Recent reviews by 30-foot Dogbot

This is the worst game I have ever recommended. You must have an amazing tolerance for jank and at least one friend with same,

Okay, here goes.

Forced myself to finish the game - this is the most abysmal piece of media I've consumed in a long time. Maybe the asspull ending of Game of Thrones was worse? But if it is, this comes close.

The story - and it's being ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ charitable to call it that - is made of nothing but hollow platitudes, painfully forced drama, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mystery boxes and absolutely nonsense """motivations""" on all sides. It doesn't even have the decency to be threadbare - the story is advanced through painfully lengthy, clumsy cutscenes explaining things slow enough for a toddler to keep up, and about at the same level - and because the writers have somehow been impressed by Kurtzman-style mystery box storytelling instead of anything fulfilling these cutscenes spend ages saying nothing. They're not even pretty to look at. There are three characters, two rooms for them to occupy and they spend literally the entire time in the space version of a conference call. No action at all, no changes of pace, just three people clumsily emoting the """"""story""""" at each other and you by proxy. I don't have adjectives to describe how much I hated this. Imagine a combination of Star Trek Picard and The Room, then lower your expectations to Mohole depths. And the end this trashfire on a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sequel hook?

Just...♥♥♥♥ you.

The game behind this storytelling abortion isn't any better. Seemingly every step is taken to make the game a miserable experience - and I say experience because ♥♥♥♥ you, you won't be controlling it but instead just witnessing it. Every ship seems to have it's own AI maneuver and fire routines - these are aggressive and override any orders you might want to give. Ships have locational defenses and firing arcs, theoretically allowing you to spring ambushes, attack where your opponent is weak and so on - but ship AI absolutely ignores all of this information and drives your fleet in directions of their choosing, often deciding not to point their weapons at the enemy, exposing broadsides as they decide to circle or chase a seemingly random target kilometers away from the battle. Torpedo frigates will always move away from their targets at top speed, shattering your battleline for no reason, allowing them to get picked off by faster opponents. You aren't even allowed to group your ships - assigning too many to a command group - decided by the game and not you - will split your ships into several smaller units that feel absolutely no need to stay close to each other, again allowing your forces to be defeated in detail. You cannot order repair ships to target a specific friendly ship, only orbit near them as they repair ships nearby again seemingly at random. I was less frustrated by the unit controls in Majesty, and the SELLING POINT of that RTS was being unable to control your forces.

Minefields exist for you to never be able to use - but clumsy and ineffective. You cannot designate areas to be mined, only the immediate area around your ship. Turrets exist for your fleets to run directly away from, hating supporting fire for some reason, but cannot be deployed en masse - requiring you to select each one individually, scroll to wherever you would like them, hunt around until you find a spot the game deems worthy, then move back to your Mothership for the next turret. As they require numbers into the dozens to be effective, this is again an abysmal, unacceptable combat choice. Many other ships have special abilities but they range from pointless micro to almost worth using to actively detrimental. Unit abilities are horrendously unclear and not synced across groups - Torpedo ships have an ability that increases their range at the cost of movement speed, but there is zero indication of how long that range is. Worse, if some of the ships in a unit have the ability on and others off - say they were just reinforced - activating the ability will turn it on for some of the ships and off for the others. There is never an instance where this is the correct action. It's ♥♥♥♥♥ design atop ♥♥♥♥♥ design.

The camera is absolutely awful for the 6-axis combat BBI desperately wanted. Homeworld 1 had the ability to instantly lock the camera on any ship, friendly or enemy, this game hides that functionality behind multiple mouse clicks. The camera is also limited to a minuscule orbit distance, never allowing you to zoom out to anything approaching an overview. Given the scope and scale of the game this is baffling.

Multiplayer isn't much better. The garbage ship AI reduces players to only the most basic of harassment and sending blobs of ships at each other, hoping yours perform marginally better, or for the truly skilled players microing individual ship abilities slightly faster. I've seen more tactical depth in mobile phone games. Hyperspacing has been removed from the game where it was a huge enhancement to tactical depth in earlier entries to the series. research has been gutted, cutting the legs out of destroyer or cruiser rush strategies. Upgrades in general barely exist, seemingly something added at the last minute just because previous games had them with no thought as to why.

War Games somehow manages to grow more miserable the longer you play it, as levels unlock new fleets and new trash Artifacts that "upgrade" your fleet, diluting the pool of fun effects you want to use. There are new fleet types to unlock, but these will soon become clogged with the same sea of 'bonus sight range' or 'unnoticeable health regeneration' options you never want and always get. Hilariously there is a turret-based fleet that I ache to try just to laugh at how utterly useless it must be.

The only upside of this game is that it's made Homeworld 2 look like high-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-cinema by comparison. Do not buy it. Do not give BBI your money. I know you love Homeworld. I love Homeworld, but purchasing this game feels like enabling an abuser. 0/100, no stars. I have been tainted, but I can still save you.

This game ♥♥♥♥♥♥ slaps. Gamefeel is perfect, build diversity is endless, the spectacle never stops.

But it's not worth signing up for Sony's corporate garbage.

...now you don't have to, though. 10/10

For Atoma!

ARMORED CORE ARMORED CORE ARMORED CORE ARMORED CORE

it good

If you liked DoomRL, this is DoomRL.

I can't any more. I just...I can't.