Recent reviews by Civvy

A very solid, well done dungeon-crawler. I've played a fair bit by now and that was enough to learn enough to get my first escape under my belt. The game does really well at feeling like an old dungeon-crawl, but with a covert twist. The game also makes great use of VR hardware without making your computer explode.

There's enough in the game when you first start that you have plenty to learn about and experiment with, without making the game feel unknowable or inaccessible. As you escape more, the game will offer you new tools and new challenges. The game is also clear about what you will unlock at what milestones, making it fun to tick towards new things.

The objectives system isn't overwhelming, with only two extra tasks to complete. They're simple, such as retrieving a certain semi-plentiful item or taking a picture of something special. Still, it drives me into the dark to challenge me to find what I need before I fall to attrition or get overwhelmed by guards.

Very solid game, I love the atmosphere, I love the historical presentation and the information I can find and learn about, and I love the pace. Very good VR experience, would absolutely reccomend.

This is a strange one, and I see why it's overlooked in the Xcom storyline, and as a game. To sum it all up, this game was.. Experimental at best, and so I recommend it either for free like I got it in a giveaway, or on a really, really good sale, because there is definitely something here to enjoy, and something intriguing to consider if you enjoy Xcom, its systems, or its story. It certainly has it's problems, though, and a few that dampened the experience for me.

This game was an experiment to see where 2K wanted to take the franchise, I assume. There's a good bit of story here, although it is awkwardly presented, and some of the mechanics from this game made it into either Xcom 2 or Chimera Squad, although its contribution is small.

To make it simple, I really enjoyed how they tried something new with the 'Tactical Focus' system, and tried to make use of it outside of combat. I would say the cover shooting didn't do it for me, but this is something of a 3rd person version of what your soldiers see in the other games, which put a smile on my face.
I also liked where they tried to take the story. Although, worldwide alien invasion and CIA coverup don't really mix well, trying to play both the overt and the covert sides of the story.

What I didn't enjoy was the ending. The ending mission was fun, but the story stumbled over itself trying to cover everything up, loosely tying it up to Roswell. Also, I was promised skin-crawling alien parasite horror, invasion of the body-snatchers style. Did I once enter a suburban home in 1960's America, find out the wife is actually an alien, and then try to stop their nefarious plan to slowly replace the population? Nah. I went to a college, a few farmsteads, and a lot of alien towers. The mystery of your enemy tanks after a certain point in the story, as if the mystery was that strong. You're blasting these lads from the very first mission. Fun! But- not as stimulating as I'd hoped.
Also, no basebuilding or particularly good customization. No armor upgrades, no research-- All of that is handled for you, and by the end, you're wearing the same snazzy suit, but you're carrying a gun that you found on an alien body.

Aside from the problems with the story and setting, it's an alright game. Not very in depth, and hardly Xcom, but if you want a romp through the 60's, blasting aliens and seeing where 2K was thinking of taking the Ethereals, by all means, go for it. I had fun enough.

Stormworks, in short, is an excellent engineering game with challenges and physics not seen in many other games. With its custom modes and wonderfully versatile library of parts, one would be hard pressed to be at a loss for something to do, or some way to get the cogs in their mind churning.
From helicopters to ships, rickets, drones, trucks, all-terrain vehicles, trains-- whatever you want to make, whatever function you want it to have, it can be done, and there's always a mission to go with it. Can't find it? Go ahead n' make one, yourself! The game just added custom buildings, and before that just added forest fires. This truly lives up to its name: build and rescue.
Now, if you're into engineering machines of all kinds, taking on all manner of different jobs, saving lives and weathering storms, go ahead and pick this up. You won't be sorry, I assure you!

I thought this game was gonna be something I played a bit of, got bored, n' left it for when I was looking for something else to do. Not the case! This is a lovely little romp of a game that's so simple, you'll keep on' playing it. It's great for when you just want to calm down, or give your brain a little snack. It is surprisingly challenging to get to the next island later on, as you start to run out of space. It's a great exercise in efficiency! I picked this up on sale, as I do with everything, and it's been worth every cent and much more. Mind you, it's not the next big thing or some second coming, but it's worth the price.

