Author - Judgeman

Preview of Planetary Annihilation (PC)

2014/03/31

News, Previews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Preview

This preview of Planetary Annihilation ends an unofficial review/preview theme week for me. Both Windforge and Planetary Annihilation were created, in part at least, with funds from Kickstarter campaigns. While Windforge only brought in about $50,000, Planetary Annihilation has racked in a massive $2.2 million dollars to finish the dream of the developers over at Uber Entertainment. Planetary Annihilation is getting closer and closer to release, but the build I was able to play was still listed as a Gamma build and needed refinement. While I will mention some of the issues and bugs that I encountered while playing the game, please understand that these issues and bugs may very well be fixed even by the next Gamma build, or at least before general release.

Planetary Annihilation is a real time strategy game that can cover an entire galaxy, and not just one map. Readers of this site will know that rts games and I don’t always go hand in hand down a tree lined lane. It’s more like the rts takes me out for a drag over glass laden asphalt streets. So expanding the map to include various planets, moons and asteroids was very difficult for me, but a damn blast in looking at and trying to play. This is what makes Planetary Annihilation unique, the ability to expand your army to outer rim planets, and then bombard the other systems by using massive weapons, or even by launching asteroids. If your enemy has completely entrenched themselves on a planet so that you cannot remove them using conventional forces, then blow up the planet with an asteroid strike.

Moving your armies around a planet works the same as it does with most rts games, click and drag then select with the left mouse button. However, with these types of maps, you have a unique situation to ponder over, what type of terrain the planet is. On some of the planets, land forms can help protect your base from invasion from a certain direction, with other planets, there is no protection from any direction. One of the planets I played on was a created planet, with large canyons through part of it, but created an interesting dynamic in that my enemy could technically invade me from any side at all, since all they had to do was walk their armies around to the other side of the planet to invade. I had to set up my defenses literally in a 360 degree arc and “circle my wagons”.

The actual game play of Planetary Annihilation is fairly generic rts style stuff. You have a commander unit that runs your entire military, and once that commander is defeated, the game is over for you. For resources, you can mine metal or harvest energy through buildings, then build up your defenses, armies, and base by creating troops and buildings. All of this is pulled off flawlessly during the game and feels very intuitive, especially if you have played any other type of rts on the market. Your armies can take to the air, land, sea, or space depending on what theater of war you need to fight in. The planet you are currently on will help determine the type of force you build, a navy is completely useless on a desert planet, and so on.

Currently, Planet Annihilation does not have a campaign to play, so if that’s your thing you may want to watch the development to see if one is forthcoming, but it does offer single player or multi player skirmishes that can occur over an entire galaxy of planets and involve up to 40 players. Planet Annihilation can also be played offline, but you will be missing out on some very cool and massive galactic wars. Another interesting feature of Planetary Annihilation is that there isn’t a cap limit built in for troops, like in other rts games. If you have the materials and energy, you are creating the troop. This allows for some epic armies to be created and sent out to various planets. However, this also causes another issue for me, and that is army management. It was hard enough for me to maintain a single army in Starcraft II, let alone five armies fighting on five different planets, plus my orbital stations and my asteroid flinging unit on the outer rim. I would reach a point to where my army was just too big for me, personally, to manage it, but it was cool to have.

The sound and the art direction right now are heading in the right direction. With the Kickstarter funds, Uber Entertainment was able to get a full orchestra to do the soundtrack, and it sounds very nice. The aesthetic of the game, at first, looked fairly simple to me. Then as the action began, the visuals began to show their true nature, with great looking explosions and massive craters left when something big blows up to really give you a neat looking game. What the game lacks is character, and by that I mean someone to be the face of the franchise or someone to get behind. The armies are all designed to be the same look visually, except for the commander which can have different skins. But all the armies are essentially, mechanoid, with no real difference between them except for color. A little variety in military can go a long way, and the development of characters that the audience can care about can create a new franchise.

Now, onto the issues that I personally had with Planetary Annihilation, and thankfully they were all bugs. First off, the game is absolutely unplayable in full screen, with a 32 bit system and an AMD video card. You just can’t do it, there isn’t a cursor to select anything in the menus when played this way. Thankfully, the game plays just fine in windowed mode, so you can work around it. I also suffered from various slow downs and complete crashes, just getting into the game. The software would completely lock up on me and had to be restarted. Again, this is all playing an unreleased gamma build of the game, and could completely be fixed even at the time of this writing. Uber Entertainment is collection all of these bugs and working to fix them prior to release.

Planetary Annihilation is a massive undertaking for an independent game developer, but with funds from a successful $2.2 million dollar Kickstarter, the game is coming along quite nicely. What is there right now is fun and really interesting to play, and then allowing the community to mod Planetary Annihilation can only mean that there could be some fantastic and unexpected new things in it’s future. Keep your eyes here as we follow Planetary Annihilation into it’s last legs of development.

Windforge – A Review (PC)

2014/03/31

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Snowed In Studios has released their newest creation in Windforge, a side scrolling game that has been described by the developers as “Minecraft meets Contra”. What Windforge really comes out to be is a nice attempt at this hybridization with a great aesthetic, but it’s riddled with flaws and bugs. I really love the look and the feel of Windforge, but the game just ended up being way too frustrating to play due to game ending bugs and just tedious quests that killed the flow of the story. There are a lot of things that are right about Windforge, but one must look long and hard to overcome the other issues of the game.

Story

Windforge takes place on the world of Cordeus, a steampunk style world that is run completely on sky whale oil. Think Dishonored, but with sky whales. The economy of Cordeus is falling apart, mostly due to the complete over harvesting of the planets sky whale population, and the bizarre law that outlaws any research into alternate technology. You create your character to be either a butcher, sailor, prospector or merchant to set out and make your own fortune in Cordeus.

Early in the game, you discover the ancient ruins of another race of beings, the Aetherkin. The Aetherkin knew of alternate power sources and technologies that were not depending on the dwindling supply of sky whale oil, but the pursuit of these technologies have been banned. Ultimately, you set out on a epic quest to bring those technologies to the people of Cordeus, in order to prevent the complete extinction of the sky whales and to bring the economy back to life.

