Board Game Blog

Preview: Planet Coaster

There’s a throne, held by the Roller Coaster Tycoon series, as the best tycoon series ever created. The king has reigned for about a decade now, the last king, Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, having ruled without a legitimate heir for a while. As Roller Coaster Tycoon World looks like it won’t be a true successor to that throne, Planet Coaster hopes to topple the franchise and usurp the title. Can it become the new king of tycoon games?

The original Roller Coaster Tycoon gave birth to what became the indisputable king of tycoon simulation games. A successor to the previous Roller Coaster Tycoon (3) has long been coming and more than once we’ve been given a new Roller Coaster Tycoon title that isn’t a true follow up to the storied RCT series. RCT 3 hit in late 2004, with a good chunk of additional expansions and extra content following. Since then, we’ve been given nothing but pure garbage pretenders in the form of microtransaction mobile games and a RCT World title that has been a disaster from day 1. I knew, after they’d changed developers twice, it wasn’t going to bode well for a product that was apparently still going to be pushed onto shelves as if it were ready. That was before it changed developers a third time. Recently, Atari announced RCT World would not go full release as planned this Spring (which was already a pushed back date from December), but instead Early Access. With it’s struggle, the heir to the throne of tycoon simulator looks ready to die and a new king poised to rise.

Years and years ago, I spent an inordinate amount of time playing RCT and honestly, the second and especially the third, wasn’t much different. The series got a little bit cartoony and I didn’t necessarily care for it. It wasn’t as odd as Sim Coaster, but cartoony in the sense that it included a lot of unrealistic rides that didn’t interest me. For that reason I always looked back on the original with great nostalgia. Building coasters and other rides was incredibly simple and fun. Getting riders to ride some of your creations though was something else entirely.

So through many years and after the many disappointing iterations of an attempted successor to the RCT throne, I’d almost given up hope. But in a strange twist of fate, in what reminds me of the Sim City debacle, it seems that the heir apparent is about to be stabbed in the back and his claim lost perhaps forever. From the respected Frontier developers comes Planet Coaster, who also developed RCT3 and it’s expansions. Planet Coaster looks to topple the RCT regime that it’s developers had once helped cement, but can it? Will it fare better than RCT World?

I did this preview knowing full well that this game is extremely early access. Frontier expects a Q4 release this year with 3 planned stages of early access – 1st stage being scenery and basics, which is already been implemented, a 2nd stage consisting of coaster building and terraforming, and a 3rd adding community functionality. That being said, I wanted to do a preview as it stands right now, and then come back when the game releases and do a full review.

Gamplay, Graphics & Sound

Despite being in the very beginning stages, the game is far along. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not a finished game and in it’s current state, it’s more of a park building sandbox than a coaster tycoon. But as a foundation, it could hardly be stronger and I can’t think of a better way to get early access rolling. I’m counting on it to have an extensive career mode with many challenges as well as a lot of scenarios, both built-in and player-made scenarios. The exclusion of player-made challenges would be a complete shame.

Before I go into detail regarding the current state / phase of development, it’s really important to scrutinize what’s there and probably won’t be changing. The game’s engine is developed using Frontier’s own COBRA engine which seems to be extremely robust. Graphically the game is way better than I expected and the level of detail is superb. From a god-like view watching over your park to completely zoomed in, the game hardly breaks immersion and does not sacrifice its looks at all. Even the people in your park were paid close attention to, with fantastic animations and a great level of detail. Frontier has gone to painstaking detail to make rides and attractions realistic, down to the nuts and bolts of each support for each rail of each coaster. Weather, landscapes and other conditions create perfect atmospheres, from a dark night to early morning.

Frontier did their homework on rides and have pledged that all the rides you’ll see have real-world equivalents. To my utter happiness, we’ll not see strange fantasy rides in PC. You’ll see this realism translate to really intricate rides that look and behave as you’d expect them to. When you build a roller coaster, not only will the physics work as they should, but you’ll have to build according to the constraints of the given materials. You’ll see supports generate in an authentic way, not simply up and down but supports at angles that you’d see in actual parks.

The first phase of EA concentrated on scenery. At it’s core, you’re able to make entire buildings that you can duplicate, move and tweak. These buildings aren’t premade though, as you’re given a wide variety of walls, ceilings, decorations and more to build a completely customizable structure. And when I say customizable, I do mean customizable. The number of things you can do with each piece is staggering, from flipping and rotation to placement inside other objects, you’re limited only to what you can think of. I’d like to see a scaling option here as well similar to what’s in the Sims 4. It would really provide an added depth to your ability to use pieces for other tasks. We might see it in the near future though in another release, so here’s to hoping for that. Regardless the building implementation is extremely powerful and allows for dramatic scenery for simple looks or very functional ride entrances. It remains to be seen though if we’ll get enough themed scenery that hopefully isn’t too genre specific. Right now there’s a decent mix of pirate, castle and futuristic-themed items, along with some other things.

Along with scenery and true to the mantra that everything will be realistic and exist somewhere, there’s a handful of props and animtronic people and creatures with surely more to come that should further the experience and immersion. One highlight, the fan-favorite kraken, is a huge servo-driven beast that rises and falls and roars, with separate tentacles that add tremendously to the feel. Paths in-game are a bit wonky to make, I’m not totally sold on the path making tool but I’ve read it will be much improved with subsequent alpha releases so I’m not too worried with that.

This phase of development featured limited coaster building thanks to a built-in cheat. The developers weren’t going to include it at all, considering it wasn’t a part of the first phase and it’s clearly not finished yet, but to appease the community they added the ability to unlock the tool. Despite being very unfinished, building one of two types of steel coasters is very fun and easy. There’s still some obvious smaller bugs and some odd tweaks I found with things like track inclination, tilt and various special components like brakes and lift chains but they are very fun to make, realistic, and as you’d expect, completely ridable.

At the moment, I’m not entirely impressed (and a bit disappointed) with the way it appears shops/stalls will be implemented. I’ve seen some really cool buildings that mimic restaurants, down to tables and chairs made from a mish mash of miscellaneous items. But that’s all for show, unfortunately, as shops for food and souvenirs will only be little window in a wall. I was (and still am, considering it’s only early access) hoping for something a lot more dynamic, something I’d have a lot more control over and more ability to make truly my own. Something a lot like how prison architect is how I’d envision it. You would designate specific areas / buildings to certain functions, so for example, you’d mark one building off as a restaurant and another as a souvenir shop. Then, based on what you designated it, each type has requirements to be functional. So a restaurant might require at least 4 tables, chairs, a kitchen, and server station or whatever. Likewise, the souvenir shop might require a checkout line, 4 product stands, etc. Just my opinion but setting these up would be a lot more fun and would add an additional management level to the game, where you’d have to keep an eye on things like as your park gets more popular, the restaurants might get more crowded and thus require more tables.

To the ears this game is already a masterpiece. While the graphics left my jaw on the floor, the sound had me blown away. Crowds of people sound extremely good – it sounds like you’re really there. Ride sounds are even better, from the clicking of the chain lift or the brakes on a roller coaster, to stationary ride sound effects like sirens and air pressure releases, it is insanely immersive. I can’t wait to see this expanded further as well.

Controls and UI

If this game were finished, I’d rate the controls as pretty sub par. Not terrible but not ideal either. One of my main gripes is camera control. Others may be used to it, and it probably is just a thing with me but the controls for rotation, by clicking the middle mouse button, is odd for me and I don’t like it. There are some settings to change what the right button hold does, but I’ve been unable to make that rotate. Currently it just slides the camera based on a few things (you can select it to slide based on the clicked location, or slide in general). I want to be able to rotate with the RMB and it’s a bit annoying. Also the default camera for building things like paths is set to center each time you build a new piece, so if you zoom out and pan a little, then build a segment, it zooms back in and pans back to center. Thankfully this is easily changed but it’s a very odd camera.

They’ve included the ability to free roam as a camera view, which is perfect. To be able to see all sorts of eye-lines and really see your park from every perspective is what I’d hope for.

UI is above average. It is sleek and user-friendly but could do for some upgrades as far as selection and sorting. There’s not a ton of items in there though, so it may be that there’s not enough to really showcase what it can do. So I won’t go any further into that for now, especially considering that I’d expect to see improvement.

Immersion and Challenge Level

Immersion is tremendous. As mentioned, a free roam camera will allow you to see your park from every angle, and viewing the rides from the rider camera makes for quite the experience. It’s something else to be able to jump onto your own roller coaster and watch every crest, drop and turn. Oculus support is hopeful but not implemented yet, which should make this game incredibly immersive.

Challenge really is non-existant, as the game is simply a sandbox at this point with no pricing, funds, R&D, etc. Still it’s very easy to challenge yourself through builds and such for now.

Mods & Modability

It seems that while modding support hasn’t been a primary concern for Frontier at this time, community integration in phase three of development will feature the ability to share, download and build other player’s creations. While not exactly the same, it’s a step in the right direction. Frontier’s RCT 3 was given life well beyond it’s few expansions thanks to mod support and a great community and if this doesn’t have the same I will be let down. The opportunities are limitless, with new maps, expanded rides and coasters, to more themed scenery and stalls.

