Author - Judgeman

Wasteland 2 – A Review (PC)

2014/10/06

Geek News, News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Seems like a lot of the games that I’ve been given to review lately, have had their origins in crowd funding. Whether through Indiegogo or Kickstarter, developers of smaller games are heading to the people to gather funds for their ideas. Wasteland 2 by inXile Entertainment is another such product, but unlike many of the others that I have played, Wasteland 2 is a great game. With close to $3 million in funds from Kickstarter, inXile Entertainment turned out one hell of a fantastic product and just a year late from their original proposed release date. Wasteland 2 is the first official sequel to Wasteland, the post-apocalyptic role playing game that kicked off the entire genre back in 1988. Twenty six years later, and we finally have another game from the series that inspired Fallout, and it is an absolute gem.

Story

Civilization as we know it ended in 1998 due to a nuclear holocaust. During this cataclysmic event, a squad of U.S. Army engineers took over a prison in the American Southwest, expelling all of the prisoners into the unknown aftermath of this holocaust. The engineers brought in groups of survivalists from the local area, and together were able to fortify the prison and survive. The survivalists and the engineers, together, form a group in the same vein as the Texas Rangers to help bring law and order back to this post apocalyptic world. They name their group the “Desert Rangers” and set off to help the people of the land.

Wasteland 2 begins fifteen years after this event, with the murder of a Desert Ranger named Ace. General Vargas, the leader of the Desert Rangers, is extremely worried about this particular murder, since he sent Ace out to investigate a mysterious radio signal. This radio signal described “man and machine becoming one to bring down the Desert Rangers”. Vargas, not having many options left, turns to his newest group of Desert Rangers to investigate both the murder of Ace and this mysterious radio signal. That’s where you come in.

Wasteland 2 is a role playing game in the most classic sense of the word. You begin by creating your group of four rangers. The way they look, the skill sets they have, even their backgrounds and life histories are all up to you to create. You can spend hours writing back-stories for each character you create, to bring each Desert Ranger to life. Of course, that life could just last for the next ten minutes, so be prepared to lose your work in a hail of bullets if your not too careful.

A screenshot from the original Wasteland. Graphics have come a long way…

The story of Wasteland 2 adapts to the choices that you make during the game. These choices are not your typical “good vs. evil” choices where you can easily decide what to do and how you want to shape your game play, but tough moral decisions that will affect the game world around you. During the first mission, you will receive two radio messages from two towns that are under fire, at exactly the same moment. You must chose which town to save and which town to ignore. This will change the world around you, not only will the town you ignore be seriously damaged and have less resources for you, but the people of that town will hold a grudge against the Desert Rangers since they ignored their plea for help. Characters will react to your decisions in game and this will change the world around you, so you will have to live with your decisions.

The story for Wasteland 2 is incredibly engaging, with moments of chaos and quiet throughout the game. The world you explore is rich, deep and well thought out. The story is brought to life mostly by text, but with just the right amount of voice work to make it interesting and believable. The choices you make during the story are all morally gray, with no obvious good or evil consequences. You behave the way you think your character would behave, and the world reacts around you. From the live-action introduction all the way to the end, I loved every moment of this story.

Game Play

The game play in Wasteland 2 features a semi-overhead, isometric view of the desolate environment around you. The game is best described as a role playing game with tactical, turn-based combat involving your party of up to seven characters (your four you create and up to three non player characters). When you create your characters, you choose what skills and attributes they will have so their role is determined by you. From a strong melee centered character with intimidate, to a lucky sniper with lock picking skills, each character you create will play the way you want them to. The non player characters will have their own skills, attributes, and agendas that you will need to deal with.

Combat is its own little world in Wasteland 2. Once you receive the message “Encounter Begins”, your options for character actions become vastly varied. Each character has their own set of action points that are based on their core attributes. These action points are used for everything the character needs to do. You can do multiple actions in a turn as long as you have enough action points to do so. If you want to take a shot with a weapon, move to cover, and then try to bandage yourself it is possible as long as you have the points and the skills to do so. These points can be saved and moved to your next action phase to give you a vast amount when you really need them.

Items can change the way you view combat as well. Each piece of armor not only can change your defense statistic, but can either slow you down or speed you up depending on the weight of the armor. Food, weapons, and equipment all have tactical decisions that will need to be addressed in combat. Every time you assign a piece of gear or eat something in Wasteland 2, you will have to have combat in mind. In the easier modes of play, this won’t have too much effect on combat, but in the harder modes it becomes a matter of life or death.

I really enjoyed the way Wasteland 2 played, especially the amount of choices you have during combat. With a variety of tactics available to you, and depending on the group you have gathered, the combat scenarios can be played out in a multitude of ways. The issue that I did have with the game play of Wasteland 2 is how the skills work. I have gotten used to how Fallout 3 has developed a skill system, to where the more you use a skill, the better it gets. Wasteland 2 goes with the more old school method of only giving out skills when you level up, and that can be a problem if you need a particular skill at a particular time. This is more of a personal choice issue more than a knock against the game, a little bit of how games have changed over the years and sometimes it is for the better.

Aesthetics

The look, feel and sounds of Wasteland 2 is incredibly engrossing and truly brings the game to life for me. The world is full of little clues and hidden spots to explore, and looks great while you do it. The voice acting is just enough to make the world feel lived in, without being too much to be a drain on the funds that were available. Even the live action scene in the introduction was very well done and was a great way to introduce the world of Wasteland 2 to those that haven’t played or have forgotten the original Wasteland.

Final Thoughts

Wasteland 2 is proof that a Kickstarter funded game can be great. What inXile Entertainment did with the nearly $3 million in funds from Kickstarter is nothing but incredible and proof that a solid, fun gaming experience does not need a movie sized budget. The story of Wasteland 2 is well developed and paced very nicely, with sections of absolute chaos and quiet parceled out to make the ride enjoyable. Game play is solid and gives the player a multitude of options in and out of combat, which is absolutely necessary at the higher difficulty levels of the game. The look and feel of Wasteland 2 adds to my enjoyment of the game by giving me a world that looks both lived in, and full of characters, places, and secrets to discover. If you liked Fallout 1 and 2, but never had the chance to play the game that made Fallout possible, I would strongly recommend picking up Wasteland 2. Wasteland 2 is currently available on Steam for $39.99. You can also pick up the original Wasteland while you are there for $4.99 and loose yourself for a long, long time in a couple of great role playing games.

