Damascus

4/10 - An exellent game for what it tries to be, but an 80' cardboard tabletop combat game is simply to booring and repetitive to hold any kind of appeal to me. The nostalgia wore off after 5 hours, and that was that.

8/10 - This game is quite undervalued. It seemed rather simplistic when I first started playing, like a typical ipad-game, and I didn't like it. However, it turned out to be rather deep once I got under its skin and it's got some entirely unique qualities that make this an excellent 4x. Unique 1: Your viewpoint is from that of a military umbrella-government that rule 3 human empires under martial law. This because you're fleeing home due an alien invasion. The challenge in this game then comes as much from internal strife between the 3 empires under your control and their wish to end your martial rule sooner than later, or even dominate all humans in your sector, as from deadly xenos. If you don't succeed in keeping the power of the 3 in balance you'll see a slew of detrimental effects on the planets affected by their politics, which in turn can cripple your ability to fight off external enemies. Very appealing game mechanics. Unique 2: You're calling the rest of the exodus fleet, letting them know you've settled. Your population growth doesen't come from new births but from immigration. As a result population growth is out of your control as long as you have a place to settle the newcomers. This result in a very different early game from other 4x games, where there is no value in expanding to new uninhabited worlds just to have more places to grow population. You total population growth is the same with one world per faction as with 10 worlds, as long as there is room to settle the newcomers. This make the early gameplay and expansion in general far more interesting than in other 4x. Another interesting facet of this game stem from the abilities the 3 factions afford your united realm. You get a choise of different factions to pick your 3, and they can have abilities like skilled pilots from superior millitary traditions. But if you choose to base all your united millitary from out of that faction during the game (to get the strongest millitary possible) that would lead to the millitary faction declearing war on the other defenceless ones. This means you cannot simplify your choise of factions into "roles" based on their specialty, but must maintain a more complex view of the composition. There are other less appealing game-mechanics that prevent this game from truly shining. There are some rather easy-to-find strategies that the AI simply can't handle. Some of the graphics is unappealing, not just low quality (I don't like the ship models). The fuel and logistic mechanics could be more inspired. But despite all this, Star Traders 4x remains a solid 8/10.

TLTR: 3/10. Bad UI. Bad gameplay. Bad board-game port. Bad graphics. Bad sound. Bad skirmish-mode. Bad campaign. Good not one thing I could find. I've been trying to force myself to play this game in the hopes of eventually liking it, but but I cannot find a single redeeming quality. 28. Des. 2015 - One year after release. UI: Mouse-clicks need to hit the correct pixel to choose units, meaning I need to click 3-9 times every time I want to choose a new unit. UI is otherwise very clunky and dependent on on-display buttons to control your units, which slows down gameplay to a crawl. Plenty of UI glitches causing unit-control to fail and causing a turnover for my most powerful units. General Gameplay: Developers chose an engine what was unable to handle the board-game. The result is a game uning the Warmashine brand without being Warmachine. Everything in this game is a poor look-alike. The difference in particular doesen't use the PC-medium to improve gameplay, rather being a result of poor development and decisions. The developers also doesen't have a clue, evident in the many many unelegant solutions for gameplay and presentation. They made mistakes I haven't seen in PC-games since the 90s. Graphics and Sound: All the lines are too soft, affording the game a generic cartoonish look. The colors are way to vibrant. The music and sounds are very repetitive and I turned them off after playing for about an hour. I was getting a headache. Skirmish and Multiplayer: The maps are very small, leaving no real room for manouvering. The game is so poor that the entire worldwide playerbase can be measured in two digits, making finding players for mm a chore. Campaign: The missions are drawn-out and have an unappealing design. The dialogue make me cringe, and are partially unskippable. Cutsceenes are ugly, meaningless and unskippable. The mission objectives are very unclear (Example: Protect the train - but the train is 1/4 of the scenario graphics and there is no way of knowing which pixel you need to protect or how fast and under which conditions the enemy can harm it. Example: Move down the gorge - but the gorge have 3 directions and there is no way of knowing which way is "down".)

