Rome Total War: Alexander will probably be one of the shortest reviews I’ve written on this fine repository for inane gaming takes. Solely because there really isn’t much here to discuss. If you’ve played Rome Total War, then this is basically the same game but considerably slimmed down. The first and most obvious reason for this is because we don’t have Rome, or indeed most of Europe in this version. Instead we have the Macedonians who mainly use Greek units. The Persians who use Eastern units and then a handful of weak barbarian civilizations. They use Barbarian units (as expected), but mostly only last for a few turns until they get destroyed. That’s about it, as far as the faction roster goes. You can play as the Indians, but they’re not in the campaign so… they’re only available for the multiplayer mode. As for the units themselves, while the faction roster is limited this expansion does feature around 25 new units. Mostly for the Macedonians. While some of them are fairly commonly used, a lot of them are still quite similar to existing units. Which meant that in my experience I was mainly Phalanx-maxing. To be fair to the game, the new units are nice. Even if most of them are very similar to existing units, you can already use as Greece. There are a few new cavalry units for example, but they function just like cavalry normally does. As for the rest of the rest of the new content, well… There is a new campaign, six new historical missions and that’s it. If you wanted to play as anyone other than the Greeks, then that’s not an option. At least outside of skirmishes and the multiplayer mode.

Which begs the obvious question “how’s the campaign then?”. Well it’s honestly pretty good if a little short. This is partly due the 100 turn limit, although I found I only needed two-thirds of that time to finish it. Basically you need to conquer a set list of provinces, while being at war with literally everyone else. The enemies are all allied with each other, but it will generally descend into you grinding down the Persians until they collapse. This is due to the rest of the factions being weaker barbarians. Who only have a province or two while the Persians control most of the map. As for the rest of the game, the battle AI is a bit better than in the base game so that’s nice. Although I do think it would’ve been interesting to get to play as… well anyone else. As it stands you’ll play through the campaign once, and that’s kind of it as far as the expansion goes. I mean sure there are those 6 historical battles. Plus the skirmish/multiplayer modes, but for me Rome Total War: Alexander feels a bit short. It took me around 10 hours to finish the Greek campaign, and then only a few more to get through the historical battles so it’s a short but sweet experience. The campaign itself doesn’t really have any particular twists, instead playing as a standard game albeit in a new map.

And honestly that’s about it! I’m really struggling to think of anything else that’s really worth mentioning. As I’ve said, there are some extra historical battles which is always nice and there is a new campaign that’s admittedly fairly short. There are some new units but they don’t feel that new. The sieges are the same. The AI has been improved slightly. Uhhh the game is still great like the base game and uhhh…. that’s about it. I guess I could gripe about the game being unstable on Windows 11. Or how the Steam Screenshot function barely works any more, but honestly who cares. This is a game that’s close to twenty years old at the time of writing, and it holds up well.

In conclusion then, Rome Total War: Alexander is an enjoyable if short piece of extra content. If you loved playing as the Greeks, you’ll love this expansion. Ultimately I’d recommend it to anyone who has played the base game. Although it won’t convince anyone who doesn’t already like Rome: Total War.

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Railroad Corporation is another one of those games that I don’t remember buying, and can only assume that I got it included as some sort of bundle. Unlike most games with that earn that dubious epithet however, I actually thought Railroad Corporation looked interesting and wasn’t that bad to play. I’d even go so far as to say that I had fun with Railroad Corporation and found it to be a bit addicting. With that being said, it’s a pretty standard railroad business simulation game. You control a railway company, you need to build the tracks between various settlements and then run trains between them. The idea being that you’ll transport various resources between towns, farms and mines to earn a profit and to grow those settlements. As the settlements grow, they demand a broader range of products and these “higher level” products provide higher profits. There are the standard additional add-ons, like the ability to buy businesses, research new types of trains, hire staff for modest bonuses (e.g. cheaper bridges or more profit for transporting grain) and so on. As for the setting, it’s America during the 19th century which is par for the course. Most games in this sub-genre use this setting, down to the time-period and what trains you can research and eventually buy. In terms of the content you get, there are 12 campaign scenarios where you race to achieve various tasks (e.g. deliver 20 shipments of cloth to settlement X) and the ability to play these maps in scenario mode. Honestly so far it’s pretty standard stuff, nothing particularly exciting in terms of the setting, narrative, gameplay mechanics or amount of content.

