21 August, 2017

Brigador Review

It took me a long time to think about what I'd say about Brigador, as I usually list a negative first and I'm very judgemental when it comes to games. Brigador only had very mild negatives, along with some very strong positives that makes it difficult for me to say anything bad about it.

From an excellent soundtrack to the incredible gameplay, to the lore and graphics design, everything about Brigador appears to have been well made and shows great attention to detail. A gentle learning curve and a campaign that will teach you and then present you with ever increasing challenges followed with free play contracts that will let you go at the speed and difficulty you prefer means that you will always be able to customize your experience to tailor it to what you like and what you can handle.
The maps are designed well and pretty to look at, with everything inside except for the map boundaries being fully destructible. You are even encouraged to do so, and destroying things gives you a bonus.

A large selection of vehicles, weaponry and enemies ensures that there is a lot for you to choose from, with every piece of gear you pick having its use and using your gear well is usually the key to success. But with all that gear, you can pick and choose how you want to play. Stealth, guns blazing, or a mix is all possible with none of the weapons seeming overpowered or underpowered. And everything you see ingame is a thing you can take and use.

The only negative I've found was the control scheme, which doesn't always work well with every vehicle. But it is barely a negative as you can change your control scheme as needed. Out of all the things in game, everything works together amazingly well and handles great, both in the missions and with the overarching theme.

Brigador is one of those rare games where you do not regret any moment of your time playing it. Everything can be made to be the way you enjoy it the best while at the same time offering you challenges exactly the way you want them. It seems to do everything right and has no real negatives to it that I could find. Brigador tells you to enjoy yourself, and it gives you all the tools you need to do so.

21 July, 2017

Friday 13th: The Game Review

I was going to write a detailed review and put effort into it, but since the devs don't seem to care I won't care either. In Friday 13th, you can have a great time or a terrible time, depending on who you play with and the amount of bugs you run into. Generally from what I've found it's people who don't speak English, with those who do speak English either teamkilling you for fun or being excellent people.

The gameplay itself is pretty nice. You don't need to run scared all the time and you can actually fight back against Jason, though it's more of a way to buy time so you can get away than anything else. If you run, there are a large amount of invisible walls around the map, making it a risk to go anywhere that Jason won't look for you. Luckily, you do have the advantage around windows and cabins, and you are faster when you sprint.

The best part about this game, in my opinion, is that you can talk to eachother and Jason while playing. Trash talk, pleading, and misdirection brings a lot to the game. Telling Jason that the others are escaping in a car will make him usually pull out his map to see if the car moved, buying you precious time. And not just once did I hear someone plead for their life and told them I'll save them for last. Out of everything, being able to meaningfully interact with people the rare few times they know English is what makes it fun.

But then the bad is plentiful as well. Only three maps, many councilors being just terrible in general, a kickstarter-only Jason that is just flat out better than any other Jason you can ever hope to get and bugs+exploits still in the game long after launch leads to a feeling that this is not very well managed or planned out, and ultimately combining these factors with the devs being ban-happy at the wrong people and ignoring the people who do need to be at least warned leads to me concluding that this deserves a negative as it stands right now. At the very least until the devs bring about a serious effort to address everything they've been ignoring now.

Friday 13th is a nice idea, that was almost there. It's massively overpriced for what it does and would have been great if it was done by someone who actually gave a shit. Wait for a substantial sale if you do want to get it, because what they're asking for now is too much.

14 July, 2017

Predynastic Egypt Review

Predynastic Egypt is a resource management and optimization game in which you overcome trials and ordeals and establish Egypt as unified kingdom.
From humble beginnings with simple decisions to make to managing a large amount of workers while planning several turns ahead, Predynastic Egypt offers a pleasant if a bit simple of an experience. There aren't a lot of different mechanics involved, but they do not need to be. With a simple foundation and easily controlled, intuitive basic gameplay you'll be able to manage your tribe and deal with what Egypt has to offer. Multiple difficulty options allow you to customize the game to your liking while everything is explained in enough detail that you will not have to worry about not knowing what is going on, though it still doesn't give you more information than you really need.

One concern is replayability. As it is the same map every time, with the same ordeals every time at the same turns it becomes predictable and later playthroughs will feel repetitive. At the highest difficulties, it's all about solving everything perfectly, with perfect timing on everything and good luck on the random events. If you enjoy achievement hunting, you will get plenty of replayability out of it, but otherwise there isn't much reason to play it a second time.

As for the trials and ordeals, they are challenging when you first go through them, but fair. With a bit of planning and forward thinking you can win the game on your first try. Playthroughs after the first will make it a lot easier and unless you actively avoid doing them it is difficult to really fail at any of them.

A relaxed atmosphere and simple base mechanic means this is mostly a casual game, pleasant to play and worth the time to get it, Predynastic Egypt does what it tells you it does, does it very well, and overall delivers a good experience at a good price.

25 June, 2017

Carrier Deck Review

Carrier Deck is a simple management game where you control the deck of a carrier, select mission loadouts and manage who flies and where. Don't be fooled by the suggestion of a simulation game. It is definitely not one of those.

While it isn't the most detailed by far, and certainly not hard, it is capable of occasionally providing decent challenges and keeping the action up at a decent flow in the campaign. There are however several issues with it that make it difficult to really get into it.
(Campaign) Missions feel too small, and don't seem to really present a challenge except for the last few. But they are decent enough and enjoyable to play. On the contrary, 'quick' missions and endless mode are not really enjoyable as there is a large amount of waiting and when things do happen they seem to be randomly throwing things at you regardless of whether it's possible to succeed. This makes the endless mode more about luck than actually managing your carrier.

The other flaws include the hitbox for clicking on things being just too small on many things, leading to clicking off something and wasting time, and the airplane/heli pathing being terrible. They only move in pre-determined paths, and when they run into one another they wait for only a second or two before deciding to turn around and go back to where they were before you ordered them. This in turn makes managing any more than two or three things at the same time a huge pain in the ass, as you need to babysit almost everything or risk them deciding they don't really want to do what you told them to.

