Scritty

Played for 15 years and bought every version in those years. I play exclusively RTTS. I have tried DD and other modes. I don't enjoy them. I'm too old and my reactions too slow to complete online (I can't "get gud" - cause I already "got old") This year RTTS is - frankly terrible. You have one character. You can't create another. Pressing square in the start RTTS menu makes it look like you can - but once you create this "new player" you see they have the same looks, items and stats as your existing RTTS player. Being forced to do the two way story part every game... 20 minutes pitching not optional - I'm losing the will to live. Stats capped at 50. You get the other 50 by "wearing different clothes and equipping different cards" WTF!! After 18 hours play I have... 2 cards. A poor pair of gloves and a compression sleeve. Then you see. They want to FORCE YOU online or into Diamond Dynasty. I suspect they want to force you to open your wallet and buy stubs to buy equipment Because without it expect to play a real life 40-50 hours in AA and AAA Sliders cannot be altered without losing all XP. Why? Because the RTTS mode is linked to the online modes and they don't want people "cheesing" a superb player in RTTS and taking them online. I NEVER WANT TO PLAY ONLINE. Just give us a option at the beginning "This character can earn offline XP and cannot be used in online play if you press this button" Then let us alter the sliders. I get it. Online play is the essential step when converting a single player game into a profitable "software as a service" model. Frankly is that's the way San Diego Studios are going with MLB the show. They can stuff their game where the sun doesn't shine. If you are an RTTS player (and it looks like over 50% of players are) the game as it stands is complete garbage.

Summary. Decent game - but spongey controls and a game style far removed from AC. This is a game for people who like War for Middle Earth or similar. It's a mass melee combat game with very little left of the original AC formula. Bows are nerfed, assassinate opportunities are VERY rare and far between. Double wield axes and go in roaring or don't bother playing at all. In terms of stealth, assassination and the efficiency of bow combat this is a HUGE step down from even Odyssey and Origins - which themselves were huge steps down from the first few games. Having played every Assassins Creed game. Most to the end. Some several times. This one looks pretty good but the combat on PC using M+K is spongy and inaccurate. Firstly, stealth and traditional assassin gameplay is an option for maybe 20% of the game. At most. If you want to that - don't buy this game. Whereas Odyssey had a little less in the way of stealth than Origins and Origins about the same as Syndicate. This has a TON less than any AC game I've played (And as I said I've played all of them extensively). It just isn't an option for most of e game. This is far more like a game like War for Middle Earth. All about mass melee combat (even bows are VERY seriously nerfed) That might be Ok if the melee combat wasn't also pretty weak compared with previous games. Sometimes you can't block, often the knockback on foes does not work, there is a palpable delay between pressing the button and the action taking place. It doesn't feel right at all. I've loaded up Origins and Odyssey for comparison ad they are both spot on. Valhalla's combat really does feel spongey, delayed and inaccurate. This is not a game for traditional AC fans. This is a hack and slash game with more in common with Diablo than e legacy of AC. What with that and the really poor feel of controls, this is probably the last AC game I will buy.

It's Ok. But a mish mash of good and bad, The gameplay feels more proscriptive than it should. While there are multiple paths to success, there is an obvious best one in most campaign missions. I hear the same speech too often. The recruit speech is almost the same every time and I've not come across very many variations of accent. There are parkour "lite" things to do in the game, but these are done really badly. Some walls or barriers you can climb - others you can't Often there is no logic as to why you can't climb. You scale a 8 foot wall easily, then can't scale the next 7 foot high wall. Why? The gunplay is ok. The spider bot is overpowered but fun for a while. Recruiting is a waste of time. I've found no need to change character except where a mission demands I use someone specific - like a construction worker to use one of the large hover pad things. Most missions it really doesn't make much - if any - difference who you use. The graphics are good but even on a relatively high end PC running from NVME drive, a 8700K running at 4.9 Ghz all cores, 32 gigs of 3200 ram and a 2070 Super card there are stutters as (I think) textures are loaded in. The politics are ham fisted. Given the "thought and language" police that are everywhere in UK society in the last 10 years at the moment, destroying careers, destroying lives, insisting on increasingly worrying additions to legislation designed to curb freedom - come exclusively from the left wing. It feels like a "bait and switch" to pretend these issues are from the right wing as this game s awkwardly and transparently insists. Mind you left wing fascism is a "thing" these days and maybe that's what this is. That said it's easy to ignore the messages as although they are everywhere, they are so simplistic and un-nuanced that - when I played - I was soon in a different universe. It was so unlike reality that in my mind it soon wasn't and this was just "random made-up world"

The best game I've bought this year. Though I've only bought about 3 full priced games. I have well over 800 hours in XCOM 2 and bought the original Microprose terror from the Deep on UK release day in the 90's and completed it on the hardest level many times. This is pitched somewhere between the Firaxis games and the Microprose games in terms of depth. It has a lot of user QOL improvements, good graphics and despite a couple of bugs (Overwatch can be flakey) it is a great game already. The tutorial does a great job. It explains the basics but leaves so much to discover,a nd that is - after all - a HUGE part of the game. Discovering what to buildm what goes where. There does not seem to be a right way to win, different strategies seem to work if they are well thought out. But the game lets you discover much for yourself and for me that is far preferable to being hand held. After the tutorial you can do anything and everything - but only at a superficial level. The rest is for you to find out. That's the ideal tutorial as far as I'm concerned Discovery and imagination are key gameplay ideas that so many developers destroy by forcing you to play a certain way and explaining every nut and bolt of the game It's a lot more stable (for me) than XCOM 2 was at launch and looks considerably better, The geoscape is a vast improvement over the Firaxis game. The UI in the base is clean and simple to understand the aliens are wonderful and that game has become a classic with solid developer support, well priced and effective DLC's and a massive boost from an enthusiastic modding community. Phoenix Point starts in a better place (as far as I'm concerned) and with good support could (and perhaps should) be a better game in timer than XCOM 2 is with mods, DLC's and bug fixes. It's a solid game now. 50-60 hours for a game that costs quite a bit less than most AAA releases. I'll be playing this game a lot in the coming months. This and Factorio are the only two games I'll play till Spring probably. Wish I had more time for games and wish there were more games like this :)