In fact one of the biggest things to note about Railroad Corporation is not what it adds, but what it takes away. Unlike basically every other railway management game, in Railroad Corporation you can’t set signals or otherwise decide what routes your trains will take. Instead everything is managed by the game, on your behalf. You still decide which trains to run, where they go and what items they load or unload, but that’s about it. This makes it both very approachable, and also a tad bizarre. From my own experience, the AI is actually good at managing these train routes. Yet the omission of the ability to customise routes is definitely something that felt surreal even if I actually didn’t miss it too much. Aside from this aspect of the railway management being culled, my only other issue with something lacking was how the game managements owned businesses. As mentioned, you can buy any business in the game via an auction between yourself and all other players (including the AI competitors). The catch is while in other games you would still receive money as per usual for delivering to your own businesses, in Railroad Corporation you… don’t. So if you buy a wheat farm, you don’t have to pay for grain. On the flip-side, if you buy a farm that takes grain to produce meat, then you don’t get paid for delivering grain to a farm you own. Which is fine, but if you own all the stages of a production chain then you end up with multiple trains that are seemingly in the red. Often to staggering sums. You’ll still make a profit overall once the end product is delivered to a city, but when checking whether each train is profitable these trains really stand out for the wrong reasons. Oh and before you ask, no you can’t sort your list of trains by the type of train, profitability etc. Which is another weirdly missing feature, albeit a more minor one.

The real issue I had with the game though, is that the campaign is quite often a bit annoying. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly halfway through the campaign it goes “oopsie woopsie, we’ve reset all your research :3” so you are dumped back on the most basic of trains which is a bit of a kicker. In Railroad Corporation the various research projects are expensive and often take a lot of time, so having them reset halfway through the game is a pain. Fortunately the fact they take a lot of time isn’t an issue in reality, because so do most of the later scenarios. I would spend around 3 hours on a lot of the Act 2 missions and apparently I was about 10 hours ahead of the times on the HowLongToBeat website. This is partly due to them being a staggered series of objectives, most of which are somewhat convoluted (e.g. transport 20 high-tier products to this one place on the opposite side of the map). It’s mainly due to the AI players being a total pain in the backside to deal with. They’re not hugely difficult to overcome, but they are really annoying to deal with. Not only does the game often give them advantages in the form of better resource supplies and thus the potential for better railway connections, but they’re also exempt from various requirements. In addition they operate fairly quickly, don’t need to dabble with research and love to start auctioning off various industries as soon as they are able to. On the other hand, they generally aren’t that difficult to overcome because they are stupid. They’ll always get stuck at a certain point, and while they do grow at a constant rate they seem reluctant to share railway tracks and as such tend to avoid anywhere you’ve already expanded to.

Yet while the AI is easy to overcome in the long-run, the missions are often structured in such a way so that they’re most difficult from the very beginning. I wouldn’t say that the campaign of Railroad Corporation is particularly hard, but the Act 2 missions really stack the cards against you at the start of each one. You’ll often barely have time to complete the first objective or two, and constantly be struggling to balance your overdraft with the hard-coded requirements. Making a single rail-line can often make or break the early stages of a scenario in the later missions. Once you’ve overcome these exceedingly tight requirements though, the missions become much, much easier. To the point that you’ll always have plenty of time to start maxing out your research tree because you’re just waiting for the last objective or two to get wrapped up. It’s a weird issue that hinders the overall enjoyment of the campaign somewhat, because you’ll end up getting stuck in a mission for a few attempts due to one or two early objectives then breeze through the rest of the mission for a couple of hours. As such it can feel pretty inconsistent, and the only time events spiralled out of my control was due to the AI cheating. Well, maybe it’s more fair to say that the scenario cheated on the AI’s behalf, but it was much easier for the AI to reach a certain company valuation before me because it had a much better layout of various resources and towns. Otherwise the missions are either easy (like the first 6 in Act 1) or front-loaded in terms of challenge.

