Recent reviews by AI-COM/RSPN

If you're a Warhammer Fantasy Battles fan, or a Warhammer/tabletop mini wargame fan in general, this is the game for you.

It's free and it works very well.

If you're like me and fell in love with the genre reading the old White Dwarf battle reports then this is that reincarnate and it'll bring you right back to those days.

I can't recommend this game enough if you're one of those people.

Here's the story with this game; it's a very mid-card RTS. Ten years ago, this would've been a solid game. Today it's just mediocre at best and a kitschy annoyance to play through at worst, and unfortunately, that worst is most of what you're going to experience here.

Yes, we get it, ha-ha, the game goes "apes do you want to live forever and make bugs good bugs by killing them and would you like to know more and do your part?" Very funny, very clever. The music is satirically made crappy 'patriotic' garble. The 'narrator' is a quaint idiot seemingly excited-not-excited for anything you do. The in-game character narrator is a 'tough as nails, hate those pretty flyboys! mobile infantry knockoff.

It's all just so funny, and it just gets funnier the longer you play the game. You know what makes a game like this really shine? When everything is sarcastic and over-the-top, all the time, mixed with dated gameplay and graphics.

If you're just a die-hard fan of the movie/books, then by all means, get this game on sale and have fun smiling to yourself everytime someone says the word 'ape'. If you're a self-loathing person, go ahead and have a shot of your favorite liquor anytime anyone says the same thing, and then don't forget to sign your will because you're not going to be on this earth much longer.

I really enjoy watching half my settlers become obese while doing labor all day. No food boosts for you, fatties.

I'm giving this game a recommend for a few reasons, and they're all namely if you're new to Homeworld or are looking for a new RTS/space sci-fi game;

* The graphics and set piece gameplay aspects are as homeworld was - absolutely gorgeous. The art and design team for the graphical and background aspects of the game should be lauded for what they've done here. It looks like Homeworld and it looks like what a space RTS should be.
* The gameplay is still nominally good. Yes, its not what Homeworld veterans, or really a lot of RTS grognards, were expecting vis-a-vie the scarring aspect of the ships, physics based bullet trajectory (ala HW1), or unit variety..but it's still miles ahead of almost every other 'new' RTS on the market (looking at you, CoH3).

The bad though? Oh...the bad.

* This storyline has to be a self-insert. It's one of the worst storylines in any game and is just flatly absurd from the get go. It retcons almost all of the Homeworld storyline in the most ridiculous fashion and is just awful in all regards. I'm a little surprised something this bad came out of Gearbox/Blackbird Interactive.
* The first point goes along with the second - there's no tension here. There are no 'homeworld' moments. There are no 'hiigara is burning, our people are dying..' or 'bring sajuuk to bear, bring sajuuk to bear!' moments. There is only the slow plodding of your ships (of which the mothership is the fastest? tf?) with the occasional gameplay aspect breaking into your earpiece with some poor excuse for compression in gameplay.
* The gameplay is...not what homeworld fans were expecting. In 2024, no physics based projection, like in 1998's Homeworld 1? The ship variety is lacking. The unit abilities are just tedious and annoying and harken back to a 'let's make a MOBA!' style of gameplay design that demolished the Dawn of War series with IT'S OWN third iteration. The units lose orders and there are no viable branching strategies here - it's your blob vs. their blob until somebody runs out of resources. Gone are the days of investing hard into interceptor/bomber swarms to overwhelm frigates/destroyers. Gone are the days of countering that swarm with the right types of frigates until you could get a battlecruiser on the field. Gone are the days of mixed-tempo builds with early and mid harass until you can fight over capitals..all the while targeting subsections of them to the best effect.
* I have to mention the storyline again. It's that bad.

Do I recommend this game? Yes, because it's Homeworld, and I love (love!) the Homeworld series - playing HW1 in 1998, the grandiose gameplay, the space opera story told in an unforgettable way, the voice overlays giving life to your fleet so that you're desperately trying to save every ship as every ship represents another one of your now endangered people...but Homeworld 3 isn't that. It's a passable RTS..and that's why I'm recommending it.

PSN account not mandatory...for now.

There is way too much ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in Madden for me to care about even trying to learn how to play it anymore.

As a guy that stopped playing this franchise in 2004 I can say I'd buy a remaster but I won't learn the myriad of whatever garbage combo I have to in order to 'master' the game.

Salt is great. A little salt is good, some more salt is even better, but too much salt just makes me salty and everything taste like the ♥♥♥♥ that this game has turned into...too much of everything trying to be 'innovative' instead of just focusing on its core gameplay mechanics.

This is the year that indie game devs completely upend AAA studios in both quality and entertainment.

Manor Lords is one of the reasons why. If you're a fan of the settlement builder/civ builder, if you're a fan of somewhat relaxed gameplay with a great atmosphere and depth, then you cannot go wrong purchasing this game.

It's a bargain even in early access and would be at full price.

So here's the thing about this game;

It's an owlcat game. Which means the mechanics behind it are unnecessarily complicated. I got tired of reading through the seemingly endless types of abilities, their co-dependencies relying on other abilities or characteristics to 'work well' or 'work at all', and trying to figure out how to best apply those around hour fifteen of playing this game.

