Recent reviews by flightsaber

Feels like D&D:

I would rather most wait to play it until its finished and saves won't be wiped. There are a lot of bugs, some missing races/classes, and the story will cut off at the end of the first of three acts (actual release is planned for late next year, I believe). But the story started strong and never let down throughout the first 40 hours or so, and several of the moment-to-moment sidequests hit hard. I kept thinking about two of them over the following week. Combat is open-ended in how you can approach it and feels true to D&D. You can survive fights against much more powerful enemies if you're clever with your turns, but I nearly always felt threatened and died often. Sound and art design are excellent, though there were some graphical glitches like floating bodies from time to time. I couldn't stop casting light on things, just to see the effect it had on the area. Overall, I really enjoyed Early Access. I played longer during it than I did in my first run though of KOTOR - there's a lot of story there.

On release in 2011, SWTOR had more than 240 hours of voiced story content (every class has a unique story questing experience with dialogue options that affect the story, similar to KOTOR or Mass Effect), making it the single most expensive video game of all time at launch. The quality here still shows, with Bioware's spiritual successor to Knights of the Old Republic arriving with the dialogue trees and companion story arcs Star Wars fans already loved. While initial reviews expressed concern over its MMO elements, expansions following its launch have both added to the content that's there, made all previous raiding/pvp/flashpoint/heroic questing/space battle content available at max level, added the most robust housing options for a themepark MMO, and generally addressed those concerns while doubling the number of voiced content. The combat is traditional Everquest 2 or WoW style tab targeting, with talent trees very similar to Wrath of the Lich King and specializations that expand the number of gameplay sub-classes to around 20. The cadence of updates is slower than other MMOs, both due to the team's double duty on Anthem and due to the unprecedented amount of voice acting needed for each expansion, and class stories in the latest content have merged to form two divergent faction stories with a small number of quests that reference the original class story, likely due to budget constraints. But if you're new, this is basically WoW with Bioware-style storytelling, if everything from Vanilla to live gave relevant gear but scaled a bit to maintain a challenge regardless of what you want to play.

The game is free to play for all released content except for the latest expansion, and making any purchase at all or creating an account with a friend's referral link upgrades your account permanently to 'premium.' Both free and premium accounts come with a number of restrictions on quality of life elements, such as credit caps and quickbars. Many of the restrictions on premium accounts can be removed through one-time purchases. If you live in China, the login servers are blocked by the PRC due to Bioware's refusal to censor games and you will need a VPN to play.

After nearly a year of updates, I feel Age of Empires 2 has finally surpassed the old client/Voobly combo to become the most enjoyable way to play the game. Microsoft's post-launch support has been excellent, consistently delivering free content updates, updating tutorials to ease players into a 15-20 year old competitive scene, fixing bugs and sponsoring professional tournaments. The game's skill cap is similar to chess, in that most players will never be able to reach the highest level of play. But the game's ranking system and large playerbase ensures that a match against a reasonably beatable opponent is easy to find (although earning a rank does require 10 games against differently skilled players, which can lead to mismatches in the first couple online matches). Civilization balance is patched regularly, and the community has made the most of map creation tools to create new game-modes and even more advanced tutorials to take intermediate players to the next level.

The level of polish and depth of content that somehow manages to make nearly all of the 35 civilizations viable (with 1-3 unique units, civilization bonuses, and team bonuses ) - a remarkable feet of 20 years of playtesting and balance patching and part of the reason why this remains one of the preferred traditional RTS games for pros. For those who have never played, it is part civilization management where villagers collect one of four resources and build a base, and part rock-paper-scissors style combat where particular units counter each other as they try to hit as many of the opponent's buildings and economic units as possible to take control of the map and win. There are extensive single-player campaigns available, offline play with bots, and a ton of steam achievements added for this release. If you want an RTS likely to still have a community 15-20 years from now, then historically this would be your best bet.

"Held up surprisingly well"

Like world of warcraft, Impossible creatures opts for a simplistic, artsy graphical approach that lets this old school RTS still feel decent in that department. Although the RTS portion has all of the usual components (two resources, mine one, auto-mine the other, build up armies, attack/win), it's the ability to create your own units that really sets this game apart from anything else. With excellent free community mods, you receve around 70 creatures to mix and match the parts of. Resulting units change in cost, special abilities, and stats as appropriate - so building a team of 9 of these units that suits your playstyle then testing your composition out on the RTS battlefield is what this one is all about.

There's still nothing else like it, so it's easy to recommend if you've been looking for an RTS that dares to do something a bit different.

Easy to learn, difficult to master.

The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot is really two games: One where you prepare a castle to be assaulted using limited resources, and another where you assault other players' castles to increase the resources available to you for your own defense. It's engrosing, and though there are still some minor bug and polish issues in the current beta, the game looks nearly ready for release.

There are difficulty spikes - players are greatly encouraged to use cheap tricks with their castles, such as launching enemy players into a plethora of explosive traps. But the requirement for players to beat their own castle before opening it up to challengers ensures that every castle is beatable, and with practice the more common defenses can be prepared for.

The free-to-play model is very well done, allowing players to create one hero of a class of their choice for free. Choose carefully, though the replay functions enabling you to see other classes' attempts at conquering your fortress will likely entice you to try out another hero for a few bucks.

Overall, it's a very satisfying adventure with an endless array of excellent player-created content, as well as some challenging boss battles provided by the developers. Definitely worth a try.

It's the best 2d platformer. Ever.

Before it was released, I recommended Super Mario World on the SNES to people who wanted to experience a 2d platformer for the first time. Now, I reccomend Rayman Origins.

Ubisoft finally beat Nintendo's gem, and I dare ya' to give it a go.

Best played in 4 player local coop mode on one pc, which supports any peripherals you might have (360 wired preferrred, but grab 4 keyboards if it suits you and bind to different keys).