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A REVIEW OF TOTAL WAR ATTILA

Themes

From the worn-out colours of its loading screen art to its haunting main menu music, Total War Attila provides an apocalyptic interpretation of the early 5th Century AD, a tumultuous period in history which saw the rise of the modern nations of Europe and the accompanying collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

Creative Assembly has created its most bleak, desperate, and heroic offering in the Total War series – a setting driven by the titular antagonist Attila and the domino effect of barbarian tribes fleeing before his inexhaustible Hunnic hordes.

Attila inverts many core Total War features. Rather than chronicling a small faction’s rise to power, Attila paints a much bleaker picture of war and creates an atmosphere of decay and despair. The Roman Empire in Attila is a starving wolf circled by vultures. The classical civilisation it embodies is dying, and its slow but steady destruction paves the way for new kingdoms and new beginnings. It is the cycle of life, but Attila’s focus is squarely on the long, drawn out, and perhaps defiant death preceding the rebirth.

Attila uses thematically appropriate imagery and theological references to illustrate this bleak atmosphere. The Huns, the driving force behind the majority of the campaign, are titled the Scourge of God – something the Romans historically dubbed Attila, for they were so terrified of him that they believed that he was sent by God to punish them. The Hunnic faction traits refer to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, Famine, Pestilence and Death. Not only are these core mechanics of the gameplay experience, but they also refer to the Book of Revelations - appropriate, given the impending destruction of the Roman Empire.

The artstyle depicts an old world in decay and long past its prime. The legions of Rome wear poorly maintained chainmail, torn off at the hips and sleeves. The quality of the recruits have changed – the proud Latin sons of Italy have mostly given way to the very same Germans that are invading the Empire. Shields are scratched and dented, indicating lack of maintenance. Towns are faded and crumbling, reminders that the past glories of Rome will never return. The addition of dynamic fires that can spread throughout settlements also adds to the apocalyptic feel – you are fighting to hold on, but you can only watch as the last vestiges of past glory are destroyed.

The music in Attila further reinforces the sense of doom. Slow strings and steppe throat singing featured prominently during downtime create mournful and wistful undertones mixed with the impending sense of a menacing, utterly alien, threat approaching you. These evoke the sense of the end of days, and the final collapse of a once-great civilisation. Conversely, the significantly sped up and rhythmic battle themes evoke a sense of desperate heroics, and of futile defiance against the tide of history.

Campaign

At its best, Attila excels at creating an atmosphere of desperation and dread which makes the game stand out from the rest of the series. As either half of the divided Roman Empire, players must contend with a strained treasury, religious turmoil, and dozens of barbarian tribes looking to carve out a piece of a dying empire. As the various Germanic tribes bordering the Romans, you are in a race against the approaching Huns to punch through the Roman armies and find a safer homeland for your people.

At its worst, Attila can be mindnumbingly dull. For example, while the Huns under AI control drive the campaign gameplay by literally pushing barbarian tribes westwards with their infinitely respawning armies, they offer a very shallow gameplay experience as a playable faction. The Huns cannot settle, and their entire gameplay loop consists of wiping settlements off the face of the map over and over again, occasionally building tents to make more money. There is no internal strife, and no external foes specifically out to destroy you, no challenge. Similarly, The Sassanid Empire also suffers from a lack of challenge. The early game will see the Sassanid player scrambling to defend Persia from the White Huns. Afterwards, however, the Sassanids have no internal problems, no real external enemies, and can simply pick away at the embattled and collapsing Eastern Roman Empire at the player’s leisure.

Attila converts Rome 2’s simplistic gameplay loop of building whatever you want with zero consequences into something requiring foresight and planning, with appropriate consequences. For example, a building may greatly increase income, but cause squalor and disorder. A garrison building will provide additional troops to defend a settlement with, but at great financial cost. Religious buildings are good at providing public order, but consume large amounts of food or money. Each province requires a steady supply of food, and embarking on grand construction projects without substantial investment in farms or fisheries can lead to a famine.

Rome 2’s system of putting a hard cap on the number of armies you can deploy at a time is a restrictive and frustrating mechanic which artificially limits your ability to strike at multiple targets. However, in Attila, this inherited feature adds much to the campaign experience. As the Romans, the massive starting territory, the large number of tribes about to spill into your lands, and the limited number of armies scattered across your holdings combine to create a situation where you cannot fight off all of your enemies at once, and you must decide which territories are critical enough to warrant the presence of a legion, and which territories must instead rely on smaller garrisons. It brings to life the image of an overstretched empire getting picked at from all sides and hammers in the sense of desperation and dread.

Battle

In comparison to the previous entry, Rome 2, Attila features noticeably faster and more lethal battles. Units in combat will kill each other extremely quickly, and this increase in pace makes battles much more punishing, but also more rewarding.

For example, a player might try to match an enemy battle line and find that their frontline units have taken horrific casualties, which may prevent them from later using the army to fight a second battle on the same turn. On the other hand, the increased lethality can be exploited to quickly turn the tides of battle. Well-positioned flank attacks, and well-timed cavalry charges can completely shatter enemy armies, turning an assured defeat into a heroic victory.

