Savage 2 - Free FPS/RTS/RPG Hybrid - Extremely Polished!

Bridger

I have to say I'm extremely surprised that there isn't a Geeknights show dedicated to Savage 2. It seems like a game that's just up Scott and Rym's ally since they adore NS so much (which is also an awesome free game BTW). You can find a lot of great info about it at www.playsavage2.com. Best of all, it's now free! I hadn't played the game in a very long time but came back to it recently and found out that it's now free to download and play, but if you pay $10 to support the developers you get access to special player tracking and 3 extra classes (which don't get played much anyway).

For those interested, I highly recommend checking out the site linked above, but here is the skinny:

• Like NS, the objective of the game is very RTS. Both sides have a base and need to spread out around the map capturing gold mines and other strategic locations and building spawn points and defensive structures on them. The gold from these mines goes to the Team's commander who sees the game from a top down view and is the only one able to build buildings and towers and such. The commander also has the ability to provide healing and other buffs/debuffs to ongoing battles.
• Also like NS, it has two asymmetric teams, the Humans and the Beasts. Each has roughly equivalent classes in terms of role, but with quite different playstyles. For instance, the human scouts can cloak and become invisible, while the Beast shapeshifters can transform to look just like a human character and sneak behind enemy lines that way.
• The combat emphasizes melee and suprisingly does a very good job with it. I haven't seen an FPS that does melee well until now.

I cannot recommend this highly enough, and the best part is it's free now

Omnutia

Nice advert, I'm not much of an RTS fan myself but I'm sure someone might like it.

P.S. Scott (Apreche) will be along shortly to denounce this as the worst thing to hit a processor since hydrochloric acid, please try not to be discouraged.

Walker

My experience with the first Savage was not very good. It was kind of grindy and slow, and required hardly any FPS skill to play. Any idea if the Savage 2 changed the formula very much?

Apreche

Nice advert, I'm not much of an RTS fan myself but I'm sure someone might like it.

P.S. Scott (Apreche) will be along shortly to denounce this as the worst thing to hit a processor since hydrochloric acid, please try not to be discouraged.

Yep, looks to me like this game has too much of the old MMO perpetual-state to be of any interest. Take out the leveling, items, etc. and call me back.

Bridger

I only played the original savage demo a little bit. It was a bit rough around the edges but i really liked the idea, so i pre-ordered savage 2 at the time to support the developers. Then the game took so long to come out I forgot about it for about a year and a half. When it did come out it was a bit rough as well.

However, the developers have been patching and tweaking and fixing the game for about 2 years running now. It's one of the most polished games I've ever seen as a result. If you like it i highly suggest spending $10 on a prime account to support the developers. There's not enough good indie developers who create games tailored for people who enjoy good gameplay as opposed to licensed products.

Also, i just found: http://s2howto.com/action-player which should help you get started if your the type that likes to research stuff before you play

Bridger

Nice advert, I'm not much of an RTS fan myself but I'm sure someone might like it.

P.S. Scott (Apreche) will be along shortly to denounce this as the worst thing to hit a processor since hydrochloric acid, please try not to be discouraged.

Yep, looks to me like this game has too much of the old MMO perpetual-state to be of any interest. Take out the leveling, items, etc. and call me back.

Well the leveling and items only occurs on a per-game basis. It's the same as natural selection where you can get more advanced weapons as the game goes on. You can afford better items over the course of the 40 mins to an hour of gameplay and tweak out your character with stats that reflect your playstayle. It's similar to Enemy Territory (The RTCW one) in that fashion.

However, like any FPS, all experience/levels/stats/gold reset to 0 at the beginning of the next map. There's no persistent state to the game. There is, however, a system that rates your overall experience with the game and uses "levels" to rank players by their stats. This has NO impact on the game. It is simply a stat-tracking feature.

If you like NS as much as you claim on the podcast scott, i challenge you to try this game out for a week and not fall in love with it.

Edit: Sorry for the double post, i couldn't find the edit button. I must be blind :P

Apreche

If I had come across this game by chance, maybe I would try it. However, the fact that you join these forums and immediately start one thread, only to so shamelessly sell something makes me want to stay far far away. If you just wanted to advertise, you could have purchased the banner ad you see on the left hand side of the page.

