orctown-troll

The game itself is good enough. It does however have one BIG problem. It will waste the MAJORITY of your play time with loading screens. I guess you should definitely have an SSD hard drive. Will that actually fix this? It is 2016. 'Old school' games should load before we fall asleep waiting.

This game ticks all my boxes. It's big. So we can waste a lot of time in it. It's deep. There is a world to explore here, very well made and worth exploring. It's interesting. The stories and characters are rich and diverse. There may be some small issues with controls and combat, but these are not so serious in the scheme of things. Highly recommended. Buy it. 27.33.1089.99.18.9. OTG

After finishing this game I couldn't wait to replay DAO, and COMPARE. Wow! What a great game Origins is! In the comparison Inquisition comes off BADLY. Dragon Age Origins was **** EVERY... SINGLE.... DEPARTMENT. The only real bright spot was the use of the Frostbite 3 engine. DAI is pretty. The zones look better! Thanks DICE! It's a fairly sad say when you have to say the bestparts of a 'Bioware' game don't actually come from 'Bioware'. Inquisition finally FAILS as a gaming experience, because it was not seriously designed as a western RPG at all. Instead it was designed (1): As an advertising ploy to sell console software to kids (and their parents). (2) As some kind of interactive MELODRAMA to appease a 'civil rights' agenda that has gone out of control. We have all enjoyed being gay in DA since Zevran in Origins already! As in the real world, the sexuality of the people is NOT AN ISSUE. Why then, does it have to be such a central theme in the Bioware mindset! You guys are CREEPY! For most of us our private lives are private! They are not central to our public functions. Gay or straight can you stop with the sex obsession already! Why are romance options So IMPORTANT with you people! Is this a fantasy RPG or a dating sim? Mike Laidlaw was obviously so consumed by fear that the game wouldn't sell enough console copies that he continued the ongoing simplification (hollowing) of the game mechanics. This may not be obvious at first because the game LOOKS SO GOOD. But as you play more the return dividend on 'play' diminishes steadily over time. In the end it is not a game that invites multiple replays. One play through is boring enough. This is NOT GOOD for a 'western RPG', where the whole point is multiple returns. The good parts of the game: the writing and the voice acting, the scenery and the zones are effectively WASTED by a game that has almost ZERO role-playing or character development options AT ALL! If you thought DA2 was bad, it actually got worse. Worse skill sets. Less control of stats. The crafting is a DUD (incredibly tedious). Bad combat controls. Useless tactical camera. DREADFUL party AI. Boring, repetitive encounters. Boring, repetitive quests. The Wartable is a farce. We were promised we would have power and influence in the world of Thedas. that turned out to be BS. The Wartable is a faux mini-game designed to waste time and have us tread water while we grind our way through the lovingly made NPC backstories. Now the backstories ARE good! If inter-active cinema is your thing, fine! However for every thrilling bedroom scene with Iron Bull there is a hell of a lot of grinding to endure. The Wartable could have been the heart of the game. Should have been the heart of the game. However no 'game design' was applied at all in this critical space. BIG FAIL! I won't go on. In conclusion the game is something of a mess. It looks great. It LOOKS great. The writing is good and the romance options are fun. The cut scenes are FANTASTIC. The interplay and backstories of the NPCs are great. The zones are exciting when you first explore them. The idea of being master of the inquisition sounds appealing. However none of that makes for a great game. Behind the great façade lies a sadly mediocre and disappointing GAME. Bioware have truly forgotten and abandoned their own Origins and their core fan base. Orctowngrot

If it runs at all the game is GOOD. The map is big and beautiful. The tactical battles are fun. After that, sad to say there are numerous problems with this game design, so it is not the great game it might have been. I won't get into the details, since others have covered them, but obvious bad points include: instant transports for armies... clunky region development..... excessive DLC....crappy optimization.

Beamdog continues to do great work re-optimizing the old classic RPGs for a new generation. Each new 'enhanced' version is better than the last. I understand that there are a few nay-sayers who think $20 is too much to pay for an upgraded version of a 2001 game. Well, those people can simply be patient and wait a year to get the game on sale. For those with jobs who don't mind paying full price you won't be disappointed with this Greatly enhanced version of an old RPG classic.

The problem with Borderlands goes back to the original game and the recipe that all the teams have stuck with TOO LONG. The combat (ITSELF) is NOT interesting. Finding new and better guns IS Interesting for a bit but that dies as you reach the level cap. The character builds are NOT interesting. So what are we playing for? It has to be the STORY. And here stands the PROBLEM. The story right through Borderlands (ALL THREE BIG ONES) is BAD! Look what happened to all the DLC for Borderlands 2 which consists basically of terrible 'jokes' and 'memes' rather than anything serious! All the DLCs were TERRIBLE in all caps. Really dreadful. So what we have here is the excruciatingly boring and unfunny Borderlands story again. More of the same. I think the writers don't really understand comedy or qualify as comedic writers. Comedy is used by people to alleviate existential but real PAIN. The Borderlands world is a cell shaded comic book game world where death and 'suffering simply can't be taken seriously. There is no need in such a world for extra comedy. Instead there is a need for some 'SERIOUS' themes to big this funny world some 'believable' GRAVITY. This game was pretty much doomed to fail because 2K has been showing their ignorance by giving us lots and lots of REALLY terrible DLC for BL2. This game is just more of the same. Definitely don't buy it now or the season pass. Gearbox and 2K do not deserve your faith. If previous DLC is anything to go by the DLC for this will be even worse. I think 2K Australia did OK with this but it's hard to make a truly good game where the men at the top have not diagnosed where their franchise is lacking: IT'S THE WRITING. It needs a TON of weight to balance out the excess of light-hearted 'comedy'. MORE GRAVITY not less. Orctowngrot