11/10 - A genuinely unique game that does everything it tries very well. It captures why the breeding focus of the nobility of old occurred, well within plausibility. Supreme range of action. Fantastic freedom of choice. Mods take this title from a 10/10 and well into the realm of the assumed impossible. CKII is a grand strategy game played from a dynasty perspective. You view the world through the perspective of the head of your family, and manipulate the world around you through him and what influence over others he wield. You have to maintain your holdings and manouver the world while grooming your heir so he's capable of taking over your dynasty when you die. A brilliant game about political manouvering in a faudal world. This game has many dlc, but they add enough to the game to feel worthwhile as opposed to a scam. The best part of the game is the mod-community. They take CKII out of medieval realism and into fantasy fiction. They have had enough time to mature into full-blown polished full-featured titles within themselves. My current favourite is Geheimnisnacht, a Warhammer mod set to the vampire wars (IC2100) and ranging most of the planet and races. Incredible!!! The mod community make CKII blow the scale of what a best game can be. 11/10.

Gem-Alert! An amazing game I'd rate at 10/10 in spite of obvious flaws. I tripped over this little beauty by chance 2 days after release, can you believe it :) Graphics 2/10 Sound 1/10 Dialogue 3/10 Character building 10/10 Tecnological development as a strategic mechanic 11/10 Tactical gameplay 12/10 Overall 10/10 Templar Battleforce delivers what I always wanted when playing a Games Workshop sci-fi computer game. No fantasy elements or board-game mechanics. Instead it fully utilize what the computer can afford a tactical squad-game. Superb tactical mechanics, fantastic technology tree and brilliant character building! Raiding derelict space-ships while outmanouvering xenos is finally as fun as you thought it would be. I recoment turning off the in-game "music" and put Atrium Carceri or Lustmord on Spotify in the background. Enjoy!

This 10/10 is for the best writing and rpg-presentation of any game in history. Game-mechanics are better than dnd, but still need both refining and further development.

Five reasons this game is absolute **** e ! 1. I needed community support to even start the game. 2. Game-mechanics are somewhat boring. Rather limited options for doing anything, and unless you know the tricks you'll be doing absolutely nothing the first half of the game. 3. This game is drudgery galore. It's main game-mechanic consist of organizing your troops into a proper chain of command. Doing this is about as time-consuming as in real life. A clunky and unintuitive interface makes this chore into your own personal hell. 4. HoI3 is spent waiting for something interesting to happen, but it never does. 5. You have to go online to learn how to play the game.

Five reasons this game is absolute **** e ! 1. I needed community support to even start the game. 2. Game-mechanics are somewhat booring. Rather limited options for doing anything, and unless you know the tricks you'll be doing absolutely nothing the first half of the game. 3. This game is drudgery galore. It's main game-mechanic consist of organizing your troops into a proper chain of command. Doing this is about as time-consuming as in real life. A cluncky and unintuitive interface makes this chore into your own personal hell. 4. HoI3 is spent waiting for something interesting to happen, but it never does. 5. You have to go online to learn how to play the game.

Five reasons this game is absolute **** e ! 1. I needed community support to even start the game. 2. Game-mechanics are somewhat booring. Rather limited options for doing anything, and unless you know the tricks you'll be doing absolutely nothing the first half of the game. 3. This game is drudgery galore. It's main game-mechanic consist of organizing your troops into a proper chain of command. Doing this is about as time-consuming as in real life. A cluncky and unintuitive interface makes this chore into your own personal hell. 4. HoI3 is spent waiting for something interesting to happen, but it never does. 5. You have to go online to learn how to play the game.

Five reasons this game is absolute **** e ! 1. I needed community support to even start the game. 2. Game-mechanics are somewhat booring. Rather limited options for doing anything, and unless you know the tricks you'll be doing absolutely nothing the first half of the game. 3. This game is drudgery galore. It's main game-mechanic consist of organizing your troops into a proper chain of command. Doing this is about as time-consuming as in real life. A cluncky and unintuitive interface makes this chore into your own personal hell. 4. HoI3 is spent waiting for something interesting to happen, but it never does. 5. You have to go online to learn how to play the game.

Five reasons this game is absolute **** e ! 1. I needed community support to even start the game. 2. Game-mechanics are somewhat booring. Rather limited options for doing anything. 3. Once you become a Great Power you must spend the rest of the game watching the influence interface, trying to jocky your sphere of influence into the AIs. About as fun as watching an intrument-panel on a random factory-machine. 4. Every 5-20 seconds the game throws a splash-screen in your face, demanding you press "confirm" or make a choice that have a miniscule impact on your game. Until you do, it will either lock the game in pause or block your view while the game is still running. 5. You have to go online to learn how to play the game.