Frontier essentially said they’ve looked into doing it, but haven’t promised anything, so I wouldn’t expect anything less than how Bethesda handled their creation (mod) kit, by releasing it several month’s after the game’s release. Either way, to go without mod support entirely is a huge mistake, one that the infamous Sim City made that Cities: Skylines capitlized on in a big way. Fan-made content in maps, buildings, landmarks, architectural-styles, interchanges, not to mention gameplay teaks all contributed to Cities’ success tremendously.

A history / conclusion

There’s quite a parallel I’ve drawn here, that I see plain as day, between the famous city-building game franchise and the famous roller coaster tycoon-building franchise. Each had it’s own distinct throne, held by a reigning king for years, with multiple titles that further cemented the king’s rule over other similar games. Sim City held the title since the early ninties, while roller coaster tycoon, while developed by various studios firmly grasped it’s rule since 1999.

Both had a significant gap between their last title and their most recent one. Sim City 4 hit in 2003, while RCT 3 hit 2004. You’ll notice in this case I’m ignoring smaller-project spinoffs and titles, like RCT 4 Mobile. This gap in time, for almost a decade for both series, created cracks in the foundation of their castles, casting doubt and allowing pretenders to rise. And rise they did.

Finally in 2012 Sim City (5) was announced, a reboot of the series intended to bring a fresh game to the series to again assert it’s dominance. But due to a number of issues that plagued the game, from small cities, always-online DRM requirements, bugs, horrid launch, and more, the game completely failed to claim the throne of City Simulator. In came Cities: Skylines from Paradox; Sim City basically as it should’ve been. Better promises, better development, complete mod and steam workshop support, it was a phenomenal success, stealing away the crown.

Likewise, here we have RCT 3, which was actually developed by the same developers as Planet Coaster (so small wonder the hype for this game), that had not had a true successor until the announcement of RCT World in late 2014. But over it’s “development” cycle, it incurred numerous issues, switching developers three times. Now, after a promised release of late 2015, they set it back to an early access stage for May. Gameplay footage has been shown to be buggy and downright bad, graphics aren’t good and they insist on no mod support. When will these developers learn that modding is an extremely important facet to a game’s lifespan and sales? Needless to say, with Planet Coaster already in EA and poised to claim the throne, we’ll find out later this year if the throne has been usurped and two reigning dynasty franchises have been toppled.

Preview: Pulsar Lost Colony

We’ve all played games where we control a starship – smaller ships that could be manned by as small as a 1 man crew or some that needed thousands of hands. But in any case, we’ve always controlled that craft with simple mouse clicks, controls and joysticks. Well this is a breath of fresh air: this is what it would really be like to control a ship with a crew of five, each officer responsible for his station and ensuring mission success and survival. Does this new approach herald a great game, or does it fall short?

The HMS Dauntless drops out of warp in the Adalmaak system, a pretty large orb of blue directly ahead shifts into our main view. Right away, the scientist officer, Mr. Winkle calls out a warning: “Hostile ship, scanning!” The readouts in front of me pulsate as I glance over the status.

“Pilot,” I call from my captain’s chair, addressing Cocainee at his controls directly in front of me at the base of the view window, “keep our distance and maneuver to get a shot.”

The planet beyond the view screen rotates as he manipulates the yoke of the Intrepid-class light frigate, we were turning upside down and slowly away from the bright disc.

“Incoming fire!” Hurske, the weapons specialist called from his station at the main turret, located directly on the top of the ship. “Enemy is firing lasers! Permission to fire!?”

A cursory glance at my control screen shows we’ve lost a quarter of our shields. Thankfully our range has kept the worst of the damage from us. I turn my chair directly behind to see the engineer and the scientist officers at their station. “Engineering, initiate jump drive charge and head back to the reactor. Science, give us modulated shields. Weapons, cleared to engage.”

Naomi, the engineer, pressed a few things on his console and then ran out of the bridge to man his station in the reactor to ensure we would not overheat. Just as he left, a red flash indicated our main turret fired. The ship lurched from the recoil as the laser spewed to the port side of the ship, towards the enemy cruiser that was, until now, 5 kilometers distant. Cocainee struggled to adjust the ship’s course against the powerful laser’s shot.

“Core temperature rising, captain,” warned Naomi from the reactor room aft. “Currently at 2,000 kP and climbing!”

The shipped rocked sideways, an explosion setting off alarms. The lights flicker momentarily then they’re back as I notice on the status screen our shields are not only down, but the weapons bay has taken serious damage. I jump from my captain’s chair to run to the teleportation room, which leads me to the weapons bay. The main power conduit and console was on fire so I quickly grab the fire extinguisher and begin spraying down the fire.

“Weapons damaged, charge to the main turret is incredibly slow,” reported Corsi.

“Standby to fire,” I reply. “Science run boost program and then attack with a sitting duck virus. Engineering, divert more power cells to science.”

The last of the embers died but still the gun would not charge. I grab my repair tool and set to it, working to restore the conduit fully. We had precious seconds before the enemy ship would fire it’s main turret again.

“Incoming!”

Hopefully that little anecdote of what the game is really like got you interested in Pulsar: Lost Colony because that is exactly what it’s like to be part of the crew of a starship. A lot of people call it a Star Trek simulator and I hesitate to call it that, simply because it might scare some people away (it might do that for myself, as I’m not a Star Trek fan).

The premise is simple, become a part of a crew, five in all, and work as a team to control the ship, battle, complete missions and explore the galaxy. You’ll be tasked with random missions like aiding friendly ships, ambushes and responding to distress beacons, but not just merely ship missions. Each ship is equipped with teleportation pads allowing you to beam not only to other ships when their shields are down, as a sort of boarding action, but also down to a planet’s surface to complete exploratory and assistance missions.

The game, currently in early-access beta is incredibly far along. This is yet another game I’ve watched (through Moddb.com) for at least 1-2 years. Finally I decided it was time to give it a go, and I’m more than impressed with it. It’s very stable and growing with each additional release, featuring a steady stream of content and minor bug squashing.

So without further ado, let’s get into the nitty-gritty:
Gameplay

There’s little that I’m not impressed with thus far with the gameplay. The game is centered around the five officers: Captain, who leads the ship and gives the orders. The Engineer is responsible for maintaining the reactor, fuel, coolant and power systems, controlling the warp drive, as well as a specializing in repair. The Scientist plays a multirole function, looking after the crew’s health, advancing the ship’s scientific research, and most importantly running the ship’s computers, viruses, firewall and more. The Weapons Specialist gets to pew pew things, as he’s the only one from the start that can operate the ship’s main turret. Last but not least, the Pilot is responsible for the direct control of the ship’s drives and thrusters.

The unique take on a first person space ship command game is incredible. It’s so different and fun, providing such a uncommon challenge with a small group of friends, it’s hard to put down and not like.

Each member has their own distinct duties both in the operation of the ship while navigating through the galaxy, which is procedurally generated and different every time, and while in battle. The galaxy, while not extremely unique every time, does change with every game in some ways so it provides a fresh galaxy with each play. The pilot, during navigation will need to align to the next system that the captain has plotted out, the engineer will need to prime the warp core to charge for the upcoming jump while science can scan the next system for possible planets, ships and more.

And with each member’s role, he’ll get skills and bonuses to his/her job. So weapons specialists will get bonuses to weapons cooldowns while the captain can get crew buffs. Every member has unique jobs that don’t necessarily overlap, while also having jobs that everyone can perform if another is busy (helping put out fires, repairing, etc). There might be a small bit of downtime but still everyone is kept engaged for the most part.

Amazingly, there’s not just one ship you can play with either. There are in total six different ships to choose from of varying sizes, each ship boasting it’s own model and unique interior, as well as it’s own sort of play style. The playstyles can vary from a small stealthy ship, to hard hitting carriers and cruisers and with the varying styles, there are a number of ways you can emerge as the victor (or suffer agonizing defeat) in battle. Obviously pummeling the enemy to death is one way, but you can use teleporters to beam aboard the enemy ship, disable ship systems and kill the crew to loot to your hearts content. Pirates can utilize a credit siphon virus, keeping range while stealing money from enemy ships.

There’s a number of factions within the game already, and you’ll earn reputation (or lose it) depending on your actions, which will affect your standing with them (whether you’re attacked on sight – IF they detect you that is), if you can access their repair stations and hubs, etc. As your game progresses you’ll earn credits from missions, which you can receive from NPCs at hubs or randomly from system jumps, XP which you can turn in for talent points to get buffs based on your officer role, and the chaos level will rise. I’ll talk about the chaos level below under challenge level, but it’s basically a difficulty meter that increases as your game progresses.

