I can see why people who have played this game for a long time love it. Some of the gameplay and buildup is very fun. Some of the key gameplay mechanics are unappealing to me. You can build a hero unit up, only to encounter an enemy army that entirely annihilates his/her army, thus killing that hero off forever. There's no way to know if a group of enemies will join your army, or will start a battle with your army. The lack of ability to diagnose army size and power is a huge problem. Furthermore, once the battle starts, even if it's obvious that you're going to lose, you can't exit without shutting down the program. Does anyone else see the exploitation of females in this game as a problem? Every female I encountered was hypersexualized. I realize that they were trying to appeal to teenage boys with out-of-control hormones, but I would hope that we can recognize even in our games the dignity and real value of women.
This game has an intriguing storyline, that becomes clear the further you dig. The way the game signals to you when you begin to close in on the truth send chills up my spine. It's pretty riveting. My main caution is about the language. It can be pretty filthy at times. Definitely R-rated at times. If it hadn't been for that, I would definitely have finished the game.
I'm having a blast with this simple hex-based strategy game. Your goal is to shepherd an army through a campaign lasting through many maps. There's some great guidance on YouTube, so that helped me avoid a lot of frustration, and stick to the strong units and leaders. The AI is fun to play against, even at the lower difficulty level, which is where I'm at. In short, stick almost exclusively to heavy infantry, and you'll be fine. Still, some experience with the maps really helps.
This is a unique take on the traditional RTS. I'm sure that experience players of this game have a great time. For a newb to this game, there was just too little explanation. Tooltips would be nice, but the UI mostly lacks explanatory information. There isn't a tutorial to speak of, and this game really needs one. I figured out some of the basics, but there's a lot of strange, intentionally weird programming in the game. For example, in one of the first missions, you have to extend your defensive grid to cover a particular structure. But there's no explanation of how the grid works, and even once I covered the building with my grid, nothing happened. Eventually, I got tired of having to look at videos to find why the game was behaving in such non-sensical ways. On the plus side, it's fun to build the big mechs, and watch them duke it out.
Apparently players reacted to an early beta by asking for the game to be harder. The developers apparently responded by introducing a level of micromanagement and RNG that's just not fun. While enemy vehicles move intelligently, yours seem to do all they can to be useless. They navigate poorly, which makes avoiding obstacles, which destroy your vehicles completely, very difficult. On an Easy game, from the beginning, I was chased by enemies much more powerful than me. I had no idea how to procure supplies, and in several games never succeeded in winning a battle or accomplishing anything, apparently. I could have watched even more videos and worked hard to learn what I'm trying to do., but that's not why I started at Easy.
This game combines my least favorite elements: -No apparent goals -No map -Endless backtracking -Lots of jumping -Artificially limited navigation options Some of these may be a matter of personal preference. But #'s 2,3, and 5 indicate lazy game-making. I don't really care to follow along with a walkthrough as I figure out where to wander to next. This game could have been so much better. On the positive side, it looks cool, and load times are great.
This is a great mix of RPG, financial sim, and train lore. It's not hard to learn to make money, but it's also not hard to be caught off guard by unexpected expenses. My best advice is to use self control, take your time, and save your money. Save more than you think you need before beginning the next part of your mission. I lost a game because I thought I had enough saved to complete one of the more complex missions, but fell a few bucks short. You're always balancing train weight with train space and coal use - it's tricky, but not onerous, with a little practice. You can make money pretty quickly, but a couple of ill-planned loads can also doom your game. Perfect! The game is pretty, and the UI is pretty intuitive. Screens flow quickly and smoothly. Overall, a pleasure to play!
This game has a very interesting concept. Instead of playing AI that are trying to simulate human players, you're playing an AI that plays like a semi-self-aware machine. Intriguing. I ran into a lot of issues with mechanics in this game. I often had to click a building multiple times before the game realized what I was trying to do. My ships often seemed to lose track of the fact that they needed to attack the enemy. I got tired of sending in a big fleet, only to be wiped out when my ships acted like low-level machines instead of human crews. Also, very little in the game is explained. There is a decent tutorial, but it leaves many questions unanswered. And I was unable to find answers to most of my questions online. For example, I never figured out how to build the larger fleet vessels. I got tired of not being able to find information. Since the game doesn't provide adequate in-game help, it became too much of a hassle for me to continue. I can understand why experienced players like this game. I could probably learn to enjoy it with more time playing. But I chiefly want to play a game, not study it. I study quite enough in my professional life.
With a lot of practice and study, I think this game could be pretty fun. I haven't quite figured out how to survive more than a few minutes, since money, fuel, and supplies are extremely rare. So why don't I spend the time necessary to learn how to be successful in this game? There just doesn't seem to be much incentive. I'm not interested in sleeping with crew members, so that's out. I also don't tend to invest a lot of time in games that require you to practice for hours before you can begin to enjoy yourself. Also, the speed of the game is very slow. I often set off on a long voyage across most of the map. Will I run out of fuel or supplies before I reach my destination, since none are available along the way (which doesn't make any sense economically)? Who knows, because I'm just going to have to watch my ship sail along for a couple/few minutes to find out. I can't speed up time, and if I increase my ship's speed it eats up precious fuel. I often don't even need to steer at all. It's not very fun to watch the computer play itself.
This game is a mystery to me. I cannot comprehend why someone would design this piece of computer-based refuse, produce it, and release it. I also cannot understand why a site would host it, and even charge money for it! To call it a game would be to insult the games industry. Visually, the game looks like the developers put all of their ideas for how to make a game look hideous into a hat, drew all of the ideas out, executed them all, and then had a horde of rampaging monkeys throw poo on it all. You can only view the horrific mass from one perspective, though the game randomly changes that perspective after the repetitive, long, non-skippable cutscenes. Inevitably, the shapeless blobs they call characters have to take off walking in one direction or another, hoping they're not headed down a dead-end path. I spent a significant amount of time viewing the inside of my "character's" head, as it was squished into the camera that I could not re-orient. Delightful. Speaking of squishing heads, the developers seem to want you to kill the innocent couple as many times as possible. If you get caught in the wrong spot, you'll have to spend an excruciating amount of time slowly and steadily taking actions that you know will kill your neighbors. I don't know what to make of this seemingly homicidal tendency in the game makers. Horrifically nasty. I found myself in the second segment, wandering endlessly down the same monotonous, wretched paths, wondering why I was spending all of this time just to help a depressed woman walk out on her husband and child. Seriously, guys? This is the best incentive you can give to a player? Most of your time is spent in almost aimless, sometimes blind wandering around and around the same repetitive map, wondering what the meaning of it all might be. Here's a clue: it doesn't exist. Do I like anything about this game? Yes, yes I do. I'll never have to play it again.