Yet with all that, it's still decent. It's certainly not amazing, but it does what it tells you it will do, and it does so well enough to entertain. But it doesn't go past that, or try anything special, but it isn't bad at least. It's worth the price it asks for, but I wouldn't recommend it if you weren't into any kind of management game. For those that are, Carrier Deck is worthwhile enough to try out.

23 June, 2017

Orbt XL Review

Orbt XL is a small game about orbiting a black hole and not crashing into things

It's simple, cheap, and a pretty decent price. The control scheme is simple(Left mouse button to go further, let go to go closer) and the gameplay itself is varied enough to be entertaining.
A few special cases mix things up, the obstacles are varied enough to be entertaining, and the gameplay simple enough to be easy to understand.

It represents a good price to value ratio, and it is pleasant to play for a while but it is certainly just a short thing to spend some time on and then move on. Worth picking up if you run across it bored or otherwise have a euro laying around doing nothing.

09 June, 2017

Take on Mars Review

Take on Mars is more simulation than game, and clearly showing that the goal was a simulation first, and a game second. That said, it remains very interesting and works quite well as a game, when you can figure out how to do things and get it to work.

And that is one of the problems. The biggest problem however is the complete lack of time acceleration and slow speeds. I understand wanting realistic speeds in your simulation game, but this is not an experience that any but the most patient people are willing to go through. For reference, to complete the unmanned campaign you will need to travel ~50,000m at speeds between 1.5m/s and 2m/s, or in more understandable terms, your rovers go at the speed of an old man with a walking aid and you need to travel roughly a small country's length. The game does helpfully offer you a realistic wheel speeds option, which will bring your speed down to around 0.6m/s, or roughly the speed of that old man if he had to stop to take a breather after every step. I firmly believe that I am one of the most patient people in the world and submit this game as proof for that.

With the biggest problem out of the way, the smaller problems are still noticable. It essentially does not tell you how to do or use most things. When starting a campaign, the first thing I had to do was push every button on my keyboard in the hopes that it would move along the interactive first landing of an historical Russian lander. It worked eventually, and I could play the game after that. After that, you are never told how to use specific instruments, and you aren't told what technologies actually do for you as a player. But that is something you can figure out as well with a lot of looking for things, so eventually it will work out.
There also still appear to be a fair amount of bugs in the game, including random missions asking you to take microscope pictures of the atmosphere, and one that makes it so missions do not spawn when they should so the game literally becomes unfinishable. With the last one in mind, I had to stop my playthrough before I could get to the manned stage, as the missions I needed to complete did not ever show up. The physics at times become a large problem in that your science instruments need to be held still to do science, but the physics tries to make your rovers almost dance, which makes it nearly impossible to use your instruments unless you forcibly jam them against the rock or sand you are trying to perform experiments on.

Even then, Mars is a nice and often varied place, with a lot of interesting terrain and good looking locations, with missions placed so that they show you to all the good places with almost scenic tours. The economic part of the game- Getting your funding, is very rough early on and practically doesn't exist in the later stages. This may be to save up money for the manned missions, but I never actually reached that part, so I wouldn't know.

All things said, Take on Mars needs work. It is not an unpleasant experience for one with a lot of patience, but I struggle to see what would draw in anyone other than the most scientific minded people who at the same time don't mind gameplay. For anyone else, it is a nice novelty, but very repetitive and slow. There does not seem to be that much here, at least not in the unmanned campaign.

There is also a multiplayer mode, but I've yet to be able to motivate anyone into playing it with me. I will update this review whenever I get people into a server with it.

24 May, 2017

Killers and Thieves Review

Since I've only just gotten it, I'll play further at a later point and edit this review as needed. For now, I will say that I enjoyed my time with Killers and Thieves, and while it has issues(Mainly the lack of tutorial, questionable controls, and civilian/guards being incredibly simple), it is still decent, though very much overpriced for what it does at this point.

Edit: Further playing reveals a much greater problem still- A complete lack of replayability. Once you've seen one or two randomly generated maps, you've seen it all. There doesn't seem to be much more than that, not even story wise.
After a few more hours of trying, it feels very much like a flash game with a great concept and no substance. it's neat and has potential, but it will never realize that potential and become great. Quite sad, but that's how many great concepts go.

My time with it is best summed up by analogy;
You get yourself a new bathtub installed, paid for it and finally want to use it to relax. You step in and the bathtub is too small for you to fit in it, so you awkwardly stand in it trying to take a shower. Then you get a phonecall. The shower was nice, but it only just started and now you're interupted. The phone call was someone trying to order a pizza with the wrong number. You go back to your shower and try to enjoy it when you get called again. someone else trying to order a pizza. This repeats for a few hours and you never get the water to heat up so you have to just take a cold shower and then you turn it off and go do something else. All the while you're left thinking about the wonderful warm bath you've been promised.

Original review follows;
Killers and Thieves puts the player in control of a medieval thieves' guild, an interesting idea that might have needed a bit more explaining and working out. As it stands, it is still worth looking at, but it does feel like it could have used a bit more thought at a lot of points.

The story seems pretty good, but the day to day business of robbing places, training your thieves and selling loot feels like it is lacking a bit and often feels clumsy and obtuse. The controls for your thieves are not very intuitive, and the stealth system not regenerating any points once you've lost them makes it impossible to enter stealth again after being spotted.

But that is just one of the systems that feels too simple to me. Perhaps I just expected too much, but so far I've not yet found any unique looking maps. Everything appears to be randomised, even the story missions I've found thus far. While it seems like a lot of effort was put in the presentation, into looks and mood, into the story itself and the concept, it doesn't seem like this effort was placed on connecting the story to the game. An early example is a story mission telling me to rob a place to put pressure on someone, the map was randomly generated, so I just went in and stole a bunch of stuff. With multiple houses there, I had no idea where I was supposed to go. But it turned out the answer was "Anywhere", as stealing from any of the houses counted. Then in a the story afterward the man's house was robbed, yet I couldn't picture the house as everything seemed to just be randomly generated.