[easyreview title=”Wasteland 2 Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”4″ ]

J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars – A Review (PC)

2014/10/02

Judgeman

Geek News, News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Like many indie games within the last few years, J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars was brought to life using funds through a crowd sourcing website. CBE Software used Indiegogo to help raise over $14,000 to help enhance an earlier version of J.U.L.I.A. and was able to find a wide release through Steam this last September. Crowd funding and early release games are becoming standard fare in the video game industry lately, the hard part is sifting through the myriad of garbage, lies and traps to find games that are actually playable and fun. While J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars may have its negative aspects, overall the game is worth a look.

Story

You play as Rachel Manners, a 35 year old astrobiologist, who is a member of an elite team of scientists chosen to explore and document a solar system discovered by the Chandra 17 space telescope. You begin the game as Rachel is being awoken from cryogenic sleep, with the probe under a state of emergency. J.U.L.I.A., the probe’s main computer, needs your help to repair the probe from the damage done by an unexpected meteor storm. You then discover that you have been asleep for decades, and are the last remaining crew member alive. It is up to you to discover what happened to the rest of your team on each of the planets in this new solar system.

The story is interesting enough to bring you into the detective role that the game wants you to be in. However, my initial question of “why the hell was Rachel asleep for this entire time while everyone else was working?” kept popping into the back of my head. I can only imagine that Rachel Manners was the annoying, know-it-all astrobiologist and the rest of the crew thought it would be better if they got on with the actual exploring and investigating of new planets without her. The game never explains why you are the only one left, so it is best to just move on from that plot hole.

The rest of the narrative comes from exploring each and every planet of the solar system, looking for clues. You do this with the help of the aforementioned J.U.L.I.A., and a survey robot named MOBOT. Once you reach a planet, it really is MOBOT who flies down to the surface, to do the actual exploring and investigating while you sit safely on the probe in orbit. The story begins to unfold as you visit each planet, reading data pads, log entries, and speaking with indigenous people about the contact hey had with the original crew.

Plot holes aside, the story for J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars works as long as you don’t poke it too hard with logic. I do like how the story unfolds the more you explore and read while investigating the abandoned camps on each planet. You have to piece together what happened at each site, sometimes actually building a story board to discover the chronology of the events. This kept my interest in the game much longer then just giving me the story through forced narrative. I felt like an actual investigator, and it really made the process enjoyable.

Game Play

Game play for J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars is described by the developer as a “interfaced based adventure game”. Essentially what that means is, you will be playing through menus, mini games, and point-and-click style rooms to discover the story of your missing crew. The best way to describe the game play for J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars is really as a string of mini-games and puzzles that need to be completed to gain the necessary information you are looking for. For instance, to unlock a password encrypted door that is barring your progress, you will have to find that password on another data pad, by either finding the password for the data pad or by hacking the data pad. Each one of this could have a mini game attached to it in order for you to complete the task.

All of this is done through MOBOT, which can be upgraded by finding certain blue prints. These blue prints are story locked, meaning you will have to reach that moment in the narrative in order to obtain these upgrades. J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars is also not afraid to send you back to other planets to complete tasks with these new upgrades. You will reach a point on a certain planet to where you cannot proceed without a particular upgrade, so you will have to find that upgrade, build it through a mini game, then back track to complete that task.

For the most part, I found the puzzles at least amusing though I have always hated mandatory backtracking in video games. The puzzles are not too difficult if you look around and collect the information first. What this usually boils down to is reading every little scrap of informayion, looking for the one piece that you need. I found that I needed to keep a journal next to me, because I couldn’t figure out if the game was saving any of this information for me to access later.

Aesthetics

Visually,J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars does the job right. The scenery is nice looking and well detailed, though it is rendered with minimal moving parts. The look of J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars is really comparable to a modern day point-and-click adventure game. The animations of the talking heads during conversations were not well done, but considering the budget there are things that I am ready to forgive.

What I am not ready to forgive is the voice acting. I understand that the budget for J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars wasn’t enough to hire star power, but an actor that could at least portray the correct emotion during the correct scene is a necessity. The opening scene of the game, in which the probe has just been bombarded by meteors and is crippled, had the feeling of a casual conversation at the local diner instead of one that portrayed the emergency that was being shown. No, the game didn’t need top notch talent, but it did need an actor and not just someone reading from a script.

Final Thoughts

While J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars does have it’s negatives, I feel that it is still a fun game overall. I truly liked the investigative aspect of the game, though it could have used less forced backtracking. The mini-games were hard enough to keep me on my toes, but not insanely difficult that I needed to stop every five minutes to check the internet. Even the horrid acting couldn’t really bring down my overall enjoyment for J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars. Even with its flaws, J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars is a puzzle adventure game that is worth your time, but only if you can forgive some of the warts that comes with an indie game such as this one. J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars is available now through Steam for $19.99.

[easyreview title=”Product Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”2″ ]

Sacred 3 – A Review (PC)

2014/08/18

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Keen Games and Deep Silver have released their latest incarnation in the Sacred series with Sacred 3. Representing a departure from the action role playing game genre, Sacred 3 has more in coming with Gauntlet then with the Diablo series. While giving the player a solid 10 to 12 hours of game play that can be challenging, the lack of any type of loot system or talent tree system turns what could have been a viable contender for the Diablo 3 market, into a mindless hack and slash with terrible acting. Still, the game play can be challenging and cooperative play is truly cooperative since there isn’t any loot to fight over.

Story

In Sacred 3, you choose one of four heroes to play as through the campaign. These four heroes are based on the four elements and have talents and powers along those lines. Marak represents fire and wields a huge hammer, Claire is a winged paladin with air based attacks, Vajra is an archer with ice spells, and Alithea is an earth based amazon style warrior.

You duty is to defend the land of Ancaria from the Warlord Zane and the Ashen Empire. Zane has promised vengeance on the land of Ancaria for the death of his mother, whom he was planning to assassinate first. The game begins with Zane invading the last free city in Ancaria and stealing the ancient artifact that was housed there. With the help of a fledgling telepath, you and your fellow heroes set out to save the people of Halios and to defeat the Warlord Zane.

