Great to wander the streets I've lived and worked in most of my life! Another excellent example of what can be made with love and skill rather than money and hordes of people (Stalker Anomaly 64bit as a prime example). First off, after repeated CTDs on initial install (full offline installs, no GOG Galaxy even, running at 2560x1440, ultra on an old 1050ti laptop) I then followed RTFM principles and used the provided config files. After that, almost none to the point I've roamed through most central locations and established a base (seem to be some issues with loading perhaps too much in Eastern locations, I've tried reloading and taking differing routes to destination to work around). Certainly in need of polishing from dialogues and map glitches, to companions disappearing (sure I had a dog?!) and other Fallout standards like stuttering but overall an excellent total conversion with a very London twist and stunning weapon mods. So, make sure you've got a good cuppa inside you, first things first of course, don't go postal or drop your conkers and have a jolly old time in Blighty!
As we only get GOG’s permission to write a review once, I’ll be careful to list the amusing, if I hadn’t wasted £6 on this tedious game, attempts to create historical ‘chaos of battle realism’ instead of a warfare simulator. Just in the tutorial, a spear unit, properly formed, facing the enemy, within range of a general and with friendly units on both sides is attacked by horse riding bowmen and breaks after they attack. Same premise again, spearmen facing an enemy horse unit cannot do anything for two moves and is then decimated because it could not attack, rotate or move. ‘Can’t charge that target type’ Oh, I didn’t realise armies used to ride a horse unit up in front of spearmen to form an impenetrable wall. Contrastingly, on the other side of the battlefield one of my units (exactly the same as one that was just decimated by sword wielding bowmen) starts to attack an enemy unit and without any chance for my input, stomps through three enemy units over the next few turns.. Is the other premise to repeatedly demonstrate the Mongolian false retreat principle of breaking up the enemy formations? Or is the suggestion all Samurai armies were comprised of completely disorganised rabble? Even more bizarrely, after expending the pitiful movement points that require a sheet of paper and formulas to calculate any single move’s likelihood of maintaining any proper battle formation, when attacking, a unit can suddenly move four extra squares to pursue an enemy unit, past and deep into enemy formations and where any skilled warrior would avoid being. Wheee, there goes a horse unit chasing 20 squares after enemy units that rush off the map and then pop back up where my unit can’t turn and face. Where is the strategy? Line of sight with ranged units takes some weird concept that a 20 degree frontward angle change only allows a rank to fire with half angle of fire? 1960's table top gaming was more accurate.
Enjoyable engine with reasonably immersive underwater movement and minor skirmishes in nice environments. Shame more time seems to have been spent on writing text for background and adding in backer characters than in designing a campaign. Got the feeling this is like the Battlefield series, "We market for multiplayer so create a few standard bot spawns and call it a campaign." Don't bother trying to build up all ships, even scavenging will make it hard to afford. Then suddenly you get access to all the mods for them just in time to have one final, dull battle, never getting a chance to compare. Cut to ending sequence. "Is that it?" Like Mechwarrior 5, this hints at what could have been an excellent game, expanding factions interplay and time to develop ships before reaching an end, or adding in just a few more bounty missions might have helped. Why put repeating hints in as you enter an area that tell you exactly what to do rather than having some discovery (not checked if you can turn hints off). Feels like shareware you pay for to test out the game, in anticipation of forking out more for DLCs that might make it a full game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po_4y52ulFw Nice series of games. Shame the devs were so lazy and incompetent they couldn't manage to work out how to bind key mappings consistently through the DLCs. Shame too the publishers/distributers care so little about customers they didn't get the bug fixed back in 2013 nor even when released on GOG in 2021. If broken basic gameplay functionality ruins people's enjoyment of a game, do you think they'll stick with your next release? Future Bioshock releases now shifted to 'buy when on special offer for £5, a year or so after GOG release it'.
Refund please. Why are GOG continuing to sell games that have still not been fixed from the original release? This review after trying every single performance option on a gaming rig that should be able to play this game fine. Charge into battle to find you've been unseated from the horse during a glitching 2-3 FPS period. Sneak up on a boar to find it ran off while you were spinning in circles when the game caught up with what was on the screen. Watch the dice glitch off the board when trying to play a mini-game. All in all, play for about 40 seconds of every minute this game is loaded. Wait 20. Can see why people say it is a good game, it has a great deal to make it interesting and long lasting. This is if it were playable.
