Recent reviews by sitontheedge

FSF feels like a demo for a game I'd really have enjoyed playing. I completed it in under two hours (while holding a fussy baby), and at no point did a puzzle call for more than a few minute's reflection. The only point at which I got stuck on a puzzle turned out to be due to a bug--something hadn't loaded and what I was trying to do was actually impossible without reloading. I ran into two such bugs in my play through.

That said, this is a promising premise for a puzzle platformer, and executed in a way that is pleasing if not especially remarkable. I enjoyed what I got. But right around the point that I was ready for the puzzles that would get serious and apply my understanding of the mechanics of a region that region would, instead, be completed. Thus much of the game feels introductory. It won't be more than a mouthful for a veteran puzzle gamer.

(There is a "new game+" mode, but it doesn't alter game content at all. It merely changes the graphical representation of the main mechanic.)

This game is a bit of a bloated mess. And, in the midst of that mess, there's quite a bit of fun to be had. I've had fun and will likely have a bit more. But the mess keeps intruding.

To begin, the game is one thing at heart but postures as if it were another. At heart it's a set of really promising mechanics: a collect-and-battle monster game bolted on to an open-world brawler. It's Pokemon and Arkham Knight's misbegotten child. Meanwhile, it postures as if it were a serious open-world fantasy game, like Dragon Age, in which SERIOUS people make MEANINGFUL decision about which I should CARE. But the (entirely linear) story is fragmented and in places downright silly. You can lose sight of it for hours because you're doing what the game ostensibly intends you to do. And when you return to the main plot, it feels more like an interruption than coming back to the point. Even outside of storyline missions, Talion and his live-in wraith friend bicker pointlessly like some tedious buddy cop duo. The tone implies gravity but the content fails to back it up.

(On this score its proximity to Tolkien is probably hurting more than helping by inviting comparison to better-written media. The game is quite successful in borrowing Peter Jackson's visual style. But that, along with its tendency to incorporate bits of Tolkien’s phrasing and mythos in inexplicable ways, gives the odd impression of something fundamentally different that's received a coat of Middle Earth paint.)

By rights, though, the orcs are the centerpiece of this game, not the story. Clearly a lot of TLC went into these orcs. They are interesting and varied, endlessly spit out by a dynamic generation system yet each one still feels like it has personality. And then the nemesis system structures all these random orcs into little unfolding stories of rivalries, ambitions, and betrayals. No collect-and-battle game I’ve seen has come close to anything like this. It’s frankly impressive. (Why can't GameFreak be this creative?)

This is where the best fun is to be had—when I can forget all about Sauron and Come-hither Shelob and just help my orcs chop up some other orcs. But even here the game can’t quite quit while it’s ahead. Every hostile orc chieftain you run into has to give a little speech to show how unique and full of personality he is. You may get another midway through the fight. That’s fine for a bit, but pretty soon you get tired of it, and that’s when you realize the devs, so proud of their orc children, made the speeches unskippable. If you get ambushed you can be subjected to whole minutes of orc grandstanding before you can get back to fighting. Bloated. Messy.

And the fighting is OK. On paper it’s incredible: it’s the close quarters system from the Arkham games with ranged elf magic, time dilation, and mind control rounding out the power trip. Boo-ya! But again it isn’t just left at that. You have a dizzying array of upgrades and abilities on a huge skill tree. And all this maps onto the same few buttons. It’s hard to keep track of it all (at the 40 hour mark, having played through the previous game). The combat itself, and for that matter the map traversal, seldom feels entirely clean and crisp. Something always is just a bit off, Talion zigs when you wanted him to Zag. Perhaps that’s hard to avoid with a series of overlapping systems this big and complicated, but that’s the thing—it did not need to be this big and complicated!

The same goes for a lot of the game’s overlapping complex of systems. In addition to the skill tree there’s a gear system. And of course this involves a rarity system, a currency for upgrading gear, mini-objectives per-gear-piece, and socketable gems which can be gathered and combined. There is also a secondary inventory for online mission loot, which includes vestigial loot boxes. And there are maps, with a jumble of open-world icons (too few of which are quick-travel points) that contribute busy-work quests in the form of three separate sorts of uninteresting mini games, and an overworld map where good UI has been traded off for sense-of-scale. There is a rarity system AND a leveling system for orcs, which can be further modified from a training menu. And there is an upgrade system per-region for both fort defenses and an assault force one maintains. And…

…And a lot of it just isn’t helping the experience. Ostensibly, part of this is the ordinary bloat of current open world games, while much more resulted from an ill-considered pay-to-win system since stripped out of the game. If the aim had been pleasure rather than incentivizing grind, the gear system could have been combined with the skill tree and both simplified. The simplistic gem system could have been axed altogether. Two of the three bringing-an-object-into-focus-by-moving-sticks mini-games could have been cut. (Or all three. Is somebody clamoring for these? Or are they just taking up our time in the hope that we’ll subsequently forget what percentage of the game’s runtime was filler?) For that matter the level cap could have been lower so that one can get into online orc battlin' sooner.

