Where WE review our games

[civvver]

Cus some people want to try stuff for themselves. It is a shame though, I don't know what's happened to Maxis but I think they are done. SimCity was so bad not even from a game standpoint but from a technical bug standpoint. Same with Darkspore. Well actually I kind of liked Darkspore but all the technical issues overshadowed any good points and the end game was atrocious. And sims 4 has gotten some bad reviews too.

Despite all this though their games still seem to sell a lot so maybe they stay open.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Cus some people want to try stuff for themselves. It is a shame though, I don't know what's happened to Maxis but I think they are done. SimCity was so bad not even from a game standpoint but from a technical bug standpoint. Same with Darkspore. Well actually I kind of liked Darkspore but all the technical issues overshadowed any good points and the end game was atrocious. And sims 4 has gotten some bad reviews too.

Despite all this though their games still seem to sell a lot so maybe they stay open.

I think Sims 4 did sell well enough, probably enough to turn a profit... it just sold nowhere near as well as Sims 3 apparently. So you basically had some new consumers buy the game... but you end up alienating a good chunk of your existing fanbase who figures it's better to just stick with Sims 2 and Sims 3. That aside, the main problem, from what I heard, was not so much any technical issues, but, of course, the fact that the game is so barebones.

I know my cousin bought Sims 4 a while ago, but he didn't have any other Sims game other than seeing me and/or my brother play Sims 3, so next time I visit him I might play Sims 4 a bit and see how bad it is.

 

[civvver]

Which is why it feels like Maxis has reached the breaking point to me, three failed releases- Darkspore, new SimCity, Sims4. Four if you count Spore (although I personally don't feel Spore was a failure, it just didn't live up to the expectations set for it).

However tons of game and entertainment companies live on because it doesn't matter if something sucks, just that people buy it. Look at nickleback for example lol.

 

[Maniacal]

Which is exactly why buying it to check it out anyway despite overwhelming proof that it is bad is a very bad idea, as the only thing it tells the dev & publisher is that people will still buy our crap anyway.

 

[Oruc]

I think Sims 4 did sell well enough, probably enough to turn a profit... it just sold nowhere near as well as Sims 3 apparently. So you basically had some new consumers buy the game... but you end up alienating a good chunk of your existing fanbase who figures it's better to just stick with Sims 2 and Sims 3. That aside, the main problem, from what I heard, was not so much any technical issues, but, of course, the fact that the game is so barebones.

I know my cousin bought Sims 4 a while ago, but he didn't have any other Sims game other than seeing me and/or my brother play Sims 3, so next time I visit him I might play Sims 4 a bit and see how bad it is.

They removed the open world, that was a big selling point in 3 and it's gone. You have a small street with 4 houses in it, you can walk on your property, around your neighbours property but if set foot on their land you have to go through a loading screen.

 

[cybrxkhan]

They removed the open world, that was a big selling point in 3 and it's gone. You have a small street with 4 houses in it, you can walk on your property, around your neighbours property but if set foot on their land you have to go through a loading screen.

Yeah, from what I heard that's the biggest thing they removed. And of course it's rather stupid, given that that was one of the big improvements in Sims 3, in my opinion. That said, I've heard that EA and Maxis originally wanted Sims 4 to be "multiplayer" in the same vein as SIMCITY but changed with the whole fiasco of SimCity at release. Might explain why some things are missing...

 

[Oruc]

Yeah, from what I heard that's the biggest thing they removed. And of course it's rather stupid, given that that was one of the big improvements in Sims 3, in my opinion. That said, I've heard that EA and Maxis originally wanted Sims 4 to be "multiplayer" in the same vein as SIMCITY but changed with the whole fiasco of SimCity at release. Might explain why some things are missing...

I think EA did come out saying multiplayer was going to be a requirement for their games, so I can see that. I understand one reason they did it, to remove bloat.
Save games would give up the ghost sims3 after a point.

 

[civvver]

Papers, Please

This game is a mixture of point and click, choose your own adventure novel with timed puzzle elements. You play as an inspector at an immigration checkpoint for a fictitious country called Arstotzka. It all resembles the soviet block in 80s. Each day people try to enter the country and you can approve or deny their entry, but you have to be careful and inspect all their documents or you are docked pay. You are also paid by the number of people processed so you want to move as quickly as possible but be careful not to deny or approve anyone incorrectly.

