stern

This is a very good underrated game when compared with CiM2 or C:Skyline. The first thing you feel with CiM 1 is cozyness, how the game evokes some kind of 60's central european vibe that instantly pulls you in, and you see yourself checking the news about the cold war, checking the price of fuel and gauging your city economy. Yes, CiM1 have many problems, from vehicles appearing in the wrong year to a shallow economy system, to a lack of re-playability and complexity. But two of these issues can be fixed with mods- such as line statistics- and in spite of the last one, CiM1 still holds an undeniable charm. If a cities in motion game maintained the historical progression and aesthetic beauty of CiM1, with the complexity and detail of CiM2, plus some interesting metropolitan areas in the developing world like Curitiba, Jerusalem and Johannesburg, with real transport issues for the player to solve, we would have the perfect transport simulation ever made.

I'm a long time player of strategy games from Paradox, AGEod and Positech. First I'll try to review this game without considering any ideological or political aspect of it, then I'll take them into account. The graphics of Peacemaker are surprisingly good for a game made in 2007 and with such a low profile. The interface is clean, the tabs are simple and which is rare for strategy games, it's very easy to understand in first contact. The music is also good and have a sort of middle eastern factor. Now for the mechanics of the game... Well, they are a bit disappointing. You can only do one action per "turn", they often fail by you not meeting the unsaid requirements (like having a very high domestic support), you don't have a real notion of your nation affairs such as its economical situation, and after everything that can be said about the game, in the end it's shallow, it gives you the impression of managing either Palestine or Israel, but your actions are so few, the paths are so restricted, that only a rigid pre-set succession of choices can lead you to win the game, it'll work the same in every difficulty and it's just a matter of guessing this path during gameplay. Although there are tabs for you to track your support among the population, settlers/militants, foreign powers, etc; they hardly matter/hardly help. But I consider this good quality for a game that was free in their own site. I see a potential in PeaceMaker and I hope they explore it. Which brings me to the political and ideological thoughts behind it. Games like Democracy 3, Victoria 2, Darkest Hour don't have any stance in politics, at least not explicitly. They don't deal with the moral or ethic aspects of the player building gated communities in their country, exterminating black people in Congo, or sending their whole military staff to the Gulag in a purge. PeaceMaker claims itself as a serious game but I see it as the complete opposite: Peacemaker avoids giving the player the ability to decide what is right or wrong, and what path to follow, instead giving a third intifada game over screen. "So that's it?" we ask ourselves, "don't I have the chance to see my country crumbling, being invaded and over-spending itself? Don't I have the chance to see consequence of my actions, my failures, and instead I am being told that I failed?". Games shouldn't try to have hidden political messages behind them in the same way as novels shouldn't be hidden religious pamphlets. And so instead of allowing the player the create the ever dreamt greater Israel or the ever longed liberation of Palestine, the amazing strategy game that dealt with Middle East tensions that everyone is waiting for, PeaceMaker only allows the player to reach a dubious peace without ever questioning if this peace is wanted, proper, desired or possible. There aren't even foreign nations in the game and the idea of one of them invading Israel/Palestine, although very possible in reality, doesn't exist inside PeaceMaker. For anyone really wanting to experience this region affairs I advice playing an Israeli mod for Democracy 3.

I found this game by chance and so far it's being amazing. I kept playing Diablo 2 in my life way, way past normal people stopped with it, I tried my hand with many Diablo clones, I never entered in Diablo 3 because I'm blessed by a divine force, protecting me from all the evil in this world (sometimes these evils take the name of Blizzard or EA) who only want money from my pocket and then... I found Path of Exile and I'm playing it non-stop. I loved the skill system, which is pretty similar to the open point system of Final Fantasy X, I loved the fact that there isn't a proper currency but spendable orbs, and I'm loving how the art of the game is realistic and dark in the same vein as the first Diablo and Starcraft of the 90's instead of the childish tone game nowdays took, and as someone who never buys game and always pirate, except if it's from Paradox or some very obscure creative developer, I love their market model. Maybe I'm so excited because like another reviewer said "You didn't reach endgame yet", maybe the game is good in the end. I only hope their add more content in the future

