Reseñas recientes de IL PALLINO

Overview:

Negligee is a yuri (lesbian) visual novel focused on a young woman named Hannah who works every lesbian's dream job: Managing a lingerie shop while deciding upon which of three beautiful women to hire.

Only kidding! Only men think that. Real lesbians prefer to work in book stores and agricultural communes, unless they're one of the lucky few who can play Golf or Basketball professionally. Anyway, the owner promotes Hannah to the position of Manager (despite obviously lacking in any managerial experience and skills) when the previous manager quits, and Hannah is immediately tasked with hiring one of three potential new employees: Charlotte the quiet student, Jasmin the exotic dancer, and Sophie, the loudmouth daughter of the owner's friend who's in search of a job. The player must choose the correct actions (which are usually choices of things to say in response to questions), and hope that Hannah will be able to make the right choice upon who to hire.

Graphics and Sound:

Given the nature of a visual novel game, the "be all, end all" are the girls in the game, and the three potential employees for Hannah to pick from are all cute. I wasn't a particular fan of Jasmin's smile. (The girl on the left in the below picture.) But I've seen far worse-looking people and facial expressions in anime visual novels, and this is the only thing I didn't like about the graphics.

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1147030474

The scenes for all of the locations in the game are all typical of visual novels, but every so often, a non-stock picture will appear in the more interesting parts of the game. I do like how many of the text boxes have lacy frills on the edges, which helps reinforce the theme that the game is set in a lingerie store.

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1147083063

I thought that the breasts on all the women tended too strongly to all be the same (large) size, but at least there's one character who's less-endowed than the rest, but with the uncensored patch, I did appreciate the fact that not all women had the same amount of pubes. (If any at all.)

Negligee's soundtrack isn't the best, but it does help with setting the mood, which is the most important thing the music can do in a visual novel.

Positives and negatives:

(Note: I combined them both because while there's things I don't like about the game, it's not to say it's a bad thing, and in at least one situation, the negative was a good thing because of it's function.)

Replay value is the number one reason why people buy video games, and Negligee has that. With a large number of endings, you're sure to be playing over and over trying to get into a girl's panties. Or if you want to see what a bad ending looks like to a game, there's a few of those you can have.

Hannah never actually has sex with anyone during the normal course of the game. Is it unusual from other H-Anime and date sim games? It's not what I was used to from playing True Love and Little My Maid, but unless you're lucky the first time, you won't be seeing too many ladies get naked besides Hannah.

While Jasmin, Charlotte, and Sophie are believable characters, Emily the owner isn't anything what I've come to expect from a store owner. (Unless her backstory is that she's a millionaire who bought the store for the sake of buying lingerie at wholesale prices.) The most unbelievable thing about Hannah, is that she sees pictures of a naked woman, and reacts much the same way a man would. Jasmin says something along the way that doesn't strike me as being true, especially given the way that I've heard about how most real life lesbians don't care if their partner had sex with a man.

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1149560406

But this isn't real life, this is a sex game, which means you can throw realism out the window, and jack up the heat!

I don't know what the standard is in visual novels that have a "harem ending" where you win over every single girl, but in Negligee, the player must go through all of the good endings (and probably also all of the bad endings) in order to get the harem ending. The worst part about the endings, is that there's no endings that involve Emily, and I don't give a golly gosh darn if she does like men.

Conclusion:

This is Steam, and this game is... Steamy! You might have to work for the hot pictures, but there's quite a few that are easy enough to unlock, and the sexual situations are H-O-T! So get this game, get the uncensored patch, get your girl (or boy... Or toy, or lube), and get ready to yell Hentai or DIE!!

Overview:

Highschool (sic) Romance is a visual novel set at a private school. The main character is a boy sent to the school by his parents, only to find out the admission policy changed, and that the school is now an all-female institution of learning. For reasons unknown, the principal of the school decides to admit the main character, but transvestize him to fit in for whatever reason. Along the way, the main character encounters two other girls in addition to the principal. Expecting more people to be encountered? I know I was.

Graphics and sound:

Highschool Romance cuts so many corners, the programmers would be better suited for making globes. The main thing that really stood out to me, was that gym class was being held outdoors, and yet the graphic on screen was the stock picture of the gymnasium:

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1137937624

I should have taken a closer look at the graphics when I got Highschool Romance, but for some odd reason, it wasn't until I got in game, that I noticed that every female in the game looks like they have a Hapsburg jaw. In fact, the jaws are even more pronounced on the females than the male character, which may explain why the principal thought the main character could pass for female.

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1137933234

I was also disappointed by a scene in which another character attempts to put makeup on the main character, yet all you're treated to, is the same stock picture of the main character and his Plain Jane face. Not even the tiny picture of the main character features him wearing makeup, yet you would think that such a scene was big enough to warrant a full sized screenshot.

The sound is nothing special. The music isn't my style, but it's a letdown in the sense that it doesn't help set the mood of the game, which should be the be all, end all for a game's soundtrack. There's very little sound effects to speak of, and none that stand out.

Positives:

Although the idea of transvestized (and sex changed) anime boys is nothing new, I did have a lot of fun with the concept of this game earlier on. I was really humored in the beginning when the principal takes the main character shopping for girl's clothes. It's obvious that shopping trip was designed by a man, because there was a lengthy trip for lingerie shopping. (My personal favorite part of the game.) But absolutely no mention was made of buying shoes.