The setting of Ancaria is set up very well from the beginning of the game and, for those like me that never played a Sacred game, welcomes the new player with back story so you will understand what is going on from the beginning. The plot of the story is fairly generic with the evil warlord invasion bit, but the writers try to make this fresh and new with their attempt at witty dialogue. This may work for some, but I found the dialogue and especially the acting to be annoying and grating. The weapon spirits in Sacred 3 best exemplify this horrible dialogue and became a factor in my enjoyment of the game.

Game Play

Sacred 3 is a complete departure of the game play that was found in either Sacred or Sacred 2. Sacred 3 is an incredibly linear game with no loot system, well, at least one that we are used too. Since this was my major issue with the game, I’ll talk about the loot system first. Gone is the day of looking for weapon drops. Each character, as they progress, will receive new weapons. These weapons can be selected before each mission and have different stats to them, but are not randomized at all. What Sacred 3 has for a loot system are the weapon spirits. Weapon spirits are spirits of older adventurers that, when equipped, gives the player a special ability during combat. The spirits are fully voiced characters that will cheer you on during game play. For some this could be a benefit, for me this was pure torture. The spirits’ dialogue is cheesy at best, and can become grating and irritating as the game goes on. I would actually select a spirit on the basis of who was the least annoying to hear, and not on their benefit during combat.

The rest of the game controls are pretty basic for this style of game. You get two abilities to use that are elemental based and dependent on your character. You also receive a hero power that needs to be charged during combat. However, most of the time you will only be mashing the basic attack button. Some enemies do require you to break their guard, meaning you have to hit them with one of your powers first, but these enemies are all marked well so you will be prepared for them. Occasionally, you will knock down an enemy and need to execute him before he gets up. These executions are very easy to pull off and do feel very satisfying in completing. You also get a dodge ability, which only worked for me when it felt like it. I had a hard time controlling the direction of the dodge, and that would lead to frustration during the harder boss battles.

The enemies can be very challenging, especially when the dodge sends you where it wants you to go. Bosses can easily knock you into a corner and have their way with you, so you do have to watch the timing of their attacks and stay out of certain areas during combat. If you are paying attention, then you will not have much trouble with most of the effects during a boss battle. Check points are few and far between, so make sure you are paying attention. With more players, the game play becomes easier, as does the side missions and leveling up your character. If you are doing every mission and side mission, you will soon find that you are out-leveling the curve of the game.

Aesthetics

Visually, Sacred 3 is a break from the norm. The colors used in the game are from the brighter palettes this time, not the typical browns, grays, or blacks that we are used to. Sacred 3 is played from the same vantage point as Diablo 3 is, a three-quarter view of the world. I only ran into troubles with the view point when I would go under some form of architecture. The game will outline things in red when you move behind the scenery, but it is still difficult to see what is going on. Just keep mashing attack and you will make it out from behind that building. The game ran just fine on my aging computer, with no lag during multiplayer. Players were able to join in and leave without any frame rate issues or causing lag, which was very nice.

As for the voice acting in Sacred 3, it is by far the worst voice acting and dialogue I have heard all year. The writers tried to go with a cheesy and humorous feel to the dialogue, having the heroes issue quips and jokes during cut scenes and having the weapon spirits have over-the-top personalities. The actors give their dialogue with the hint that even they know just how bad this will sound, so the effort comes off half hearted. If the actors had decided to go into full scenery chewing mode, then it might have worked. However, it just comes off has bad, cheesy, and a complete mess.

Final Thoughts

Fans of Sacred and Sacred 2, be wary in purchasing Sacred 3. It isn’t the same game style that you have come to know with the previous games. Having more in common with Gauntlet than Diablo 3, Sacred 3 lacks any type of talent tree system for customization, or an equipment loot system that makes these games so enjoyable. That does not mean that Sacred 3 is without enjoyment. As a hack and slash game goes, Sacred 3 is long and challenging, giving the player a solid 10-12 hours of game play. However, that is 10-12 hours of living with the annoying dialogue and horrible jokes of the heroes and the weapon spirits. It would have been great to have a lighter hearted version of Diablo 3 on the market, something that does not take itself too seriously. Sacred 3 just does not pull this off enough to rise above average in my eyes. The writing and acting needed to be much better for this to work. Other than that, Sacred 3 is a solid game that may be worth a look, depending on how thick skinned you are to bad voice acting. Sacred 3 is available now on Steam for the PC.

[easyreview title=”Sacred 3 Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3″ ]

Max: The Curse of the Brotherhood – A Review (PC)

2014/06/24

Judgeman

News, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Press Play and Microsoft Studios has released a brand new platformer for the PC, named Max: The Curse of Brotherhood. Max: The Curse of the Brotherhood ends up being a bright and shiny version of Limbo, with a neutered story line and a frustrating game play gimmick that doesn’t quite reach the mark during the game. What we end up with at the end of the day is a seven hour long stroll through some beautiful environments, but never really get the satisfaction from a good story nor great game play.

Story

Max: The Curse of Brotherhood begins with Max coming home from school to find his kid brother in Max’s room, playing with Max’s toys. Max decides to search the Internet using “Giggle” for a spell that would rid him of the perceived nuisance that his his brother. Max conjures a portal to another world, where a huge hand reaches through and grabs Max’s little brother, taking him away. Immediately feeling remorse for conjuring the portal, Max jumps through to save his brother. Max chases down the huge monster that has his brother, but is unable to catch up nor stop the creature. Max then finds an old woman, who teaches Max to use a magic marker to take control of his environments, in order to both help his brother and to stop the villain from conquering this world.

The story for Max: The Curse of Brotherhood begins very Disney-esque, in fact reminds me very much of the Jim Henson movie, “Labyrinth”. I had such high hopes for a great little story about a boy who discovers the true love of brotherhood and learns to accept his younger sibling as a brother and not as a nuisance. However, the story never develops. Once the game begins, it feels like the story and Max’s progress as a character are just forgotten. Even the story about the world you are in and the main villain, Mustacho, becomes secondary to the game play. I really feel that the developers missed the mark here in making Max a more interesting character. They had all the elements right at the beginning, then just forgot about everything that made the first hour special.

Game Play

Max: The Curse of Brotherhood is essentially a 2.5 dimension platformer with a magic marker gimmick thrown in to make it feel different. The platforming controls feel tight and well done, Max controls very well with both a standard controller and a mouse/keyboard. The puzzles you encounter are not difficult to figure out, you usually just need a moment or two to see what the game developers want you to do. If the developers had stopped there and focused more on the story line, I feel that Max: Curse of Brotherhood would have been a much better game, but they had to introduce the magic marker.

