Recent reviews by Virsteinn

Arrowhead is great. Don't really have too many complaints about them, and the only ones I do have aren't really worth talking about as I can easily adjust how I deal with them. Solid game company, no regrets paying the $60 for the Super Citizen Edition or the additional $40 for Super Credits, they absolutely deserve it. My money for Super Earth.

Sony, on the other hand, seems to be acting, at the risk of sounding incredibly racist, stereotypically Japanese. If you've watched anime and seen the dude rubbing his hands together just to the side of his jaw, you've seen a common Japanese cultural stereotype typically associated with greedy merchant characters. It's not unlike the Happy Merchant caricature, and as an ethnic Jew, the irony is not lost on me in the slightest. The more hawk-eyed among those of you reading might already see what I'm talking about before I even get into how their behavior even fits the stereotype.

First, from launch, they locked the Japanese language to Japan in particular. There's absolutely no commercial benefit to doing this, they're just being objectively racist. Second, again from launch, they've delisted the Super Citizen Edition upgrade. Given that the upgrade tacks on $20 to the base price of the game, there's objectively a commercial detriment to making the upgrade unlisted, despite the fact that one can still otherwise make the purchase after having bought the game. Most recently, third, they've changed their terms of service for Helldivers 2 such that anyone playing the game must link their account to a PlayStation Network account.

Leaving aside how scummy this is as a business practice, their cybersecurity has historically been a joke, so any personal information one would be required to have logged in this PSN account does not have a realistic expectation of privacy. To make matters worse, many players live in areas where the laws prevent them from being able to make a PSN account. What's more, in many legal jurisdictions, including that of my home state of California, this practice is actually illegal. What this means for me in particular is that if I didn't have a PSN account, didn't want to link my Steam account to a PSN account, and got banned for this, I'd be able to sue Sony under the California Consumer Privacy Act and California Privacy Rights Act for discriminating against me for exercising my privacy rights.

For my part, I'm hoping this review is read by Sony's legal team. It would do them and the company they are on retainer for a world of good to know just how stupid of a decision this is from both a financial and legal standpoint.

UPDATE 5/5/24 9:00 PM PST: Sony walked their ♥♥♥♥ back right quick. Tentative switch to Recommended in light of that.

UPDATE 6/2/24 6:05 PM PST: It's been almost a month, and they've still not relisted the countries that were delisted. Until they relist those countries, this review is going right back to Not Recommended.

Funny how basically all the negative reviews disallow comments. It's almost like the people that wrote them don't want to accept that the vast majority of their problems can be summed up with the words, "skill issue."

I especially love the reviews that talk about going up against a Greater Daemon complaining about the fact that they eat your ammo, while simultaneously being completely oblivious to the Weapon Strength to Toughness ratio. It's like these people have no concept of ammo conservation. Maybe don't waste your Plasma charges and Krak Grenades on the Autogun Cultists, and you'll have some left for the Lord of Change.

It's also extremely important to keep in mind what can go where. If a Screamer is in an enclosed space, there's a good chance you can avoid it entirely simply by sticking to a flight of stairs, on account of how obnoxiously big the thing is. Anybody who quits the game halfway into playing it complaining about the enemies has done next to nothing to learn how to actually combat them, regardless of how annoying the enemies in question actually are. And this is all to say nothing about the person's general lack of situational awareness. If you're playing this game, that means you have functional eyes. Use them. Slow down and take stock of your surroundings.

For my part, I'm simply waiting for more content before I pick the game up again, as I've already 100%ed it. There's a lot of potential here for expansion, whether in the setting and/or environment, the variety of enemies you can end up fighting, the weapons you can acquire, or even the type and/or Chapter of Space Marine you can play as. Khorne and Greenskins surprisingly had no presence on Graia despite WAAAGH! Grimskull and the events surrounding it, while a slew of weapons that a Space Marine could feasibly have access to on a Forge World were simply not present. Even with the current game engine, one could potentially retool the current weapon selection system to have one number key cycle through multiple different weapons à la Doom 2's Super Shotgun cycling on 3 alongside the Shotgun. This idea could be implemented in several different ways, whether by the weapon's type, its battlefield role, or even its Strength Rating.

