With the upcoming Steam sale and other holiday sales, I could use some video game recommendations, specifically PC games.
Games I love:
Portal/Portal 2
Mass Effect 1/2
Half Life 1/2/etc.
Games I’m less happy with:
Batman Arkham Asylum
Whatever the newest Tomb Raider game was
Far Cry
Basically, I’m looking for a reasonably low priced FPS (like Half Life) or RPG (like Mass Effect), but one that plays best on a keyboard/mouse rather than a controller (I thought Batman and Tomb Raider were more designed for controllers, and I hate playing with those). However, I don’t like shooting people (monsters, zombies, and enemies like the Half Life combine are OK). Far Cry and Call of Duty, for example, make me, I don’t know, uncomfortable.
My computer is relatively up to date (Core i7 920 with dual AMD 4670 graphics cards using Crossfire).
You might like Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It’s perfectly possible to do a “pacifist run” which involved stealth and a tranquilizer gun. You, ultimately, do have to kill four people, and there’s a small chance in one scene late in the game that a robot will blow up a couple people by accident, but you can play 98% of the game without killing another human (just tranquilizing or CQCing them unconscious).
Hm. STALKER perhaps? Most of the human enemies that you have to fight are zombified or brainwashed, and a lot of the combat is against non-human mutants. I’ve played Shadow of Chernobyl and Call of Pripyat. The latter has better gameplay IMO, but the former was the most atmospheric game I’d ever played until Metro: 2033.
Metro 2033 might be an option - there are a lot of human enemies (though not exclusively), but it’s often possible to avoid combat with them. That makes it a sneaky game rather than an FPS, though, and the stealth mechanic isn’t great. (The game is definitely a flawed gem - read around a bit if you’re curious about it. It can be very frustrating, but has incredible atmosphere)
My favourite RPGs are the Witcher games; however, again, there’s a fair number of humans (or elves and dwarves) that need killing, among all the monsters and undead. Still, seeing as how you’re presumably against killing people in games for moral reasons, you might really enjoy the games; they’re very much grounded in morality, and about making difficult decisions in a world where there are no saints, few heroes, and a lot of wickedness.
On the subject of RPGs, I recently finished Alpha Protocol after getting it on sale for $2.50 I believe; it might be on a similar sale soon. It’s a highly flawed game and deserves its rather negative reviews (the result of crappy management under production, from what I’ve read), but behind the flaws lurks a good setting and some nice ideas; on balance, I really enjoyed it. It’s possible to go through the game without killing almost anyone (…actually, it might be possible to win without killing anyone at all, in retrospect) if you play as a stealth-oriented character using fists and tranquilizer darts to get by. Oh, it’s a console port, BTW, so you might hate it for that alone, although I got by fine with mouse&keyboard.
Well, for today only (that is, until 1pm tomorrow), Steam has Deus Ex: Human Revolution on sale for $24.99 ($29.99 for the augmented version), so if that’s more in the range of your price point, you might want to take advantage of that deal.
Good choice on CoP! Remember that it’s a fairly open-world game. Take the time to explore and do sidequests instead of just focusing on main quests. There’s also not the usual progression of weaponry - a salesman of custom weaponry in the first area provides some of the best guns in the game, for a price.
Since you’re looking for bargains - the Serious Sam HD games are on sale for less than $5 (for both together) on Steam for the next 3 hours - 90% off. I only played a demo of the original games, though; basically it seemed more like an arcade game or monster shooting gallery FPS (like Painkiller - if that’s your thing, it’s available cheap on GoG.com) than a “real” FPS with a story, but it seemed fun.
Serious Sam is very much the oldschool FPS style, in a completely over the top form. It’s you against a kazillion enemies, often from all directions. It plays like a first-person Smash TV at times. Great fun. You can’t go wrong with the HD updates of them.
I’ll second Serious Sam (because its serious fun) and also add Left For Dead 2. You said you don’t mind killing zombies and L4D2 is about as awesome of a zombie game as there is, and since its been out for over a year now I think its pretty cheap on Steam too. Lots of cool weapons, gore, interesting settings, etc.
Though the reviews were terrible, I’m enjoying Alpha Protocol. A lot like the Deus Ex series, you can play in many ways; go in guns blazing, or sneak around and tranq baddies instead. There’s a nice bit of espionage as well. It’s buggy and strange, but fun anyway. 10 bucks on Steam right now.
Dragon Age: Origins. It is an older game so you can get it cheap and it is basically the Fantasy version of Mass Effect.
Dragon Age 2 is not as universally liked but I liked it and it actually plays even more like Mass Effect if anything.
Almost everyone reading this is also playing Skyrim. You an think of it as a Fantasy FPS but it is much more than that.
I would also Recommend Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas. Also similar to Mass Effect but set in a “dieselpunk” Retro futuristic Post apocalyptic world. F3 is Washington DC and you can guess where NV takes place. You do shoot people but if you play as as good guy the people are almost all Gang thugs that if you squint really aren’t all that much different than Zombies.