Cremlian

If I had come across this game by chance, maybe I would try it. However, the fact that you join these forums and immediately start one thread, only to so shamelessly sell something makes me want to stay far far away. If you just wanted to advertise, you could have purchased the banner ad you see on the left hand side of the page.

well the shameless sell did have enough information to know that you both like NS and might be interested in the game so it's not as bad as some shameless sells...

Rym

I'll try the game. Never knock a game unless you either try it or have enough information to systematically manufacture said knocking.

Bridger

If I had come across this game by chance, maybe I would try it. However, the fact that you join these forums and immediately start one thread, only to so shamelessly sell something makes me want to stay far far away. If you just wanted to advertise, you could have purchased the banner ad you see on the left hand side of the page.

I personally figure it more of a recommendation than a "selling" since I don't personally have any stake in the game's success (other than that of a fan who would like to see the community grow).

I met you guys at connecticon and started listening to all of the back podcasts and today i looked around both the forums and the podcast archive cause i figured there must be an episode about this game somewhere, i want to hear it. I was pretty shocked to see it was never mentioned at all. I find I am almost always in line with rym and scott (and yahtzee) on their views of games these days (90% are crap). I wanted to hear your opinion on this one.

Rym

. I wanted to hear your opinion on this one.

Scott aside, you'll get mine as soon as I get a chance to play. ^_~

GreatTeacherMacRoss

I played Savage in beta (the first one game, not the new one) and I could definitely see the appeal. I agree it is very NS-like, and while I can't speak for the second game, the first was a good deal of fun. My problem with the original Savage was horrendous netcode that never seemed to get finished, and very very jerky animation that made enemies hard to hit at a distance. Now, this was all beta so it's possible much of this got figured out. I think Scrym will take a passing fancy in it before going back to NS.

Vhdblood

I'm actually enjoying this game quite a bit. Seems a bit buggy, but has a good tutorial (kinda slow) and the gameplay is quite fun.

Apreche

I was pretty shocked to see it was never mentioned at all.

Shocked that with only hundreds of podcast episodes and thousands upon thousands, perhaps millions, of video games that one obscure game was never mentioned! Shocking!

Cremlian

I was pretty shocked to see it was never mentioned at all.

Shocked that with only hundreds of podcast episodes and thousands upon thousands, perhaps millions, of video games that one obscure game was never mentioned! Shocking!

Scott is a troll today :-p

gomidog

No, he's not trying to troll. This is just the standard "I am a Busy Man and there is too much Media for me to consume" line.

Cremlian

No, he's not trying to troll. This is just the standard "I am a Busy Man and there is too much Media for me to consume" line.

That's still trolling...

gomidog

I thought trolling implies intent. Unless you mean that he is always a troll, regardless of anything else.

Cremlian

Unless you mean that he is always a troll, regardless of anything else.

yes ^_^

Bridger

I played Savage in beta (the first one game, not the new one) and I could definitely see the appeal. I agree it is very NS-like, and while I can't speak for the second game, the first was a good deal of fun. My problem with the original Savage was horrendous netcode that never seemed to get finished, and very very jerky animation that made enemies hard to hit at a distance. Now, this was all beta so it's possible much of this got figured out. I think Scrym will take a passing fancy in it before going back to NS.

FWIW, I tried S2 when it came out originally and was turned off by a buggy netcode. However, the guys who develop it have been patching it for almost two years now. The game came out in Jan of '08 and had a patch just this past september that included a number of map fixes, some balance tweaks, and UI fixes. It is almost a completely different game from the one i played back at launch. The melee system has been cleaned up and the netcode is very good from my experience.

I was pretty shocked to see it was never mentioned at all.

Shocked that with only hundreds of podcast episodes and thousands upon thousands, perhaps millions, of video games that one obscure game was never mentioned! Shocking!

Shocked that two people who get feedback from probably thousands of gamers, who are hardcore gamers themselves in the gaming scene, who like other games which are very much like this one, haven't played it yet. Does that clear it up? :P

Now i have a new question. I tried to edit the top post a bit (it does seem a bit like a sell, sorry about that >_<), but it said i couldn't. I'm on probation until I learn proper grammar and spelling? I cannot find any information about this feature of the board and I'm currently at a loss as to what it is referencing. I always thought I was one of the more "well-spoken" of the Internet's posters. Is it an automated spam blocker for new accounts? I can't create this topic in the correct forum for the question because I can't post new topics

gomidog

Well, you don't consistently capitalize "i" to start. Wait until Mr. Period gets here. He'll explain the whole thing to you. Basically, although you may consider yourself well spoken, you have made some glaring grammatical errors that seem to have attracted the ire of the grammar mods. Yes, that's right: We have grammar mods here. Welcome to our world.