With all that being said, I still that Railroad Corporation is a decent enough game in spite of it’s wonky balancing and missing features. As stated at the top of this review, I had a fun time playing through it despite the occasional set-backs and was able to power it through it without too much trouble. The scenarios themselves provide a pretty solid introduction to the game’s mechanics, and while there isn’t much additional content once you’ve blitzed through them the game does have a bunch of DLC and even some free post-launch scenarios to work through. As for the actual gameplay itself, Railroad Corporation is fairly competent and handles well (albeit with some significant slowdown during track-laying) while still offering some depth. Between the ability to build new businesses, upgrade stations, research new trains and hire staff there’s plenty to do to optimise your company. The basics are all there and work fine, while the additional tweaking and twiddling does let you gain an edge over the AI.

As for the rest of the package, well it’s fine. You’ve got some period appropriate music that’s nice enough even if I felt like the OST is a bit too limited for it’s own good. While the music isn’t bad, most scenarios take a few hours and as such the music tends to loop a bit much. As for the visuals, I think they’re pleasant to look at although you can’t zoom in too much unlike some other games in the genre. Everything looks pretty good and as mentioned outside of track-laying the game performs well on high settings, at least on my current laptop (with a Nvidia 4060 and 12th gen intel i7 12700). There’s therefore not that much to complain about, aside from grousing over one or two missing features and the weird difficulty curve that this game has. Otherwise it’s a good looking, well playing and fairly optimised game albeit nothing particularly special.

In summary then, Railroad Corporation is a perfectly acceptable game in the railway tycoon sub-genre. Nothing about it really stands out as being great, but it doesn’t really have any significant negatives either. Sure there are a few things I could quibble about like occasional performance dips, the way that the game autosaves over it’s last autosave when you’ve loaded it, some wonky balance and a fairly bland setting but there’s nothing major to whine about. It’s just a decent little railroad game, that will take you around 25ish hours to get through. There’s enough content to justify the price, even if it’s hard to recommend this game over it’s competition. After all, this is a space with some stand out games like the Railroad Tycoon series and even for my money Sid Meier’s Railroads. As such I’d say that if you’ve played the rest, then you’ll probably enjoy this one. For everyone else, I wouldn’t recommend Railroad Corporation as your starting point. Not because it’s bad, but just because it’s not the best either.

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Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is not an RTS for the faint of heart. Not because it’s overly complicated or difficult to play, but more due to the fact that this is an extensive package. You see, not only are you getting all of the content from the original game and it’s expansion pack, but you’re also getting additional content. As a result, getting through all the campaign scenarios took me around 50 hours. Which is quite a task, especially for more casual RTS players. On the other hand, those willing to embrace this game and deal with it’s drawbacks (such as a piddingly small max population) will have a good time. You’ve got a decent range of skirmish maps, plenty of campaign scenarios and of course a solid pool of civilizations to play as. Unlike it’s sequel, I’d argue that Age of Empires: Definitive Edition does a better job of making each civilization feel unique to play. This is because once you start hitting the higher tiers of units, buildings and upgrades you’ll notice there are a lot of distinguishing factors between these civilizations. If you want to play as the Romans for example, enjoy having weak archers, no fire ships, lame towers and so-so cavalry. Want to play as the Carthaginians? Well your standard sword units are hopeless and so are your siege units. You don’t get to have everything as any civilization, and I think this is a good thing.

