Recent reviews by Zaayl

Okay if you can get it cheap.

Its HEAVILY based on Civilization 6, but don't expect that level of depth with the strategy elements. It's Civ with a greater focus on combat, as such I do enjoy the combat more than Civ 6 (Not exactly a high bar however.)

So if you want a faster paced, more combat oriented game of civ without diplomacy or culture or any of the other gubbins, its fun for a game or two here or there.

My biggest complaint is how few factions are in the base game. 4 is dreadfully few, especially in a game that goes up to 16 players. I know they all play distinctly different and every unit is unique to them so it takes longer to make a new faction for this than it does for games like Civ where most factions are just different flavors of the core game with one or two unique units, but chaos space marines and tyranids at launch would have made the game a lot more fleshed out, a bit more varied and more worth the original asking price.

The intro of the game was fun. The middle of the game sapped out my soul and I got too bored to finish it when I realized I wasn't even halfway through.

Shame because apparently the ending of the game is also good.

They should have stuck to the more story focused formula of Mafia 1 and 2, rather than try to emulate a Ubisoft open world game. Dull, repetitive, too many collectibles, even the big fights to take over a racket are just boring. I was hoping it would feel more like the open world elements of The Godfather The Game, but instead its just Farcry with mid combat.

5/10 game with a 7/10 story and 10/10 music.

Turn the licensed music off for the best experience. (Its not a bad selection, its just you will never hear the original tracks they made for this game that are phenomenal.)

This DLC is a complete fun-vampire to the game. The difficulty spike is pretty severe (I did this post-steeltown, with the only thing left in the game being Yuma County, my party was beefy with high end gear, and some enemies could still one or two-shot most of them.)

That said, the first encounter they throw at you is probably the hardest one, I was able to adapt and manage, even against dumb mechanics like enemies just... ignoring death. (You either stun them, or they just get a free round to hurt you before dying)

Most major encounters have infinitely spawning enemies, which sounds worse than it is, but its still bad. It forces you to for the most part, ignore enemies and just push objectives.

The game then has two of the worst boss fights in Wasteland 3... back to back. (One is technically optional, but the choice they present you for skipping it is massively unreasonable, unless you specifically take certain steps so that its not gonna gimp you for the rest of the game, but that feels against the spirit of the game and still morally wrong.) Both are gimmick bosses that once you figure out the mechanics, aren't difficult, but they aren't fun either. In fact they are legitimately boring, I never felt challenged by either, nor did I feel they required a modicum of tactics beyond the most basic things.

Oh also the holy radiation mechanic means your party will have a hit-chance penalty basically the whole dlc and its not really worth using the consumables to cure it until you are finished, since you will just get dosed again. (But you will also be tankier, for what thats worth.)

So yeah, the gameplay is just a drag and a slog.

Story-wise, its actually not bad. It works well and I was not dissatisfied with the resolution, and a couple characters even gave me a good laugh. It might be worth a playthrough for the story, but that depends on how many hours of tedious slog gameplay you are willing to put up with.

Item rewards... meh. Most of the upgraded versions of the radiation weapons are weaker than end-game gear, the only weapon I wound up using was the Diminuator (my weird science character has become a weird buffer-debuffer using the Diminuator to make my melee character embiggened, the shield gun from steel town to protect people and the sonic emitter for AoE stuns.) the upgraded pre-war armor is alright, the best defense value you can get for a no-strength requirement armor, but has no fancy special effects and then there's the item you get from fixing all the toasters (you need toaster repair 10) which... on one hand its +20% hit chance. On the other... it makes the character who has it equipped have a really annoying visual/audio filter when they are being controlled. So that's something I have to live with now.

So overall, bad gameplay, decent story, middling rewards. At least they knew not to price it too high but I still wouldn't buy this outside of a sale.

I tried so, so hard to like this game, but in the end I just couldn't. It took four hours just to figure out how to accept missions. How to get from place to place, how to do any basic thing is just underneath several layers of obfuscation and unintuitive design.

