When this game was first released I was not sure if I was going to like it. From defending the whole planet to just a single city? How can this be any fun? Well...it is. :) The GUI will take a bit to get used to, but it is nothing too bad. The globe has been replaced by a city, the enemies are still aliens but also human factions....yes factions. While the alien invaders in the past (pre this game) were defeated, the Earth was left mostly uninhabitable apart from this city. Or something like that. There are MANY factions (police, government, various companies, alien sympathizers, etc) each with their own agenda. You have to be careful how you deal with them all. Any of them can be infiltrated by aliens and even taken over by them. With a mix of carrot and stick, you have to deal with them. To help you there are military, police and even civilian versions of weapons and vehicles. Plus anything you might capture from the aliens to help you with research for more and better assets. The battles in the global, eh I mean city, map require a more hands on approach. You can give direct orders to any of your units to follow a specific strategy (for example fly as high as possible and use long range attacks only) trying to shoot down enemy vessels. Be it UFOs or enemy faction vehicles. When the game turns into a land battle then you get to choose who (soldiers) to send to deal with the enemy. When they arrive you have two options, one to fight in turn based mode as in the previous games in the series, or two to fight in real time. I do not advice the real time mode, but that is because I prefer the more detailed approach of turn based battles. You have more options this time around (compared to the previous 2 games) but overall the same difficulty remains. If you play stupid, you will lose. There is a very nice variety of vehicles, land battle locations, AI for factions and even city maps. The game is even larger than previous games. It's a great X-Com game.
Alien sightings, alien abductions, they are all real. More than real, they are an every day occurrence and it is clear to everyone, they are here and they mean us plenty of harm. The governments of this planet decide to create a special force to deal with the threat. They are going to have to defend human population, investigate sightings and in the end, defeat this alien threat. You are the leader of this human elite force. The X-Com team. The game has two main parts. One is the global view where you see the planet. Here the time runs in real time, or faster, or paused, depending on your setting. From here you can build bases, equip soldiers. Research new weapons, techs and whatever you find during your time as the commander of X-Com. You will need to make sure to pay closer attention to the governments which actively support your operation. If one of them gets infiltrated enough, or is disappointed with your protection of their country, they will withdrawn from the project. Too much of that will mean both you risking running out of funds and losing the war (game). Build fighter planes to go after enemy UFOs. If you manage to take them down, send troops to investigate and deal with any remaining aliens. At any point you will get aliens attacking cities, villages, going on abduction missions, etc. It is up to you to protect humanity. During land battles the game turns into a pure turn based game. Every soldier has action points which can be used for a variety of actions, moving, firing are but two of them. When you finish with all your troops actions, or just want to end your turn after having an ambush ready, click end turn and let the enemy AI play. You will die. You will lose. You will curse the game. You will love it and come back for more. This is one of the best strategy games ever created. Suggestions 1) Turn off the lights and play at night. 2) Make sure the music is on. 3) Get ready to become a masochist as you will lose and want more
For a reboot/remake that is. It is very faithful to the original Pirates! You begin in an open world with a background story and try to do whatever you want. You can become a pirate, a mercenary for a European power (or more), a trader, etc, it's up to you. At the same time you can go after the story of the game, finding and releasing members of your family which were kidnapped years ago. There is no time limit to either of them, other than the overall time limit on how good is your health. Time limit which can be expanded by taking the medicine "perk" and by finding and using various items in the world. I hate time limits in games but this is really nothing to worry about. It's barely noticeable. The main part of the game has you in command of a ship (or fleet of ships, with direct control of one) traveling in the Caribbean sea and doing whatever you want to. When you wish you can fight other ships. This jumps you to a "mini game" where you control the ship with similar control method and try to sink the opponents. Your ship(s) can be upgraded (depending on the port) with items which can increase the type of ammo it can carry, the type of sails, extra armor, etc etc. If you are lucky you can also find special crew which provide bonuses to your crew or ship. For example you can get someone who provides increased morale, or someone who increases the turn rate of your ship, etc. During ship battle you may proceed (if you wish or if the enemy captain boards your ship) on a sword battle aboard one of the ships. There the game turns into a 1 on 1 battle where you try to defeat the enemy captain. The same type of mini game is also in other 1 on 1 combat scenarios like if....well, I don't want to spoil it for you. :) There is a word limit for this review so I won't continue with more details. What matters is that this is one of the best games that you will come back to it every now and then. Make sure to play your first game on the easiest level :p