Solid game on Ipad. plays well. Just over 3 gigs which is tiny compared to the 20+ gigs the PC version is. Price seems fair for a PC developed full game. On that - I have PC and most consoles. I know that the development cost for a game like this is in the tens of millions of dollars and so developing it for, and selling it on Ipad first for $4.99 with maybe 300,000 sales is never going to work. This game sold almost 5 million copies on Steam alone (See SteamSpy for details) 70% of them at the full $50 price tag. It's great that Ipad users get games like this to play - but we don't get many developed for us from scratch of this level, because financially it isn't possible. We get easy, cost effective conversions of already successful games that have paid of their development and R&D costs on their main sales platform, I've got this FF WotL, Darkest Dungeons and sever other games that were all on other platforms first. They all play really well on Ipad and I'm happy with that. Maybe if 2 million people would pay $30 for an Ipad game we'd gat premium games developed for Ios first? But if that day never comes I'm happy to be able to play some of the greatest games ever on a touch screen on the go even if it is a year or two after PC or console release. Seems a fair way to do things.

UPDATED FOR 2019. The Ipad version is now 64 bit. anti aliasing is now implemented and the one annoying inventory crash seems to have been fixed (playing through again on 2018 Ipad - not one crash in 20+ hours). Now a solid 8 out of ten. Loses a mark or two because the touch screen inventory system makes it slightly harder to use than it should. NOTE. The iPad and iPhone versions ARE NOT THE SAME (2 different listings on app store, 2 different downloads, different prices). I have no idea if the iPhone version plays well. I don't have it.

Very good game, and much cheaper than V4 which came out about the same time. Some of the missions are more puzzle than strategy (The massive enemy tank) and probably requires some grinding in skirmish mode to get your troops up to a level where beating this one is going to work. But other than that it's a great game. Enough depth and strategy and well worth the small asking price (as I write this it is less than half the price of V4 and almost as good)

It's ok. However I would argue that it isn't a strategy game. It's a puzzle game. Strategy makes very little difference. Puzzle solving makes all the difference. I would recommend this as a 9 to puzzle gamers and a 6 to strategy gamers. so 7.5 overall?

If you've never played a Harvest Moon or Rune Factory game before this might scratch an itch. The problem for this game is that **** Valley exists. **** Valley looks better, plays better has a LOT more content and is less than half the price. Graphics. I can see the idea "We have a 3D capable platform - so we better use it". But it isn;t good. The characters look "laid on" to the ground and their perspective to the ground they are on isn't right. Also by making them so big (yet not detailed) there is so much less of an area on screen. I am finding I'm getting disorientated all the time becasue so little is on the screen. The graphics aren't terrible but they aren;t that good and trhe move to 3D seems like a tick box rather than a well thought out feature. Gameplay The core gameplay is pure Harvest Moon. It isn't as precise as I would like. Having played them all (that I'm awareof )and all the Rune factories you soon get upset at watering the wrong patch, the fiddly selection. When you've played other games in the same series and have no problems with those then you know it's the game design and not you. Content It's very light on gameplay. Almost a roll back to the erly Nintendo GBA games but wihtout the pick up and play charm, ease of control. There really is not a lot of depth here and where the comparisons to **** vallety really struck me. It was what wasn't in the game, the things I couldn't do that stuck out. Value. HOW MUCH!!! Ok it's not the most expensive game, but it feels anbd plays like a freeware flash game and £35 or $40 seems about twice the price this game should be. Again **** Valley is better in almost every regard and is a third of the price. Summary I really don't know why anyone would buy this game unless they had completed everything in SDV and wanted a weak sauce version of the same game, with less content, less tightly implemented controls a clunky and awkward implementation of 3D with much less content and at a price point 300% higher. 3 is a red bar score here on Metacritic. But that's all this is worth.

I notice that the top 3 scores on this page give a 10 - and all three are accounts that have only ever rated 3 games ever. This, it's prequel and Mighty number 9 (by the same developer) they have done nothing before or since and all gave all 3 games 10 out of 10. Clearly the developers abusing the system. If I could give a minus score to balance that cheating - I would. 0/10 - and that's being generous

Great game - obtuse control method choices. Darkest Dungeon is a game I played on PC for almost 2 years. I decided before buying the DLC to move to a mobile platform to play it on. It's that sort of game. At it's heart it's a brilliant turn based 2D rogue like/lite. It has a ton of depth, party based combat where each member can help or hinder assist, buff, debuff attack. There are a ton of options. The Hamlet mechanic is brilliant meaning the metagame has real depth. I would consider a 9 or 10 for this if it wasn't for the very below par control design choices. Like using the item menu. Why all different buttons? Click "A" to select the item, surely then pull it over the character you want to use it on and press "A" Again? But no Select menu with one button, select item with a second button and use or move items with a third and 4th button. And these buttons are not related. You are using the D pad to select the item menu, the analog to move around the items item then switch to the ABXY pad to actually select the item then a shoulder button to use the item? WTF??? That has not one, but two levels of extra completely unnecessary complexity just to use a chuffing item. They sorted the UI out on the Vita version of this game - I hope they give this version some love as well, because at the moment it's spoiling a great game.

