Последние обзоры BloodyStirge

Beautiful but painfully uninspired game.

It's hard to fathom why Bioware let this game go so far astray, since they wanted it to be the start of a new ME series. It has a few positive elements in world design, mechanics and graphics, but most of the rest is just meh.

Get it on super sale if you're curious. I'll say it's worth at least one playthrough for the avid ME fan.

This is the most expansive of the DLCs for AoW4, and I begrudgingly have to give it props for the amount of content it adds in comparison to the price. This is the only DLC that isn't a total ripoff. Though if you're considering buying this then you've already been ripped off I suppose, RIP.

Almost $30 and it doesn't even contain a new culture.

I would criticize this for having no original animations, but it's only $10, so I can't be surprised or particularly mad I suppose.

Overpriced, but not as bad as the other DLCs.

Trash. Selling this as a DLC is insulting, considering how lacking the base game is.

I had high hopes for this game, and I've honestly spent way too much money on it (roughly CDN$120). With each DLC I kept hoping it would finally become the game I wanted, but AoW4 severely suffers from issues stemming from the core design rather than a lack of content.

If you're expecting a game with the depth of Stellaris because AoW4 is published by Paradox, then I urge you to turn back and buy something else.

**+** Decent artwork.

**-** Cultures are shallow. Each culture has 6 unit types, including scouts which are useless for combat, and the majority of their building chains are the same. They've since added a few more cultures in DLCs, but they suffer from the same issue of having no depth.

**-** Combat is generally just bad. Tactics matter far less than unit types, abilities, and spells. If you're coming from a game like Total War you're going to be pretty disappointed. Battles are monotonously slow, to the point where having three stacks of units (18 in total) will take you hours to complete, and most players will auto-resolve.

*However, auto-resolve does fully simulate battles instead of just crunching numbers, which I would say is one of the only good features AoW4 has.*

**-** The strategic map gameplay / empire management is also shallow (see below)

• The game only has four resources: food, production, draft, and gold. Food increases pop growth, production builds stuff, draft creates units of x turns, and gold buys buildings and units.

• No resource sharing between cities. So you can't have a city specced for something like food production.

• Can't build multiple of structures like blacksmiths. Cities don't even have building slots, you're simply limited to one of each building, with a few buildings requiring specific province improvements.

• The games abstracts almost everything down into the city-specific 'production' resource. Wood? Stone? These don't exist as real resources in AoW4, foresters and quarries just give you flat bonuses for your production rate. It's designed to be as simple as possible because the devs don't trust players to have working brains. You can't even focus your citizens into doing anything specific, and even if you could the mechanical depth just isn't there for it.

• The AI is abysmal. The only way to get any challenge out of it is to play on brutal, where the only difference is *drumroll* the AI gets resource bonuses.

• "Free Cities" on the map, essentially a lamer version of Civilization's city states. The spawn stacks of units and sit there waiting for you to conquer them, turn them into vassals, or absorb them into your empire.

**-** The game has no campaign. There are a handful of "Story Realms" but they are not a substitute. Triumph's expectation is that you'll create realms (randomly generated with a few features you set) and just play by yourself with bots.

**Conclusion**

There are other issues but I'm honestly sick of writing about this game.

If you're unsure, please take time to watch AoW4 gameplay on youtube so you can see for yourself. I can't in good conscience recommend this game to anyone, and don't fall into the trap of thinking that all the DLCs will fix it. They don't, I own them all and they're not even a bandaid solution.

If you like old RE or Silent Games, you'll love this.

Understand that Hollow Body aims at recreating the gameplay of that genre with it's own twist (if it wasn't obvious from the trailers), so you're not exactly getting modern camera controls Dead Space combat.

That said, Hollow Body is an excellent retro horror and atmospheric experience.

+ Puzzles with just the right amount of challenge to figure out.
+ Emphasis on exploration and scavenging (for tools, ammo, and other supplies).
+ Larger backstory gradually revealed through radio transmissions and documents scattered throughout the city.
+ Excellent artwork and environments.
+ Great soundtrack.

- Dogs

Pros
- Large, detailed maps.
- Great artwork which adheres to the Alien aesthetic.
- Highly customizable difficulty.

Cons
- Not really 'squad based'. Your marines act as a single entity. They can be individually customized between missions, but otherwise you have no micro control of squad members. You move them, they attack hostile enemies automatically, you tell them to crouch behind stuff, you activate abilities and place turrets, and that's basically it. If you've played actual squad based games, it will quickly become apparent that A:DD is a gimmicky and shallow autoshooter.

- The higher the difficulty, the more it lends towards stealth based gameplay as a necessity. Some of you want to eradicate xenos because that's what appeals to you, and you want it to be challenging, but the game actively punishes for doing so. If you're playing a custom difficulty you can offset this, but if you're playing nightmare mode as it's meant to be played then you're not gonna have a good time.

- Abilities are limited by 'command points'. You can increase your command points as you progress, but all the same it's one of those simplified systems developers use instead of real resources because they don't trust players to have functioning brains. Just another facet of how the supposed strategy aspect of the game isn't fulfilling at all.

- The AI for non-xenomorph enemies is laughably bad. Groups of humans will nonchalantly walk by your ARC as it buzzsaws them with its turret.

- Enemy spawns and encounters are highly scripted. The key to the game is getting ambushed, dying, reloading, and metagaming (can you feel the strategy yet?)

- Xenos don't use vents to travel and rely on doors. They do use vents to ambush you, but the game is nice and lets you know exactly where they are so that doesn't happen. lol

- You only get to control one squad of marines, and you can only have a max of 5 marines. So no large scale battles kiddos, our brains might burst from the strain.

Overall

I feel like a lot of people are singing this game's praises because it's Alien. If you want a good Alien game, go pick up Isolation. Don't buy this unless it's at least 50% off, because that's how much its worth.

Good for the most part. Fun colors, nice environments, lots of funny bits.

On the other hand, none of the weapons are that fun to use.
Music is all incredibly bland synths with some percussion thrown in, it almost sounds royalty free.
No robots at all, which was pretty disappointing.

This was a game from a new studio so it's okay to cut them some slack, it's definitely an amazing feat for their first release, but I'm hoping one of them plays Ratchet & Clank at some point and takes notes for their next game.