I like this game. It is essentially a base-building simulator on Mars that has you balancing mining, resources, and markets in hope of acquiring enough money to buy out the competition. It's fun for a while, and games are short. The AI is pretty good, and on higher difficulties can micromanage things better than the average player ever could. There is a solid tutorial, and the campaign is fairly decent. I even like the music, and the graphics are suitable for this kind of top-down city-builder game. There are only a few shortcomings. First, this can get boring fast once you realize that you are just following market prices and clicking frantically to buy and sell stuff before your opponents can. Thankfully, the game has a fair amount of tension and competitiveness in the typical skirmish, and you can tweak a number of settings to add variety. It's not the kind of game that's going to keep the average player engaged for days or weeks on end, but it is easy and interesting enough to pick up and play once in a while.
I played Everspace with its expansion, Encounters, and found it completely underwhelming. On the positive side, it is as gorgeous as the pictures and videos suggest, and it can be played comfortably with a keyboard and mouse (it was actually more awkward with my controller). The combat can be satisfying, and each weapon has its own feel. However, after a few hours of play, you realize that the game is just a pretty arcade space shooter with no character or real story line. In general, you jump from randomly generated sector to sector and fight other ships that may or may not appear. When you eventually get blown up--which will happen many times even on easy difficulty--you respawn in a hanger and get to upgrade your ship with whatever loot you got during the last run. It could be an addictive, workable progression system, except it all feels like grinding in an empty space field for the same scraps each time. During my 3-4 hours of game play, a story did appear to be unfolding, but it seemed to be an afterthought--just enough to temporarily break up the monotony of cruising through quiet sectors. Dying over and over again is a core feature of the game, which has never appealed to me in any game. It's poor game design that reveals a certain lack of imagination on the part of the developers who should have really included a proper campaign and better level dynamics. This might be worth a try for $5. Otherwise, don't bother. The sad part is that this game could have been something special.
I am not sure why someone won't make a proper Freelancer sequel, but here's is another bland wannabe. Rebel Galaxy is fun for about 2 hours until you realize that you are doing the same kill, rescue, and delivery missions in the same empty space while listening to the same grating country-rock music tracks. I was not especially bothered by the 2D ship combat, and the fighting could actually be fun. But the game is not well paced, so you could finish one fight pretty easily and then stumble upon a gang of enemy ships that destroy you in seconds just as you were getting ready to dock at a space station, the only place where the game saves. I lost hours of progress this way. The game is only worth playing if you like the grinding of missions to upgrade your ship so that you can grind more missions to upgrade your ship further, etc. Even what passes for the campaign is part of the grind, and the side activities like trading simply help finance, yes, more mission grinding. On a positive note, the game plays well with a controller, and the graphics are pretty decent. Voice acting is okay, but there is not enough of it to offset the feeling that you are all alone most of time. If you must play this game, do wait for a sale. Otherwise, go back and play Freelancer or some other game with more character and better gameplay design. +Good graphics +Solid fighting mechanics +Upgrading and buying ships can be fun +Some people will like the music, others not so much -The game is one big mission grind with a lot of side grinds sprinkled in -Some funky camera angles in combat -Uneven difficulty, many random encounters and deaths -Game only auto-saves after leaving a space station
This is a turn-based dungeon crawler based around the W40K's Adeptus Mechanicus faction and the (undead-like) Necrons whom they hope to defeat on a strange tomb world. The game has a pretty good story and good writing. And you'll be doing lots of reading since the techpriests that you control speak in gibberish. The game has some good roleplaying elements that are fun, like leveling up your characters and selecting new skills and gear for them. Missions are generally short and to the point, but have enough atmosphere and variation to not make the game too boring after a while. The art style is solid, as is the music. The game is really a long countdown between first landing on the Necron world and finally awakening its leader (the last fight). You can choose which missions to take during the countdown, and I was able to do about 25 of them before the last boss fight. The game has a good number settings, and you can adjust the difficulty of enemies, the speed of the countdown, and several other factors. There are enough variations of Necrons to keep things interesting, and the techpriests have enough dialogue and personality to distinguish them. Winning battles can be quite satisfying. Okay, things that I didn't like. The cognition mechanic got old fast. It controls how far you can move, which weapons you can use, and even whether you can launch a basic attack during a fight. It just felt out of place and as a way of needlessly complicating the game. Along with this, the game does have a learning curve. I lost four missions in a row at the start and nearly quit the game before finally figuring it out. If there was a problem with the game being too easy at one time, that has been fixed. Tweak the difficulty settings to see what works for you; maybe start on "casual" and work your way up. Some of the mission rewards are junk or repetitious, and many of the choices that you make during a mission seem to have random consequences. Overall, worth my $15.
Well-done Chaos race. Good models and diversity of units and research. Similar to the base game and other DLC, it lacks voice acting, which is a shame. However, there is a great mod (Too Many Voices) that adds some professional-level voice work.