Why do I think this? Well not only does it make each faction feel different and thus encourage strategy, but it also helps with the campaign scenarios. For me this is the meat of the game, and while a lot of missions can be a bit of a grind they are generally pretty fun and varied. As mentioned above, one nice aspect of Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is the fact that you get access to the missions from the demos. These were hitherto semi-lost, as you’d need to seek out and get those demos running on more modern machines. Not only that, but these missions were also a bit of a mess sometimes and now they have been brought up to snuff. Ultimately there are over 60 campaign missions to play through, and they offer a decent level of challenge and do a good job of teaching you how to play the game properly. That’s not to say they’re all great, but the overall experience is pretty fun and has a nice difficulty curve to it.

As you’ll have noticed from the pictures, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is a pretty great visual upgrade over the base game. It’s not only the visuals that have been upgraded though, as there are myriad tweaks and changes under the hood to make everything more intuitive. You’ve got more hotkeys, the ability to automatically reseed farms, notifications when you can move to the next Age (essentially moving up to the next tier of the tech-tree), improvements to pathfinding, balancing tweaks, the ability to see technology trees while playing and a lot more. As a consequence, the Definitive Edition not only looks better – but more importantly it plays better too. Of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one or two things that frustrated me to no end during my time with what I otherwise consider to be a stellar game.

The first issue I have, and one that everyone will encounter, is that the enemy AI is an odd beast. Hopeless at macro-level decisions such as what to build or where to attack, but utterly insufferable at the micro-level. Enemy archers and siege units do a fantastic job of dodging shots and otherwise making a pain of themselves, with endless little hit-and-run actions. If you try to snipe an AI villager or fishing ship, they will drag it out and do their best to avoid every shot or hit. In a game where villagers can quickly become some of the fastest units, this does make things a bit tedious when you are trying to focus on something. As the AI is a literal machine, they can send a dumb little diversionary attack, while using a priest to convert a unit, while queuing up more units, sending villagers to repair damaged buildings and more all at the same time. You on the other hand are a feeble assortment of flesh and bone, and will find the AI an irritating opponent at times. Fortunately it’s never too much of a struggle to outlast the AI, but my goodness can the near endless “you are under attack” notification sound become a source of frustration. The second big issue, which I think all players will also encounter is that improved path-finding is still deeply flawed. It’s no doubt better, but it’s still annoying to see your units clump up and get in each others way near constantly.

On the subject of annoyances, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition has a few that to it’s credit are authentic. You can’t build gates in walls, for example. Similarly fishing boats will gobble up all the fish at one point and then need to be explicitly told to go slightly further afield (or asea?) to get more. Generally speaking this a pretty faithful reproduction of the base game, with it’s strengths and some of it’s flaws being carried over. Want to build a big army in your campaign battle? Too bad, here’s 50 population which gets you 50 units split between economy, naval and ground forces (further split between infantry, archers, cavalry and siege units). I’m not mad about these decisions because after all, it’s a remaster and they were part of the base game. I just mention them because I imagine most people reading this (if anyone ever does) will be more familiar with Age of Empires 2/3/4. Which all let you build gates, have smarter villagers and have bigger armies.

And at this point I’ve kind of run out of things to say. I suppose I should quickly mention that the soundtrack is great and that the game is very fairly priced. Not only that, but it frequently goes on sale for around £3.74 or $4.99 yankee bucks and for that price it’s an easy recommendation from me. Not only does this game generally play great, but it has tons of content and a nice presentation. For existing fans of the series, this is either a faithful reproduction or the best introduction to where this series started. For RTS noobs, this is an easy to pickup and play game, although it doesn’t quite have the same appeal as some of it’s successors. Ultimately I would recommend this game to anyone, although I would recommend Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition first. If you enjoyed that game, then give this one a shot too. You might just be surprised how well it holds up. Just don’t let the AI’s micro GOD skills get you down.