Mediocre game. If you get it for a couple of dollars there isn't much to complain about but time best spent with something higher quality. Mediocre game. If you get it for a couple of dollars there isn't much to complain about but time best spent with something higher quality. Mediocre game. If you get it for a couple of dollars there isn't much to complain about but time best spent with something higher quality. Mediocre game. If you get it for a couple of dollars there isn't much to complain about but time best spent with something higher quality.

Do not buy this game. It is a sorry excuse for a sequel that has bare bones features compared to the previous installments, is riddled with almost mandatory microtransactions if you actually want to build a deck that has any strategical chance against the campaign opponents and the cheating/sabotaging AI is back worse than ever. Let's go through this point by point. The sealed format is gone, Two headed Giant is gone and the puzzle challenges are gone. Instead there is *only* the campaign mode where you fight duels against decks that have massively superior cards than you, that you can never have unless you buy the "premium booster packs" on top of... you know... *buying the game with your hard earned money*. The AI has the magical ability of without fault always drawing the exact card it needs to win, while you get shafted by either only land or no land cards at all. I have beaten both 2013 and 2014 campaigns and the revenge campaign of 2013 so cheating is nothing new for the AI in this series but man... the AI not only cheats like a motherfu*ker but uses game-breakingly strong cards that you can never, ever gain. So going through the game becomes an exercise in "let's hit the restart button until we give up in disgust". This on the easiest difficulty. Even the "help AI" has been sabotaged against you and it constantly tells you to make moves that are simply suicidal and *always without fail* automatically tries to choose the absolute worst way to use your mana. Even if you have the patience to grind through the "explore realm" levels to get all the possible cards you can, you still eventually run into a planeswalker there as well, who will without fail decimate you by cheating and prevent you from gaining even the weak pointless cards you could get from exploring the realms. Ajani, for example trumps your progress in one of these "explore" nodes and is absolutely impossible to beat, unless the game shows mercy and decides to eventually sometime in the year 2989 give you a duel that is actually possible to win. Ajani has a deck that, if drawn perfectly, is unbeatable by any combination of cards you can muster up. And as we have already established, the AI almost always chooses to draw a perfect card for every situation and beat you. The same thing happens with most other opponents, especially planeswalkers like Jace and Liliana. So that is the game designer's idea of "fun". Impossible cheating AI duels that transform the game from a game of Magic into a game of "hit the restart button 960 000 times and smash your head against the wall and then *maybe* you can progress to the next opponent and repeat the process". This game is nothing more than a stripped down sham to try and force people to pay free-to-play microtransactions by causing aggravation and frustration. Do not waste your money on this crap. It's not even a game, it is a joke. The designer's clearly wanted to show a middle finger to every Magic player in the world, new or old, and try to prove that they can get the cash they want by putting out any insulting **** they want.

How the mighty have fallen. Dragon Age II marked the end of Bioware as a serious RPG developer. This is a long winded dating simulation game. Huge amounts of resources have been wasted in cut scenes and NEVER-ENDING blather about the sexual politics of the NPCs. Everything else in the game has been totally neglected. There is not even a city to explore. Only one dungeon, re-used for all encounters. Limited and impaired loot. Limited and impaired encounters. A 'new' art style so much worse than the old one. And a story that railroads the player into a single (horrible) 'Hawke' character. Dragon Age Origins was good but flawed. This game is WORSE in ALL areas. One can conclude that if fan wrath about this game contributed to new management in Bioware that MAY be a good thing. Cross your fingers for Inquisition. 2014 will allow us to see if Bioware still has what it takes as they go into direct contest with Larian (Divinity Original Sin) and Obsidian (Pillars of Eternity). We pray for a Bioware redemption of course! All the best Edmonton! orctowngrot

What surprises me is how long it took a game developer to figure out how to equal or improve Baldur's Gate in the year 2014. The answer is finally here. Here we have a game with a big world and MANY ways to interact with it. A game where it is FUN to evolve your character. A game where it is FUN to play around, not running a scripted treadmill, but exploring the environments, and approaching encounters as a way to tell your own story! The good news is that Larian have put most of their effort in to refining the engine and the underlying rule set. In the pipeline there will be a creation kit which will allow the player base to create adventures, the best thing to happen in RPG gaming since Neverwinter Nights. Larian are putting RPG gaming back on track. Let's not forget that Oblivion is also hard at work on Pillars of Eternity, and Bioware is looking to redeem itself with a (finally) worthy Dragon Age Game. Looks like 2014 maybe the year of the great RPG restoration! praise the RPG gods! orctowngrot

Universe Sandbox, sadly fails. It is supposed to be a game but is not a fun one. It could have been an educational tool but lacks any expositional elements, voice overs explanations or presentations.... so it doesn't do that. As a simulation it is also lacking. This game is a sketch **** idea. It is a rough draft of what a space-science game might look like. Dan Dixon (the developer) needs to re-invest money he is making from this into a second version of the game that expands greatly on the potential here for great science education and entertainment. Orctowngrot.

