Shadowcat on 1/6/2011 at 09:10
Well I remembered to time the next mission I played, and it took me 38 minutes. It was one of the larger maps I've seen, and I also got into a bad situation that it took a while to dig myself out of, but if you were concerned about my conservative time estimates above, there's a counter-example for you :)
Shadowcat on 1/6/2011 at 10:14
Joy. There's nothing quite like a perfectly executed flanking manoeuvre :)
My final opponent was holed up in a circular room with two facing doorways. I had a machine gunner sliding across each entrance, aiming inwards. As they moved in unison, I had a rocket blow a hole in a side wall, opening that up to my fourth man, who was covering that angle with another machine gun. Timed to perfection, all three gunners opened fire at once. In my simulation the bad guy covered a doorway, and, one of my men went down. In practice the enemy opened up at the distant gunner through the newly opened hole in the wall, missed, and all my guys survived.
I thought the third angle was pretty redundant at the time (it was just fun to do :), but it might well have saved one of my men, and that meant no deaths on my team. Very satisfying! (Especially given that my previous failed attempt at the mission started quite hilariously badly, with three of my four men getting cut down in the opening turn :)
faetal on 1/6/2011 at 18:25
If anyone has a spare code, I'd be very interested :)
Aerothorn on 1/6/2011 at 19:05
I'd totally buy one and gift a copy if my gaming backlog wasn't overwhelmed.
If I buy this in a year will anyone still be playing?
Volitions Advocate on 1/6/2011 at 20:51
Note to those sharing keys.
It looks like if you were given a key from a friend, you use the same activation key to get the game, but if you want to activate it on steam only one of you are able to. I just tried activating the key Matthew gave me on steam and it says its already been activated and it wont let me. NBD really, just means I wont be using steam to play it. But if you're handing out your 2nd copy, make sure that if you want it on steam you activate it there first. Or your buddy could take your steam activation away from you.
Volitions Advocate on 1/6/2011 at 23:24
Tried that already, gave me the same key. didn't work. its no biggie.
henke on 7/7/2011 at 12:05
So what is everyone's usernames in this game? Mine is "Henke". Just played the tutorial and one mission against the CPU before delving into the MP. I got challenged by a dude with 10 wins under his belt but I still kicked his ass. :cheeky: Then again he didn't seem to put the same thought into his every move the way I did. In the end he even had his last grenadier punch his own ticket before I could get to him. :p
I like that the turns can be on hold indefenitely and that games can stretch out for weeks if one so wishes, just like a high-level chessgame. That also makes playing against people in different timezones a non-issue. So let me know your usernames and let's DUKE IT OUT. :cool:
henke on 13/7/2011 at 11:58
Steam tells me that I've played 20 hours of Frozen Synapse now. I've only done a handful of MP games so most of that is the singleplayer campaign(which I think I'm nearing the end of(I'm at the university)). I didn't expect much from the story in this game. When I first started the SP I was treated to a bunch of dosiers about the different factions and technologies in the game, as well as conversations(more like monolgues really, as the playercharacter doesn't say a word) with the people in my organization. I wasn't interested in that stuff at all and just clicked the Start Mission button. But quite soon, maybe on the first or second mission, I started becoming interested in this conflict that I was a driving force in. Why did I work for Petrov's Shard and what had these Enyo:Nomad guys done that was so bad we were fighting them?
Although most of the missions are the same scenarios over and over again(assault, capture the zone, escort the VIP, etc.) the game does a good job of making them relevant to the plot of the game. For instance one of your first assignments is to extract undercover agent Kate Soulsby out of an Enyo:Nomad complex, and after that Kate often shows up between missions to share her thoughts on how things are going. She's perhaps the most morally righteous person in the organization, though commited to the cause she often questions if our methods are too brutal. Nix is the leader of Petrov's Shard, he was one fo the founders of Enyo:Nomad but left after he became disillusioned with the organization, now he works to bring it down. Belaqcua is a wisecracking AI who will frequently comment on the going's on with the same detached cynisism as our local TTLG forum wiseasses. The writing for all the characters is really good, and all of them are complex and multi-faceted. Even the people most commited sometimes seem to waver, or seem to be doing it for less-than-noble reasons.
But the biggest reason I've ended up spending 20 hours with this game over the past week is still the gameplay. Much of it might simply be the thrill of getting re-aquainted with a genre I haven't played in a decade. But as I'm plotting out the paths for my shotgundudes rocketlauncherdudes am I not reminded of Jagged Alliance, but rather of every MP FPS I've ever played. I know that when you've got a shotgun you're gonna lose against a sniper over a long distance. I know that if you have a grenadelauncher and you're being chased by a guy with an assaultrifle you need to fire the grenade in the same direction you're running and calculate that it will explode just as your pursuer comes running by. And the right man with the right gun in the right situation can do an obscene amount of damage.
For instance in one recent mission I was down to one guy against 5 enemies. Luckily my guy had a shotgun, while my enemies had assaultrifles and we were in close quarters tight-hallways-combat. Through meticulous planning and running though simulations for all the possible scenarios I could think of before hitting the Prime button I ended up winning the mission. Other times you might feel like everything is going your way and you've got all the bases covered only to have everything go painfully, soulcrushingly wrong in one single turn. So, you analyze what you did wrong, and how you could have avoided the disaster, and hit the Restart Mission button.
tl;dr: Frozen Synapse is my GOTY for 2011 at this point. :)
henke on 18/7/2011 at 13:32
Just beat it. Steam says 31.5 hours played total, so around 30 hours for the single player campaign. Good plot and dialogue although it gets a bit silly at the end. Fantastic gameplay. 10/10
If anyone wants to play some MP against me my username is Henke. I have challenged several of you dudes but so far none have dared accept. Wise choice.