So, yeah. Rather bloated and messy. But, having said all that, if anybody wants to sell me these same core systems sans the mess piled on top I’d gladly buy it.

'Endless Legend' did me a big favor and ran on my work laptop even though said laptop doesn't meet the minimum requirements. For that alone I owe this game a solid. But EL hits a sweet spot for me, and that's made it my go-to strategy game for the last few years.

As a 4x game much of EL will be mechanically familiar. But its real excellence is its unique flavor. The world of EL is lush, varied, and original. Instead of just stitching well-used fantasy tropes into a "setting", EL has a thought out lore all its own that straddles fantasy and sci-fi. The playable factions feel distinct and vivid. And this distinctness is reflected mechanically--core gameplay systems and starting units differ radically between them. (There's a faction of immortals that has no need for food, and another of fanatical cultists who cannot colonize new regions but only convert their native inhabitants to the faith.) Minor factions, analogous to Civ's barbarians, are similarly diverse.

My one major complaint with the game, worth mentioning to potential new players, is that learning to play it takes some effort. I found some of the menus less than intuitive, and tutorials are insufficient. A few central mechanics like city district leveling aren't properly explained at all in-game (do look that up). But the community has written some good guides and resources, and the game's been well worth the initial investment. Once you're over the hump, though, gameplay is solid, and expands on the 4x genre with some new mechanics. For instance there's the influence system, a sort of diplomatic currency used for both negotiations with other nations and for empire-wide initiatives that set a direction for your own long-term progress.

(Speaking of the community, if you do decide to play the game, I strongly recommend looking into the Endless Legend Community Patch. From small quality of life improvements to a major AI upgrade, it does a lot for the game. And most veteran players seem to swear by it.)

The upshot is that I've played EL in a way I haven't played any 4x since Alpha Centauri back in the day. The two games share that combination of crisp strategy and immersion in a setting that is truly different. And, well, it runs on my work laptop...

This game has a great concept: build a factory (like in Factorio or Satisfactory) to power tower defense. The execution falls a bit short of the potential, but it's still good fun.

The factory designing is simplified compared to games with that as their exclusive focus, but still gives a good range of options. Simple resources of a handful of types must be procured and then processed into more advanced resources or used to generate power. It's quite pleasing to lay out and refine a map-spanning system of resource collection and defense. Playing a campaign map you’ll hurriedly throw up defenses to withstand a few waves, and progressively upgrading your tech as new materials come online. The goal is to survive past a certain wave. But, having done this, you can return to the same maps with copious supplies and build at a leisurely pace, optimizing the heck out of everything. Now the aim is lasting as long as you can.

But the experience isn't as smooth as it could be. The game systems have some aggravating imperfections. For instance, the electrical grid makes connections only upon construction, and not always where they’d make most sense. Thus, you can have something hooked up properly, yet when it is rebuilt by your repair drones the connections are filled in wrong and elements don’t have power. To get things hooked back up you’ll sometimes need to tear down a pole just to rebuild it in the same spot. Another complaint is that pipes really work like reskinned conveyers so fluid dynamics are clunky: pipes are all one-way, and water pressure behaves in a counterintuitive way.

Perhaps more significantly, gameplay is ultimately rather slow. The single player campaign just isn't that hard. The only reason it takes some time is that it has a tech tree with unlocks and the unlocks require a bit of grinding (though nothing excessive). Otherwise, there are only a couple maps it took me more than one try to beat. Coming back and trying to last longer is a better challenge, but it’s also slow to build and entire apparatus and then wait through hundreds of waves doing fairly little. There’s no fast forward. You can speed up the waves of enemies but you may not want to because your system relies on harvesting resources which takes time.

So this game will be enjoyable to somebody who likes system building for its own sake, but less for somebody looking for the kind of gameplay usually found in tower defense games. I like both, and I found this fun provided I had a podcast to listen to, or some Simpsons on in the background.

This game almost immediately became one of my favorite things I have ever played. A lot of games try to transport you to an alien world. This game, with its hand drawn sprites and carefully crafted soundscape, succeeds better than a lot of titles that have a much larger budget and profile. This game is magical.

Compared to other 2D ship building games, a genre I have a real weakness for, Nimbatus has one of the best ship creation studios I've seen. While the way ships seem held together with rubber bands is a bit hard to get used to at first, the diversity of elements at your disposal, and ability to automate and customize all aspects of your ship are very nice. There is a system of sensors and logical components in place that allows one to set up arbitrarily complex behaviors. It's rewarding to play with the ship builder.