Game Play

Windforge does play like a cross between Contra and Minecraft, with a touch of Diablo or Torchlight thrown in for good measure. The basic premise of the game is ultimate creation or destruction of the environment around you, ala Minecraft or Terreria. You can control and shape your world, including your sky craft. Creating objects or materials in Windforge is very simple, and makes perfect sense. Menus tell you exactly what materials you need to make what, then it is up to you to locate these materials and assemble them. The first crafting quest in Windforge has you searching a mine for materials to patch up your blimp and to add propellers for lift and movement. Unlike other games lately, I felt that Windforge gave me a clear idea as to how to craft objects so that I could do this for the rest of the game.

The Contra part of Windforge comes in clearly during movement and combat when not in your blimp. You control your character by using the WASD keys, while the mouse controls where you aim. You can switch between tools and weapons on the fly by using the number keys, then aim with your mouse and use the buttons to interact or fire that weapon. You are quite easily able to run away from an enemy and fire your pistol in the opposite direction in an attempt to dissuade them from further pursuit. Your character also has a grappling hook, that adds in a little Bionic Commando to your exploration. All of this works very smoothly when it comes to the actual execution, I never once became frustrated with how my character moved or interacted with the world.

Windforge differs from other games of this type by becoming more based on item drops then resource gathering and crafting. While, yes, crafting is in the game, drops from enemies you face will become your bread and butter way of outfitting your character. This will end up giving you much more options to outfit your airship or character then just relying on either a drop system or craft system.

That is about the extent of the good news for Windforge, so let’s go ahead and begin on what is wrong with the game. Let’s start off with traveling around the world itself. The world is divided up into six or so parts, each with their own load times. The problem I have with that, is that it completely takes one out of the interactivity of the world. I will forever compare games that have loading times to move from one zone to the other to World of Warcraft, where it was absolutely possible to travel from one end of Kalimdor to the other without a single loading screen. It may be unrealistic on my part, but loading screens in worlds now just feels out of place.

Another huge issue I had was that the game just became tedious. The Aetherkin temples were devoid of anything interesting and most quests just felt like I was grinding for levels or items. The story itself just seems to get bogged down with no direction or idea on where it wants to go. And that is, if the game runs right. Windforge is buggy, to say the least. Complete save files have become randomly corrupted and my whole game and to be restarted from the beginning, twice. I cannot, ever, recommend to anyone a game that has these type of game ending bugs. It just isn’t excusable.

Aesthetics

Windforge has a very unique and beautiful aesthetic to the world, and the characters that populate it. Snowed In Games decided to go a different direction with their visuals and, unlike Terreria and Minecraft, went with a cleaner, less 8 bit art style. I must say, that the game really has a very cool look to it, with the way the land appears, the look of the airships, and even the design of the sky whales. The music for Windforge also really helps in creating this unique aesthetic. There isn’t any type of voice over work, so all dialogue is completed through text boxes. I was really impressed with the direction of both the visuals and music design for Windforge, it is just too bad that the game suffered so much from bugs and glitches.

Final Thoughts

Windforge was a valiant attempt by Snowed In Studios to create a creative game that had a decent drop type system and interesting combat. Windforge can be described as part Minecraft, part Contra, and part Diablo in its game play systems, with a very unique and gorgeous world to play in. However, game ending bugs and a tedious quest system really brings Windforge out of the realm of a solid, good game into something a little more mediocre and hard to recommend. Windforge is available now through Steam.

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

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Infested Planet – A Review (PC)

2014/03/20

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Infested Planet by RocketBear Games can be easily dismissed as a water-downed, arcade version of StarCraft II. Truthfully, that is what I started to believe the first hour I played the game. But, once you begin delving deeper into Infested Planet, you will realize that there is much more going on behind the scenes of this real time strategy game. Infested Planet puts you in charge of a squad of five space marine mercenaries that have been hired to wipe a planet clean of bug-like, alien creatures. What makes Infested Planet worth picking up for anyone that is even remotely interested in a real time strategy game is that there is something for both new and hardcore players alike. New players will find a very accessible and easy to understand RTS game that does not overload the senses with a HUD that requires a one hundred page manual, while veteran RTS players will love the challenge that Infested Planet brings with it’s adaptable AI and restricted unit numbers.

Story Line

The story line for Infested Planet is fairly generic, inoffensive, and borrows heavily from the StarCraft universe. You are in command of a squad of space marine mercenaries that are being hired by the government to help purge a planet from an insectoid alien race. You spend the entire campaign taking orders from either the military leader or the head of the science division, then are tasked with completing certain objectives planetside, whether it be capture objective points, build bases, or eradication of the aliens.

The campaign for Infested Planet is fairly minimal, told through a text box before each stage of the game, with no voice acting or cut scenes. There isn’t anything about the story that I can praise, nor does the story really ruin the game play of Infested planet. The story is just kind of there, just enough to give you a background as to why you are doing what you are doing in game, but not enough to care about the characters in the story, nor be excited about plot turns.

Game Play

Infested Planet is a real time strategy game, and that usually elicits a huge groan from me when I get one as an assignment. In my other life as a teacher, I have to be organized and have to manage a classroom full of students and their academics. My entire day is built around resource management and allocating those resources to the most efficient places, so when I come home to unwind doing just that in a game is not at all what I want to do. Infested Planet shocked me in its simple, though deep, game play.

One of the biggest changes is how Infested Planet handled it’s resource management system. The game runs on build points, similar to resources in other rts games. Instead of mining or refining build points, you get a certain allocation while defeating enemy strong points. You can then use these build points to reinforce or upgrade your current squad, which is maxed out at the small number of five marines. When a marine dies, the replacement will spawn at a strong point with the same gear that the original had. So sitting in your base and building up a huge army of marines to overrun the computer just cannot be done, you will have to beat the enemy with the resources you have and the limited manpower available.

The enemy AI is aggressive, think Starship Troopers aggressive. Swarms of bugs will through themselves at you in an attempt to overrun your positions with just overwhelming numbers. Then the mutations will start to kick in and make your life a living hell. Mutations allows the AI to adapt to your strategy. If you arm your marines with flame throwers to deal with the enemy, expect a mutation to develop that allows the aliens to adapt and avoid your flame throwers. Hives react violently to being attacked, and if your squad is weakened when they hit the hive, they can be quickly killed off. You have to pay very close attention to the ebb and flow of the battle, to where the enemy is strongest and plot your moves accordingly. Even after all that, a random mutation or adaption by the AI can through your plan into chaos, just like real combat.