While the graphics are good with a consistent, pleasant to look at style that isn't difficult to tell guards and loot apart from the background, the sound is maybe a bit too simple, with music and soundbites seemingly repeated over and over. This got a bit annoying after a while, which I found to detract from the general experience. They can certainly use more variety for the audio.

Guard AI, for a stealth based game, is fairly important. It is then sad that it is so simplistic. Guards seem to move at random, and stand still at random. This means that if you're unlucky, you're going to be stuck in a room for a long time waiting for the guards to move away. They often patrol in buildings randomly, wandering through bedrooms of slums and standing at random staircases in the middle of a house. There doesn't seem to be any sense, which leads me to believe the guard patrols are probably also randomly generated.

The RPG elements are slow, and you will need to level up a lot in order to get the training points needed to make your thieves capable of doing their job properly, and even then there are often not many ways you can use the skills in the maps as they are, even if you actively look for them. I like the idea of growing my band of thieves from poorly skilled randoms from the street to a group of elite heisters, but the leveling up, learning of skills and trying to make thieves better just doesn't seem to matter most of the time. Not to mention that it takes forever to get even the slightest upgrade.

It feels like they've had a great idea, but didn't really know how to turn it into a great game. So they got a story that seems good so far, and they've made some gameplay for it. But they don't seem to have really made it fit well together with the story, and the gameplay elements often appear to conflict in their goals. The numerous flaws in the game seem to break immersion quite often, and the sheer randomness of everything makes planning impossible. Controlling four thieves at the same time with the clumsy controls means you're likely to just leave three outside and use one at a time.

I like the idea, I like the art, and it seems like a lot of work went into the story. But the gameplay feels lacking in many ways. It is essentially the looting and exploration part of This War of Mine with slight changes to it, randomly generated every time and with an overworld system that doesn't seem to really do much anyway. Many things regarding the gameplay feel like they've not been thought about, leading to what feels like a patchwork of mechanics and systems that interact at times, but never truly work together to provide a great immersive and challenging experience.
It is worth getting and playing at some point, and you may very well end up enjoying it like I do. But I can see that it has big issues that would make it a frustrating and poor experience for many, so definitely do not get it at full price.

12 May, 2017

Battle Brothers Review

Battle Brothers puts you in command of a small mercenary band seeking to make a name for itself, and to earn money.
You control individual soldiers, their loadout, their skill growth, and their moves in battle. It is a pretty interesting tactical game, but it quickly gets repetitive as there isn't a lot of variation to be had and most of your experience will be walking around and occasional bandit fights. That said, what content is there works well and is enjoyable.

Your loadout matters most of the time, with different weapons giving different options in battle, leading to easy to understand choices that you can easily see impact your battles along with most of the time it being easy to see where and how you made mistakes.
A lot of Battle Brothers is about survival, as the real enemy isn't the bandits, greenskins or undead, though they all provide a different challenge, but attrition. As you need to level up your mercenaries, you'll end up having to protect them. And it then feels unfair when you have to level up every one of your brothers from nearly nothing while the game generates enemies for you at higher levels with the idea that you should be able to take them by then. Once you fall behind on the curve and lose a few more fights to now-superior opponents there is no real coming back as there is practically nothing left to fight that won't just murder everyone in your group. If you did not earn enough money to buy good equipment, or you couldn't find the better equipment, you just fell behind on the curve and it will be more and more difficult to catch back up. Assuming it is at all possible.

For a game that seems to take hints from X-com and similar hard games, it feels arbitrary. You are always limited to at most 12 men in your combat formation, while you will quickly find enemies do not have such a limit. Enemies do not need to worry about losing their highly trained men, so they just throw themselves at you- After all, they just get generated from nothing to give you a fight and they don't care if they survive. Then you notice the world feels empty and artificial, as things are generated just to fight you and nothing else seems to happen without you explicitly making it happen by accepting a contract. The fact that the world is randomly generated and seems to not be too interested in making roads and villages fit the terrain doesn't help it either. While I like the idea of the map being randomly generated and it occasionally seems to come up with a good map, it feels like the majority of them are pretty poor in many aspects, though thankfully no map seed is terrible to the point it can't be dealt with by a tactics and strategy change.

There are no fights outside of nature, even if you accept a contract to fight in a siege and the text says you push through the gate of the citadel, only to find it is a grassy plain just like every other plain out there. You may be asked to enter a mausoleum for an artifact, or a graveyard to get rid of grave robbers, but these too are just empty grassy plains and maybe hills.
Without a doubt, it feels like they did not pay attention to the details, and things weren't really worked out that well, leading to it feeling frustrating and what should have been a climax- A siege on a stone citadel during a war between noble houses- Instead just became a disappointment as it was just another fight on a field of grass.

But all that said, it remains a positive experience. being able to name your mercenaries and build them in the way you like(Though most of them will be pretty standard simply because the reality of combat makes some things highly impractical), the flavour text and random events are amusing and interesting. Armour and weapons can be looted from the enemy after combat, and the looks of your men change with their injuries and equipment.

Battle Brothers is a flawed but still enjoyable game, if you are okay with being frustrated often and a lot of doing battles that feel the same over and over. What is there is pretty good, but it feels like there is definitely too much of the same and it never seems to go anywhere. It's worth getting if you are interested in team management and fighting against attrition, but for everyone that isn't a big fan of turn based tactical combat I'd say wait for a sale. Or you're just going to end up frustrated and annoyed.

10 May, 2017

PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS Review

ALL CAPITAL LETTERS GAME is about landing on an island with up to 99 other people and being the last team(Or person) standing. If that interests you, you're probably going to enjoy this game. I was somewhat surprised to find this to be an entire subgenre of FPS (And third person shooters too), and from what I can tell it seems to be the best in it at the moment.