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Quick note: This game runs like ass on Windows 11, not only will you need to manually tweak the launch options to enable wide-screen resolutions, but it also crashes a lot if you Alt-tab. Multi-monitor setups are going to have a rough time of it, so I’d suggest saving often and disabling any extra screens if you want to play online.

Command & Conquer: Generals is the off-shoot of the venerable C&C series after Westwood was left for dead by EA and consequentially a scattered band of survivors were merged with another studio to make a new entry in the series. As such the gameplay is both familiar and yet new, with the same base-building mechanics but a larger focus on abilities. Of course Red Alert 2 had unit abilities, at least for some units but generally these weren’t a big deal. In Generals by contrast, almost every unit gets a couple of abilities or bespoke upgrades that can have a big impact on how they’re used. Whether it be GLA rebels gaining the ability to turn invisible by standing still, or US rangers having the ability to clear out occupied buildings with ease via the flash-bang ability. Then there are the purchasable drones for US armoured units, the ability for GLA units to acquire supplies from defeated enemies (or upgrades for certain units) and a whole bunch of other stuff. Alongside these unit abilities are a bunch of new call-in abilities, unlocked via the introduction of quasi-skill trees. The way it works is simple, each faction has a range of specific unlocks such as gaining access to certain units or commander powers. These can include calling in an artillery strike, spawning friendly units, defensive AoE healing powers or having new units of a certain type spawn in at veterancy rank 1. You won’t be unlock all of them, and they don’t carry over between games. The system is fairly intuitive, you get XP for defeating enemy units and after enough carnage has been caused you’ll level up. Once you’ve levelled, up you can choose from a variety of powers that are structured in a tier-list. This encourages you to purchase these unlocks as soon as they’re available, but you can just save them up for the “stronger” abilities. From my own personal experience, trying to get all of the free damage call-ins like bombing runs and so on is generally the best way to do it. Because you get infinitely respawning free damage, and while there is a cool-down it generally pays off. Especially for the later abilities like the fuel bomb and the EMP blast, which can either wreck an enemy base or army respectively. Outside of these changes, the game is pretty much classic C&C. You’ve got a handful of unit types, they all basically hard counter various other unit types and the tone is pretty silly. Arguably the tone in C&C Generals is a bit more po-faced, but honestly everyone is at best a stereotype in this game. One last thing to mention, is that resources are clustered in specific spots, and don’t respawn over time.

As mentioned, while there are tweaks and changes Command & Conquer: Generals is still fundamentally a classic C&C style RTS at it’s core. Sure the call-ins are a tad overpowered and resources run out scarily quickly, but everything else is par for the course. You’ve got 3 asymmetrical factions, some basic base building that never gets too intensive, a campaign for each faction that’s both fun and yet slightly short alongside a ton of skirmish maps. I guess you could argue that having base building units that can build anywhere, instead of MCVs that can deploy anywhere is a big change. Personally I don’t consider it particularly different, as all it does is make it easier to setup resource gathering stations around the map. As for the combat, while there are a lot more unit abilities going around each unit type is pretty familiar. You’ve got standard infantry that can get run over, anti-tank infantry that shred tanks, tanks which are a bit hopeless against infantry, air units that are great against everything that can’t shoot back and then some artillery units. There are a couple of unique cases like the fully upgraded Chinese overlord tank (OP against basically everything) and the GLA terrorists and bomb trucks which can disguise themselves but really there isn’t anything radically new here. Instead the charm of Command and Conquer: Generals is that everything is just done pretty well. The three factions: The United States of America, China and the Global Liberation Army (GLA) are all fun to play and do feel quite different. The USA has strong tanks and the best air-force but can be a resource-sink and requires decent micro, while a lot of Chinese units get bonuses by being mobbed together and thrown into the fray. Then you’ve got the GLA who are fairly unique and get a bunch of mechanics like stealth infantry and bombs, tunnel networks, claiming supplies from fallen foes and the like but who don’t get any air units and have relatively weak tanks.