What makes Max: The Curse of Brotherhood different from, let’s say, Limbo is the magic marker game play mechanic. Once you meet the old woman, you gain the power to use your marker to draw certain items or affect the environment around you, in order to solve the platforming puzzles. It’s a cute idea, in theory, but in practice becomes a frustrating event that really just brings the entire game down. The marker is hard to control with the mouse, in both direction and in power. You will find yourself slowing down to use the marker in a much more precise manner. Later in the game, however, you do not have that extra time and must use the marker precisely with little or no margin for error.

The game developers do a great job in introducing the new marker powers as you get them in the game. Each level helps teach you everything you need to know about that power, but the mechanic just falls apart and feels clunky at the end. I really enjoyed the mechanic in the beginning but it soon began to wear on my as the game progressed and many of my deaths were attributed to the marker not going where I needed it to go.

Aesthetics

Max: The Curse of Brotherhood has a great look to it, reminding me of a colorful version of Limbo. The world that Max encounters is nothing short of breath taking visually, and is full of dangerous and nasty creatures that will kill Max in a hear beat. The design is made to give the player that sense of security by using the bright and colorful visuals, but the game is truly darker than that and Max will face horrific ends if you are not careful. The visual aesthetic of Max: The Curse of Brotherhood is truly the gem of this game.

The audio aesthetic is well done, as well. Each character is voice acted well, and the acting fits the feel of the game. Again, my biggest issue is that the story does not give these actors enough plot to bring these characters truly to life, or to have them grow during the game. This is the most evident in Max and his little brother, who I feel the developers really let down with how the story was handled.

Final Thoughts

Max: The Curse of Brotherhood is a game that was full of promise and excitement in the beginning, but ends up not keeping these promises all the way through to the end. Cursed with a shoddy story line and a frustrating game play mechanic, Max: The Curse of Brotherhood could have been so much better then it came out to be. The game is still solid and worth the time and money if you are interested in it, but I feel other games on the market have just done this job better. Max: The Curse of Brotherhood is available now on Steam.

[easyreview title=”Product Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3″ ]

Hegemony Rome: The Rise of Caesar Review (PC)

2014/06/08

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Longbow Games has released its newest real time strategy game, Hegemony Rome: The Rise of Caesar. Hegemony Rome, like its name suggests, follows the path of Gaius Julius Caesar and his rise to power, beginning with the Gallic Wars in 58 BCE. While the game play was very solid, especially for someone who does not do rts games very well, it was my background and degrees in history that kind of ruined Hegemony Rome for me. For instance, Rome did not use a hegemony style of government during the Gallic Wars, which is when the game begins. The title is, therefore, misleading but I guess “Republic Rome” just didn’t have the same ring to it.

Story:

Hegemony Rome begins in 58 BCE, at the beginning of the Gallic Wars. Caesar had heard of a migration of the Gallic Tribe, the Helvetii, across the northern parts of Gaul, and used this movement to further his political career and to help reduce the massive debt that he had built in his road to proconcul. Caesar hurries to Geneva, with a single legion at his command, and burns down the bridge over the Rhone, to stall talks with the Helvetii emissary. When Caesar finally meets with the Helvetii emissary, Caesar refuses safe passage of the Helvetii tribe and warns them that force will be used if they tried to pass into Roman territory.

The Helvetii then form an alliance with another neigbhoring tribe, the Sequani, and begin to move through Sequani territory across the Alps. Caesar leaves his troops in the hands of his second, Titus Labienus, and then moves to Cisalpine Gaul to recruit three more full legions of troops. Unfortunately, in order to return with these legions, Caesar himself had to trespass into Sequani territory, causing many skirmishes along the way.

This is just what happens in the first chapter of the game, and it is all historically accurate. While I may have issues with the title not being accurate, the rest of the game has been almost perfect in terms of historical story telling, down to the map and individuals involved. The first chapter ends with the Battle of Bibracte, where Caesar faced off against 92,000 Helvatii, according to his own researchers. The other campaigns in Hegemony Rome, follows the rest of Caesar’s book Commentarii de Bello Gallico, which was written by Caesar himself to retell the events of the Gallic Wars. I loved that the story was very historically accurate and was told in an engrossing way, but could see an issue with how the objectives were lined up for certain players. For instance, being told to move your troops to Bibracte doesn’t help if you have no idea where Bibracte is, since the map uses the “fog of war” technique of unlocking certain sections of map. There is no way point system or arrows that show you where things are if you haven’t uncovered it yet. So, study your ancient maps of Gaul before playing this game, kids.

Game Play:

Game play wise, Hegemony Rome falls on the side of being easy to learn, but deep enough for the hardcore players to enjoy. I was able to identify troops, leaders, and environments very easy. What really saved me during the game, was the ability to pause game play by pressing the space bar and deciding how I wanted to approach a battle. This gave me the breathing room that I needed in most cases, to really plan out my next move and defeat my enemies.

One great feature that made life in Hegemony Rome easy was how the map system worked in regards to tracking legions across great distances and zooming into certain areas. By using the middle mouse wheel, you are able to zoom in and out of the world, to either see a section close up to micro manage your battles, or to see Gaul as a whole and watch icons march across the land.

The rest of the game was standard rts and strategy game material. You have options to gather resources to build forts, farms, and towns. You have to watch your supply lines as you travel across Gaul, to make sure your Legions are properly fed, and the game will constantly remind you of that. The moral of your men is important to watch also, since they will break and run if you are not properly supporting them in battle. Most battles felt a lot more like just two mobs hacking at each other, then any actual strategy going on. Facing didn’t seem to matter, nor did flanking maneuvers, but Legions could charge at the other ranks to cause some moral loss and force a retreat.

Overall, I felt that the game play was solid enough for me, a complete rts and strategy newb, to do well enough and have fun. How the hardcore would see it is another matter. This game may not be hard enough or deep enough for those of you that are truly hardcore players of strategy and rts games. That will be up to each individual player, but I enjoyed my time with Hegemony Rome and felt that it played well enough to be fun.

Aesthetics:

Hegemony Rome looks decent enough, but won’t win any beauty prizes. When zoomed in, the character models are a little more cartoony than I would have liked for a game that is based on actual history. And while the towns seemed populated, with peasants and guards milling about, the level of detail on the individual units just didn’t quite do it for me.