For everyone who hasn't been convinced yet or doesn't know anything about it, I would say it's...Alright, I suppose.

I'm not really impressed by it, but it certainly does what it says it will. A typical round lasts at most about 25 minutes and starts with you jumping out of a plane over the island. You then land and you have to find gear for yourself- Which essentially means guns, ammo and medical supplies. Technically melee weaponry exists but unless you and someone else are in the same building in the first minute of the game you're going to not use anything except guns.
Once everyone has landed the playable area starts becoming smaller, forcing players into conflict as the playable area reduces in size until the game ends with a winner.
There is no penalty for losing or leaving the game, matches are quick to hop in and quick to leave, and it has a very quick format for those who are low on time. It does get somewhat repetitive, and most rounds go roughly the same in my experience, you get your stuff, you try to not die, and then either you end up killing the other people or you get shot and die.

The actual gunplay is solid enough, and aiming with a scope is not unpleasant. A large amount of the tactics involved are about flanking your opponent. As almost everything is very powerful and capable of killing someone in just a few good shots you will want to use cover to your advantage and deny it for your opponents. The controls are sometimes a bit rough, with some odd input lag for things like entering vehicles or opening doors, but this is probably because it is still early access.
Sound design seems good, and you can often hear someone before you see them.

You may have noticed the 'survival' tag on the steam store. The goal is survival, I suppose. But you're in the wrong place if you're looking for somewhere that you'll need to find food and drink, build shelter, and similar things to actually survive in the long term. There is no long term in this game, for better or worse. In the same way, I suppose it is technically an open world, you can go anywhere you want. But you're going to take damage and get limited to a smaller area really quickly.

I'm having trouble finding other things to say about it. I am not really impressed by it, it does what it says it does, and it does them pretty well. But it doesnt say it will do much either. It had its origins as a mod for an other game, and it still feels like it is just that right now- A mod for some other game. A good mod, for sure. Enjoyable for a while, certainly. But not what I'd call a full game worth 30€
At least not in its current state. Unless you are really into this kind of game, in which case you're going to probably spend over 100 hours in it as it is the best one of its kind at the moment

30 April, 2017

Grand Theft Auto V Review

GTA V is two games in one- A single player game with a storyline and GTA online, named so for reasons one may assume to be obvious. As such, this review will mainly focus on the online, as that is what I have mostly played, and why I purchased it. With that said, there are obvious similarities in it, and many of the things I will mention apply to both.

In Grand Theft Auto you mainly start the game small- Whether homeless or with just a small house, there is very little you can lose. And from there you begin your adventure in crime and moneymaking. With what appears to be an anarchocapitalist society filled with well-made backstory and world complete with multiple full series of cartoons, mock TV channels(Better than real TV!) and radio stations. There is an internet ingame with plenty of often humour-filled websites, along with useful ones that you will find to be genuinely interesting on their own.
In short- The worldbuilding is top quality, there is a lot of effort and attention in it and it shows that it was a great priority when it was made

In contrast, the controls are not very well thought through. Aside from the car and boat controls they are very clunky and questionable, with movement being difficult to get right and taking cover means you will stick to the wall too long when you want to get going to other cover, and you will not stick to cover when you actually want to stay in it. I've found the movement and cover to be questionable at best. Switching weapon is a massive pain and will generally not be viable unless you are not actively in combat. For airplanes and helicopters there is no joystick support at all.

Following what they did right with vehicles is the damage model for cars. As may be expected from a GTA game, the cars can be damaged, destroyed, and otherwise have their function impeded. Though it isn't massively realistic, it is good enough to give you natural damage effects such as veering to the left or right or the engine beginning to break and give less power. It is then a shame that this will almost never show up in multiplayer unless you are a terrible driver, because a thing that they clearly did not think about for the multiplayer
Namely, the balance. Everyone gets a homing rocket launcher, no matter their level. This rocket launcher will destroy most cars in one hit and blows anything flying out of the air with a little aim and luck. This means that while you can put armour on your car to protect it from bullets, your vehicle's function is more along the lines of "Has it exploded? Yes or no" than anything else. Similar for non-vehicle pvp. You will be either dead in seconds or your enemy is dead, no long firefights with players here.
Much like this, the rest of the online balance is out the window- with many things costing a large amount of money and income being generally very low even for things with several millions of input needed to set them up. If you want anything more than just a gun and a random car you can still from the street, you are going to have to actively grind for money, or play for a very long time without spending on anything.

The loading, and in general connecting to the online servers for a first time in a session(Or when switching session) takes a truly massive amount of time, though I have been told it is much less in single player, I will still say it is unreasonably long- You can go do the dishes and return in time to catch the end of the loading screen. Something I know because I've done that. I have no idea how they thought this was acceptable.

With that said, the rest of it is mostly good- Sound and looks are pretty decent, the map seems very nicely made with lots of interesting details and plenty of hidden spots. Someone seems to have thought about everything on the map

In the end, what really sells GTA isn't the pvp and fighting other people online. What is good about it is the single player, the missions, and the world. For online the one thing that is much more interesting than any of the official selling points is the fact that it is a world you can hop into with your friends and drive around together, do a few missions, or just decide to take everyone on a race, go parachuting, or even just play a round of golf. There may not be a real grouping up mechanic and there are a large amount of flaws in multiplayer, but as just a world for you and your friends to hang out in and do whatever you want to do it does incredibly well.
Worth full price? It's a rare moment when I say it is for something this expensive. But I certainly got my money worth and do not regret it. It has a fair amount of technical issues with it, but the design is great for many things and there is almost always something to do- So I would say it is.

15 April, 2017

Stellaris Review

Stellaris is an early alpha game that is to be finished in DLC. If you buy it now, you get to enjoy all the placeholder mechanics that they will ask you money for to replace with something resembling an actually thought out game. And even then it will be half-assed and with minimum effort because you're already invested (See also the Sunk Cost Fallacy). You'll have to buy it or be stuck with an unfinished version that isn't really good at anything.