Compared to many others, mine was a more deliberate and methodical approach that emphasized observation, tactics, and use of the terrain for advantage over speed and reflexive reactions. That's not to say that I didn't die while playing the game (I am not that guy), but I did notice that for the most part, I tended to die less when the terrain was working for me than when I was trying to dart in between different bits of cover. In many ways, it could be argued that I played much like how an Ultramarine would fight; I certainly "read the book," as it were, quite a bit as I played the game.

As it is, I enjoyed the game for what it was. The Nurgling swarms were perhaps pushing my limits, though liberal application of Shotgun blasts, Frag Grenades, and controlled Bolter fire certainly helped me stem that particular tide when it came flowing my direction. The enemy variety was diverse enough to be visually interesting while simultaneously offering a challenge, with many of them even dropping ammo and/or grenades on death; the various weapons and their ammunition were generally generously placed in the event someone missed one earlier or simply started the game in the middle, or even if they simply ran out of ammo; the weapons functioned well at what they were intended for, and sometimes even at what they weren't (Praise the Vengeance Launcher!); and the various environments were well-constructed both for visual appeal and to provide cover and elevation for the player. Really the only complaint I have concerns the visual effect of the Warp bleeding into Realspace, though perhaps the fact that a bunch of pink and purple puke on walls and amorphous blobs hurt my hypersensitive 20/15 eyes was intentional; it is, after all, the collective accumulation of sentient (un)conscious thought and sentiment bleeding into reality.

10/10, Would absolutely pick up again if expanded upon.

When last I played this game (more than five three years ago now), they had just added in lootboxes and other "surprise mechanics that totally aren't gambling, no sir, definitely not," while simultaneously removing many block features that rewarded skillful building and control in favor of dumbing things down for Big Sir and Scooby Doofus playing the game. My fixed-wing plasma bomber, a craft that took a good two or three hours to build in a way that was functional, got deleted entirely, and I was never able to reconstruct it. The new mechanics made it so that I lost many of the components I previously had access to, whether because they were locked again or simply because my inventory ceased to exist.

Run, do not walk, to the nearest exit.

I've played Stellaris for a pretty long time. Not a thousand hours long, but I'd call just a few under 400 hours a long time, myself. I was happy with how the Lithoid species were handled, how when you selected a Lithoid portrait, you automatically got the Lithoid species trait while still allowing you to pick the same amount of traits besides Lithoid as any biological species.

Why the hell wasn't Necrophage handled the same way? The description of this pack describes Necroids as, and I quote, "an intelligent undead species." This implies that something literally died to propagate the Necroids, and yet without the Necrophage origin or, by extension, the Necrophage trait (both of which, for some unfathomable reason, apply to all non-Machine species), every single Necroid species propagates as if they are normal Biological or Lithoid. Despite the fact that the Necroids are, and I quote, "an intelligent undead species," and therefore shouldn't be able to metabolize anything, they still consume food or minerals as if Biological or Lithoid.

I suppose the funniest thing I could do is edit the United Nations of Earth start to have the Necrophage origin so that humans spawned from a Mammalian species, since at that point I could make a reference to eating chitlins. Hilarious as that may be, in my opinion, that in and of itself doesn't justify the price for this species pack. This is literally one step removed from what Paradox did with the Plantoids, and we can all see what a joke that was.

Honestly, I probably should've started with the demo.

Without going into too much detail (as many before me have already done, thereby rendering any subsequent effort redundant), the gameplay is mindnumbingly repetitive, the movement controls are annoying at best and rage-inducing at worst, the enemies a ♥♥♥♥♥ to deal with, the primary weapon woefully inadequate even when used properly, and the others even worse.