The missions can include a number of different tasks. Random missions can include investigating abandoned and crashed ships, requiring you to teleport aboard them and figure out what happened, ambush and combat assistance missions and more. These only last a specified amount of time before they expire. They’re a bit on the repetitive side, but with each release they’re adding more missions so I’d expect this to get better. I believe the game is at that point where adding content now is a main focus as bug squashing and actual coding has been established and minimized, so I can see this improving. I think it’s at that point where they’re still building the game a bit, but moreso now moving over to fleshing out more content. Regardless, there’s still a lot already.

Spaceship combat is not the only thing though. Many missions will require beaming down to a planet’s surface (after your science officer scans it to ensure you don’t need a exosuit to survive) or onto another ship. This FPS aspect of the game again gives P:LC a completely different feel than other spaceship games. You’ll be tasked with investigating crash sites, helping research stations repel spiders, or find and eradicate smuggler’s dens. There’s plenty to do and I’m extremely optimistic for every future update release.

Last I’ll touch up upon the market, ship upgrades and that sort of thing. Currently it’s pretty good but could be a lot better. Market prices are adjusted based on your standing with that particular faction, but I’d have to say that prices in general are a bit too low. There’s a great selection of different mods for the ship, upgrades to reactors, thrusters, weapons, and more. I’m not as impressed with the weapons, there’s not enough (currently there’s only one main type of turret and two types of secondary turrets) I know they’ll expand upon this, but it’s worth mentioning. There’s other types of ship weaponry, like nukes and missiles, but there needs to be more flavor to the turrets. There’s also a good amount of loot for your character, better pistols and such both to buy and find but there could certainly more. I’d like to see rifles (perhaps only usable by the weapons specialist), armor and other small buff objects.

I’ll say it again though, I’m extremely optimistic for future releases.

Graphics & Sound

Graphically, there’s nothing to write home about here. I’d say the visuals are “good enough” but they could certainly be improved upon. Space is engaging and each system brings it’s own look and feel, likewise each planet feels special. Even planet-side the environments, though small, are pretty diverse, ranging from cold planets that freeze your exo-suit’s view to lava planets, jungle planets and more.

Ship design is incredible. While there needs to be more, both for the player (even though I’m impressed that there is already 6 playable ships) and the enemies, the ships are still great. Graphically the ships and modules need to be diversified but I chalk this up to a beta thing right now, as it’s more about function currently than looks.

Sounds could be vastly improved and one of the major score detractions here. There’s little ambiance to the ship that I’d expect (and hope for) if I was inside a vessel that explored the stars. The hum of the drives, alarm klaxons when you take damage, shrill warnings, computerized spoken “warning” alarms as well, beeping and chiming of computers, reactor noises, groaning of metal and better damage sounds, improved weapons sounds, etc. This is where I am quite let down but hopefully it will be addressed. I can see the immersion factor going way up (will touch upon this below) with better ambient noises, not even just better sound effects.

Controls & UI

Controls are very straightforward, mostly owing to basic FPS elements and point-and-click on in-game screens on the ship. From that standpoint it’s simple and works pretty well. Not much to say here.

I took a few points off for one big reason, and this is currently tied for my biggest grip with the game as it stands. There are numerous consoles / screens in the ship itself that display shields and armor health, reactor output, etc. So you would use that to see that your shields are at 50%. Or you could use the immersion-breaking UI section that displays the two bars for shield and armor HP! Why would I use the in-game screens when the ship’s health is displayed so easily on the right of my screen? Not only does it show your health, but it shows your enemy’s health, too! Remove it please, or at least provide us with the ability to remove it in a “hardcore-type” mode, which I’ll detail under immersion.

Replayability – 14/15

With a randomly generated universe and a number of ships to try out and paths to play, there’s a good amount of replayability available. The galaxy itself doesn’t vary extremely, but there’s a new layout and systems (and their affiliation) change each time. There could be greater variance and I’d like to see that, but for now and where it’s at I can’t complain at all.

Immersion

This was so close to being absolutely perfect. I feel like I’m truly an officer aboard an interstellar ship as each member of our team coordinates to ensure the ship is run smoothly. You really lose track of time in this game and it’s totally worth it. A lot of this immersion depends on your crew but the vast majority of players that I’ve played with, both friends and random players who have joined our public game join in on comms and contribute to the immersion. Orders are called out by the captain, officers preform their duty in accordance and call out functions as necessary. If you prefer to solo without a mic, this game is not for you, even though you can fill some slots with an AI bot.

But back to my biggest gripe: the need for a hardcore mode. Two things strike me as completely out of place though I understand their inclusion in the game, which is why I propose it be a game type that is an option, just like ironman. I mentioned one of the things that bother me, the UI that gives you the health of your ship and the enemy ship on your computer screen (not in game screens) needs to be removed. I shouldn’t always know what the exact health of my vessel is if I’m not at my station. It’s something we’re used to seeing in just about every single other game but doesn’t belong here.

The second thing that needs to be included in hardcore is first-person exclusive mode. So the majority of the game is first-person only, when doing most things, planetary combat, etc. However, when piloting, you get to use the exterior view to navigate the ship and it’s pretty immersion breaking and doesn’t belong in what is essentially a spaceship simulator. It wouldn’t be easy flying the ship through the main view screens but that’s how you’d have to do it. I’d like to see it happen.

Challenge Level

The game progresses forward as you upgrade in the form of a chaos level. I believe it is based on the number of jumps/warps you’ve made but it basically ensures you’ll see harder enemies that you wouldn’t see when your ship isn’t as advanced. I like the idea, but I think it is too influential. I should run into ships / battles I can’t handle just as often as I run into easy opponents, no matter how much I’ve played this game. I should have to fire up warp drives and escape sometimes, and I feel like this is a rarity at the beginning. Make chaos level less of an impact on difficulty and randomize the ships you encounter more. Chaos level can still impact difficulty and boss battles, as well as end-game creep (I won’t spoil anything) but I need it to feel a less linear, less grindy progression and more luck and skill involved in each game, in each battle.

There’s also an ironman mode, which as expected won’t allow you to save before every jump. This functions as a permadeath-type game. In the current game, respawning yoru character is pretty common and there are no penalties for it. So eventually you’ll most certainly be able to take an enemy down, for example, on a planet. Ironman does not apply to player respawning, so unfortunately you will still be able to endlessly throw yourselves at an enemy, but it prevents save scumming. There needs to be a middle-ground with every game mode that when a player dies and respawns, he loses some loot and XP, and possibly talent points.

Mods & Modability

I’d say while there was other things that affected the score a bit more, this has to be the biggest disappointment. The devs, who are independent and started this via Kickstarter/Greenlight Steam, did not reach the funding goals necessary to ensure the code base supported mods. They’ve said to support mods they’d have to rewrite a ton of code and because of it, we probably won’t see many mods here.

This is an extreme shame, as community-made content would not only provide an extreme boom in depth, from player-made ships, planets, galaxies, AI improvements, and gameplay tweaks/ balance fixes, but would also ensure the life of Pulsar continues years into the future, long after the devs have moved on from this brilliant project.

I can only hope that some ambitious soul(s) will aim to make this moddable and create content. Where there’s a will there’s a way and I’d expect to see at least a few things.

Summary

Overall, I’m incredibly impressed with this game in it’s current state and can’t wait for more content to be added via beta releases. The game is very playable as it is, with only minor glitches and the occasional crash, it is well worth the money spent for it. Being an indie dev, it’s not even that pricey, either. So if you’re even on the fringe about getting this game, I highly recommend it, especially if you have a friend that the two of you could jump in.

The lack of mod support planned hurt this score but don’t let it fool you, the game is an extremely fresh breath of air for spaceship combat games. Much better than I had hoped for even back when I saw the devlogs a year or two ago on moddb. Just so long as the devs continue adding content as they plan to and have been the game will be a smash hit. I’d just like to see a hardcore mode!

Battlefleet Gothic Review

In a previous review I went into depth about how war never changes. Well this isn’t far off the mark because in the grim dark future of the 41st millenium, there is only war. This is the early review of the upcoming Warhammer 40,000 game that focuses on the epic space battles from Games Workshop. This year is shaping up to be a 40k fan’s dream with many 40k video games being released. But will this one be the best or forgotten?

Battlefleet Gothic Armada takes place in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Some are familiar with Games Workshop’s fantasy adaption into an apocalyptic far-future of the 41st millennium, but if you’re not just know it is a future filled with endless warring and strife. There’s plenty of places to get more background into 40k, so that’s as far as I will touch upon the universe itself. The lore, even though it may be a bit spotty at times, is fantastic. The universe really sucks you in and has great customization too it if you want.

Battlefleet Gothic centers around the spaceship combat of the universe, which features massive ships, several kilometers long brandishing huge broadsides, fighter craft and torpedoes in an effort to control the Gothic sector. The game stems from the original tabletop game called Battlefleet Gothic (the expansion of which is where the game itself takes it’s name) which I dabbled in a bit years ago. The game, just like tabletop, removed the 3D aspect of space in combat because it provided no added depth or gameplay. BFG tabletop was fun and a lot cheaper than tabletop 40k, not to mention it was, to me, more strategically interesting. You could give ships special orders, you’d fire off volleys of broadsides and pummel the opponent’s ships to floating wreckage, or sometimes almost nothing at all. So as a tabletop player I know how the game is supposed to play, and having read a good portion of the 40k books, especially involving the naval ones, I have a lot of background knowledge of the lore.