Fortunately each faction is fairly simple to understand and use effectively, with the campaigns basically serving as a series of tutorials. There are one or two missions in each which give you the full arsenal and the chance to use it, but most missions are focused on a handful of available units and you’re just trying to make the best use of them. Each of these campaigns follows the same broad structure and while you do occasionally get to see missions from different perspectives, they’re too short to have much of an impact. For context clearing through all 3 campaigns took me around 7 hours, factoring in half a dozen crashes to the desktop (in a game with no autosaving). The campaigns are fun, but more experienced players are encouraged to try them on Hard or even Brutal as otherwise they are very short and not particularly challenging. Then once those campaigns have been cleared up, there isn’t much left to do but play through the skirmish mode. The map variety is decent and there are just over 20 maps to play, but as mentioned earlier the amount of resources on each map depletes surprisingly quickly and the AI can often be relied upon to squander the funding available to it. Each faction can construct building which let it gain more income over time, or in the case of the Chinese a unit that can gain income over time. Trust me when I say that you’ll either want to do this, or rush the enemy ASAP. You don’t have much time at the apex of the tech tree before resources become a distant memory.

Speaking of the AI, it’s not great in many situations and will reliably trickle through forces in multiple attack waves instead of trying to aim for a killing blow. It’s not the end of the world, but this is a game where the real challenge is in the multiplayer mode. Fortunately there has been an active modding community which has produced swathes of maps and conversions, although at that point you may as well just grab the expansion pack. The good news is that all stores still selling a digital copy of the game now bundle in Zero Hour, although you do also get basically every other C&C game included as well (even C&C4). As for other criticisms of the game, I do have a few. Again the campaigns are really short which is a shame as they only really let you get a feel for each faction towards of the tail-end of their missions. Furthermore I’ll also re-iterate that this game loves to crash to modern operating systems, a problem that the unofficial community version didn’t have. Thanks EA! In terms of problems I haven’t mentioned yet, there are a couple of smaller ones. Unit pathfinding straight up sucks and controlling large blobs of units can be a pain, which is a problem because playing as China explicitly encourages this. The early 3D graphics can be off-putting to some, but I’ve personally never had a big issue with them because that was the style at the time. Finally there are some weird aspects of the UI, that were fixed up in Zero Hour and later games in the series but weren’t quite resolved in the base game. Super weapons need to be activated from their building and don’t appear on the side bar and neither do other building call-ins. Of course the AI doesn’t have an issue with this, but for human players it can be a bit counter-intuitive to actually use the full breadth of abilities that are available to them.

Yet in spite of these niggles, I have no problem recommending Command & Conquer: Generals to pretty much anyone. It has a great soundtrack, good voice-acting, multiple factions that feel different, fun campaigns (even if they’re short), solid combat and plenty of skirmish maps. The expansion pack definitely brings everything to the next level, but the base game is still enjoyable. Even if the new hero units do feel a bit useless compared to the sheer base destroying insanity of Tanya (for example). As such I’ll end my short review by saying Command & Conquer: Generals is a fun game and if you haven’t played it, then you should consider grabbing it on Steam or Origin.