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1137933725

Negatives:

The main character is in a school full of girls, and yet only three other people seem to exist. The only interesting thing about the trio, is that they have Hapsburg jaws. They're merely just stock characters masquerading as major characters with no interesting details or personality quirks about them. The athletic girl in the game has the same physical attributes as every other athletic girl in Anime (including warrior women): Her arms and legs are just as lacking in muscle as every other female in the game (or movie), and her breasts have the same amount of fat as every other non-athletic girl.

I'll admit to being suckered into those tags on Steam that infer Highschool Romance has nudity and mature content. Both of these were lacking. I was thinking that maybe I should play through the game again and see if there's any other path that offers nude scenes, but I lost interest in the game soon afterwards. Just as well, because I noticed that all of the "interesting" pictures from the game are online outside of Steam, anyway, and I saw none that contained nudity.

Adult content aside, when a game has the word "Romance" in the title, I don't expect anything less. The kissing I saw in the one path I took was just that; kissing without substance. I felt no sort of attachment to the girl that the main character was kissing, and I'm sure the rest of the girls would have been equally disappointing. No dialogue to infer how much in love both characters were with one another, zero passion in the pictures involving "love," and really, absolutely no sense of beauty in intimacy.

Conclusion:

The game would have been more aptly labeled "High School Transvestism," since it's an even bigger point of the game than the romance. But I've learned my lesson: Don't pay more than a dollar for a game that has only four achievements!

Overview:

1849 is a settlement management sim set in... Well? In the time of the California Gold Rush. 1849 can be played in both sandbox and campaign modes, with the latter involving building towns all around California to exploit natural resourses of the immediate area, and sell these resourses to other cities in California via trade routes. Once scenario objectives are complete, it's time to move onto the founding of the next city. Trade routes are both ways, so if one city buys something your city has to offer, then you'll also be able to buy whatever it is that other city specializes in, and hopefully the item in question will be something your settlement needs. But like many other management sims, it's much better to sell than it is to buy.

Graphics and sound:

The graphics are what you can expect for the money, but that ASSumes the player bought 1849 when it was on sale.
http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1137777463

There's nothing that stands out as particularly likable concerning the sounds of the game, but the period music does help with setting the mood. I'll listen to the music if I really do need a mood-setter, but I don't particularly enjoy any song in the game's soundtrack more than the other, so I'll mute the sound on the game, and play my own brand of music the few times I play 1849.

Positives:

1849 is an original concept for management sims, and there's not a great deal of gold rush era games in the first place. If you're fascinated by the Gold Rush era, you should enjoy this game more than me if you management sims are your thing.

Negatives:

The difficulty curve in 1849 appears to have some randomness to it. (Either that, or it gets extremely difficult very quickly!) The first several missions in 1849 were pig simple, but fairly early on, you're still going to need to need playthrough videos or text walkthroughs to help beat one of the scenarios. The way to complete one early scenario was one I never would have guessed on account of the scenario not requiring production or selling of the biggest money maker, which is your only means of completing this scenario. Any management sim fan will tell you that there's nothing worse than a game that has only one exact way of completing a scenario, and while I can tolerate such a flaw in missions that are supposed to be extremely difficult at the end of a campaign, a player shouldn't have to go through it less than five scenarios into the game.

There's nothing interesting to speak of about the campaign. There's no main character to speak of, nothing of interest comes up between scenarios except for a big ol' map of northern California, and the location of where you settle next. In fact, the campaign just seems very boring in general. It's been about twenty years since Railroad Tycoon 2 was released, and it featured very interesting insights to scenarios. (Including it's expansion pack, which had interesting things to say about even it's far future scenarios.)

Remember Imperium Romanum which had all sorts of interesting facts about the Roman Empire that were revealed as you played the game? This feature is totally absent from 1849. My only interest in California may be in the Punk bands from there, but it would have been nice to have gotten lessons from the game as to the relevance of things like olive oil and cotton to the Californian economy when you're pretty sure that gold mining was the be all, end all of what made settlers want to settle in a state plagued by mudslides, earthquakes, fires, and lots of people who think the sun shines out of their behinds. Random fun facts about the Gold Rush would have been nice, but about the only thing you're going to learn from this game, is that the campaign can be difficult, and is really uninteresting. (Players may, however, have fun building up a city in a sandbox game.)

Conclusion:

Listen to your friends on Steam: They are your friends for a reason, and they mean what they say when they say not to purchase a game! I thought one friend in particular was just being overly critical about 1849 (and lacking in key information), but you can take it from me to save your money on much more fascinating games, because I make a more solid effort to inform players (usually friends) about games. I do intend on completing the campaign someday just for the sake of having bought this game. (Edit: I changed my mind, and decided to request a refund.) You might have fun playing sandbox games just for the sake of building settlements from the ground on up. (A challenge I sometimes enjoy, but far less after having played Banished.)

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1137776534

I cannot recommend 1849 in good faith to anyone. There's far better games on Steam involving management for the same amount of money (even at 1849's sale price), and if you need the challenge of developing cities, just look for an established city building game to get your kicks.