And it's that version I will review here. Stellaris attempts to merge Grand Strategy games and 4X games, managing to take only the worst of both worlds in a nice looking jacket to hide the lack of things to do. To begin, the early game plays much like a 4X game. You explore, you look for places to expand and colonize, and you work on your planets. After everything is mostly claimed and you've met a fair amount of alien empires the grand strategy game is supposed to take over, but it never does. This leaves you with a rather poorly done 4X game that has no real mid or late game. Once you've finished exploring, you build up a military until it's bigger than your neighbour and throw it at them until you have no more neighbours.

To begin with the good things about it, it looks pretty decent, as screenshots will show you. And the events have decent flavour to them, and a few stories that actually made me want to follow up on them only to be disappointed when it results in an anticlimactic "+500 energy credits" for finishing the entire storyline. Many events and anomalies imply you'll be able to do great things once you end up with highly advanced technology, but you never do, and the simple events and anomalies start repeating before you're even done with one game. Most of these storylines and events do not seem to matter whatsoever, with all of them being self-contained minor effects that do not interact with anything outside of them.

Nearly everything in the game is, I would hope, a placeholder mechanic- Technology ends in the mid game and you research repeatable technologies that give you a slight numbers bonus, military matters are simple with no debt to them whatsoever, species are all interchangeable except for a few fringe cases, diplomacy doesn't really exist, just like many options to control your empire don't seem to exist and there is no real grand strategy part of this. It offers you three ways to travel the stars with FTL technology, yet two of these are completely useless.

The AI, in all ways, is completely incapable. Diplomatically it doesn't do anything of real note, often remaining passive until a certain value just happens to rise by coincidence and triggers it to do something. Militarily it doesn't do anything- It makes ships that are poorly planned and optimized by just putting on whatever seems like the latest technology, even if it's terrible. It develops its lands randomly, completely ignoring any sort of planning or goals it may be able to do, and in general feels much less like it's trying to emulate an opponent and more like they just hooked up an RNG to the controls.

The military and combat stuff is, in one word, bad. While there is a minimum of customization to try to counter your opponent, in the end everything comes down to who just has the bigger stack. The entire military game is essentially a dick measuring content. If yours is bigger then you win, take your opponent's stuff and move on to measure against the next guy. There is no strategy, no tactics, and no maneuvering. You do not even get to control what your ships do and do not engage. Planetary invasions are a joke- You leave some ships above the place and then bring in a big stack of armies to wipe out the defenders. It's more of a formality at that point, because you have the bigger naval dick from the earlier measuring contest so it's not like you can't just wait a few years to bring in more armies

As mentioned earlier, technology is a joke past the early game, but even at the early game you will find a large amount of completely useless technologies that will never be even a little bit useful. You get a choice of a few randomly selected technologies to research, and while I like the idea of it, all it really means is that you're going to just research the cheapest technology of the set until something actually useful comes up.

Most of Stellaris is set up to be pretty and to pretend it has depth, but if you look even a little bit at it you will find that most of it is empty and flat. Past the initial experience of the early game and expanding there is nothing to do except waiting or continued dick measuring competition with your neighbours, and then moving on to measure against the next guy.

Is it worth getting? Maybe if you can get it really cheap on sale. Maybe in a few years when they've finished it.
At release, I'd have called Stellaris a technically playable tech demo. At the least with the latest DLC(Utopia) it is now a  barely playable early alpha game. So hey, there's some progress here.
Shame it's going to take another 200€ of DLC and several years for it to be finished

13 April, 2017

Stellaris Utopia DLC Review

Small review because I may as well share my experiences on it
Instead of writing a whole analysis, I'll just go through the feature list and comment on it. I know this will be unpopular among the hype, but I'm still going to say it-
It's not that good

"Megastructures"
It's a shame they come too late to be of any real use in single player, by the time you get to unlock these through researching several rare technologies(So it's possible you won't ever get to anyway even if you made it your goal for the game) you'll be able to steamroll the galaxy with minimal effort.
They're shiny, but aside from the sensor array they don't actually do anything that you could actually reliably want at that stage of the game without being able to already get it elsewhere.

"Habitat Stations"
Actually works somewhat decently, though with how more planets increases the cost of research and the unity needed for the civ 5 tradition copy. You may want to make a few because they're roughly equal to a decently managed planet per tile, but since they are small and have some very strong drawbacks they will never be amazing. You will not 'go tall' with these as the feature blurb says, If you're in a confined empire you won't have the resources for them. And if you're not confined, you're going to still want them anyway because they're decent to have. They're just something everyone is going to end up getting. Costs one of the ascension perks, but it's not like those perk slots have any serious competition going for them.

"Ascension Perks"
This is the main thing for this DLC and it's actually pretty good. The sad thing is that there is a clear "Good" and "Awful" collection of perks for this that makes it clear that you will likely pick the exact same thing every game with the exception of the actual ascension path. You're going to just get the same things because the alternatives are just not useful.

"Indoctrination"
Curious to see this listed as a feature, since it's just a single button for something that is a very minor part of the game. You can take a planet with people who don't have space tech and indoctrinate them into your ethics.
I'm having trouble figuring out any point at which this may matter, so I'll just move on.

"Advanced Slavery"
In this paid DLC, we get tools for things that really should be in the base game. I'd like to ask Paradox for other useful DLC next, perhaps a management window for a planet's build-queue, a functional military that isn't just throwing everything at the enemy stack, different FTL methods that aren't just limiting yourself for the sake of it, or making it so slavery is actually useful for something other than encouraging rebellion on your own planets.

"Advanced Governments"
Support for the things people were doing already, now with small bonuses and made official. Most of it is of questionable use, but there is no denying that hive minds are pretty nice to have and a few of the things are nice and flavourful.