Hegemony Roam is fully voiced by actors, which is actually well done. Though I do wish that developers would stop grabbing actors from the United Kingdom anytime they need an accent to sound “foreign”. Hearing Julius Caesar speak of the greatness of Rome in that accent just did nothing for my immersion into the game. Music quality is good, as is the sound effect during game play. All in all, the aesthetics for Hegemony Rome does the job well for this type of game, without feeling special.

Final Thoughts:

Hegemony Rome: The Rise of Caesar does a lot of things well enough to make it a good, solid game – but not quite outstanding enough to really set Hegemony Rome apart from the rest of the pack. The story is taken directly from Julius Caesar’s own personal accounts of the Gallic Wars, and thus are very historically accurate – even if the name of the game is not. Game play wise, Hegemony Rome does a good job in letting RTS “noobs” get into the fight without going through page after page of stats and items to micro manage, but this may make the hardcore fans of these types of games feel that Hegemony Rome is light on depth. Hegemony Rome: The Rise of Caesar is good, not great, and is available now on Steam.

[easyreview title=”Product Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3″ ]

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Tropico 5 – A Review (PC)

2014/06/03

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Kalypso and Haemimont Games has brought us the latest edition of the dictator simulator with Tropico 5. The Tropico series is a civilization building simulator, well known for its tongue in cheek approach to “banana republics” and topics such as totalitarianism, colonization, and interference from super powers into the Third World. I have never played a Tropico game, not being a huge fan of the “civilization builder” type games, so I have no point of reference in what is better or different with Tropico 5 versus the older versions of this same game. However, I can say that I really enjoyed my time with Tropico 5, and now plan to keep a closer eye on this series in the future.

Story

The story for Tropico 5 begins when you are handed a colony from the crown to govern for a set number of years. As you govern, you are brought little story points that you have to make decisions about and who to support. Like many civilization builder games, the story line isn’t one of strict narrative, but of implied narrative based on your current objectives or goals. The overall story follows you, El Presidente, and your family from colonial governor into the 21st century.

For the most part, the story in the campaign mode is fairly forced upon you. You have to become independent before your contract is up with the crown or you do not move onto the next series of quests. This will limit your decision making somewhat in the campaign, since you will have to support the revolutionaries in order to claim your independence, but when you support them is up to you. I have been able to utilize the crown’s resources all the way up to the very last moment before declaring my independence, thus building a more solid and structured country before moving on. The story works well enough for the game type, just don’t expect a sweeping drama to unfold as you rule your little island.

Game Play

The game play for Tropico 5 is where all the action is at. At the heart of Tropico 5’s campaign mode, you must complete a set of objectives in order to move onto the next set of objectives, and the next time period. The early game play revolves around setting up your island with the help of the crown. You must reach a certain popularity with the revolutionaries and declare your independence before your mandate runs out. Along the way, there are certain quests in which you can participate in, which can either increase your popularity with a certain faction, increase your personal bank account, or increase your mandate giving you more time before the crown removes you.

As you build up your island, you have many choices to make with the direction of how you want your country to progress. Tropico 5 is full of different types of buildings that you can create, with different items to research for each time period. Each building then also has many different ways to customize the output, resources, and workforce for each building. Building a ranch, for example, will allow you to choose what type of animal you are raising for resources, how much money you want to put into that resource for development, and what manager you want running the ranch, which will give you bonuses or negatives depending on the manager.

Resource gathering is one of the most important game play elements in Tropico 5, and the game gives you many opportunities to do so. You can begin by exploring your island for natural resources. This will include mines, oil, and artifact that can be utilized for tourism. You can also see a grid system that will help you plant other resource gathering buildings more efficiently. You will also be able to create and change your trade routes with other countries and pirates to find more buyers for your goods.

Tropico 5 also has a multi-player mode to go along with the single player campaign mode. The multi-player mode can be either cooperative or competitive, whatever strikes your fancy at that time. Up to four players can play on a single island, building your own cities, competing for resources, working together to build a civilization, or to declare war on each other.

Aesthetics

The aesthetics for Tropico 5 is really what made the game for me. The art direction for the visuals is fantastic and fits the humor very well. It is on the cartoonish side of art, but I feel that the direction works fantastic for the game. The island is very detailed in its visuals, and you can zoom into each area to really get a sense of the detail that was put into the art direction. You can change the appearance of all of your characters, from El Presidente all the way down your familial chain.

Tropico 5’s audio is also very well designed and the game is fully voiced by actors. The actors all give the appropriate accents for the nationality that they are representing, though they are a little bit more stereotypical then reality. I can forgive that here, since the game takes many of the qualities of these nations and exaggerates them just a bit, to create a distinct aesthetic. The music is fantastic and really puts the player in the tropical mindset. Both the visuals and the audio work so well together to bring Tropico 5 to life.

Final Thoughts

Tropico 5 is the first Tropico game that I have played, and I am now aware of what I was missing. Tropico 5 is a great game that is not only fun, but also challenging as you get passed the early campaign levels. The game play is solid and deep, giving you control over many aspects of the lives of your subjects, and each building can me maintained and ran to your choosing. The extra stress of the mandate running out during the colonial period was a fun way of having a clock to race against, and I love how each time period brought in new challenges and sets of items and buildings to research and build. Tropico 5 is a great game that is a must-play for anyone that is interested in this type of game. Tropico 5 is available now on Steam.

[easyreview title=”Product Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”4″ ]

Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition Review (PC)

2014/05/31

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

I have a very solid rule when it comes to game titles, and that is games with the word “Xtreme” in it should be avoided at all costs – especially when it is spelled in that manner. You are just better off leaving that game on the shelf. Lucky for Tecmo Koei, I was assigned to review their latest and greatest edition in their Dynasty Warriors, uh, dynasty called Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition. This game was a much better experience than I was expecting, and really fun to play. With this edition, you get everything that was in Dynasty Warriors 8 and in the expansion Xtreme Legends, hence the “Complete Edition” title. This is literally everything you need in one package if you want to play Dynasty Warriors 8 on the PC.

Story

The story for Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition (this is going to get old, fast) is broken into six parts, following each faction: Wei, Wu, Shu, Jin, The Others, and Lu Bu. The story for each faction is different for each group, from fighting down a eunuch rebellion, to gathering allies. Each faction has their own heroes to choose from, and the story is told through cut scenes, text boxes, and in game voice overs between characters. There isn’t a single narrative through Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition, you really get six.

