out. History about everything is thought out to some degree. And if you see something interesting, odds are it has an interesting story to tell. This makes exploration rewarding, sometimes also financially within the game. Each system really feels like several hundred years of development and history were thought out to get to the game world’s current state.
The Controls - Generally in an older game, controls are hard to get the hang of. Freelancer uses an intuitive mouse aim flight system that lets you focus on where you want to go rather than how you have to maneuver your ship to get there, which means it’s not a burden to exploring and makes combat fun while still retaining a lot of depth. It’s not a space sim in the traditional sense. It doesn’t have the systems control that your more hardcore space sims do if that’s your thing, but between the ship customization and ease of flight, the barrier to entry is almost non-existent while still being engaging.
Past the campaign, there is still a very active modding community that continues to support an active online player base. There are plenty of simplistic mods to add new ships, weapons, or QOL features, out to full mods such as Discovery that adds a new house and continues to extend the game storyline through iterative updates and player-driven events, including dynamic player-created stations, to total conversions like Tides of War that wrap the world in a well put together Star Wars skin.
I was active on Discovery for a long time and really is where I put most of my hours into this game, playing online and just existing and driving the world into different directions at the same level of quality as the original game.
I could gush so much more, but just booting it up and playing a few minutes I think is enough to hook the right person. While not on the digital distribution platforms, the usual abandonware sites typically host a copy of the disc iso (as does DiscoveryGC for use during their mod install process) and it will install and run without issue on modern systems. Last fall, the Freelancer HD Edition mod was released on ModDB that updates visuals, textures, and adds some QOL features so that the game properly supports widescreen resolutions and looks great on modern displays.
I love this game, and frankly it’s the platonic ideal of a space sim that I’m still looking for a worthy successor to this day, with the closest from a gameplay perspective being Everspace, and nothing matching the depth and care and just jot of zooming around space.
One thing I love about Dead Cells is how every level feels different. There is always some unique gimmick or special features or a very specific level structure etc…
The DLC levels are no exception, and just for that I’d say they’re worth it.
This sounds like a fun project! :) I’ve only played one game in this genre, Cave Noire for Game Boy. It has randomly generated dungeons. It’s turn based. There’s no stats to level up, instead the player just has to improve their own gameplay strategy. There’s 40 stages (to put it simply), each getting a little harder. After you beat a stage the game saves and you never have to play that one again. How would you classify it?
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