Recent reviews by Colonial Tom

[Minor Spoilers]

Too often, when a game developer decides to take a crack at a licensed game, they form-fit the license around what genre or mechanics they would actually like to be working with if not for the contract. "A Star Wars game? Eh, I've always wanted to do a dogfighting game. Let's make Jedi Starfighter." "A Simpsons game? Eh, I'll just make a wrestling game with Homer and Dr. Nick." Sometimes, this has good outcomes, sometimes bad.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle joins an exclusive club of licensed games that break the mold. Arkham Asylum, Friday the 13th, Alien: Isolation, and now this. You can tell the Developers, instead of bending their license game into something different, just decided to make the best video game adaption of the respective franchise.

In the slapstick combat, goofy moments, awesome historical setpieces, and cinematic puzzles, the game developers reveal their goal was just to make the best Indiana Jones game they possibly could. And it works very well if you're a fan of Indiana Jones. That's a big kicker, though. If you're not even a marginal fan of the original Indiana Jones trilogy, you might have a hard time getting into this game.

I think the stand-out feature of this game for me was the combat. I really didn't know that I needed slapstick combat so faithfully executed in a game, but it's so remarkably fun. I love it. And to those getting into the game, it's not really a stealth game. It's more a run in, punch people, have fun game. Though you can stealth. My one complaint is that the introduction of guns about halfway into the game made everything considerably less fun.

The open worlds are incredible. My favorite was definitely the Vatican, and I found that it was the most faithful recreation of a historical setting I had seen in a very long time. As a true lover of Italian history, I appreciated it immensely. I also respected that while the Nazi villains' goofiness was turned up to 11, Mussolini was portrayed faithfully as to how he actually acted, instead of being 4 foot tall and bouncing around the room or whatever. A reminder found in the Last Crusade that real villainy ought be taken more serious than its serialized counterpart. Gizeh I found a far more unfortunate interpretation of a real civilization. It felt like Arabic Egyptian culture was never really taken seriously beyond a set piece, and I would've preferred a native leader to Dame Nawal, who I found a sort of oppressive presence in a way Antonio was not as the Vatican's ally. I'm not too far into Siam, but it's pretty cool so far. The Vatican is definitely the stand-out, though. Love real history being shown, even if in a fundamentally goofy story. Discovering secrets and doing side quests with the journal was never tiring.

Now, when it comes to story, I should preface that I have not finished it. If the ending is really bad I'll come back and revise this part. But generally... it's good! The plot is so mystical and pseudo-historical and cool. You can tell what the weird insane parts were where George Lucas advised them, haha! Now, I do have nitpicks.

First, Gina. I don't really care for her. Her character seems very modern in a way that took me out of the story. Now, when read in the context of this game generally being inspired by the story of Raiders, I kind of get it. She's meant to be Marion, the sort of headstrong, norms-defying woman that George Lucas likes to write. But, I really got a different vibe from Gina than I did Marion. I felt like Marion's personality conflicted Indy's exactly because of those traits. They bounced off each other well because he was someone who didn't really care about other people, and she reminded him he had a heart. Gina was just as assertive, which again, is not a bad thing, but the problem is that Indy never pushes back. He's apparently jaded and broken-hearted again at the start of the game, but it never really sustains in his behavior. He's always way more accomodating to her than he ever was to any of the other women we see on screen, while never making a move until waaay into the game. So, I guess this is really less a Gina problem than an Indy problem. It felt like they didn't really know how to write him once Gina got into the picture. I think generally it's very hard for this modern class of writers to imagine people who were born earlier than like 1940. They just don't really understand them very well, and as a historian-in-training myself it takes me out of the media.

My other complaint is that the battleship cutscene is like 13 minutes long. I was genuinely very annoyed that I was watching a fight scene in a game instead of playing it. It was a good cutscene, but come on! This is a video game!

Regardless of those small problems, though, the game is excellent.

9/10
VALUE: $39.99

It's felt pretty strange to give Paradox the wins I recently have been, but I'm happy to say that trend continues. Götterdämmerung is a good DLC.

Starting with Special Projects, this is a strong addition to the game. I was worried before the DLC's release that the introduction of this DLC that the Special Projects' gameplay would be too much like the Operative System, which I think was waaay too micro, and boring to work with. It wasn't too overbearing, never distracted me too much from the war effort, contributed to the overall gameplay, and boasts a charming UI. Very good.