I think that was always my issue with the Dynasty Warriors franchise, really. I hadn’t played one of these games since Dynasty Warriors 2 or 3, and remember always feeling like the story was just disjointed and never made sense to me. That feeling still persists through Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition, I never really feel that there is an over arching narrative, and the characters are just not interesting enough for me to care about. I think the other issue with characterization, is that there are literally sixteen characters per faction for the first four factions, then a less amount after that. This must be what a newbie feels like when they first pick up an Xmen comic book anymore, there are just way too many people to keep track of.

Game Play

Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition plays just like I remember it, with some extras thrown in. Game modes are plenty here, with Story Mode, Free Mode, Challenge Mode, and a new Ambition Mode. Ambition Mode allows you to fight for allies, resources, and weapons to build up y our own town to win the eye of the Emperor. It’s deep, interesting, and a great way to continue to play this game, even after you have finished the Story Mode.

Game play for a Dynasty Warriors game hasn’t really changed over the years, though they do through in some new moves and weapon upgrades in this one. The main idea is that you as the character of your choosing, will fight against hundreds and hundreds of enemies in trying to reach your goal. Your goal will change depending on the mission, but the game play is still the same. Charge in, fight hundreds of enemies, and finish your objective.

You kill your enemies by using combinations of weak and strong attacks, and can switch between two weapons, each with different stats, characteristics, and upgrade potential. You will also have special attacks and EX attacks, that can help speed up the slaughter. As you kill your enemies, you will find drops in the shape of money, health, armor, and weapons. These can be used to upgrade your character in between battles to help strengthen and customize your warrior.

My only issue with Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition is that, if you are playing on the PC, you absolutely need a game pad. This game controls like a dead elephant if you are using a keyboard, and you can’t remap any of your keys. The game as a bad habit of asking you to do something, like mount a horse, and not even tell you which key that is. Very frustrating, but with a game pad, all those issues will disappear.

Aesthetics

Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition looks good, not overly fantastic. I enjoy the different costumes that the characters can wear, and the colors of the clothes make the heroes stand out against the enemy, but each stage always feels pretty much the same to me. Canyons, towns, fortresses, or forests, the landscape feels more like a design afterthought then a concentrated effort to give the player something to look at. Your character is obviously the main focus of all the visual design elements.

The game is fully voice acted, and that is somewhat of a negative for me. Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition reminds me of a bad 1970’s Kung Fu movie that is dubbed in English. Sure, the dialogue makes sense, but the energy that is put into simple lines of script feels either way over the top, or just not enough. It can be easily overlooked, but for people that are paying attention to the quality of the voice acting, it will be distracting the more you play.

Final Thoughts

Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition is a good game, and is the best version to pick up if you are looking for a good Dynasty Warriors game for the PC. The game play is solid Dynasty Warriors, there are more then enough story lines, factions, and characters to keep you busy for quite a while. Even when you’ve gone through all that, you can try your hand at the Challenge, Ambition, or Free modes. The biggest problem with Dynasty Warriors as a whole, is that it is really for a niche audience. Either you will love it, and therefore already own it, or it isn’t for you and nothing I will say will convince you otherwise. If you have never played a Dynasty Warriors game and are interested in checking it out, this is the version for you. If you loved the games of the past, then you already have this game. For me, it was a good and solid game, worth recommending to someone who is open minded about battling swarms of Chinese peasants. Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition is available now on Steam.

[easyreview title=”Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3″ ]
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Warhammer 40k: Storm of Vengeance – A Review (PC)

2014/05/20

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Eutechnyx and Games Workshop has brought us the latest video game from the Warhammer 40k universe with Storm of Vengeance, a tower defense/lane strategy game based off of the campaign pack of the same name from the miniature game and the novel by Gav Thorpe, “The Purging of Kadillus”. What this game boils down to is a game that feels entirely like a developer going for a quick buck by utilizing an easy game development type with a well known licence. For me, this feels like a movie tie in game, it’s that bad. For those of you that don’t know, Warhammer 40k has been an incredibly popular product licence since the eighties, coming out of the United Kingdom. This licence was originally a miniature game, but has since spawned spin offs into the board game genre, novels, movies, video games, and many other products. Storm of Vengeance is the most recent effort in a long line of mediocre attempts in bringing this universe to the video game industry.

Story

The story of Storm of Vengeance originates from two sources, the campaign pack of the same name and the Gav Thorpe novel. The story takes place on the planet Piscina IV in the build up to the Third War of Armageddon. The Third Company of Dark Angels, led by Master Belial, come under heavy attack from an Ork invasion force, consisting of Bad Moon, Goff, and Deathskull tribes. Facing increasing numbers, Belial tries to defend Kadillus, but is faced with the choice of either trying to find a way to stop the ever increasing push by the Ork armies, or completely annihilate the continent that they are standing on, killing everyone.

The tone of the story is very similar to every tone of every Warhammer story, ever. The heroic few Space Marines must stand and defeat the massive armies of the invading and savage Orks by using superior technology and strong military strategies, all while praising the Emperor. While that is the obvious tone of this story as well, the feel of this tone never makes it to the actual game play of the game, since you have unlimited resources and troops to utilize, as long as you have objects that can generate them. Never once during game play did I actually feel over run and out numbered.

The story is told during the campaign by using text boxes with portraits of who is speaking. The dialogue is typical Warhammer universe stuff, “We will crush the Xenos!”, “Praise the Emperor!”, and all that. There is nothing new or exciting here, even if you are a fan of the license, like I am. I have always had an issue with the writing in the Warhammer universe, especially in the video games that come out. Characters are generally one dimensional, predicable, and without emotion. This game is no different. You get what you expect from the storyline, its’s just told in an uninteresting way.

Game Play

Storm of Vengeance has a couple of game modes for the player to explore, a campaign and a multiplayer mode. The campaign allows the player to select one of two initial armies to play as, either the Dark Angels or the Goff Orks. Through DLC the player can add the Imperial Guard, Bad Moon Orks, and Deathskull Orks to your list of armies. Once you have chosen your army, then the story begins. Ultimately, the game is a series of battles that show up through a story mode with text boxes in between each battle, giving you little narrative about what is going on. Once you have beaten the set battle, then you move onto the next text box, then the next battle, and so on and so on.