If your hands are above average size the game is pretty much unplayable on the Vita. It uses the rear touch surface of the console and unless you spend your time with your hands clenched into a fist risking getting finger cramp every 5 minutes then, as you stretch your fingers out from the clenched position, or just relax them slightly to avoid the pain of playing like this you WILL touch the control surface at the back of the VITA and a random action you did not mean to take almost definitely will occur as a consequence. For me the game on Vita is utterly unplayable. I can't even finish a dungeon. Luckily the game is on PS4 at the same time and I've progressed over 150 hours on that platform and loved it. But this is a review of the Vita version, and the Vita version is unplayable for me so 0 is a fair score.

There are a few bugs for sure and multiplayer is not particularly well implemented (yet) There is also confusion over character customization - which is not revealed until after the first two missions. This lack of transparency has lead to some angry reviews from many who think the customization does not exist (that's how important being able to personalise an experience is these days). The initial missions are not taxing and don't showcase the game as well as they might either. But... Once you get through that - the game is very very good indeed. I don't play multiplayer but have some sympathy for those who want to use it, but as a single player experience the game really is A1 quality. Just play through the first couple of missions - they are there for noobs and the game opens up nicely after that

This is the game I bought my Switch for. Not Zelda, not Mario - But Disgaea. Want to know something else? I already owned it and had got to end game (which is by no means the end of the game - is a bit misleading) on the PS4 version almost 18 months earlier. Disgaea treats you like an adult. Yes - if you play the quest lines (about 15-20 hours - and really should be considered as only the entrée to the game proper) and do this without grinding - then it can be a moderate and balanced challenge. But that's not how I play it. That's not how anyone I read about or watch on Youtube plays it. In Disgaea 5 - within a very eclectic set of possible activates - you can do pretty much whatever you want whenever you want. Do you want to try and win the game with one character? Fine that's possible. Using only armies of Prinnies? Yes that's also possible. Create a weapon so powerful you can spend the next 3 days cleaning half a map of enemy mobs in one shot Yes - if you spend enough time levelling that weapon in the item world - you can do that. But you could also level... A curry... if you wanted Why would you do that? I have no idea, but the game lets you do it if you want. You can play the first few quest worlds then never go back to finish the quest at all and still have 500 hours of never to repeat tactical action in this game. Yes it's turn based (A bit like Like Final Fantasy Tactics or "Let's Cling Together" on steroids) Looking back the learning curve "could" have been a monster, but it isn't. Like most JRPG tactical JRPG games, elements are spoon fed to the player so after about 4 hours play you know a lot of the mechanics without realising it. But don't think for one minute at that point that you know them all. Not until you've made new laws, interrogated prisoners, visited the Item worlds, sent teams on missions. Gone to Char world (the weirdest pseudo dice board game you'll likely ever see) morphed your classes into new classes - made a tower of all the characters you have on the map and hopped from one side to the other in a single turn. Worked out how to place the gems to turn every coloured square on a map to every variation of colour - damaging your foes as you do it - and of course - thrown an exploding penguin at a Netherdemon. You see in Disgaea you CAN do all of these things - you can do one of them forever, dip in and out of some and never touch others - it's entirely your choice - If you do balance your activities you can create some superbly powerful team mates with some ludicrously awesome skills that work through some mega tricked out weapons and armour... but that's entirely up to you. You can set out to do your DARNDEST to break the game - and the game will give you the tools and scope to try. All these systems interlock. Your characters special abilities can gell into the weapons awesome stats which you can improve in the item world and give yourself an advantage making new ridiculous laws to play under; Like "Give all the XP to one character for the next map" or "Create a sequence of maps full of things like fish I need to carry and milk bottles I need to smash to give me better weapon stats". or my favourite "Make the curry much more powerful" Really I could go on and on and on. The tactical main game is colourful and rewarding. The meta game on your craft is so varied and forgiving. You can't actually do anything "wrong". You can decide to not bother to learn whole aspects of the game play, because they bore you or you just prefer doing something else - and that's just fine - no problem Disgaea is what a grind should be. Because you the player are treated like an adult - given a play box full of interconnecting aspects you can grind or ignore at your hearts content, and told to get on with it. No other game anywhere - ever (and I've looked long and hard) is anything even remotely like Disgaea It's Disgaea - go on break it. Go on, don't be scared - try and break it... it's daring you.

Not sure why people were expecting this to be on a par with full sized none portables. That's unrealistic expectations. The game isn't perfect. Not sure why the key pad layout is slightly different than most of the other versions I tried in Fifa 2017 and some of the off the field modes are a little cut down and this is an area where the switch really could have it all. No issues with RAM or none volatile storage compared with current gen consoles, so put these elements in for next year please. Other than that a great game I'll sink hundreds of hours into.

I'm not a fan of action RPG's and much prefer turn based. I have all the VK games including the PSP exclusive and love them all. Until this one. The devs made a great play of saying, after initial fan criticism that they were moving away from TBS to ARPG that they were introducing tactical elements. Well maybe they did, but they are pretty much none existent. The world is full of action RPG's so many franchises do this, and so many more convert from turn based to ARPG (Final Fantasy just has) It's nothing to do with being an old gameplay system - it's to do with a large minority of gamers preferring it - always. Yet every game moves to the Demon Souls, God of War, Final Fantasy 15, Witcher style of gameplay. I bought it because I loved the franchise before this game and the devs said they were introducing tactical elements. The franchise is now cack - and the tactical elements are so minimal as to be not even worth considering. Not only that, but it isn't a particularly good ARPG, and the textures are really pretty poor, often mashing up "blending#2 into each other. So even as an example of the franchise in a different genre of game - it's still cack. Back to X-Com and Hard West etc. Much better games than this tripe.

