The Humble Indie Bundle has a new bundle where you donate however much you want and you get some games on Steam for free. The deal expires in six days, so act fast! You get some good games for donating any amount (even 30 cents, but how can you sleep at night, you cheap bastage!?). But the real prize is Frozen Synapse.
I'll admit, the graphics of Frozen Synapse really turned me off. But once you play past the tutorial, beat the first few levels, and get into the swing of things, it's really a simple, but deep, strategy game. This is dubbed a 'simultaneous, turn-based strategy' game. Basically, in the planning stage, you plan out your units maneuvers. At this point you can also try to predict your enemy movements by creating a mock scenario using the known position of the enemies. When both players are ready, they both hit the primer button and let the AI battle it out. There are five basic units: Shotgun, Machinegun, Sniper, Grenade, and Rocket. There is a sort of rock-paper-scissors element with the sniper, machinegun, and shotgun units, with the shotgun winning in close-range everytime, while the sniper will win over longer distances. But that is not always the case. A unit behind cover will win against a unit who is exposed, while a crouched unit will win against a standing unit. There are exceptions to some of these rules, but once you play through and beat the single player campaign, you should have a good idea what units are ideal for getting the job done. There is no element of 'randomness' and no hitpoints.
One thing neat about multiplayer is that you can make your move against someone who is offline. You can have multiple games going on over a period of weeks if you don't feel like staying up trying to finish a game. If you don't move for two weeks, however, you automatically lose.
The single-player campaign is one of the better single player stories in any strategy game since Starcraft, in my opinion. Some of the scenarios seem impossible, but once you beat the odds, it's quite satisfying. The music is also another great aspect of the game. If you like electronic game music from the 90's (think Crusader:No Remorse, Unreal Tournament, and Command and Conquer) then you'll love the Frozen Synapse's music, created by nervous_testpilot.
Definitely buy it if you love strategy games (turned based or realtime), and even if you don't like strategy games, try it out just by donating however much you want to the Humble Indie Bundle, which comes with some other great games. The money goes to a good cause so even if you don't intend to play anything you can gift the Steam keys to a friend.
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