The ships, as I said and want to reiterate, are huge in 40k which is why I love them. Crewed by tens of thousands of men, these ships slowly draw their way through the void to decimate their enemies. They draw heavily upon the age of sail in the way they fight and feel, with slower maneuverability, large broadsides and large crews, not to mention boarding. Granted each race has their own unique style and advantages.

As you can imagine, I was real excited to take on this beta; I had followed it for quite some time before springing onto it. The final release is due in a few weeks and hopefully this will give you an idea of how it will play and if it will shape up to be a great game. I had seen a few youtube videos of previews and such, so was really looking forward to the visuals and really feeling like I was controlling a fleet of unfathomably large ships. The beta access features most of the multiplayer aspects, a skirmish mode which is simple PvE engagements where you build up a fleet using renown, and two campaign missions (only for the Imperium) so there’s plenty to test.

Now before I go any further I will say that I’m not a big fan of multiplayer games, nor especially games that are focused on short multiplayer kill and be done matches so this is out of my comfort zone.

Gameplay – 13/25

As a newly-made admiral it’s your job to create a fleet, gain renown and upgrade and expand your fleet. You do this by unlocking more ship slots so you can field more ships, unlocking bigger ships and upgrading your existing ones in a multitude of ways. As your ships (and their captains) gain experience in battle, you unlock upgrades, favors, crew improvements, and skills, all which will improve the ship’s capabilities and usually allow you to specialize a vessel and increase its effectiveness.

The upgrades range from very useful, to rarely used which is a bit unfortunate. I’d like to see all the upgrades be viable in certain situations, rather than, for example, certain offensive upgrades like the plasma bomb be a sort of default choice for most ship’s first skill when you’re using the Imperial Navy. There’s a good range of them though and I’d like to see even more added as the game progresses. The more choices the better the diversity and the more fun upgrading ships will be (and caring for them!)

Your fleet has a set number of capital ship slots based on your renown level. Capital ships are the big ships (the other being small escorts) that make up the core of your fleet. Capitals come in many different flavors and sizes depending on the race as well. The Imperium and Chaos forces features only the smallest light cruisers but eventually you’ll unlock 1 and then 2 cruiser slots, then battlecruisers and battleships. It is free to actually acquire the ship once you have a slot, which I found a bit odd. Each class generally has at least a few, and sometimes as many as 6 or 7 variants, each with different weaponry, armor, shields, sensors, etc.

You start a game (be it a singleplayer skirmish campaign, the main campaign, or multiplayer) by being shown the mission (simple kill mission, data retrieval, convoy duty, etc) your role (attacker / defender) and the points for the battle. Each ship is assigned a points value based on what it is its upgrades. So a 300 point convoy protection mission means you can take 300 points of ships from your fleet to participate. If your ship was destroyed in a previous match, you won’t be able to use it for the following 1-2 matches at least, but more on that later. So after ship selection, at which point you’ll know your enemy’s race, you are brought in-game to deploy. You are given an area to deploy and after deployment, the game begins.

The game is surprisingly fast-paced and faster than I expected. I’m a bit of a noob at these types of games so my click count is probably incredibly low, but even so I’d probably prefer the gameplay to be a bit slower. Not a dealbreaker though, as you don’t want to be bogged down with one game for half an hour or so. On average my matches have lastest around 5-10 minutes max. So they’re not long drawn-out affairs.

Overall I was pretty disappointed that this game, that is supposed to entail ships that are kilometers long; slow lumbering behemoths is so fast-paced. They feel nothing like the ships of the 41st millennium, that are crewed by thousands of souls and have served the Imperium for centuries. They feel like easy to replace pawns that shoot quickly and nothing more.

Balance is key in a game like this and while most appear to be close and every race has their own distinct advantages, style and feel, it’s not perfect (nor do I expect it to be just yet in beta). It will require you to think about strategy from the very beginning when you’re selecting your fleet based on the mission, to the final moments of the battle. Each of the current 3 races has different ships which require different strategies and playstyle. A fourth race, the Eldar, is to be added next week at the time of writing. The Imperium (humans) feature slow, tanky ships with many torpedoes and the unqiue nova cannon. Chaos hit hard with lance turrets and are accurate at longer ranges and are slightly faster. Ork ships feature immense customization and love ramming with their crudely-built ships and the Eldar are advanced and sneaky, using very fast, maneuverable ships that make use of stealth and other tricky tactics.

There is a lot of micromanaging that better players will clearly excel at. Ships can all have special orders that have a long cooldown time, like bracing for impact which reduces incoming damage taken, to Lock on which increases critical damage chance. They all have a maneuver meter that you can use to go all ahead full, increasing speed, or burn thrusters to narrowly dodge an incoming salvo. In addition to these features that every ship has, some ships have the ability to board enemy ships with boarding tubes or lightning (teleportation) strikes and inflict damage, launch fighters, bombers and other craft, launch torpedo salvos, fire bombs and other special weaponry, the list goes on.

And with all that going on, it can become very difficult to manage ships. You can assign priority to enemy ships as well as what ship system you want them to fire upon. You can tell your ship to prioritize firing broadsides, or head on, depending on the ship’s weaponry, the preferred range, and more. If that isn’t enough, then there’s the controversial Tactical Cogitator function. At any point during a game, a player can hit space bar to activate the Tactical Cogitator which slows the game down significantly. It’s basically a slowmo so you can get your clicks in, to make sure you can activate an ability in time, maneuver a ship before it gets hit, or ensure your salvo is aimed perfectly. In multiplayer matches, each player has a bar which drains when the cogitatoris activated. Once out, you can no longer use it. But obviously the game slows down for both players when one activates it. Some hate it, some think it’s very helpful, myself included.

Last, on the current game modes, campaign seems to have everything there and ready to go for launch even though you can only play 2 battles into it. It reminds me of the dawn of war campaign, where you’d have many different locations (systems in this case) to defend and gives you the sense of an entire campaign in the Gothic Sector. The systems give differing fleet bonuses and such. For now, the campaign appears to be only from the Imperial perspective so I’m really hoping you’ll be able to play the same campaign from a different viewpoint. AKA instead of defending the territory of the Imperium, you’re waging a “waagh” for the Orks and decimating the territory and gaining ground. Not sure if that will be in at the time of release. Multiplayer is just that. There is currently no matchmaking yet, but I’m expecting there to be during release, which will also signify a server reset. So multiplayer matches can be pretty brutal at the moment. It does feature 2v2 matches as well. Skirmish is a pretty cool game mode that is pretty much a single player version of multiplayer. You can build your fleet and bash your opponents. You also have the opportunity to play private PvP games against your friends.

Graphics & Sound – 15/20

Graphically the game is great. I was blown away by the visuals from pre-alpha footage and while it isn’t exactly as good, it still is pretty great. Playing the settings on “epic” maxed out yields beautiful ships that for most part, feel as massive as they should be, all on a breathtaking starscape background. The effects, especially warping to escape, is pure awesome and exactly the sort of the a 40k fan would love, not to mention the firing effects, engines and more.

I do have a bone to pick about the maps / backgrounds. To create something more visually stimulating than just a star backdrop, the devs appear to add strange structures, asteroids, planets and suns that provide a sort of foreground to the background. They have no bearing to the game but actually confuse me, especially when at certain camera angles it looks like the background asteroids are asteroids your ships are about to run into. Some of the structures don’t even make sense in 40k lore, as far as I know, and other celestial objects just appear odd. Most of these “foreground backgrounds” I’ll call them should just be removed. A just starry background is not a bad thing.

Also on the bone to pick category, I do experience some odd screen tearing during the short intro sequences for each battle (which I am not allowed to skip for whatever reason). It occurs only for a few moments when the screen is panning with the ships, but it is very bad and very obvious. That’s the only graphical glitch I seem to have encountered. The camera pan and zoom works smoothly but feels a bit limited- I want to be able to zoom out more than I am currently able to.

Just as with visuals, creating sound for the 40k universe is extremely difficult. It is near-impossible to capture the true apocalyptic dark gothic atmosphere of the far future. That said, for the most part the sounds are good and on par with DOW, from vocals to ship weapon and engine sounds (there ARE sounds in space!) So this is where I expect it to be at.

Controls & UI – 11/15

The controls are what you’d expect from a top-down type real time strategy. Intuitive to start and the UI is laid out in a relatively clean manner. There’s a lot to it, though and I’m not sure I’d be the one to have to tackle the task of making the UI. There are a lot of orders buttons, maneuver buttons and more that almost clutter the UI and make for a tall learning curve. Veterans will learn the keyboard shortcuts and thus drastically speed up play time for them, as a huge advantage.