In terms of our new focus trees for minor nations, the Austrian and Hungarian ones are both welcome additions also. The Austrian one specifically I found fun to work with, and a nice challenge. The only problem with Austria's was the bizarre Danubian/EU path, which is lazy alt-history. Belgium's was boring, and I would've liked that effort put toward something else, like a Vichy rework, or something.

Germany's Inner Circle thing is totally awesome. I love it. The new focus tree for Germany is, in general, fantastic. The Germany experience still is better than anything else in the game, but now it's somehow even more fun. The sense of buildup is great. Good job, PDX. I do have a few criticisms though: The free market Hitler path is bonkers, and that sort of dramatic change from Hitler's historical position should lead to more drastic negative effects for the regime. If you're not going to integrate that into a political path, why have that at all? The focus where Japan gives you all its WW1 conquests is also hilariously dumb. The main thing that peeved me in game is just how fast everything goes by. In a historical Germany run you miss a lot of the stuff in your tree Germany did in real life. I would add a national spirit for early game that lets them accomplish their focuses faster, that expires when the war starts. But these are all nitpicks.

Overall, an 8.5/10 DLC, and probably the best one they've done. I had fun with it, especially when paired with the AI patch.

I have been a critic of CK3 since it came out: It felt like a downgrade from where CK2 was. With the release of this DLC, I can finally say that CK3 is on par with CK2, not because it's catching up to what CK2 has already done, but instead has built upon the concept with unique and awesome new features.

The Byzantine rework is incredible. Totally changes up the game in a unique yet not overbearing way. Engaging with the politics of the empire is actually fun. Not going to lie, in these games I always felt like playing outside feudal Europe was boring, and not what the game was designed for. This DLC has proven that CK is not just for feudal Europe, but also can be made fun in other areas. And boy is it fun.

Landless adventurers are also an awesome new feature, and as someone who plays the game more for the story than the map-painting and the gene-honing, this adds a whole new dimension to my stories, and adds weight to loss, instead of a simple game over screen.

This is also going to sound weird, but the animations seem better. Like, there are more of them.

Before I wrap up this review, I'd also like to say how happy I am with CK3's post-release DLC philosophy. Instead of re-releasing the same things over and over, this game has decided to make every DLC super unique, with features that really awe me in how creative and cool they are. Having a throne room, traveling around the world, and now clawing your way up from nothing. It's all so conceptually awesome, even if not always executed perfectly. Please, keep it up, and by the end of this game's development cycle, it will be far and away your best.

Still, with all of that praise said, I still don't think it's worth $30. $22 is what I'd say is reasonable. The Chapter bundle system is cool though, I got this for $40 plus a bunch of other stuff. Nice idea.

9/10

The Alien franchise has had ups and downs throughout the years. Aliens: Dark Descent is a definitive up, and is to Aliens what Alien: Isolation was to Alien.

For me, the game shines the most in the gameplay, and I'm sure that's what you're most concerned about, so that's where I'll start: There have been many XCOM clones, and Alien is not the first major franchise to devise one (hello Gears Tactics), but I will say that of the XCOM derivatives I've played, Aliens: Dark Descent does the most to differentiate from and expand upon the concept. In XCOM, a lot of the fun is not knowing what you'll be battling next (thus, Enemy Unknown). The fun of Aliens: Dark Descent is knowing exactly what you're up against (the constantly-ticking motion tracker telling you where your enemy is in a fairly generous vicinity) and knowing that you probably can't handle it. The Xenomorphs you face though, much like in the original Aliens film, aren't exactly hyper-intelligent. In Aliens: Dark Descent, you'll rarely win by fighting head-on. Instead, you can use your command points to outsmart and outplay the Xenos. Simple tricks that I wish I knew when I first started include using deployable trackers near your ARC/APC to draw all Xenos in the area to their deaths, or upgrading the silencer on a recon troop and taking out everything without much trouble.

You'll quickly get it if you start playing, but the real fun of this game are the quiet, uneventful parts, or the times when nothing can be seen, but your motion tracker is still ticking as an enemy lingers from afar. Aliens: Dark Descent masters the slow build-up of tension, and then when an onslaught comes or you're faced against a Queen, it's truly exhilarating.

If you were gunning down thousands of Xenomorphs, you'd get a little stressed out. And your marines do too. They accumulate stress points during missions, and will need to rest in between missions or even go into therapy after. It's a really neat way of making your soldiers feel more like people.

