Recent reviews by Ash

"starship troopers" as a 4 player co op shooter. There are a few bugs, and the community can be salty at times, but the game just /feels/ good to play. The physics are sometimes frustrating and buggy, but often hilarious. The comedy and music hit just right for me, and elevate the game. A great variety of weapons and equipment to play with against 3 different factions on different planet types with several different missions and sub-objectives keeps the game feeling fresh.

A great game to play with friends. Solo play varies greatly depending on who you get dropped in with

Challenging and satisfying combat mechanics set in the rich warhammer 40,000 setting. The major issue I had with the game was lack of content but it is improving all the time as more content is added and now it feels like there is so much more to do with the added siege mode and a couple of extra missions.

The only other criticism I have is the game could benefit from a more robust online co-op system: for example not having to go through a loading screen in the lobby every time someone leaves your group and if someone disconnects during play, the game should hold their spot at least for a few minutes so they can reconnect, but instead all of your accumulated xp etc. is lost even if you do manage to rejoin before the game puts someone else in.

The game is relatively relaxed at the beginning, but ramps up towards the end of the match. I keep coming back to it because of the large variety of victory conditions and different special abilities of each clan. The storyline is pretty good, but I've spent most of my time with conquest mode which encourages you to adjust your play style to fit your clan and whatever special conditions each map has.

The game isn't just about defeating opponents directly most of the time (although it can be if that is your preference) but is mostly about trying to balance your resources as you grow, being careful not to run out of any particular thing or your clan will suffer very badly. This is a nice change from most strategy games which are ultimately focused on conquest to win.

I've not played multiplayer, and I am not sure how balanced it would be but it feels like it would be. I enjoy the game in single player and recommend anyone who likes games like the settlers or age of empires.

The controls look and feel solid and familiar. There are 4 "classes" but two (with no doubt room for more) characters in each that have their own unique abilities. Unlike some other shooters however, all characters can heal others, and the devs have managed to make each character feel unique, but at the same time not feel like someone has to play a healer or someone has to play a tank or whatever. Everyone can play whatever they want and it'll work just fine.

I'm not the best FPS player. Despite this, I have played a lot of them over the years so feel like I have an idea of what makes a good one. On games like CoD, I spend as much time dead as alive normally, and it is frustrating that it all seems to be about who sees who a split-second before the other. This FPS is like that to some extent, and it does reward fast reactions, however the sheer variety of abilities and weapons, and the more open layout of the battlefields lend themselves well to being tactical and strategic. This is something that CoD doesn't have as much where everything can feel cramped. The support and recon classes have abilities that can either heal and buff teammates, create respawn points or mark enemies, which can make even someone who isn't a 360-no-scope god feel useful and helpful instead of just cannon fodder.

There are three modes which play like different games, and I've only got around to two even after nearly 50 hours play. The first mode is similar to battlefield with attack/defend as the primary game mode but there are also classics like siege, king of the hill etc. These modes have a lot of players, so it feels very intense and there is constant fighting. It can feel great when you get into a group who are working together to push an objective, covering each other and medding each other when another goes down. Others prefer going lone wolf.. all tactics can work.

The second mode is called operations, and is an "extraction mode", where you collect equipment and items as you go through a map full of AI enemies. You start at one end of a map and work your way to the opposite end, and several other teams are doing the same but deployed on the opposing sides so at any point you might cross paths. It is up to you if you want to be aggressive and hunt for other players, or be stealthy, complete missions and then extract. These maps are filled with interesting terrain and features, and lots of loot to collect and missions to complete. The AI can be very dangerous on the "normal" difficulty. The mode feels like high stakes because whatever you go in with, you'll lose if you die and the other players can loot it all. Whatever you make it out with you can keep for the next game or can be kept in your "stash". This mode is what I find addictive, and the missions start simple but quickly ramp up, encouraging using different weapons, classes of operator and styles of play, as well as showcasing some of the secret areas and goodies that you might not find otherwise. It feels soul destroying the first time you die and lose everything, but you realise that you can quickly replace what you have lost thanks to mechanics such as tickets that give you a basic set of gear to go in with.
The loot you find can be sold in an auction house that is full of items listed by other players, so there is somewhat of a player-run economy. They can also be used to upgrade your "blacksite" which improves various stats and also unlocks the ability to combine parts to make equipment or other items that can be used for missions or upgrading the blacksite further all of which bring replayability to the mode.

Weapon customisation is great, and there are a fantastic amount of options for each weapon, all of which are rendered. Armour and other gear is also all unique and very detailed. Graphic quality overall is excellent, the characters are all voiced well (although the British medic is a bit too squeaky for my liking!) and it walks the line between realism and being tongue-in-cheek very nicely.

