Reviews - ComradeWinston

Very buggy but the essential expansion/sequel Dawn of War never got from its incompetent developers over at Relic.

In an era of buggy broken "AAA" games, this game's a godsend. What a 'fan' of the series may think, I cannot care. As a game, its on par with games like the Witcher 3 and that's all that matters. Also given how absurdly optimized it is, you may well think it could hit 60fps on a calculator. If you have the remotest of interest in an open world game set in modern times, you have no excuse to skip this game.

It's a very tempting thing indeed to make comparisons to Skyrim's vast open semi-comedic world and Game of Throne's unforgiving world, though I guess it gets the point across. It's the good old dirty Witcher world we've come to know and love in the previous games, assuming you're a fan. If you're willing to steep yourself in a single game, mastering its combat and so on, you'll come to love it if you have any taste at all.

Above all, the very most impressive thing about this game is the sheer depth of meaningful quests and things to do in general. At most, there is the occasional random group of monsters or token chest guarded by something or someone. Much like Skyrim, the point of this game isn't to get through the main story but rather to invest yourself in the world. Pretty much every village among the dozens of them has a meaningful quest if not multiple or many, never mind the city of Novigrad. These aren't just fetch quests, they are distinct across the board and none have felt convoluted or as if they were added merely to fill time. It can't be understated how totally this puts to shame every "AAA" game made in the past decade. What would otherwise be forgettable tasks in other games feel as though they were given the attention another game's main story would recieve.

Visually it looks quite good but it is demanding on hardware. Regardless, I have textures as well as shadows on their highest settings along with AA and it looks beautiful even with pretty much every other setting on low or medium. Unlike most other games full of stiff objects, wind makes the world feel alive and storms doubly so. If not for being released on consoles as well, I have no doubt it would perform and look better but given CD Project Red's history they'll probably patch it in due time.

To my surprise, there's a card game called Gwent that I've actually come to like quite a bit. Never before have I so enjoyed one of these types of minigames. If Gwent was on Steam for something like $5, I'd probably buy it without second thought.

It doesn't feel stupidly difficult but you will fail occasionally, however you can pretty much win any fight with enough skill if you really want to but retreating is usually an option as well. Combat feels better in general and the necessity to learn how to fight specific foes all over the place provides practical value to lore. The leveling process is very slow compared to other games but not meaninglessly so, as the devs were not kidding when they said you can go on for something like 220 hours. At a point onward into the early double digits, you'll find you have plenty of contracts and secondary missions.

This is plainly the most impressive game I've played in my life, a 'Game of the Decade' worthy one no less. For this kind of game, it is certainly worth full price and a steal during any sale.

Everthing about this city builder functions perfectly as you'd expect and more. For instance, one thing speaks to how much thought has and may continue to be put into this game: the ability to close off a body of water with a dam, build pumps in it, and drain it. A short while after draining the body of water, grass soon grows on what was once dirt and you can plop down more city. You can even put sewage pumps along that area beforehand, remove the water pumps before turning them on, and flood your new stretch of city with poop water. If you really hate your citizens, you can place new water pumps in the ruins of your new-ish poop-flooded part of the city and your citizens all throughout your city will become poisoined and die.

Sure most of that has little to do with the whole city building thing most of the time but it tells me everything I need to know about their dedication to detail and sandbox mechanics.

This thing isn't Battlefield at all. After the sad excuses for sequels that 3 & 4 were, this is just pitiful. I hope DICE gets dissolved and its talent is liberated.

Update(3/17/2015)
Three DLC packs within a month's time of this game's release. This isn't just greedy, its becoming disgusting and it all adds up to $69. **** Sega and **** this, they can either release a finished game or suck my **** because they certainly aren't getting a penny more out of me otherwise.
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**** Paywall "DLC"
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This is the Napoleon: Total War of Rome 2, its obvious. However I only give it a pass on the account of the horde system, everything else is generally the same except the Western Roman Empire's goal being to simply not collapse. Unlike every Total War where you would have to deal with a relatively annoying-to-defend bunch of well-spread cities, you can just turn your civilization into a glorified collection of tents. When you choose to migrate, your settlements will become mobile self-sustaining armies that can sack and raze the world's greatest cities if you so wish.

It looks prettier, some things have been fixed or just made better, cities generally are better designed and it seems maps in general are scaled to be larger as well as the units being smaller to give you more room to move around. Of course though, this is a Total War game released in 2015 so within one week of launch they've released two of their infamous "cultural packs" allowing you the esteemed honor of playing six factions already present in the damned game.