This is going to be heretical for some hardcore HOMM fans. Tribes turns 5 into a game that is BETTER than III. 5 on its own is not as good as 3. It has similar mechanics, dodgy camera angles, a "meh" campaign (with some difficulty spikes that are legendary) and a lack of a decent skirmish mode. Tribes fixes this. The game now offers upgrade paths, it flows better, the maps are simply excellent. I love III it plays really well on my old laptop and its methods and gameplay are like second nature. It's quick, precise and smart. However - with 5 - if you can handle the "World of Warcraft" style graphics - and get the Tribes expansion - it's arguably a better game.

Why all the love for this being playable on an Ipad? This is specifically, and bannered quite clearly as a review of the PC version of the game. It's not even as if you get the Ipad version free if you buy the PC version, they are completely different products. The choice is simple. You can buy this, less than **** with some HD sprites that look marginally better (marginally). OR go to GoG get the whole game, all expansions, random map generator, fan patches that work with it - and free maps - for less than half the price. That works perfectly well and silky smooth on all operating systems (Win 98 through to Windows 10). Why you would spend twice the money on less than half the game? Who knows. It gets a couple of marks for the base game being as good as it always was. Ubi didn't **** that up - but why they bothered for PC players is beyond me when a much superior and much cheaper version is already available.

No real improvement in graphics. The Hi res official patch from Bethesda for vanilla Skyrim is probably about the level this achieves. Godrays and HDR used all over the place like the designer was on a trip when deciding where to put them. Glaring off walls and buildings in a blinding bright light that obscures the textures - Which is just as well as they are barely better than vanilla. Simple fixes like allowing for modern PC monitor sizes above 1920x1080 (who buys monitors with a res that low any more these days?) Yes,you can fix the in game mostly with an ini file change, however the menus remain largely unusable with elements unreachable off the top and bottom of them. Shocking that a remaster doesn't fix simple things like accommodating modern monitor sizes. Expecting PC users to still be using the poorly named "Full HD" which now looks like watching a block puzzle rather than playing a game like Skyrim. Perhaps 64 bit mod support (Will modders bother to repeat their work on such an old game?) and DX11's box of tricks might help a little in the coming months, but for now, if you own original Skyrim and even just the official HD patch - this isn't worth it in any way shape or form. If you are running SKY UI and other mods on your original then stepping back to play this will be a disappointment. My advice is, until or unless the modders fix this - steer well clear. It's just about worth its price of free so I give it a 5. I don't feel entitled to more BTW -It's free so no issue in terms of value proposition. I just think this is such a wasted opportunity - such a lazy conversion it deserves no more than average. Shovelware - even free shovelware - is still shovelware and a score above average simple isn't deserved.

Gameplay is meh in single player with some strange decisions. Not brilliant. Online is horrible - lag tastic. Server support is terrible, graphics are a joke (Seriously - so lo-res it's like football with legos). PS4 version not only looks a DAMN site better, it also plays better. This looks like an Xbox 360 game - something from 2008, which would be forgivable if the online experience was anything other than abysmal.

Sneak into enemy base undetected after spending hours on a flight. Suddenly (again) you hear "Right we have 8 turns (2 minutes) to get in and out. No recce has been done, so rush in, press a button/hack a terminal/free a dweeb - whatever then rush out again. 1.2.3 TANK RUSH That is not tactical, it's not clever. it's NOT WHAT GUERILA WARFARE IS IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM Real guerilla warfare is 90% about gathering the intelligence, setting the trap and getting into position YES... the actual firefight may be short and sharp, but the preparation is absolutely paramount - every rime There is no prep in this game. No time. On many maps the maths of the distance and your squads movement limit barely allows you to reach the objective at a full sprint. Ready steady TANK RUSH!!!! No guerilla warfare is fought like that. Not from a guerilla group that expects their troops to fight more than one battle it isn't. Recon, planning, set up then a short fire fight then out. Mad rush to objective is not the way small forces fight against large ones anywhere - ever. Why do they rely on this timer over and over again? Because the enemy AI is risibly poor and the sense of urgency and tension is completely and 100% down to the timer in the early game Later in the game enemies have uber HP levels (so the programmer typed a bigger number into the enemy HP when designing the game .. yeah, great - top strategy... yawn) Then their are the faces of your troops. OMG. Like melted waxworks. The extra detail only show cases how damn ugly they all are. YEUCH!! Real disappointment, Terrible design decisions destroyed the franchise for a second time after the Interceptor did almost 20 years ago. What a shame.

The best game in the series yet. Finally with a lot of trains and some great gameplay additions. The scope is enormous, easily dwarfing the pitiful scale and scope of the risible SimCity 2013. New scheduling options, speed restriction options, and the ability to drive your own train, boat or car around your city, though purely cosmetic in terms of gameplay, add a real sense of achievement. Added to the rich building and train control mechanics (which might take a novice a while to master) the game world opens up. Check out one guy and his recreation of the entire of Tokyo city centre, including the metro on YouTube. Try doping that in SimCity, you might just get the first 3 city blocks and a bus shelter implemented before you run out of space.

As a mobile game it's ok. As a free mobile game it's pretty good. But that's just comparing it to mobile games. Reading the paid and home reviews you'd think this was "the real deal" in terms of FF strategy titles for mobile devices. It isn't. It, like 99.9% of mobile games is as deep as a spit puddle designed for 10 minute play burst before coming a repetitive bore-fest. But as that applies to just about all mobile games - and at least this one is free, then I suppose if we are just marking against it's peers in the handheld market. It deserves an average score. If this was a console or PC game It's get 1, maybe 2 at a push.