On the other hand, the game play isn't currently very compelling. Once you get the hang of the building tools, and perhaps unlock some weapon upgrades (which is grindy, but not hard) most missions become tremendously easy. Only arena missions still pose an interesting challenge--and those place strict constraints on which components and building options one can use.

Since this is still in early access I'm hoping the great ship building studio will eventually be matched with some nice design challenges. But, in the meantime, this gets a positive review for the ship building alone.

I've played all of the Shadowrun games by Hairbrained Schemes--and if they come out with more I'll play those too. They've all been solid, enjoyable games with an interesting setting and a good turn-based combat system. Not much changes mechanically between them, and at this point they feel rather old school with their isometric perspective and fairly linear plot. But they use this format well, and add a lot of texture to the world through good writing and visual detail.

This one is my favorite of the lot, largely for the good core cast of characters (who get dedicated missions fleshing out their backstories and personalities) and for the main story as well, which struck me as more compelling than the other two. If I was trying to get somebody into these games this is the one I'd give them.

This game was ultimately disappointing. There are a bunch of things to like here: this is a polished game on the pattern of Civ V which looks nice and in which the fantasy elements are not just superficial. There are nice incentives for diversifying your empire between the various fantasy races, and the races really do differ in significant regards. For fantasy feel, I'd give this game high marks. The hero and magical systems also add interesting fantasy twists to the Civ formula. Seeing all this, I really wanted to love this game and settle in for the process of mastering it.

But I found that right around the point where I grasped all the systems and should have really gotten into the nuance I instead ran into significant flaws. For example, the economic and city management parts of the game are shallow. Cities pool resources so you can have cities with no income and no food production without issue. There is no variable for citizen happiness, and no noticeable drawback to rapid expansion. There are no grand projects to embark on and availability of specialized buildings are a matter of environment, not planning. Your infrastructure options are dead simple and there just wasn't anything more to learn.

Instead of a tech tree there is a system for learning spells. That's a selling point in theory, but as implemented it's a drawback. Spells aren't arranged in any sort of linear progression. What you have the options to learn seems nearly random so there is no way to direct your efforts towards the powerful spells you actually want. And, at a certain point, most of the spells you'll be researching aren't that useful to you anyway (because you already have working alternatives, or just won't use them because the casting time is better used on other things), yet you still need to learn them to get dealt other random research opportunities. Research largely looses relevance.

Worst of all AI is poor to the point of being ridiculous and immersion breaking. Here is an example (this happened in multiple games): after sending out scouts I was in contact with leaders of distant nations. Periodically these leaders would try to shake me down for resources and--when I didn't give them anything--declare war. But we shared no borders. War was innocuous. I never saw any of their units. Years would pass, and then eventually they would sue for peace, offering me substantial compensation for agreeing to end a war in which no shot was ever fired. On the other hand, I could offer peace to an opponent clearly about to lose at my hand and they'd turn it down with an insult. And increasing the difficulty level doesn't seem to improve the AI.

This game could have been good. I'm a fan of really stripped down RTS games. For example, I've played many hours of Galcon Fusion. Control Craft 2 has the bones of a game like that, with just a few changes it could be a good game. Unfortunately there are too many things wrong with it in its current form:

--It's short. I played through 3/4 of the available stages in just an hour and a half with no prior experience of the game.
--It was ported from a FTP mobile game and still retains many features of that which should have been changed. It still has banner ads in it and lacks a full screen option!
--It is poorly documented. I still haven't figured out how to unlock a bunch of major upgrades even though I've almost completed the game. (Technically, I guess I'm not certain they can be unlocked.) This is very frustrating.

So I wouldn't recommend buying this game, not in its current form. That said, my first hour of play was a positive experience. If the developer ever wanted to clean this up for a proper PC release, I'd be interested.

I didn't have the problems so many others did. I first played the game after the major patches and on a fairly powerful machine. It ran great. Had it not, this might have been a very different review.

With that out of the way, I thought this was hands down the best installment in the Arkham serries, and a return to form after the disapointment of Arkham Origins. The story here is more worth paying attention to than in any of the prior iterations. And you have a huge and beautifully detailed chunk of Gotham to explore. Also the presentation of the story involves some novel tequniques--things I haven't seen in other action games such as seemless integration of Batman's halucinations into the open world gameplay rather than making them a seperate stage or cut scenes.

A more minor thing I appreciated was the shift in the style of boss battles so that their mechanics aren't, in general, very different from those of a normal fight. Thus instead of feeling like you are in a different game for boss fights, in AK they are very much continuous with all the other fights in the game and the same skills apply.

My largest complaint is that the final showdown with a favorite villain ends up just being a tank battle. But even though gameplay in the Batmobile could be a bit tedious, I thought it too added a nice element to the flavor of the game, and tank battles were reasonably enjoyable.

It's too bad they messed up the release of this game so badly. Under it all, there's a really excellent Batman game.