In XCOM, the game shines the most with those bouts of individual heroism. In this corps, however, there's no such concept. Your squad will move and act as a group. I was horrified when I first realized this, but it's actually the change from your average RTS that I appreciate the most. It both makes your squad far more vulnerable and limits what you can see to what your squad can see. There's no scouting out the entire map and killing everything in one fell swoop. You've got to go one step at a time. It's genius.

The game's management systems are... alright. It was tense for most of the early game but by the end I was swimming in more materials than I could ever use.

The graphics were great, except the faces. They were really terrible, but you're probably not playing an Aliens game for the facial models. I should note, however, that the use of lighting was really unique and cool.

The weakest limb of the game for me, was the story. It wasn't bad, per se, but it definitely wasn't good either. The narrative itself didn't bother me, but I really wish it was integrated better with the great gameplay. There were two missions specifically where you were locked to a select number of story characters and I was like "Really? Where are my marines?" So that bothered me. Definitely not a dealbreaker though. There's also a part late in the game with a death countdown, and that was really annoying, and made me rush through a game that I felt was shining when it was patient. I'd definitely recommend turning it off in the start options when you get the game.

Overall, great, great, great game. Loved it.

This is a DLC that adds big focus trees to Brazil, Argentina and Chile, and smaller ones to Paraguay and Uruguay. As thus, the worthiness of this DLC will live or die on the quality of these focus trees. To put it simply, these trees are not good—or at least incredibly subpar. And that's not good enough.

First of all: What makes a good focus tree? In my view, there are three really good focus trees in the game; Spain's, Mexico's, and Poland's. These focus trees have paths that feel unique to the nation you're playing. I.E., if I want to crown a cossack as king, I'm going to play Poland. You can think of the antithesis to this principle as the basic-bland communist path that exists in almost every nation, wherein you foment revolution and then decide between "stay with Moscow" or "our own way", sometimes with those exact words. Good focus trees will also give the player plenty of things to do outside of the country's borders. In HOI4, that usually translates to conquestable territory, but sometimes this can be done peaceably. Lastly, good focus trees will often integrate the more mundane parts (think economic and military) of their tree, or make those mundane paths interesting with unique, well-researched things to do. Integrating can be an important bonus, because it means your economic and military bonuses require political change first, which is how it works IRL. Very few Paradox focus trees really pull that last part off, but there are a few strong examples, like Spain's and Mexico's.

So to recap, the best focus tree has:

( ) Unique and not bland political paths
( ) Good external opportunities
( ) Integrated mundane paths

Spain:

(✓) Unique and not bland political paths
(✓) Good external opportunities
(✓) Integrated mundane paths

I would argue your average Paradox focus tree has:

(½) Unique and not bland political paths — Pretty much every Paradox tree has at least one that's somewhat interesting, either because it's the historical path or the obvious a-historical path.
(✓) Good external opportunities — Every Paradox focus tree gives you stuff to kill. It's genuinely difficult to screw this point up.
(X) Integrated mundane paths — No.

So with all that being said, let's see how the focus trees in Trials of Allegiance square up:

(X) Unique and not bland political paths
(X) Good external opportunities
(X) Integrated mundane paths

It's not like the problems here are new, but focus trees of Paradox past had a valuable crutch: The fact that most of those bad focus trees were for nations that were actually in noteworthy regions. Czechoslovakia's focus tree isn't great, for instance, but going fascist as Czechoslovakia, though that is a boringly designed path, has a serious affect on the countries around you and gives you a lot to do. Fighting in the jungle as South American nations is impossible to enjoy, and Paradox decided not to do the obvious fix of adding jungle special forces. South America's focus trees lacks this crutch, which leaves it as nothing more than a disappointment.

To say something positive, I liked Uruguay's tree the most, surprisingly. But the jungles you have to fight in again make it significantly less fun. I think honestly this pack would've been much better if they had added a bunch of small, Uruguay-sized focuses to every Latin American country, that had 2-3 paths each. Maybe put more emphasis on events or decisions.

As it stands, though, this pack is the weakest since Together for Victory. If you're not particularly invested in these countries, hard pass.

I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.

Let me preface with this: I do not enjoy horror media.

I find horror boring and predictable, and I do not scare easily.

Alien: Isolation was simply terrifying.

