The game itself plays pretty well but is very simplified. No skills, no new abilities throughout the game, auto-heal and no difficulty options means the game is extremely easy to the point that it might as well have been just a sightseeing tour. The game's looks and the story are probably the only things that will make you want to continue playing. And this is where the disappointment comes in... After 8 levels and some very minor side missions, the game abruptly ends just as the story is finally starting to get interesting. There are some pretty major revelations made in the game and everything seems to be going well. The story is rather intriguing and then you come to what appears to be the end of Act 1... and it just ends. There is nothing more. Thanks for playing. The fact that Trine 4 completely ignores the events of this game is disappointing too. I understand that they ran out of funds during development but finishing this story arc with at least a comic or something would have been a nice gesture. If you plan on playing through the entire series I recommend skipping this one as it's a dead end. A beautiful looking one for sure, but still a dead end. Also, the move to 3D isn't the apocalypse some reviews make it out to be. It will take you 2-3 levels to adjust and it's smooth sailing then. True, 3 levels is almost half of the game but I didn't have any issues with controls or anything after playing for a while. Giving this one a 6/10 and I'm being very generous.
This has to be hands down one of the best RTS games I've played recently and this is strictly from the single player point of view. There are 8 campaigns (9 if you get Saladin) with 5 missions each making it a total of 40 (45) missions which is a very good amount to keep you going for a while. I just finished the last Saladin mission, having completed all 45 missions on hard difficulty. They are all narrated and voice acted with hand-drawn Age of Empires 2 style prologues. The battles themselves are loud and look awesome. The animations are really well done and sometimes, you will just find yourself zooming in on the battle and enjoying the show. Fans of Dawn of War will find themselves very satisfied because every unit has a finishing move for any other type of unit. You can also set it so that every single corpse stays on the battlefield forever. Seeing the ground just littered with corpses or a river turning red after just having won a huge battle feels incredible. As for battles tactics, utilizing retreat is especially important. Whenever you find yourself in an unfavorable situation, it is better to regroup, replenish your troops and engage from a more preferable position. Flanking, attacking from the back and outnumbering play a huge factor. Archers will friendly fire a lot if they have to shoot over your guys who are fighting in melee. You have to either get them behind the enemy or just have them stop shooting. Most units have different stances and abilities which can help greatly to sway the tide in your favor. Simply put, I found my strategic skill put to the test and enjoyed it greatly. And while certain creative freedoms were taken for the sake of gameplay, the stories are based mostly on real events. I found myself reading about some key figures and events which were presented in the game. The last time I had this sort of edutainment was with Age of Empires 2 and it felt great. An easy 9/10 game. Would recommend to anyone who likes RTS games.
Right up there with the legendary III. After IV, this was a very nice return to form. Good: - Hero build diversity is massively improved Most skills have a use (where about 50% of them were useless in III). Many skills require some prerequisite skills to be able to pick them and every faction also has a very hard to get ultimate skill, which you will only potentially be able to get towards the end of the campaigns. - Thanks to the above, taking and building your heroes through the campaigns is a joy. With my ranger, I ended up going with a build focusing on Ballista which could be imbued with attack spells and fired 3 times per round. That's 3 Ballista shots every round that negated defense and also cast Implosion on the target after each one. Probably the most fun I had in Heroes, period. - Campaigns are decent, have a coherent story that keeps going through both expansions and ultimately ends in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. All cutscenes are fully voice acted and it was definitely the best campaign experience to me. Difficulty can be all over the place, but I loved it from start to finish. - Spells are overall much more balanced than in III where magic dominated no matter what. - Awesome music. - Great unit designs and town screens. Bad: - AI turns can take extremely long for whatever reason. It's mostly fine in the campaigns, but larger skirmish maps suffer from this a lot. - Occasional bugs. Some campaign missions still have a few bugs you might stumble into. Most notably, the first Sylvan mission, where an enemy hero you have to defeat to win won't arrive if you load a save in that mission. There is also a game freeze bug in the prologue Stronghold mission. But others can be easily worked around and are not that numerous. - The normal battlefield is a bit small in size. Fine in sieges. The next best thing after III. It took what worked in it and tried doing some new things that mostly worked out. Can't go wrong with this one if you liked III.
