When I had first played Fallout 3, I had not been a really amazing fan of the series to start. I had played, finished, and enjoyed Fallout and struggled with and never finished Fallout 2. Fallout 3 was the chance for a new developer to take the series in a new direction. That direction went from the classic D&D-style turn-based RPG to the Action RPG that we see today. What was lost in complexity of story and sheer dynamic of the world was replaced by a run and gun shooter with RPG elements. Whether you feel that change is in the best interests of the genre depends on how much you liked the old games. I can sympathize with the old guard fans who feel betrayed at the dumbing down of the series. The original Fallout universe was a multitude of shades of gray rather than the homogenous brown that attempts to feed in black and white choice into the game in the newer entries. The dialogue in Fallout games since 2 has been the thing of memes and one has to wonder how much more simplistic it can get. The lack of strategy needed to play the game has gone away in exchange for an inventory management simulator. But despite this, Fallout 3 is still incredibly fun. I still find myself tuning in to President Eden's speeches, I want to hear Three Dog's assessment of my story with his swagger attitude that he brings to the repetitious radio station he runs. While the combat is more reminiscent of a shooter than an RPG, it still is fun and no matter how many times you see it, an exploding slaver head is always satisfying. Sure there is little "choice" in the game's endings, but I still look at the story fondly and sometimes find myself wishing that Liam Neeson would be my father. The graphics are dated, but you can still enjoy an alternate Washington D.C. and still get lost in the world trudging through a post-apocalyptic action role-playing game.
Civ III has a few things that I loved and many things that I hated. For starters, the game always had resource balance issues and map seeding issues. If I played on a Pangea map, I would always get stuck on a small island by myself. If I played continents, I got stuck in a place that had no resources. I had no iron, no saltpeter, and no rubber, so I was always attacking with spearmen when they had swordsmen and musketmen, and had to wait to get riflemen before I could become competitive militarily, if only for a short while when the AI could build infantry. This just created an ultimate sense of frustration that any game I played was unbalanced in the AI's favor. The things I absolutely loved (that I wish they still did in modern Civ games) were palace building and leader portraits. Building your palace was amazing. Creating a single style or mix-and-matching was awesome. It was an improvement over the Throne Room of Civ II. I also loved that the leader portraits during diplomacy evolved with the tech age they were in. For example, if you were in the ancient era, all the leaders were wearing animal skins. In the classical age, they wore togas. In medieval era, they wore armor, and so on and so forth. It created a unique and immersive experience that Firaxis has not matched since, even with the "realistic" avatars in Civ V and the cartoony realism in Civ VI. I wish that Firaxis would take the time to put in little improvements like these into their newer Civ games. All in all, I don't give Civ III a high score, although I can see why many people liked it. On that very rare occasion when I did get a good starting spot with balanced resources, the game was a lot of fun, almost as much fun as my penultimate Civ game, Civ II.
This game looks like it's a lot of fun. The visuals are nice, the combat is fluid and dynamic. Although it's an arcade WW2 aerial dogfight simulator, it still feels like you're flying a WW2-era craft (basically a refrigerator with an engine and wings). However, the controller controls are not optimized at all. If you're using a gamepad, 95% of the controls are not mapped to any keys, so you're awkwardly trying to maneuver your plane while trying to find the random key on the keyboard you're supposed to hit to make the thing you want to work. I think if this was ever released on a console, they would have streamlined the controls, but seeing as it probably wasn't (or if it was, the devs were too lazy to port the controls to the PC) then the controller controls are a nightmare. Only play if you have a joystick or if you want to use a keyboard for your flight simulator. Controllers are not welcome here.
The title says it all. This is THE most frustrating experience I've had with a game. Let me first say that you should NOT play with a controller. The game has incredibly poor optimization for controllers. There are so many controls in the game that 90% of them can't even be mapped to the controller anyway. The game also seemed to think it was a good idea to put very essential controls (like target lock and firing heavy weapons) mapped to the keyboard in awkward positions rather than trying to map them to the controller. Also, if you decide you want to use a controller, the game completely SHUTS OFF the mouse, so you can't use it AT ALL! I'm in the tutorial mission and the game is asking me to scan the wreckage of a ship. I have no idea how to do it. I'm searching all of the controls that the game has set and none of them are working. It looks like there's a "SCAN" button to the left of the wreckage, but there's no way for me to click on it. So I'm just sitting in a ship trying to figure out how to do one of the most BASIC functions of a ship, scanning wreckage. There's also conveniently no tutorial help on how to do it too. On top of that, the game requires a reset EVERY TIME YOU CHANGE ANY VIDEO SETTINGS. This includes changing the game resolution as well as going from full screen to non-full screen. Also, don't Alt-Tab out of the game if you're playing in Full Screen mode. It puts it into windowed mode and you have to be able to save the game so you can change the settings to not be in full screen mode, then restart the game, then re-enter the game, reset the game to go to full screen mode, exit the game AGAIN, then go back into the game. But here's the kicker, YOU CAN'T SAVE THE GAME IN THE TUTORIAL MISSION! So if any of your settings are not up to par, guess what, you either have to wait until the game finally decides it's okay to save your game, or you have to REDO THE ENTIRE TUTORIAL MISSION OVER! Total waste of money... do not buy.