There isn’t any direct multiplayer in Infested Planet, so don’t expect to be able to play against friends or other online. There is a skirmish mode where you can just jump into a randomly created map and destroy bugs. The only online interaction a player will get against others is in the form of leader boards.

Infested Planet does a fantastic job in stream lining the rts experience for people like me, ones that just don’t want to have to juggle an entire army of soldiers while trying to find out where the next mine of resources is, and then have to manage all of my research and development. Here, I only focus on my one squad of soldiers, the limited build and research menu, but still have an adaptable and smart enemy to face, who can send hundreds of bugs at me at any moment. Infested Planet has a nice arcade feel to it, while retaining some of it’s core rts game play mechanics.

Aesthetics

Infested Planet take a top down view on the action, and allows the player to zoom in and out using the mouse wheel, just like other rts games. The visual aesthetic to Infested Planet is bright and colorful, almost cartoonish, but simple. Marine animations are incredibly simple looking, limited to pretty much two legs moving under a torso that swivels to show movement. While this means an aesthetic style that cannot compare to StarCraft II in complexity and beauty, what it does mean is that anyone can run this game on their computer, and that is what I believe RocketBear Games was aiming for. It was sometimes hard to tell my marines from the enemies, due to color conflicts, but the aesthetic still works for the game as a whole.

Sound is also simplified, with very little voice acting and dialogue and fairly basic sound effects and music for game play. Voice acting is limited to in game voice commands from the marines, with absolutely no voice acting being used for the story campaign. Like the story itself, the sound aesthetic gets the job done, without being fantastic and engrossing, or horrible to the point of greatness.

Final Thoughts

If you have ever wanted to get into a real time strategy game but was overwhelmed by the shear number of operations per second you needed to complete, then I would strongly suggest checking out Infested Planet, but do not think you are in for an easy ride. Infested Planet does a great job in making the game accessible to everyone, but it also does a great job in making it challenging enough that veteran RTS players will find something here to like. If you do not pay attention to what is happening on the battle field, you will lose and lose badly. While Infested Planet lacks the production values and polish of games like StarCraft II, it also lacks the $50 price tag. Infested Planet is available now through Steam for $15.

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

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Thief – A Review (PC)

2014/03/06

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Eidos Montreal and Square Enix have resurrected one of my all time favorite PC series with their remake of Thief. When Thief: The Dark Age came out in 1998, I was hooked. I loved the stealth game play, the maps that contained multiple maps to my goal, and the visuals of the game were some of the best in the industry, at that time. When I had heard that Eidos and Enix were going to remake Thief for a 2014 release, I was beside myself. I wanted this game more then Watch Dogs, Titan Fall, and Dark Souls II combined! What I got, was disappointed. Thief just wasn’t the experience that I wanted in my remake.

Story

Thief begins the game by introducing the player to Garrett, This is the same Garrett that appeared in the first three Thief games, but as an older and wiser version. The introductory level also introduces you to Garrett’s young and brash sometimes partner, Erin, who epitomizes everything that Garrett is against in a thief. In this level, you and Erin are charged with stealing a small gem like object from the Baron’s stronghold in The City. As Garrett and Erin reaches the stronghold, they come upon a magical ritual, which causes the building to shake. Garrett and Erin choose this time to have one of their annoying little squabbles, which leads to Erin’s apparent death and Garrett being put into a coma for a year.

One year later, Garrett comes to and is taken back into The City, just to find that The City has fallen victim to plague and brutality. Garrett heads to his hideout to check his belongings, then immediately crosses town to visit his handler to see if he has any jobs available for a thief who needs money.

The story line for Thief works ok for me, not that great but I have seen much, much worse. My issue with the story is that, when looked at as a whole, the story feels disjointed and incomplete. It very well could be the consistent load times that appear during game play, or the score screens after each level, but the story never feels like it is a whole story. I found it much easier and more enjoyable to view each level as a story upon itself in Garrett’s life, much like how Hitman is set up with it’s levels.

The other issue that I had with Thief’s story, was the characters. I’ll talk a little bit more about their design later, but who the characters were and how they acted drove me absolutely nuts. Erin is a brash, arrogant, and loud character, who has no reservation in getting into an argument during a job, while there are guards just ten feet away. Erin also sees guards as objects that needs to be removed and has no objection in killing them. Garrett, on the other hand, is the veteran that hates everything about Erin and how she does it. Garrett chastises Erin every chance he gets, especially over her killing of a guard, and yet as the player you will eventually kill your fair share of guards during the game. Erin is an annoying teenager type character, and Garrett is a know-it-all hypocrite, I never liked either one at all during the game.

Game Play

Thief is, at it’s heart, a stealth game and Eidos has done that right. You are giving a light sensor on your heads up display that shows you how much light is shining on Garrett. This helps keep Garrett in the dark, which is key to completing your levels well. Garrett also has an array of special items and moves that help him maneuver around The City, completing his tasks. Garrett has his trusty bow with him, including his water, fire, rope, and broad tipped arrows that can be used to move around or take out obstacles. Garrett also carries a blackjack and grapple, rolled into one that he stole from Erin during the prologue. Before each mission, Garrett has the chance to buy more equipment using the cash from his last job.

This new Garrett also has some new moves to help him finish his jobs. There is a new dash move that allows Garrett to move quickly between two points, usually from shadow to shadow or to close the gap between you and a guard that is walking away. This dash move is the more helpful of the two new abilities and allows you to get Garrett out of trouble quickly and quietly. The other move, Focus, is a some what cheap feeling ability to me. Focus is context based, and will either slow down time if you are in combat, or show you items in the world that you can interact with by making them glow. When you enter a room and hit focus, everything that can be picked up or interacted with will glow a soft blue, so that hidden safe behind the portrait won’t stay hidden long. This feels cheap to me because it takes away from the exploration and discovery of the first Thief games that I enjoyed so much. It was much more rewarding in finding the merchant’s hidden vault on your own, and not just by clicking Focus to find what items you can interact with.

My biggest complaint with the game play of Thief is how you move around The City. The City allows for multiple paths to complete your jobs, which is great, but Garrett cannot utilize many of the sections that you see around you, and must stick to your chosen path until you are given the option to choose another path. Playing games like Assassin’s Creed have absolutely ruined how I see the way Garrett should move around The City. Some ledges you can drop down, others you can’t and you won’t be able to tell this unless you try to. Movement does nothing to make Garrett feel like the master thief he is. If Eidos wanted a great example of how Garrett should feel in movement, they should have just taken a look at Dishonored, that would have worked fantastically.