I play these games solely for solo career. And in that regard this game is pretty poor. How poor? Well I've booted up Masters from 3 years ago on my PS3 and am currently playing that in preference. 1) Character creation. This is dumbed down to the extreme. A choice of a maximum of a dozen pre-set faces, eye colours etc - all of which are pretty hideous. If you can create one that looks like yourself with these options? I feel sorry for you. 2) Character advancement? Man, is this is dumbed down. You don't get to put points into attributes and truly customize. You pick a basic speciality (Power, Finesse and 2 others - you pick one a the start of your career) and then the game chooses where to put your earned power ups depending on which one you joined. As you progress through levels you "unlock" the other three basic types - but that just means the game makes choices in those player types for you as well. The end of customization. :( The game takes an age to initially load - but then is ok from hole to hole. At least that much is better. The "Arcade" version is a waste of time. Why it uses the left analogue stick is beyond me, you can do whatever you like to the stick, as long as at some point it's pushed in the rough direction of "up" then at some later point it's pushed "down" it plays a perfect shot every time. The only skill is in picking the right club and line to begin with, With zero skill required with the gamepad it's actually even simpler than 3 click. Hell it's even simpler than 2 click used to be. It's so simple.. I can't actually see the point in doing it, you might as well shout at the screen" Now play the perfect shot with these settings" and it does..every time. The graphics are 1080P (unlike some other games on this so called 2nd generation of HD console that still shrink the screen) but the detail is not very good. Graphically It's ever so slightly better than Tiger Woods 2012 on the PS3 - but not much better and you need to see them side by side to notice the difference. And the 2012 game actually has proper player skill customization, appearance customization and no game modes which are pretty much a waste of time. If you have a PS3, get the last TW game on that platform that instead (probably $10 in the bargain section). It is definitely a lot better than this essp. if career mode and customization are important to you

A decent game. However the main character, The one you have to play with. Is a total arse. One of the most unlikeable looking and acting people in any game Period. He looks like Peter Stringfellow and acts like a clod of earth. If I could design my own character and not have to look at this unpleasant dolt - I would love this game. But bizarre as this seems, this 80's night club owner look-a-like being on my screen every second of the game? I can't play it. He's that bad - I've turned it off. Writing probably great (only played 40 minutes - so can't really judge), graphics certainly seem good for the 20 minutes I play. Not really a fan of reaction based combat, but this seems ok as well. Other mechanics seem fine. I just can't stand the main protagonist - so that's "Game Over" for me. Yes it's a good game probably. If they mod it so you can change the look of the main guy I'll jump on board, but otherwise I'm just picturing him beckoning Vinny Jones and Maria Whittaker into his cheesy neon night club for a cocktail with too many bits of fluorescent crap floating in it. He's the worst main character I've ever seen IMO.

Second review. Played for 12 hours hated it. Decided to plug in my 360 controller for another go. Suddenly the game seemed like a different beast. As it's mostly 3rd person I thought I'd give it a go (I'd never play an FPS with a controller, RTS's and other types of games - no way) but with the controller. It's really rather good. Not perfect, but suddenly the game is playable. So my score reflects that I'm now 21 hours in and likely to get to 50 before the middle of next week.

As a player of PC games but the owner of every console released in the UK for the past 25 years, this is the reason some AAA manufacturers should leave the PC alone. With this muddy unfocused conversion, the recent terrible PC version of Watchdog I almost feel as sorry for the designers as for the buyers "Do we really HAVE TO release this for PC as well? all the different configurations, the bugs, the lag, the moaning" And DS2 is the latest result of games that should never have come out for the PC. A decent game, but un-optimized, graphically muddy and with gameplay that is pretty basic. The difficulty level is high, but not insurmountable - but the better versions are on console. Given that they will sell more units on console and that certain AAA developers struggle to get action/arcade games optimized for various PC specs - maybe it's time they left the PC to indie developers and strategy games. Quite happy to buy this for console in the future, but the lacklustre PC version. What is strange is how some seemingly graphically intense games rock from day one on PC (Far Cry 3, The recent Tomb Raider re-boot among quite a few others) While others are terrible and this is below average. A good game, a poor PC conversion that still leaves it as "decent" on PC, but certainly nothing to compare with the far superior console versions. Maybe they should never have made it.

With the main game still broken disconnections and losing cities still a common event. All the restrictions are still in place tiny cities and always on DRM that is to say the very least temperamental then this expansion pack (ahem really calling it an expansion pack with this little content?) is to coin a phrase "polishing a turd". It does help balance the game for single players (i.e 95% of the community) by making cities viable as specialists meaning you could consider some of the larger worlds with multiple cities as dispersed "city like2 structures as opposed to playing in the small villages the game offers as standard. But this is a patch worth of improvement barely worth $4.99 as a download only DLC. The pretty new graphics are incongruous to say the least and I would rather they weren't there at all. They don't overlay every structure and are so stylized and "niche". A 50's style view of the future maybe? Don't know but I don't like it. Very poor. For the game to now be over 9 months old with the same main issues it had at launch day speaks volumes for how much EA give a damn about this franchise's loyal player base. Back to Cities in Motion 2 and Sim City 4 for me. This is overpriced. Too little too late and leaves the major errors firmly in place.