After an enjoyable romp through Sniper Elite V2 we now have Sniper Elite 3. A good game. An improved product. levels are bigger and more interesting. Game play is less linear and gives the player far more sense of control. It's visually beautiful. Shooting compute based enemies in the nuts never gets old. Despite that I have to shave some score points of as a protest at the pricing of the day 1 DLC. $10 to get ****. $10 to open up a couple of different characters. Pretty rich for day 1. The game has a great engine. It makes sense then to wait a while and offer expansion-sized DLC, with new maps that EXPAND the core game. Instead Rebellion went down the path of cutting out core content to be resold with the rort of being a 'pre-order bonus'. It's a putrid idea and it is pretty silly to be doing that right in the middle of the Steam summer sale. Orctowngrot

LLTQ is a NICHE product. It has slide-show graphics. It has a silly premise. A silly story. Within this framework the game is fun in its niche-market mode. The point is you will run through the story many many times to uncover all the variations that flesh out the full story. If you are a fan of anime and Japanese RPG production values, then this would be a recommended buy at about $2. This game (and genre) has great potential to offer GREAT gameplay. But it fails because of a vital lack of CONTENT. There are insufficient variations in the story. The graphics are UNDERWHELMING. The skill trees don't lead to anything. Too many story paths lead to death and failure rather than discovery. It is not much fun going back for 'another run' through the same, limited 'tunnels'. 5/10. Mediocre. orctowngrot

A lot of the people who play 'real' Magic with cards were disappointed with this game. Fair enough. The game lacks several key dimensions of the card game, especially building your own decks. Others complain about the DLC. Also fair. It is far easier to pay to win than actually grind the card unlocks. So yes, the DLC is bad. However this is still a good magic game, and it is an excellent product as an introduction to the game for beginners or the curious. If you are a veteran magic player you may wish to avoid it. But if you are an outsider who wants to see how this famous game functions this is a good place to start. And of course the way around the high price of DLC is PATIENCE. Wait for the inevitable Steam sale. 9/10 as a great demo for magic. Orctowngrot.

A lot of the people who play 'real' Magic with cards were disappointed with this game. Fair enough. The game lacks several key dimensions of the card game, especially building your own decks. Others complain about the DLC. Also fair. It is far easier to pay to win than actually grind the card unlocks. So yes, the DLC is bad. However this is still a good magic game, and it is an excellent product as an introduction to the game for beginners or the curious. If you are a veteran magic player you may wish to avoid it. But if you are an outsider who wants to see how this famous game functions this is a good place to start. And of course the way around the high price of DLC is PATIENCE. Wait for the inevitable Steam sale. 9/10 as a great demo for magic. Orctowngrot.

A lot of the people who play 'real' Magic with cards were disappointed with this game. Fair enough. The game lacks several key dimensions of the card game, especially building your own decks. Others complain about the DLC. Also fair. It is far easier to pay to win than actually grind the card unlocks. So yes, the DLC is bad. However this is still a good magic game, and it is an excellent product as an introduction to the game for beginners or the curious. If you are a veteran magic player you may wish to avoid it. But if you are an outsider who wants to see how this famous game functions this is a good place to start. And of course the way around the high price of DLC is PATIENCE. Wait for the inevitable Steam sale. 9/10 as a great demo for magic. Orctowngrot.

Neocore, I love you. A good game at a nice price. Nothing to cry about here, and a lot to appreciate when you actually get into it. A nice evolution from the first game. People with complaints haven't bothered to play enough and find out how much there is to see in this game. Very much looking forward to the third in the series. orctowngrot

Sniper Elite V2 is a very well built war fantasy game. It is a fantasy, because even on higher settings your character regenerates health after being shot, and often will be shot 10-20 times but still complete a mission. The graphics are GREAT. This really feels like 1945 Germany. The game mechanics are GOOD. Shooting is fun, and scoping and moving are fluid. Voice work and sound are GOOD as well. The missions are also fairly good, but we can feel all over the constraints of the consoles in the design. The levels are smallish. There are not enough missions and certainly not enough open maps. A good game but finally it is too small and too short. The missions are great but there is not enough open material to let the player roam about and explore. Future games will need MORE content. Especially more and bigger levels to let the players gain a feeling of excitement in sneaking around and discovering things. It also wouldn't hurt to have a bigger range of interactions with the environment. People have criticized the AI but IMHO it is GREAT. The enemy units have amazing animations, they move realistically, and relocate and flank very effectively. It's impossible to shoot easily at range when the enemy will close in and take you down with SMGs from short range. This makes for very exciting gameplay, forcing the player into constant vigilance and motion to avoid the enemy counterattacks. orctowngrot

It's weird how people lose perspective and take umbrage at all sorts of issues with games. Wolfenstein TNO boasts great visuals, a well built library of assets, a fun story, great characters, interesting set pieces, good level design and decent pacing. The developers put a huge amount of effort in and it shows. A good game and a lot of fun. Also mostly bug free which is something of a miracle in itself. You can get it now and have some fun shooting ****, or you can wait a couple of years and get a better deal. Either way you are likely to enjoy this one. Highly recommended. Orctowngrot

