Posted by asteflix on 2016-05-18 00:24:14

Total War so soon.
It is the Warhammer kind.
May 24th hype wave.

Posted by asteflix on 2016-05-18 00:28:17

Civilization.
The newest one is coming.
October 21.

Posted by asteflix on 2016-05-18 00:30:37

In the shooter genre.
Doom came out four days ago.
Critically praised.

Posted by ianuk77 on 2016-05-18 00:35:33

Firstly, I hope you mean 16Gb of RAM..

Personally, my favourite strategy games have always been Civ series and also Europa Universalis. Depending on how much time you are willing to sink into a game you wont get much deeper than EU series, once you get over the steeeeeeep learning curve its unsurpassed in my opinion.

VLC - (and some sort of codec pack probably, Adobe reader/flash, java, WinRAR, AV(free are always ad-tastic now i find, I just use AVG still and pretty certain you can suppress some of the popups), chrome and the latest graphics card drivers are where I always start when ive got a new blank slate of a PC. You will always find something you missed..

Havent bothered with torrents for a while really but Vuze seemed to be still functional last time i did few weeks ago.

Posted by licker on 2016-05-18 00:45:56

I don't find Avast to be particularly pop-up heavy, but it's true that it will pop up now and again. Maybe there's a setting somewhere though I used, it really only happens at boot up once in a while for me.

I use X-Chat (or is it Y-Chat?). Works great for irc, never bugs me for anything other than if there's an update, but you can turn off notifications too if you like.

Also, Open Office seems to do everything I care about and doesn't cause me any headaches, but not knowing exactly what and how much you need MS office I can't say if it would be a proper replacement for you. Still seems you could try it and defer getting MS office until you've proven that OO won't satisfy your needs. You do have to be a bit careful with formats though, so depending on your work that might be a headache occasionally, it's only bugged me once, but the file I was working on was so heavily edited before I got it that I don't know that the fault was with OO or with something the previous reviewer tried to do. I'm also not a formatting wiz, so I typically just ignore that stuff since I'm responsible for technical review, it's likely that if you do more formatting related work you would understand issues that I don't even see.

As to games...

Well XCOM EW (eventually with Long War mod) could take up 100s of hours by itself. XCOM2 is also quite good, but lacking great content adding mods (at the moment) is probably 10s of hours unless you really love it so much you want to replay it (I didn't, but I still enjoyed it greatly). I found a Slitherine bundle of 10 games for $5 so I'm playing through some of those, I like Pandora quite a bit, but it has some warts. Though if you like SMAC(X) then a cheap copy of Pandora would scratch that itch. At least it seems to be much better than Beyond Earth.

I'm really up and down on Stellaris (don't own it). I watch it being played and think, wow, that's great, then I dig into details and think, wow that needs a lot of love still. There's the 'reboot' of MoO as well, but again, I'm not sure it really gets it right enough to be worth getting into.

Posted by xnoelx on 2016-05-18 01:28:40

According to Christer, Avast and AVG and Norton and the like are no better than Microsoft Security Essentials, and in some cases worse. However, I don't know if there's a version/equivalent for Windows 10.

Posted by WingedHuman on 2016-05-18 04:49:49

You'll need a Good ANtivirus and Antimalware program, some might do both, but it's better to double up.

1) I recommend firefox with AdBlockPlus to prevent crap from autoinstalling on your system.

2) Windows Security essentials + Malwarebytes Professional ($35/yr for 3x devices) is the best I've seen for malware/virus prevention.

VLC - Great media playing platform

Posted by Beanchilla on 2016-05-18 06:53:00

1) Definitely use chrome or firefox. Edge seems like it will be awesome eventually but without extensions it just isn't worth it right now.

2) Antivirus - Honestly I've just been using windows defender and firewall and it has worked great. I download quite a lot of things regularly and have been working freelance as a video editor for a few years without any issues. It's pretty great. If you feel the need to go beyond that bitdefender or malwarebytes have always been trustworthy to me.

VLC is the best media player in my opinion. It's great and lightweight too.


Tactical games are my bread and butter! I would definitely suggest picking up XCOM-2. Age of Wonders 3 is another one of my favorites, it's a bit like Civilization but focused almost entirely on warfare and building up an army of strange fantasy creature synergies. It's a lot of fun and the tactical combat is fantastic.

If you haven't played Frozen Synapse it's like Counter-Strike meets chess. You plan your moves and they play out simultaneously vs your opponent. It's a great game.

I also just picked up Stellaris. It's a lot of fun if you're into games like Galactic Civilizations. Not a tactics game, more grand strategy/4x but check it out if that's your thing. It needs to have it's AI fleshed out a bit but it's a great game.


Best of luck to you bud

Posted by jdm on 2016-05-18 08:58:57

Dropbox and OneDrive - might as well keep both, they're free and extra storage might be useful if one gets full. OneDrive has just announced they're shrinking storage for users but free so, why not.

LibreOffice - does everything Office does but free. Just change the default save formats to something that office can recognise for sharing docs.

Firefox - but chrome is just as good IMO.

Windows Defender - used Microsoft Security Essentials but it's now renamed to Windows Defender on windows 10. Free and non invasive. Comes pre installed with a perfectly good firewall too. Avast is good too.