Firstly this is NOT an RTS. If it's a game like Homeworld you want then this game is NOT FOR YOU, Comparing it to RTS's with their tool tips, and easy mode game play (dumbed down for those with sub 80 IQ's) are about all over the place. Go play one. Why come here and blame a game for not being something it never had any intention of being? It's a now aging 4X game that has good exploration, decent control and automatic combat. That's the games weakness for me, very little say in the combat. A nice turn based combat system would have made this game a 9 or 10 IMO. As it is it's like Total War on the strategic scale and has little or no tactical scale. Still intriguing and for the price (currently under $9 on Steam for the full package) worth an 8

While I do have rose tinted specs regarding Patrician 2 and 3 this is probably better than both of those. It's as good as if not better than Port Royale and better IMO than PR2 and 3. The plot/politics side is greatly enhanced from the previous games and trading has been smoothed (but not nerfed) The need to keep a pen and paper handy just to see if a route is profitable or not is no longer required. That was always annoying. There you are, in front of a £1500 PC, using a calculator to work out whether buying bricks from Barbados and selling them at St Kitts was worth it or not. It didn't really add to the game. Well that's all fixed now. The GFX are good, the combat is optional (good as I have no interest in it) the gmae is a solid deep trading and strategy game. Some of the reviews pro and player seem a little annoyed that it isn't a pirates and swashbuckling game and review it as if it SHOULD have been. Guess they don't understand the real pleasure of a deep logistics and trading strategy game and maybe next time the pro game review sites are handed a game like this to review and the editor is working out who to give it to then some of those who have reviewed this should just own up and say "You know what I just don't 'get' this sort of game maybe give the review to someone who does" Would they give the next CoD or Battlefield game to someone like me to review someone who can't stand FPS's? I don't think so.

What is the "elevator pitch" for people to upgrade to this game? How is it an upgrade. I can see what it removes from X3 Albion Prelude, and sometimes removing things is a good design choice (though I don't think many nerfs in this game are good) but what Rebirth actually add? At the moment it's playing OK for me. Just. Being stuck in one ship is a terrible design choice, one I think the developers will regret in the long term. Simplfying the trade. Those of use who loved the supply chain logistics of previous X games will be very upset this is almost completely nerfed here. One station does it all. Simpler? Yes More enjoyable? Nope not for me anyway. Combat has been dumbed down. Choices removed. Things like the stock exchange that was present in AP has gone, the none campaign missions also seem gone. The graphics while ok are not better than AP either (this is a direct X 9.0c game after all, so is running the same technology as the original X3 more or less) I'm not saying this is a bad game, just can't see the point of it existing who did Egosoft make it for? How is it more advanced or better than the last X3 update? I've only put 8 and a half hours in so far, but I might as well write this now, as I can't see me playing any more. It just seems to lack the depth and rewarding complexity of the last games. I'm looking for "new" or "innovative" and can find nothing... at all. Am I missing something? In short even when fixed, I'm not sure why I would play this in preference to Albion Prelude which is a larger, more mature, deeper and more rewarding game that looks the same (if not better) plays more **** anyone could answer that question I'd love to hear from them

DIablo3? Nah Titan Quest and its expansion are years ahead in terms of playability and atmosphere. It grabs you and won't let go. The setting moves underground after teh sunshine of the original game (well a lot of underground) and the difficulty ratchets up 20%. The extras, secrets well it's smooth as silk, plays like a game like this should play. I look up and another 90 minutes has gone by and I still don't want to stop. Played this game through twice before and will likely still be playing it in another 7 years

A real shame. After all the turn based movement it turns out that the combat is "twitch". For me that's enough of a killer to begin with, but allied to some pretty ordinary design decisions (too many pixel hunt puzzles.. literally DOZENS of them by the time you get 1/2 way through the game) and a very average user interface that turns the whole process into a "click fest". You end up clicking in this game more per minute than say Diablo 3. Maybe this is something people like. I don't

Now on about the 40th main story mission (stolen the last of 5 cars for a dude) plus done a lot of the "freaks" and other content. After buying 4 back in 2008, and giving up on it inside 90 minutes (I still think it's rubbish I have no sympathy for Niko and hated playing as him. In fact I would love to have played someone to shoot him in the face and end the game then and there when you really despise the character you're playing it's hard to play at all) this game is a complete turn around. Some of the missions are just unbelievable, the size and scope is amazing. Yeah the AI for something this size isn't perfect everywhere, but the gameplay mechanics are fabulous. I'm a PC games, and this is only the second action game I've ever bothered with on console (I much prefer mouse and keyboard most of the time) this is up there is not better than Red Dead (which is the other game I played). The story is hilarious mostly a couple of nasty bits, but mostly really funny. You get to like even the psychotic characters a little. Remember this is the "taster" the single player game is the entree to what's coming in a few days. People talk about the game that will topple Warcraft as an MMO? This is it. No bull when GTA Online comes out based on this play set this theme park... and with all the other items that are going live and planned over the next 12 months for Online this is the game that will finally challenge WoW for online numbers. And yes expect to pay a little for it either in micro transactions or a sub (probably the former). My only puzzle is why bring it out on 2 consoles that are going to be obsolete 8 weeks later? Really odd choice. Am I going to have to keep my 360 and PS3 out alongside my Xbox1 and PS4 just to play this game (as neither console offers backwards compatibility) The other thing here is, AAA studios bringing out GFX candy and open world action games for the new consoles have a benchmark to beat. Hell I can see the reviews now "How come this PS4 game has worse GFX and less to do than GTA V which is a last gen game"? Conversations like that are going to be all over the place after November 2013 for the next 12 months at least. That's how high GTA 5 sets the bar.