There is an outside chance that you will experience technical problems with the cable or note recognition which can ruin the experience. The arcade games are a pain in the rear end, so don't take the 'game' part of this product too seriously. Rocksmith 2014 is education software. it is a guitar tutor. And it is FANTASTIC in that capacity. Highly recommended and hope you don't suffer from technical issues! orctowngrot

Best Game Ever. Well until they came out with Rocksmith 2014. Be warned of possible technical problems which may ruin the experience for you. This is an educational game and a real-world life improvement game. It is also the faster and most enjoyable way to learn guitar. Definitely recommended. Orctowngrot

Reading through the reviews here there is no doubt that most of the 10/10 scores have been written from development team members God-bless-them! The game is pretty good. It would be ok as free to play. Truth is that it is not easy to make a MMO that is going to be truly interesting for everyone. The need to drag the play out with deliberate grinding is going to deter most people in the end. For this game $60 up front and then subscription represents pretty poor value for money. Most of us would be better of playing RIFT. Just as Bioware wasted millions making a mediocre game in SWTOR, Zenimax has wasted big bucks on a game that is simply not a good investment for most players. I suggest avoiding this game till it is free to play. Let's hope that rather than mediocre MMOs Zenimax actually puts some effort into greatly improving their single player games and evolving that model with co-op and multiplayer elements. Orctowngrot.

Well Sega. I would absolutely buy play and review this DLC IF I COULD. However I live in South Korea and no Total War games or expansions can be bought on Steam here. If you make an effort to make this buyable then I will definitely get back here to give it a fair review.

OK so it's hats off to Ken Levine for finishing his work on Bioshock in great style. While these games were in the end more about storytelling than gameplay, I think we need to acknowledge that the story WAS interesting. Nothing is perfect and it is easy to nitpick elements that are less than satisfying along the way. however in the end it was a landmark franchise. It is worthwhile to buy and play all the parts of it. And in the end it leaves more than a few interesting memories, much as though we had read a good book. Thanks for the games to all the team at Irrational. Hope you all move on to new good things! Orctowngrot.

This game had a bad launch and was practically buried in bad reviews when it came out. This is unfortunate now, because Rage is actually a brilliant, though flawed game, that very nearly rises to the level of the two games it most closely emulates: Fallout 3 and Borderlands. In a comparison of the three games Rage comes in as the third place contender for post-apocalyptic fun. WHY? Well three reasons really. (1) The explorable 'world' of Rage is too small. (2) The role playing elements of the game (leveling up, gaining skill increases and perks) don't exist. (3) The scenario and writing is too generic and lack-luster. This is slightly sad as the environmental art, level design and combat AI in this game are really great. Id Software got a lot of the elements right. However without exploration, an exciting plot or character building to motivate players the player base quickly declined and the game was forgotten. Id should have looked deeper at what motivates gamers to play games. A bigger world. A better story. More sense of forging your own identity with your character (aka role playing). Buy this game on sale and enjoy its overall excellence. For achievement hunters good luck getting four of a kind playing poker! The mini-games in Rage are TERRIBLY boring for poor suffering completionists. Orctowngrot

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Game is OK but it is basically TOO HARD to be enjoyable. This is made worse by the way the map resets after each death. With each death accumulated (money) progress is lost so the game basically wastes your time by denying any progress. You might die 20-30 times before you luck-out and get enough money to get an upgrade. Don't waste your time with this garbage.

Well. I think sometimes we have to accept that game design is a very complex and demanding science. This is a young and inexperienced team learning the ropes the hard way. They have about 30 years of accumulated programming wisdom to absorb in a short amount of time. Patches suggest that they ARE learning, and this lesson in 'how to make a game' IS being learned. Buy it on sale and don't expect too much. We can all of us learn something new. This game has been an interesting window on the steep learning curve faced by a new development team. Buy the game and support them. Where the game is underwhelming find why and offer constructive criticism. Support developers and there is every chance this team will later surprise you by making the game we all really want to play. Orctowngrot.

This DLC is WAY overpriced for what you get. Also the scenario is NOT very good. NOT well designed. NOT fun to play and NOT an enhancement of the core game. Its $15 for a piece of CRAP basically. There are better mods out there for free. Now CA can probably appreciate how flawed their entire approach to Rome II has been. If the engine design and the basic engine had been built properly an idea like this would have translated into a great mini campaign. As it is definitely WAIT till you can get this POS for about $1. Because that's all it's worth. I fell like a real moron for paying full price for this. Orctowngrot

This game needs to be rebuilt in 2014. To this day this is THE BEST WWII combat simulation game. It is still WAY better than Company of Heroes 1+2, or anything called 'Man of War' or anything developed in Russia. What is sad is that the game finally lacked a big fan base and so resources were never employed to upscale the maps. enhance the graphics or build a larger, longer campaign. This game is a war game done RIGHT. There is real line of sight. Realistic limits on ammo, Realistic morale, and it requires realistic tactics and thought. Units are not build out of unlimited resources. When tanks are destroyed they are gone. when men are dead their force is depleted. There is ambush, hiding, moving out of line and sight, smoke for cover, artillery and air support. Ways for tanks to dominate and ways for infantry to be useful, or to win the game, and eliminate armor when used properly. In many ways it remains in the top 5 games I ever played, and it could be so much better if rebuilt with even a portion of the game making knowledge that has accumulated in the last decade. Firaxis went and rebuilt X-COM and did it pretty well. We need someone to go and rebuild this too, and show the world how a WWII game can be among the BEST EVER. Orctowngrot.