At first the process is very easy because you simply deny all foreigners or anyone with expired documents. However new orders arrive daily updating the immigration policies. They change who can come, what papers they need, and basically add tons more stuff you have to check so it gets increasingly complex to process someone. On top of that between levels you have to spend money on the welfare of your family, on food and medicine, rent and heat. If you don't they could die and the game is over.

Along the way you also meet many story characters and you can choose whether to help them or not, all with different consequences. In all there are 20 different endings you can achieve depending on your choices throughout the game.

It seems kinda of simplistic but I was actually pretty hooked on this game and wanted to finish all the days. Once I discovered a couple endings on my own though after about 5 hours of playing I got a little restless and went to the wiki to read about the other endings. So there's really not a lot of reason for me to keep playing. Checking all those documents at first is kind of a fun challenge but it is tiring after a while.

So in general the game is a little too one dimensional from a gameplay standpoint and a little too short from a value standpoint. I wouldn't have wanted it to be longer cus the gameplay was wearing on me, but make sure you get this one on sale. Unless you insist on unlocking every ending yourself it's not really worth $10.

It is an innovative, unique game and the concept is refreshing, even if the atmosphere in the game is depressing! I give it a 75/100.

 

[civvver]

Hero Siege

Hero Siege is yet another 16 bit graphics style rogue like game that seems to be popping up all over iOs and steam. It had really good feedback though so I gave it a shot and was pleasantly surprised.


First let's talk price. I got it on sale for $2 I think and I have seen it in bundles. It was on indie gala last week I think and I believe it's been on humble bundle. So it's a darn cheap game. There's one dlc for it which I got for $0.75 last weekend too. And it's hardly required. I love cheap games even if they only last me a few hours. And boy, this one will last more than a few. However that's more due to intentional game design, a huge drawback as I'll explain.


The gameplay is a rogue-like meets Diablo meets Legend of Zelda. Actually I drew a lot of comparisons to Binding of Issac and reminds me of Spelunky in a LOT of ways. I have only played those last two a few hours each so forgive me if the comparisons aren't perfect, but that was my initial impression.


You first choose a class. There are viking (warrior), pyromancer (mage), hunter, pirate (ranged), nomad (rogue), redneck (didn't try yet), necromancer (warlock) and samurai (in expansion). So there's a lot to try out. Each class has a talent tree with 4 actives and 4 or 5 passive skills. It takes a while to unlock them all so you don't have too many skills to use at first. Mainly auto attacks. That's where it feels a lot like diablo. You run around avoiding enemies and hitting them or shooting them back. You can't shoot diagonally though. Each stage is pretty small and you fight waves on enemies, 6 per stage. Every 5 stages is a new zone, sort of like Spelunky. Also like Spelunky there are shops along the way to buy temporary upgrades to your stats or items called relics.


They really keep the leveling system simple with four stats and they do the same things for all heroes. Strength gives you more dmg (some abilities also do extra dmg based on strength). Swiftness (agility) makes you attack and move quicker. Armor reduces dmg taken (all dmg, there's only one type in this game to keep it simple). Stamina gives you more hp. Your base stats are all pretty low as each level you get to add two stats and one talent point. The main way you get strong enough to kill bosses and stuff is by doing a bunch of levels. You can only choose what zone to start in. I have only gotten to like the 4th level in the second zone so now I can start on zone one or zone two. But as I go through zone one I pick up potions and relics that increase my stats for that whole run. Once I die I lose all those. The only ones that stay are your base stats from leveling.


As an example I split my stats evenly on my viking between strength and stamina so I have like 30 in each. Once I finished the first zone my last game I had an extra 60 or so strength and tripled my hitpoints going into zone 2. This is the downside to the game. It's pretty much required to advance that you chain a bunch of levels together in a run, collecting these stat upgrades. It's the difference between getting 2 shot in a level vs actually having a shot to beat it.


Relics don't only provide flat stat bonuses though, some have active and passive abilities like shooting rockets or healing you when used. In general it's a cool system but the game is too hard without it. I would like to progress without having to do 5 trivial levels just to gather a bunch of loot first. It would be nice if you could save relic progress at the start of a zone or something but you can't. You can save your progress if you haven't died, much like in FTL and pick it up later. You just can't save and replay after dying, you have to start with zero items at the start of a zone.


