Recent reviews by DukeOfGonzo

The game I played on a 20 inch TV decades ago looks amazing on a modern computer monitor. The game handles just like I remember it. Has anything I could think of when it comes to Halo.

Edit: One week after I wrote this review the game has been tanking on me. My computer wheezes when something is loaded from disk when playing Halo 3. The frame rate drops to 12 and never recovers. Now all the Halos are giving me the same FPS drop. I can only recommend this game if you manage to find the window to play it without technical difficulties.

I was intrigued by the brutalist architecture, the dreary office aesthetics, and the hint of post-modern storytelling. Those all keep paying off throughout the game. The action was quick to put together in an inventive manner that I rarely felt trapped by the difficulty. The game was a blast from start to finish.

It's almost ten years old, but it's still fun and pretty to me.

It's fast and brutal. Pretty as well, if you dig grimey cyberpunk aesthetics drenched in red light.

I do not like how much jumping and climbing and puzzles make up the gameplay. I tolerated it in the the first Darksiders. This one has proven to be about fifty percent non-combat puzzles using the character's movement. I kept hoping it would turn a corner into a section with heavy combat, but it never happened. I didn't want to keep moving down repetitive tunnels just to find some sort of jumping puzzle to retrieve a blue key.

It's the same game as Dawn of War 2. The campaign is a bit more fun because each playable race's story intertwines. The Imperial Guard is added. I can't handle so many units and I feel the point system is lopsided against them since guardsmen die so easily. But who cares? They're guardsmen. That's what they are there for!

I've never played the actual 40k tabletop game. I just love the lore. This is the most satisfying of the three Relic developed 40k RTS games. The singe player campaign is more like an action RPG, but the multiplayer is a small scale RTS. Minimal resources, zero base building, and a decent match being in the 20-30 minute range. It's an eleven year old game now but it still looks nice to me.

I really enjoy horror games in a group setting. This game was definitely a crowd-pleaser. The atmosphere and game mechanics are moody enough to provide dread. There are of course jump scares, but they are reasonably paced apart to that they don't feel overwhelming. Any horror game essentially turns into a trial and error game once you get killed enough times and the fear turns into frustration, so I'd suggest playing this on the easiest difficulty.

I dont play this game too seriously. I find it soothing. Like tending to a garden.

I played the hell out of this game in 2012 using the Total War'ish schemes from Shogun and Rome. As far as total war games, this is the slowest one of those three series I've tried.

If you've tried other Total War games, this is slower and much more about positioning. You can relax a smidge and let a good plan come together and just send your reserves to clean up your lines.

And you learn some ♥♥♥♥ about Napoleanoic warfare if you pay attention.