Loving it, so much better than the really very poor GTA 4. Loadning times are kept to a minimum. GFX scale up to close to 1080 (they aren't I'm sure but close), controls are spot on. And the stuff to do. 13 hours play so far. I've played tennis and golf, rode a bike up the pier, played the stock market, bought cars, clothes and businesses, raced, had a lap dance (ahem, that is pretty XXX) swam, driven a boat, been to the shooting range, been on a hunt (complete with stupid headgear)... Got to add the the "mini" games are hardly mini at all. The golf and tennis are almost release worthy games in themselves, the stock market is mondo impressive. I'm looking after a dog FFS! (and improving his temprament via my Ipad) And it's all FUN, you feel like you are progressing. Yeah I'm reviewing after 13 hours play. Brilliant

I wanted to give this 4, but not a "red" review. 4 should be **** 4 is all it's worth really. Ok the game is alright. The first couple of hours it seems like their is more depth, but that peters out pretty quickly to "not a lot". Gameplay is ok when you are on foot, and shallow when tactical (even more shallow than Firaxes..which itself was a helluva lot more shallow than the original games). So yes like all games made now, it's dumbed down for idiots. But in an idiot modd I sort of enjoyed it...just

Metacritic is BROKEN. I have just seen over 200 user reviews clearly written by the same person. I have no doubt that this is the case these hundreds of reviews. All taking about what a terrible war WWII was, how the writers family suffered etc. Many of them contain the exact same spelling mistake. All of them go on about "Russian suffereing" and hardly ever mention the game. Either one person using a bot to create accounts (very VERY simple) and post gazillions of reviews (very VERY simple using UBot 4.1 and some proxies). THis devalues Metacrtic and shows the arrogance of someone who thinks that their opinion in worth that of hundreds of other people and must be artificially aplified to ensure his will pervails. The sort of arrogance and method Stalin might have used if he were alive or ****! The game IS crap however. How on earth the magazones give it 8+ is beyond me. It's not a "0" though maybe a 3 but it is a very poor game. Terrible AI, poorly optimized, nerfed in terms of strategy from the original. Not very good at all. Just wish it could have earned this low score naturally rather then having someone so obviously force the issue with voting bots.

Oh dear. I got this becasue the screen-shots liked good. I loved Van Helsing, Titan Quest, Torchlight and this looks similar. It's not. It's not very good at all. The screen is the worst I've played with since the mid 2000's. The camera is always in the wrong place the control is terrible (just moving in a straight line is like tying shoe laces while wearing boxing gloves) the difficulty curve is naff. I don't mid if it doesn't scale that's good (it doesn't scale BTW) but this forces you to grind and grind and grind in boring circles, the whole timestruggling with the cotrol method from hell and a camera angle that just doesn't let you see what's going on. With Van Helsing out only a few days ago and SO MUCH BETTER then if you want another Diablo like then that's the one to get. If you haven't aleady got Torchlight 2 then that's the best of the lot. Hell even Diablo 3 for all it's nonsense is a lot better than this. At least it's playable if a bit dull. This one struggles to give you any enjoyment at all.

Here's the thing. Baseball is baseball. The PS3 is the PS3 (read "old) so we are not oging to get massive innovation. Baseball hasn;t suddenly changed teh rules and the PS3 hasn't suddenly tripled in power and capacity. Let's face it harly anyone uses "move" and when they do it barely works. So what of MLB13? Well we are told it's the last "Show" for the PS3 as from '14 onwards the main focus will be on the PS4. In itself it is THE best baseball game (alongside OOTP as a management baseball game) on the market. But what it is not is a huge change over 2012. If you bought a game from this franchise every 2...better still 3 years. Then this game will be a breath of fresh air. The graphics are tighter, pulse pitching is good, more stances, more pitching...great. If you have MLB12 then 13 is not an essential purchase. If you have '11 then it's viable but not required. If the last MLB game you bought was '10 or earlier then this is pretty essential. But with '14 on the PS4 looming there will be an essential purchase for us all next year and I can't wait!

Yet another game for iOS that would struggle to qualify as a free "flash" based browser game on any other system. So **** so little to do..sooo repetitive.

Not a terrible game by any means but not a patch on the PC version. Why? The controls. If you aren't super dexterous with thin, strong fast moving fingers this "slide to move" adaptation rapidly becomes a complete pain the the rear end. The rest of the game might well be great but 20 minutes smashing into objects and failing to get through doors was enough for me to uninstall the game and download the PC version from Steam (which is a lot cheaper than this Ipad version as well..less than 1/2 the price the day I got it) Works flawlessly and you cen enjoy the great game rather than be constantly frustrated by its awkward control system

Dumbed down. Dumbed down and dumbed down. Tank rush? MUCH!! What is it with developers? Or does every gamer want a "lowest common denominator" experience these days? Starcraft 3 will likely be a 2 button cover based shooter as that seems to be all the brain dead dolts who buy games these days are capable of enjoying. Thank god for Indie games where gameplay, depth and longevity are still valued by most. This is garbage. Blizzard along with Bioware 2 of the best developers 10 years ago, now both churning out "assemble by numbers" thoughtless dumbed down drivvel like this.

Quite badly bugged. Slows down (this is with 4x 4.6 Ghz Processor, SSD hard drive, 16 gigs of RAM and GFX Titan GFX card) The game is no where near as deep as they would have think, the logic is quite poor and it crashes from time to time. $4.99 it might be ok, but for $20, there are far better games about. FE and HOMMVI (and a host of other games) are all better, and can be had for the same price or less if you hunt or wait a little.

Not quite perfect. A great game with real control, real choices. The editor is a great idea but the lack **** is tricky for road laying. But this is nit picking. This game was built with less than 5% of the budget of **** the result is 5x better. Not having a go at EA, not being spiteful for the sake of it this is a better game than Simcity. It is in fact Sim city for a quarter of the cost to buy and 10x the pleaseure to play.

The best FPS I've ever played. And the biggest reason I can give you is Elizabeth. Elizabeth the best NPC in any video game I've ever played. THe gameplay is excellent (though fiddly at times) the graphics are top notch (not the aboluste best, but only a tad under) the sense of "being there" is fantastic as the details is just breath taking. The game mechanics are worked out and smooth. But it is Elizabeth I've fallen in love with a sodding video game character. Please let me buy all your DLC expansions and follow ups. Sign me up right now but if you change her personality Irrational Games... I'm coming after you with a stick covered in dog excrement.