This game. . . Lord have mercy, this game!! I am a big Xcom fan, being introduced to the games via Enemy Unknown. Let me tell you here and now, UFO Defense gets my brain chugging and my heart pumping like little else and leaves me with a good taste in my mouth after a session.
I'm a man who likes to steadily push his limits. Not going to fast, but hardly stagnating, and UFO Defense really tests my mental metle in the best of ways. Your soldiers feel vulnerable and easy to kill, the aliens feel like they're everywhere and nowhere, and you never feel liek you've wrested full control on the situation. The aliens feel truly like skulking, deadly extraterrestrial creatures form a horror film.
I've never been a big fan of horror, but this is more of a horror you feel like you can combat effectively, should you play your cards right.
However, with this, the game isn't always intuitive. The UI isn't the best and the game doesn't exactly tell you what you need to know, but what game from the 90's did? There are mods to make the game a bit more user-friendly, a few of whom I may try out. Alas, aliens also feel like they come out of nowhere without giving you a chance to react before a good chunk of your men are dead, but I suppose that adds to the terror and unfamiliarity of the situation.
I havne't gotten very far in the game as it's pretty difficult, even at earlier stages, but the more tactics you learn and the better you adapt, you'll be left with a satusfied sense when you down an alien craft, kill any remaining crew with minimal casualties, and still come home with the power core intact.
You will come home with several stories of how your men beat the odds and came home with the gold, and just as many stories of how half the men were killed and your one legless soldier made it home with nothign more to his name that a shattered ego and half a hand... Where he will later die.
You'll be chewed up, torn a tsunder, browbeat, curbstomped and tazed six ways form Sunday, but when you backhand the aliens across the face in the end, you'll feel like a king.
If you like a challenge, a selection of tense moments and an engaging defense of Earth, Xcom: UFO Defense is for you. This is a must-have for any turn-based strategy fan in my book.

Cities: Skylines is an excellent peice of work! It's everything SimCity (number 5? 6, was it?) should have been. The trafic makes sense, sort of, the electricity and water run smoothly, you have a lot of freedom, and mods just make it all the better!
Except.. .One... big thing.
The DLC. Now, I get it. "Games are expensive to make, be happy they're not more so." But when you're as massive a success as the (originally) Unity title, Cities Skylines, you don't need DLC, let alone do you need to charge over ten USD for each pack that adds something that should have been in the game anyway. You can argue all you want about it, but it's hella expensive to feel like you're getting everything you can out of the game, even with the DLC on sale. It nickle-and-dimes you to death.
Don't get me wrong, the base game exceeds expectation, but do not underestimate the fact that you are missing what is escentially another half of the game locked away behind about fifty-six (not on sale, of course) dollars. Do you know how many more games you could buy with that that you'll undoubtedly enjoy more than being able to have a tornado rip through your city a few times and set up a blimp route?
It's for this reason I don't recomend the game unless it and its DLC's are on sale, or if you're just really into the base game, which if you are, kudos. Enjoy.

Company of Heroes 2. Oh, how I looked forward to purchasing this! I had played, on disk, the Opposing Fronts standalone expansion from CoH1 and I adore it.
If that was such a great addition to a great game, who had the bright idea at Relic to take one step forward and then one step back? Now... Bare with me here. This is a review, not a bash, so let me explain, and don't worry. There is a TL:DR at the end, but I assure you the body of this review is more in-depth.

I only ever had the chance to play Opposing Fronts, but that alone was outstanding. There was diversity in the play-styles between Germany and Britain, and even more so with the different 'focus trees' you could go down, which there were three of and who had 7 unlockable abilities and perks within each (if memory serves me correctly. It could have been 5), really allowing you to explore a lot of different options in approaching a task.
To add to it, the cutscenes were a joy to watch. Even if you ignored the story, the cutscenes would pull away into actual gameplay, seemlessly. This was genius for immersion and made me feel a lot closer to the beginning of the action. Durring gameplay, even, everything was satusfying. The tanks felt like butter when you hit them and felt like rock when you bounced-- The ragdolls were all over the place, and were almost fascinating to watch, halftracks displayed the men inside the actual truck based on how many men you put in, and so on.
Why, then, would you take this all away?? In CoH2, you have cutscenes and ragdolls and tanks-- but none of the fun or feeling to them. Ragdolls are sometimes replaced with death animations, the bodies are still stiff after being blown to peices (which can't happen, really), and the tanks feel hard and not very satusfying to destroy in comparison to the CoH1 tanks. The cutscenes, too, look just like the ones from CoH1, but they ruin the immersion, I feel, with removing what made the CoH1 cutscenes special, being in-game rather than played over the game.
Of course, I understand these points are nitpicking at best, but what really dissapointed me was the lack of any and all focus trees. You have command points, but what is the point of racking up 32 in any given battle without anything to spend them on? You've already unlocked the three to five abilites you can use, and command points sit to collect dust. With that, teams are really only ever given one way to play, and for the Russians, that's conscript spam. I mean, who values human life, amirite? but seriously, it takes away the ability to taylor your own play-style.
Perhaps I've squabbled a bit too much for now. There is a lot of good to the game. Especially upon purchasing the Ardennes Assault expansion, which is just worth the price of admission for what it brings. The expansion does wonders with playstyle customisation through unit skill trees in between missions, the ability to choose a roster of your choosing being three divisions you want to fight with, and an active battle map, where you usher your units through to an objective, moving battle-lines and so on. This sort of action is what the vanilla serise needs, really. There's also this really interesting, intuitive and fresh concept with freezing to death. While I don't feel it was utilized to its full potential, being relegated to two missions each campaign if that, it certainly has an exciting future in the workshop, and if I can find out how, I'd like to build a map centered around an assault in a blizard.
However, I was very dissapointed in Fox Company. Fox Company is a DLC, locked off for a whole five dollars, and all of the annoying purchases that nickle-and-dime you really feel like a sham, and kind of buffeted my enjoyment of the game, feeling like a peice of the game had been taken from me for the money I paid for it, and left a sour taste in my mouth.
The stories are a what you'd expect, and the gameplay isn't too different-- perhaps just a tad more stale that the original game, but it isn't by any means "bad".