The battles are set up on maps that utilize five lanes of attack. You place your troops and resources on the left, while your enemy is on the right. You have five spots to begin the production of troops and resources, so you must choose what to place in each spot to generate a certain type of resource or troop. For instance, for the Dark Angels, placing Comm Towers will generate the resources needed to play troop cards into a lane, but you need either a Drop Pod, Rhino, or Stormraven on one of the five spots to actually generate the troops. Each type of troop generator will create a different type of troop. Using the same three examples as before, the Drop Pod generates a standard Space Marine, the Rhino a Devastator Marine, and the Stormraven an Assault Marine.

You can also generate upgrades for your troop types, for instance Space Marines can be outfitted with Frag grenades that can be tossed into other lanes. You can also change the type of resources that you are generating to earn different types of troops. By switching resources, you will halt production on the typical Space Marines, but will be able to generate a member of the Ravenwing bike squad. I found that doing this would actually slow my game down, as it was much more efficient to just continually spawn Marines and over run the opposition.

As a Marine is produced, you can place that marine in any of the five lanes on the map. The entire point of the game is to defeat a certain number of enemy resource generators while defending your own. Each Marine type will have different characteristics when they are produced to help you defeat your enemies, the Assault Marine is much faster then the standard Marine, but the standard Marine can shoot into the next lane.

While the game play is tight for what it is, I just found it entirely too boring to continue. It was constantly the same damn thing, battle after battle. Place your resources, generate troops, select lane, rinse, repeat. Every battle felt like the last, and I knew that the next one was gong to be more of the same.

Aesthetics

Storm of Vengeance’s aesthetics is very dull, with absolutely no character nor anything interesting about it. The visual design is generic Warhammer at it’s worst. The maps are dusty, desert landscapes while the troops look generic and exactly like each other. Even the text box portraits are colorless, static, and made to look like images through static. There is no voice overs during these text box story moments, the only time you get some voice work is during the battles, when the troops will call out random things when they are generated. The sound design is even more generic then the visuals, and just not worth really delving into. This game just looks and sounds like it had a quick development cycle and was rushed to market.

Final Thoughts

Warhammer 40k: Storm of Vengeance needs to be avoided at all costs, even if you are a fan of the licence. It is an uninteresting, colorless, and boring game with nothing to offer anyone, from the hardcore fan to the casual gamer. Games Workshop has seemingly peaked in the video game market with Space Marine that came out three years ago. Warhammer 40k: Storm of Vengeance is available now through Steam.

[easyreview title=”Product Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”1″ ]

Wargame: Red Dragon Review (PC)

2014/05/04

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Do you love the smell of napalm in the morning? Feel that your current real time strategy game has a decidedly less tactical feel to it? Are you one of those people that would just like to watch the world burn? Then do I have a game for you! Wargame: Red Dragon, developed and published by Focus Entertainment and Eugen Systems, is a tactical real time strategy game that gives you the chance to participate in fictional conflicts during the 1980’s in Asia. What really sets Wargame: Red Dragon apart is the spectacle of combat. It is stunning to watch the battle unfold in front of you, as tanks erupt into flames and entire forests are burned to the ground. This game screamed out to the historian in me, it is just too bad that I am absolutely horrible at these types of games.

Story

The single player campaign in Wargame: Red Dragon is based on five fictional scenarios that are based on actual, historical events that occurred right around the 1980’s in Asia. The five campaign stories include campaigns such as a North Korean invasion of South Korea during the 1987 presidential election, a border war between the USSR and China over Vietnam, and Margaret Thatcher taking on the entirety of the Chinese military over Hong Kong. Each campaign has a difficulty setting that allows players to move into the game at their own pace. Unfortunately, the artificial intelligence has a tendency to employ the same tactical decisions over and over again, so if you can keep those in mind, you will be able to predict the A.I.’s troop movements.

The campaigns have an over view map of the entire campaign battle field, that is made up of smaller territories that you will fight over once you come into contact with the enemy. Each campaign has an over all objective to complete, then each battle has a similar objective that you must reach in order to win that battle. Most objectives are either destroy a particular percentage of the enemy or capture a particular point. The campaign itself is broken down into turns, so you get to move your troops then the A.I. gets to respond. When the smaller battles begin, you get a choice as to whether you want to play that particular battle yourself, auto resolve the battle, or just flat out surrender that territory. Your actions and the results of that battle then determine the current look of the overall conflict, including troop resources and availability of military assets.

Each campaign has an introductory video that explains the background to each conflict. The Busan Pocket campaign begins with President Chun Doo-hwon selecting his successor. This leads to the June Democracy Movement in South Korea. Where the actual movement was resolved with little to no violence, Wargame: Red Dragon takes history down a different path. Chun Doo-hwon violently puts down the the June Democracy Movement, leaving an opening for an invasion by North Korea into an already chaotic situation, and this begins open conflict between the two Koreas and the United States forces in South Korea.

I really enjoyed the alternate history angle of Wargame: Red Dragon. It is fun to take actual military vehicles and troops into a conflict that is based on actual historical events, but with a twist. I loved taking on China as the U.K. over Hong Kong, in an event that never occurred just to see how history could have turned out.

Game Play

I wrote a little bit on how the campaign is set up in the Story section, so I’m going to focus more on the actual game play and the other items that Wargame: Red Dragon has to offer. The battles in Wargame: Red Dragon play out like most real time strategy games do, with proper troop selection, meeting your opponent head on, and killing every single one of his or her troops. The major different with Wargame: Red Dragon is the shear number of troops and types of items you have in your arsenal. You have access to tanks, infantry, support, air support, recon, and navy; Wargame: Red Dragon’s newest troop type.

Battles have a very tactical feel to them. You begin by placing your troops in your home sectors, then decide how to confront your enemy. Troops are not seen until your troops can see them. This is were the recon section of your force pays off. Recon helps identify troop types early and can see where your enemy is moving. This allows you to counter act with troops that are strong against his troops. Wargame: Red Dragon does have a little bit of a “paper, rock, scissor” feel to it, in that I mean you have troops that are strong against certain groups, but weak against others. It never feels cheap due to the vast amount of troops that you have at your fingertips.