The stat design is also kind of a drawback. While I appreciate the simplicity it's horribly balanced. My viking for example hits for like 70 base dmg. Even with a ton of strength relics he hits for like 100. Each strength point only adds like half a dmg point. That's fine at the lowest levels where enemies have 300 hp but jumping from level 1-5 to level 2-1 the enemies jump from like 300-500 hp to 1400-2500 hp. So you become completely reliant on special moves. At first I was putting a ton of points into swiftness cus viking also has a chance to stun so I would stun lock enemies but once my base dmg wasn't enough to do anything I had to completely respec my character. My slam was doing like 500 dmg cus I leveled stun over it and put all my points in swiftness. Once I respec'd to all strength and put the talent points into my slam I could again kill stuff as it was doing 2000 dmg. Swiftness right now is really poorly designed just cus your base attack doesn't scale. If it also like reduced cooldowns or something then maybe it would work.


Armor is the other one that just doesn't work. 1 point gives you 0.2% dmg reduction whereas 1 point in stamina gives you 17 hp (on viking, mages get like 15). That means for an armor point to have the same effect as a stam point at zero armor you'd need like 8500 hp. So far the most I've gotten up to was around 4k. Armor too is basically worthless at early levels compared to stam. Fortunately you can respec easily between runs so if the stats ever become relevant later it's easy to switch.


In general the game is fun but you're in for a huge grind, just be forewarned. I tried to get multiplayer to work but apparently it's in beta and to host a game you have to have port forwarding on your router and it seems like no one knows what this is cus every game I tired to join failed. So I can't comment on it. Supposedly it's fun.


I should also point out I played with an xbox controller. I don't think the pc controls are any good. It's like a twin stick shooter except you only use keyboard, not the mouse.


So really it's fun, cool music, sound effects, cool graphics, good base gameplay but horrible balance and far to grindy. I give it a 7/10 but for the price of the game I would check it out. Cus even though it's not like off the charts fun I've already put ~7 hours into my viking and will probably keep playing this game off and on for a while. I won't be surprised if this becomes a lunch break game and I end up with several hundred hours in a few years on it.

Edit: Update, it is also very buggy. I finished the game on normal and the harder levels failed to unlock. Tons of players are posting this issue on the forums and the devs response was we can't reproduce so tough luck. Kind of annoying. It ended up not being quite as hard as I initially thought. I did one big run through and collected a ton of relics that made it pretty easy. I don't envision myself playing this much in the future but it was a fun few hours. Would be a good <$3 game on sale some time.

 

[Sonereal]

Ironcast

I've put seven hours into the game since I picked it up on Steam for 30% off ($10). The most common description I heard for the game is that it is an FTL-like roguelike match-3 game with permadeath.

And you will die. A lot.

Ironcast is a steampunk game set during an 1880s French invasion of England. The game makes heavy use of the steampunk aesthetic and mechanics, with one of the enemy types you fight being steamtanks. However, the game revolves around the Ironcasts, steampunk mecha armed with cannons, energy weapons, and shields.

Your choice of pilot and Ironcast affects your starting loadout, health, and abilities. The starting Ironcast, for example, can fire several rockets as a special ability. Another Ironcast allows you to overheat the enemy in battle, which increases the coolant cost of actions.

Battles are 1v1. There are four resources: Ammo, Energy, Coolant, and Repair. You start with maximum coolant, but the other resources have to be collected by connecting pieces on a game board. Here's a screenshot I found online real quick.

You need to connect at least three of the same type to gain the resource. Longer chains increases XP, but you can't store more of a resource than your Ironcast allows. Furthermore, there are special board pieces that appear from time to time. Overdrive pieces will overcharge you next shield/walk-up, or give the next weapon you fire a damage up in the form of firing more shots, or firing a more powerful shot. Scrap pieces do nothing during the match, but increases the amount of scrap you can spend on new components when you're in the hangar.

Spoiler Warning, Large :

Shields use energy and coolant and decrease the damage you take when hit. A good shield is powerful enough to completely block rapid-firing weapons with low damage, so if you run up against an Ironcast with a strong shield, you should use a powerful weapon with high one-shot damage.