Overview:

how do you Do It (actual capitalization) is a "game" that involves a girl trying to figure sex out on her own by removing the clothes from a male and female doll, and repeatedly mashing the dolls together while her mother is out of the house. There's no other game play. Same scene of the girl's mother leaving the house, then controling the movement and rotation of the two dolls, and the scene ends with the girl hiding the dolls from her returning mother and a counter as to how many times the dolls may have "did sex." I may have given up too soon, but I couldn't even have the girl get caught.

Graphics and sound:

This is a free to play game, so what exactly are you expecting?

Positives:

If WTF kinda humor is your kinda humor, then there's a chance you may enjoy this game. I was brought up on crude sexual humor encountered in the schlock movies shown on USA Up All Night back in the early 1990's, but even the humor value this game immediately lost it's value with me.

Negatives:

There's virtually no gameplay to speak of, and you have to use the keyboard. But don't fret. Unless you're the same age as the girl in this game, you likely won't find yourself needing to use one of your hands to touch yourself as you mash the two naked dolls together in an attempt to have them possibly do it.

Conclusion: It's like what Rowan Atkinson said in Blackadder's Christmas Carrol: One massively disappointing bang, and the whole novelty quickly wears off... Only there wasn't much of a "bang" between the two dolls, the girl mashing the dolls together has the same (childhood sexuality) thoughts every single time, and yet never seems to wonder what's between a boy's legs. This game may be perfect for people who live in households that consider homosexuality wrong, because there's only one male and one female doll, and with no ability to have the girl try and mash two naked dolls of the same gender together. And since there's only two dolls, both of them are white, which means no ability to form interracial couples. If you want sexual encounters from a child's perspective, your best bet is to look for the Alter Ego games outside of Steam. Even while those two are text based, at least you'll get more amusement from it's portrayal of childhood sexuality.

Overview:

Rebuild 3 is a survivalist management simulation set in the midst of a zombie apocalypse in the pacific northwest. The game involves reclaiming enough parts of cities to manage the menace of zombies while dealing with factions you can either ally with or destroy. Sometimes you'll be able to work towards finding the cure for the zombiism in a city, which means you shouldn't be too anxious to get out of town and take your most liked survivalists with you. The main gameplay of cities involes clearing zed out of unclaimed city blocks, then building a wall around pacified blocks, and then scavenging for food and supplies (either within parts of your own territory, or in unclaimed blocks with some risk to the scavenger/s), recruiting new survivalists, diplomacy with outside factions, and trade with either an outside caravan or other factions, and that ever-elusive goal of building up food production so that your community can not only survive, but also thrive into a bigger community capable of sustaining more people to do whatever it is that their specialty dictates. (Steam has caps on review lengths, so I'm cannot describe the roles of solders, scavengers, builders, engineers, and leaders.) And once you've met all of the goals, it's time to go to the next city... Unless you want to stick around for a bit longer to earn more achievements to proudly show off to your friends.

Graphics and Sound:

The graphics aren't the best, but I do find them aesthetically pleasing, and that's the most important thing. The main issue about grahpics, is that the wall around your territory is built all the way around (and underneath) bridges... The game even tells you that zombies cannot swim!
http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=980486315

The sound is nothing special by and large. I do enjoy the sound the game makes whenever zombie hordes attack your city, and it does create that feeling that scores of undead are coming to eat your brains. The main issue I have with the music in Rebuild 3, is that I either like a song, but it sounds out of place, or the song fits perfectly, but I don't like it. The main exception would have to be the song "Flicker The Light," which is not only my personal favorite in Rebuild 3's soundtrack, and it does help create a sense of urgency. Fortunately, Rebuild 3 is the sort of game you can enjoy with the sound down. So go ahead and defend your turf while you're playing the theme to the schlock movie Raiders of the Living Dead.

Positives:

I am impressed by the game's storyline. It's a lot more than just endless zombie killing, and the use of real life geographical locations also provides a nice feel to Rebuild 3. (The player can rename cities as they wish.) While not exactly River City Ransom, the game does have a sense of humor absent from most games, and rather than just saturate the player in jokes and hope that one of them makes the player laugh, the humor is judiciously used, and something funny will come up when the player least expects to be humored.

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1075311590

Scavenging is always a nice bit of pot luck, because you don't know if the supplies you're going to find will be building materials or ammunition. You might even be lucky enough to find a weapon or item to give to one of your survivalists in order for them to get the most out of their skills.

While skills can be improved upon for survivalists, fortunately a survivalist does not have to have any skill to do something outside of their specialty, which is good because with few people in your community to start each city, you're going to have everyone scouting, fighting, and building. Some people might even have everyone scavenging, but I prefer to leave scavenging to my scavengers. (Especially if they have the hoarder trait, which can result in more building materials.) And if you find yourself with too many survivalists with the same skill? You can either build or reclaim a school, and have a survivalist gain a new skill! (While retaining their original skill level in their former specialty.)

I also enjoy the system for traits. Every so often, you will get a dialogue bubble next to a survivalist's picture, and you can let them talk about their backstory, which allows you to pick a trait that you can apply to that survivalist. The main character can also gain new (and much better) traits than the other survivalists as time goes by.