In this third and final release, slowly the narrative coherence of Mass Effect eroded, until near the end, at a fast pace it completly crumbled. In ME2 you could say that the villains were unjustified and meaningless in a narrative sense, you could say that choices, events and positions were forced into your character and many were literally asspulls, but at least ME2 provided plenty of well written and thoughtful content in the form of loyality missions for example, to couterbalance this. In ME3 there is no such thing and what starts as a contrived, average to bad story, end as a complete mess with giant holes where obviously the writers or devs didn't know what they were doing. Or if you played Deus Ex 1, a classical and mind-blowing game unlike ME3, you'll simply know that ME3 ending is a rip off, out of thone, feel and athmosphere from the rest of ME series and even from the rest of the third game itself, not addressing any of the questions and propositions that the ending should address. Mission after mission asspulls are thrown at the player and they are supposed to contain core elements of the narrative without any connection with the previous games. "Oh, you know, we found the ancient plans to this super-weapon, we don't even know what it does, but it's our only hope! Why didn't I mention these ancient plans before? I don't know", "Oh, the genophage was stabilished as a necessary evil, was even fully approached in a previous game? Too bad, let's use it again in the narrative in a total different way!", "You reproggammed heretic Geths? Nah, it didn't change anything!", "Forget Ilos and the Conduit, forget Haelstrom!" and so on, with even poorer resolutions than before, sometimes even with implausible forever happy conclusions, where magically everything worked out for everyone and butterflies and rainbows are in the sky. As for other aspects, some can be praised: they finally fleshed out powers, cooldowns and shields/armors/barriers, even adding power combos, making the gameplay as a pure adept or as an enginner very interesting. Too bad the game fail to explain this and you are supposed to search in the internet for a guide to which power detonates the other and what defense is vulnerable to what power (for example, energy drain is useless against armor, carnage is useless against shield, etc). The combat system is finally fun and interesting if you have patience to micromanage your squadmates, because they are useless otherwise and never use the proper powers if left by themselves. Other aspects must be criticized: the missions journal is confusing and doesn't match the missions name in the galaxy map, the weapons customization is dumbed down and mostly useless, upgrading equipment is a chore, side missions are utterly boring and repetitive, re-using multiplayer maps and the same mission model (active console A, hold postion B, etc), there are plenty and I mean plent of bugs even so long after release, sometimes advancing the main plot makes side missions expire and several, several characters are out of character or at least with very poorly written lines. The game feels short and I wonder if this is because they decided to focus on multiplayer instead. Unlike ME2, I can't recommend any DLC except for Javik. Citadel is cringe worthy and apparently made for 15 years old, Leviathan is stupid, inspired by movies such as Abyss and presents more implausible asspulls than answers, Omega is boring and will make you skip full dialogues out of boredom. ME3 is so bad that makes ME1 a master piece in comparison, it'll age bad and be a waste of your time. I recommend reading the relevant plot in wikis and skip this game. Too bad they are making a 4th installation, I predict a even worse product.

The whole experience in Mass Effect 2 feels like a high budget hollywoodian action film or as an Assassin's Creed game, specially wen compared with the first iteration, when Bioware obviously had more time to put things together and less expectation to deliver quality. This means that while some parts of it are truly brilliant and amazing, as the characters loyality mission- Tali comes to mind- in others moment the game appears to be written by complete different people, with complete different ideas of how things should be done, and gosh, how these parts are bland, generic and dumb, feeling more like you are playing the singleplayer campaign **** shooter than a scifi rpg. And what is said in others reviews isn't exageration or extremism, the game is a hell of an example of why people despise DLCs, with whole parts of the main plot, relevant to the game and the lore- Lair of Shadow Broker for example- being made into DLC. If you don't buy DLCs, several rooms of your ship will be locked for you with no explanation; it's like they, Bioware/EA, want you, they require you to buy those expensive and sometimes silly DLCs in top of an already expensive game to full. Another aspect also mentioned in previous reviews is the diminishing rpg experience, it's like they heard some people complaining about the poor inventory management in ME1 and thought "why not cut this altogether? why not throw the inventory away?". This minimalism was behind every aspect of the development: they removed separated cooldowns for powers, they removed heating for weapons and added ammo, they removed free roaming/open spaces, the removed non-combat utility of tech, they removed planet exploration and they pretty much removed non-council races from any relevant plot in the universe. This means that (1) every space is a corridor and sometimes you can't even go back, every city you are exploring is disappointing and boring, and an awful lost potential, for example, imagine what could have been to walk and explore the Migrant Fleet, to see how the Quarians lived in this crowded and ever nomadic space... When you go to the Citadel you'll understand what I am saying; (2) playing as an enginner or adept is horrible, even your companions seem tailored for a soldier or vanguard class; (3) they could make the impossible, they made space exploration even more boring and repetitive, now you are left sending probes into planets like a robot, even worse now that discovering gasses and minerals is a necessity; and finally (4) they lost many chances of exploring non-coucil races, for example Ilium would fit perfectly as a volus world, but all you see in the game is an even narrower landscape that you saw in ME1. The story is told in a rail-road, forced fashion: you are supposed to believe unplausible things, to accept unidimensional characters such as Jacob (clearly created to cater to what EA believe is a black young audience) and Miranda (clearly a fanservice ****), and to consider as villains beings who are never openly understood or expressed. Only mid-game things get interesting and by that point you already saw all Blade Runner, Star Wars, Asimov and general scifi inspiration that Bioware immersed itself to create the game. The ending doesn't answer any of ME1 open questions and doesn't even progress the plot, it's just action and action and action. All in all, like I said before, there are clearly amazing moments in ME2, such as the quarian zionist congress, I mean, the quarian audience and these parts were written by creative people. It's a game worth pirating.