Well don't we all love a co-ordinated score bombing: It is true that the campaign for this game distorts the history. However it is a GAME. pretty clearly most of the Russians scoring this 0/10 for insulting their history never played the game, and simply posted their venting reviews. As for the game being too much like Company of Heroes 1, or an inferior game, I disagree. There is definitely an evolution of ideas at play here. And Relic worked hard and long to create a framework for gamers to enjoy a lot here. The way the game was diced up to be bought as DLC is pretty terrible. Selling vehicle skins for dollars a pop is absurd when we are talking about 50 skins and probably more than $100! Sega are you out of your minds? That is ABSURD! Dudes give us an in-game workshop to make our own color schemes! don't be so greedy! Despite the over-priced DLC and the anti-Soviet propaganda. There is a good game in here. Definitely wait till it is on sale, and especially the expansion packs which are way-over-priced. Ignore the skins and load up on 'commanders' when they are cheap. And enjoy a good, high-paced RTS. 8/10 with a couple of points added to address the ridiculous 1.8 user score. In terms of gameplay this game is a painful exercise in futile micro-management. If anyone out there wants to play a game that is faithful to actual military combat in WWII do not get this game. instead you should hunt out an old combat of Close Combat V invasion Normandy which is the same basic idea as this game but 1000 times better! Orctowngrot.

One of the weaker 'HD upgrades' out there. Certainly not worth the $20 asking price, and reasonable only when at $5 on Steam sale. It's the original game with bare-bones graphical adjustments for new monitors, but no real graphic enhancements to speak of. Basically a lazy product designed to milk money out of nostalgia. The game itself is fine. The enhancements are a joke. Orctowngrot

What this game lacks in terms of overall professionalism/writing and fine tuning it more than makes up for with FUN and overall chaos. The game does not try to be everything to everyone, to craft a coherent world or story. It's just heaps of silly violence and messy old-school level design with one-line jokes that barely even work! Who cares! A good buy on Steam sale and a nice way to waste a couple of evenings after a day of hard work at the office. orctowngrot

For quite a while now Gearbox have been dumping pretty useless DLC on this game. This is a particularly bad one. The OP levels actually make the game too hard to play solo and thus kill off any chance to enjoy the game by yourself. Total balance was not worked out properly, and to replay the same boring level over and over is tedious beyond belief. Gearbox get a grip! You are officially ruining what was originally a great game! orctowngrot

Quite brilliant story and dialogues here. (10/10) Unfortunately they are stuck in another clunky console port. Even at the supposed correct resolution it is impossible to access some menus on a wide screen monitor. The game suffers from tedious, slow and clunky gameplay. Too plot bound and linear, getting around your base is a royal pain in the rear-end. So while the set pieces, and plot lines, the voice acting and lighting are all FANTASTIC (Bravo) the GAME is terrible. This is a must buy for fans of UFO retro, not as a game but as a cultural artifact. Wait to get it on sale under $10. Play it to enjoy the story because you WILL NOT enjoy it as a 'game'. Orctowngrot.

Great set of enhancement for an already great game. More maps. More campaign elements, more inventory to manage. While the new additions of meld and medals may make the endgame easier on easy setting, they won't help you on classic or impossible ironman so much. The criticism that this makes the game too easy are invalidated by the fact that the game has hard settings, and ways to even make it harder from there. Arguments that the expansion is overpriced ignore the fact that this is targeted at people who already play the game and want more. In this context the price is reasonable. Indeed I'm surprised that fans of the game would not be happy to expand their play experience and support the developers at the same time, with a price that is good for everyone. If you like X-COM Enemy this is a no-brainer, get it today. If you are in here giving it a red score on the basis of price, you are a no-brainer, who probably needs to get a job. Orctowngrot.

Dreadful effort of game design in 2013. Looks and feels like a bad Playstation 1 title. And feels like a bad port from a Nintendo DS. Graphics are 8-bit quality. Voice work is Japanese with the female parts mostly squealing like nymphomaniac pre-teens. Game play is painfully slow, as you watch the slide show of manga-dialogues and endure a horrible 1985 Japanese RPG combat system. You will feel that you are wasting every minute of your time with this crap, trying to figure out the menus and controls in order to slowly grind your way through the slide show of terrible plot points. This game is strictly for the fans of its genre, and even they would be better off wasting their time with anything else. Orctowngrot

I love Borderlands 2 and I will buy all the DLC to support the developers. However guys, this is simply a total waste of time. One map. A quest that lasts 5 minutes. And then the 'listening to grandma' quest which wins the prize as the most self-indulgent and unfunny joke in the history of game design. I guess from the high of its core game BL2 can only fall. But this DLC is getting worse and worse! Orctowngrot.

