Yakoob on 1/9/2013 at 19:49
Quote Posted by Brethren
Been playing this a bit. Enjoying it, but...the difficulty is steep. Frustratingly so at some times. I probably need to adjust my typically indoor Thieflike strategies to something different for the outdoors environment. You seem to have almost no chance in a direct fight with the robots, even with a gun, because ammo is so sparse. Sneaking works to degree, but it's not too likely that you'll be able to sneak all the way up to a "piece," grab it, and get away without being detected at some point.
Hmm, that makes me reconsider the game quite a bit; I'd consider myself a "Thiefer-light" in the sense I enjoy a bit of stealth but quickly grow impatient (i.e. like the Thief games but was nearly sick of stealth by the time I completed each one, and could never just sit in a shadow observing guards for 10 minutes).
Quote:
I would love the ability to go prone too, maybe at the cost of not being able to move, but it would give you near instant invisibility (except at very close range). .
This kind of reminds me of this one time I was playing Red Orchestra and crossing an open area with a fellow soldier when suddenly from the nearby hill a german tank rolls out and we're like "fuuu" dropping to the ground in the tall grass. The tank slowly approached us as we looked at each other in horror, then rolled on literally 2-3 feet of where we were lying, just baaarely missing us. Never noticed us thanks to the foliage too. That was hands down one of the more tense moments in a game I've had :p
Muzman on 2/9/2013 at 03:21
It's quite variable on how much camping you really can do, or would want to do, right now. I usually find that when I've sat somewhere long enough to really sus the pattern of a patrol, that's when the balloon shows up, headed straight for my hideyhole in the grass.
Quote Posted by Psychomorph
I've been completely out of loop with this. What's goin on, when they plan release and is there going to be a playable demo for all people, or all backers? Does it shape up nicely?
It's not a mil-sim, first of all. Stalker is the ballpark for this, in terms of landscape and gunplay (only this doesn't have Stalker's bullet modelling either). It's most repects it's Lite. The pace can be high and the feel can be loose. Everyone having low RoF weapons has its own charm too. But it's fun and still hard, don't doubt that. (the reaction so far does seem to want to pull it in two directions: One lot want it more like Minecraft CoD, somehow. The others want more Operation Flashpoint.)
They want to have single player complete by January/February area. (I think that'll be hard personally. The subtle tweaking with every new AI is going to be pretty major to get the feel right. and then they have to do it again every time they add something. And there's, as they say, 2.5 people working in it. Maybe -feature- complete by then). No idea on the demo. I'm sure they could sort something out with one island instead of five or something.
Now it's stable and only has one main enemy. But those guys carry an impressive lot of weight. As they add the other, weirder bots I expect the game will change a lot and even subtle tweaks can have exponential consequences. But they've stamped it alpha at a sensible point since the basis is solid now and they can build on that, (although that's pretty necessary given all the randomness I suppose. But still, you see things in "alpha" that are barely-featured crashware. This isn't that). I'll be hanging on to all my old builds as they change it since I expect they'll still be fun in their own right.
Jason Moyer on 1/5/2014 at 12:11
Just an FYI for anyone who has been waiting to get this, today is the official feature-complete launch of the game (sans multiplayer, which will be added later).
Also, it's goddamn amazing. It's STALKER or Far Cry 2 without the awful bits.
Shadowcat on 1/5/2014 at 15:30
Wait, what? It's out?
I've had literally two emails from them since I backed it; the last one was in June.
I didn't mind -- I didn't back the project to get involved with its development process -- but it would be nice if they at least communicated the big stuff! (like "we've finished the game" and "here's where you can download it" ?!).
Muzman on 1/5/2014 at 23:40
That's highly irregular. They've put out updates and issued new alpha's and betas every month right on schedule.
Anyway, yes, hurrah for v1
[video=youtube;akrT77X-IZA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akrT77X-IZA[/video]
Fafhrd on 2/5/2014 at 01:47
They seriously need to do something about the optimization of this thing. There is no reason that my video card should hit 80C within a minute of booting Sir, and yet Sleeping Dogs at max settings stabilizes at ~70.
I'd really like to play, but I can't because my PC sounds like a fucking jet engine. And yes, I've turned both VSYNC and Limit Frames on.
Muzman on 2/5/2014 at 02:36
Is that the latest one? I assume so. They did a big optimisation pass at beta which improved things a lot. It is still a fairly heavy game for whatever reason, despite its light cartooniness. I guess its methods are a bit crude. There's no data streaming, I think. They might simulate the AI over the whole island once they spawn etc. People report scenes with lots of transparencies (like certain types of trees and barbed wire) have big stresses on the rendering at times.
Submit your stuff to them. They'd probably appreciate it.
henke on 2/5/2014 at 04:35
Oh man that trailer looks amazing. :D
I'll get to this. Eventually.
BEAR on 23/5/2015 at 17:22
I know I'm late to the party but I see the last replies to this thread are fairly old. I've been playing Sir for 15-20 hours so far probably and I have to say I am super impressed. I've seen some not-great reviews, but as of this year I think they've fixed a lot of the bugs that were the source of a lot of the poor reviews.