Also: I am in the game industry, and I tend to keep up with the indie game news at least to some extent, but I was not familiar with your game until now. It looks interesting, and I'll give it a shot, but you really can't blame Rym and Scott for not knowing.

Bridger

Well, you don't consistently capitalize "i" to start. Wait until Mr. Period gets here. He'll explain the whole thing to you. Basically, although you my consider yourself well spoken, you have made some glaring grammatical errors that seem to have attracted the ire of the grammar mods. Yes, that's right: We have grammar mods here. Welcome to our world.

Also: I am in the game industry, and I tend to keep up with the indie game news at least to some extent, but I was not familiar with your game until now. It looks interesting, and I'll give it a shot, but you really can't blame Rym and Scott for not knowing.

OK, I understand the interest in attempting to keep the pokemon kiddies and steam-type forum trolls out. However, the first post i made here is unedited and I capitalized I in every single instance I've found. Firefox has a spell check built into it and I use it on a regular basis. I'm not entirely sure what else might have been referenced. I've seen some horrendous posting on forums (single paragraph that goes on for 10 lines but is only composed of 2 sentences, etc.), but I never considered myself one of them.

I feel this might be somewhat due to the content of my first post, which does appear to be an "advert" as someone put it. I apologize for that. I've run my own podcast before, I can understand the wariness. I tried to edit it to make it less overtly offensive in that sense, but was prohibited due to the grammar probation.

I would like to participate in these forums more. Is the next step simply to continue posting replies to threads until I have "proved" myself worthy of the grammar mods?

Apreche

However, the first post i made here is unedited, and I capitalized I in every single instance I've found

GreatTeacherMacRoss

Well, you don't consistently capitalize "i" to start. Wait until Mr. Period gets here. He'll explain the whole thing to you. Basically, although you my consider yourself well spoken, you have made some glaring grammatical errors that seem to have attracted the ire of the grammar mods. Yes, that's right: We have grammar mods here. Welcome to our world.

Also: I am in the game industry, and I tend to keep up with the indie game news at least to some extent, but I was not familiar with your game until now. It looks interesting, and I'll give it a shot, but you really can't blame Rym and Scott for not knowing.

OK, I understand the interest in attempting to keep the pokemon kiddies and steam-type forum trolls out. However, the first post i made here is unedited and I capitalized I in every single instance I've found. Firefox has a spell check built into it and I use it on a regular basis. I'm not entirely sure what else might have been referenced. I've seen some horrendous posting on forums (single paragraph that goes on for 10 lines but is only composed of 2 sentences, etc.), but I never considered myself one of them.

I feel this might be somewhat due to the content of my first post, which does appear to be an "advert" as someone put it. I apologize for that. I've run my own podcast before, I can understand the wariness. I tried to edit it to make it less overtly offensive in that sense, but was prohibited due to the grammar probation.

I would like to participate in these forums more. Is the next step simply to continue posting replies to threads until I have "proved" myself worthy of the grammar mods?

Patience and diligence, grasshopper.

Bridger

However, the first postimade here is unedited,and I capitalized I in every single instance I've found

Touche sir. Touche indeed. However ironic my statement is, the fact remains that it's content is true. The first post is well formatted and gramaticly sound as far as i can tell. So what this implies is anytime anybody makes a mistake while posting they go on probation? Or is it just new accounts? Am I going to have to worry about every little mistake I make putting me back onto this probation once I've proven myself?

blockquote>Patience and diligence, grasshopper.

Fair enough. I guess I don't understand the necessity. I understand the desire to keep the boards free from people who post a block of text that is hard to read. I certainly feel that creating a legible post is very important. I do not feel that a mispelled word here and there, or a missing comma deserve retribution. They do not take away from the readability of the post; at least not to me. I guess it feels like the punishement doesn't fit the crime in my eyes.

I wonder if it's not someone using the letter of the law to defeat the spirit of the law? The letter of the law being "if you don't use proper grammar and spelling you will be on probation." The spirit of the law being "lets keep the boards civilized so they are easy to read." It seems as though someone took offense to my first post being an "advert," as it were, and used the best method for putting me on probation that was availible. If that is not the case, that's fine. That simply means you guys take grammar and spelling a hell of a lot more seriously than I feel is necessary.