Rebuild 3 also has a technology tree that you're free to research. And while not normally mandatory, it does add to the challenge of how to best use the engineers in your community. (Or just a place to put engineers to work for whatever reason.) Research can lead to all sorts of things that either provide macro benefits to one's community, or allows engineers to craft new types of items in workshops.

The large number of weapons and items also makes Rebuild 3 an enjoyable game. The best part is that some weapons have non-combat applications (sledgehammers can be used for construction as well combat), while some items (particularly hammers and crowbars) can be used to help a survivalist in combat in addition to their usual non-combat function.. If a survivalist has a vehicle, they can use that to make jobs far away from one's zone of control safer to achieve, or at some random occasion in combat, vehicles can be used for running over zombies foolish enough to attack you.

Negatives:

Mixed use of masculine and feminine pronouns. This screams amateurization at it's loudest. I can only presume that Rebuild 3 was play-tested because I don't have any issue with the game crashing. But you can expect to see people called "he" and "she" in the same encounter.

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1090975936

Rebuild 3 also lacks a safety feature for going back to the main menu. The game asks if you're sure if you want to delete saved games, yet if you click on the "main menu" button by accident (and it's a mistake I've made many times), you get taken straight to the main menu.

The paradox of going too slow and too fast isn't something I enjoy about Rebuild 3. The game takes points off of your score the longer you stay in a city, and there's even an achievement for being able to finish a city within 50 days. But if you rush through a city which contains events needed to find a cure, and you leave before you find them, then tough luck, sucker!

Conclusion:

I got Rebuild 3 while it was on sale, and I would recommend this game at it's sale price. I'd like to think that you could get a better game for the same price, only I cannot think of any better games than Rebuild 3 at a comparable price. Rebuild 3 is good, addictive fun. It's the type of game, which if it's in your niche, takes over everything and puts life on hold while you go through the motions of surviving and then thriving all while trying to set up your territory to stop other factions from claiming buildings that you might want for yourself (power plants and water treatment plants are personal favorites of mine), so you'll be enjoying Rebuild 3 to the point to where you won't be playing any other games on the side with your free time. One nice feature of Rebuild 3, is that there's multiple endings, so that automatically gives the game replay value. I know I'll play Rebuild 3 again some day, but just not soon. (There was something I overlooked in one of the cities.) Not only is Rebuild 3 a one of a kind game, but it's also a great one at that you will be playing for a long time. (At least on your first playthrough.)

Overview:

Banished is a colony management game set in Medieval times that calls to mind games like The Settlers and Imperium Romanum, only without the combat aspect. As a result, the game is focused on micromanagement of people over city management. You build, and if your settlement isn't wiped out through starvation (and not many people freeze), you keep gathering resources, build buildings which will hopefully sustain a higher population, and that takes you back to square one.

Repetitive? Absolutely. Name a city or colony management game that wasn't! The main difference, is that all you have to go for, is achievements to proudly display on Steam. There's no in-game rewards for increasing the size of your settlement to a certain population or buildings to unlock, because every building is unlocked at the beginning.

Graphics and sound:

You've seen the screenshots. I personally like the look and feel of everything in-game. My main criticism is that you don't see workers in hunter's lodges taking down game, but everything looks great. You can do nothing except simply look at the screen, and what you see looks wonderful. (ASSuming that you don't have any pressing needs for your colony that bring your mood down!) The music is amazing, not just because it helps with setting the mood for the game, but I went a long time actually listening to it, as opposed to other games, which I normally mute, and then play my own brand of music while I enjoy a game.

Positives:

What I like about Banished invokes the memory of US Suprme Court (Associate) Justice Potter Stewart, who was best remembered for saying "I know it when I see it." There's something I truly enjoy about the experence of Banished, which is why I kept playing repeatedly before I decided to give up completely and seek out a refund.

The system for trading with visiting merchants is by far the best feature of Banished. Trades is purely barter, and isn't even-steven. It would have been better if merchants came by with more than one type of product to trade, but my only complaint, was that the time I was able to trade for chickens, I could only afford one, and that thing obviously didn't get itself pregnant! (At least nobody can accuse the game of lacking in realism in that department.)

The tutorial was exactly the way game tutorials should be: Broken into multiple parts, highly controlled environments, and each of them actually educating the player well, with one exception I'll cover in the negatives.

Achievements in Banished are my idea of achievements. You're not going to get anything just because you built your first building. These are achievements which you actually have to put in a genuine amount of work to earn.

Negatives:

FOOD!! This is a totally broken feature of the game, and especially if you're playing at the most difficult level. (Which I always like to do.) The game is ambiguious about how much food hunters, gatherers, and fishermen produce. Farmlands, orchards, and animal pens are much the same way. Even when I assign priority to the construction of food production (and producing a minimal amount of coats, firewood, and tools), I still have a serious problem with people starving.

Edit: Food producers have varying degrees of productivity depending on the location of their building, but the game does nothing to show the projected effectiveness of food producers at the time of building placement.

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=962696296

As for starvation, it really makes me sick that children can starve to death, and the game informs you that the person who died is in fact a child. Whoever put this feature in Banished should really be ashamed of themselves. (I play video games to escape issues like child starvation... If Banished was any worse, it would be exposing me to mass shootings, public bombings, and news of Donald Trump's latest outrage.)