Five reasons this game is absolute **** e ! 1. I needed community support to even start the game. 2. Game-mechanics are somewhat booring. Rather limited options for doing anything. 3. Once you become a Great Power you must spend the rest of the game watching the influence interface, trying to jocky your sphere of influence into the AIs. About as fun as watching an intrument-panel on a random factory-machine. 4. Every 5-20 seconds the game throws a splash-screen in your face, demanding you press "confirm" or make a choice that have a miniscule impact on your game. Until you do, it will either lock the game in pause or block your view while the game is still running. 5. You have to go online to learn how to play the game.

Five reasons this game is absolute **** e ! 1. I needed community support to even start the game. 2. Game-mechanics are somewhat booring. Rather limited options for doing anything. 3. Once you become a Great Power you must spend the rest of the game watching the influence interface, trying to jocky your sphere of influence into the AIs. About as fun as watching an intrument-panel on a random factory-machine. 4. Every 5-20 seconds the game throws a splash-screen in your face, demanding you press "confirm" or make a choice that have a miniscule impact on your game. Until you do, it will either lock the game in pause or block your view while the game is still running. 5. You have to go online to learn how to play the game.

Verdict: Ok game, for what it tries to be. KoPnP is all about character-building and fantasy combat. Char-build is quite simplistic, but in a good way. The combat becomes repetitive after a while, but it's ok until it gets booring. KoPnP does not deliver an enganging story or personalities, but rather a parody on pnpRPG. It does that well enough to make me laugh.

Verdict: Ok game, for what it tries to be. ToME is all about character-building and fantasy combat. It delivers well enough on the first account, with interesting choises and hard priorities. The combat becomes repetitive after a while, but it's ok until it gets booring. ToME does not deliver an enganging story, personalities or anything of interest beyond combat and character-building. Nor does it attempt to.

Left me craving more. The strategy part of the game ends up having rather spesific solutions for each battle. This is well-crafted enough to be quite enjoyable. The mercenary-mech aspect of Sunrider is also very nice, where I find myself enjoying slowly developing my carrier and my fighters. The economy is tight enough to keep me prioritizing througout. The VN-part of the game have some really wierd quirks that is gonna take a long time to grow on me. I guess it's part of the genre or something. Stuff like the staffs head popping up to convey their personality at very odd moments. Stuff like the bridge being empty outside of my leutenant who keeps shouting orders towards the seemingly empty chairs. Stuff like laserbeams that bends in vacuum. I would have liked being able to make some decisions on which figters to employ, but within the frames of economy of this game I know of nothing I would trade away to get it.

This game is barely ok. The story feels copy-pasted with a few twists that just seem silly in leu of the original. RPG elements are blind, which doesen't cater to me. I would have enjoyed this title if there was proper clues to help make decisions, instead of just having to fumble blindly through the story.

A fine and addictive Civ-with-sorcery experience. Good theme with unique elements. Clear improvement on the original because it's gameplay is more consentrated, less drawn out. Biggest con is a useless AI. You'll encounter your final opponent at turn 200, only to find he's still in his initial build-up stage, with a single world, 3 cities and a handful of first-tier units. Only thing that can make you loose in this game is scripted events. A fun alternative to CIv5 in multiplayer.

Wasteland 2 is unfortunately a booring game. Four critical flaws make it so. First, it doesen't really capture the post-apocalyptic feel. The sounds aren't haunting and lonely enough, the people you meet doesen't have character enough, the narrative doesen't emphasise it enough, and the world is more absurd than gritty. Second, the story doesen't grip me. It's bland and seems uninspired, more like a backdrop for laying down lead than anything else. It fails to motivate me, making leveling and shooting the only motivation to keep playing. Thirdly, because the game fails to convey the feel and story of the wasteland, each new area is just a hub for more generic tasks. Exploring in this game just means finding another safe to crack, another lock to fiddle with and another bandit to shoot. In other words, exprloring is booring. Fourth, the leveling is also booring. The formula is too easy, has too little crunch, too little character and feels kinda pointless. Once you figure out that the only thing that matters from character creation is action points, initiative and skillpoints, you realize that the best party consist of 4 clones, with some small ajustments to one of them to make sure you have good range of sight. There is almost no correlation between stats and skill, meaning you can pin any skill on any character with the same effect. This is ok if you don't want to make character building a focus, but it also removes character building as a motivation to play on. Further, this game reward not spending your skillpoints until you really need them, which makes the treshhold for each level completely irrelevant. In contrast, Fallout 1 and 2 was the opposite in all of the above, and it's what made them shine imo. So I'm halfway into the game. I don't really care about what just happened in Arizona and I don't care about what's gonna happen in California. Why should I keep playing? I don't care about what happens the next level. The story ain't gonna improve. The feel ain't gonna improve. I don't care about shooting my gun just once more or opening just one more lock or disarming just one more trap. I've had my fill of generic tasks, and I'm just boored.