What really pissed me the ♥♥♥♥ off, though, was the story. It doesn't matter which way you go, because you still wind up killing your dudebro. In and of itself, that means the people that made this game put in no effort whatsoever to develop this character aside from to say that he was pals with your brother, and therefore pals with you, sO thEReforE COnfLICt BeCAuse hEARtWRENChinG pLoT HooKS NEed tO exisT. Then you kill the scientist of the enemy, and then finally the big bad. They go boom, but then so does your ass end. So then the love interest is desperately trying to encourage you to get to an airlock so you don't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ die, saying they don't want to lose you too, as a rocket up your previously-buttplugged rectum has apparently opened up a hole big enough for an elephant to go through. The entire rest of that mission is spent walking to the right to reach an airlock that doesn't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ exist while your oxygen supply escapes faster than sixty nine grown men combined can piss an oil drum full. Then your air runs out, you pop the hatch, climb out of the mech, GO WItH tHe ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sMOoTHbRAIn OpTION of OPening yoUr ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ heLmET, and then proceed to die of death poisoning.

THE END

And of course we're supposed to imagine the love interest going bOO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hOo eveRYOnE I eVeR cAred AbouT Is deaD!

To add insult to insult, if you go with the humanist option, the main male scientist that sides with you commits honourable sudoku by death poisoning after you're forced to kill his daughter. Because yes. So not only does Ya BoY always die, but Ye OlDe PrOfFeSsOr GeNiUs DaDdY also always dies. At least in the purist option, whether the general is still alive is left to your imagination, so you theoretically still have him and the love interest still alive. Going with the humanist option objectively increases the death count, with only XeNa WaRrIoR pRiNcEsS still alive.

What the ♥♥♥♥, devs? The "morally right" choice not only still results in your death, but also kills more people? How the ♥♥♥♥ is it morally right then?

"WeLL, yOu cHoPpeD DOWn tHEiR sooPER sEeKRIt spEShULL TreeS aNd InTRODUCeD a paNdEMiC, SO Of cOurSE sIdinG wiTh THEm iS mORAlLy riGht!" You got yourself roped into a blood feud to take over another tribe because you chopped down some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ trees and gave them COVID-20XX. If that makes you feel stupid, it should, because it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid.

Even for the game being 25% off, you cannot market a game for its story when it basically has none. You cannot market a game for its choices when the better one is actually worse, and otherwise makes no difference in the grand scheme of things. You especially cannot market a game for being able to step on ♥♥♥♥ while having other murder method options when that's 90% of the causes of death.

Not if you don't want to piss people off. For ♥♥♥♥'s sake, the concept would've been fine were it not for this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

kek

>Be me
>First zombie "horde" comes at day 19
>Has no military to speak of
>Starts screaming and running around in circles with a single Ranger in an attempt to buy time
>It doesn't work
>Other zombies start creeping in from the other entrances as I kite the horde of some 24 runners
>Terrifying hilarity ensues as the zombies proceed to eat all of my houses
>Military of soldier units has been built up
>Futile last stand
>They all die like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
>Still funniest game I've had
>10/10 would run around like a headless chicken again

Quick note for reviewers: I initially had a problem posting this review, which is apparently due to it being over 4,000 characters long. After a quick Google search, I found out that if you make a review's content short, and then edit in the actual review, that you'll be able to work around that issue. All I did initially was type "fart" and post that, then edited this in. Worked fine.

Before I get onto PA and TITANS, let's talk about the predecessors.