VLC for videos. I use MediaMonkey for music and iPhone management but you need to have itunes installed (just never open it). Other programs that want to manage iPhone/Pod libraries need some of the iTunes files.

uTorrent for torrents

Highly trusted security brower sounds a bit bleurgh. Nothing is gonna have more support than chrome or firefox and as long as you follow basic sensible stuff (don't do banking over public wifi for example) you'll be fine.

Other useful bits: 7zip (lightweight unzipper, ooh er missus) and sumatra PDF reader.

Posted by jdm on 2016-05-18 09:00:14

^these are the bits that I use, not saying they're the best but they do what it says on tin for me.

Posted by Meltyman on 2016-05-18 10:29:35

I recommend using https://ninite.com/ to check what you could download.
This site makes it fast to do and is safe to use (like you could trust anyone who says that, but hey worked for me).

Posted by Christer on 2016-05-18 13:06:12

My two cents for what it's worth:

Antivirus: Uninstall whatever third-party AV tool you have. Windows 10 comes with its own (Windows Defender, used to be called Security Essentials) which is pretty much as good as any of the third-party ones out there and it doesn't bog down your system like the other ones do.

Media: If you like VLC, stick with it. It's reputable and solid.

Browser: Stick with Chrome. Edge is very new and is likely to be a pain in the behind for the time being. Try it out for a while if you're curious, but generally speaking it's not ready for prime yet. Stay *far* away from any non-reputable browser (ie, the Avast one, or the one from Comodo). They're terrible and add nothing. In fact, the Comodo "secure" browser disables absolutely crucial security settings (same-origin policy if you're technically minded). Essentially, they're all going to be productified versions of an existing browser (chromium is commonly used as a base). Better to stick with the original well-maintained version of the browser (ie, Chrome in this case).

Cloud: Dropbox is probably the best choice here. It's been around for a long time and it's their primary business so it's well tested and works well.

Torrent: No clue. I'll let others respond to that one.

IRC: This is a pet peeve of mine. I dislike mIRC because of its history of security problems and the ancient user interface. Hydra has a better interface but is a pain to get to do basic things (autojoining servers, and onconnect scripts for authentication). My current Windows IRC client is actually a windows store app (IRC Explorer, full paid version), but it has been acting up on me lately (random freezing without any visible cue that it did) so I've gone back to using Linkinus on the Mac instead. Annoying to say the least.

Posted by awambawamb on 2016-05-18 14:05:32

down to what I know...

Browser: why not the good ol Firefox? I'm still happy with that.
Torrents: i use uTorrent, but I always disable the ads. it's just a couple of clicks.
Office: LibreOffice is ok but if you work with macros and andvanced stuff, MS Office.
Antivirus: I use Sophos antivirus atm.
IRC: I use either Pidgin or Quassel

at portableapps.com you'll find a lot of useful stuff that doesn't need installation...

Posted by happygrue on 2016-05-18 16:04:05

IRC: I have used Quassel for a long time (the standalone client, 5+ years at least?) and quite enjoyed it, though sometimes I wish there was a lighter client with a similar feel.

Games: I still quite enjoy a lot of the older game and lurk around GoG until they go on Sale. I'm sure a sad old squad tactical gamer already has a copy, but I note that Jagged Alliance 2 is on sale on Steam http://store.steampowered.com/app/1620/

(and on the chance that you never played it, set down your coffee and buy it this very instant).

For more recent fare: I've just picked up Table Top Simulator, which I couldn't run well until recently. There are a number of board games that have free mods that allow you to play a wide range of "classic board games". I grabbed it to play Twilight Imperium 3 (Or rather, a variant set of house rules that makes it way better: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=591279712) So if you are a board gamer with your friends scattered far and wide it's possible you might be able to find whatever you wish to play on there and convince your friends to get it too..

Oh, and obviously BB2... :lulz:

Posted by happygrue on 2016-05-18 16:05:44

Table Top Simulator itself is here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/286160/

Posted by happygrue on 2016-05-18 16:22:55

Oh, and I see Fallout 4 wasn't mentioned. I haven't played it, but it sounds like the kind of thing you may want to consider.

Posted by Azure on 2016-05-18 18:52:51

If you are going to play XCOM: Enemy within - you probably want to get the Long War Mod. It is a complete upgrade of the game. So many awesome upgrades - I am holding off on XCOM 2 for at least another year so it can be more polished.

http://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/88/?

Posted by Wotfudboy on 2016-05-18 21:04:26

I know where you're coming from. I bought a new all singing & dancing laptop for gaming from PC Specialist back in Sept 2012.

Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3840QM (2.80GHz) 8MB
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 680M - 4.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (4 x 4GB)
240GB INTEL® 330 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 500MB/sR | 450MB/sW)
With a few extras it cost me around £2k...

However, a few years on I am just about scratching minimum requirements on canirunit.com - worst of all, according to PCSpecialist, I can't upgrade the graphics card because "although the card port in the laptop is compatible to change the MXM graphics card that you have installed, the laptop wouldn't know what to do with it and would simply fall over"...

I thought I had a future-proofed laptop but it turns out that's not so... I needed a laptop as opposed to a gaming PC for reasons I won't go into, but for me it's certainly painful. Not sure I have the salary to justify such a purchase again... fortunately the fumbbl client isn't quite so demanding as the latest PC games.

Posted by awambawamb on 2016-05-19 11:32:26

Fallout 4 is more of an adventure game.
you can't really roleplay it since you're forced to follow the path of the do-gooder. options are very, very limited.