I could think of maybe one or two improvements I’d personally make to the UI, one of them being possibly a radial wheel menu for orders when you hold-click a ship. It might really help bridge the gap between newer players who have trouble learning keyboard shortcuts and learning the UI to getting better.

At this time, some of the tool tips and some rare text runs off in places where you can’t read it, and some tool tips just don’t explain enough or sometimes too much.

Replayability – 13/15

I think there’s a lot of room for replayability here in multiplayer. A lot of this score will depend on the campaign, as there’s really nothing to go on that just yet, but for now based on multiplayer there seems to be plenty to replay. Will also depend on how matchmaking works so we’ll see. I think the progression through earning renown and building your fleet is a bit too fast but I’ll touch upon that in challenge level.

Immersion – 8/10

I’ll just stay they stuck to the lore and tabletop game as much as they could and did a great job of it. As I said before it’s not something simple to do, and even in a balanced tabletop game, it doesn’t make for a simple conversion into a video game. A year or two ago, a company attempted to make a conversion of the tabletop Battletech game called Mechwarrior Tactics. The game was never finished (currently “on hold”) and even though the rules and balance were there to begin with, it still required tweaking instead of being a simple turn-based conversion.

Challenge Level – 8/10

The difficulty of the game is pretty spot on and I’m very impressed that this is the case at this stage of the development. AI is pretty good and when you get past normal and hard difficulties it feels like it should. Multiplayer is a great challenge and the different mission types present different strategies and require different fleet compositions. I’d like to see even more variety but currently it’s a great start, with simple kill missions, to convoy protection and destruction, breakthrough missions and more. These are well done and force you as the admiral to make tactical decisions from the getgo. A slow hard-hitting long range ship might not be the best choice for a flagship for data recovery missions, where you need fast ships to catch and then board the enemy flagship.

I think the game modes and their randomness really add a lot more than one might expect to the game, and I can only hope they’ll add even more, like troop insertion missions, space hulk missions and more.

Penalties for ship losses are good but could be better. I’d like to see a bit more than just not being able to use the ship for more than 1-2 battles. Degraded rank (and therefor loss of some bonuses, skills, etc) and complete destruction should be something that could happen should you not choose to withdraw your wounded ships from battle. I like that it already incorporates that sort of retreat gameplay and feels like a drawn-out campaign so it would be even better to make the consequences more realistic. The “Retreat” function, warping out when the battle goes south, is great incentive.

However there is an issue that when some or most of your fleet is unavailable, or hindered / damaged for the next match, and then when you ready up and hope it’s a small quick match but it’s not, you don’t really get the time to recover that you need. I love that it incentivizes warping out and fleet preservation but there also needs to be a match queue for small matches so you don’t have to commit your injured fleet for the next match if you don’t want to.

I also mentioned before there’s still not matchmaking yet so getting your ass handed to you will happen often enough. Hopefully this will be addressed.

Mods & Modability – 1/5

I changed the weight of this category a bit because, like most 40k video games, licensed by Games Workshop, they are usually inherently not meant to be modded easily and usually don’t receive a lot of attention in the modding community. DOW was an exception, but think Space Marine, Space Hulk, Fire Warrior, etc. There’s always a relationship between game popularity / ease of modding and how many mods a game will have. Here there’s some potential I suppose but not a lot, and I don’t expect much, if any at all, aside from different balance mods and such.

OVERALL SCORE – 69

To conclude this preview, there’s a lot to like about this game. It offers fast-paced gameplay complimented with a lot of tactical options if you’re into that. I’d say leveling is a bit too fast, it’s too easy, even after a string of losses, to earn renown but that might be because it’s Beta. I’d hope there’s a bit more there and matchmaking is properly implemented. The campaign looks fantastic and I can’t wait to sink my teeth into it. As a huge 40k and BFG fan, I was incredibly happy to finally see a BFG combat game rise from the tabletop game that I remember playing. To see it flourish as it has is fantastic and I look forward to the upcoming free DLCs that I receive for preordering (Space marine fleet and an unannounced fleet).

Fallout 4 Review

War never changes. With all the hype that Bethesda piled on (with no small amount of help thanks to the media as well), expectations were sky high for this returning smash hit series. Set in a retro-futuristic apocolyptia that takes place in an alternate timeline branched off from WW II, Fallout 4 continues the series this time in the ruins of Boston. Does it live up to the hype?

This is another game that I got ahold of after the series’ third iteration. (See Morrowind review) The past two were a classic isometric RPG from Black Isle Studios, gaining a true cult following with its rich, unique game world. FO3, and later New Vegas (Obsidian Entertainment, not Bethesda) were a vast departure, taking the game into a beautiful 3D action RPG with a large open world. As I write this review, I will try to keep the spoilers to the minimum. That said, most of what I say can be gathered within the first few hours of gameplay and anything that I mention that happens later, I talk about extremely vaguely, so it should be spoiler safe.

Fallout 4 seeks to stick to the incredibly deep and interesting backstory; one I find absolutely awesome. The alternate timeline in which Fallout takes place involves the U.S. and China in a Cold War after World War II, where the development of technology is different. Instead of the miniaturization of electronics and the microchip transistor, their world developed nuclear technology much further and faster, eventually harnessing fusion power. However, the neverending Cold War culminates in a nuclear holocaust as the world is consumed in fire. This destroyed retro 50’s style futuristic world is the world you emerge to, when you step from your Vault, which kept you safe underground.

A true signature of the series, and one of my favorite features is the true open-endedness that the game takes on. Different factions to side with create different quests that ultimately lead you to a unique ending. You really end up feeling like you shaped the world, rather than played out a predetermined story. Both FO3 and FO New Vegas had many cool endings culminating with distinct videos that go with what you’ve accomplished and how you chose to make your mark on the wasteland. Some clips would show how you saved someone, referencing a quest you might’ve accomplished, others maybe not.

Gameplay – 12/20
There’s several huge steps forward here for the Fallout Series but also quite a few steps back for RPG games in general. Most obvious is the vast improvements to the FPS elements. It feels a lot more like a shooter, which was missing in 3 and NV. Better weapon feel, aiming and gun mechanics all contribute to this. Customization is no small thing either, with weapon customization offering loads of options, provided you spend your perks properly. I’d probably have liked to see really rare loot also contribute to this as well. For example, some extremely rare loot (only maybe 3 available in the wasteland) is needed to craft specialized parts for higher damage or better ROF instead of skills.

On the customization subject, the settlements feature is really cool but I almost consider it a bit basic and look forward to it’s growth in mods soon. Despite this, it offers great options and some fun things to do when not roaming the wasteland. The management though is a bit weary and gets downright annoying as you have to almost babysit settlements endlessly for the Minutemen.

A major downside to this game was the omitting of proper RPG-like factions and how the player is within them. Almost ALL (if not all) Bethesda RPGs, past Fallout games were no exception, allowed you to join factions at your own will, where you’d obviously start at the bottom of the totem pole, and do quests to rank up, usually until you got to the top as a guild master (or what have you). This game is a vast departure from this tried and true aspect, sadly. Not only are faction standings basically non-existent, but the player starts out as the general of the minutemen, you already have power armor, and with the completion of a quest early on, you can easily become a knight in the brotherhood, which is no minor rank. Not to mention there are many less factions
than compared to previous Fallout games. I’d have loved to see other factions joinable, especially to see your standings plummet with others. Being able to join the Gunners and take assassination quests, or perhaps take the FEV and join the various warbands of super mutants.

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I’ll also mention that there is no real Karma type-system either. Behind the scenes there’s something going on that will determine how much your companions like or dislike you and your actions but it did not seem to affect my gameplay in the slightest. I liked in Fallout 3 that NPCs viewed me and talked to me based on my standing.

The dialog can go either way, some aren’t a fan of the simplified responses and would rather see the entire response. It doesn’t bother me too much, but I will say that it was nice to see charisma get more use, as it was a very minor, specialized skill in previous games. Though I miss having the specialized dialog options, for example, if my Intelligence was extremely high, I might have an option to fix something I otherwise couldn’t have. This is still present in FO4 but it is very minor now. The simplification of skills and specializations is ever-present here, sadly.

One great thing they did right is how the Power Armor functions. Some might complain about it no longer functioning just like armor, but in the lore, it was always seen as a replacement for tanks, and it does not disappoint. It should feel like something you need to use only in the most extreme cases, never something you wander around with throughout the entirety of the game.

The overall storyline is good, so that’s all I’ll say about that. Nothing to complain about, but nothing extremely great, either.

Graphics & Sound – 17/20
A great deal of noise was made about the quality of the graphics and Fallout’s unremarkable engine. I’ve always been along the school of thought that without great gameplay, shiny graphics and effects are worthless. Still it isn’t anything that pushes the boundaries here, and sometimes it is disappointing. Overall though I was happy with the visual experience, it was engaging and fun, a lot more colorful and a lot less dreary than Fallout 3’s famous atmosphere. Take that for what you will.