Aesthetics

The visual design of The City is great, and it looks just fantastic on the PC. If you have a machine that is beefy enough, the PC version is the only place that will get you 60 frames per second at the highest graphics level. I, unfortunately, do not own one of those types of PCs, but the game looked great and ran great at the setting I choose. The look of The City is one of medieval Europe meets Industrial Age Europe, in a similar vein to the original games. The world is appropriately dark and dreary, and the lighting effects look great and give you a sense of where not to be.

Character sound and visuals are a completely separate matter. Garrett’s design is all over the place, and I have no idea why the man is wearing a corset. I truly believe the reason Garrett stays in the shadows is due to the fear of being seen and dying from embarrassment. Original voice actor Stephen Russell has been replaced as the voice of Garrett by Romano Orzari, and this moved had caused a huge stirring of disapproval from the Thief faithful. Russell, as I remember, was fantastic as the voice of Garrett, while Orzari seems bored and flat in his delivery. Ultimately, what this feels like is a different Garrett than we had years ago, and Eidos may have been better served in making the main character Garrett’s son, rather than Garrett.

Final Thoughts

Thief by Eidos Montreal and Square Enix is a mediocre game at best. While The City looks fantastic and the game play, at times, makes you feel like a master thief, ultimately the story and character design just isn’t enough to make me care enough about this reboot. If you take each chapter as a separate game and focus on that section, then the game seems to get better – especially when you can change the difficulty per each chapter and try again with harder artificial intelligence. It’s when the game is taken as a whole that my feeling of joy for Thief seems to fall apart. It just doesn’t live up to the original game, and maybe that’s my issue. It is almost impossible to view a remake of one of your favorite games objectively, and truth be told I am not going to try. My advice to you is, if you played the original and loved it, you may be in for a big disappointment with this new reboot. Overall, the game just comes of as “okay”. Thief is available now for the PC via Steam.

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

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NASCAR 14 Review

2014/03/01

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

It’s that time of the year again, time to turn left and race for that checkered flag. NASCAR 14, from the folks at Eutechnyx and Deep Silver, is a direct sequel to the 2013 release of NASCAR the Game: Inside Line. The decision to not go into the next generation consoles means that the graphics for NASCAR 14 wouldn’t be getting a major overhaul, so Eutechnyx focused on giving the player more online functions, a deeper design center, and tweaking the artificial intelligence to make the game more challenging.

Story

This is a sports game, so there isn’t a story to tell. The closest thing we have to a story is the career mode, so I’ll go ahead and talk about that in this section. Career mode allows you to play as a user-generated driver, the new kid on the circuit, and race in the NASCAR season. One of the first things you get to do is customize your car. Car customization is deep in NASCAR 14, with a wide array of colors, finishes, and patterns to choose from. The layering system works out nice too, to add depth of color to your car. This is a nice addition to creating your own racing team and giving you a sense of ownership in NASCAR 14.

Once your car and team are customized, it is off to the first race of the circuit, the Daytona 500. Race weekend is filled with all the events that a typical NASCAR event has, from the practice laps to the duels and finally, the big race. After each practice lap, you’ll be able to fine tune your car to make it work the way you want it to work, and then test it again in the next practice lap.

Between events, you’ll be able to chase down new sponsors to increase your income, which you can put right back into research and development for your racing team. You can even manage your pit crew to help shave seconds off of your pit stops. These are great features that really bring to life the world of NASCAR for any fan. Everything in career mode worked out fine and felt like it needed to be there. For the more casual fans, you do have the ability to skip events during a race weekend if you just want to get out and race. Once I had run a few practice laps and qualified first for the Daytona 500, I was good to go ahead and get that race started.

Game Play

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first, this game NEEDS a steering wheel controller with a gas pedal to be played correctly and get the full effect. If you are a racing game aficionado for the PC, odds are you already have one so you should be fine. If you want to get the most out of NASCAR 14, then invest in some sort of wheel controller, it will save your sanity. I don’t have one, so the keyboard was all I had to use. The game is controlled just by four buttons, up and down arrow are gas and break respectively, while left and right are just that, left and right. The problem with this control scheme is that you will over-steer too much and the fine adjustments to steering just isn’t there. This is a major problem when you go into a turn three deep.

One of the items that Eutechnyx wanted to work on was improving the artificial intelligence of the other race drivers. Since I never played a NASCAR game in my life, I have no comparison to whether or not they made this happen. All I can say is that the other drivers pissed me off something fierce, so maybe Eutechnyx was successful. Once I had finally got some handle on the controls and would race the Daytona 500, I would get cut off or pinched by the other racers, trying to shove me out of my line. Not being a fan of NASCAR, but I was almost positive that you just cannot come down from a turn to bump another racer off of their line once they’ve established themselves. And with the keyboard control scheme, any little shove anywhere would lead me to over compensate and spin out, causing a massive wreck.

During races, you will have to keep an eye out for the various penalties you can acquire as well. In trying to avoid yet another wreck, I steered my car under the yellow line and was summarily black flagged for it. Pit row also has a strict 55 mph speed limit, which must be obeyed in order to avoid that penalty. It’s a great feeling to a game when all the little things are put in there.

Online multiplayer is available, with a new league mode for this year. You and your friends can set up your own NASCAR league and head through the season, racing against each other and the bots for the overall cup. These leagues are fully supported by statistics, replays, rankings and challenges so you can fight for bragging rights among your NASCAR group. If you just want to race online, race matchmaking is available to pair you up with racers of the same skill level.

Aesthetics

The aesthetics of NASCAR 14 is probably the weakest aspect of the game, but they are not horrible to say the least. Visually, the game looks like its predecessors, without having any significant increase in graphics. The game is being designed for the 360/PS3 generation so the developer really didn’t focus on trying to push the boundaries of the visuals of the game. What you do get is enough to make the experience enjoyable and look good too. Damage will show up on your car if you bang into one to many obstacles, and seeing the dust come up down the track is a great early warning sign to watch out for a wreck ahead of you. The car models look clean and the lighting is well done.

Sound design is typical for this type of game, with nothing really being too bad or too great about it. Voice acting is standard and what you would expect, with the in-game voice coming from your race manager, helping you “see” the track. Soundtrack is typical as is the sound effects for the game. Nothing that I would call memorable, but also nothing that I would call horrible either.