Greedy business practices, superior mechanics & combat, and a new coat of paint. What's new.

Release Update
The Day 1 DLC being shoveled out is downright comedic. Over $60 of skin packs alone, plus the season pass to boot. Without second thought, I now consider 2K a worse company than EA in every respect and will until EA does something incredibly stupid again. They obviously have zero respect for the consumer, with the full intention to nickle and dime you the consumer over every last pixel.

Alpha Review
Without the $60 price tag in consideration, it is generally a good game that will most likely be polished by release and is worth paying some attention to at the very least. Among many concerns though is a lack of content and customization in general, to make this more than a rinse & repeat sort of game like L4D. Granted the maps are pretty but that does not make up for their relatively small size and lacking variation between maps or in them, in general.

The length of any given match is short, making it feel though this is more of a showpiece or demo intended to present a concept rather than a full concept in itself. It may seem a stupid criticism given the primary objective is to hunt the monster but it ends up becoming boring after a while doing that one thing over and over again. It would do this game well to give players something to do aside from running in the general direction of the monster as it eats enough within a couple minutes to hit level 3.

Of course its badly optimized for the time being but as mentioned I doubt it'll be a problem in the official release, not even my rig can run it at the moment on anything more than Medium without any AA settings; otherwise stuttering like a madman and becoming unplayable. It does look pretty good though, on the highest settings at least but not better than most others released these days.

The pre-order bonus hints at the future of this game all too much, especially given the game's publisher. If a single monster pre-order bonus is a big deal, they're going to charge for every last bit of new content until it probably starts to outweigh the game's price; like Borderlands or other developers such as Relic. That's just greedy as **** and a way to artificially raise the price of the "full game." Considering the price for this generally repetitive game with limited content, I can't recomend it and nor will I consider buying it until a big price drop or Steam sale puts it down to maybe $20 or so.

Very promising. This game plays a bit like a MOBA in the grand scheme of things but with ships. For the price & quality, I can't not recomend this but keep in mind that it is very team-oriented.

There isn't any way around it, this is a much more in-depth fantasy version of Civilization 5. Aside from all the depth and such, the setting feels far more fitting than the "insert X historical leader as the figurehead of X nation" of Civilization. The "world gets periodically buried in an ice age" lore simply works well, where that historical stuff is fun but wears quickly; at least in my experience. It generally helps the diversity of the world, factions, and even is a gameplay element with the onset of a punishing winter for elongated periods of time.

City placement isn't dictated by distance between cities but rather they're divided by generated provinces you can claim with a single city, entirely doing away with gamey nonsense and weird broken borders typical to Civ5. Technology is organic, only divided into tiers rather than mandatory lines of progress more like a loading bar as a manifestation of your needs. After having played a number of Paradox strategy games, I've come to appreciate a good UI and this game certainly isn't hard to navigate through; everything's where it should be, no hassle.

Diplomacy isn't the typical limited rigid enemy/neutral/friendly set either. By default nations are in a state of "cold war" from which point they can either become friendly or fight their opposition's armies over control of neutral territory. You can also compliment and insult, among other things to decrease or increase the cost of certain types of diplomatic declarations and agreements. No longer are the days of "I really want to kill that guy's settler but I really don't want to declare war on him" as now you can simply slaughter them along with everything else.

Units are one of the finer points of this developer's games, at least compared to most generic units in strategy games. Each faction has three basic units but you can drastically alter them by creating(renaming kinda) a new unit with better equipment, along with any minor faction's units you pick up along the way. You could make your ranged units more durable than any generic mele unit, create a berserker unit, or even the most expensive upgraded thing you can get your hands on.

Heroes play a role much like characters in more recent Total War games. They can be given the finest equipment your nation has like any unit and eventually level-up to be anything from a skilled administrator to a glorious commander through a very Total War-esq tree of passive boons. In battle, they also play a role as a most effective unit.

Faction diversity's easily among the strongest features of this game, going against the current trend of making factions very much the same as each other. For instance, one of them can only build a single powerful city and subjugate distant minor faction villages which then occasionally supply that faction with free units. Another can only increase its population and heal units through using dust (magical money). The trader faction can even uproot its cities and set down somewhere else at will. This vast difference between factions is only further supplemented by the ability to create custom factions, with a limited point system providing you a series of boons along with crippling debuffs to choose from; ensuring balance.

If you've enjoyed Civilization, you'll probably find this game surpasses it in pretty much every way—though the character limit on custom names is truly criminal.