The unparalleled king of Carmageddon and one of the best vehicular combat games to date. Incredible amount of cars, ranging from normal racing cars through a giant bulldozer or a jet powered bus to a WW 2 plane which you just drive around on ground or a vehicle that doesn't even fit through checkpoint gates. This game has it all. Non-stop fun on sandbox-like maps where you can fool around to your heart's content. Jumping on rooftops and finding rare and powerful power-ups, running over hundreds of pedestrians (or annihilating them with the multitude of anti-ped weapons) or just straight up brawling with the AI opponents, all of it is simply fun. Add in an occasional, objective based mission to break up the monotony and you got a winner. It also has an incredibly good damage system that feels fair and consistent both for the player and the AI. My only advice would be to avoid upgrades (armor, power and offense) as much as possible as it eventually makes the game way too easy and they just suck the fun out of it. A very easy 10/10.
Everything seems to be in place for a faithful Carmageddon remake. Nice looking graphics, new maps, great looking cars, more power-ups. Seems like a dream come true. That is until you start looking a little more in-depth at the damage system. It unfortunately works on the basis of "Tag, you're it". If you haven't touched an opponent within like 5 seconds, you are basically indestructible. You can ram straight into buildings at the speed of sound and only come out with a slightly damage engine. Now do the same with the only difference of an opponent gently touching you along the way to the building wall and you will be absolutely obliterated and annihilated because you are tagged and receive massively increased damage from everything. Ram a wall at 60 km/h? Nothing happens. Ram a wall at 60 km/h shortly after an opponent touched you in any way? Your entire front will explode upon the slightest contact until ~5 seconds pass. It only leads to constantly swapping periods of near immortality when just cruising around and horribly unfun ridiculous damage spikes coming out of nowhere when you are fighting opponents. The perfectly good damage system from Carmageddon 2 was tossed away for no reason. There you could easily die to opponents as well as your bad driving. It was consistent and you could get the "feel" for it. Here, it is just 2 extremes constantly swapping with each other with no in-between. You are either completely unharmed or wrecked the next second. Also, it tries too hard to be like Carma 1 without taking into account the improvements made in Carma 2. Most notably, the ability to repair yourself even when you are fully destroyed. When you remove the danger of being eliminated from a race, it honestly becomes boring after a while. The system of "stealing" the cars is also very unnecessary and random and they should have just made it so you can buy the cars you wrecked after the race like in Carma 2. 7/10. The horrible damage system eats 3 points.
Just finished my playthrough on the default difficulty (3 out of 4) and it took me just over 5 hours. A little on the short side but the price corresponds with that so all good. Might replay it once on the hardest difficulty to try the other gender (you can choose at the start of the game) and to hear the other voice actor. As for the game itself, the combat is pretty good and satisfying. Difficult if you do stupid stuff but if you exploit the enemy weaknesses properly, you should be able to overcome anything with good strategy. I almost never used blocking, it's all about the parries and dodging unparryable stuff There are also a lot more weapons than I expected. A good selection with different moves, damage values, damage types and special parameters. You should be able to quickly find your favorites, there are enough to fit most play styles I think (no ranged weapons). The enemies also have various resistances and vulnerabilities to the 3 damage types present in the game. Choose the right tool for the job. You collect essence from enemies and chests and spend it to upgrade (with the usual Souls mechanic of "You die, you have to go pick it up where you died, enemies respawn etc."). The leveling mechanic seems a bit lacking though. There is just increases to damage, speed and HP. Every main category has 3 perks which you can unlock once the base value of the attribute reaches 5,12 and 20 respectively. The problem is that the game is so short that if you do a somewhat balanced build, you will never reach the 20 perks in a playthrough. I ended at 8, 12, 15 so 35 points. If you go for one of the 20 perks, your other attributes will be pretty lacking. Story is basic, don't buy this game if you want an engaging story. It's more of a background flavor than an actual story. It's all about the combat and that is where it excels. It rewards being good at it by making you feel pretty badass. Al in all, $11 dollars well spent and I can recommend it. 7.5/10