Final Thougts

Reviewing a NASCAR title, for me, was an interesting experiment. I am no fan of the genre, not in the slightest, but had fun playing this game. I would still pick up a copy of Forza or Gran Turismo over NASCAR 14 any day of the week, but NASCAR 14 does a great job in simulating the NASCAR experience, and I know there are a lot of NASCAR fans out there looking for just that. For the PC, the biggest suggestion I can make is to invest in a steering wheel controller, because the keyboard just doesn’t give you the fine tuning in steering that a wheel will. The career mode is packed full of neat extras, like r & d and sponsors, while the car customization is deep and fun to play with. In the end, NASCAR 14 cannot compete with the polish and fun of either Forza or Gran Turismo, but NASCAR 14 is the only game in town that will replicate the NASCAR experience, and it does it well. NASCAR 14 is available now for the PC and PS3 and is coming soon for the Xbox 360.

[easyreview title=”NASCAR 14 Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3″ ]

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Loadout – A Review (PC)

2014/02/08

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Edge of Reality has brought us a brand new, free to play, third person shooter called Loadout. What separates Loadout from other third person shooters is the custom weapons that players can design, test, and then use in the game’s arenas. Loadout’s design is completely on the side of “over the top” when it comes to its humor, gore, and weapon design. Edge of Reality went with the idea that, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth over doing and it works for Loadout.

Story

Here’s the thing about Loadout’s story line: There isn’t one. Not a scrap of story to be found anywhere in this game, and I am fine with that. Some games can carry themselves just purely on fun gameplay, and that is exactly what Loadout does.

gameplay

When you begin the game, you have to set up your first loadout. These loadouts consist of a character skin and two weapons. The characters that you can choose from are limited to one of three skins; beefy white guy, beefy black guy, or beefy white girl. The default skins offer no customization at all, unless you buy the Spacebux from Edge of Reality. I will get into that a little more later.

Loadout is really all about the weaponcrafting, and you get to carry two custom weapons in each loadout. You begin by selecting one of four chassis, either beam, missile, slug or pulse. The chassis determines how the basic gun will behave. After you have selected the basic chassis, then you are ready to add on more parts to further customize your weapon. You can change the barrel, magazine, stock, scope, ammo, and other parts to truly customize your weapon. The more you level up, the more choices you will be given. Here’s the cool thing, you pay for your upgrades with currency that you earn in game, not the purchasable Spacebux.

What I really liked about the weapon customization was how Edge of Reality would let you outfit your gun and test it prior to spending one point of currency. You can choose all the available upgrades that you want to see how they work, then hit test and are sent to a single player shooting range. You get to see the damage that your new weapon can deal on stationary and moving targets, and then decide on whether or not that configuration will work for you. It’s never final until you hit the buy button.

Since I’ve already touched on it twice, let’s get the free to play thing out of the way. Edge of Reality has done Loadout’s free to play model right, in my opinion. You can purchase Spacebux with real currency, but what Spacebux can buy are customization options for your character or experience boosts, which has no advantage during the actual gameplay. Everything that you need to customize your weapons and increase your firepower is bought with in game currency, therefore Loadout is absolutely not a pay to win game. You have the same chance of winning and killing others as someone of equal level that has spent hundreds of dollars in Spacebux, you just don’t look as good. The customization options for your characters range from absolutely silly, hardcore military style, to just hard to watch. I played against a character that choose the naked skin costume, and it was disturbing to see his pixelated man bits flopping around. I personally went with the Baseball Furies costume from The Warriors, oh yeah.

Ok, that’s four paragraphs right there on the customization of Loadout, so let’s talk about how the dang game actually plays. Currently, I could only enter the casual game modes and not the competitive ones, but there were still a few modes to choose from. There is Death Snatch (kill confirmed), Jackhammer (capture the flag), Extraction (collect the shiny bits and run to a set point), and finally Blitz (control point). These games are all set for 4 vs 4 action, or 4 vs AI if you are looking for some cooperation gameplay with your friends. I generally just looked for random games and game types, and was consistently put into full games where the action was fast and fun.

Actual gameplay is a blast and reminds me of the old Unreal 2k3 days. With only two weapons, your loadout becomes extremely important but you can also pick up other people’s guns after you have blasted them into itty bitty pieces. Jumping is a viable dodge technique, as is the actual double tap to dodge, so get used to aiming at bouncing characters. Maps are designed well, with side passages to sneak up on people. I feel that the maps are the right size most of the time, though I hated that sometimes in Blitz one team had no chance just because the control point spawned near someone that was already there.

Aesthetics

Loadout is over the top gore and humor at it’s finest for a free to play game. Weapons will literally blow parts off of you in a shower of cartoony blood and bits. A hard enough shot that doesn’t kill you will completely damage your character. A head shot will just leave you with your brain and two eyes on eyestalks, or a chest wound can leave you running around with a large hole where your pecs used to be. If the shot does kill you, well then you are usually torn in half, or found hopping around on a bloody stump as you bleed out. Occasionally your character, if he or she is feeling especially full of it, will end his or her last breath by giving the enemy the finger before quietly passing on.

Sound is really well done to, but a little minimal when you really analyze it. There is no music during the actual gameplay, so sound effects is usually just weapon fire, explosions or heart beats when you get low on health. Voice acting is limited to just grunts, groans and yells for the characters, and announcement from the female narrator ala The Administrator from Team Fortress 2.

Final Thoughts

Loadout from Edge of Reality is how free to play game should be done. You can play the game without spending a single dollar and still be competitive and have fun, you just won’t have access to the myriad of great clothes options or taunts that the Spacebux can buy you. If you want a slick costume and really customize your character, then be prepared to shell out some real life dough. If not, then just be content with the default character. Gameplay wise, Loadout is just damn fun, it really is. I played Unreal 2k3 for hours upon hours because of how fun that game is, and Loadout feels like a spiritual successor to that title. Match-ups worked fine for me, though I do know that Edge of Reality has some issues during the first day or so of launch. Edge of Reality has said that they are working hard to fix that issue and will make it up to everyone who was affected. Look, the game is free. You loose absolutely nothing in trying it, and I really think that most of you out there will actually enjoy it. Loadout is available now through Steam.