-TL;DR-
In short, the game isn't bad, but the profuse amounts of DLC left a bad taste in my mouth, and they sort of traded off with innovation with the Ardennes assault capaign (which has to be bought alongside the base game if you want to play it), but a few noteable advances and neat ideas are found in the base game, as well.
In comparison to the first Company of Heroes, number 2 is a bit number 2, but if you're content with more CoH, a few locked squads and a whole other capaign taunting you from the other side of the fence, I would buy this game on sale. I still got pleanty of enjoyment out of it, and the workshop really does make me happy.
So if it's on sale and you want the game, go ahead! Otherwise, I'd say stick with CoH1: Opposing Fronts.

Crashes every two seconds and you will learn to loathe parts of the campaign. Has a lot of great moments however, and the workshop and editor are really quite exceptional. I'd definitely recomend the game on sale-- but not for the campaign.

This game--- oh Lordy have mercy, this game! Going into 'Sid Meier's Prirates!', I had the impression it was going to be an overall decent experience, but without much direction. The game has a story, but, in my first few minutes, I had feared it'd be too open-ended and not give me much to go on. Wrong.
You're set out proper into the ocean with a decent crew, a small ship and a good six or so months worth of food, and are tasked with finding your captured family. While this may seem daunting, seeing as there are sixteen greek family members to all track down, it's surprisingly simple to start the story. Simply make your mark by capturing a few easy ships, do some quests for some governers and such-- before you know it, you're hunting down pirates, treasure, merchant vessles and everything of the sort, easy peasy!
The game is wonderfully simple to get into, and it kept me hooked for hours. Couldn't stopl playing unit I demended to myself "Go eat something and finish your homework--- THEN you'll have EVEN MORE time to play!" And so I'm writing this review eating one heck of a tuna sandwich, if I do say so myself. It's got parsley and mayo in-- I put lettice and some mango on it, and a little bit of hidden valley ranch---
The game.
It's awesome.
If you're looking for a light-hearted but still involved pirate game where you carve out a ledgend other pirates will envy, this is the game for you! Fluid mechanics, everyhting feels wonderful to do-- just... I waited for a sale-- and this was undoubtedly some of the best three bucks of my life. Usually 10 but heck-- I'd say it's totally worth it, there's just so much to be had!

This game was a pleasant surprise to me. I had thought it would have been pay-to-win multyplayer, or some cheepskate buy-the-ending title, but on the contrary, I now have something to bide my empty time.

I will say this. It is not the hardest game in the world.
The worst thing that happened to me was being stuck in a cutter (small military ship) that was decently fast and had a few good cannons. I managed to sink two enemy pirates at one point with the stern cannons I bought. Of course, anything larger than a ketch chasing you, you'd best hightale it out of there.
Eventually, I saved for a carrak, a shipping vessle with a good cannon load. I could then fight off brigantines and the inexperienced brig captain, but it wasn't easy, and I ran in to a lot of them.
When my experience really took off was when I bought and upgraded a corvett, an excelent ship. It's faster than nearly everything out there, decently strong with a good cannon load, it can carry almost as much as a carrak when the hold is upgraded and I could go toe-to-toe with anything less powerful than a Man-o'-War. 1st and 2nd rates are still above me atm.
Overall, I've had an exciting time outrunning enemy corvetts and sinking pirate frigates, taking their flags and using them to patch my sails.
Currently, I play a corvett decked to the nines, a pretty skilled captain, and a pet wookie named Steve.
The game's progression is a good pace for me and you'll hardly ever run out of things to do. Currently, i'm trying to find a poorly defended port so I can capture a man-o'-war or something.

With that, and the consideration the game is free, I have no issues with recomending this if you have some extra time on your hands. It's fun, decently paced, and it'll give you a few good stories to tell.

Happy hunting~!!