As I can't update reviews to reflect improved experiences, I'll just note that on a PC that can play other similarly aged titles fine, this game goes from 30-40FPS down to 1-2 constantly. Looks pretty but totally unplayable therefore. I'll now delve into the memory tuning, graphics options enabling/disabling and other possible options to get a game to work on equipment it was designed for. Course I won't be able to update this review with results. Ho hum.
As I can't update my review of the base game, I'll add the updates on finishing the pathetic waste of money this game is. By comparison, this game doesn't offer much more than the first quarter of many other games, at best several hours of play on a difficult level and has been so lazily thrown together it appears the people that attempted to write a story left and the developers got bored and moved onto something else. (Or "Pay us more and we'll develop some more content") A real shame what could have been an excellent replayable game, ends up feeling like playing a free demo that instead you've wasted money on. Minor spoiler/hint: Don't bother picking any loot up when you get to the last planet, not as if you'll get a chance to use any of it...
Taking the Harry Potter approach of pasting together content from other tales, this "buy the DLC to get the full game" style of Fallout blended with a hint of Borderlands and the characters/themes from Serenity/Firefly (e.g. a timid female engineer you take off her backwater planet), leaves you with that same, "Is that it?" feeling after several hours of play. If you just bought the teaser game, you'll be forgiven for wondering when you can reach the point of removing mods from weapons (that the game repeatedly tells you is possible when you reach a certain level), only to find that doesn't come unless you pay more for the first DLC. Let me guess, as I haven't got there yet, all those planets it looks like you'll end up being able to travel back and forth to, are also only accessible if you pay more? Not sure if we're experiencing a nostalgic design here, where keyboard mappings are fixed for some keys and even if you do customise your keyboard settings to your preferred options, the game binds the original and new function to the chosen key. (So my second character performs an attack while I'm trying to go into slo-mo mode). 1980s gaming feel. Companions combat options allow for them to stand idly (unless you can manage to fight and give commands in real time) or to charge in, blocking line of sight. Defensive mode could be defined to give a better experience. On the plus side, some of the character dialogue and interactions show the beginnings of a better RPG construct, delivering a feeling of greater immersion at times, rather than just plodding from delivery job to job. Tinkering is another plus that allows the development of weapons and armour beyond the level you get them at and in line with your character's level. Until at high levels this is a costly option to take a level 2 weapon up to level 20, but certainly extends the use of preferred weapons and armour. All in all, the makings of a great game that sadly only gives a hint of what it could be.
Space Hulk Deathwing had the makings of an incredible single player game. Capturing the feeling of being overwhelmed by hordes of aliens, in a squad capable of standing their ground. Placing you in a haunting and visually stunning Warhammer setting, the combination of set piece spawning and random roving swarms of aliens keeps the action nearly constant (although there are occasional periods of complete silence, presumably due to some AI navigational issues upon sealing doors). You could forgive the lack of any instructions, the companion AI for running back through a door you’re about to seal or that the game is difficult to beat even on the easiest setting, were it not for the frustrating restrictions. What is the point of having a skill tree or increasing weapon customisations if only allowing access to these at the end of the game? “Here, have this weapon that is only really useful against 1st level opponents. Welcome to level 12.” Why make it so people cannot choose logical combinations of weapons or are tied to a series of weapons? You can use this gun and sword but this gun that is exactly the same size makes your left hand incapable of carrying anything. Ok, create a first play through restriction that means you can only really use one weapon set and complete one skill tree that either benefits you or your squad, not both. Why not follow something akin to the Prey model and allow people to develop their skill tree further on subsequent play throughs? Also allow them to combine differing weapons, so they can enjoy the same freedom to use them as the developers did in ‘god mode’. So, when I fancy a bit of repetitive, shoot, use spells, use sword, fall back, I might load up Space Hulk Deathwing. Likely, as with the even worse ‘sit and watch the cut scene movies, while waiting to go back and choose the appropriate weapon loadout’ that Metro: Exodus forces people through, it will be consigned to the ‘could have been good’ pile of rarely replayed games.