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

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Might and Magic X: Legacy – A Review (PC)

2014/01/31

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Limbic Entertainment and Ubisoft have just released the newest incarnation in the Might and Magic world, Might and Magic X: Legacy. Legacy is designed to give you that old school dungeon crawler experience, similar to games like Legend of Grimrock or Dungeon Master. What sets Legacy apart from it’s predecessors, is that the action isn’t just locked into tight, monster filled caves and dungeons, but expands to an entire surface world. Might and Magic X: Legacy gives you a much more complete turn based, grided, role playing game then the likes of Legend of Grimrock, but it comes with it’s own set of shortcomings as well.

Story

The initial cut scene for Legacy tells the player an epic tale of the ancient battle between angel and devil, with man caught in the middle. In the end, in order to end the conflict between angel and demon, Uriel manipulated Emperor Liam and the nations of the Empire, to hunt down and destroy the Faceless. After the death of the Emperor Liam, the mortals began to see through Uriel’s lies and discover that they have been manipulated all along. This truth began to tear into the Empire. Years of political treachery and outside conflict have taken it’s toll on the Empire, as it nears the edge of collapse. Your role in this story, has absolutely nothing to do with any of this.

You represent a band of four adventurers, that are brand new to the lands of the Empire. What epic quest brings you to the Empire? The dying wishes of your old master to have his ashes buried in his homeland. While in Sorpigal Town, you pick up some other quests to pretty much just to pay the bills. These beginning quests include clearing out a well full of spiders, investigating a lighthouse, and removing a thieves’ den that is located near town.

The story does get a little grander as you proceed through the game, but nowhere near the level that is suggested in the introductory cut scene. It feels like the intro belongs to another game entirely. I can understand wanting to give the player some history about the land that the adventurers are heading to, but this could have also been done through books or other items in game, with an intro cut scene that is a little more connected to the game that is about to be played. Story is told through text boxes at the bottom of your screen whenever you interact with a person. You are given choices of topics to ask about or quests to undertake, but there is no real interaction with the people of Legacy. In comparison to the other dungeon crawlers I mentioned about, Legacy does have the best story going for it. However, that really is only because the other games had almost no story what so ever.

Game Play

Might and Magic X: Legacy does come in much stronger in the game play area of my review, but still has a few knocks against it. To start with, let’s talk about the overall game play type for Legacy. Legacy is a turn based, first person, grided, role playing game. This game plays almost exactly like others of its type, with the exception of being able to entire the wilds surrounding the towns. Legacy plays almost identical to the old school games of this type, and that is both a blessing and a curse.

You begin the game by selecting a difficulty mode, either normal or hard, then by creating a party of four. What’s nice about Legacy is that you can just use the default party and be very capable of finishing the game, or build your own party and experiment with the vast combinations of race, class, and spells to see what works. Races and classes are pretty typical of this type of genre that includes orcs, dwarves, elves, fighters, mages, rangers, and crusaders. Depending on the skills you choose in the beginning, your character will have a different role to play out. Building a tank, for example, utilizes different skills then a berserker, even though they are both considered warrior classes.

Combat is a thing of beauty in Legacy, and works very well at being tough but fair. Each character will have a set of skills and attacks that they can do on their turn, or use an item such as a potion or antidote. Combat becomes extremely tactical during some of the harder fights that you will run into. When will you sacrifice the damage out put for a taunt? Which spell to use to best help your party? Did you bring enough potions for everybody? These are very typical concerns and questions that you will be asked during your adventures. Using your mage to air blast a foe back, so that your ranger can entangle them and give your tank a few extra moments to heal up is a very satisfying experience.

What is not so satisfying is the movement when you are not in combat. Yes, I know it’s supposed to be that way since its turn based, but you should really be able to move a lot more smoothly if you are not in combat. Just because the older versions of this game did it, doesn’t mean we cannot make improvements. Also, while we are on the subject if irritants, let’s talk about Uplay and some of the bugs I ran into. I hate having to play a game I bought through some sort of authentication process, and Uplay is no better then any of the others that I’ve been forced to use. In fact, during the review process, I had to have a completely new authentication code sent to me, because Uplay locked me out of my original one due to a random bug. I also ran into some game ending bugs that caused me to have to restart to an earlier save file. In one case, it was simply that I could not walk through a door, like the party become stuck on something. While few and far between, game ending bugs are just inexcusable in this day and age. It shows a complete lack of quality control.

Aesthetics

Legacy is a graphical beast, which is weird to say for something of this genre. It’s not that it has the best graphics in town or just looks phenomenal, it’s a graphical beast because of it’s poor optimization. Legacy is taxing, even on higher end PCs, and doesn’t even look like it should be that much of a resource hog. Legacy is good looking, but is just way to taxing for what you get. The sound design is solid, you get some very nice music and sound effects that fit within the world you are exploring. There is no voice acting in game, so everything will have to be read through dialogue boxes. To be honest, the aesthetics department is the area that feels the most rushed with Legacy. No voice acting, bad optimization, visual glitches, and just overall lack of polish can be seen throughout the game when it comes to aesthetics, and that to me just lowers the overall feeling to Legacy.

Final Thoughts

Looking back through this review, I feel that I might have been a little harsher on Legacy than I meant to be. Truth be told, my experience with the game was very frustrating because of Uplay, the glitches, and how my machine ran Legacy. The core game play is truly a solid experience with old school dungeon crawlers. Legacy’s development feels like it was placed on an extremely tight budget that did not allow for the polishing that was required to turn a good game into a great game. I would definitely still recommend Legacy to anyone that has beaten Legend of Grimrock and is looking for a new dungeon crawler game. If you are looking to get into the genre for the first time, my suggestion is to play Legend of Grimrock first, since that is the better of the two games, then give Legacy a go if you liked Grimrock. Might and Magic X: Legacy is available now on Steam.

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

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Spellforce 2: Demons of the Past Review (PC)

2014/01/28

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Nordic Games has released their newest stand alone expansion for the Spellforce 2 saga: Demons of the Past. Demons of the Past is officially the fourth game in the Spellforce 2 saga, continuing the story from the original Spellforce 2: Shadow Wars. The good news is that Demons of the Past, like Faith in Destiny which I reviewed last year, is a stand alone expansion. This means you can jump right into the saga with this game and do not need to purchase the previous three releases. However, if you do this, you will experience the same disconnect with the over arching story line that I felt when I started with Faith in Destiny. You will feel like you are coming into a great movie about three quarters of the way through, and will need to bug your neighbors as to what the hell is going on.