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Call to Arms is one of those games I was pretty excited about, until I made the fateful decision to actually play the damn thing. Which isn’t to say it’s a bad game, because it’s not, but it languished in my Steam library for years before I decided to finally give it another go and try to figure out what made me drop it in the first place. Honestly I’m not sure what caused me to get butthurt the last time, although I think I played it during early access and as such there were only 5 campaign missions which may have been entirely different from the ones in the base game. After playing through the campaign I can say that it’s alright, the mission structure will be incredibly familiar to anyone who’s played a Men of War game (any of them, even Faces of War the unofficial member!) because they all fit into a handful of standard roles. You’ve got two stealth missions, where you have barely any guys and have to crawl around the map dodging patrols until you can start shredding fools. Then you’ve got the defence missions where you hold a position against waves of baddies, and a couple of standard attack the enemy piece-by-piece missions where they keep adding new objectives while you have not quite enough men or material left. Finally there’s a proper assault mission which is saved for last, in which you not only attack various objectives but also get to call in reinforcements. The main twist in this campaign is a mission where you can only use Direct Control over a tank, and you drive around with some buddies shredding the defenders of an airfield before shooting down some jets and taking piece in a steadfast defence against waves of enemy armour. Most of these missions are pretty fun, although some of them (such as the 3rd mission) are much, much, much easier if you utilise direct control to a level I’ve never seen before.

Those not familiar with the Men of War series will no doubt be asking WTF is Direct Control? Well it’s when you assume direct control of a unit in the game, with the option of controlling them in 1st or 3rd person. You can control any unit at any time and the only catch is that while you’re laughing it up as a tank, you can’t be directing the rest of your forces. This feature has also been in previous games in the series, but the first person view and controls are entirely new to my knowledge. It’s a fun little gimmick and directly controlling an Abrams tank is pretty fun, I’m not going to lie while the soldier controls do let relieve your Rambo 3 fantasies on those nasty Global Revolutionary Movement baddies. One other caveat with this feature is that you have to bind both all of your 1st person controls, and all of your RTS controls on the same keyboard and mouse which means that the direct control erm controls are frankly a bit weird. Crouch is ALT, grenade is Mouse button 4 and so on. To make things even trickier, you still have to worry about your limited inventory because in Call to Arms like in Men of War every unit has their own inventory and consequentially their own amount of ammo. Unfortunately the other thing making direct control slightly tricky is the fact that it seems kind of… bugged? I don’t know why, but quite often when using an automatic weapon it would just keep shooting continuously for a while of it’s own volition. Then sometimes it wouldn’t fire for ages, again for some reason that I can’t quite figure out. Ultimately it’s a cool feature, that gets a lot of emphasis in the campaign but does lack a bit of polish. It’s also kinda over powered, because you can absolutely start shredding the enemy while in first person to the point that you’ll often find yourself racking up huge body counts with each soldier.

In terms of other changes to the game, Call to Arms sadly falls short. You do get two new factions in a contemporary setting, but the “bad guys” the Global Revolutionary Movement are pretty boring and so-so as they’re just a generic middle eastern “rebel” movement. You’re not getting something like the Global Liberation Army from C&C Generals which was oozing flavour and fun, but instead you’re getting the generic baddies from a war on terror game. So they’ve got some soviet-era tanks, a bunch of generic middle eastern dudes and nothing in the way of excitement. Then you’ve got the US Army, who are fine but have a pretty limited roster as they only really get the Abrams, Bradley, Striker and Humvee vehicles alongside a couple of types of infantry grunts. Compared to Men of War Assault Squad which let you play as (WW2) Germany, Russia, America, the British Commonwealth and Imperial Japan each of which had as many, if not more units each it’s a bit disappointing. You’d be forgiven for thinking “oh well this is the new baseline just like Men of War only had Russia and Germany”, but you can jog on because they’ve used Call to Arms as a gateway to introduce a new WW2 subgame (Gates to Hell) which has reintroduced all the WW2 factions (except Japan I think). So it’s kind of a small game, considering that you get only one campaign unless you upgrade to the Deluxe edition for an extra 750 Great British pennies or roughly $10 with only 10 campaign missions in the base game. Then it’s just skirmish and multiplayer maps against other players, so there isn’t too much to run with here.