The game is so much better than I would have expected from the original trailers (which looked cool but to me, overly optimistic, especially for a procedurally generated AI heavy game). It is tough at first for sure, but that is what makes it so good. The limited saving options makes the game much more tense, especially when you've been playing a long time without saving and get caught and have to make a run for it. Despite the difficulty, definitely play as Aristocrat (you start with almost nothing and have to explore for everything). I played a very short game as the officer who starts with a lot of guns, but realized that it would be more challenging and fun to have to explore for everything.
I don't know what problems the game had before the most recent patches but seriously, do yourself a favor and play this. I'm planning on buying a few copies just to gift people because a game like this that doesn't get the attention it deserves would be a real shame. If you like thief and stalker, you really cannot go wrong. I can't say enough good stuff for 20 bucks. If you are friends with me on steam, hit me up and I'll toss you a copy if I have an extra.
Pros:
Stealth: The stealth is a lot of fun and is done pretty well, robots will hear you if you run too loudly near them and they have pretty decent vision. I've been caught a number of times at a distance not realizing that I was a little to visible. I would like some indoor stealth, but this the kind of stealth I really wish STALKER had.
AI: The AI is remarkably good, once you figure it out (which took me a while tbh) you can start taking advantage of it, but for the most part its difficult to predict and there is enough randomness to keep it interesting. You are at enough of a disadvantage that even when you do figure the AI out there is plenty of room to make mistakes.
Difficulty: The difficulty is really perfect starting out, you are weak and vulnerable and have to run and hide. You eventually get the ability to fight, but it draws attention and is not a viable strategy most of the time to duke it out. You have enough health generally to take a few hits and run for it, but not too much more than that. This is perfect because some of the most tense moments are when you get caught and have to make a break for it. Some people might feel like the eating requirement is a hack, and maybe it is in a way but it definitely enhances the game. I'm sure they had a hard time trying to figure out how to keep the tension going and force you to move around a lot, but it works. The fast day/night cycle makes it more realistic in that respect. Honestly though, the way they dynamically take away your safe zones is genius, I'm sure it was a real pain to balance but it makes the game flow so well.
Scaling: I was afraid I would get bored as I was playing, but the way newer and more challenging AI show up gradually is great and keeps you on your toes. You find that some of your safe areas gradually become unsafe, until there is really nowhere you feel like you can hide indefinitely. The variety of AI keeps you constantly having to be on the lookout which is great.
Customization: I haven't gotten into customizing the game yet, but I can see after beating it the first time that I might want to customize the game to make it harder on myself. I know you can do things like changing the color of the robots eyes (a helpful visual aid) or removing them altogether. I think you can also reduce the sound they make, which would be great at making chance encounters more frequent and making it a lot harder to avoid the robots.
Humor: The readables you find are well done and offer just enough background while keeping things mysterious.
Music/sound: The music and sound are great. Some of the ambient tunes sound a lot like the sounds the robots make, which has me constantly checking over my shoulders. The conversations the robots have are funny (when they have them) but the sound a lot of robots make are really creepy. Pretty often I would find myself crouching in a hedgerow only to hear the sound of a specific type of robot coming towards me and its really nerve racking.
Environments: The environments are awesome, I've only really seen 3 so far (2 islands to go), but they are great for being procedurally generated. The wildlife (fairly limited as it is) makes it feel very organic and scares the crap out of me occasionally when a flock of birds take off right under your feet (and occasionally will alert robots at a distance).
Cons:
Occasionally the robots get stuck which breaks the immersion a little, usually though its one of the particularly big robots that I have yet to be caught by and who are fairly easy to avoid because of the noise they make.
A lot of the mechanics are not obvious early on, so I didn't necessarily use all the tools I had at my disposal. I think that its actually better to not experiment heavily near a save point to get good with everything until you really need to, using a new tool for the first or second time in a real situation where you are in danger is much better than looking it up or practicing in safety.
The Parts: The parts are sometimes well distributed, but occasionally they are all grouped together on one side of an island. On the industrial island, all the smoke stacks confused me and I had explored it for hours finding general stuff, thinking there was a trick and somehow the smokestacks had the parts until I finally found all 3 parts within sight of eachother. Mostly its been good though.
Finding the parts: Once you learn a few tricks to getting the parts, some of them can be fairly easy, but occasionally those methods backfire and you are running for your life.
Playthrough recommendations:
1. Don't save fanatically. The game tries to prevent this by making save points far away, but once you start traveling to other islands you can save more often than you realize at first. I still save for sure but try not to travel to a boat or the nexus JUST to save.
2. Play as aristocrat. You'll hate me for the first hour but believe me the game will be more fun.
3. Play it in decently long blocks. Its a lot like thief, you have to get into the mood and it takes 10 or 15 minutes to get into it but once you do it can be really fun.
4. Don't look stuff up unless you really have to. Especially don't look up the enemies and how to beat them. When a new one shows up its much better to have them be an unknown until you get caught and learn first hand what they do.
5. So basically, just wing it, that will probably be the most fun early on. Later when you are strategizing to actually beat it you can be more analytical.