Where I find most horror boring and predictable, Alien: Isolation was consistently exciting and spontaneous, thanks to the game's ingenious AI, sound design and atmosphere. There are videos on YT about the brilliance of A:I's AI, and I recommend checking them out. Stuff is legit fascinating. As for atmosphere, the game institutes and expands on the 70's sci-fi look of Ridley's Scott original Alien flawlessly. Funny enough, while playing I was inspired to go rewatch Alien 1979, and within the first minute I was fangirling over a door, and how I recognized it from the game. This game made me excited over a door.

The atmosphere itself is amazing, the graphics are incredible and what lore I saw was nice, but frankly with some of the insane gameplay elements which heighten the fear factor (game doesn't pause in terminals or during saving), I basically had no desire to delve into the in-game lore because while reading there was a constant threat of death, and save points were so scarce.

Maybe it's because I played on normal instead of hard, but the survival horror elements like crafting and ammo management was really easy. To anyone who's buying the game, don't be too conservative with your stuff like I was. Find the right balance.

My biggest issues with the game are that it was like five missions too long (AND YOU FEEL IT), and the fact that there are so few moments where you get a chance to chill and take in the environment. Two of the best parts of the original Alien were the characters and the tension (the Alien's only in action like 5% of the movie p much), and I felt like both of those elements were absent for this game.

Overall, though, this game was incredible. The perfect horror game with an unpredictable, credible threat. Even if you're not usually a horror-enjoyer like me, give it a go if you want a good fright.

Rating: 9/10
Value: $30

I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies.

Got this game through ♥♥♥. Not paying 40 bucks for a ten year old game. F you Activision.

Batman: Arkham Knight is a game about Batman's car.

The story is absolute garbage and riddled with holes.

The game relies too much on the Batmobile, it being used in practically every mission

Batman kills people.

If you don't care about any of this and just want to have dumb-fun in the best digital interpretation of Gotham ever, then you'll have fun with this game.

This game is very good, despite the nasty reviews. The graphics are beautiful, the game can be heavily modded and it runs smoothly.

Hears of Iron IV: Man the Guns - 6/10

So, I've had some time to marinate with Man the Guns, as it has been out for a few weeks at the time of writing this. My review here is not meant to cause controversy or flame Paradox, but rather to give some insight about what this DLC got right, and what it got wrong.

With that being said,

1 - Unfocused Trees

One of the biggest things I happened to dislike in this pack ended up, shockingly, being the focus trees. Maybe it's because I'm just not interested in somewhere like the Netherlands, but just the way they went about doing the US, UK, and the Dutch trees just felt so wrong. And I couldn't really put my finger on why until I read the review from @guachiman. An excerpt from that review: "Every nation is now completely controlled by it's own focus trees"; I couldn't agree more. The ahistory of the gameplay (I.E. fascist demagogues and communist revolutionaries) seems completely neglected. Now decisions and focuses basically decide what you'll be for you. This makes the game feel more linear. Nations are now dependent on their trees not for bonuses, but for most of the things you do in the game.

Now, in being fair, I'd like to mention how wonderful the Mexican focus tree truly is. It's definitely my favorite in the game, and if every nation in this DLC got a path along the lines of Mexico's the pack would be vastly improved. The guy who made the tree should be in charge of all the trees, because he clearly did his research and made a truly unique and interesting tree. Kudos for that.

2 - We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

So, the main gameplay expansion from this pack is boats! Yes, boats! I'll be totally fair here, the improvements are good ones. Naval terrain, Naval exercises, and Templates are all welcome changes. But, again, I'd like to quote someone from an MTG public game I hosted:

"i didn't understand naval combat before, and now i double don't understand it"

The truth is that the changes are not easy to learn. Unlike Waking the Tiger, where the changes were easy and simple to grasp, it took me around 5 hours of gameplay to learn how to work my Navy. Maybe I'm just an idiot, but it really shouldn't take anyone more than 30 minutes to learn how to work the new system.

3 - Black Gold, Texas T

Fuel, my friends. It's a thing now. And it's actually a really good gameplay improvement that I totally endorse. It's simple to understand and it's something that will directly affect a nation like Germany.

4 - The End

There is still the question that needs to be answered: Is Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns worth buying?

Eh. Maybe? I guess.

In conclusion, it's okay at best, and annoying at worst. If you like what you see, then you'll probably enjoy the pack, but don't expect to be blown away. If none of this interests you, then you're not losing anything by passing. Maybe it's because it has to live up to Waking the Tiger, a pack that improved gameplay and effectively gave 10 or so nations new things to do, but either way Man the Guns felt really underwhelming.

~~ Captain Tom