Energy and coolant is also used to make your Ironcast move. Moving Ironcasts have a chance to evade enemy fire. You can have a maximum of three walk speed and three shields up at once. Every time you start a new turn, your shields and walk speed decrease by one.

Ammo and coolant is used to fire your weapons. You can individually target the different components of the other Ironcast such as weapons, their drive (movement), and shield.

Repair pieces are used to repair components damaged in battle. You cannot repair the hull during battle without special abilities.

Because doing anything that isn't repair usually costs coolant, coolant is arguably the most important resource. If you run out, you can still do other things if you have the resources, but it damages all your components and does a decent chunk of damage to your hull, so you should only do this out of desperation. The less damage you suffer, the less you will need to spend to repair in-between missions.

A lot of battles are straight forward "destroy the other guy", but there are special missions as well such as having to survive X number of turns, suffering a coolant leak, etc.

After a mission, you're awarded war assets and scrap. Scrap is used to buy new components. I won't explain war assets because spoilers. You're also rewarded XP. When you level up, you can pick one of three bonuses, usually attachments to your weapons, drives, shields, Ironcast, or just general abilities. Most abilities really change the way you approach the game.

Spoiler Hangar :

In the hangar, you can buy things and change your loadouts.

If you die (and you will), you will gain Global XP. Global XP unlocks new abilities, pilots, and Ironcasts.

Overall, I'm really enjoying the game so far. There are a few UI things I dislike, and you can never tell whether or not the AI is playing with resources the same way you are or not. I haven't gotten pass the first boss yet, but I'm probably bad at the game or something.

I'll give it a 7/10. It is a pretty solid game and it has a "one more mission" feel to it like Civilization's one more turn feeling. If you like defending the island from filthy French invaders in a Victorian steampunk game with mecha, you will like this game.

 

[civvver]

That looks really cool actually, but a little pricey for what it is. I mean consider FTL goes on sale for like four dollars, I'll probably get Ironcast next year when it's 75% off.

 

[Disgustipated]

A quick review of Divinity: Original Sin. I never played the previous ones, I'm unfamiliar with the series. Bought it as it was considered a kickstarter gem along with Wasteland 2.

Bugs/stability: A: Very stable, very few bugs. I had one boss fight glitch out on me (I think), but it worked to my advantage. It evened out since my ally was supposed to help me as well, and she didn't. This was the final fight of the game by the way. The final fight was very easy, but even had he continued with the summons, I would have been okay.

Gameplay: A: Very good. I enjoyed the combat very much. Dialogue, story, and roleplay aren't that great. But I enjoyed combat and exploration. The difficulty level of the game is very difficult. But I was lazy and didn't learn the crafting system until the end. The game got significantly easier if you craft and upgrade your items.

Roleplaying: D+: You do get + or - on various scales on your character sheet based on decisions you make in the game, but overall I found roleplaying to be limited.

Story: C: Meh. Usual fantasy stuff. I had a little trouble getting into the story. But it was sufficient enough for me to want to finish the game and see how it all turned out.

Interface: A-: No complaints really

Party NPC's: D-: You can do a quest for them, but dialogue is limited, and they don't add much to the game. I didn't find myself caring about them all that much.

graphics: B+: Yes the graphics don't match big budget games, but the graphics are pretty good for a kickstarter game. I enjoyed the graphics.

sound: B+: sound effects seemed pretty good. No complains.

Music: C+: Honestly, I don't even remember the music much. But it wasn't bad.

Overall: B Play this game if you like challenge. It's different from the stuff I usually play, and I enjoyed that.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate Edition

Essentially Civ in space (planets instead of cities, for just one example), but I would say, even better. The tech tree is an actual tree that has different branches that don't wind up on itself. One of the biggest things it improves on is that peaceful play can be as powerful or even more powerful than warmongering. Diplomacy bonuses to trade deals and the number of ways to use Influence (think Civ's Culture) offensively see to this. Much has been said in other reviews of the game's strong and cunning AI, but I cannot comment yet since I'm still working my way up to those difficulties. The game also has a quirky sense of humor in the vein of Douglas Adams, which I find improves the experience.

