jmhoffer

Europa Universalis is nearly brilliant. Nearly. On the grand strategy level, it is beautiful; make alliances, arrange marriages, control trade, pirate your rivals' trade, colonise the primitive lands and more. But where it fails spectacularly is on the TACTICAL level. Which, if you plan on expanding by conquest, is major. The inherent problem with combat is that you have zero control over it. You send in some armies and then everything is handled automatically. The problem with this is that the combat is SPECTACULARLY complex. And despite being complex and difficult, the only control you have is how many men you send into battle and whether or not they have a general leading them. This means that you win or lose battles for entirely unknown reasons or by total random chance. The battle system is so complex that the only way people actually know anything about it is by delving into the code. Despite this, again, you have ZERO control. Worse yet, random chance can easily screw you over when you otherwise have an overwhelming advantage. Unless you study the battle system like you study for your college exams, you have no chance of understanding it or how to win. This completely takes away from the rest of the game to the point where it just gets frustrating and no longer fun unless you have a strange obsession or literally have no life other than working and this game. Of course, the combat becomes much easier when you get cannons. The secret to cannons? Get a **** ton of them. The more you have, the more likely you are to win. So have as many cannons as you have men in melee and you'll nearly always win. But until then, combat is spectacularly difficult without doing an immense amount of research and asking for immense amounts of help from people that have delved into the code. Either pick a start date where cannons are already available or only fight when you have overwhelming numbers on your side.

I couldn't even get going in this game as there were no factions I wanted to play. I prefer horse archer factions. They are my mainstay throughout all the Total War games other than Medieval 2, where I liked playing with Britain's longbows. In Attila, they butcher history and leave you with only two horse archer factions worth playing; the Huns or the Sassanids. The Sassanids are not a good faction to learn to play with due to their starting size. I like playing as a smaller faction and discovering the game as I grow larger rather than having everything from a large empire thrown at me in the beginning. They're out. I have no interest in playing a culture that can't settle down and is forced to remain nomadic no matter what you want to do. The Huns are out. The last possible faction of potential interest is the Alans, the descendents of the Scythians. And oh boy, did CA screw THAT up! They get only two horse archer units and neither are available while migrating. This makes absolutely no sense on its own. The far worse part is that their horse archers are crap. They can't shoot 360 like the Huns and the Sassanids which makes absolutely no sense. They were descended from the freakin' Scythians! So there is no one interesting to play at all in the whole game. Bad enough that every Total War game makes horse archer ridiculously under powered.

There are a lot of bad games out there, but Terran Conflict (all of X3, really) takes the cake. This game suffers from the trope The AI is a Cheating Bastard to epic proportions. There is a weapon called the Plasma Burst Generator which for most of the game is only available to AI pirates. It is impossible to beat an enemy with this weapon. The plasma burst generator will one hit kill even heavy fighter craft and there is no way to escape it nor defeat an enemy with it (maybe if you have capital ships, but you'll be dead before you ever get that far). Players are known for cheating to get the weapon, loading it onto relatively small ships and then blasting apart the most powerful ships in the game. By the time you realise your enemy has a Plasma Burst Generator, you're dead. End of story. Because they game only allows you to save at stations unless you waste your credits on "insurance" (something you can ill afford to do at game start), you can end up losing massive areas of play as you attempt to fly between sectors where you can't dock all because The AI is a Cheating Bastard. Despite this over powered weapon, due to the love of cheating amongst players of the X Series, no one has made a mod to remove it from the game and instructions on how to mod it out yourself are incomprehensible. Since you can't beat enemies with this weapon, there is no point in playing the game unless you plan on cheating (something which many players eventually admit to having done; my guess is that nearly all do). A great idea absolutely obliterated by an incompetent development team.

It's been two years since this game was released. It has received update after update and it looks like the developers are done updating. And you still shouldn't pay a cent for it. It is still riddled with glitches, bugs and low FPS issues even on high end systems. The campaign is more frustrating than fun (such as sending you into combat that you can't win unless you run away and make your enemy follow you to a station and let the station turrets destroy them). I played for a few hours then uninstalled. People, PLEASE stop pre purchasing! The only reason game companies can release crap like this is because you idiots keep pre purchasing their games! They already have your money, so they can release junk and there is nothing you can do about it! STOP!

Unfortunately, falls in with the rest of survival games; made by people that have zero clue. From thirst rising too quickly to unhappiness from eating warm food simply because you're not used to eating insects (which in real life, you get used to quickly), the game developers say that they want to listen to people with knowledge, but then they don't. In the scrap bin with all the other survival games.

From large shopping bags that somehow can only hold a single bag of chips and break while holding light items to needing three litres of water to barely stay satiated (the amount of water you need in a survival situation per day), game is so unrealistic that immersion is impossible to anyone that isn't stupid. Like most survival games, made by morons that know absolutely nothing about survival.

As is typical for survival games, completely ****. It takes three weeks to starve to death, not a few days. Fresh water is much more important. The rapidly dropping mental strength is also ridiculous. Mental strength typically increases in a survival situation over time as a person comes to accept their fate and simply begins working on necessities. Contrary to popular belief, humans are very good survivors. Science structure was also idiotic. What is so difficult about chopping down a tree, propping it up and then sleeping underneath it for shelter? Why is there no mental boost from fire? Total immersion loss at all times. Could not enjoy. Would not recommend.

Bottom line, this game should never have been released. It's a great idea; but the developers and programmers were/are incompetent. Even after nearly 10 years and the newest update (version 4.2, which supposedly fixed over 100 bugs), the game is crawling with gamebreaking bugs. Random crashes are still all too common, the AI management of businesses (necessary once you have more than a few) is still incompetent, your characters will randomly lose their attributes (which are VITAL to success in the game), spending experience to increase attributes will often spend the experience but not increase the attribute, NPCs will randomly disappear (which is annoying when you are trying to interact with them) and if you play as a rogue your pickpockets will randomly run back to base for no reason and then stay there but will still indicate that they are pickpocketing. If you want to try the game, creatively acquire it. It's a total waste of money.