But I persevered. I knew going in this game was flawed, through every bad review just talked about bad AI, so finding a mod to fix the AI was something I did before even buying the game. I got suckered in with the promise of a space flight sim, coupled with a space sim/strategy game.

But nothing prepared me for just how much jank I had to deal with. Building space stations took me hours to figure out how to rotate parts (and the way you do it is absolutely terrible compared to literally every other game that has these kinds of features) But I started to get the hang of it, money started flowing in and I was building something. But then... more cracks started to show.

I was playing as the split, early on I realized the split had a massive hull parts shortage, as nobody was supplying the half dozen hull parts factories with refined metal. So I began building a refined metals factory to fill that niche and hopefully get the split to start building ships as Xenon kept pushing into their borders like an endless ocean. If nothing else, it was lucrative money.

However, as my operation expanded, so did my need to move goods. Well, thats simple, just assign more trade ships to move cargo back and forth... oh, you can only assign one ship to each task. Well, thats okay, I can assign a ship to the station trader on the "mimic commander" orders... oh, that just flat out doesn't work for trading with your own station...

There were workarounds... sorta, that required a bit more micro, but... oh well I guess.

But hey, we got tons of refined metals flowing in, hull parts are readily available, so the split should be pumping out ships now, right???

Lolnope.

While theres a mod to make the ship AI smarter, the empire AI's are absolutely idiotic. They just seem to refuse to do anything to protect their own borders from the Xenon, leaving it all up to the player.

Very early in the game. When the player can't do ♥♥♥♥.

Hey, speaking of early game helplessness, theres another fun faction called the "Khaak" and these guys are perhaps one of the worst mechanics I have ever seen in a game. Apparently if you mine a lot in an area (how you will make all your early money) a Khaak station has a chance to spawn in the far distance, once its spawned, Khaak fighters can spawn out of thin air on top of your mining ships and just instantly kill them. Well, just gotta take care of that station, right? (And then spend millions rebuilding your miners) Except, if you don't have access to a massive assault fleet containing multiple capital ships... you aren't going to even scratch that thing. You are helpless and this sector is lost to you. No the only solution now, is to simply mod the Khaak out of the game entirely.

But hey, how about starship combat and exploration? Those are engaging right?

Nope.

Starship combat is sluggish in every way except how fast you can be blown out of space. Theres not much skill to manuevering or evading, its just a matter of point your guns at the enemy and hope they die first. There can be some strategy to positioning when fighting capital ships, but that is necessary to even stay alive in a smaller ship as their guns can one-shot you and many of their components are too strong for you to even hurt. Which, makes you excited for when YOU get a capital ship, these seemingly unstoppable juggernauts, shields too strong for normal fighters to even put a dent- and a fighter swarm ganked you in a few seconds. Yup, every time you upgrade ships to something bigger, meatier, you are just slower and easier of a target and the AI has zero problems ripping you to shreds. You want to win fights, bring more ships. Which requires being pretty deep into the game before you are economically secure enough to be throwing many, very expensive ships at a problem.

Okay, thats a wash, but what about exploring the galaxy? Seeing the sights!

What sights? Most sectors are the same thing, they are all inhabited, full of stations, planets dont even seem to exist. The exploration mechanic feels completely forced, if all of these sectors are inhabited, why can't I just purchase star charts and call it a day? Its just tedious busywork.

So, actually flying ships yourself is a complete waste, the best part of the game is the empire management, which is incredibly complex, clunky and above all, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ BORING. My money making strategy was to save the game, fire up the SETA to make time go past faster and walk out of my room letting money accumulate, so I could then invest in my next money making venture. This is the core gameplay loop.

And at that rate, if this is what the game is, then it doesn't even get to be in the running with games like Elite Dangerous. No, this is a clunky space strategy/economics game, and at that point, go play Stellaris, Endless Space, Galactic Civilizations or any of the other space strategy games out there.