It isn't that this is a bad thing, normally it isn't in games. It becomes a bad thing when you need to do it for six separate characters over the course of this game. Each character then having a multitude of options for combat that, half of which will basically do nothing/never be used, or are used literally every round of every turn that you get to the point where you're annoyed at having to constantly click the same damn ability over and over and over and OVER AND OVER again when..it should've apparently just been a default 'buff' ability instead of, yet another, activated ability.

It's cool at first. Then it becomes a little overwhelming for the lazy. Then overtly monotonous and annoying. Then it just becomes a tedious, boring chore.

Does this mean this is a bad game? No, not at all - the writing is seemingly good, the game looks good and has vibrant color palette in settings regardless of whether you're in a dreary station or in an imperial town, you know the devs have a real care for 40k and its lore, and the effects you see are visually appealing...but holy hell does 'enough' become "enough already..." around the fifteenth level of reading through paragraph upon paragraph of character leveling abilities to figure out what the hell would be anywhere near useful with your current 'build'.

So yeah, I'll give this game a recommend, it's not bad, but it certainly isn't for everyone either.

Ixion is the game you need when you're bored of everything else, still want a challenge, but don't want to have to come home and 'work' at something to have fun.

The visuals, the story, the music, all serve to create one of the better gaming experiences you're going to have. When your hull is degrading, your people are nearing mutiny, you're thinking about risking another in-sector move to get closer to mining materials, a science ship just got lost to a freak accident, and your stockpiles are going through a re-organization you've determined will raise efficiency..the music will hit and you'll feel like you're doing the right thing for humanity's future.

Is Ixion difficult? Yes. Will it punish you? Yes. Will you be wondering if this is the right technology to unlock with the current science you've been able to uncover when you really think that tech over there might benefit you more in the long run..but you need to survive today? Yes.

If you're looking for something a little different, a little challenging, but very enjoyable, then look no further than Ixion.

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Updated review:

This game is STILL an absolute ♥♥♥♥ show.

The servers have been utterly broken from day one. This game has been out over a week and this is still not fixed. It doesn't matter what difficulty or heist, I've never been able to match with another soul playing this game. The only lobbies I've been able to get have been made through inviting others.

What rip-off from an awful company. Get your stuff together and fix the most basic functionality of your game already.

Now, onto the rest, after a little over a week of either playing solo or with the 1-2 people that I've been able to create lobbies with in this travesty of a title, here's a spoiler; the game is still trash.

No voice chat. A UI that is absolute garbage and shows no useful information, or hides information behind weird configurations. Matchmaking that is constantly down, matchmaking that doesn't make any sense. There are limited heists for a title this mature - why previous heists aren't in this game (except for """storyline""") is beyond me. Want to queue for one of them for one of the two ways you can accomplish it, stealth or loud? Nope, can't do that, because reasons I guess. Want to keep a party together after a mission? Also nope; lobby blows up. Want to play offline? Nope, because this company values your private data and must collect and then sell it. And sure, you might say, why would you want to play a four player co-op game offline? ...To which I'd respond, why the %$#@ wouldn't you be able to play any game you buy offline?

Aside from the servers the cardinal sins of these game really boil down to two things - the progression and monetary system. Both are broken completely. Money no longer matters, now you convert your leftover cash for an in-game currency that does, apparently, nothing valuable. For a game about stealing money...money is now functionally meaningless. The second thing, which is also the worst thing about this game, is the progression system. Previously harder missions meant more XP which meant more progression - overkill difficulty gave more XP than very hard which gave more than hard which gave more than normal. Killing more enemies meant you got more XP. Completing more bonus mission objectives meant you got more XP. Doing missions stealthily also gave you an XP bonus. In this game? That's all gone. All of it. Instead of sticking to what was fun, they tried to innovate (and hey, at least they tried, right? ..right?) and absolutely blew up the largest facet of the game that makes it enjoyable to play. Want to advance with a weapon or a skill? Congrats, that's now behind some convoluted 'challenge' wall. Not only is it behind a stupid challenge wall (complete a mission on X difficulty..150 times? What?), it's hidden in the UI behind that challenge wall so you'll have to go hunting in order to find out why you're not progressing/find that way to progress. What an absolutely contrived and awful way to design a game.

..but hey, all that's ok because this game hardly works to begin with.

Here's what this game improved on compared to Payday 2 - a slight bump in graphics and gunplay.

Here's what this game didn't improve on compared to Payday 2 - literally everything else.

Payday 2, over the years, just became inundated with horde upon horde of specials swarming you to the point of obnoxious nausea. Payday 3 will go in the same direction because the devs will think its free real estate to revisit ideas they've already had (more specials! New [old] specials! MORE specials!).

I used to say I'd recommend this game if you were a fan of Payday 2 and it was on sale. Now I can confidently say that I do not recommend this game whatsoever even if you loved Payday 2 and it IS on sale. Firstly, it doesn't work, at all, because of server issues this company has not addressed in a week+ despite the huge amount of revenue they were given in pre-orders. Secondly, the progression/challenge system in this game is one of the worst in any game I've played and will absolutely put a stop to any amount of fun you were going to have within a few hours of playing it.

The real theft here was on the wallets of those that purchased this steaming pile of gosa.