Total Annihilation was an RTS built on players being able to build a crapton of units and structures for any number of different playstyles. Given the choice between two different identical but still very different factions, one could rush the enemy with fast units/KBots, bombard them with long-range cannon fire from the base, gain air superiority and carpet bomb them back to the stone age, conquer the seas with a vast navy and assault the enemy with a battery of batteries of naval guns, nuke them, construct an army of Krogoth super KBots and march them to steamroll the enemy, go Hitler on people with blitzkrieg tactics reliant on tanks. Or, if you really felt like trolling someone, one could march their Commander to the enemy's and D-Gun the ♥♥♥♥ out of it, taking both out at the same time and forcing a draw (if the game was made for losing a Commander to be the loss of the game and it was a two player game). And, while there was no dialog save for the pre=game narrator, the campaign was engaging.

From my limited experience with Supreme Commander, with its three very distinct factions, I saw that the scenario presented by Total Annihilation had thankfully not changed all that much. Each faction still had a plethora of units and structures that could be built, even if said plethora wasn't near as varied between three factions as it was between two on TA. And then there's the campaign. The presence of humans in the story, and the dialog that came from them, had a noticable impact in how I perceived the game,

Planetary Annihilation is not Total Annihilation, nor is it Supreme Commander. Generally, not being the same as another thing is something to strive for. Unfortunately, PA and, by extension, TITANS is an exception to the rule. The game is advertised as having over a hundred combat units, including the Titans. There is only one faction of units, so those hundred combat units? That's literally all you have to game with. Basically, I paid $62 for a glorified interactive chess set.

Yes, I paid a total of $62. $50 for the original game back when it was first released, and then $12 for TITANS.

Unless you are very lucky, each game amounts to one of three things: spam them with bots, spam them with aircraft, or GO BLITZKRIEG ON THEIR ASS WITH TANKS! WHOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

............wait, why the ♥♥♥♥ are they so slow? I was aiming for blitzkrieg, not sitzkrieg.

...ooh, that one's faster than the rest of them. It'll probably reach the enemy in half an hour!

Needless to say, if you were expecting for the tanks to have some semblance of mobility rather than being more pondersome than TA's tanks, prepare to be sorely disappointed and drop a Lincoln on TA.

If (and this is a very big IF) you get lucky, you might be able to smash a small moon into a planet for a resoundingly game-freezing effect, crack a planet with a laser that bores into the core, kick a bucket that just so happens to be the enemy Commander with one Titan of five (AMAZING!!! A WHOLE FIVE!?!?!?) possible in the game, or exploit the power reserves of the metal planet *cough*Death Star*cough* to blast any celestial body with another laser.

Oh, and that troll that I mentioned in the TA paragraph? He doesn't force a draw in PA. HE WINS THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ GAME. THE COMMANDER DOESN'T ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ DIE FROM A COMMANDER EXPLOSION.

As for the campaign...

...pardon me, what the ♥♥♥♥'s a campaign? Surely a game as successful as this has-wait, nope, no button labeled "Campaign" in this game. There's Galactic War, though, perhaps that's worth a spin?

SAME ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ TACTICS.

"But wait, Virsteinn, unless you've already unlocked these things here, the Commander only starts off able to build T1 vehicles! Doesn't that lend towards replayability?"

I wish it did. I am no completionist, so I don't have the patience or motivation to play through the entirety of a Galactic War, let alone two or three, to be able to get those "loadouts" as they're called.

"But Virsteinn, the loadouts!"

...must I really torture myself?

To my knowledge, GT Interactive Software, the original publisers of TA, THQ, the publishers of SupCom, and Wargaming.net, the Steam publishers of TA, are (or rather were, in the case of GT and THQ), businesses that didn't try to swindle people out of their money, Granted, Wargaming does use microtransactions in their World of MMO series, but that's honest business in my opinion. However, the fact that Uber abused the ability for developers and publishers to delete reviews (which has since been revoked across the board), deleted the original PA from the market, put this "standalone game" on the market to replace it, and forced those of us who had purchased the original game to pay an extra $12 dollars on top of the $50 we paid is really low. This is a money grab for a game clearly not worth the $62 I paid for it. And frankly, it sounds worse for those who funded the Kickstarter. I can't condone these business practices.