How wrong is it that once onions and mushrooms harvested in the wild are grown, they can only be consumed? Certainly even the lowest functioning of brains would know that to sustain a community, these gathered items should be planted to produce even more of them in the future.

Resource allocation in the game's natural state is impossible. One time I got lucky enough to have a tangible population for my settlement, and once I built me a mine to gather coal (to add to my wood and iron to make steel tools), I found myself unable to make tools because the jackwagons in my settlement took all the coal, and then burned it because they couldn't wait for more firewood?

Of course, you could download mods that Banished enjoyable enough to play, but it seems pointless, because achievements become restricted.

Conclusion:

Perhaps the idiotic tendencies of the people in Banished is why they were "banished" from their homeland in the first place, but there's a huge difference between a human being of below average intelligence and a brain damaged butt monkey. There's also a huge difference between a game who's most difficult level is challenging, and a game who's most dificult level is sadistic and impossible to play.

I purchased Banished for 70% off (US$4.99), and I still feel like I paid too much for the game. I gave a good faith effort to enjoy Banished. I really wish I can enjoy Banished. If there's any groups of people who enjoy Banished, they either feel proud of themselves playing on the easiest levels, or they're the type of person who enjoys the challenge of being in defenseless situations involving robbery and rape. My advice is to stick to The Settlers-series of games. Even the very first one made in 1994 is a more enjoyable experience.

Vietnam '65 is a turn-based strategy war game set in the la (sic) Drang Valley of the former Republic of Vietnam. (South Vietnam, if you prefer.) You start with a US Army base with some units inside, and expand from there. Expansion involves setting up a fire base to extend your zone of control and (if you prefer) forward bases where you believe they'll do the most good. From there, you fight against Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) units of various types, send US and South Vietnamese (ARVN) infantry into villages to get intelligence on the enemy and/or raise support from the locals (called "hearts & minds"), purchase more units (or perform some actions) with the game's version of currency (called "congressional support"), make sure units are supplied, and hope that you have at least a 50% score in hearts & minds when the mission ends. End of mission screens (win or lose) feature a US Army officer's uniform and medal case that shows the rank you've achieved and progression to the next rank, along with progression to earning future medals and decorations.

There's absolutely nothing special about the graphics of this game, which is the reason Vietnam '65 normally doesn't retail for over ten US dollars. (I was lucky enough to get Vietnam '65 on sale.) There's nothing I particularly like about Vietnam '65's graphics, but the worst feature has to be direct fire combat.

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=956813299

Combat animation would have been much better accomplished by featuring an independent animation featuring firefights between US/ARVN aginst VC/NVA units. (The same is true with non-infantry.) I'm sure I would watch every time, even if it was the same animation with the only difference being skin color and uniforms of personnel. The sound in Vietnam '65 is nothing interesting. The one thing I really like about the sound, is the roar of F-4 Phantom jets you can call in to bomb enemy units and structures. Not that Vietnam '65 needs music to be enjoyed, the music is next to non-existent. The main complaint about the sound, is while it does have an authentic military vibe to it, the radio voices of people is out-done from what I experienced in a Vietnam War game I bought over twenty years ago for a DOS computer.

Writing positives for Vietnam '65 is the most difficult job I've ever had in writing a Steam review to date. If my childhood and teenage years of gaming are any indication, I think the overall military experience of Vietnam '65 is the game's best feature. Hearing noises reminicent of a jungle in southeast Asia, rainfall, and brief radio chatter is nice, but I do enjoy looking at my uniform at the end of every mission.

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=956814722

Vietnam '65 has a great replayability factor to it. While the game takes place in the likeness of a real life geographic location, the map is randomized in regards to village locations and terrain. Difficulty settings can be customized to make things more interesting. Medals (and other uniform decorations) mean new things to try and accomplish at the player's whim.

The ability to create ARVN companies from forward bases (through training from Green Berets) was a good move by the programmers. (ARVN infantry units are also better at dealing with villagers than US infantry at the expense of being less adept at combat.) No matter how old I get, looking at real life military equipment and uniforms never loses it's interest.

Landmines are plentiful in Vietnam '65, and rightly so. I can only imagine paranoia was high for US and ARVN who had to deal with booby traps of all types. (Both explosive and non-explosive.) Fortunately, the game allows engineers to detect mined spaces, and foot solders can remove them.

Probably the biggest negative, is the potential that was wasted in this game. While a ranomized depection of the la Drang Valley is fine, I personally thought there should have been more theaters of operation, which may mean removing the "'65" part of the name, but variety is good, right? Certainly Navy and Marine Corps settings could work.

Rivers aren't the same dangerous terrarin they were in the real life Vietnam War, and while you can't call on the ubiquitous "swif boat" for support, river crossings also aren't hampered by fortified positions that the US and ARVN had to deal with in real life river engagements. Although I do not know how many US helicopters were shot down by RPG's in the Vietnam War, air travel (at least in veteran mode) is quite dangerous, and perhaps moreso than what it was in the Vietnam War.