A short and cute game. Stealth around 3 persons in a house to uncover cues to make progress. Make some hard priorities at the end of each scene to shape the vacation and ensuing life of the 3 aforementioned persons. I spent 4 hours in all doing one run-through. Had an enjojable time, although I got bored after roughly 1 hour and took a break every 2nd-3rd scene. End-verdict: Ok. Worth getting at 75% off.

This game is 100% linear. It's extremly easy on the hardest difficulty setting. The monsters can't even hurt you. You'll be able to figure out the plot before you even meet the first monster, but your character wont aknowledge the fact, and continue on oblivious. The game is built on a good concept, but the devs had no idea of how to make it work, and it doesen't. Pity.

My 5/10 is a neither here nor there grade. Most likely any Dominions game will be a 0 or 10 for you. It's a 5 for me exactly because I'm neither here nor there. I love it, but it may be more work than this kind of fun is worth for me. Graphics and sound would have been good 20 years ago. Strategic gameplay is maybe the deepest of any non-abstract computer game ever made, but/and also entirely unbalanced, unforgiving and uncompromisingly hard. This is to say, you need to know exactly what you're doing at every point in the game or you'll just suddenly die (no matter how well you seem to be doing) and have to start over (or find another game if doing multiplayer). There is no save (Although you can backup the game-files manually to effectively make one). While this caters to the target audience perfectly (this game is 10/10 if spending about a year full-time, studying its every little nuance, appeals to you), but makes it a less than good game objectively. The fantasy themes are very well presented, and the best part of the game is how it lets you create The Lion or The Witch of Narnia, or Gandalf or Sauron, or a DnD Lich-King, or a Titan of the Greek Mythologies or just about any classic powerful being as a pretender to godhood. No other game on any media have been able to mix a fraction of the themes or come close to portraying them as well as Illwinter. They also deserve kudos for being Indie before the concept was concieved. Dominions 4 is a clear improvement to Dom 3, affording better graphics and implementing some important re-balancing. If you come from Dom 3 you'll probably be dissapointed that your old best strategies will be less sound, but I think this make it a better game in the long run. The pricing is too steep in my view, but if you know you're gonna like it, it's well worth getting on a rabated sale.

Talisman is a very poor board game to begin with. Main game mechanic is frustrating the player. A dice game that goes on for 3-8 hours. The Digital edition is a bad port of the board game. It forces you to watch hundreds of die-roll animations every game. It's bug-ridden and you can not expect anything to work at any time - it will just not function, at random critical moments. Interaction with the game is often non-intuitive and cluncky. You can forget multiplayer as it crashes at random roughly 9 of 10 games. Talisman Digital Edition runs a DLC greed-scheme, where they offer you the game piecemeal for an insane price. This is as bad as it gets.

Dishonored is the best stealth-game available. It also have a very cool steam-punk setting and nice **** story is ok, but the missions the story provide a backdrop for are excellent.

Best game of the series. ............................................. ............................................. .............................................

I don't really care for puzzle-games, but the music score and the theme for this game is extremely well-crafted! The metaphors in this game coin it's theme perfectly, and tell a very real story. Impressive!

A simulator with some potential. A trucking simulator could be an important application for the PC, but two flaws stand in its way of achieving any form of usability. The first critical flaw is simulated head-turning. When navigating actual traffic you need to look around. ETS2 does not have a working solution for doing this, instead offering the possibility to slowly and inaccurately turn your pow around. As a result you won't be able to achieve proper speed of decision-making. The second flaw is the "realistic" turning wheel, which does not translate well into PC-controllers. This makes controlling the truck actually quite a bit harder than in real life.