I have this game with all of the DLC (including Tau), and I must say that it scratches that W40K itch that I first got when I first played Dawn of War back in 2005. Gladius is a turn-based strategy game that gets most things right and is certainly recommended if you like either strategy games or the W40K universe. The game looks great, and a lot of care was taken with the presentation and graphics. It also has good sound effects and very good music. I like the mission/quest structure for each race, which is more or less a basic campaign that allows you to follow a somewhat coherent story line. The UI is fairly clean, and the tutorial is solid. The game is true to its lore: there is only war. There's an economic system and some light role-playing possibilities when it comes to customizing your hero units with gear and abilities. And since your units do gain experience and level up, you do start to care about them over time (you can rename your heroes, units, HQ, etc.). But the game is all about the war raging across Gladius. There's no diplomacy, no truces, no welcoming committees. It's all SM bolter fire, Ork choppaz, Tyranid acid, and Necro gauss the whole time. You are not there to just build and survive, but to dominate and destroy. It's all good fun, but just know that going in--war, war, and more war. The problems with the game are worth mentioning. There are no voices for the units, which is inexcusable. Fortunately, there is a very well-done mod called Too Many Voices that adds an array of voices for each race. Also, while you play on randomized maps, the color and terrain palette is rather limited. Moreover, the game does not have a map editor, which is rather odd. Another mod that you should get is one that disables a neutral unit called Enslavers. It really ruins the early game by mind controlling your units. The game only crashed one time for me, so no big problem with stability. Highly recommended! 4/5
Overall, I enjoyed D:OS2. I didn't play the first game, but this one was easy enough to get into. It has a chiche story arc, where a lowly prisoner is destined to become a god, much like the Baldur's Gate and Elder Scroll games. The gameplay mechanics are logical and fairly easy to learn, and the 4 party members that I had were all well scripted and fun to play. The game actually has very good writing and narration. It's pretty and has solid (mostly British) voice acting, and the music and sound effects are quite nice. Baldur's Gate 2 is still the gold standard for party-based fantasy RPGS, but this one is in the same tradition and does it justice. The problems of D:OS2 can mostly be overlooked, but a few of them wear on you after a while. The game doesn't give you good clues about where to go next in some of the quests or what to do. Thus, you'll either spend hours pointlessly wandering around or have to do some searching online for answers. This especially becomes more common toward the end of the game. Relatedly, the in-game journal becomes a bit of a mess by the late game and isn't quite useful at keeping you informed or directing your actions. The game has several puzzles, and a few will stump you (again, back to searching online for answers). The difficulty level can spike in certain fights. Either you will have to spend hours grinding levels and equipment to win them later or you can reduce the difficulty level in the main menu. I did the latter; grinding has never been fun to me and is a sign of poor game design in my opinion. This is a long game with lots of quests and things to do. If you don't mind using a walk-through guide occasionally and dealing with quite a bit of reloading of saves on the higher difficulty levels, then there is some fun to be had here. Definitely worth playing if you can buy it at a discount and have the time and patience to get through some of the puzzles and harder fights.
I played about 8 hours of this before it lost my interests. The main problem is that it is trying to be a real-time strategy game and a role-playing game and does neither well. The RTS part is old-school resource collecting and base building. It offers no innovations that were not in Warcraft 3 15 years ago. The RPG portion is a bit more interesting, with some character development, questing, and decent voice acting. But the need to occasionally build bases and armies is a big distraction. This might not be so bad if the interface was better. But as it is, you might struggle to figure out how to access the right abilities, spells, buildings, and so on during heated battles. I didn't have any problems with frame rates, though the load screens could be long. The game is beautiful and sound effects are fine, but I struggle to remain interested in the gameplay and story.
I enjoyed the first Witcher game, but could not get into the second one. Given all of the great reviews for Witcher 3, I thought I'd give it a shot. After 5 hours of gameplay, it completely failed to maintain my interest. The pacing is off, and nothing especially interesting happens for the first several hours. The game is pretty, but the exploration felt generic. You went to one village, then into the countryside, killed a couple of drowners, ran from a alghoul or pack of bandits, then wash, rinse, and repeat. The UI and controls are serviceable but a bit too layered and busy for my taste. Ten years ago, I would have stuck with such a game to see if things improved. However, now with so many games available and a backlog of games that I still need to play, I don't really have time to sink 4-5 hours into a game and still wonder whether it's worth the effort. Anyhow, I still have fond memories of the first game, and I guess that will have to be enough.
I love the Warhammer 40K universe. Dawn of War (DoW) was my introduction, and I have been looking for good W40K games ever since I first played it back in 2005. Sanctus Reach, unlike DoW, is a turn-based game, which is closer to its table-top roots. Unless you are into the long, tedious slogs of table-top games, where you move around units and obsess on stats, this game will probably not hold your attention long. The models are well done, and the special effects are good enough. Sounds and voices are good as well. However, the campaign gets boring quickly and certainly does not have an interesting story. You are mostly capturing points on a game board and holding them until the turn-timer runs out. Thankfully, you do get to select your units before each fight, and they level up and improve. But other than that, there is nothing exciting about the gameplay. I made the mistake of buying the expansions, which I am just not inspired enough to play. Anyhow, if you are looking for a good W40K game, try DoW1 or DoW2 (definitely skip DoW3). Both are great, especially DoW: Soulstorm and the other expansions for the first game. W40K: Space Marine is a good first-person-shooter rump worth playing, too. I bought W40K: Gladius and will play it before long. It's gotten decent reviews and looks good. Anyhow, unless you are just too curious about Sanctus Reach and can find it at a deep discount, don't bother. It got very tiring to me long before the campaign ended.