In some ways a Total War game in space. As other 4X games, you get to rule the expansion in this (random with options or scenario) galaxy of your chosen empire/race. There is not a huge number of different races, but there is very good diversity in how they look, feel and expand. Pros and Cons for every race, traits, exist. For example the humans get to use space lanes to travel between the stars which limits their expansion to where the lanes lead to and from. But, later on they can develop technologies which make traveling through them a very very fast way of traveling. The meat of the game is the turn based strategy map gameplay. You choose where to build ships, where to move your ships, how to develop your systems (with sliders), diplomacy etc. The battles can be automated if you prefer to focus on this part of the game. The galaxy map and GUI is beautiful, although it might take some while to get used to how you look around the galaxy. Research trees are randomized. Just because you got technology tree X in one game, it doesn't mean your scientists will find it and research it next time. You thought things were hard with shields? Try without lol. It's a lovely change from the norm as it provides not just an extra challenge but also more diversity to gameplay and you are forced to develop new strategies. The AI can be hard and have no doubt, you will lose a lot till you get the hang of it. The battles are in real time with 3D, lots of 3D. The graphics are not as impressive as they used to be, but they are damn fine and look really nice even in 2016. Your ships show on them the damage they get. If a turret is destroyed, you can see it. If parts of the ship are on fire, you can see it, etc. The controls are similar to RTS games, but there are differences. You will need to practice. Overall a very good 4X game. Among the top 10 of 4X games set in space, ever.
For those who know the Tropico series, this is like a less complicated (not less deep) version of them, set in around the time period of the title. You start a game in an archipelago which contains X number of islands and usually have AI players too, controlling their own little "empire". There is a completely neutral trader who provides with goods all the players, for a price. There are mini missions/quests (bring me X amount of X good and you get a bonus), not needed to do them, but they can be very profitable. There are shipwrecks (goody huts) around the world which if you find and get with one of your ships you can earn a variety of goods/money/etc. You develop your colony on your starting island of choice, more or less as you do in the beginning of a game of Colonization, only that the island you land on is yours and yours alone, unless of course down the line someone invades you. You colony is made of your people and the buildings you construct. From places to live to farms, woodcutter huts, to other far more complicated structures. You try to provide whatever the people require, for starters food, then churches, specific goods, luxuries etc. When you manage to reach certain level of satisfaction (and any necessary goods to go with), your colony advances level, which allows your citizens to advance and become more profitable through taxes, but also more demanding. Advancing your colony provides access to more complicated structures and lines of production. Which provide specific goods, which help with making life easier and more profitable for you. At the same time you get access to better military units, which can be used to defend or attack others. No island is fully self sufficient, even if it lacks something which you don't need right now. You can trade with the free trader or any AI player. You can set auto trade routes or manually give orders (not advised) It's a beautiful deep fun strategy game which is hard to the newbie, but worth learning.
Good game. I played a couple of hours each day for about a week. Overall it took me about 19 hours. In my party it was the sorcerer, werewolf, cultist, minotaur. (you can pick your heroes) The fact that I actually sat down and played a game to finish within a week, it's quite rare of me lately. This should tell you something. In many ways it is a linear experience, but I just didn't mind. If nothing, since the whole game takes place "underground" it was logical. I think the best part of the game is how straightforward experience it is. The battles were from hard to easier to hard, very hard, OMG ARE YOU KIDDING ME, hard and the very last hour where it became easy. Overall a fun experience. I highly suggest this game to people who (like me) always found dungeon crawlers interesting, but never managed to complete one, for the high difficulty in puzzles, getting lost all the time, or the "got you!" moments. This is not Skyrim, Albion, Arcanum, Two Worlds, this is an experience where you have to lead your group of 4+1 anti-heroes through a journey of constant fights, to freedom. It's a fun game with a ton of turn based battles and an interesting ending. Satisfying ending. If there was something I didn't like is the GUI which some times didn't feel 100% right. Also the music which cannot be turned down, so I had to mute the game from the Windows Volume Mixer. Lastly there were a few puzzles (ie doors) which cannot be opened, feels like they were broken (script wise). Thankfully none of them affected the experience. Good game.
