jimplunder

I know the game got panned for the numerous bugs that were there on launch. Thankfully, I've only had the game crash once. A lot of people complain about the UI and the combat AI. I don't really know where that comes from (since I usually auto-resolve fights and I can find my way around the UI just fine). I can say that I have tried a couple of naval battles and the pathfinding is horrendous. I also don't understand why the game automatically switches from a boarding stance to a ramming stance without your permission. I was fighting a couple of enemy ships with a large fleet and even though I set EVERY ship in my fleet to board enemy ships, 99% of them sat in the water doing nothing and when I looked at them, they had their stance set back to ramming. I lost a lot more men than I should have thanks to that. But overall, it's been a good game for me. I enjoy playing it. It's not the best TW game in the series by far, but it's fun. I like the new faction balancing in the game which adds a nice political touch to the game. I like having to manage individual provinces with multiple cities in them rather than just one. It changes up enough to keep the TW series interesting but still feels familiar enough so you can pick up and play. Creative Assembly said it will patch the game regularly, so perhaps a lot of the concerns in the negative reviews will be addressed.

StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm picks up where Wings of Liberty left off and continue the epic story of the StarCraft II saga. While, in my opinion, the story wasn't as good as Wings of Liberty, it helped you to understand more how the Zerg work and operate (which involve essence, essence, and more essence from other biological things). The dialogue between Kerrigan and her advanced brood minions was almost always something about essence. It got kind of boring after a while. The dialogue between Jim and his mercenaries/freedom fighters was always lively and provided some much needed comic relief. The missions are pretty standard and it's all about destroying this base, protecting this item, collecting items, destroying a base while protecting an item and collecting other items, etc. The story comes to a decent conclusion and readies up the series for its final episode in a few years. There really aren't many new units either, which was disappointing...

Definitely one of the best games of the year, hands down! The storytelling was amazing, the voice acting was great (with the exception of Clementine for me, but perhaps that's how she was supposed to be and it just went over my head), the graphics weren't top-notch but they captured that comic book feel, and the interface was pretty good. Sometimes I felt the point-and-click quick-time-events were a bit clunky. Sometimes I was clicking, multiple times, on the designated area, but nothing happened. Also the lack of free saving during the game and the inability to skip dialogue scenes was a bit irritating. The game is definitely not action-oriented. It's all story and character. But each episode makes you make some very hard decisions and the game takes those choices into account as the world moves on. Some choices have higher values than others, and you sometimes learn that the hard way, and sometimes the choices you make seem like they would have a bigger impact but then they don't... That's why I gave the game a 9/10. Overall, it's an amazing game that deserves some of the highest praise, but there are just a few things that stick out that keep it from being perfect. It's more inconsistencies than anything... But if you get it, and you don't mind doing the story/puzzle thing instead of shooting 50,000,000 zombies in the face, then you'll definitely enjoy the ride!

The game looks like it has promise, it really does, but the first time I played it, the game froze right away. The devs released a 2 GB patch for it, so I tried it again. Froze during the basic training. Also, there are WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too many buttons to manage while playing. I have no idea why the devs made the prone button make you go down, but not go back up again. But they had some good mechanics, like being able to roll while proned. The graphics on it looked fairly decent, but still a little dated. If you can get passed the bugs and the insane controls, then enjoy. If not, you'll run out of patience with it fast. If this review doesn't tell you how bad the launch was, it had a price drop within the first week...

Total War: Shogun 2 is a good game. Of course, I always have a bone to pick with games. The feeling of it is exactly like that of Empire/Napoleon: Total War. You have a city, you have a port (if the province is on the coast), you have farms, and you have support buildings. You have to manage your economy through trade and production within your own territory. You also have to decide whether or not you want to stick with with traditional religion of Shinto-Buddhism, or convert to Christianity when you trade with the nanban (Europeans). The combat is very similar to all of the other games (except they give you pre-made formations you can use) and the game keeps the tradition of solid combat alive. While the graphics are a HUGE improvement (they are absolutely gorgeous), the gameplay is something that is still likable and enjoyable, the creators made the game a little too difficult for my liking. I'm a person who likes to develop provinces up, get a ton of gold in reserve, build huge armies, and send them out to conquer the territory peacemeal while leaving token garrisons behind. It's a sound strategy and it works, but the game doesn't give you enough time to really flesh the game out. It feels like to me that the game's over right when it's beginning. You either have to settle with groups of small armies going after each other and picking off small provinces one by one, leaving little development in the process, or fail. I'd like the game more if they lengthened the time span of the campaign (possibly doubling it). I'm sure there's a mod for that, but I'm not going to poke around to look for one. Why can't they make sliders for game length? That way if you want to give yourself more of a challenge, you can do the short or long campaigns in more or less time. Make the game more customizable. Also the diplomacy screens are ridiculous. Even on easy, the AI doesn't like to negotiate... at all. I'm crushing these two clans in a war and when I offer a peace treaty because I want to go pound on my ever-growing neighbor, they won't bother to make peace. I even try to throw away money and marriage offers and still nothing. Then 5 turns later, another person declares war on me. For casual gamers like me, this is frustrating. I've tried a couple of different campaigns and even when I wasn't shogun, it felt like everyone was ganging up on me for the sake of it. It feels like the game doesn't want me to win. I know that's part of the challenge and a lot of people like it, but when a game becomes oppressive, it takes the fun out of it.