In closing, I hope the devs continue to grow and expand. I think what they are trying to build here is a great idea and the foundation is there, but I think they are being too ambitious for the budget and manpower they have at their disposal and maybe they should consider dialing back the scope in the future until they can get a few of these facets polished to perfection before allowing feature creep to take hold.

One of the best games I have ever played, they just nail everything a narrative driven game needs to nail to keep you hooked from start to finish. Story, characters, voice acting, choices, music, its all perfect. The kind of once-in-a-lifetime experience that leaves an impact on you.

I received the Deluxe Pack for free and am quite glad I did, because frankly.

This isn't worth anywhere close to $35

For the price of the last games season pass, you get access to a bunch of escalations and items tied to the escalations. Due to the incredibly poor wording on the store page and the steep price, you could be forgiven for thinking this is a season pass, including the 7 deadly sins pack, it is not, these escalations are unique to this DLC.

The escalations themselves are of a higher production value than the ones you typically get for free, that doesn't mean however that they are good. Unless you are really into escalations and looking for some that are very unforgiving and take a long time to complete, then theres nothing really here to enjoy. Completing them feels like work, but lets go down the full list. Also note, every single one of them removes your ability to plan the mission, so unlocks wont help you.

Dubai: Most of this one is spent running around the level as you start at the bottom and have targets spread all over the map. Easily the most boring one.

Dartmoor: Unremarkable, but its a fairly easy to complete one.

Berlin: Slow and tedious with very strict failure conditions. Expect to spend an hour or two on this one alone and curse the lack of saves during escalations.

Chongqing: One of the better ones, not too basic, not too unforgiving or overly long.

Mendoza: Kind of unremarkable, easier than it seems at first.

Carpathian Mountains: Best one by far, has a couple fun gimmicks but one of the stages can be pretty frustrating with how trial-and-error it is.

The unlockable items are very much in the realm of "Your mileage may very" Honestly none of them interested me, but its personal taste. None of them have any functional use to your arsenal other than maybe having an additional emetic grenade to bring on missions or the ability to have three sedative dart guns... if thats something you wanted. The rest are all suits and reskin items, not even token stat differences like having more ammo or slightly different traits, all items are pure reskins of items already available because our inventories aren't already clogged to the gills with dupes.

You also get a art book, the soundtrack and a developer commentary mode for each level.

The price as it is is just way too steep for what you get, more than half the retail price of an entire game for a few little bonus items and content that just feels like busy work.

Arkham Origins has a spotty reputation, its the black sheep of the family and for good reason. It was made by a different developer, uses different voice actors and it's status as even being canon to the Rocksteady game is... debatable. It doesn't conflict with the Rocksteady games (Other than maybe its allusion to Deathstroke joining Suicide Squad, which I think the devs were just hoping to land a Suicide Squad game, which didn't happen.) but it doesn't add anything to them either, nor do I believe Arkham Knight makes even a single callback to the events of Origins. This game can be and often was, entirely ignored

Those saying this game is the perfect starting point: For the love of god, don't. Start with Asylum. Just because this is a prequel, doesn't make this a good starting point. Speaking from experience, going from Arkham Cities combat (which this is) backwards to Asylum is... rough. Also this game does spoil a twist in the Arkham series by revealing and alluding to certain characters plans that you aren't supposed to even suspect until after Asylum. This game was explicitly written with players who have beaten City in mind, even though its a prequel.

So, years later, does this game hold up on its own compared to the rest of the series? Mostly... yeah. Is this game a must-play part of the series? Not even a little. If you want more Arkham Batman and don't want to replay the other three, then this game is for you. If you want an exceptional batman story... its not.

The writing of this game rides the fine line of "Average" the whole way through. Characters run through their usual paces and events transpire almost exactly as you can expect from a Joker origin story. Even its DLC, Cold Cold Heart is just yet another retelling of Mr. Freeze's "Heart of Ice" origin story, it does it servicably but we have all seen that story before, several times, and it really doesn't do anything special with it. If you know these batman characters, you know exactly what will happen in the game. If you don't, I suppose that adds a bit of value.