Story

Demons of the Past picks up where Faith in Destiny essentially left you off, with the world of Eo in peril and you, an Elder Shaikan, trying to prevent The Nameless from completing the destruction of the planet. As the Elder Shaikan, it is up to you to deal with this peril and defeat Zazhut, the main villain of this expansion. In order to defeat Zazhut, you will require the help of the Gods, but they are not so eager to help you. Before setting out to finally end this evil once and for all, you will have to convince the Gods to help you in your hour of need.

The people at Nordic Games wrote a sprawling epic in the world of Spellforce 2 that is both gripping and enjoyable to play. However, this is lost depending on where the player jumps into the series at. Sure, you can grasp the single campaign of each release and gather information as to how this story fits in with the rest, but you will be lost for a significant time in the beginning. Truth be told, I couldn’t remember much of the story line from Faith in Destiny, and had to relearn what was going on when I started Demons of the Past. If you are new to the story, be prepared to try to get past that feeling in order to be able to fully appreciate and understand the story.

If you are not new to the world of Spellforce 2, then welcome to the end game of this campaign. Like past expansions of Spellforce 2, you begin by recreating your avatar, or by selecting a whole new one. As I remember from Faith in Destiny, the same faces seem to appear in the character creation menu, so you can faithfully recreate your avatar from past games.

Game Play

The Spellforce 2 series is a combination of real time strategy and role playing game. You will be able to recruit specific members to your party in the beginning of the game, choosing between mage, healer, fighter, or ranged fighters. As your party members level up, you will be able to choose what talents and spells they will train in, in addition to allocating equipment that is found along the way. The RPG elements of Demons of the Past aren’t some sort of cut down version that you see in most RTS games, but a full RPG experience. It was very satisfying to choose my main party in the beginning on how I plan on playing the game, then continuing to personalize the characters to my play style.

The RTS half of Demons of the Past is seen whenever you are out of character screens, for instance during combat or world movement. The classic RTS style controls are found in Demons of the Past; the drag and collect feature for gathering troops, right clicking on enemies to attack, or clicking on the small portraits of your party members to utilize their spells or powers. Resource management is just as important in Demons of the Past as it is in other RTS games, and you will need to manage your troops, money, and materials in order to succeed.

The Spellforce 2 series did a fantastic job in combining the elements of an RTS with an RPG, and making it a fun game to play. The real critique with the series is that Nordic Games did this just well enough for Spellforce 2 to be a solid game, but did not bring enough innovation to the genre for Spellforce 2 to become a great game. Everything game play related works well and is bug free. The RTS sections of the game feels just like any good RTS game from that genre, and the RPG elements really allows you to tailor your party to how you play and the item system brings in that thrill of discovery any time you see loot sparkles.

Demons of the Past has about 50 main quests with about 40 side quests available to experience, bringing the experience to around 25 hours of game play. That is a significant amount of play time for this game. Demons of the Past also brings in a new survival mode and a boss fight mode that can be played separate of the main campaign, in addition to the traditional RTS multiplayer. With Demons of the Past, players will also be able to play as almost all races in the Spellforce 2 world, including the Pact, Shaikan and Undead.

Aesthetics

This is the big downfall for the Spellforce 2 series – specifically, Demons of the Past. The game looks like it is about ten years old, rather then just being released last week. The graphics of the avatars have a blocky look to them, as if they are unfinished in the process of being rendered. The avatars also seem to be much less detailed then other games on the market. The closest game I can make comparisons to is Warcraft III, which came out in 2002. However, Warcraft III had a great aesthetic to it, leaning towards the animated rather then realistic. While I am usually the first to say that games don’t need to have the most up to date graphics to be great, the game does need to look like it is a recent release. If I walked by Demons of the Past as it is being played, I would swear that someone was playing a retro titled game, not a new release.

The voice acting for Demons of the Past helps save what would rather be a disappointing aesthetic experience. The actors deliver their lines adequately without being too over the top. The musical score is good and ramps up with the situation, but is fairly forgettable once you stop playing the game.

Final Thoughts

Spellforce 2: Demons of the Past is a must buy for anyone that has played the Spellforce 2 saga and loved it. You will get more of the same with Demons of the Past and will enjoy the continuing story line. For the rest of you, the best I can say is that it is a good and solid game, but I would recommend beginning the series with Spellforce 2: Shadow Wars, which is the first installment. If you like that game, then by all means continue the story and work your way through all of the expansions. You will receive absolutely no benefit from picking up Demons of the Past first, rather then Shadow Wars.

[easyreview title=”Spellforce 2: Demons of the Past Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3″ ]

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Horizon – A Preview (PC)

2014/01/15

Judgeman

News, Windows PC News, Windows PC Preview

L30 is currently running a beta for their upcoming release of Horizon, a turn based galactic conquest game. Horizon will allow players to explore a vast galaxy, complete with ten alien races each with their own culture and agendas. Horizon allows you to colonize surrounding systems to build centers of trade, diplomacy, or military bases as the need arises. Horizon is focused on bringing the human race from first contact with alien species to a galactic power to be reckoned with.

Horizon begins its story with humanity’s first contact with an alien species just outside of Pluto’s orbit. An alien race known as the Kor’Tahz Alliance has sent a probe into our solar system, requesting contact. The Kor’Tahz claim to be responsible for seeding most life in the galaxy, due to an ancient experiment that sent out life giving spores to the farthest reaches of the universe. This contact sets in motion a series of events where humankind must now struggle to earn a place in a much larger universe filled with alien races, backstabbing, and outright war.

Horizon’s story line has a “Babylon 5” feel with how it treats the human race’s position in the universe. The human race is definitely the new kid on the block in this game, and must struggle to find a foothold in this universe through trade, diplomacy, and military strength. The time frame for this is cut rather short, as new alien races begin to contact the human race and move into the Sol system, in hopes of discovering more about this Kor’Tahz probe.

Horizon is designed to be a legacy style game, as each turn in the game is one year on Earth. So when you are setting up a new colony on Mars and that new government building is going to take 30 turns to finish, it’s 30 Earth years in the story. What made me chuckle when I realized this, is that I was still getting the same human avatar giving me missions and talking me through the plot even after about a hundred Earth years have passed. Guess we become a longer lived species in the future.