Although I have no problem with the game featuring the patch of the 1'st Cavalry Division on the player's uniform, I don't think it's right that units that weren't a part of the division are directly usable by the player. Maybe it's better that the game isn't 1'st Cavalry-centric, but it's a shame that there's only two types of US foot solders: Infantry and Green Berets. Why not also allow for Rangers (which would function like Green Berets, but cannot train ARVN)? That way, players can earn a Ranger stripe for their uniform. (Many high ranking US Army officers have earned them.)

I personally don't like how helicopters cannot spot enemy units under any conditions. I'm sure that VC and NVA were easily visible on foot in open areas and crossing rivers to US helicopters! While I am fine with the enemy being difficult to spot in jungles, I'm dismayed by the fact that jungle spaces can only be cleared with engineers. The player can call on the Air Force to air drop supplies to units and bases or bomb enemy units and bases, but no ability to defoliate jungles with napalm and Agent Orange.

Unsuccessful attacks from artillery and airstrikes cause a drop in hearts & minds from villages, which makes no sense. Maybe if a strike went awry and hit a friendly unit or a village, then yes, I can see why hearts & minds would be affected. Units receiving wounds (or damage) also cause a loss in hearts and minds. That would make sense if a unit is lost through combat, but otherwise still being able to function?

There's two issues with medals: You can only earn them once, and you can't tell which medal is which by hovering the cursor over them. I say the game should allow for devices (like stars) to be placed on top of their respective ribbon band on the uniform to signify multiple awardings of medals.

Wounded units can only be treated back at base. Field hospitals cannot be created, medics do not exist, yet vehicles can be repaired anywhere by engineers.

The tutorial was simply wrong. The names for "basic training" and "advanced training" were backwards. The former is more "advanced" than the latter. Basic training isn't controlled enough to teach the player well.

The thing that stands out as being most incorrect about Vietnam '65, is the difficulty settings. When I first played, I selected "custom," and I made everything as difficult as possible. (Even moreso than the "veteran" difficulty setting.) At least my experiences were similar to the Vietnam War in that regard: It didn't matter how many enemies I killed, my apprval rating fell like an anvil in Loony Tunes, and combat became unsustainable.)

Fire bases get supplied like headquarters at the end of every turn, but do not directly receive howitzer munitions. Restocking howitzer munitions is accomplished by helicopters flying to and from HQ and bases containing howitzers.

If you see this game on sale, buy it! Vietnam '65 is the example of a niche game. There's things you know are wrong about it, yet if it's in your niche, you will still love it. Just be careful of when you're supposed to sleep. The first day I played, I was playing until 8 AM the next morning, and finally got sleepy at the end of a mission. Now I can't wait to finish typing to play this game again. (I'm tempted to skip on proof-reading just to get my fix!)

10/10: The city builder every other city builder wishes it was. May take over the player's life.


Every fan of management simulation games will obsess over Cities: Skylines while anyone who would enjoy the challenge of growing a city will have a great time with this game if they can tolerate the repetetive nature that hardcore management simulation fans thrive under.

You grow the city, get more types of services and problems to confront, spend money where needed, and hope that your city can reach the next classification of city type, which grants more money, unlocks new buildings, and that takes you back to square one. This style of gameplay sometimes gets too repetetive even for my aspie mindset of repetition, but playing this game in short bursts helps me tackle city problems and prevents me from staring at the screen with a blank expression wondering about what to do next while I wonder about how to use what little money I have to expand with while I'm unable to secure any more financing, and see money trickle into my account. (And sometimes watch money run out, depending on which way my luck cuts.)


It's obvious from the get-go that this sort of game is graphics intensive, and Cities: Skylines is excellent in the graphics department. You can easily see things like rain and fog, and see them all either up close, far away, and in full 3D. But for better or worse, fog is mostly visible from far away, and not from up close.
http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=918347573

The animation and graphics for pollution is absolutely perfect. You can not only see the dirty, filthy, stinking haze close up, but you can also see it from far away on buildings that pollute.
http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=918355011

The only real complaint about graphics, is that industries involved in oil drilling do not build oil derricks on top of their zones.

It actually took me a long time to turn on the sound, and I only did so for the sake of writing a review. There's nothing awe-inspiring or game-breaking about the game's sounds, but I really disliked the music. The music was totally out of place, especially for viewing densely populated areas and streets with densely packed traffic. Your best bet is to just move the main volume slider to 0%, and play music that's to your liking. Of course, you are free to mute the music volume should you want to hear the game and also listen to your own music.


This game is so awesome, I cannot include everything I like about Cities: Skylines. (I tried, but my original review would not fit when I tried to copy and paste!) Cities:Skylines takes features from past city management sims, and takes them to a whole new level without feeling outright like a copycat game. I will say that Cities: Skylines has everything I enjoy about city management games dating back to 1990 and the added ability to rename buildings of every kind, create districts, and rename these districts to anything one wishes.


While I do love Cities: Skylines, I am bothered by some of the game's flaws, and there's enough flaws, I'm unable to bury the reader in as many paragraphs as I wanted, but I made the mistake of including things that I wish were features, or what I thought should be done differently. With a city of close to 36,000 people, the only complaints I have room to mention, is that collection of trash and dead bodies is deeply flawed. It doesn't matter if one has enough landfill or incenerator capacity or space in cemetaries and creamatories, the larger your city becomes, the more likely you can expect to see icons over buildings indicating filthy, stinking garbage and rotting corpses desperately in need of disposal, and the game does nothing to prioritize collection.