There are also a number of wonderful features for both types of players. The Ship Designer should give you plenty of fun designing awesome-looking ships with the specifications tailored to your requirements. Being able to customize your civilization provides more options. I had way too much fun seeing the ships of the United Nations Space Command firing their Magnetic Accelerator Cannons to vanquish enemies of humanity. This was done using the Battle Viewer, another fun little feature.

The game has little flaws. The game gives you many options to fine-tune your experience, ranging from changing AI behavior to increasing the pace of tech to interface tweaks. One major issue is that a number of the victories seem boring. The tech victory is just sitting there researching high-cost techs that do nothing. Ascension is just sitting there waiting for some of your starbases to collect points. Diplomatic and Influence victories can be similar to Conquest, with the alternative being sitting there spending either goodies or constructors to build up goodwill for alliances or expand your sphere.

At the end of the day though, GalCiv II understands what a great game needs: to give the player more options. I think this game deserves a 9/10.

 

[civvver]

Dead Space 3

Edit: I played some more and had to adjust the gameplay rating. The auto save system is just too broken. You can play for a couple hours and lose all progress and it's impossible to know when it's going to save. Dropped overall game to 70. Good game but some major mechanical flaws.

I'm not actually finished with the game yet so I may return to edit in some important changes. The game starts up with these guys recruiting Isaac to go find and rescue Ellie who was searching for more markers. The unitologists are at is once again releasing markers all over so someone has to shut them all down and that someone is you (as Isaac). Ellie thinks she's found the marker homeworld so you go there to try and stop it.

Overall story is strong once again. Not quite a cool as the second one but that's normal when you have a trilogy that needs an epic conclusion I feel, as you lose some of the individual story lines that make games really interesting for sake of the overall plot.

Graphics are outstanding. Definitely looks like a brand new game, which it almost is. My one complaint is being a console port it doesn't push pc hardware. There's no MSAA option, couple other things. It could be even prettier if it was optimized for pc.

Sound and music, again very good. Not as suspenseful as the first, but solid.

The only downside really is the gameplay. I think this game suffers from the trend of what I like to call gamerfication of video games. You know how like every new video game has to have hp stats and dps stats? What was cool about Dead Space 1 was how it had those but they were well hidden from the player when actually playing so it was more immersive. Now it feels like that's thrown out the window here. They completely revamped the weapon crafting and suits and it feels like a blatant push to sell dlc. Now you craft weapons from materials, you don't find them and buy them and upgrade. The system is way more complex and gamey. I liked the old way better where I just gathered power nodes and upgraded a weapon fully. Now there's multiple attachments, a whole bunch of parts, upgrade circuits, it's very complex and for no real reason. Except maybe to sell dlc cus you want all the new weapon types.

Also they did something really stupid and removed save locations. Now it all works off auto save. If you quit the game you start at your last auto save. You have to keep a close eye on the screen for the auto save icon to popup before quitting to know you won't have to redo the last 30 minutes you played. Sometimes finding a save station in the previous games was annoying but at least you knew when your game was saved and you could have multiple saves going to reload. Now you can't and you have no idea when the game is going to save.

Other than those to glaring issues the gameplay is largely the same as 2 and good. I have noticed enemies are much quicker. I get hit a lot more. This may be intended to have a more in your face experience. I don't mind it, it just feels different. I also like the removed ammo types so all weapons use the same and you're not collecting 6 or more types of ammo in your limited bag space. Good move.

Graphics 9.5/10. Simply awesome. Half a point off for not utilizing pc hardware fully.
Sound and music 8/10. Good but not the same level of anticipation I got from the first one.
Gameplay 6/10. I have to ding it for stupid save and weapon crafting systems.
Story and writing 8/10. Not as good imo as the 2nd one but kind of expected and still a great story.
Overall 70%

Overall an awesome game, just a few gameplay issues that keep it from being as great as the first two.

Actually came back to look up an old review of mine for steam post and found this, and I have to say, after finishing the game, it got way more interesting in the latter half. I finally figured out the annoying weapon crafting system and it wasn't so annoying. I made some sweet assault rifles with shotgun attachments. The downside is certain weapons seem vastly superior so there's not a lot of incentive to mix it up. Like a shredder does way less damage than the rifles. And handguns are cool but just aren't as strong as rifles.