Overall I am very impressed with this. I feel it is better than the other "AAA" FPS games out there, and is free to play. This game deserves to knock the others off their throne, and shake up the FPS industry a bit which has in my opinion been resting on its laurels too long.

Contrived, boring, too easy and repetitive. Very buggy (enemies stuck in the sky on all the levels I tried). Such a disappointment.

After putting in quite a few hours and enjoying this game for a while I'm here to leave a negative review. Why? I don't think this game is worth picking up in 2020 and beyond as it currently stands. I'll list some pros and cons because there are definitely some good parts about this game but unfortunately there are some issues that cripple it.

Pros:
-Fun single player experience. This is the only time I'd recommend picking up the game if you are a solo player and enjoy GTA. The storyline and characters are probably second only to San Andreas in the GTA games I've played in my opinion.
-The vast majority of activities from previous GTAs are present, in addition to some brilliant multiplayer modes and concepts, from heists (essentially a series of group missions with a good variety of interesting and challenging activities) to racing mad max style cars in a battle arena.
-Graphics are still very good for its age and the amount of customisation, vehicles and decor for the huge amount of different buildings you can end up owning in the game is fantastic.

Cons: I'll list these as there are many:
-The "free"/sandbox online mode consists of mostly just avoiding other players for risk of being blown up doing a high risk low reward activity.
-There are many beautiful cars and customisation options in the game, but you can't really use them very often because they just get blown up and there is no practical use for them since they introduced flying motorcycles and orbital cannons making the vast majority of vehicles redundant.
-Ridiculous loading times (literally over 5 mins just to join a server!) even just transitioning between areas
-Clunky, obvious console-port interface
-If your game crashes or you get disconnected, any mission you are on (and worse, your friends are on with you) ends and you lose either a portion or all of your time and money invested in that mission. This can be literally hours of work lost
-There are several activities where the balance is severely messed up. Sometimes you'll be sent to collect or deliver something in a single vehicle, and other times the same activity will have you doing 3 vehicles whilst getting attacked from all sides, making the mission nearly impossible solo. There is no warning what kind of mission you'll get until you have started and the clock is ticking.
-Everything in online is very expensive and without using exploits or cheats you'll have to spend many, many hours to even start buying any of the businesses or nicer vehicles.
-Online is pay-to-win. The game effectively encourages other players to grief you online, and you'll feel encouraged to buy "shark cards" which are overpriced in-game currency (which is why rockstar hasn't bothered to make another GTA by the way as they rake it in through these transactions)
-Online is full of exploiters/cheaters/"modders". At least on PC, you'll come accross modders fairly regularly. They can instantly kill you and make you lose anything you were doing at the time. They can even make you crash out of the game completely. Rockstar doesn't seem to be able/care enough to stop them as there are so many.

Summary: It's a shame. The game is great for content and there wouldn't need to be a new GTA for years to come if they just optimised the game, updated the interface, dealt with the cheaters and rebalanced some of the missions and rewards. As things stand, this is a time and money sink for very little reward and I certainly wouldn't play it or recommend that anyone else does as I only do because I've invested so much time and money already and a few of my friends are in the same boat. You'll save yourself a lot of frustration of crashes, long loading times and cheaters losing you many hours of your life by picking up a different game.

Picking up this game 11 years after release as part of a bundle, I remember hearing and seeing stuff about it when it came out but never picked it up thinking it wouldn't be my sort of game at the time. I went into this with quite low expectations. I was pleasantly surprised.

Positives:
I can't think of a single game better looking than this for its age. It is beautiful. Most of the time, I turn my nose up at graphics and am much more focused on gameplay but this game is one of the rare exceptions where the eye candy actually plays a significant part in making the game good. Running along the city skyline, there were many times where I got that "heart in mouth" feeling when I made a leap across a gap, and even moreso if I didn't make it and plummeted. I imagine this might not be pleasant for someone with vertigo. The audio is also nicely done, with nothing too overbearing but enough to add emotion to the right areas. Sound effects are great too, with the sounds of rubber sneakers squeaking as you struggle to find grip running across a wall or a hearty "thwack" when you punch a "blue".

The protagonist is cool. I really like her style - a badass female character without any of the cliches or overt sexuality seen in most games, films and stories. The story itself is quite a standard affair corrupt government/corporation arc but it is competently done with you not really knowing who to trust until the end.