A game as complex as Cities: Skylines certainly requires a tutorial, but none is included in game. Certainly the most seasoned of us need an interactive lesson in the fundamentals.

The act of forbidding tractor trailers from operating on roads via city ordinance seems like a good idea at first, it really bothers me that banning tractor trailers on specific streets (and sometimes stretches of streets) requires making micro-districts dedicated solely to vehicle bans.
http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=916928296


Cities: Skylines has the city management game genre cornered. No other city management sim competes. Buy this game. Buy it at any price. If you can wait for a sale, that's cool, too. If you like the idea of giving cities a unique feel, you have the ability to rename many of the things you see on see in your city. And when you do buy this game, you should check out the DLC available for Cities: Skylines. Some of them are really cool, but others look like awful moneygrabs that you would think only Electronic Arts would inflict upon the gaming world. You should especially check out tutorials for this game before you start playing it, because if you don't, you can expect quite a bit of trial and error in the building of your city, and that could end up costing you lots of money. Especially make sure you read the manual, unless you want to look at the forums (or ask questions that were long since asked) about how to build elevated roads.

The game, however, is still plenty of good fun without any DLC's or custom content, so you can expect lots of fun times playing Cities: Skylines. Just be sure to let your friends and family know they'll never hear from you again, and be prepared to stay up all night.

(Note: Do not let the amount of time Steam says I've played this game fool you. I'm almost always offline when I play. Besides, I don't believe I could unlock nineteen achievementsat the time of this writing.)

Management sims are my favorite genre of games and I love Formula One, so this game immediately took over possession of my heart, life, and soul. I strongly recommend this game to any fan of management simulations. And what if you don't like Formula One or auto racing? Then you'll be more forgiving of some of the game's flaws than I am!

Motorsport Manager contains three tiers of open-wheel auto racing leagues called the World Motorsport Championship (obviously a play on Formula One) and two inferior leagues known as the Asia-Pacific Challenge Cup and the European Racing Series which are more regional and not based off of any real life motorsports association.

The World Motorsport Championship contains the likenesses of real life Formula One teams and drivers in 2015. If you know Formula One, it isn't difficult to match up teams to their real life counterparts. Several of the drivers are female (unlike their real life counterparts), but if you know Formula One, you can tell easily enough who the Australian woman racing for Panther Race Team is supposed to be, along with Dieter Wexler and Niilo Saarinen who drive for Scuderia Rossini. Circuits are also much like their real life counterparts, yet anything but identical. The closest any of the circuits come in this game to the locations of their real life counterparts is Singapore, but it isn't difficult to guess at which race is which in real life with the exception of the Cape Town Grand Prix. It took me awhile to see the resemblance to the Monaco Grand Prix, but anyone familiar with the Monaco Grand Prix will eventually see the resemblance.

Although management sims are hardly graphics-dependent (I can amuse myself for hours with text-based games), the graphics of Motorsport Manager go above and beyond aesthetically pleasing. The layouts of the track and scenery around it never gets old to see. The graphics would have been better if more 3D angles were provided than merely a camera that follows the desired car. The direction and pitch of the camera can be changed, but apart from the lack ability to zoom-in incredibly close, I would have liked it better if the game allowed for TV style viewing and (even better) a view of the race from a driver's cockpit camera. But the worst part about the graphics, is the fact that you will occasionally see cars travel straight through one another. Another flaw to graphics, is that the numerals on cars featured on the track map are all white, which naturally, makes this difficult to read on lightly colored dots. ("Metal on metal" in the case of white on yellowish colors.) Screens between races are rarely exciting, but that's management sims for you. However, the screens for HQ and Sponsors are pleasing to the eye.

Being a management sim, sound is even less important than graphics to me. Just for the sake of writing a review, I played this game with the sound on... Once! The races all sound just like the V-8 engines of Formula One before 2014, though this may be a negative for any gearheads playing this game, because the World Motorsport Championship uses V-10 engines, and V-10 engines all make a distinctive whine. The music doesn't help set the mood, but at the same time, the music doesn't sound out of place. But it's easy to enjoy Motorsport Manager with the sound off, and listen to your favorite sort of music while making between-race decisions and watching in-race action.

There's much I would like to share about my game experiences, except that Steam puts a limit on reviews. (I would like to see Steam put a minimum number on words for reviews. Single word reviews here are comonplace, and jackwagons who write them seem to think they're actually being helpful!) My list of positives and negatives are anything but all-inclusive, so I'm unable to share other important details that may also be important to the reader. (Particularly the lack of Formula One rules applied to the game... Even the stupid ones, like the current "engine" formula and the maximum engine rule.)

The biggest positives of this game have to be the large variety of buildings you can build for your team headquarters. (Though a single "administrative office" is mysteriously absent.) Weather patterns (including temperature) are flawless, and the in-race and random events that happen between races that affect a driver's skills (either temporarily or permanently), moods, and health are something to belove. I was skeptical when I noticed there wasn't a driver skill dedicated to wet weather racing, but then I saw this intergrated into driver traits. (If a driver has the trait when the condition is active, they will receive bonus points to their skills.) I also love how practice actually means something! I really enjoy the challenge of making a car that's "built to win." (My apoligies to Seta.) Elections are always fun, and I enjoy the possibilities. (Including the ability to accept bribes from another team's chairman to vote their way.)