Current cost of this game with DLCs is 2100 euro. Two-thousand one-hundred euro. This for simulated train-piloting. Crash and burn ****! ...

There are so many fantastic things about this game that I don't know where to start.. ..for the first half of the game. The game then deteriorates to a semi-boring shooter. I've read a rumor somewhere that the development team was fired and replaced. I don't know if that's true, but it would certainly explain why the game halfway through suddenly goes from being the best rpg ever made to a half-arsed shooter with rpg elements. Still, the first half of the game is so good it deserves 10/10 even in light of the second half. The modding community have also made rather good mods, that changes game-mechanics and makes available sabbat bloodlines.

This 0/10 is for putting this game up for sale on stem for 19 euro 8 years after its original release. Price aside this game deserves to be a 4/10 in 2013. Graphics and sound would have been good 20 years ago. Strategic gameplay is maybe the deepest of any computer game ever made, but/and also entirely unbalanced, unforgiving and uncompromisingly hard. This is to say, you need to know exactly what you're doing at every point in the game or you'll just suddenly die (no matter how well you seem to be doing) and have to start over (or find another game if doing multiplayer). There is no save. While this caters to the target audience perfectly (this game is 10/10 if spending about a year full-time, studying its every little nuance, appeals to you), but makes it a less than good game objectively. The fantasy themes are very well presented, and the best part of the game is how it lets to create The Lion or The Witch of Narnia, or Gandalf or Sauron, or a DnD Lich-King, or a Titan of the Greek Mythologies or just about any classic powerful being as a pretender to godhood. No other game on any media have been able to mix a fraction of the themes or come as close to portraying them as well as Illwinter. They also deserve kudos for being Indie before the concept was concieved. I wish Illwinter good luck with the upcoming Dominions 4, but if you're curios about this game you should find another way of procuring it other than buying it. Illwinter does not deserve your money, demanding what is full-price for a brand new top-notch indie game for an 8-year old indie w 20y-old graphics w an extremely narrow target audience.

This 0/10 is for the price of Rome II and for exploiting the DLC-concept far beyond the point of shame. At this point it doesn't even matter what the game has to offer.

SH is archaic in a bad way. Compared with todays board-games SH was victim of its time, gaming-culture and the limitations of table-top miniature games. This computer-game is a port of SH the board-game, interpreted with clunky, cartoonish graphics with over-saturated colors. Full Control Studios don't add anything to gameplay, and they fail miserably at coining the atmosphere of exploring a WH40 space hulk. Welcome to glossy coloured warhammer, where space marines spend their spare time polishing and waxing each others helmet, and the genestealers are polite enough not to leave any clawmarks or scratches anywhere, instead making sure to keep the dust from collecting in the hallways. No wonder they are attacking those humans, as their helmets obviously aren't clean enough and they have to chase them away to keep their beloved hallways dirt-free. They've priced this at 30 euro, where 3 euro would be appropriate. Don't buy this game, FCS does not deserve your money.