In the end, is it worth 20€?
I highly doubt it. You're going to have to get it eventually because it's essentially content missing from the base game and some small flavour things. But when you do, make sure it's on sale

07 April, 2017

Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide Schluesselschlos Review

For Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide, the DLC of Schluesselschloss gives you a single map for the last stand mode, the Schluesselschloss.
Your first task and challenge will be to pronounce it, then after that you will need to motivate 3 people to play it with you as the rewards for this, and indeed the entire last stand mode are at best mediocre and at worst nonexistent.

Luckily for them, they do not need to own it to play with you- As long as the host owns the DLC it is available to anyone who joins them.

The map itself is well made, with just enough supplies unlocking over time and many potentially great places to hold out, all of them flawed just enough to be a challenge. It looks pretty well, has a great view and is not too big or too small.
The price is a bit much for a single map, so I recommend only buying it if you want to support the game and developer. Otherwise, you will probably be able to find better value elsewhere

16 March, 2017

Syrian Warfare Review

Syrian Warfare is a game set in the still ongoing, and, of course, controversial Syrian war. In the game you follow Police Lieutenant Anwar, who takes control of his hometown's police forces to defend against invading terrorists in a realistic strategical game of modern warfare. As time progresses, you will rise through command ranks and eventually will be given military units to command, as well as being allowed to call in Russian bombings on your enemy. In addition, units that survive and vehicles you take from the enemy can be carried on to the next mission, allowing you to build a preferred core of units if you don't let them die.

The first thing one may notice is the lack of a skirmish or custom battle option. There is only a campaign with pre-set missions as far as I have found. While there is plenty of content in the missions and you will almost certainly need several attempts to do everything in them, it would be nice to have a way to set up my own engagements, even just for things like testing out unit accuracy or to see how long one can hold out in defence.



Secondly would be the graphics. They look good, and I find myself wanting to look at the action as it happens.
And that leads to the next thing I want to point out, namely the difficulty. Things move quickly, and they die quickly. As can be expected from an era of warfare where there are weapons against everything, your men are not safe even inside a tank or a big building. Using vehicles or squads of soldiers properly is a large factor in whether or not you are successful. Anti-tank missiles do exist, and are very capable of taking out your armoured vehicles. At the same time, a smaller car or technical vehicle can be taken down by a machine gun, and it is often more likely to kill the driver or crew of a vehicle than it is to destroy the vehicle outright. Which in turn means that you can take over and often repair the vehicle for your own use.
Aside from that a large part of the difficulty comes from the numbers involved. With limited forces and limited reinforcements it is difficult to attack. Defending is easy enough, fortify a position and hold them off. But to attack when the enemy outnumbers you is difficult. To do so while also under time pressure for optional objectives that you will want to complete is even harder. Some missions need you to take out 500 or more hostiles, while you will not have even half of that. As you do not 'build' units like in most RTS games and instead only get a limited amount at the start and limited reinforcements this can make for a very difficult situation where I found myself often asking 'Am I missing something? Am I doing something wrong?' while I am micromanaging the one squad of infantry that hasn't been reduced to a single living squad member to clear out several buildings.
Or maybe I'm just bad at modern tactics.



Everything appears to be very detailed, from vehicles having many parts to them that can be individually disabled to buildings seeming to be fully modeled, though without furniture, to every individual soldier having their own health and carried weaponry. Buildings can have parts of them get exploded, and even fully collapse. I've found it a pleasure to watch what happens to a building and the hostiles in it as it gets shelled by a tank.



In between missions you will be able to follow the social media, giving you stories from people involved in or commenting on the Syrian war. Some serious, and some amusing. Others give background information to Syria for those who haven't paid attention to the entire conflict. At this point, I will say that this game displays some favour to the Syrian army (and Russia) and not as much to the opponents of said army, though it does so without politics getting in the way of gameplay - perhaps it simplifies the situation a bit, but complex politics would not really do much for the gameplay itself.



There are some negatives as well. Aside from there not being a custom battle option, it seems the pathfinding is a bit questionable. Often it will drive, or walk in places you really do not want it to. Infantry in a building can be given a command to face one way, but they will ignore it if fire is incoming from the other side. Such as large explosive tank shells. And then they will stand on the balcony where said tank shells are hitting. They will go onto the roof even when mortars hit, and you can't tell them to take cover in the lower floors when artillery strikes the building and takes off the top floor. Along with the tendency for a squad to get split up this makes it difficult to shield your infantry from harm.
At times it appears the AI doesn't do much - except for a few times it mostly seems like it is up to you to attack, and it does not always seem to react to being attacked. I'm not sure if this is good or bad, because if it would react then I am sure I'd be losing pretty much every time I try something.
I have also found the camera to be restrictive. At one point I managed to fly a helicopter to the side of the map where I couldn't see it anymore, at others it felt like I couldn't zoom out to take a look at the whole situation, something that often resulted in me not noticing an enemy RPG team trying to sneak up on my vehicles.



Sound and voice acting are good. With dialogue and voice acting being well done with a touch of humour at times, and the sounds being as one would expect - good quality and distinct enough to be able to tell what is happening without looking at them, though often only when you're late because that rocket flying at your troop transport means you're already too late to stop it in most cases.

In conclusion, Syrian Warfare is not a meme game or trying to sell based on controversy. It is detailed in many aspects and very good in many more. Though there are some slight issues with the pathfinding and the AI, it is very much worth playing for anyone who is into modern strategy, or if you just want to see how well you can do at it.

Disclaimer: Game copy provided for free.

12 March, 2017

Blackwake Review

Blackwake is a multiplayer naval game where the players crew ships and fight each other in often fast paced matches of positioning, skill at combat and teamwork.
As an early access game, it mostly works off its basics- There remains very little in the way of content but what is there is enough to lead to many varied and interesting situations, often entirely different because of the reliance on player captains to steer the ships and individual tactics(Or lack of tactics) effecting almost everything about a battle.