But to each his own. It's your board. Run it however you want to. I'll see if I feel it's worth my time to attempt to earn back my privilage to post new topics. I guess that depends on the quality of the boards. I do enjoy the show. Rym and scott often echo my thoughts on games like very few other game commentary does (I recently tried Burning Wheel on their recomendation alone and it's fantastic!). I was hoping to find a community of like-minded individuals. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this grammar point.


I won't argue the point anymore, lets get this thread back on track!

On Topic:

If you've played the game, what are your thoughts? How does it compare to NS? These are the only two well-done games of the FPS/RTS hybrid genre that I found that work (don't even get me started on that horrible battleswarm game).

After just listening to the NS geeknights show, I think i have to say NS is probably a better game. I'd almost forgotten how good the atmosphere in NS is and it made me think that S2 doesn't have all that much. The game is beautiful to be sure, and it's not trying to make a scary atmosphere that way that NS is. Yet it's that feeling when your the last marine alive of a scouting expedition, behind enemy lines. That can't really be replicated in S2 as far as I've found.

gomidog

Even I, a friend of Rym and Scott, have gotten warned on occasion. The occasional slip-up is forgiven as long as the content is good, and the error appears to be just a typo that has slipped past the poster's radar. You, however, persist in posting "i" and misspelling, despite having been reprimanded.

However ironic my statement is, the fact remains that its content is true. The first post is well-formatted and grammatically sound as far as I can tell.

I think this made the mods slap you with the banner to see if you would improve. It's not helping. That's why it says probation.

Here, let me explain using words you got wrong in your previous post: mispelled punishement availible, Rym and scott recomendation.

Kate Monster

I'll try the game. Never knock a game unless you either try it or have enough information to systematically manufacture said knocking.

This is a bit of a tangent, but I wanted to point out how incredibly wise this statement is. A lot of people, myself included, prejudge movies, games, books, etc. without ever having experienced them. This is not to say that people can't make reasoned decisions based on previews, reviews, word of mouth, but to attempt speak from authority without first hand knowledge is preposterous.
Hurrah to Rym for pointing it out!

Bridger

Even I, a friend of Rym and Scott, have gotten warned on occasion. The occasional slip-up is forgiven as long as the content is good, and the error appears to be just a typo that has slipped past the poster's radar. You, however, persist in posting "i" and misspelling, despite having been reprimanded.

However ironic my statement is, the fact remains thatitscontent is true. The first post is well-formatted andgrammaticallysound as far asIcan tell.

I think this made the mods slap you with the banner to see if you would improve. It's not helping. That's why it says probation.

OK, I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't routinely re-read my posts to check for grammar and spelling mistakes. I consider it a waste of time since it is perfectly readable 99% of the time. Obviously the mods here think readable isn't enough. Perhaps I'll just enjoy the podcast.

Anyway, I've got all the information on this subject that I need. Either I must post without error most of the time or I don't get to start new discussions. That's what i was looking for (perhaps it should be explicitly posted somewhere? I didn't find a "rules" section). We can get back on topic now.

Vhdblood

Even I, a friend of Rym and Scott, have gotten warned on occasion. The occasional slip-up is forgiven as long as the content is good, and the error appears to be just a typo that has slipped past the poster's radar. You, however, persist in posting "i" and misspelling, despite having been reprimanded.

However ironic my statement is, the fact remains thatitscontent is true. The first post is well-formatted andgrammaticallysound as far asIcan tell.

I think this made the mods slap you with the banner to see if you would improve. It's not helping. That's why it says probation.

OK, I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't routinely re-read my posts to check for grammar and spelling mistakes. I consider it a waste of time since it is perfectly readable 99% of the time. Obviously the mods here think readable isn't enough. Perhaps I'll just enjoy the podcast.

At some point, you get used to typing everything right the first time, or at least catching yourself as soon as you have an error. I rarely proofread my posts, and if I do, I scan for content, not grammar.

Sail

Just don't sweat the banner. As many will tell you, the new members often get slapped with it and don't get it removed until it's far outdated. It's the "I am a troll, don't feed me" banner that you have to worry about.

Σπεκωσποκ

Just don't sweat the banner. As many will tell you, the new members often get slapped with it and don't get it removed until it's far outdated. It's the "I am a troll, don't feed me" banner that you have to worry about.

Is there anyone who still has one of those left?