Like every other survival game out there, I have to give this game a nil score. How, exactly, with a simple metal working station did I make a shovel and crowbar? Think about it for a few minutes. It's not physically possible. I need forging equipment to do that. Tools don't last long enough and should be something you look for and find, not something you have to constantly make and replace. That makes zero sense. Has no one ever used a crowbar before? In my time as a renovator I met people that had bought crowbars thirty years ago that they were still using, and they were using them a hell of a lot more than what you do in this game. Why, exactly, does my rainwater - CLEAN WATER - need filters? Why would I need to set up the collector every time for this? You would just set it up once and let it collect as much as possible. This doesn't make sense. If the argument is that it is from a contaminated source, a filter doesn't do anything unless it is chemical contamination (which generally will not be a problem). The more pressing issue is biological contaminants, which means boiling, not filtering. Why can't I use a brick, piece of wood or rubble as makeshift weaponry? Are none of these books guides on how to make simple traps that don't require manufacturing? I could go on ENDLESSLY. I have yet to test to see how the hunger mechanics work, but in real life it takes THREE WEEKS before your body shuts down from lack of food. Vastly more important? Water; without which you will go into kidney failure in three days. The makers claim to have lived through a warzone? Sorry, I'm not buying it. There is far too much that makes no sense for that to be true. I'm a practiced survivalist and this game made zero sense to me. How is it that you can't go outside during the day, but some random idiot that wants to trade can? Why are people showing up at my door and NOT telling me what makes them useful in order to convince me it's a good idea to let them in? Why can only one guy go scavenging at a time, even though in real life that would be nearly suicidal? I just don't see it. I didn't feel like I was in a war zone: I felt like I was in a bad game made by people who have zero understanding of survival. The fact that this game gets a good score shows the ignorance of the gamers and the reviewers. This is not an immersive game nor even a good game. This is a bunch of pandering and nothing more. I read a claim that the makers had actually been in a warzone. I'm calling BS. If they had been, they'd know everything that I'd just questioned over the immersion. This game is, like all other survival games I've tried, absolutely terrible and a prime example of why I don't pay for video games until after I've tried it. This game was so bad that I should have been paid money to play it.

Normally I expect much more from indy games than this is able to deliver. At first, it seems like an interesting game. Unique idea (with a story that makes zero sense) and definitely unique and fun game play. The problem is, even at version 1.6+, it is buggy as all hell. Your outposts disappear for no reason, building outposts can cost you time and credit but the outpost won't build, overwhelmingly powerful fleets do next to no damage at times (or at all times, in some cases), weak as hell fleets can end up doing immense amounts of damage. Another thing that bothers me is that it is very, very easy for you to be surpassed, even if you're the technological powerhouse. You can't build nor capture military outposts, which multiply ship capabilities. The only way to get one is for a random event to occur. A depressurization kills everyone on board someone else's space station. The game tells you who this happened to but not where and you have to go from station to station. Once you find one that needs repairs, this is either a station you can repair and take over or a station that took damage and you can be friendly and repair it. If this is owned by an enemy and it was just slightly damaged, congratulations, you just helped your enemy instead of capturing a station. Overall, it's flaws and illogical attributes currently outweigh everything good about it, and by a fair margin. Even though I'd like to give this game a good score, I can't. The developers have a LOT of work to do before that happens.

People ask me why I hate paying for games. This game is why. This game is an endless source of frustration. Spend minutes scoping out the guards and lining up perfect shots and what do you get? A bullet hole in the cover instead of a dead or knocked out guard. This ridiculously serious design flaw makes the game unplayable. The fact that this game is getting good reviews shows just how stupid the average gamer is, not proof that it is a good game.

A rare gem amongst games, the low score given to it only fueling my misanthropy in general and my disdain for gamers in particular. Far better than the average puzzle game, this god game is easy to learn but difficult to master. I had few if any problems with the controls even on the PC and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I'd love to see the genre expand upon From Dust. I would honestly like to see a mix of From Dust and Black and White, although leaning more towards From Dust. Indirect control is the gem of the god game - you shouldn't be controlling people as a god, you should be shaping the land to your whim and aiding your people in that way!

Comes close to a worthwhile game, but just doesn't make the cut. You are far too caged in when it comes to the your base, the world is far too small and there are an unlimited number of zombies despite an extremely limited supply of resources. One would think that the mods might fix things, but the sheer number of bugs created by even the best mods makes it worse. An clunky combat system compounds the problems. Worth a few days of entertainment, but you'll get bored and/or frustrated before every finishing the mission. If you don't, get checked for autism.

You can only play this game if you spend most of your life holed up in a black room with no light. While it had the potential to be interesting if more play-testing had been done, there is no way to have any fun with the game. If you make a mistake in your character progression early on, your only option to fix it is to restart the game. When you restart, you are forced to go through every single cutscene over again. A massive waste of time and money.

This is quite possibly one of the worst games ever made. I didn't even make it 20 minutes into the game before deleting it. Your weapons break unrealistically fast (a fire axe can only take a few hits before breaking) and it is next to impossible to save the survivors. They are incompetent and constantly get themselves into trouble, and getting them out of trouble inevitably ends with you hitting them. This eventually leads to them defecting and abandoning you. Further, you can't hit zombies that you've knocked down, so you can't finish them and have to wait for them to get back up to do so. Live zombies that you've knocked down can still block your path though! This game deserves to be burned and the creators should be banned from ever making video games.