Recent reviews by Burgertime

Always refreshing to see an indie platformer whose art style isn't just fat "retro" pixels

If you can't decide between getting this or Euro Truck Simulator 2, I'd get this game first because the map is way more consistent in this game than in ETS2

This is my second most-played game on Steam, I like playing it when I'm stressed out because driving calms me down.

UPDATE: This is now my most-played game on Steam

As far as the single player goes, it's certainly a good time, but it's no San Andreas.

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one of my friends called it QWOP Rally and that's basically the best way to describe this game

I'd say this game is closer to being a Tony Hawk-style "stunt game" than it is to being a racing game. Sure, there are races, but there are also challenges based on doing sick flips off of broken parts of bridges as well as ones based on seeing if your car can beat up the other cars. The world that the game takes place in is also very nice; they basically mashed a bunch of cities and settings together into one city specifically designed for racing (though sometimes it's eerie how despite it being a large city, there are 0 pedestrians or otherwise any signs of life apart from empty, self-driving cars), and it works great. And despite this game being relatively old, it still looks great, and the great news is that it still works! Several other old games are unplayable now because of DRM-related issues, and this game is not one of those games (though "DLC Island" is extinct now)

This game has a few flaws though. If you're a "purist", this game might upset you since everything feels very arcade-y (for me this was a plus though). Second, some stuff like the aforementioned "DLC Island" is no longer accessible (at least as far as I know) due to DRM shenanigans, so if you're one of those people who boycotts games that suffered from DRM, this might be bad news for you, though having said that the game works fine even with DRM shooting it in the foot slightly (and hey, if you were expecting any better from EA, then... yeah). The in-game announcer DJ Atomika is also annoying, but it's not anything that would completely ruin a game IMO.

Overall, I'd say this game is a good buy. I got it in a Humble Bundle many years ago, and it has ended up becoming my all-time favorite racing game, so there's that. (also sorry in advance if this review reads weird, I was a bit tired when I wrote it)

I really want to recommend this game to people, but there are just too many flaws with this thing for me to do so. First of all, the way battles are done in this game is crap. When you invade a country, what happens is all of your and the enemy country's troops move into the same spot and have one really large battle, after which your enemy's armies are completely obliterated (or yours if you screwed up), leaving you to capture all their points with little resistance. The interface for this game is also pretty bad; they tried to go for a minimalist approach, which would be good for a regular strategy game, but in a grand strategy game such as this you'd want as much information as reasonably possible on screen at the same time, which this game fails to do in a way that's not stupid (you get to open a bunch of windows that can get cluterred very easily, and it can sometimes take a lot of fighting with the interface to get to the information you want). There's very little flavor to the game as well; if you're coming from Paradox games like I did, or even from Creative Assembly games, both of which have a lot of historical flavor in their games, you might be a bit disappointed with what you see here. I guess there's a bit of flavor in the tutorial missions and in early game when the game has some startlingly plausible events take place based on the data within the game that was "taken from U.S. military and C.I.A. databases" as the box proudly proclaims (I've had a Pakistan vs. India war in my game, and have heard of stories of the Arab Spring happen in some people's games despite this game being released years before the Arab Spring took place), but other than that the game can get very boring very quick if you're in it for the flavor, unless you aren't looking for historical flavor in a history simulator.

Also, you're playing Russian Roulette if you buy this game to play it on a newer computer. Despite all the fixes, this game still refuses to work on newer computers, and getting any support is next to impossible from what I've seen. You'll also need to be connected to the internet just to start the thing.

I remember buying this one from a Humble Weekly bundle a while back, even paying extra to get a special tileset to make cyberpunk games out of. It might have been worth the around $7 that I payed for it, but definitely not the $69.99 they're asking for it. Here's why:

1) The resolution is locked at 640x480. This isn't really that big of a crime when you think about it, since 640x480 is a very comfy resolution for an RPG and a really large resolution would mean that too many tiles would be displayed on screen at once, but what makes this bad is that you can't go fullscreen in a way that's not stupid, which ruins immersion a little bit but more importantly prevents upscaling on larger monitors, meaning that people with really large native resolutions might be stuck on what is basically a postage stamp to them.

2) The tiles are locked at 32x32. If you just wanted to make your original game work around smaller tiles for whatever reason, tough luck!