Combat is tactical and turn based, with is great for me since I have always struggled with real time strategy games. You get to plot your moves and really get to see the entire battlefield in a tactical view. It is done in two dimensional space, with is unfortunate since space is really three dimensional, but still works for the game. My biggest issue with the combat is the same issue I have with the rest of the game, I don’t seem to get enough information when I need it. During my first battle, my scout ship had it’s lasers damaged. There was no indication that I was shot nor any way to fix them, I just had to fly around aimlessly with that scout ship since it was now useless.

The rest of the game is fairly straight forward with menus that were easy enough to navigate once you get used to them. I liked the ability to create ships to fit the exact situation you need, but again ran into issues trying to colonize another planet. I created a colonizer, just like they show you in the tutorial, then for what ever reason the game would not allow me to colonize my chosen planet. There was no indication as to what the issue was nor anyway to fix it.

Now for my biggest critique of Horizon: It’s ugly. Really ugly. IN all fairness, however, Horizon is going through beta testing now and all of this could be cleaned up prior to the actual release of the game. But, that intro movie was unattractive. The characters were devoid of any life and the backgrounds just looked hideous with no type of lighting effects in place. I am hoping these are place holders for now and they get switched out in the future. The actual gameplay graphics are spartan, with nothing standout about them.

To sum up, Horizon is a solid 4X game from the gameplay side of things, but will do nothing, as of now, to please your eyes. L30 is developing this game at a bad time – a couple of years earlier and Horizon would have been a front runner for the must-play 4x game, but with the other games that have seen release within the last year, Horizon may just get skipped over. We will follow Horizon’s development as it progresses through beta.

Darkout Review (PC)

2013/12/26

Judgeman

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Allgraff has finally released their newest game, named Darkout, on Steam. This release of Darkout is Stage One of the planned release schedule for content. Allgraff has a total of four stages planned currently, with each stage adding more content, story, and environments to add to the game. I was able to play the Darkout Beta version a while ago, and walked away from that experience disappointed but hopeful that the developers could fix the myriad of issues that I ran into during game play. With the Stage One release, I am happy to say that Darkout is mostly fixed, but still far from perfect. I was able to move beyond the tutorial with this release, so did get a lot more game time outside of the first area.

Story

The story for Darkout is much more fleshed out then it was in the beta, thanks to a new introductory cinematic. The cinematic shows a derelict space cruiser, in orbit around a darkened planet. Within the cruiser, there are signs of some sort of battle or catastrophic failure, which caused all but one of the escape pods to have been jettisoned. You are in the last pod, and as the cinematic closes, you are rocketing towards the dark planet.

Your character then begins their new life on this mysterious planet, with no resources save for what can be found in the escape pod or on the planet itself. The rest of the story currently is essentially created by you, the player. Currently, the story line feels structured more like Minecraft then Terreria, which this game is heavily influenced by. Stages 2-4 will be adding much more story line to Darkout, along with survivors to interact with.

The problem with this story telling model, is that you currently have no other objectives then to just survive. Once your home is built and you have the basic camp set up, you are just supposed to wander around a little aimlessly, gathering more materials to research more items. Players of the game know that more story will be coming, but will have to wait for it.

Game Play

Darkout is heavily influenced by Terreria, from its two dimensional world all the way to how you interact with the world and build structures. The good news here is that Darkout is a much more good looking game then Terreria is, and is based more on science fiction survival then fantasy. Bottom line here though, folks, is that if you played Terreria then you are already know what to expect from Darkout.

Character creation is minimal at best. You select either Male or Female, then you select a color. I am still experiencing a bug that misplaces the type face for the color choices, but it is annoying at worst. You then get to select a world and then you are all set to begin the game. The tutorial is finally fixed and makes much more sense then it did in Beta. The tutorial explains how to interact with the world and sets you on your first job of gathering wood to make a home. Placing and picking up items in the world still feels hit or miss at this point, but are much easier to do then in the Beta. Yay for progress!

Darkout utilizes the same idea that Minecraft did in terms of enemies, the darker it is outside, the deadlier the world is. So light becomes imperative to protect yourself, not only in your home but as you are exploring the world around you. Torches not only serve to light your way, but they start off as your default melee weapon, with a pistol being your ranged option.

Darkout plays much more smoothly in the release version of the game then any other version I have played before. I finally feel that I can open doors, place objects, and pick up items more consistently then before. Currently, Stage One has a boss that the player can work towards defeating, and Allgraff will release a new boss for each stage of development. There is no current multiplayer for Darkout, but that is in the plans for Stage Two Alpha and hopefully to be released fully by Stage Three.

Aesthetics

Darkout is a much prettier version of Terreria, with the developers choosing not to go with a stylistic 8 bit feel, but a much more fleshed out and higher resolution game visual. Lighting is especially good looking in Darkout, and can be seen as the focus of the entire game. Enemies glow and they move through the world while plants off their own bio-luminescence to help light your path. It is very cool to be exploring a very dark cave, just to come across some soft, ambient lighting that is coming from some form of fauna at the bottom of the cavern.

We do need some more options for character creation, especially with the upcoming multiplayer that is planned. Currently, there are only two models, one male and one female, that you can choose from. There are a nice selection of colors that you can tint your suit with during creation, but the developers really need to come up with a plan to make sure the models look much more different before multiplayer.

The sound of Darkout is interesting, but not memorable. Allgraff says that there is voice acting in the game, but during my time with Darkout, the only thing that was voiced was the tutorial. Voice acting isn’t currently the most pressing problem that faces Darkout, since there isn’t anyone else right now to interact with, but hopefully as survivors are introduced this is something that becomes more prevalent to help the story along.

Final Thoughts

Darkout’s development seems to be the new way of how smaller, more independent companies are going to be making their games in the future. That is, by releasing a Beta version of the game and selling access to said beta, the developers are able to help fund the future of the product while allowing the community full access to what they have made and incorporating community ideas and suggestions into the final product. Minecraft, a game with a similar development cycle, is a monstrous hit and has proven that this type of development can work very well. I can already see much improvement between this version and the last Beta version that I played for our preview. Of course, this type of development means that the players must be much more patient for the complete experience, since content will still be released in stages. The Minecraft we play today is a much different experience then the one we played a year ago, and Darkout will be the same. Darkout is ultimately a very solid game that plays just like Terreria, but has the potential to be great as more of the content gets released in the future. Darkout Stage One is available now on Steam.

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

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