Xenophage

This game is a frustrating exercise in existentialism. There's really no purpose here except what you give it, but if you give it any, it's probably because you're an idiot. I was tricked into buying this game because someone said that eventually little people show up on your mountain and build little cities, and you get to be god of the little people. Nothing like that ever happens. The mountain just twirls endlessly in space while completely random object crash into it for absolutely no reason. I just had a thought: Maybe I don't ascribe any reason to it because I don't ascribe reason to the Universe? Maybe a religious person would find this game moving and deep? What did I say before? "If you ascribe meaning to it, it's probably because you're an idiot." Oh yeah. Wait, if I think the purpose of the Mountain is to make me question it, and question my metaphysics and epistemology, then I must be the idiot! And so your thoughts turn and turn, endlessly, like the mountain. I think the mountain is telling me to kill myself. No... no... John Lennon.... Kill... John... Lennon.... Anyway there's nothing interesting about this game except the ambient sound track and the weird artsy-fartsy meaningless statements it makes. I gave it a two.... it was only 99 cents after all.

I'm a big fan of the Total War series, but Rome 2 is a big step backwards. Like, 15 years backwards. Honestly, Medieval 2 had better graphics. Actually, I think they may have re-used the same graphical engine from the original Rome: Total War. It looks about like that, with the big difference of only running at 8 frames per second on my actually-not-that-bad Radeon 6870. Maybe this game has some neat stuff in it, but you can't see it through all the pixels. In any case, the historical accuracy is awesome, like other Total War games, and I did learn a few things before I punched my fist through my computer screen and pissed all over the motherboard. For instance, I had no idea Roman soldiers wore puke from head to toe before they went into battle. It probably would have been effective at avoiding confrontation, if their enemies weren't all non-descript pink naked blobs wielding what appear to be gray foam tubes, with the intelligence of lemmings. Yeah, the graphics make it difficult to view very much of the game, but I can at least see that the A.I. is more **** than the pong game I programmed when I was 13. Seriously. I hate this game, and this game hates me, and will hate you if you buy it. Just do yourself a favor and go play Tetris on a web page or something.