The game nicely marks where to go and what to do without affecting the visuals too much. Whoever came up with the red colouring was a genius IMHO as it's easy to see but isn't garish. The controls are decent for the free-running and the tutorial at the beginning teaches you everything you need to know. The controls feel smooth after some practise and it feels satisfying to pull off some of the more advanced moves.

Negatives:
The field of view is a bit narrow. It didn't affect me so much luckily. I think the game is a technical marvel for its time but it does show a little bit here. It consequently might not be tolerable for people who get motion sickness.

Sometimes the controls aren't perfect, and some ledges look like you can hang onto them but you can't and vice versa. Generally the markers and notifications showing you where to go are good but there are one or two times where it became confusing. The parts of the game where you can manage to get hold of a gun are OK but feel a bit basic. I understand this isn't the games focus but a simple cover mechanic and slightly more intelligent AI would have made this part of the game much better.

The game is also very short. I completed it in just over 5 hours. I can imagine most negative reviews revolve around this. The ending feels like it was cut too. I was surprised when it suddenly finished.


Overall:
The game is well worth it when it is on sale at sub-$3 and I do recommend it for anyone who doesn't suffer from motion sickness/vertigo. It is a pleasant if short game that left me wanting more.

Admittedly only played 94 minutes of this game but it was enough. I was quite hopeful for this game as I enjoy hex turn based combat and I like RPGs. I've put in a fair amount of hours on similar games and enjoyed them thoroughly. Sadly Blackguards was a disappointment.

Combat mechanics: Meh. It is fairly standard, turn based, flanking, random hit/miss chance. It's OK, nothing innovative at all.
Inventory/class/skill systems: Equipment is very generic, there are much more robust systems out there. The skill systems for the 3 classes does look quite robust. It does however look like there are obvious better choices which you need to pick otherwise you'll struggle.
Story: The major turnoff. Linear, obvious, boring. 2-dimensional companion characters. Gives you choices which aren't choices as they all lead to the same thing.

Overall: There is nothing innovative in this game. I could overlook this if the story was good, the characters were interesting or the combat was compelling but the fact it all aspects of it are mediocre at best and poor in other areas there is really no reason to play this game.

This game is one of the better modern RPGs, and supports co-op both couch and online which is very rare!

There are some bugs which is somewhat to be expected with a game on this scale: the turn system sometimes gets into a muddle and you can't see who is going next. Also there are some bugs when joining the game on occasion. Nothing game-breaking however and the game is still a pleasure to play. It takes a while to get into the game and some of the mechanics feel a bit clunky. The action point system feels a bit restrictive and some patience is required due to the difficulty. Once all of these issues are looked past however this is a fantastic game with the potential to last many hours and possibly multiple play-throughs. Only one modern game of this type surpasses this game in it's genre and that is its sequel Divinity 2 which deals with all of the bugs, has a more cohesive storyline and feels smoother mechanically with a more refined action point and movement system. Still, I highly recommend this game.

Just nearing the end of DoW3 after playing DoW1 and 2 for quite a long time.

Pros: The storyline of the campaign is fun and some of the maps and situations are great. The orky humour in this game is on point and there is one part where I laughed out loud in real life at "Ronny". Although it's a predictable storyline, I did feel like I connected with the main protagonists more in this game than the previous ones.

As a stand alone game, this isn't bad. I still recommend playing it as there is nothing else out there at the moment that really tops it in this genre, except perhaps the fact that...

Cons: I can say that DoW3 offers less than DoW2 and 1 on almost all counts. This game is a shining example of a money-grab where they have stripped out so much content so they can make us pay more for it later. No last stand mode, less races, a single linear campaign and less units per race than the previous games.

I also don't like how the mechanics of the game have been changed to weaken 'normal' units almost to uselessness compared with the 'elite' units, and how they have virtually removed damage type resistances so that dire avengers/regular ork boyz can destroy vehicles instead of having to plan ahead and prepare specialised units such as fire dragons (which don't even exist in this one, I imagine future paid DLC content). Gone is the idea of reserving banshees with their power weapons for armoured foes like space marines and using striking scorpions for orks: now for some reason striking scorpions and warp spiders are elite units - ones that I'll probably never pick when having to choose between them and the wraithlord.

I also don't like how they have essentially removed cover from the game (and put in weird circles that you can garrison in very limited places instead) and how you have to constantly micromanage each unit to activate their abilities, so much that there is little time to do anything else. It just becomes a panic-stricken click-fest rather than a strategy game.




I've given this a thumbs-up because it's not a bad game and there is still some fun to be had especially if you are new to the franchise. Unfortunately however it's just not as good as its predecessors