Being a forum member myself, I long awaited this DLC, mainly because of jews and to see how Paradox would flesh out christianity and islamism. Needless to say I was disappointed: besides not having any oriental jews (the mizrachim), with their exilarchy, a political-religious entity who fought the sunni Caliph, the jews themselves doesn't have any inherent mechanics wich makes them different from christianity, they can create a titular kingdom, restore a priesthood- something ahistorical to judaism, more right would be restore the sanhedrin- and thats it. In other aspects they are just christians without features and with a different animation for the chaplain. "What mechanics would you give to jews, then?" would you ask. If you go to Paradox forums and read the numerous threads about jews you can see plenty of interesting, subtle and coherent mechanics, some of them even related to the learning stat. Other disappointments: seeing how broken and random all that stuff about cardinals and anti-popes are, how often the Joan D'arc event would span, how decadence (more exactly, how the ai deal with decadence) wasn't touched at all, and how orthodoxy, nestorianism and others eastern faiths were left behind, with no change to the creation of its patriarchal heads. But the worse thing in my opinion was the change that the patch brought with it. I love Crusader Kings, it's one of the games I most spent hours in my life, and I don't feel that limiting the roleplay of it- the best aspect in my opinion- is the best way of dealing with gamey tactics such as kingdoms entirely made of mayors or grand-bishoprics. But of course, it feels an important and overlooked portion of the game and it was very necessary. As PDS games are works in progress I'm sure they fix and improve things.

A good port for the pc and in my opinion the best 2d fighting game for the pc out there nowdays. As others said it's advisable to have a joystick because the keyboard isn't that responsive (which is ironic, older iterations of KoF were very responsive in emulators). There are much unjustified hate against the "new" KoFs from people who never arsed themselves to learn to play with a interesting character such as Ash. And what other options you have? A game as Blazblue or Skullgirls with less than 8 characters? A 3d game made for 15 years olds? Unfortunately the age of arcades died here where I live- and pretty much elsewhere besides Japan- and this game offer something I haven't seen for years. I can only compare it to Last Blade 2 or Garou:MotW.

A horrible port for pc with unresponsive controls, a fixed fps of 20, a complete lack of graphical options and multiplayer which doesn't work. Not worth of your money but hey! At least this shows they are giving more consideration to pc instead of consoles. As for the game itself- no matter if for console or pc- it's just another boring licensed fighting game. Nothing much to see here. Suffice to say that I simply downloaded a save with all characters unlocked. Most of them play the same anyway with few having different mechanics and interesting gameplays, and there is a striking lack of any depthness. I don't even know why they still have items in the right pad and this system of ougis/ninjustsus. They could change it all and make a much more interesting gameplay. If it didn't had the name Naruto imprited on it no one would even give attention.

The concept artist of this game deserves a nobel. Seriously. It's a beautiful game full of immersion and deep thinking. When I first entered Uta's room... God. It's hard to learn, you need to read some guides, but in the end it's an enjoyable experience, very far from what "indie games" pretend to be instead of the overpriced and incomplete sketchs they are. I look foward for other games of this company.

It's an incomplete game, buggy, with design flaws, and worst, a broken hard-coded core. This is something that not even modders will be able to change or improve, because it's the mechanics of Total War in the end. They should decide if they want to make a tactical real time battles game or if they want to make a strategical turn based map-based war game. As it is now, they try both and fail utterly. If you paid for this game I feel sorry for you, I sure grew out to Paradox games many years ago so I wasn't expecting any different from CA. Whoever played Medieval know what pain is. One wonders the appraisal this game has from "professional" reviewers. Were they paid?