The main point isn't even the DRM. It's the fact that the logic of the game in so many areas JUST DOESN'T WORK. Simoleons are lost, weird limits placed on buying energy or shipping waste or whatever, shops restocking with no need of industry (and no other players and at ZERO cost to your "mini city" People leaving work from home" A" and returning to a completely different house.. Home "B" and then repeating this randomly every day, pathfinding for traffic terrible. Waste not clearing, cash limits "sticking". The logic of the game is just plain BROKEN all over the place. The list could go on and on and on. For the first 90 minutes you are thinking "This is a good game. Looks good, if the servers OK I'm going to enjoy this"... Then WHAM the logic somewhere trips you up and often it's a game ending error. Nothing to do with servers or online logic issues these are pure and simple game logic errors and LOTS OF THEM. As for online multiplay. Sharing a zone is a nightmare without some sort of "mind control" over your fellow players. Everyone has to build at the same rate for this to work. and display co-ordination and co-operatiion over the long term consistent communication and really playing "one way" that would need to be pre decided before the game begins. It almost requires separate coms software and tracking to get this to work even then, if a player stops playing, wants to experiment, or comes across a problem and doesn't communicate quickly your own "city" (tiny village) is most likely on a downward spiral to collapse as a result. And this happens...every game. Rely on someone to provide your power? Well make sure he or she is playing and expanding at about the same rate and at the same time as you or BAM it goes out of the window. Same with waste same with EVERYTHING. You need almost superhuman co-ordination to get a 15 player map to any decent level using multiplayer. It's darn hard with 3! Then you realize why goods appear from no-where at zero cost. Maxis knew the game logic was bust and hid 1/3rd of the issue by making these phantom products for "C" districts to sell. But didn't apply the same "bodge" fixes to "I" or "R" (perhaps becasue that would have let the cat out of the bag too early as far as botched game mechanics go) For me the idea of global market multiplayer seems quite atractive. I would go online for that for sure. It WOULD bring a new facet to the game. I would hope it was optional. But that is academic. It doesn't work and it's not just a "little bit" broke go deep enough into any facet of the game and it will unravel into a mess of faulty logic and counter intuitive reactions from your Sims. My two pence worth is Maxis "shoe horned" multiplayer functionality in sometime mid 2012 to justify always online DRM. And botched the logic..BADLY. I'd like to say probably at the request of EA but I have no idea whether that would be true or not. The sad thing is all of this worked (and still does) with Sim City 4. A ten year old game that works almost flawlessly to this day and is what I'm playing on my other monitor as I type this.

It's a sad day when you realize that we will never see a game like this again. Oblivion and Skyrim have dumbed down the games RPG and combat elemets to "click on the quest marker" exploring and "popamole" combat. Morrowind itself is not the deepest, it's an action RPG after all, but the scope of what you can do, who you can interact with, choices with CONSEQUENCES, real value and pride in the items you find rather than every random mob wearing lootable Daedric Armour like in Oblivion (why? how dis that make any sense?). If you can get over the graphics then MW is still the best single player action RPG on the PC (or anywhere else for that matter) and like I sad at the top we will not see a game like this again....ever of that I'm certain.

It's ok. The freedom of the original Crysis is missing, this is a much more on rails experience, and graphics aside adds nothing. So the way I see it, it's taken a 4 year old game and deducted one of my favourite aspects and improved on nothing. I'm back playing the original again and wondering how come Far Cry 3 is so darn good and Crysis 3 is so "Meh". It's not bad at all, it's just not any where near as good as it should be.

It's not a bad game, but it certainly not a patch on DK or even the slightly below par DK2, which are available for a lot less than this and still play as well. MY fave part of DK was designing very specific traps and plans, rooms of different sizes etc. With the prebuilt rooms and no real Imp customization and direct control of the Imps, the game is more of a lite RTS that requires twitch reactions than a true successor to DK. Only game that offers what DK had (and a LOT more of course) is probably Dwarf Fortress. Possibly Gnomoria. Not bad, but 15 years on you'd have thought SOMEONE could have done a decent modern take on **** this is another decent enough game that fails to live up to the past classics in terms of depth of gameplay.

After 7 hours of playing I will have to write now or never. Some may complain that I haven't given the game a chance. You know what? It's not going to get any more than these 7 hours out of me and in retrospect that's probably 2 or 3 hours more than this game deserves. A dull traipse through badly designed levels with "rent and idiot" characters and so little in the way of gameplay above "it moves shoot it" that it might as well be Quake with better graphics. The difference being of course, that every game must be taken in context, and of it's time Quake was innovative and excellent but that time was 17 years ago. I was temped to give this a zero just becasue I'm so cheesed off as a massive Aliens fan. Why buy the rights to an iconic franchise and do this? Why Gearbox WHY? I got nervous when they said they were removing the single player squad system to make the game "more accessible" (i.e at best "dumbed down" at worst "we couldn't be bothered or don't have the skill to implement a system like this") But this game is just so DULL. It doesn't crash, the graphics are ok the sound, though taken from 26 year old samples it seems, is very good but that's the best I can say about the game. The old samples used for gunfire polish up well considering how old they are. That really is the best I can say about this game. The gameplay is as generic as "Jenny Generic and her Generic Geriatrics" cut and paste gameplay that is soooooooo old. How could this game have taken more than 6 months to cobble together from exising gameplay mechnics with a new lick of GFX on top? Anyway I'll give it 1 out of 10 which is 2 (yes 2... I considered minus one but I couldn't push the slider back that far) more than I wanted to give it 10 minutes ago.