Currently, there is only what amounts to a deathmatch- Make the other team run out of respawns or cannonballs before they do the same to you. It is worth noting here that casualties are unavoidable at any range, as a lucky cannonball can and will hit people at almost any range, but this effect can be minimized by a good captain giving your ship good angles of attack while minimizing those of your opponent.
Often it gets a bit hectic on larger ships, as everyone needs to get some information out at the same time- The rear sail is on fire while the captain yells to prepare for ramming and a gunner says they ran out of cannonballs and need someone to run supplies. Teamwork is surprisingly easy if people communicate, but with how the game and its systems are set up you will still need to try in order to do well. A few mistakes by the captain can put a lot of holes in your ship, which floods the gun deck and disables your cannons as they can't fire underwater.




Many of the systems involved are simple, working well together to create the full experience. Flooding happens because you have holes, and water flow is not simulated. At the same time, supplies are a single resource, so you don't have a stock of regular cannonballs, gunpowder, grapeshot, and so on. Just supplies you can use. This is not bad, as the simple nature of these systems makes it easy to switch from one thing to the next- Load cannonballs and repair the hull without having to worry about the exact amount of wooden boards you have left (Repairing takes no resources), or the exact kind of ammo remaining.
Although I personally enjoy these kind of details that the game leaves out, I fully understand and admit that they are not necessary for the game to be fun, and those with less of a mind for logistics and supply management may not enjoy them.







As can be seen in the screenshots, it looks quite well. Several times of day and several weather types are available and make for varied looking rounds, with only two map variations that I've been able to find- Small islands and open sea. I've personally found the maps to be a bit small, but this is likely intentional to force confrontation so the players don't sail around without firing a single shot.

All things considered, Blackwake is a very solid game already and seems to be getting regular patches. It currently only features a single game mode and two kinds of ships, but this is enough to be a very enjoyable experience already. At the very least, I would say it is worth the price.


08 March, 2017

Tavern Tycoon - Dragon's Hangover Early Access Review

Running your own tavern? Sounds like an interesting and possibly relaxing game doesn't it? Interesting for sure, but not quite relaxing yet. Tavern Tycoon - Dragon's Hangover has a lot of potential with an interesting premise, and at the time of writing(2017,03,08) is still in early access. So anything in this preview will be subject to change.

Very clearly inspired by Theme Hospital, Tavern Tycoon has you building similarly, with similar looking mechanics that still differ when you get below the surface of them. At present, it seems to use a similar system - Someone comes in, goes to the bar, and gets drinks until they need to go to the restroom. From there on they will attempt to go to other rooms before they finally are satisfied and leave happily, or they get angry at your tavern and leave in a bad mood.


Now, as it is early access you can still expect bugs, crude balancing and other parts that need polishing, the most notable bugs and complaints I've found were that rooms stop functioning with guests refusing to use them(Thus becoming angry at the long wait and leaving), everything being expensive to the point a single bench costs 5 or more months of wages for a staff member, and the timescale being incredibly fast- There is no pausing to design a room, months pass in what feels like a matter of seconds which makes it nearly impossible to make a profit without doubling your prices from the default(Not to mention stressful as you are immediately under pressure to build everything), and many pieces of furniture not being functional yet.
Many more things are not perfect yet, but it shows that the ideas are there, there is someone actively working on them and there is a functional build with more to come.



Even then, it is pleasant to run a functional tavern and it has the beginnings of something that could be very interesting and even challenging to play, but still frustrating thanks to the bugs and unpolished nature of early access.

There is certainly great potential here, but at present it is untapped and unpolished. I've found it to be a bit too close to Theme Hospital to make the tavern theme truly work, but that may still change as updates are made and it develops into more of its own thing. My suggestion for those looking into it would be to wait- At least for the bugs and balancing to be adjusted, or you're going to be frustrated more often than not. But if you need to make a decision right now on whether to buy it or to never look at it again, I would say it is worth the risk. The price is low and the basics are there to enjoy it if you try to ignore the worst of the unpolished parts.

12 February, 2017

Warhammer 40k : Eternal Crusade Review

Warhammer 40,000 : Eternal Crusade promises a lot, and delivers very little. Nonetheless, what little there is is solid enough to be interesting and even enjoyable if you do not expect much from it. That said, it is hilarious how overpriced and overmarketed the game is.

WH40k EC promises you the world - MMO Warhammer 40k, massive persistent world, campaigns, thousands of items, huge battles and 20 different subfactions? This sounds great! I'd say that is one of the best sounding lists of features that I've seen before. But that is not to be. As much fun as the game is - good controls, decent graphics and fast paced gameplay where it truly feels skill matters - essentially none of that feature list actually got into the game proper. Not to mention the bugs and missing quality of life things that seem to pop up somewhat regularly.

With that said, the game itself is worth playing, so let's go through the promises to point out where it went so wrong and why you should not expect anything the marketing tells you so that you can enjoy what is there rather than feel betrayed that you did not get what you wanted.

MMO tag - this is not an MMO. It does not look like it will be any time soon, or like anything resembling it is planned for in the future. It is a lobby based shooter without a server browser. You queue up and are placed in an instanced battle with a number of other players and that is all there is to it. Nothing about this is an MMO, and since there is no early access tag I can only assume that there are no serious plans to make it into one.

Persistent world - nope. Nothing persistent about it at all. There is truly nothing about the world that will ever carry over to the future in any way, shape, or form. It is not unlikely that the same map is played on several different servers at the same time, none of them having any effect on anything else whatsoever.

The 'massive' part of the world - maps are slightly big for the playercount, I suppose. But only if you don't bring a vehicle and have to walk. As established there is no persistent map, so there is no real overworld to speak of either. "Slightly above average map sizes" is a better description.

Campaign - does not currently exist. They have a feature called a 'campaign', but it is as the time of writing this review it's both disabled and a joke. "Win 10 random battles for extra tokens" is not a campaign. While I appreciate getting the extra stuff, it would be dishonest to call it anything resembling a campaign.

Thousands of items - to be added, clearly. Because there sure aren't that many now. Maybe if you count every single item in the game, for every race and every modification and scope? Perhaps you'll even get close to a thousand, but you won't reach it still.