The gameplay is, Batman: Arkham City, with less polish. I found the new enemy types to just be either aggravating or complete non-issues, the only gadgets that aren't part of your Arkham City arsenal are... interesting attempts to vary Batman's gadgets. The line launcher replacement is somewhat amusing, and the electro-gloves trivialize the games combat, once you activate them, you basically win whatever fight you are in.

Traversing the map is legitimately the worst part of the game, lots of ledges don't allow you to grapple to them for literally no reason beyond the developers arbitrarily deciding you can't so that getting the "Enigma Data Pack" in high places is harder. Unlike previous games which have defined rules, such as being unable to grapple crumbling ledges, this game just... doesn't let you. Because.

The collectables are pretty bad as well, and the "Enigma" (Riddler) datapacks are just as much of a chore as the trophies are in City and Knight (Once the games transitioned to Gotham City, these collectables should have been handled differently, but thats a problem with all Arkham games past Asylum) with the worst payout in the series after getting them all. The game also features two completely unmarked collectables that in a map this huge, are basically impossible without a guide. Needless to say, I didn't bother getting them.

Spoilers below for the rest of the review.

Honestly, my biggest problem with the game, is Bane. Bane is, once again, playing second fiddle to a true primary antagonist (Whether its the League of Assassins, Poison Ivy or the Joker, Bane outside the comics cannot catch a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ break.) Bane is legitimately one of Batman's most fearsome foes, both in physicality and mentally. His schemes often bring the Dark Knight to his absolute lowest points that even Joker has trouble managing. They try to allude to this by having Bane find out Batman's identity like he did in Knightfall, but that's the end of it. Past that, Bane is once again put in his place as an idiotic brute. Someone who seeks to destroy Batman by sheer physical prowess and an army of mercenaries. Its just another waste of his character. And of course, as is typical for Batman stories, Bane gives himself amnesia and forgets Batman is Bruce Wayne. Convenient, huh?

On the surface this looked like a (jankier) Hardspace Shipbreaker but with the real world equivalent.

Turns out however you aren't shipbreaking, you are just breaking the bits and bobs sitting on the ship for crafting materials, then sending the whole and intact ship on its way. Also Skyrim lockpicking... for reasons? (It's a derelict ship, why would I lockpick the doors and lockers and not use a blowtorch or a hammer and salvage the entire box?) ...Probably because it was an easy minigame to add in without much thought or effort.

That really exemplifies this game "Not much thought or effort."

Some of my issues could be addressed in the full game, like the pacing. I had every tool and building upgrade the prologue had to offer after the first ship, after buying a second ship and watching the gameplay loop repeat itself, I stopped. (However this seems to be a common problem in Playway games, where you max your skills and tools out within 3 hours of gameplay.) But the core problem, that this game just has no depth, no danger (they literally boast about this being the most dangerous job in the world, because it is, but none of that is actually present in the game.)

And that's not the only thing about the description alone that feels misleading. "A dozen kilometers of beach filled with wrecks. Hundreds of ships wrecked on the coast. Thousands of tons of steel. Choose the most valuable ship for you and start the adventure." This makes it sound as though there might be exploration mechanics, seeing what ships are out there and available, picking one out and hoping its worth the time and effort. Instead, the beach is just set-dressing and all you find exploring is very basic materials. You order ships on a computer interface and a brand spanking new ship is driven straight to you, lush with materials.

This is a very basic, quick flip of a game pumped out on the cheap in Unity, like a lot of these Playway games are, and completely lacks any charm or appeal. Just play Hardspace Shipbreaker, which has depth, personality, charm, actual danger and engaging gameplay.

Also keep in mind my gameplay time says 1.3 hours, but half of that was AFK.

Imagine if every gun was the Doom 3 Shotgun.