The story became pretty epic too, a little out there, but really satisfying. All the crap from dead space 1 and 2 is starting to make sense, like a grand space opera. I also played the dlc awakened (which is far too short for the price. It takes like two hours or less. Even half off I was disappointed), and the continuation of the story is pretty shocking. I can't wait for a dead space 4.

Overall rating still stands, it's a little too shooter like and missing a lot of the heart of the first two, but still a very solid and polished game.

 

[civvver]

Dead Island - PC

I've spent the last few days playing Dead Island and it's one of those odd games where I really want to like it but seemingly the game just wants to dissapoint me at every turn. Basically it's an open ended zombie survival/horror game with an emphasis on questing, character customisation and weapon modding. In theory it sounded great and ticked a lot of boxes for me.

The game starts well with an idyllic holiday resort gone to pot with zombies all over the place; you get given a bunch of quests and there's a heap of optionals along the way as well as rescuing passers-by. However as the game progresses it rapidly becomes more linear with less and less side quests and with many many hours of interminable sewer crawls later on.

The characters themselves seem rather flawed; you can choose between throwing, shooting, blunt and bladed weapons but they can all use them all anyway so it ultimately just boils down to numbers and largely samey talent trees. I ended up picking guns but spent most of time whacking things with a machete because guns themselves are only useful against people and akin to flinging stones at zombies.

There also seems to be a massive discrepancy between character dialogue and their actions - there was a point early on when someone asked me to fetch some gas to burn a pile of corpses. When I returned with the cans he said "hurry up these f***ers are starting to stink" and then two seconds later when I finished the quest there was a cut scence of him crying whilst burning the corpses. Oh and the accents are hilarious, it's like people who have never been to Australia doing accents gleaned only by watching Baywatch.

The weapon upgrade system boils down to numbers which is rather boring but the modification system is fun, rigging a police bation to administer lethal doses of electricity was quite good. However the prize for worst implementation in the game goes to the repair system: so right from the start you collect things which might come in handy, glue, duct tape, nails etc so you would think that in order to repair something you use that stuff. But instead you pay a workbench x amount of dollars to magically repair your stuff. It just feels really out of place and gets on my nerves.

Also weapons degrade way too fast. I can understand the logic of an oar breaking quickly but a meat cleaver breaking in ~25 swings is just stupid, it's an implement designed for cutting meat, why is it breaking so quickly? Oh and guns don't degrade which is rather weird.

I could go on about the combat, the controls and the vehicles but overall Dead Island just feels like a console game that was put onto PC at the last moment. Some controls don't even work and others are hard coded so that you can't change them, it feels sluggish and unresponsive at times and quite poorly optimised. As an example; when I turned the graphics down I could no longer see fire and steam (which can do some nasty damage) unless I was already taking damage from it.

Personally I would give Dead Island a tentative 4.5/10 (but my standards are quite high, no free 60% for it not setting my computer on fire ala Gamespot) The game sounds good but it just doesn't deliver, and what it does do is rather poor - not worth £30 in my opinion.

I just stared playing this, I got it on sale for like $5 a looong time ago, like over two years probably, it's just been sitting in my library untouched. But today I tried it out for a few hours I agree with everything you wrote. It becomes really tedious and the durability system is awful. It takes already tedious fetch quests and makes them worse by breaking all your stuff halfway through.

It's sad cus it has a ton of potential. In general the open world, the questing, the leveling, the weapon system, it's all cool ideas, just not fleshed out enough.

And two major technical points here as far as the porting. Make sure you have a controller. That's kind of the case for like any port type game now like tomb raider or darksiders, they just playing better this way. Combat feels clunky with keyboard but smooth with gamepad.

Second is you have to adjust graphics externally. I got this thing called dead island helper to increase the field of view and reduce the motion blur and bloom effects. I played 20 mins with default and wanted to go lie down, the dizziness was so bad. It's cus the default field of view is tiny and there's a ton of motion sickness inducing effects. With this helper though it plays fine.