On the downside, the movement of cars during races is often nothing short of unrealistic for any sort of racing series that I'm familiar with. The game makes no obvious mention of how much money a player may overdraft, and loans cannot be secured. (Overdrafting is a must for building up a team, especially a weak team!) While interviews are an important part of the game to fans of sports management sims, the interview sessions are deeply flawed. There's frequently only three choices for answers, and none of them are "no comment." Interviews rarely seem to factor in if a driver had overachieved in an inferior car, and post-race interviews are only two questions long, and with no ability to clarify one's answer. I also highly disagree with the fact that parts other than the front wing can be repaired in the middle of races. This isn't supposed to be endurance racing, and this takes away from the ability to have races with high rates of attrition. If this option had to be included, the game should have included "meatball flags." I particularly hate the system of promotion and relegation. This isn't Soccer, and only three leagues (and thirty teams) is far to few to make promotion and relegation viable. Promotion and relegation may be viable if one is playing the "challenge mode" of this game, but the game should require a promoted team satisfy a number of requirements in addition to finishing first. (That is, have certain buildings and facilities upgraded to a minimum number. Maybe even require a team have a certain amount of money on-hand.) To be fair to the other teams, a relegated team should have their buildings operate at a reduced level to a league's maximum. Sixteen locations is far too few places for races, and the ERS and APCC should not have races outside of their region. I was skeptical when I saw there was no skill for race starts, and for good reason: The programmers had no idea what they were doing in this important stage of a race. (Especially since erratic starts do not result in multi-car pile-ups similar to the 2012 Belgian Grand Prix.) Excellent starts on the other hand, are thwarted by a driver simply slowing down to match the speed of the car ahead, while even people who don't watch auto racing would know for a fact the faster car would try and pass the car ahead of them!

Simply put, if you're a fan of management simulations, this is the game for you regardless of your interest in motorsports. While the erratic movement of cars and lack of blue flags for drivers who have just exited the pits with a faster car approaching drives me crazier than a laughing hyena on crack rock, this still does not take away from the fact that this is one truly amazing management simulation.

Author's note: The contents of the TL:DR section is for entertainment purposes only. Ol' Il Pallino's (current) Steam account has never been compromised. Besides, Pamu is a fictional character you ignoramus!


69/10: This is Pamu speaking. I hacked the Steam account of this lazy, glass bowl, monkey fighting, mother-scratcher for not updating his ancient review to include the obligatory moist. Wabba lubba dub dub!


Crush Crush is the perfect backup game... But you intend on playing Crush Crush, make sure that you have a primary game to play while you're "playing" this game.

I've been a sucker for date sim games for over ten years now, and if you're a long time player of the genre, you should also enjoy this game, too. The girls are good looking, the dialogue is fun, and the types of dates you can take are plentiful. The large number of jobs that are available adds to the variety, and the large number of gifts you can get for the girls also adds to the variety the game has to offer.

Unfortunately the way Steam reviews work, they're an all or nothing proposition, so while I can recomend this game in good faith, the review system makes reviews an "all or nothing" proposition, and alas, this game is anything but perfect!

I don't know if the frequent typos and sometimes odd syntax is the result of a lack of proofreading or if Sad Panda Studios is intentionally making the game in Engrish (sic) as a means of paying homage to Japanese date sim games that predate Crush Crush, but if you cannot take typos and occasional odd syntax in good humor like I can, you'll probably be agitated by this game.

By all means, Crush Crush should be a backup game to any other video game you're playing. I made the mistake of downloading Crush Crush when I fell into the mindset where all the other video games I enjoy have gone stale, and that turned out to be a huge mistake. I just wanted to play a video game, and while you can make remarkable progress early on (especially on Cassie, the first girl you encounter), the amount of money you will need for going on dates and purchasing gifts goes up (there are girls who require over $15 billion in gifts to satisfy a signle requirement) while the rate at which you gain skills and job promotions goes down. (You're going to find yourself playing professional sports to satisfy one girl's requirement, which is a drag, because it pays far less than being a hunter or a lawyer, and the amount of free time you have to have on your hands to indulge in the sports career is very high.) (Edit: The number of time blocks required to engage in the professional sports career decreases dramatically with promotions. This is true of many of the occupations in this game.)

This game is going slow for me despite having purchased $10 of actual (RL) money for diamonds to speed up the game. And if you don't plan on spending any money on this game, then you should make absolutely certain that you have at least one more game to enjoy while you're waiting to fulfill the requirements needed to win over the girls, because you are going to be waiting an incredibly long time! Fortunately, the game plays itself while you're not actually in game, so you don't need the game (or even your computer) to be running just to make progress in this game. (Although you are more than free to sit back and do nothing while you watch the game play itself for you.)

This game has an unusual educational quality to it: I never learned in school (not even in college) what comes after a trillion, and I had to look up the names for quadrillion and quintillion so I could tell friends of mine about the sort of money one can expect to earn in Crush Crush, and how much they're going to have to pay to buy certain gifts for girlfriends.