3) I tried and couldn't find a way to make it so that whenever you start a new project, they don't already make half the game for you and fill your attacks and items databases with prefabs. Manually deleting all the pre-made items and attacks every time is annoying. It's a good feature for people that would make fantasy-themed RPGs, but if you wanted to make something else then deleting these large amounts of pre-made things every time is tedious.

4) Everything that this thing does, GameMaker can do better, and for free. In GameMaker, you can make the resolution or tile sizes be anything you want. Of course, there's more coding involved when using GameMaker, but considering how much Ruby scripting you'll have to do in RPG Maker to do anything that would make your RPG a bit unique in terms of features, this isn't really a problem.

Overall, just go with GameMaker for making your RPGs. There's slightly more to learn, but consider how much more the FREE edition does than the $69.99 RPG Maker.

This used to be one of my most favorite games of all time, and the only reason that's no longer the case is because I basically played it to death (the 132 hours recorded on Steam are only after I got a Steam key for the game and don't include the hours I put in before with my retail copy). Basically it’s exactly what it says on the tin; you pick a country and play through a very loosely-defined era (despite the game being called Victoria, the game ends well past the OTL ending of Queen Victoria’s rule) that includes a bit of the Texas Revolution, the American Civil War, the Scramble for Africa, the Great Game (though in mechanic only), and World War I. However, unlike this game’s predecessors Europa Universalis III and Hearts of Iron III, the focus isn’t as much on territorial conquest as it is on diplomatic intrigue and the economy. Speaking of the economy, this game has one of the most detailed economies in any strategy game, along with one of the most detailed population simulations in any strategy game (every third person in the world is represented in the game and the amount that their demands are fulfilled influences the likelihood of revolts happening in your country). Of course, learning how to utilize such complex systems requires a lot of time compared to other games, but that’s one of the draws of this game: you learn something new about its mechanics almost every time you play it. Many great mods for the game also exist, including the obligatory modern day mod as well as overhaul mods that add more historical events to the game. And of course there’s some “Dwarf Fortress-style” RNG-based fun to be had with this game, as with any other historical game that tends to get ahistorical very quickly once the computer-controlled countries decide to experiment with unusual decisions.

Obviously there are cons to this game as well. The biggest for a new buyer would have to be the game’s (and Paradox’s) DLC policy. In recent years, Paradox has become infamous for its DLC policy of shipping out small, frequent expansions alongside patches to the vanilla versions of the games that make it semi-mandatory to keep having to buy the new expansions to keep having a good time with the games. Since this policy began with Crusader Kings II which came out in 2012, one would think that Victoria II, which came out in 2010, would not have these DLC-related problems. Unfortunately, at the time when Victoria II came out Paradox had an even worse DLC policy where new patches for the game would only work with the latest expansions, so you’d have to get every expansion in order to have every bug fix. Thankfully, Victoria II only has two major expansions (“A House Divided” which adds an extra start date so that the player can jump into the American Civil War right away, and “Heart of Darkness” which revamps the mechanics for colonial expansion), so getting the mandatory whole experience isn’t too expensive, but be prepared to spend an additional 150% of the base game’s price to max out the expansions that you need to have the latest patches (which most of the mods will need to work). Another negative for the game is its age; the last update was the “unofficial” Christmas update in 2015. Some people will perceive this as a negative; a game that is no longer being updated no longer has the hype from the community in a lot of cases, and any new bugs would have to be worked around rather than being repaired in patches. However, people exhausted with Paradox’s current rapid-fire DLC policy might find a “dead” game like Victoria II more comfortable (which is definitely the case for me; I still play Europa Universalis III occasionally, but as of me writing this review I don’t have plans to get EUIV because of how frequently the game changes). I’ve heard that the multiplayer for this game is a bit more clunky than the post CK2 titles’, however I’ve never played multiplayer with any of the newer Paradox games, so I can’t say for sure.

Overall I’d recommend this game. People tired of EUIV’s frequent updates who still want the EUIV diplomatic shenanigans and colonization will find something here, people who want something more complex and deep than HOI4 will find something here, and newcomers to the grand strategy genre will definitely find something here like how I did when I picked this up as a rougher introduction to the genre. God save the queen!