The game is what it is, an action movie masquerading as a computer game. If you like point-and-click hack-and-slash games, then this game is for you. It's not innovative, it's not ground-breaking, the graphics aren't spectacular, but you can have a ton of fun if you don't put a lot of hopes on it being the next big thing in third-person shooters. To be honest, I was kind of hoping for an action RPG, but basically you just find all of the items you can use in the game and the game decides at certain points to make various items available to you (as if to say, "Hey! You'll need these items in the upcoming mob/boss fight!"). The story is typical Warhammer 40,000 fare: an ork invasion leads to something more sinister! If you've played either Dawn of War game, you'll see the story coming. But once you get the jump pack and the hammer, you'll wish that was the whole game experience. There's nothing like flying up into the air and then swooping back down into a group of orks and then pounding their skulls into mush with the hammer. Unfortunately, the jump pack sequences are too short and too few. I don't really play multiplayer, so I'll leave those reviews for those who've tried it, but it seems like it's getting upgrades. It's pretty much Space Marines vs. Chaos Space Marines in death matches and capture points. They also have a dreadnaught add-on that seems like it could offer a new aspect of gameplay for people (but it's a DLC add-on, so you'll have to pay for it). If the game's on sale, go ahead and get it. It's good for the lower price.

I bought the game on sale from Steam and I've tried it out twice. My main experience is this: if you command infantry, you can never get all of the people in your squad to go where you want them to (at least 1 of my guys always stood in place unless I brought them into cover), tank tracks are destroyed like they're made of playdough (and it seems the computer always manages to disable my tank tracks from 1000 yards off with a tiny flak gun with one lucky shot while my tank crew shoots wildly and misses half the time), and you're fighting with a squad of 8 against dozens of enemies. This is the first mission of the game on Easy difficulty. I know I'm probably going to get a lot of people telling me I'm terrible at this game, but that's just my experience and because of that, I couldn't get into the game. I also had one of the "heroes" of the game get "killed" but instead of dying he was crouched down and used up all of the medpacks I had salvaged off of dead bodies without healing himself.

Well, let's be honest, a single-purchase computer game about Magic: The Gathering isn't supposed to rival the table-top card game, unless you put it online and allow people to purchase every legal card that exists in the game. What "Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012" is, is an introduction to the world of Magic: The Gathering. The game gives you several pre-made decks and you dual A.I. and human opponents in a battle of who can make the better pre-made deck. There is some customization involved, such as has been written before, by unlocking cards and purchasing packs as DLC. But when all is said and done, you have to build a deck that fits your strategy for that particular deck. For those of us who never played MtG very much, this is an excellent way to allow us to play the game too. But the game itself was pretty good. The campaign is just a bunch of single-duels versus an A.I. opponent with some challenges sprinkled in on the side (like you have 1 life, your opponent has 4, beat them in 1 turn). The Campaign was easy for me, although I heard friends who struggled with it. It all comes down to the draw, really... When I got to the Archrival campaign, that was horrendously difficult... It's a 1v3 battle with you and two allies versus a single computer with 40 life and "Scheme" cards (which basically are overpowered equalizers to help the 1 play a good game, or completely dominate you...). For those, I'd say bring a friend (or two) because the AI isn't very good at supporting you and makes some very stupid decisions (for instance, not blocking a creature that's attacking when it has more than enough damage and toughness to stop it). Who is this game for: People who are new to MtG, people who haven't played MtG in a while, people who don't like adding/subtracting/keeping track of the math involved in MtG, people who like to casually play MtG but don't have the money to buy all the cards Who isn't this game for: Hardcore MtG fans, MtG fans who love customizing decks