On the audio side, the soundtrack is great in typical Fallout fashion. I detract a bit because there’s a fair amount shared between FO4 and FO3, but there are new classics that go with FO4 that set the atmosphere perfectly. Would like to see even more, as the radio gets pretty trite, and it could be me but seems a lot more repetitive than Galaxy News Radio from FO3. You just gotta miss Three Dog but there’s FO4 smartly created it’s own personal touch.

Ambient noise leaves something to be desired. Despite the gameworld now featuring birds and other “friendlier” animals, there’s almost no living feeling. Settlement ambient noise is sadly lost almost entirely, especially in what are supposed to be larger hubs like Diamond City. It just doesn’t sound and feel like the biggest colony in the Commonwealth.

Controls & UI – 15/15
No complaints at all here. There is a bit of awkward feeling with some of the FPS-type elements, for example, grenade throwing is primitive and a bit sloppy, but the control scheme is flawless, works very well and the UI is marvelous. I’m a stickler for UI’s and the layout, design and overlook is not just useful but extremely iconic and great looking. I even have my phone looking like a pip-boy.

Replayability – 11/15

Unfortunately this score takes a bit of a hit, which is a departure from previous Fallout games. I mentioned why a bit earlier, especially pertaining to the videos and differing endings. This severely affects it, but still it will leave you wanting to go through at least one or two more times to see how things play out. Could use plenty of improvement here, though.

Immersion – 10/10

Can’t stress how incredibly rich the world is, from the opening credits onward. The Fallout Series in general lends itself to a great backstory full of interesting tidbits and awesome lore. It’s not absolutely ridiculous to think that this alternate history was very possible. Despite being an apocalyptic mess of a world, it is one that is extremely appealing to live in (as appealing as it can be) with it’s 50’s retro future style and mentality. The sort of innocent curiosity that inhabited the US when the dangers of nuclear fallout was unknown and disregarded. The story to Vault-Tec is a bit less believable but still incredibly intriguing and gets you thinking.

Challenge Level – 5/10

Huge letdown here but I can’t say I didn’t expect it. Somewhat. Sure there’s a difficulty slider, with a few different settings to choose from to suit your fancy. That’s about it. I didn’t find the game challenging, and despite bumping the difficulty up two to three times during my first playthrough, I still didn’t feel like I was under duress very much. To reference my Morrowind post again, I attribute this low score to the dumbing down of modern RPGs and games in general. Every positive point in my Morrowind review applies here inversely. The major issue here is enemy and item leveling. I also absolutely hate the built-in mechanic where somehow the further you travel south from Vault 111, the more difficult and dangerous it is.

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There’s also New Vegas’ cool hardcore mode that was implemented thanks to a highly successful FO3 mod. The mode featured stimpaks and radaways that heal over time, and introduced basic needs, the need to drink, eat and sleep. I can’t say I’m not sad something of the sort didn’t make it into FO4, though some things like hunger and such would be difficult to reproduce in this newest iteration of the series, as it introduced many new things like growable food and such.

I love the balance of the perk system, it works pretty well, with a few holes. Again I also enjoyed the interesting balance power armor has brought. Also love that the level cap was removed, allowing you to play to your heart’s content and be rewarded for it. Because isn’t that what every player wants? Character building is great, as always, albeit a bit over-simplified.

Mods & Modability – 9/10

This section is a bit premature but there’s still a fair amount of mods to judge this on already. Without the GECK kit (Bethesda’s modding software) there’s still a lot to be hopeful for. The GECK is slated to release early 2016 and many modders are waiting, drooling for a chance to play with it, but many more have just went ahead and created plenty of good content already. Some of it limited in scope but I have no doubt when the GECK hits, we’ll see some great overhauls, graphics enhancements and more. I honestly can’t wait.

OVERALL SCORE – 79

I’ve looked forward to this game for years; after I finished Fallout 3 and especially when rumors began to spread about Bethesda poking around locations in Boston, possibly making the setting for Fallout 4. It’s hard not to expect the best game of the year, especially with the hype that Bethesda built up at E3 2015 and the months that followed, leading up to the release. But it’s hard not to see the shortcomings either. This is a game that I do not regret buying; it’s great and I really recommend it. Despite my complaints about this and that there’s no doubt that I’ll pick it up and play it again in the coming months as well. My score of 79 suits the game real well great but not an all time-great and personally I’m holding out for mods to really address some of the misses.

TES: Morrowind Review

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is a game I see as the true launch of the Elder Scrolls Franchise. For me, it’s where it really began and without a such a huge success, we would never have had Oblivion or Skyrim, much less other great releases from Bethesda like the Fallout Series. This far-reaching open world RPG set the tone for all future RPGs, it is believed to have influenced soon-to-be MMOs with it’s broad scope, and I believe we’ll never see it’s like again.

Now to back up for a minute, this game is old. It released in 2002… I played it with one of those old, massive original Xbox controllers! But I’m going through a number of reviews so I thought it would be fun to go back to a classic, something I revere as possibly the greatest video game of all time, and see how it stacks up against my current reviews. I played this a lot, and replayed it a lot when I found out there was still a mod called Morrowind Rebirth keeping this alive and (somewhat) updated as far as graphics and gameplay is concerned.

I mentioned that Morrowind is partially credited with the shift to MMORPGs and their popularity, because the scope of the game was so vast that normal RPGs just could not compare. An open world game the like of Morrowind was a first, with its deep world with many quests and hidden locations. This made exploration a true, challenging yet fun task that you spent hours and hours on. The plethora of weapons and armor, to say nothing of the artifacts that you could earn and find kept you engaged and always on the look out for more. The game world was incredibly profound and complex, with a record breaking amount of text in game (whether through dialog or books you could pick up and read) that kept you engaged for days.

The game takes place on the island of Vvardenfell, which with its centrally located volcano, isn’t the most scenic province of Tamriel. With a setting that is a vast departure from the previous (and future) Elder Scrolls games, not to mention most fantasy games, it marks itself as a unique anomaly. The Dunmer (dark elf) province has it’s own legacy, it’s own styling and breadth of life that makes it fresh and special, in the series and as a whole. A nearly uncountable variety of diverse plant and animal life (whether friend or foe) along with it’s own signature architecture and styling help shape it’s one-of-a-kind world.

As a prisonor arrived from somewhere in Tamriel via a ship, the player starts of in the quaint town of Seyda Neen, establishing their character in what was an incredibly unique, highly praised way. The level of cusomization open to the new player was astounding, and finally, after beaurcratically being released as a free person to the Dark Elves’ land, you begin your journey into the world. A world where blight storms plague the lands, warring houses and factions fracture the island and the deity Dagoth Ur seeks to become immortal and all powerful and destroy everything. You learn that you may be the prophetic incarnation of Nerevar, and as The Nerevarine, you learn you must unite the island and their quarrelling houses and save the world.

Gameplay – 20/20
While the action RPG wasn’t exactly a new concept, Bethesda nailed it here. The great depth of skills really meant you could take any path you wanted, be it a hard-hitting Redguard with a massive hammer or claymore, a sneaky thief of a Wood Elf, a skilled High Elf Mage, or any combination in between. The combination of the different races, classes and skills meant a million different possibilities. There always were bonuses and drawbacks; perhaps not being able to repairs arms and armor, or the inability to cast decent spells. Unlike in future TES games, magicka doesn’t regen as quickly so it required careful thought as to how you’d deal with foes.

First, the incredible amount of weapons, armor and spells does nothing but amaze. Especially as you look forward in the series, you see everything get simpler and simpler. You don’t see claymores or other specialized weapons as much if at all, the armor gets extremely simplified and lots of interesting spells dissapear entirely. In Morrowind, you need to armor your character with a cuirass, helm, left and right pauldrons, left and right gauntlets / bracers, greaves and boots (as well as shields). In Oblivion, pauldrons are eliminated and gauntlets are simplified (into a set of two, rather than indiviually). In Skyrim, armor is further dumbed-down to elimnate greaves so you’re left with “armor”, helmet, shields, gauntlets and boots. Then to speak of all the spells (custom or otherwise) that never saw the light of day in future games like levitate.

As I said the sheer amount of possibilities is staggering. But all of it wouldn’t be possible with a rich gameworld with plenty to do. With all the quests (which I’ll go into detail about later) and factions ensure there’s always something to do and somewhere to go. Ranking up and being promoted through each faction is an Elder Scrolls staple, and Morrowind is certainly no exception.

I will say that combat is a bit one-dimensional, a bit more of a hack-and-slash style than future games but for it’s time it was great so it’s hard to detract from this. I say the same thing about the lockpicking, as a tumbler-system introduced in Oblivion was not yet heard of.

With novels and novels worth of text to read through, you do spend a lot of time reading. The dialog isn’t voiced so be prepared for that. Nonetheless it doesn’t leave you wanting. Between dialog options, books and your own journal you have many options to go through.

