GreyPawn.com

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

Quarterly Game Review

Recently updated my video card and power supply.  Can we please agree that any video card that requires not only one, but TWO power cables from the power supply to be plugged into it is overboard?  These hardware shennanigans drive me batty.  Eh, on with the reviews.

Overlord II - A pale shadow of the first Overlord.  What the hell happened?  The first Overlord was chock full of gooey content, the world seemed massive and open even though it was linear-driven.  This latest installment feels like a trainride from point A to Z and none of the fun customizable choices along the way.  The antagonists in the first were varied and wondrous, grand fairytale creatures gone horribly awry, forces of good bent on strangling the world of its choice between the two.  This second piece of garbage pits your Overlord against… wait for it.  The Roman Empire.  There are guys dressed up as Romans that you can fight, and also guys dressed up as Romans you can fight.  When you get tired of fighting Romans, you can fight the Romans.  Also, to add some spice to things, you can use a catapault to fight the Romans.  Did I mention the Romans?

The game also seems somewhat devoid of the dark humor of the first, as though the satire in the story was built by committee.  I was really looking forward to this game and it really didn’t meet expectations.

Anno 1404 (Dawn of Discovery) - The only thing bad I can say about this particular gem is that it sucked up way too much of my life.  I started to get that frightening mental thing going on where when you close your eyes, you are still playing the game in your head with this one.  Colonization of islands, resource management control, real-time strategy elements, ships with cannons and cargo, builder sim aspects - delicious.  I was honestly scared to death that they wouldn’t be able to produce a sequel to top Anno 1701, but this game improves on nearly every single aspect while presenting a different setting.  Hours and hours of replayability.

Empire: Total War - At a certain point in nearly all the Total War games, I start to win, and then this deep malaise sets in.  The certainty of victory.  The monotony of shuffling your diplomat thousands of miles across untamed wilderness to that one ridiculously far out city, one “BWONG” after another.  Pretty graphics, neat treatment of India and the trade cities.  I may come back to this one eventually.

Oblivion - I came back to this.  Mind-numbingly boring.  I can picture in my head some kind of hastily managed quest mill churning out generically written quests with god-awful proper names like “Cloud Ruler Temple” and “Icechurn Bridge” where “Grew’goth Mekwon” the Salisinian (orc) hocks his wares.  And every one of them a greenlight.  For all of the hundreds of NPCs in the game, there are quite possibly five, five total voices in the whole universe?  And two of them sound like a fat, cockney, out of work cannery foreman who can barely be bothered to move his facial muscles when he talks. 

The scenery is rather pretty with the new vid card though.

Evil Genius - I would give my right arm for a sequel to Evil Genius or Dungeon Keeper.  Is there simply no longer a market for these awesome games where you get to play the bad dude trying to build up a base to keep out the goodie two shoes?

Red Alert 3 Uprising - Satisfying RTS.  The inclusion of actors and a solid story really do make the difference.

The Sims 3 - A good occasional simulator.  Far more in depth than the old Sims 2, but what’s this?  It would appear as though all of the content the expansions offered for The Sims 2 has vanished, as though it were never created and integrated into the total offering of what the Sims was and is.  No, I have no illusions that EA is going to milk this third installment for every last droplet of expansion fodder it can and that The Sims 3 is like buying a factory-standard car - no A/C, antilock breaks, steering wheel etc.  It is a rather nice time waster though.

East India Company - I am such a damned sucker for Paradox games.  Stupid, stupid, stupid GreyPawn.  I bought this game literally the day it came out.  I played for about an hour or two before realizing this was quite possibly the worst ship style trading game on the market.  Port Royale ONE beats this game to pieces.  It’s like Civilization:Colonization broken down to its most barebones, sprite-based state and stripped of about half the features.  I don’t understand how anyone can release this kind of game and think, hey, this will be a success, when it fails on so many, many levels.  Why is this game a gig or so?   You could do this on a mobile phone to the tune of 13 megs.  I’ve never asked for my money back before for a game, even Empire Earth 3, but I’m really tempted on this one.

After Europa Universalis III and the screeching horror that was this game, Hearts of Iron 3 better be all that and a bag of Doritos or I am seriously handing in my Paradox fanboi badge.