How troubling is to review a PDS game... They are works in progress. But I feel something must be said about EU4 so long after its initial release. I was among the ones who pre-ordered it and I admit it was the first game I bought instead of pirating in, what? 10 years? The other game I bought before EU4 was Starcraft: Broodwar for you to have an idea. CK2 left a very good impresion in me, I thought PDS was finally getting a hang of things and I decided to support them. And when EU4 came, I played a bit with Burgundy, I was a litlle frustrated and regreted my decision, shelving the game. But then came all the patchs, game fixes and balances (like trade nerfing). Now EU4 is amazing and I already spent hours and hours and hours in this game, bulding Switzerland into a constitutional republic, an economical world power against France, making my north American kingdom with a norwegian court-in-exile, and many others plays. I didn't understood the sinergy and connection between Monarchic Points, technology, buildings and everything else at first, but now I see how well planed and structured everything is in this game and I'm enjoying very much. The only bad thing I would say, is that same thing that EU3 also had: is a deterministic game. You can't take Spain and go for a military non-colonial game, you can't take Brandenburg and not focus on forming Germany/Prussia, otherwise the game punishs you and thing lose sense. Also the lack of natives in South America, and how the lack of a La Plata trade node. Anyway, it's an awesome iteration and I hope that East versus West follows its footsteps.

I have played many Bioware games: Baldur's Gate, Kotor, Dragon Age: Origins, Swtor... I came to play Mass Effect a long time after release due to a recent fascination with scifi books and movies, and a sudden free time in my life. So I consider my review somewhat mature and balance, and I'm not a Bioware hater neither a stupid fanboy. First, one of the reasons I think so many reviews are high about this game, is because it fills a very empty niche. It's a clear fact that the scifi and space opera themes aren't much represented in the rpgs, and when it comes a game that let's you explore remote planets, imagine humanity future, dwell in galatic politics with different species... Well, this game is going to a thirsty and numerous audience who grew up with Dune, Star Trek, Star wars, etc, and always hoped to experience the same thing in a game. And Mass Effect delivers what it promises: it has great concept art, great graphics, a great feel, an eletronic and 80ish soundtrack, an average to good lore... But suffers from the same problems of many others BW games. One wonders how much they spend with writers while the company grows. Is the writing an underfunded sector? Are the writers few? Because their plots, dialogues and (some) characters, are as bland, immature and immerson breaking as one can get. And it's the same old formula of any BW rpg since Kotor, you always have a bulky, angry, agressive companion who worked as a mercenary and who tell plenty of stories of his battles; the protagonist is always a stupid manicheist characte, being either a perfect stupid and law abiding paladin or a ruthless monster who doesn't care about anything at all, withou grey tones between these two poles; the romatic relationships are always dealt with a complete lack of sublety and maturity; etc. What actually most surprised (and disappointed) me was to see that Mass Effect main plot is an exact copy of Kotor: an ancient space faring civilization built powerful stuff which is buried in several planets, a villain is after these artifacts and you are in a race against this villain, with all the universe hopes and future on your shoulders, but, ironically, the very own governments and political entities leading this universe you try to save doesn't recognize the threat. As you can imagine this leads to very bland experiences where no question is proposed to the player, where no though and conflicting choices need to be made, where you feel sometimes as banging your character head in the floor, only to be able to answer or react to things diffferently. Oh, but if you did that you would be acquiring "evil" points... And after you reach the half of the game, it's basically pure grinding and repetitiveness until reaching the end, and being interesting again. Add this to a worse combat system than Kotor or Dragon Age, where you can even change whom time member you control and this it. But Mass Effect isn't only bad points, as I mentioned is amazing to imagine humanity future, colonies in Mars, wars against others species, psionic powers... The Quaranians for example are very interesting and give many food for thought, specially as a reflection of real world politics. So, as a tl,dr: Play Mass Effect without expecting too much or a big deviation from your average BW rpg. Just be advised that this isn't like the first Deus Ex and there isn't any mind blowing event or amazing writing, just the overbeated "epic" story of good against the evil.

I'm a fan of the first Deus Ex, I still remember nights spent thrilled by the plot of illuminatis, templars and men in black, picking up phones with exquisite entities on the other side, finding easter eggs, this kind of thing. Sadly there is an utter lack of games like Deus Ex, games that feel like you are reading a book, games that present you with a coherent and thrilling story and an innovative game play at the same time. Dishonored offers this, not with all the glory and deepness possible, but it offers a plot, dialogues and a different combat system. Indeed it is repetitive one time or the other, or it presents you with a forced and non-sense way, but overall is enjoyable. Also the design was great and they were very successful in creating a british victorian inspired world.