The game is on sale right now for $4. At that price it's probably worth it, but there's still a ton of better stuff you could be playing. I mean playing it and killing zombies I'm kinda like, I should be playing left4dead instead with friends. And doing quests and leveling I'm kind of like man I'm in a worse version of zombie themed skyrim.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Witcher 3:
Played through the campaign. 95 hours clocked, but I'm not sure if that's all gametime. Plenty of sidequests done in that time. 48% completed according to the game.
Great game in all. Story, content, sounds, graphics, voice acting - all excellent. There are some bugs and minor annoyances to the game. I haven't been able to finish some quests and the controls are a bit wonky. The engine showing some age? Great support from the devs in fixing most issues though.
It's a pretty large undertaking to play through the whole game also and I did spoil the story somewhat to avoid bad endings. It would've been nice to have an option of guidance in the important decisions for that reason, imo. It may feel a bit repetitive due to it dragging on for so long and you mainly fight things, but the story is good enough. It's excellent value for the price and overall another step up in the witcher series.

So for an rpg of 2015: 10/10. Probably the best pure rpg the last 15 years. While not being as combat heavy as the Souls games, it is combat heavy.

 

[cardgame]

re: Dead Island

Dying Light is supposedly everything Dead Island tried and failed to be, everything is better. I've only played for like 90 minutes, so I can't say much, but it's been fun so far.

 

[civvver]

Defense Grid 2

I loved defense grid 1, really great tower defense game that had everything I wanted (challenges, not super annoying resource collection, variety) so when DG2 came out I was pumped. I waited for a sale of course, got it over the summer but just had time to get into it recently. I'm probably 2/3rds through.

I can't say if I'm disappointed but there's really no noticeable differences between this and DG1. I loved DG1 a lot so I like this too, but I was hoping for some more drastic changes I guess. The only differences are really just more stuff, they added a missile tower which is a lot like the meteor (super long range, slow firing) but not aoe so it packs a punch like a cannon. Tesla towers got reworked. Then a big thing they added is these bases for your towers called boost towers. Anything built on a boost can be upgraded for 25% more dmg, score boost (like old command towers) or disruption (like commands too but also drops shields). It's a nice wrinkle but not a ton more useful over just choosing what towers to upgrade. Other than strategically placing disruption ones I don't find them necessary. There are also a bunch more special weapons (L key) but I find myself just using the same one all the time so it's not a big deal.

The levels are also much easier than DG1 so far, I was pretty bored the first 10 missions, not having to backspace once (backspace takes you back like 2 mins in time, like a quickload if things go wrong).

One cool addition is these transport aliens that fly right on top of your cores and start spewing out aliens. You have a bit of time to dmg the transport before it starts and the aliens it spawns have their health at the same percentage. First time I saw one I had to restart the level completely and rethink my strategy.

In general it's a great tower defense game, and it's just as good as DG1, but not better. I'd give it an 8/10, it does actually have an intriguing story this time. It is still pretty short, just like DG1 though. Get it on sale.

 

[civvver]

FTL Captain's Edition

I reviewed FTL a couple years back, gave it a 90% cus I love it. I don't love it any less today, but over the holidays I managed to beat the game with every ship variant (on easy though, normal still really hard!) and wanted a fresh experience so I looked up some mods. Far and away the biggest mod is called captain's edition. It's so big in fact it has its own wiki. It's actually a collection of a ton of other mods plus more. Here I'm just going to highlight the differences between it and normal FTL rather than explain all aspects of FTL game. You can read my original review here for that.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13061019&postcount=391


Captain's edition is so different from FTL, it's almost a whole new game. Civ comparision it's like vanilla civ4/5 vs bts/brave new world. FTL comparison, take the amount of content advanced edition added to original FTL and then multiply that by a factor of at least 10. It's that big in scope.

Almost everything is changed/expanded in some way. In fact it's probably easier to list the stuff that didn't change! One of those things is systems. The existing weapons system, drones, shields etc did not change. You still get the same maximum power in each, same upgrades, same weapon slots etc. So like cloaking for instance still has 3 upgrades. Weapons have 8. And only a couple new systems were added. One is the ability to have artillery on any ship like the federation cruiser. I guess there is a bug though that enabling this system will corrupt saves so you have to finish your game in one shot. Then a couple other systems are added like a scrambler that reduces enemy weapon systems by 1-2. It's like when you hit an event where enemies knock out your weapons only now you can do that to them. Nothing super fancy.

