Recent reviews by Salisen

The OST for art of rally is absolutely fantastic. Consisting of incredibly well written retrowave, this is easily one of the best soundtracks for a video game I've listened to. It absolutely immerses you in the 80s heyday of group b rally - which this game is all about.

The only thing I'd say which wasn't so good - by default the music is too quiet - but you can fix that in the in-game settings.

Very poor stability. Crashes within 5 minutes of launching from runway - the game isn't usable in its current form. I'm running this on an AMD RX 7900 XTX, so it should run fine.

The 130 GB download is also egregious - this renders automatic refunds through Steam impossible.

I'm also not best pleased that a replacement version is on the way for release in about two months - it's a bit greedy to try to suck people in now so close to release of the next game. Realistically even on sale the prices remain excessive.

Unfortunately this game does not run in a stable fashion on AMD GPUs. I get consistent crashes on the rooftops of the 3rd level in the game and cannot progress as a result. I am one of many - there is a whole Reddit thread full of people with the same problem. I tried reinstalling the game, reinstalling my GPU drivers and also tried using with the patches released over the last couple weeks. I'm running this on an AMD RX 7900 XTX which is greatly over the minimum required spec - there should be no issues.

Nothing worked, and I've grown tired of waiting for this issue to be patched.

Spending over £70 on a brand new game comes with high expectations. At bare minimum, I expect it to work from release day with no regular crashes. I requested a refund from the Humble Store as a result, which has been granted to me as the game is defective.

I'll keep an eye out and purchase the game on sale if these issues have been fixed later in the year / next year.

Great. An already mediocre game, and now we have paid mods as well...

Kirov reporting.

Creative Assembly actually listened. They fired their product director, and doubled the amount of content in this DLC. Things are looking much more positive now - hopefully this trend continues.

My original negative review:

I only bought this because I had 28% off total on the Humble Store, landing me the DLC for £14.39 rather than £19.99. At the price I paid, it's expensive but at a point that I'd consider it just about okay considering I love Warhammer. I wouldn't pay £19.99 for this - wait until either a sale or CA decides to add much-needed content to the DLC (I can't see them reducing the price).

Putting aside comments about price and lack of content as this is very well covered elsewhere, frankly, what CA has done here is simply bad business. Video gaming is a luxury market - and like all luxuries - given a choice between eating, paying gas/electricity and video games, people are going to choose to not buy your video games - or instead buy products that offer far more value for the money paid (and there are PLENTY of those right now - BG3 and Armored Core IV just to name two!).

CA has only has two sane business choices frankly:

1. Add more content to this DLC so that it warrants the price (some of which is easy to add... how hard is it to re-skin two lords for goodness sake?).

2. Reduce the price of future equivalent DLCs by 20-30% and maintain the current amount of content.

Businesses rely on customer goodwill. Throw it away, and you can watch your market and your company sink in the process.

EDIT: Pleasingly, Creative Assembly actually listened, and doubled the content of Shadow's of Change. They fired their product director, and in general things are looking much better. As such my review changes to a recommend - I hope things continue on the current path and the game continues to receive further DLC this year.

My previously negative review:

Creative Assembly -> Total War: Warhammer is your biggest selling franchise. Frankly what you're doing here is just flat out bad business.

Did you really think you can double the price of DLC for less than half of the content (in terms of number of new units) of a single DLC from Warhammer II and get away with it from a business and PR standpoint?

You are selling a _luxury product_! Unlike food, people will simply choose not to buy!

There is only one answer to this PR and business idiocy: reduce the price, both of the latest DLC, and future DLCs, and issue a well written and genuine apology to the community. For goodness sake at least make some effort to address your mistake. Even a 10-20% price reduction would go some way towards addressing the damage you've done.

If you don't, you can watch as you sink both the reputation of your company and your income.

It's a huge shame that the dreadnaught - the centrepiece of this DLC - can only be used in the new Technophage missions.

The mech class in both XCOM 1 and XCOM 2 was balanced to work in all missions in those (very similar) games - so why can't the devs for Chaos Gate balance the rest of the content to account for the dreadnaught's presence?

I really can't recommend getting this until the devs work on allowing the dreadnaught to be used on all mission types. It just seems like a massive missed opportunity and a bad design decision to have all the assets in place but stilll not allow it to be possible. Why not restrict the number of Grey Knights to 3 when the dreadnaught is used on normal missions?

The above is a shame, however the worst aspect of this is that it's not stated at all in the description of the DLC on Steam that the dreadnaught can only be used in these mission types - instead making it appear that the dreadnaught can be used throughout. Honestly, it's super dishonest to do that and one could even argue that it's in violation of the UK Consumer Rights act as the DLC is not as described. I really hope the devs work to rectify this (and quickly!) because otherwise it's going to put people off buying potential future DLCs down the line.

EDIT 1: It does appear that the Devs have added a note to the store page indicating that the dreadnaught can only be used on Technophage missions. I am glad this has been rectified as those that are unhappy with having been misled probably are still able to refund the DLC.

EDIT 2: Regarding the dreadnaught only being able to be used on technophage missions, devs responded effectively saying 'as intended' with no comment on listening to player/buyer feedback and rectifying the criticism levied against this DLC. Well, with the amount of outcry we're currently seeing on this DLC, good luck selling future DLC for this game down the line then!

Credit to Anno 2070's developers - even if Ubisoft themselves are determined to be anti-consumer, it seems the developers of Anno 2070 have worked hard this summer to rescue the game from being effectively canned in September.

Very happy that the developers were able to save the game, but still appalled that Ubisoft were prepared to take such anti-consumer action in the first place.

All other DLC packs have a pickaxe DLC. It would be trivial to add one - I would think twice about getting this DLC as a result.