Huge battles? 30 vs 30. I mean, it's bigger than Overwatch, bigger than TF2, and bigger than CS:GO. But 60 people isn't exactly that impressive.

20 subfactions - which are entirely cosmetic, nothing to see here.

I'm not sure what happened exactly, although many things appear to be placeholders the game has a solid foundation and is a pretty good thing to spend time on. The combat feels like it's varied enough to not grow tiresome, skill based enough to not become boring and fast enough to not leave you sitting on your rear waiting for hours, and the developers appear to be actively trying to improve things still. But it seems that's all there is to it. It has its issues, and it seems very much like it's just an early access game claiming it has great plans and will put it all in "soon", but it just isn't there.

Warhammer 40k: Eternal Crusade is worth playing, don't get me wrong. But it does not deliver on any of its promises, barring a few. A pricetag of 50€ is a joke and an insult to anyone considering to buy it, and it seems unlikely that it ever will do as it promises. While I honestly believe the game is good at its core, the fact that the core is the only thing there is and that it flat out lies about almost everything means I will have to recommend against buying this, at least as long as you can't get it for under 20€.

If you do get it, have a referral link so you get some extra stuff ingame:
EC-VV6W63JL0ZJXR

28 January, 2017

Space Beast Terror Fright Review

Space Beast Terror Fright is a fast paced FPS game about infiltrating an unnamed spacecraft or station, retrieving data and then detonating the reactor and getting out before something kills you. A game I would call a hidden gem just in need of some slight polishing and expanding. SBTF is amazing potential on a very solid base game, action packed and at times frantic, yet giving you enough time to think your moves through and plan ahead.



It plays with 1-4 player teams, yet things are set up so that a single person can still survive and do the job if they're really good. Many situations will need teamwork to get through safely, or balls of steel to get through alone. I have found only a few seemingly unwinnable situations myself, and a few of those turned out not to be unwinnable after trying. Often you will feel like you are winning against the odds, and some situations may look very easy but surprise you with how hard they can be. And when you lose, you only lose a few upgrades - all of them optional but still very useful to have, and you can try again the next round.



The maps are varied in size, but at present still mostly empty rooms and hallways with a few consoles lining them, and they do look mostly like it's a map for a game still, without furniture. That said, they are generated when you play, and this generation will almost always be fair, challenging, and giving you interesting situations. You can even have everything set randomly - if you're going in blind, you truly will not know whether you're out for a milk run or for the hardest round you've ever encountered. And if that is not your thing, you can customize the map generation extensively and use pre-set seeds to get a map you like, though at present you still can not create a custom map.



Graphics are simple, but they work. At times they will even look pretty good in the right light and right angle. Sound design is quite well done, with every sound being fitting and atmospheric. In general, the mood is one of action and shooting, heroic space marines in big armour against a tide of aliens. Until the power goes out. Standing there, watching a dark hallway as your motion tracker bleeps at you in increasingly rapid tempo while a distance counts down from 10m, stressful? Maybe. But it is the good kind of stress, and certainly a great experience.



The overall design of the game, the way it uses light and dark and how you are both easily able to shoot down the aliens at range, yet utterly helpless if they get close, is excellent. I've not seen many games that can pull it off, but SBTF manages to do so perfectly, and it manages to do it consistently.

Whether you play it with friends, or you're playing it with random people online, SBTF will provide a worthwhile experience every single round. A few quick rounds can quickly string together into hours as you try to survive the endless waves of aliens while completing your objectives, and not a minute of it will be wasted time.

If that did not convince you, a single player demo is available at
http://www.nornware.com/launcher/sbtf_demo.zip

20 January, 2017

Fallen London Review

Fallen London is a browser game, with a focus on short stories and interesting snippets of information, set in an alternate universe in which London has been taken by a mysterious force and brought down to the cavernous world of the Neath inside Earth.

If that didn't turn you away, good. It's actually quite interesting. You start your adventure in New London, having come down from the 19th century world, and from there on, a multitude of stories are available to you. Without spoiling them, I will say that they come in both short and long, in obvious and not-so-obvious, and in many possibly surprising ways. And all of them are made so that you can explore the world of Fallen London while you're at it, learning about them and getting into the mindset that is the Neath and all its secrets.

And what secrets they are. A beautifully crafted, well-written world for you to explore, every time finding something new or interesting out there or uncovering curious tales. And if you don't like the stories you've gone through then you are often free to switch sides, change directions or move along to other tales entirely. There is certainly no shortage of places and tales to explore, and you can just ignore most of these to do your own things. Do mind that while some things won't change, some choices have actual consequence.

The way it works seems to be very well made and designed for modern life. You start with and can store up to 20 actions, with one refreshing every 10 minutes. This means that you will have a full action bar a little over 3 hours after you've spend them all. Which, for the most common work and school times means that you can play once in the morning before you go, then at lunch, and once more at your coffee break or when you get home. There are suitably short stories that you can spend a few minutes on them, and then spend the rest of your actions on some repeatable storylets if you are running low on time, and longer stories chained together that you can spend days trying to get to the bottom of. The design appears to be full of this, and is incredibly well made to fit in to modern life without issue.

Progression is solid, with four stats for you to raise over time. The stats are "watchful", "dangerous", "shadowy" and "persuasive", and they will grow both with success and with failure, more so if you try difficult challenges. You might at times feel like you are missing something, repeating the same things over and over, but there is always your own home to go to, with options to grow your statistics much more quickly through other players. And that brings us to player interaction. Sadly quite limited, but with enough ways to send things to each other (not your normal items though, that would be too easy), and to speak with others that you do not feel isolated. It is not an entirely single player game, but certainly has you doing things on your own for most of it.

In the end, Fallen London is a long-lasting, but surprisingly casual game that doesn't take up much of your time. It is well worth trying, and even without spending any money you can enjoy the great stories and explore its secrets. It is well worth the time to give it a try, and certainly worth the effort. As far as persistent browser games go, Fallen London may very well be the best I've played.