I strongly disagree with views this game is over-priced. Beamdog is doing great work extending the long term viability of these classic titles. The enhanced version of Baldur's Gate was superior to the GOG version (which I also own). This version is a legitimate rebuild and extension **** game that allows it to seamlessly function on new systems. Thanks for a great rebuild **** game! If you at all have any love for this game, be sure to support all the honest efforts to extend its playability into the future. People who moan about $26 as 'too much' for a game like this are losing perspective on the true value of work in this industry and perchance need spend less time playing games and more time working in the REAL world. You want the industry to support classic games? Support mods by all means, but also definitely BUY games like this so that the teams doing the work can continue to provide great games for all of us. Buy the GOG version. Mod your original version AND buy this. Then you will truly be in a position to give an honest (and constructive) review. I wonder how many 'fans' ready to score bomb this are sitting on big libraries of torrent-stolen games. Most irritating thing is that if these butt-hurt moaners really can't afford it, they only have to wait a few months till they can get it for pennies on a Steam sale. How painful that is NOT! Get some bloody perspective! Orctowngrot

This game turned the corner for me and Paradox Interactive. Until this I always thought of PI as a team of eccentric incompetents, trapped in the limitations of their ONE and ONLY game engine to forever build variations of the same terrible sausage machine. But this game finally broke the cycle, because after years of design failure they finally arrived at what can be called an objectively GOOD game. But they went one better. This is a GREAT game! Good art. Good FEEL. Good flavor. Good controls. This is good in all its parts and in total! Nice work Paradox. Exciting to think that It's not perfect. I mean. They can do better, even a LOT better. Suggesting that pretty soon these guys are going to give us a real BREAZTHTAKING game. I'm salivating at the prospect. The multiplayer is still an afterthought. The DLC comes in far too many dribs and drabs. The campaign has no real focus so the game kinds of drifts away from any kind of meaningful conclusion. However despite these caveats, which would sink a lesser game, Crusader Kings 2 is GREAT. Cudos go to those who earned them. Each piece of DLC has honed this game and made it better. I guess the fans have to be patient. Game Design is a complex art/science and it's an endurance test. It took many years of false runs and missed shots before Paradox got here! All strength to them to push on from here to the high plateau of design perfection. So tantalizingly close. Orctowngrot.

Writing this review immediately after one for Rome 2 it is perfectly clear where the best team of strategy game designers can presently be found. It's HERE! The problems, or weaknesses in this game exist, of course. Few games are truly perfect. The font size is irritating. The concessions to simplicity can sometimes exceed the necessities of elegance and render gameplay somewhat anemic in comparison to previous iterations. Indeed. Indeed. Granted. Paradox can still do better. The point is that they are TRYING and improving steadily. Not only this game. All their titles. Thanks for a great game! Many of the issues players have will be solved when Paradox finally integrates a solid server based multiplayer experience, and allows a more comprehensive game-set-up interface where players can enable or disable individual 'advanced' features. Let the one game have the capacity to play well for both strategy novices and hard core players and you will achieve perfection. May it be SOON. Orctowngrot. Orctowngrot.

Bought on steam, the game crashes to desktop from the first loading screen. AVOID this POS and those associated with it.Bought on steam, the game crashes to desktop from the first loading screen. AVOID this POS and those associated with it.Bought on steam, the game crashes to desktop from the first loading screen. AVOID this POS and those associated with it.Bought on steam, the game crashes to desktop from the first loading screen. AVOID this POS and those associated with it.Bought on steam, the game crashes to desktop from the first loading screen. AVOID this POS and those associated with it.Bought on steam, the game crashes to desktop from the first loading screen. AVOID this POS and those associated with it.Bought on steam, the game crashes to desktop from the first loading screen. AVOID this POS and those associated with it.Bought on steam, the game crashes to desktop from the first loading screen. AVOID this POS and those associated with it. orctowmgrot

The problems with this game are DEEP and stem from a lack of programming skill on the part of the programmers: From the first moment impressions are TERRIBLE: Lack of graphics options, CHECK. Lack of character creation options. CHECK. Bad camera position, CHECK. Lack of first person perspective, CHECK. Unwieldy UI and gear menus, CHECK. Difficult movement CHECK. Moving and exploring in this game are a CHORE from the start and it only gets worse when you are in combat, meaning that you will die continuously due to the terrible game controls. From such a dreadful foundation, nothing good can be built. There are any number of great MMOs available that allow players to make their character and move freely in exciting worlds. I would avoid this game and any others by this developer as they are simply obsolete and less-than-acceptable in terms of the basic ability to build a game in 2013. Suggest they hire some programmers who know their stuff, or use a function engine like the one used for Oblivion (back in the day) or even Never Winter Nights. Finally, who thought it would be a good idea to have storm sounds so LOUD they give you a migraine even when turned down to 10%. Also I have a new computer and the lack of adjustments for mouse sensitivity means that the damned game camera moves so fast it makes you dizzy. I uninstalled this POS within 20 minutes of trying it! You want to make video games? Learn How! Orctowngrot