My Background: I've never played Shadowrun before, neither on pnp nor pc. I'm a great fan of dystopian cyberpunk, but I loathe the idea of elves and other fantasy races in sci-fi. Still, I was hyped and had fairly high hopes for this game because there is a severe lack of good cRPGs these days. Every HBS game I've played before SRR have been pure and utter so while hope where high expectations where low. Game Mechanics: Skills and abilities are somewhat minimalistic for a cRPG, both in number and stated function. They are however to the point and without a huge number of redundant and useless abilities. They are also numerous and deep enough to allow for strategy through character building in a meaningful way. Maybe more meaningful than many games with a more numerous and complex skill-set. This is an achievement from a game-design perspective. Furthermore they make full use of the skills through dialogue options like Fallout 1 and 2, and planescape: torment. This works really well, even better than in those original titles! The class-less system works perfectly, unlike many other popular cRPGs. At a glance the skill-system looks a bit like in the mass effect franchise, while the class-less feature can be compared to the Elder scrolls franchise. Both of them works a lot better in SRR than they do in the two blockbusters! Gameplay is real-time except for turn-based combat (like in xcom) and dialogue, just like in the first two fallout games. This works well. 2D Graphics put limitations on destruction of scenery, but compared to the gains of using 2D this matters little. There is plenty of object interaction such as looking for clues and analyzing them, hacking computers and security-networks, hacking the internet-like Matrix, finding hidden items and more. Character Concepts work way better than I could ever imagine. I felt bad chills going down my spine as I realized that my character concept probably worked best as an Elf(!), but decided to try it out regardless. Would I have to endure glittering nail-polish, pouty lips and pink ribbons in my hair? When I found a portrait that looked more like a Necron than an Elf my grin went from one metallic ear to the other. Who would have known that the concept of elf could actually add to the feel of the fiction?!.. I'm amazed! The Stock Campaign: HBS have made a very stylised «Sin City meets Blade Runner -ish» detective/agent story. They have just the right amount and type of clichés to make it work, and every element in the game contributes to this sci-fi noir feel. Both the characters and dialogue are mature and intelligently made. Fantastic story with no redundancy. Not once did I ask myself “why the heck am I doing this?!” Not once did I have to run errands to earn xp, or be left with the choice of being either an utter or a charity-running do-gooder. Not once was I forced into a random combat that felt out of place or redundant. It's incredibly liberating to once again play a cRPG that doesn't feel like a slaughterhouse grind. SRR do this better in its stock campaign than even Planescape: Torment did. It's not that you can avoid every combat, but rather that every darnedest one feels will-timed, proper and meaningful. Graphics: 2D background is beautiful and well done. Drawback no scenery destruction. Character sprites are undefined and ugly, but I find myself not caring much about this. Character Profile Pics are maybe the best I've seen in any game. Champaign Editor: Haven't tried it yet, but I'm gonna assume it's at least able to create the stock campaign, in which case it's brilliant compared to anything out there. Can't wait to try out user-created campaigns. State-of-the-Game: The game is quite stable and appears polished for the most part. Bad Drawbacks: Checkpoint based saving This is such a weak and unintelligent solution that really hurts gameplay. Pixel-clicking The activation area of sprites in the game are glitchy. Matters of Taste: The game is very linear in the sense that you don't have a choice in where to go next. The areas you move through is in essence a track. However, I'be found that in this game this is a strength, as it helps focus and remove redundancies from the story. Short Campaign: In my opinion a game should not drone on for the sake of adding game-hours. The campaign is compact 12 hours of constant fun. There is more fun baked into SSRs 12 hours than there is spread out amongst DAOs 60 hours or Skyrims 360 hours. Quality is equal to fun divided by time imho. A Conclution of Paradox: The package of SRR as a whole is so powerful that even with the minus 30% from checkpoint-saves, it deserves the very highest score possible. Doesn't mean that it cannot be better, just that even with this glaring flaw it's the very best of it's genre so far.

While this game is a bit limited in scope, it is by far the best first-person medieval combat simulator ever made. It obviously didn't live up to the vision of the designer in terms of making the fiction come alive, but for being best in class (even if it was only one of them) it deserve the highest mark.

In many ways a very good game. It was however somewhat ruined by repetitive and unimaginative maps. It captures a lot of the atmosphere of the wh40k universe, and the units feel unique and have interesting development options.

Because of the unique mod-ability of this game, it's still in 2013 one of the very best computer games of all time and the best of the total war series. The Third-Area mod makes for the best Lord of the Rings game ever made! The Call of Warhammer mod makes for the best Warhammer game ever made!

Silly fiction that can never decide between being hard-ass realistic and disney-nice. Silly dialogue. Map feels empty and contrastingly square, for lack of a better expression. Combat is a lot worse than the Heroes of Might and Magic formula, with an idiotic interpretation of ranged versus melee mechanics. Misc battlefield elements are pointless and boring. I really wanted to like this game,but its just really bad.

Arthur II tries to make a narrative for a story-driven fantasy game, and it does so fantastically! If you wanna enjoy this game you cannot expect the freedom of action that you have in the Total War series. The game expands as you progress through it, and the payoff is a good story and a world that feels more alive. When playing along with the constraints the design-choices puts on my game-play, this game shines like nothing I've played before!

While being far from perfect, this is the best civ-building strategy-game incorporating magic as a major feature ever made. The overhaul has improved the original Fallen Enchantress a bunch, and it has the same "just-one-more-turn" effect on me as the good civ-games have. A gem, this one.