A great entry level into Paradox great strategy games. It's not overly complex, the visual design is well done, and the mechanics of inheriterance, claims and sucession are well thought. The downside is, as others stated, the point system isn't really relevant and you'll find yourself as always, trying to paint the map with your color. Also, playing the Kingdom of Jerusalem in it's historical creation date (july 15 of 1099) is impossible without cheating, you'll be steamrolled by sunis and shias in a second.

A bland and repetitive game where CA offers the same engine, the same mechanics of map painting of Rome Total war with graphics that would be considered inadequate 10 years from the release. Is so hard to invest in the artistic department? I felt shame for the developers when I saw the outdated menus, the poorly created icons and protraits, and the freatureless fortresses that were supposed to represent my settlements. If previous titles offered a smooth battle, in Medieval 2 the units are unresponsive and buggy. The AI is totally absent, they are as incapable of capitalizing on chances as they are of accepting your peace offers when they have only one city left and you are besieging it with a doomstak, like any sane human player would do. The factions are empty, you'll grow tired of spamming always the same units, the mechanics are disfunctional with broken economy, broken upgrade trees, broken unrewarding units and broken religion. There is no geopolitics whatsoever, religion spread and priest production is unrealistic, assassination/sabotage is unrealistic, the game is ahistorical... After some time playing, supposing you have eaten other factions, you'll get bored very easily. Sieging is so damn broken I can't even understand the logic behind upgrading your wall levels. The music is great, really, all the rest is crap. Paradox is a company able to portray geopolitics in their maps, CA not.

I guess writing my review for Team Fortress 2 is redundant. Is a great game and others before me have said it ad infinitum. But I feel an urge to express my opinions and this is it. Team Fortress is like a diamond which came out of mud, from the depths of the FPS world came a balanced, deep and funny game, a game which is the denial of every skill based game filled with leet players calling you noob, like COD or CS. It's like a cooperative chess, in the sense that no class is perfect in itself, always having disadvantages, depending on others and needing to fulfill a specific role in the team. Add to this a great visual design resembling the 70's and 60's- believe me, I work as a graphic designer- great typhography, great conceptual design, a whole culture, context and world behind the characters, a long learning curve... And you have endless hours of fun. The community of Team Fortress is alive and very participative in creating content. The only problem is that Team Fortress is haunted by it's FPS context and past, so when you enter a game and see that your team is made of 4 snipers and 3 spies, you know you are doomed, and you can image a 15 years old kid, thinking the games is all about aiming, being sneaky, or being the "best player", while your team is being **** over and over again. I sincerely propose that Valve one day cap the numbers of certain classes in teams or that classes are assigned randomly to players.

I played this game because of the high rating everyone was giving and now I learnt my lesson: never trust "professional" reviewers, or they are paid, or they are totally and clueless people. I ended Dragon Age only with the desire to see Morrigan nude and an utter frustration. Dragon Age is the reason people use the term WRPG pejoratively; a bland and dull fantasy world which won't attract anyone over 25, a mish-mash of all things rooted in tabletop rpgs, but with a vague and easy coming face, specially appealing to younger generations and metal fans. And also painfully linear, because they like to pretend the game isn't linear; experiment playing the game as an elf mage and going to the elf city, they won't treat you as an elf simply because their dialog lines weren't written taking your choices in account. Also, you'll se gross stereotypes, unnecessary sexualization and even offensive references to homosexuality. I bet they probably did all this to create controversy and free marketing. The game offers entertainment indeed, but you probably won't even end it, getting bored midway.

Reviewing this game is complex. At first you'll think this is only a sad and buggy re-rash of the previous title; because of similar characters (like HK-47) and similar stories (the amnesiac jedi aboard a ship). And gosh how this game start bad, you are thrown in a repetitive and bland dungeon, doing meaningless quests. But then the game open up and you see a lot of qualities unseen in the previous title. If Kotor 1 had a intense macro plot involving everything, but forced conversations with characters (for example, a character would bring a talk about his parents only to develop background) and an often unilateral representation of the world , Kotor 2 offers the opposite: the bigger plot isn't all that relevant or entertaining, but the characters are great and their personalities amazing. Some lines of Kreia and Handmaiden are writer's material, and it's a relief to finally see someone being original and playing with moral and ethical dicothomies in the Star Wars universe, an universe so hungry of this. The downside is that Kotor 2 is an incomplete game with a lot of wasted potential, besides the fact that, unlike Kotor 1, you can't really enjoy all the social interation with characters due of the inexorable influence system; if you mistreat a character once you may never be able to interact fully with him again. Play this game as weekend casual rpg and you won't disappointed. Also don't forget to install the mods. If any bug happens, see the bright side: at least you are not playing a game with bioware level of writing.