Skyrim is clearly overated. The biggest fantasy of all is that Bethesda is a studio that 'knows' and 'loves' RPGs. Oblivion was A LOT MORE FUN. If you disagree go back and try it. Skyrim is a hollow shell **** with only a single great feature: The WORLD. The rock structures the plants and the weather of Skyrim are all brilliant. The fish in the streams, the butterlies in the air. AWESOME work. well done Bethesda. Sadly its ALL DOWNHILL from there. Skyrim boasts '300' unique locations. Well its more like 4 really, all copypasted and tweaked to be 'different' but they dont feel different. You might enjoy your first draugr ruin, but running through nearly identical ruins over and over again looses its luster soon enough. And it becomes incredibly tedius before you have levelled up even your first character. Character development in this game hits NEW LOWS. For a company that is supposed to 'know and love RPGs', how can it be that with each new game levelling your character becomes more tedius and BORING. The character levelling system in this game is TERRIBLE. Choosing between 'red' 'green' or 'blue' when you level is TERRIBLE. And from the studio that 'knows and loves RPGs the magic system is also TERRIBLE. The mellee combat, hit detection, and double-wielding mellee options are all TERRIBLE! Go Bethesda! The studio may be famed as 'knowing and loving RPGs', but is an abiding mystery why they think they can create immortal games without HIRING ANY WRITERS. You got that right. Click on the credits for the game, read it and weep. When you are playing the game you might notice how dull, boring, repetive and tedious it all is. You might notice that every single quest is a pale version of something you saw before in Oblivion or Morrowind. You might awaken to the fact that the 'endless questing' is a lie, no fun at all. Check the credits to blame the writers. THERE ARE NONE. that's right. Bethesda is so hard up for money that the 3D artists who built their 4 dungeons and the 20 physical assets they dump in every single room in the land double-up as scenario writers. And if you think the side quests are bad watch out! The main quest is WORSE. it's probably the most pathetic excuse for a story dumped into a game in the last decade! It's ever worse than Fallout 3 (Which is overall a much better game than this one by the way). Not only that. This game is totally lacking in terms of the kinds of magical or legendary items we usually associate with RPGs. The only vaguely interesting items to find are tied into the Daedric Quests. These quests are an assorted grab bag of sheer nihilism and ammoral garbage which will demand you please the 'whims of the gods, doing such role playing classics as eating human flesh and murdering strangers in order to get the blessings of the god'. Nice work Bethesda! (NOT!) So if you can endure a dreadful character system, boring combat, boring 'adventures, terrible magic, non-existant plots, a game that in all areas is inferior to both Morrowind and Oblivion, I guess Skyrim is Ok. It has its moments, roaming, watching sunsets, catching butterflies, of fishing by hand in the cool clear streams. I truly wonder at user reviews that give this game 10/10 scores. presumably these are all written on the initial wonder, before 40 hours have passed. Before they have accumulated 300,000 gold with nothing you need or CAN buy, or learned how to make every potion under the sun, only to find that they NEVER EVER need to use even one potion, or while they are trying various wield options before realising that most of them ****, and settled on playing sneaky archer, which is the only really viable build (SIGH). When you play this game to maximum level it reveals itself as a soul-less, empty, hollow lonely, terminally BORING, joyless affair. There is not a single likeable NPC in the game. No kind of interesting interaction with any of the puppet-like characters in the game. There is no main plot, no compelling sidequest, nothing memorable at all. Only some sunsets, some bug-catching and then tedium as you waste dozens of hours unlocking dragon shouts that you never even need to use. All this in a crappy port with the worst UI ever put on a PC. Bethesda do NOT know and love RPGs. Bethesda are cheap skates who cut corners, build huge worlds and fill them with copy-pasted tedium and FILLER. The high scores for this game are wishful thinking, tinged with nostalgia, and appreciation for all the good things Bethesda have done over the years. Bethesda needs to know the ways this game is NOT GOOD. They have to understand the way it fails. They can and should do a LOT better than this. Giving this game a 10/10 is a really big mistake because that only encourages more of the same. Wake up people, believe me. You do NOT want more of THIS! Orctowngrot

After a single completionist playthrough sadly have to confirm that the game is NOT very good. It feels like a huge amount of work went into Amalur but it has no heart, no soul and nothing in the world to draw players back into a second playthrough. Everything about the game is almost good. The world is almost good. Had potential. The combat system is almost good. Its fun in moments but grows boring over time. The writing is almost good. The loot and crafting could have been almost good (they aren't really) but just become tedious over time as you collect and discard THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of mediocre items. The main plot is almost good but seems to have been ignored in favour of about 500 side quests that spread your interest, your attention and your immersion in the world on 100 hours of diversions each as boring and meaningless as the next. Clearly what happened with this game was that a vast amount of money was spent doing a vast amount of work setting the stage for later developments in the world. The problem with this is that the game has no real narrative focus and no real atmosphere. Can anyone who played it remember even one character's name? After spendng numerous long hours criss-crossing the map doing every imaginable fetch quest for the whole population of the lands one will be totally BORED with Amalur. While I'm scoring it the same as Skyrim, it is actually less ****. There is a palpable absence of passion in the core of this design. A lot of competent craftwork is wasted without a sense of leadership vision. Orctowngrot

While this game is not perfect it is definitely a great game and ticks enough boxes to earn 9/10. My only big complaints are the QTEs that are a form of game-design-pollution that must disappear. The island is a masterpiece of landscape/level design. The shooting mechanics are excellent. Skill trees and challenges do the job. The story is GREAT, and the NPCs are well written and well acted. The game is good for 2 play-throughs. Multiplayer is pretty good as well. As for the Ubisoft layer of DRM, its a big negative and a total waste of time. Orctowngrot