The huge game world is probably one of the biggest contributors to it’s high score, and it doesn’t feel tightly packed like newer games where you can easily walk from one marker to the next nearby within a minute. There are tons of interesting things to see and visit and plenty of secrets to uncover. Morrowind’s fast travel system, which does not feature direct fast travel but rather a few systems that allow you to travel between cities or other established points of interest (for example, via boat between coastal cities, or teleportation pads, between mage guilds). In my opinion this is absoltely perfect and something we’ll never see again in RPG games of this era. I’ll touch more on this and a few other similar things below in Challenge Level.

Last I’ll touch on a few things that really (unfortunetly) dropped off in later TES games. The repair system of maintaining arms and armor was never to be seen again,

Graphics & Sound – 18/20
The graphics were, for the time, one of the best. Although there were stunning visuals, one of the distingishing features is the draw distance. Being atop a mountain or a large building and being able to make out vast stretches of land really made you feel even more on a huge island.

I touched a bit on the art style and how it’s big change contributed to the nostalgia I feel today when I play. Too many fantasy games to count, including just about every other TES game have that familiar European-style to it. This exception cements the gameworld with unforgettable and unmistakable character. This applies from the architecture of the large manors and floating cantons of Vivec trickling all the way down to the beastly-looking armor and weapons.

I took some points off here mainly due to the sound. The music is as unforgettable as the aforementioned graphical styling, however the ambient sounds, especially spells and miscellanious combat sounds don’t do the game justice and are a bit flat.

Controls & UI – 13/15
This also gets a bit off the score because the controls aren’t anything groundbreaking. Hack and slash style, with only a few ways to strike an opponent, and a block, don’t really do the game justice. The UI is good but hard to manage on a console. For it’s time the UI is great, as you’ll see games of it’s time period with much bigger, clunkier UIs. That being said, inventory management can be a pain and downright awful when it comes to potions.

Replayability – 13/15
I’m a testament to the game’s replayability but I’m probably not the norm, as I love the game so much. The game has very memorable quests. Unfortunetly it came before the concept of dynamic, different endings that were featured in games like Fallout: New Vegas as I would die to be able to see differing endings and being able to side with different factions. The fact that you’ll get bad standing with some factions ensures it will require you to think carefully about whose side you choose.

Immersion – 10/10
Probably one of the best sense of immersion I’ve ever felt in a game. The game world feels extremely complete and fleshed out. So many places to explore, so much to do, so many things to collect. It’s very rare I feel like I’m tediously playing a video game, aside from managing inventory and loading screens.

I spoke to the sheer amount of plant, animal life. The game world is full of it. So many things you can make from it, as it all has a use. The larger cities feel like they’re larger cities, something that is hard to really hit home, and really missed the mark in Oblivion and sometimes Skyrim. A major or somewhat major city might only actually feature 3-4 buildings.

Challenge Level – 10/10
This is where Morrowind shines. I love the open world and everything in it, but it would be nothing without the challenge that Morrowind presents you with. I’ll give you the reasons what puts this game over the top and they are what you’ll likely never see in video games again.

–No Hold-your-hand Quest System – The biggest factor for in me in my opinion. There’s no quest marker on your map telling you where to go. There’s no simplified walkthrough of quests. In order to finish them, you need to work through them and use your *gasp* brain. You take notes in your journal to relevant quests. And when you have the classic “go find this in this cave” quest, guess what, you have to walk there and actually LOOK. In new RPGs, despite being told to FIND an item, all you have to do is travel to the cave then the quest marker will take you RIGHT to it. You don’t even really need to look, you just follow the compass. This easy-mode, dumbing down of video games is an extreme shame and something I’ve harped on for years. You just don’t see it anymore. Morrowind quests are challenging and offer a true test to you as a character.
–Lack of Modern-type Fast Travel – Touched on this just above. This system is perfect and allows you to get to the major points of interest fast. There’s also a set and recall type option (a spell) that allows you to cast a set spell and then you can use recall to fast travel back to that spot. That’s it; that’s the only methods of fast travel. Otherwise you have to hoof it. And why would you want to fast travel and miss the wonderful game world?
–Secrets of the world – There are a lot of worldly secrets that are very tough to find. I distictly recall a shrine that lays pretty far off the coast that is completely submerged, not a few feet deep but at least thirty foot deep. It was far from easy to get to, let alone how you found it…
–Map – This goes somewhat alongside the previous point. But the overworld map in Skyrim, I’m sure you all recall, is extremely detailed. It’s hard to get lost. You could almost see NPCs from your god-like view. With Morrowind though you had a very vague map… extremely vague. The only real help came from a poster that shipped with the game, which was a true work of art.
–Enemy Scaling – This (and the following point) are big things that you probably won’t see again either. There was NO ememy scaling in Morrowind. If you happened to stumble upon someone (or something) you could not beat, tough luck for you. In Skyrim (and even worse in Oblivion) enemies scaled with you, so you’d never see difficult enemies at the beginning, nor easy ones near the end of your leveling.
–Item Scaling – Related to the above, except with items and loot. In Morrowind, if you knew where certain items were, you could go get them straight away. Random loot did level, which I think works well.
–Crime & Bounty – The whole system is a lot more realistic than future itereations of TES. Stolen items are not marked as such so it’s up to you to remember which you’ve swiped. When you commit an act, you aren’t informed of such. In Skyrim, you can look in an NPC’s inventory (pickpocket them, but not take anything) without committing a crime!
Mods & Modability – 9/10
Morrowind has some great mods and the one that stands out the most is the one that is still being worked on. Morrowind Rebirth has added loads to the game. Cities have been expanded and are larger with more shops, npcs and more. There’s new weapons and armor. Graphics has been given a boost. It’s a great all-in-one mod that helps keep Morrowind somewhat up to date.

There’s more than a fair share of other graphics and sounds overhaul mods, not to mention complete game overhauls, balance fixes and more. Even one that allows you to grow your own Telvanni Towers.
OVERALL SCORE – 93
You can tell this game holds a special place in my heart. I mark it as one of the last in an era where games have been simplified and less challenging before, making overall sacrifices for the sake of a broader-reaching fanbase. I hate to admit it, because I love Bethesda, but their latest games, Skyrim and Fallout 4, are obviously examples of this.

From lore to the spanning game world that is unforgettable, Morrowind is a classic game that will stand the test of time, especially as it is continually updated with fresh mods. Unforunetly it has been pushed aside and almost forgotten by most, and newcomers to TEs might disregard it as antiquited, but what a mistake it would be.

Has anyone had a great experience playing this game? Remember it well? Was there another game that you feel like is something you won’t see another game like it again?

Fez Review

Just another take on the classic 2D side-scroller… or is it? Gomez is a little white fez-wearing character that finds a 3rd dimension to add to his flat 2D existence. With this he embarks on a puzzle-filled adventure which requires you to think in a multitude of ways to advance through the game and save the universe. With unparalleled art that has you mesmerized with each new scene, you’ll get lost fast in a world that leaves you wanting more and more.

What happens when you add depth to a side-scoller? Fez is what happens. Using an ever-changing perspective of Fez’s world, you are tasked with finding clues and solving countless puzzles in this beautifully crafted game. If you liked the challenge of Portal, then you’d love Fez. There are many similarities: the lack of a true epic storyline, as well as no direct enemies or combat of any sort. Just fun, brain-wracking puzzles.

Gameplay – 16/20
The entire premise of the game is built around being able to solve the various tasks and riddles by using a different prespective. Two controls rotate your view left or right ninety degrees, thereby allowing you to reach rocks that you couldn’t climb on before, see tunnels you couldn’t see before, and jump to new platforms you couldn’t reach before. Some puzzles need to be arranged carefully and won’t look right unless arranged perfectly from certain, or all, viewpoints. There is a lot of open-ended exploration involved, as collecting cubes (made of a number of mini-cubes) will unlock new worlds, with more and progressively harder enigmas.

Graphics & Sound – 19/20
I can’t say enough good things about the art in this game. It is truly beautiful and unique and each new world brings interesting surprises. The art itself is fantastic, nothing short of a masterpiece in each section of each world; whether it be a floating magical windmill or a lighthouse island or a hovering hill with it’s own waterfall, it doesn’t case to amaze. The screenshots speak for themselves.

As for the auditory side, the soundtrack it is unique and suits the game extremely well. Ambient noisesmake for great creepy or dark scenes. The sounds are muted and subdued and reflect Fez’s soft character. I’d have liked to see a bit more in the sound department but nothing that really hurts the score here, as the graphics certainly bridge the gap.

Controls & UI – 12/15
There are few controls and they’re pretty straightfoward. There is very little tutorial though your guide through the game can be a bit annoying sometimes. I prefer to use a gamepad (Xbox Controller) which works well; the triggers rotate the view left and right, and the buttons function as jump and action keys.

The UI is pretty good. It is minimal; as the player requires very little information while playing. My biggest gripe here is the oddly laid out map-type system, which does it’s best to convey each area with respect to connecting areas in a graphical way. It’s simple to understand and I grant it is cool to look at, but as far as actual navigation is concerned it is more complicated than it ought to be.