Movement and combat are treated the same as most rts games on the market, using the click and drag method to select your troops, then right clicking to either move or enter combat. The maps are massive to the point that it actually takes away from the spectacle of the battle. You can zoom into a section of the map and see your troops lock into deadly combat, but as you are watching the visual spectacle of an entire bridge disappear under a airstrike, your enemy has moved their forces into a flanking position. You have to watch the entire battle unfold zoomed out, and select the moments to zoom in and appreciate the carnage.

Wargame: Red Dragon has some nice game modes that will keep you entertained for a while. Besides the solo campaign, there is a troop builder that allows you to customize your forces, tutorial screens to help prep you for the conflict ahead, and a full multi player mode that can set you up in huge battles against other people. Multi player played fantastic on my machine, and I encountered no issues what so ever, except just getting crushed every time I played. I thoroughly blame my Soviet troops, they just weren’t up to the challenge.

Aesthetics

The aesthetic funds went right into the actual visuals during game play, and not in supporting the solo player campaign, that much is obvious. The graphics in game are just amazing, from the way the light shines off of the ocean, to the visuals of the destruction that occurs on the battlefield. The solo player campaign does have video that helps set up the story of the campaign, but then reverts to just pictures of people standing there with test boxes. The video is fully voiced, but the rest of the story is all text. It does kind of make the campaigns feel a bit more lackluster, especially in comparison to Starcraft II, but the in game graphics are a treat to behold.

Sound design, in game, is just as impressive. The narrator does a decent job in telling the background story over the video, but it begins to feel a little too much like that boring tenth grade History teacher you had back in high school. This game is designed for the historical, tactical real time strategy fan and not some someone looking for casual thrills. You have to pretty much care about history it get into the aesthetics of this game.

Final Thoughts

Wargame: Red Dragon is a fantastic game that does a lot of things right, but is just a hair under being absolutely perfect. The game is visually stunning while you are in combat, and the amount of troop choices makes each battle completely different. You have to think each battle through tactically, using recon to get an early fix on your opponent then respond using the correct troop type. Nothing looks quite as impressive as an A10 Warthog flying in low over a column of tanks. It just feels good to see the world burn after a pass like that. On the downside, the solo player campaign could use a little bit of aesthetic thought to bring in some more of the non-hardcore history buffs and the naval battles feels just off compared to the land and air combat. Wargame: Red Dragon is a definite must buy for fans of the tactical real time strategy genre and anyone that is interesting in re-writing history.

[easyreview title=”Product Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”4″ ]

Preview of Crate Entertainment’s Grim Dawn

2014/04/14

Judgeman

News, Previews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Preview

My Kickstarter reviews/previews continue this week with Grim Dawn, an action role playing game developed by Crate Entertainment. Grim Dawn racked in an impressive $537,000 on their Kickstarter, almost doubling the amount that Crate Entertainment was asking for. In order to help development further, Crate Entertainment has put Grim Dawn up for sale on Steam, following the same path that Minecraft and Day Z have taken, selling pre-release versions of the game to fund further development. Now, I have some strong feelings about this current practice, but that will be a discussion for another time. Let’s just focus on Grim Dawn today.

Grim Dawn is an action role playing game that follows in the foot paths of games like Diablo and Torchlight. Set in a fantastical Victorian era landscape, Grim Dawn begins you as one of four classes (soldier, demolitionist, occultist, and nightblade) with a fifth class coming in a later update. These pretty much break down into melee class, range class, spell caster, and assassin. One of the features of Grim Dawn that hasn’t been seen in the other games mentioned is the Dual Class System. When you hit a certain level, you may add a secondary class to your first, to gain access to their skills. Sure, the soldier can use pistols already if he has a high enough cunning, but if you really want to be better at it, dual class into the demolitionist.

As you level up, you get to increase one of your three characteristics and gain levels on your skill tree. The characteristics are broken down into three simple stats: cunning, physique, and spirit. Cunning essentially is your ability to hit, dodge, and be fleet on your feet, while physique is your strength, constitution, and durability represented in one number. Certain classes will want to focus more on one stat then the others, to be sure, but you will still need spirit as a soldier in order to use some of your skills. Skill trees look like most all other skill trees that have ever been created. You are given a set of choices at each level to choose from, and these can either be improved upon or you can select another skill if you have reached the minimum level. There is a default skill for each class that can be chosen anytime, and that skill increases your states instead of giving you another skill. Don’t like the choices given to you at a particular branch of the skill tree? Then put those points into the default skill and boost your stats.

The world of Grim Dawn is fairly generic in aesthetic. You begin in a ruined village, where you were formally a prisoner that was possessed by a demon. The inhabitants release you, and set you out on tasks to help them secure themselves against the relentless undead that has been plaguing their town. Quests follow the typical format; quest givers are seen with a yellow exclamation point over their head, they go through a dialogue describing the quest, then will have a question mark over their head until you return to fulfill their quest. Traveling across this land is down by foot, with rifts that are open around the world that act as portals to teleport you to checkpoints or back to town. Like Diablo, you can also create these rifts yourself, to get you out of a dungeon to repair or sell of your loot.

Crate Entertainment is going for some interesting features for Grim Dawn. Two of the more interesting features for me is the faction based questing and the choice system. At points during the story, you will be faced with two factions and must choose to help one or the other. Helping one faction hurts your reputation with the other faction, but will allow you to earn rewards once your reputation is high enough. I had two immediate feelings when I heard this. One was “Hey, that might be interesting to see how that works in an arpg,” then it was immediately followed by “Damn, now I have to grind factions, like I did in World of Warcraft”. The other system is the choice system, where you will be faced with certain choices, that will change the face of the world. By helping out a village to fend off an attack, the village will grow and prosper. If you choose not to help, then it will wither and die. While I am not a big fan of these perceived moral systems, it will be interesting to see what Crate Entertainment really can do with it.

As of today, Grim Dawn has two acts that are ready to play, with more coming down the road as Crate Entertainment finishes up on it. There are also some features that are still not in game yet, like multiplayer and most of the faction based questing lines. This is a work in progress, and is being sold as such. For a game that is technically still in development, it was surprisingly bug free for me. This tells me that Crate Entertainment really is taking the time to look at this game and is trying to put out the best possible game for the market. While Grim Dawn may not take the place of Diablo II in my heart as the best arpg of all time, it will definitely earn a place in my play rotation as development continues. This is a game to watch! Grim Dawn is available now through Steam Greenlight to purchase as a game in development.