One of the best charming/full of character RPGs ever. Yes it is not perfect, but any minor flaws are just lost in this very fun game. You start aboard a spaceship and end up on an unexplored planet. The planet was supposed to be far from habitable. Instead of a barren planet you encounter....you are heavily injured. You pass out. Gameplay wise the game has top down and first person exploration. Usually the first person exploration for caves, dungeons and other similar places. Battles take play in a turn based format where you place your characters in a "board" and you give orders to them, then watch the battle unfold in first person view, very similar to a myriad RPGs from the 80s. The music and graphics are superb. The whole "trying to survive on an alien planet" theme works wonderfully. There is some nudity...kind of. I mean, they are not exactly humans, but in case you are worried about these things, there are tits out there. Overall this is an RPG which once you play it for a few hours, you will always remember it. I still remember the original box (very flimsy thing that was). Great game, if you like fantasy RPGs with a touch of sci-fi, turn based battles and beautiful visuals and audio, this is the RPG for you.
My review is more for the original version and not this remastered version with better graphics and small changes. This game is a linear FPS, set in a dystopian future, taking place mostly underground in former metro stations and tracks of Moscow. There are parts outside, very dangerous parts, but most fighting is taking place indoors or underground. There is some freedom in some parts where you can choose how to attack groups of enemies and even how to avoid them. You can also choose to search for hidden (out of sight) loot. Most of the freedom you have is down to that. The other options (choices for storyline) are relative to how in general you play the game (violently or not), and a couple of choices you make at the appropriate parts. All of them change a little bit some parts of the game and the ending. It's not Fallout, but at least there is some replayability in terms of getting a slightly different story and ending. The game looked great even before this Redux version, the sound is great, I have music off in all FPS games so I have no idea how good or bad that is. The fighting is very good, although there are times where I wish I had access to more normal/modern weapons. "Pulling the trigger" feels right and definitely puts a smile into your face. There are parts of the game, very few, where you almost have to play in a stealth way. If you are terrible at stealth, you are going to suffer till you make it through them. If you also hate stealth, you might even take a small break. Always remember this though, be patient, they are very small parts. There is a relatively small variety of enemies, humans and non humans. At no point you feel that is an issue. Everything in this game oozes with atmosphere. It's one of the best FPS games of the post 2000 era and a must play if you like FPS and single player FPS at that. One warning, this is not an open world game as Fallout or even STALKER. It is worth 100% the price of admission even at full price.
I played it to completion 2 times on the Xbox 360 and then I got it for the PC on another store, planning on getting it here too DRM free. First of all, any low frame rate at some points, is the same but worse on the Xbox. and thankfully does not affect the game at all. I am not going to spend any more on that. Now, the actual game. It's a third person action game with shooting, melee fighting, driving, piloting parts. You do a lot of them and with the mouse it's a breeze. It's very similar to the 3D GTA games, though at least for me, it surpasses them in that it never stops being fun. I like the GTA games but I never finished one simply because I got bored several hours in, or in the rare case I found a mission impossible to complete. I never had this happen to me with SR2 (or the first one). The shooting feels very good with the physics looking/feeling amazing. Not perhaps full realistic, but Hollywood realistic. The game while also being extremely violent, all the time, doesn't have the somber, almost depressing parts the GTA games do. I mentioning them in case you either love or hate that in GTA so you know what you are up to here. The driving mechanics has been blasted by some for not being as good as later GTA games and to that I have nothing to say cause I just don't know how they reached that conclusion, especially with GTA IV which was the main competitor to this game. There is no competition, here it feels like you are driving arcade cars and there it feels you are driving miniature ships. SR2 is a very large game. Both in terms of map size and in terms of content. You get a butt load of side missions, optional. They can be anything from driving hookers to customers, then trying to avoid paparazzi from taking photos of your clients. To doing drug drops. To getting trucks filled with shit and spraying buildings and people and of course the police. The story missions are full of action, on foot or not. Great game.