Almost everything else is changed though. There's about 5 times as many weapons. There are now special lasers for killing crew only that penetrate shields, there's special ion weapons that penetrate shields, slow moving mines that are super cheap to power and cause a lot of hull dmg, more last types like scatter lasers for wrecking shields but not as much hull dmg, there are artillery lasers (my favorite) that have shield piercing and cause tons of dmg, 4-6 for some versions. There's a ton more drone types so you get a lot more variety, like a missile drone and an anti crew drow. There are more missile launchers that do anything from launching 3 warheads for 1 dmg each up to many pts of dmg, to ones that launch stealth missiles that drones can't target. In all it's very overwhelming at first but pretty fun in the end. Adds a ton of variety to your games.

There's of course a ton more event types added to so no longer do you know the best choice for every event, you have to experiment and roll the dice more.

Also added is a concept of morality and piracy. You know all those little popup events where you'd find a lost ship that needs fuel or some trader who wants to sell missiles for drone parts? Those still exist only now is a third option to attack those ships as an act of piracy. Your crew however may be uncomfortable with these actions and mutiny or abandon you so you must be careful. What's sweet though is it provides alternate play styles based on your ship's origin. For example, if piloting a mantis ship the pheramone augment marks you as a pirate so your crew doesn't care if you prey on every single weaker ship. Same goes for rock ships and the rock casing. But if you are commanding the kestral cruiser? No such luck. You can also accept surrenders and then still open fire on the enemy ships for even more loot, but this almost always makes your crew angry. And you remember all those slave ships in the past? Same deal, if you capture slaves off them they don't just willingly join your crew, you must force them into servitude and see how your crew reacts. It's a cool feature to have to make some moral decisions in the game now.

Another new feature is a whole crafting/trading system. Certain augments you can craft or buy that allow you to make stuff at empty beacons like one let's you build missiles for some scrap and another recycles fuel. Some let you produces augment that are only good for selling like consumer goods which you can sell at a store for ~50 scrap or whatever. So there's many more ways to acquire stuff.

Along with this there are a lot more ways to delay the rebel fleet. Every time you jump forward a sector, if your engines are upgraded enough you can spend extra fuel to travel faster and delay them. If you arrive at an empty beacon with a drone system you can deploy drones to delay them. That's just a couple options.

There are a lot more ships added too. It's rare to see the same ship types in a playthrough now, tons of new designs. This isn't really game changing but just adds more flavor to the game. With all the new weapon types you have to be able to counter more stuff as well.

Map changes abound as well, like new environmental hazards like acid clouds that slowly eat your ship but delay the rebels. You can definitely get into some hairy situations if you are unaware of the danger!

Finally everything is just tweaked for balance. Every starting ship has new weapon loadouts that are supposed to be more balanced. YMMV. Other stuff, like for instance the scrap recovery arm only adds 8% extra scrap now vs 10%, and the weapon rooms on the rebel ship now are not isolated meaning they can be repaired this time around.

That about covers it as far as I can remember. In general you will play the game and it'll seem familiar just a lot bigger and deeper. It really takes FTL to a new level. I only have one complaint about it. Some of the difficulty seems to be in acquiring weapons. Obviously you need in the later sectors enough weapons to get through level 3-4 shields, and you need to down the rebel flagship like that as well. In regular advanced edition if you just visited enough stores eventually you'd find a solution whether it's powerful missiles or burst lasers or flak cannons, whatever. In captain's edition there's a ton more weapons which also means a lot more junk weapons that aren't suitable for end game. For example beam weapons are great, but they won't work on the flagship cus they can't penetrate the shields. Same goes for all the nifty crew killing weapons now, since you can't beat the flagship by killing the crew cus the AI takes over. But you'll randomly run into a ton of shops that carry all beams or all crew killers, or maybe they just have too many crappy lasers and drones. It the attempt to show your more stuff you end up seeing a lot of stuff that just isn't worth buying. It seems counter intuitive, more options should mean more ways to win = easier, but I find the opposite is true, more bad options abound than good ones. In the end though I consistently win on easy cus there are a lot more options for acquiring scrap, delaying rebels to explore more, etc so it's not a big deal. Just frustrating at times.

Overall I would highly suggest you check out this mod if you've ever played FTL. And if you haven't played FTL... what's wrong with you?! Get this amazing game already!


Mod can be found here.
http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15663

 

[ls612]

I haven't even got around to trying the Advanced Edition so I would feel hopelessly out of my depth trying this.