Replayability – 8/15
Obviously a puzzle game isn’t the best in terms of offering endless replay options, so its score suffers here. I don’t detract too much from the score though because at it’s core it’s not meant to be, nor are puzzle games that way, in any case.

Immersion – 8/10
The world is rich, there is no doubt, though I’m left wanting more depth. It leaves you wanting more, more of a back story to the world, to Fez, to everything around you, but it does suck you in regardless.

Challenge Level – 6/10
As I mentioned before, the challenging puzzles get more complicated the further you progress in game, as you would expect. I docked quite a few points here though because I could easily see different difficulty levels added, as well as light / humourous enemies or other dangerous obstacles. Not to mention a sort of hardcore mode that requires very careful ledgework owing to a very finite number of deaths.

Mods & Modability – 3/10
Again, the puzzle-game genre hurts Fez more, as this isn’t a category that is open to modding. Aside from minor modifications, the only other thing mods can add is more puzzles, which isn’t really an easy feat. There are some mods out there, but nothing worth mentioning.

OVERALL SCORE – 72
Fez is a great game and well worth the money. My own score doesn’t do it justice, and anyone a fan of a good puzzle game and indie games in general will truly enjoy the time they spend playing Fez. Do yourself a favor and get lost in Fez’s gorgeous world.

FTL Review

FTL is the new standard for space strategy games with it’s iconic pseudo 8-bit graphics and unforgettable soundtrack. For those who have wanted to command the bridge of a starship, FTL brings style and fun together in sweet perfection that will have you spending countless hours contemplating tactics and trying out different play styles. Captain your ship, command your crew, prepare your weapons, upgrade your systems and navigate to the Federation homeworlds as you are chased by the rebel fleet tasked with your utter annihilation.

This review is going to be a little bit different, as it isn’t a new game by any means. FTL is a game that I played to death a while ago, almost two years ago, and then kind of forgot about. I was bored this weekend though and decided to pick it up for cheap on Steam ($3.99!!) which included the Advanced Edition which I hadn’t yet played.

Back when I was playing it, I knew I had something special. In fact, I played it so much that I also devoted a bit of time to modding it. Unfortunetly, it isn’t the most mod-able game though. Despite that, if there’s a will, there’s a way.

Anyway, I’ve found myself playing this again. It’s a lot different from other strategy-type games and has inspired a lot of knock-offs in the recent years. At it’s core, FTL is a top-down spaceship combat game that challenges you to manage your ship’s crew, weapons, and systems in your effort to defeat the rebel (scum). You navigate systems, picking up upgrades to your ship and different crew members along the way, battling pirates, rebels and anyone else you think you can take on. Manage power to shields, send a boarding party to attack the other ship’s interior, fire missiles and lasers and more as your ship flies to the Federation homeworlds. There are many, many text-based encounters that force you to make choices that will affect your ship, for better or for worse.

The game forgoes any sort of movement / navigation during a battle for a simpler battle sequence that actually works real well. There are many skills your crew can pick up, not to mention upgrades to the ship, that can help improve your evade to keep you alive. Use the many weapons to target enemy ship sections to disable shielding or knock out critical weapons that threaten your ship. I go into detail with the weaponry below.

As a free upgrade to all steam (and iPad) owners, FTL also has a newer Advanced Edition that adds many new events, ships, weapons, augmentations and more on top of the base content, not to mention a new race.

I’ll go into the story/lore below as I rate out each of the game’s important categories.

Gameplay – 18/20
FTL scores very high in gameplay. There’s very few games that do spaceship combat like FTL and FTL does it well. It’s a very fun approach to being a captain of a ship, for anyone who wanted to be on the bridge of the Enterprise, delegating power to subsystems and weaponry alike. There are many different ships and weapons to choose from to suit a myriad of playstyles, with dozens of ships to earn in a number of ways, through in-game quests and achievements. I like to use shield-piercing missiles to strike at critical ship components then use lasers to finish the ship off.

One of the biggest upsides that contributes to the score is the wealth of weaponry that FTL has, which contributes to a multitude of playstyles. Missiles require ammunition so require constant attention of their use, but can penetrate shielding. Bombs are the same way, teleporting directly into a ships hull and wreaking havoc on systems and crew. Lasers require energy but are a good standard weapon not requiring ammunition and beam lasers fire a long arc that can take out multiple rooms at once, provided the enemy’s shields are down. There’s also drones, boarding parties, hacking and mind control, specialized artillery, ion weaponry and more. It is extremely well balanced in that you’ll always have something to improve on and will always be looking out for that enemy that specializes in your weakness. I find myself always dreading a boarding party, as I favor a smaller, weaker crew that isn’t always prepared to deal it.

Graphics & Sound – 19/20
I can’t stress enough how perfect the soundtrack is, not to mention the near-perfect graphics. A timeless work of art, the ships and people of FTL deserve to be put up there with the rest as far as visual styling goes. The brilliant psuedo-8-bit graphics go hand in hand with FTL’s gameplay.

Controls & UI – 14/15
Great and simple UI. Pretty straightforward, with nothing spectactular here. Very easy to use and extremely easy to understand and pick up, which is important when getting to know your ship or trying to read the different power read outs and weaponry at a glance. Some of the minor components and such could use better iconography but nothing to really detract from.

Replayability – 12/15
Despite FTL not having a built-in endless mode (which I’ll go into detail about in a moment), the replayability is very high. The 10 base ships with 3 variants each present different starting scenarios, challenges and high scores each time. One ship might start with a few better weapons but 1 less crew member, or another ship might have extra shields but one one measley laser, or another might sport attack drones or a cloak. Each presents a new, exciting challenge that will make you push yourself to achieve higher scores and unlock new variants, ships and crew.

Immersion – 6/10
Quite a few might disagree with me and I won’t be angry, but this is where the game upsets me a bit. I’m not a big fan of the lore of FTL. Not really the lore as a whole, just how it relates to the game and how it influences gameplay. The premise of the game is that you’re a Federation captain who has discovered the rebellion and you must race to the Federation homeworlds to warn them before the Rebels manage to overtake you or destroy you along the way. You must trudge through many sectors of space (which can be friendlier or much more hostile), upgrading your ship and crew along the way, to finally warn the Federation and then destroy the Rebel Flagship, a series of major boss fights.

As I said, I’m not a fan of this for a few reasons. I’m not a big fan of boss fights in general in games, and this one creates a very set timeline from start to finish. You cannot endlessly roam the galaxy, taking loot as you will. If you dally in sectors, the pursuing rebel fleet will catch you and will make short work of you. I would have loved to see an open-ended game-style (in addition to the high-score oriented current version) that challenged you to survive as long as you can earning money by trading, looting and more. There’s a lot (and I mean a lot) of space trader-type games that are successful and fun to play and I’d like to see a few elements incorporated into it. Vanilla FTL doesn’t really have any sort of trading feature built into it (I say vanilla for a reason, and will point out mods later) which really kills the trader or smuggler style gameplay completely.

Challenge Level – 9/10
FTL has one of my favorite gameplay features in games that you just don’t see anymore: permadeath. Did your ship blow up? Then game over. You can’t reload, or start from a previous system. So every action you take must be carefully considered because it will affect you for the remainder of the game. If you happened to lose two crew members to giant spiders, or lack of oxygen, then you better figure out a way to get new ones.

There’s also varying levels of difficulty, with an easier mode giving you more scrap and loot.

Mods & Modability – 7/10
This scored lower merely because of the game’s modability, or lack thereof. Usually space games like FTL are quite moddable to appease many who like to take it upon themselves to turn it into a Star Wars, Star Trek, Warhammer, Stargate, etc universe. This usually consists of skinning ships to look like their favorite iconic star destroyer and such. More ambitious projects overhaul gameplay, or balance it in more realistic or better ways. FTL has quite a few, certainly, but I can say with 100% certainty that the number of mods the game would have would be tripled at least if the game was easier to mod.

Again, despite the difficulty, there is a fair share of great mods, from graphical to special ship mods, to gameplay/ overhaul mods. My favorite would be Captain’s Edition, which not only features a limitless mode, but adds many new weapons, ships, systems, stations and a crude trading system. In addition, it also adds many more random encounters, civilians (and the ability to be a rogue pirate) and more.

OVERALL SCORE – 85
FTL is a great game, plain and simple and for anything short of $20, it’s a steal. $3.99 is robbery! It’s a lot of fun and just want to share this great game. It transcends a few genres, overall making for a great strategy game. I highly recommend it!

Top 10 Games of All Time

This is currently a work in process – Check back in when I have more reviews and this list fully fleshed out. Thanks!

A) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

B) Factorio

C) Minecraft

D) Outer Wilds

E) Kerbal Space Program

F) Halo CE (along with Halo 2 & 3)

G) The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

H) Fallout 3

I) EVE Online

J) ??

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