SWTOR is pretty good. Despite that: This game is, was and may forever be, the BIGGEST failure, the BIGGEST disappointment, and the BIGGEST lost opportunity in the history of Game design up to this point. I'm not saying that what we got at publication, or what they have patched it up to now is bad. Its not. the problem with SWTOR is what it could and should have been. What it failed to be. The budget was there but the vision was lacking. For those of us who saw the first Star Wars movie in the cinema back in 1977 This IP was a life changing influence in the same way as Tolkein was in the field of literature. We all know how George Lucas had a gift for failing with Star Wars, for wrecking things, or rubbing the luster off it. But Bioware had a good track record of doing Star Wars well. KOTOR 1 and 2 were great. Mass Effect, though a unique IP showed that the Canadians were capable of great things here. So WTF happened? My guess is they played it way too safe, and tried to copy WOW as closely as possible with a few fatal dashes too many of Bioware's legendary (And in this case diasterous) 'STORYTELLING'.! Hey guys a little advice after the barn has burned down: GAMERS WANT TO WRITE THEIR OWN FACKING STORIES! We don't want to get dragged around like marionettes on strings you pull, or strapped into chairs of the scenic railroads you lay for us! We want to be the heroes of the story in our own terms! SWTOR could have ignored WOW. It could have got a few ideas from EVE and X3, heaps of inspiration from the best of the movies and then a glorious freewheeling sandbox in a galaxy, where you can play any of dozens of races, on dozens of planets explore the galaxy and pursue any numbers of skill sets developing the kind of hero you wanted to be. Luke Skywalker had a thing for droids remember! We could have all been free to develop all sorts of fun non-combat skills for the purposes of ROLE PLAYING. Eventually, after many adventures in many places the players might even have got introduced to the force, or its dark side and found the option to choose to become a Jedi knight or a Sithe warrior. Sadly that was all to 1995 for Bioware. This game offered ZERO EXPLORATION. ZERO meaningful race choice, near ZILCH in character development. Near NOTHING in player choice. You start off affiliated to one of two factions, and well on your way to mastery of skills which in the lore of Star Wars were supposed to be rare and special. Bioware designed a game, and planned for a situation where there would be literally millions of high level Jedi's and Sithe running around! A mad dream that has nothing to do with Star Wars lore. Built without vision, this game fails to impress where it should. It suffers a Bioware malaise: No sense of place. Each area you go to is a sterile set, where you plod about waiting to be cued on a conveyer belt to your next fixed 'plot point'. You don't become a bounty hunter or anything in this game by trial and error, by wandering about and earning the membership rights to a skill set. Instead you make a single choice with character creation that then becomes a RAILROAD OF SUBSEQUENT non choices. Which can also be described, when you think about it (as I so capably do) THE ANTITHESIS OF ROLEPLAYING. What some of the targets of these reviews need to understand is that I was designing games at a professional level at the age of 16, back in 1982. I'm not blowing bubbles out of my arse. The game still scores 6/10 because it has plenty of fun content. You can't burn $300 million without getting nice assets, animations, sincere efforts, good voice acting and a lot of good content, which this game DOES offer. It's pretty well a game everyone should look into when it goes free to play. it may even get patched up enough to earn a green score. I hope so. But it will always be too late. SWTOR cannot now become the masterpiece it should have been. When they set aside the budget for this game, it was a grand chance to be daring and to redefine role playing forever. What we got instead was a boring version of WOW in space. Lost in Space, where is that robot waving its arms crying "warning, warning"? TOO LATE. Orctowngrot

Creative Assembly are a wierd mob. Their games definitely LOOK great. The loading screens are PERFECT, the music is great, the campaign maps are BEAUTIFUL. In battles the units look and sound terrific. All the eye-candy is there. But the gameplay? It's INCREDIBLY BLAND. And as many, users note time and time again. the unit AI in battles and the campaign AI in general looks and plays like bad computer coding. The games never feel as good as you imagine they should feel from looking at them. I think the naval battles in this game, as a separate component, are the only truly sound part of the design. Everything else looks great but plays MEH! It was also very rude of CA to spurn the Darth MOD dude, because his hard work was actually pointing the way to make a better game. IF CA don't change their designers and find a team capable of improving their campaigns, or at least start borrowing liberally from the ideas of Paradox Interactive we are doomed to see ever new ever prettier but ever hollow shells of good games. For the long of God CA, please get over the graphics and get the gameplay right for a change! Orctowngrot

A game with pros and cons. Sure buy for CA fans and strategy nuts. The game is pretty, with a nice range of factions, a huge map to mess around in and fun tactical battles. Beyond that the game is pretty shoddy, and is so incredibly easy, that it really needs the player to handicap themselves. The craziest feature is political control. Once you conquer an area, the player has to wait about 12 months before it fully assimilates into your country. Thus you can conquer and hold ALL of Europe, the middle east and the Americas without needing to worry about rebellions, or financial costs that might threaten your complete control of the world. This is of course, ridiculous. Compared to Europa Universalis games it is also POOR game design. CA games look prettier, and it is probably more fun to feel tough and kick everyone in the arse. However as a simulation or 'historic game' it's a complete joke. Also, its no small matter that the loading screens in this game run for ages. Over time there is a lot of time lost waiting for the computer to stuff your screen with mindless prettiness. Orctowngrot

GTA V is a technical Masterpiece. It boasts extremely high quality in all its constituent parts; a VAST amount of content and industry leading immersion It is second to none, and without a doubt one of the best 5 games ever made, if not the best. It is also morally indefensible, violent, crude, stupid and repugnant. It wafts of misogyny and cruelty. It has an irreverent and misplaced sense of humor. And is astoundingly politically incorrect. For once the argument that video games are dangerous, and make people crazy might even be true. All in all a PERFECT game. Buy it today! Orctowngrot.