The Gaming Den

I ordered a bunch of parts for a PC and am having it custom built. A couple parts include games promos:

I can pick 2 games from this list:
http://www.amd4u.com/radeonrewards/

I recognize very few of them aside from Deus Ex (I liked 1 enough), Tomb Raider (haven't played in 10 years) and Thief (I've heard of). Any of anyones favourites on that list?

Deus Ex HR is excellent and you should get that. I recommend CoH2 if you're into RTSes, or Darksiders if you're not.

Deus Ex HR is excellent. If that's the Director's Cut edition, it's excellenter.

Alan Wake is a pretty good story-driven action adventure.

Just Cause 2 is an open world sandbox game a la GTA, except instead of being a shmuck you're an action hero with a fancy grappling hook that lets you latch onto moving vehicles.

Payday 2 is fun if you have a friend or two to play with, but it is grindy as hell. Now, full disclosure: when a game tells me to grind I tell it to go fuck itself and cheat. Unfortunately, cheating Payday 2 is a little more complicated than using cheat engine or whatever, but it's doable. But again, I don't really recommend it unless you have someone to play it with so whatever moving on.

Hitman Absolution... wasn't awful? Not my favorite Hitman game by far, but solid enough on its own.

Yeah, I recommend Deus Ex 100% and Just Cause 2 is also pretty fun.

Thief is good, it has very real problems but it's good and for free the price is defiantly right.

That said, as others have said Deus Ex is excellent, Tomb Raider comes highly recommended too, Just Cause is fun and crazy,

The Deus Ex box on there looks like the directors cut, and it should be on your list. If you like set piece action movies, Tomb Raider is easy to recommend. It's a series reboot, so not having played it in forever doesn't matter. I liked both of the darksiders, though 2 is probably better done. They both play a bit like zelda titles, the second more obviously so. Just Cause 2 is open world mayhem, and quite good at it.

Of the indie packs, Banner Saga is an interesting turn based battle game, with very little randomization in the battles. Guacamelee is a brawler with metroidvania exploration and a luchador theme. I'm not sure getting one of those in a pack with something else is a better call than something more substantial, and I have no experience with Dyad or that other one.

If you can only pick two, I'd grab Deus Ex and Just Cause 2 or Tomb Raider depending on whether you wanted more set pieces or more random undirected violence.

Cool! Thanks for all the advice.

One word of caution about Deus Ex HR: I don't know how the director's cut changed things, but in the original version playing a stealth-oriented character basically boned you for the boss fights.

YMMV. You might have to clear some space in your inventory temporarily, but there's enough equipment lying around in the boss arenas that are sufficient to get the job done (e.g. barrels and guns near the first boss, EMP mines in lockers in the second arena, etc.). Even without augs, Adam is good enough to take on the bosses using whatever weapons are lying around in their arenas (tranquilizers and punching are useless on bosses).

Don't hesitate to murderize the bosses even on a non lethal playthrough as it's impossible to avoid them or dispose of them non lethally.

Avoid punching through walls when someone's on the other side if you're on a non lethal playthrough as Adam will snap their necks immediately afterwards (use bombs when an enemy is behind a weak wall if you don't want them to die)

Some of the hacking upgrades do NOTHING (i.e. the ones that claim to give you more info IIRC).

NineInchNall wrote:One word of caution about Deus Ex HR: I don't know how the director's cut changed things, but in the original version playing a stealth-oriented character basically boned you for the boss fights.

Meh, stealth gives you more XP, and the second boss is relatively very far into the game, and the first boss fight can literally be killed by picking things up and throwing them at him with no shots fired and no grenades.

To maximize XP: Stealth (ghosting) + Non Lethal Takedowns (Dual takedowns as often as possible) + Hack everything even if it doesn't actually help you in the level.

Directors cut changed that anyway. Oh, and if you want to get the foxiest of the hounds achievement, you will reload. Alot.

darkmaster wrote:Directors cut changed that anyway. Oh, and if you want to get the foxiest of the hounds achievement, you will reload. Alot.

Changed what? Took away XP to nerf characters?

No, not you, the bosses, it changes them so you can do things other than shoot them. Though you still can't just run past them and slam the door in their face.

The changes to the boss fights aren't that big though; mainly you now get hackable turrets or other similar gadgets to kill the bosses for you, though in all honesty if played properly you will have so many praxis points available that you'll be a killing machine even if you don't want to be one.

Director's cut also integrates of the Missing Link portion to the main game, which gives even more praxis points and a nice gun.

Zinegata wrote:The changes to the boss fights aren't that big though; mainly you now get hackable turrets or other similar gadgets to kill the bosses for you, though in all honesty if played properly you will have so many praxis points available that you'll be a killing machine even if you don't want to be one.

Director's cut also integrates of the Missing Link portion to the main game, which gives even more praxis points and a nice gun.

Seriously, Dir cut integrates... Fucking hell, every time I played Missing Link I hated that it wasn't integrated.

But yeah, my experience as a leet double non lethal takedown/non lethal takedown of literally every enemy in the game + hacking all the things run, was that the first boss I had no military praxis of any kind and I threw gas cannisters and explody barrels at him till he died, and then the second boss I already maxxed all the none lethal stuff and also had the explody circle aug at level 2, so I threw and emp grenade, blew up on her, blew up on her, and then blew up on her, and killed her.