Attila also features an overhauled morale system. In Attila, units seemingly never shatter, no matter how many casualties it takes, so long as the rest of the army still stands. This is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, players may find some relief to know their routing units can be thrown back into the fight or plug gaps. On the other hand, it is extremely annoying to have the AI’s units keep coming back to attack your forces from random directions. However, units as a whole tend to be a lot more sensitive to “morale shocks.” Exploiting these morale shocks by killing the enemy general, attacking from the rear, surrounding a unit, tiring them out etc can quickly lead to a mass rout. This increased morale sensitivity adds another layer of depth to the battles in Attila, allowing players to overcome a stronger force through the intelligent use of tactics.

Conclusion

Total War Attila is a unique experience, delivering an apocalyptic vision of the collapse of order and civilisation, inspired by period-appropriate Christian lore. The artstyle, music, and gameplay mechanics all create and amplify the foreboding sense of doom, of desperation, of the end of days. It is the only Total War to have a strong thematic focus, and is arguably the most memorable game in the franchise. Brutal, dark, and unforgiving, Total War Attila is a challenging, but ultimately rewarding game.

The father of modern shooters is back and better than ever.

0-7 rule was created by a chimpanzee with a severe learning disability and we all suffer for it.

the grand prix needs me to write a review

this is an ok game i guess

All you need to know:

Cyclops and Sabretooth are broken. In a good way.

Elektra and Blade are broken. In a bad way.

Wolverine can solo the game.

Make no mistake, this game is fun to play. Sam Fisher is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ killing machine here, and the game works like Gears of War except you basically die in one hit. It is NOT a stealth game. If you are looking for a stealth-based Splinter Cell game, Chaos Theory is probably hands down the best entry.

Just like in Double Agent, there are some questions to be asked: if Third Echelon was a secret sub-branch of the NSA, then why the ♥♥♥♥ are they sending out kill-teams in BROAD DAYLIGHT wearing uniforms declaring to the world that Third Echelon exists to kill a man whose very existence (according to the previous games) was a secret? Why the ♥♥♥♥ does Third Echelon have its own separate headquarters, with an office that is evidently taking calls from the public, if it's both supposed to be part of the NSA and also top-secret? If Splinter Cells were supposedly chosen from the best of best, why the ♥♥♥♥ are there so many of them coming after you and why are they acting like assault troops? If Sam supposedly trained these new Splinter Cells, then why was he surprised back in Chaos Theory when he learned that other Splinter Cells existed? Did the developers even play the previous games?

There are two other things to be aware of: you need uplay, and the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ credits go on for half an hour and can't be skipped.

The shadows in the PC version of the game are broken. At times you'll be standing in full light and apparently the game will think you are in complete darkness, and at other times you'll be standing in the darkest corner of the room and the game will treat it as if you're in broad daylight. Other problems include the question of how a ragtag domestic terrorist group has the funds and technology required to send you out on half the missions.

The Shanghai mission was really good though.

I literally couldn't tell the difference between the North Korean and South Korean soldiers in the Seoul mission, even though I'm Korean myself! Does this make me racist?

I snuck past the policeman and the civilian, went up the stairs, knocked out the two policemen, stole all their data, went into the back room, snuck through the curtains, knocked the guy out, obtained the surveillance data, then snuck out for extraction.

The guy I had previously snuck past was on full alert for some reason. Drew my gun to kill him - out of ammo. Policeman vs Elite NSA Third Echelon agent, policeman wins.

10/10

8/10

Overall, Xenoverse is a good game. Moving away from the style of their previous games (the Budokai series, Burst Limit, Infinite World), Dimps crossed the line from 2D-Fighter to a Tenkaichi/Raging Blast-esque 3D fighter. Despite this, it remains a completely unique experience - whilst it certainly appears to be inspired by Tenkaichi, it plays a lot different. The emphasis is shifted from extensive combo strings to simply chaining short combos together (at least, if you're not a Saiyan, but more on that later).

Character creation is a welcome addition to any DBZ game, and the level up system borrowed from RPGs lets you differentiate your fighter from those of other people by letting you use stat points gained each level however you deem fit. The races are for the most part well balanced, each with perks and cons, but this is only until the Saiyans gain access to their Super Saiyan transformations, which allows them to spam any super and ultimate attacks for free until the transformation ends. Expect to run into Super Saiyans firing off their ultimates many, many times.

The Mentor system is overall a good addition to the DBZ gaming franchise, letting you train under iconic characters from the show and gradually learn their techniques and eventually their ultimate attacks. Why is this such a good thing? Mentors and the Skills Shop are the only places you are guaranteed to find skills - yet the skills you can obtain from these two sources probably don't even amount to half the skills in the game.

Which brings me to my one gripe - to get the vast majority of skills available for you to collect, you have to grind through every single Parallel Quest multiple times. The expectation would be that if you meet certain requirements within the battle, the skill you desire would drop, and you'd retire from a hard day's work. This is not the case. The way it works is, meeting the requirements only gives you a chance of the skill dropping - not a guarantee. As a result you'll find yourself grinding for hours on end hoping to obtain any of the following: Super Vegeta, Super Vegeta 2, Ultra Fighting Bomber, Giant Storm, Kaioken X3, Kaioken X20, Maximum Charge, Spirit Sword, and even more.

This is, of course, ignoring the other items you must grind for, such as the Z-Sword...and Dragon Balls. However, these items (and, if you think about it, most skills) aren't really essential for success in the game, and for some this will be a minor problem.

Xenoverse, despite its tedious amounts of grinding ultimately gives a fresh new experience in its excellent new combat system. If you're a fan of the previous console-exclusive DBZ games, or you want a fighter with a radically different combat system, this game is for you.