Caesar III is a Roman city-building simulator where you have to build the ideal Roman city using handfuls of buildings at your disposal. Build houses to give the settlers shelter, give them food, employment, entertainment, fire protection, water, and places of worship (lest the gods get angry with you), and provide government establishments to keep the plebs in line. On the surface it seems simple enough, but it's a circus. I was on the second campaign mission and the game just literally fell apart right before my eyes. The objective was to build farms so I could fill up a granary. Then I got messages to build reservoirs for water, fountains, markets, and all the while trying to provide prefectures and engineering stations to keep my buildings from catching on fire and falling down. Also the game kept telling me I didn't have enough workers to do all of the jobs that were in the city and then when I built more houses, the game kept telling me the workers were eating more food than was being produced, and I fit as many farms as I could into the small area they gave me to build farms in... Then since I was too preoccupied with building houses and farms, and wondering what else I needed to build, I forgot to build temples, so all of the gods started smiting me at once. Then new areas where I had built houses and other buildings started to catch fire since I was just rapidly placing houses down to try and get enough people to work my buildings... and it all just went downhill from there. This is the SECOND mission. I can't imagine how bad it's going to get further down the line... Play at your own peril...
I was looking for a good organized crime simulator and decided to try out "Gangsters: Organized Crime" over "Omerta: City of Gangsters" since I hate Kalypso/Haemimont games. I installed it and started playing. The first time I played it, I remember trying out the tutorials which were a bunch of text explaining a bunch of things I didn't understand at all. So I got bored and quit the game. I decided to try the game again. When I clicked on the launcher icon, it said "gangsters.exe could not launch". So, I uninstalled and re-installed. It worked. I tried playing the tutorial again since I completely forgot how to play the game. The game loaded, but there was no text or anything to help guide me through what I was supposed to be doing. I just decided to look at the Overview and learned a bit about the game and tried fooling around in the tutorial. I gave some orders, and started the week. There's no way to speed up time, so you just sit there and wait 10 minutes for your 1 person to finish doing their job. After the first week ended, the tutorial just quit. So I tried doing the second tutorial. No text again, no objectives, nothing to guide me as to what I was supposed to be doing. So I left the tutorials and decided to just try playing the normal game. I set it up and started to play. After the first week, half my gangsters were gone. After the second week, the other half were gone. No explanation given at all. So I quit playing for the second time and I don't think I'm going back.
This game was allegedly made by the developers of the original Fallout games, so it has that Fallout look and feel. It's set in a very unique setting, a fantasy world on the brink of an industrial revolution. You get to make your character (8? races to choose from), specialize their skills (magic, tech, swords, thievery, persuasion... the combinations are endless), and go along for the ride in the amazing story. The game offers so much in gameplay. If your character has a low intelligence, it limits your responses (and having an EXTREMELY low intelligence makes the responses hilarious!) and the choices you make impact the world. It's one of those rare gems that just make you come back for more to try and find all of the things you could have missed before. Even when you've played the story and you know what's going to happen next, you still just want to come back and experience it all over again. It's one of my favorite games of all time from any genre. Sure the camera is a little bit troublesome (you can't center it and have to manually move it), and the combat can be a little bulky at times, but these minor setbacks can't ruin the experience of this gem of a masterpiece of a game.
Theme Park was a game from my childhood! Building a theme park is every kid's dream. Trying to make a park with enough ride variation, keeping it clean (especially from the park guests who will upchuck after riding on your roller coaster), and maintained was a challenge that was so much fun! When you get bored with all of the standard rides the game provides you with, you just need to build a super-fast roller coaster and watch the riders fly off into space! This game is a must-have for fans of Roller Coaster Tycoon, Zoo Tycoon, or other simulation games. Much better and more intuitive than its cousin, Theme Hospital.
Whenever I play a BioWare game, I always have to ask, "Is this going to be as good as Jade Empire?" The answer I get is always, "No." Why? Because Jade Empire is a masterpiece. The combat (although outdated by modern standards) was fluid, intuitive, and insanely fun! Making the combat a two-button system really showed the hallmark of "simpler is better." The story was amazing, the cast of characters was unforgettable (and honestly, who can forget the Black Whirlwind?), and the setting picturesque. While the combat can get a little repetitive, especially late-game, the addition of new styles and combos really allows you to try and experiment. There's also the multiple endings, the Galaxian-style mini-game, and the "Open Palm/Closed Fist" moral system. There's honestly not enough I can say to enshrine how much I enjoyed this game. Just pick it up, give it a try, and before you know it, you'll be on your second playthrough.
Pretty much Kalypso Media and Haemimont Games make titles that look like they'll be a ton of fun, but then they turn out to be utter crap. The tradition started, for me, with Tropico 3, continued with Legends of Pegasus and Tropico 4, and still stays alive with Omerta. I've given up on buying anything else from these publishers.