As for the rest of the game, it’s really just a shinier version of Men of War as mentioned already. This means that you get an OK/10 soundtrack that you won’t listen to outside of the game but is fine enough and fits the mood. That means that the voice acting is bad, although it’s slightly better and no longer has laughably direct translations from Russian (so no more Americans shouting “FOR THE MOTHERLAND” and “HOORAY” when they get into combat). That means that you’ve got the armour penetration system with different shots and angles having a huge impact, which is still great although I must confess that it feels like battle tanks are well… tankier than they used to be. Finally it means that individual squads are alright at looking after themselves and will use grenades and medkits without too much prompting, although there is one big change that kind of got on my tits. You see in the other Men of War games, infantry had Anti-Tank grenades which meant that they could deal with unexpected enemy armour reinforcements without much trouble. Of course they’d quickly run out, but hey a decent amount of enemies had them too so you could just scavenge for them when there was a quiet moment. In Call to Arms these have been removed entirely, which doesn’t impact the enemy much because they get lots of Anti Tank rifles such as RPG’s mixed in with their squads. You don’t though, and the few AT missiles you do get tend to be wasted nearly instantly by your squad members as soon as they spot an enemy technical. You know, those jeeps with machine guns on them which the game LOVES to throw your way CONSTANTLY and which are even annoying to deal with in Direct Control mode because the driver will magically teleport to the gunners seat and back to the drivers seat endlessly making sniping them a total pain in the arse. The lack of AT grenades also means that your infantry, especially in the earlier missions will be totally bloody useless against any enemy tank and your own tank will be outnumbered 10-to-1 while dealing with swarms of enemy infantry with RPGs. It’s a weird downgrade and kind of annoying to be honest. Aside from this weird decision, combat is pretty much identical although there is a noticeable shortage of anti-tank cannons this time around.

And that’s about it really. There’s some new in-game monetisation stuff going on but honestly I can’t even pretend to care about it so make of it what you will. There was also some sort of controversy about the Season Pass not including the WW2 stuff, but again I don’t care because what sort of chump buys content that’s not out yet? Well me because I bought it during Early Access for a fiver but that’s totally different (honest). Aside from those two changes that I am frankly oblivious to, there’s not anything else to discuss. Call to Arms is Men of War but prettier and featuring ‘Murica against the generic middle eastern bad guys. Direct Control is a lot better, everything else is slightly better but there’s also a lot less content to go around. Make of it what you will. For existing Men of War fans it’s a fun little quasi-sequel, for casual RTS fans who haven’t played a Men of War game I can give it a modest recommendation whilst on sale and for everyone else I wouldn’t worry about it too much. It’s a perfectly fine and modest RTT experience with some fun missions, not a huge amount of content but you can always play it in Skirmish or MP or buy the DLC that doesn’t that much these days. Therefore I’m giving Call to Arms a singular thumbs up. Huzzah!

The post Call to Arms appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.

Quick Note – Snapshot has two technical issues that you might want to be aware of ahead of time. Firstly the CHEEVOS do not stack, so if you want all of the completion achievements then you’ll need to either deal with downloading saves from the internet or only do the bare minimum before gradually re-watching the ending for each of the completion milestones. Also if you’re playing the game on PC and have a zoom level above 100%, then this will screw with the game and you’ll need to reset your display settings to have zoom at 100%.

Oh Snapshot, you little scamp thinking you could cower away behind all those games I didn’t get in a bundle over a decade ago. Thinking you could avoid the CRITICAL GAZE of my all mighty blog and it’s dedicated following of uhm… 5 people who don’t even read most of these “reviews”? Well you were wrong buddy, because after vaguely remembering a good friend’s recommendation I’ve finally decided to track you down and figure out why the hell he thought you were a good game. Which sounds harsh but honestly, while I enjoyed the first hour or so of the game I spent most of my 6 hours wondering why everyone seemed to be leaving nice reviews. After all, a mere 2% of players actually bothered finishing this game even though someone in a rush could easily bang it out in a couple of hours. Like any good flatterer, I’ll start with a positive and note that I really liked the central concept of the game which is a puzzle platformer where you can snapshot (GEDDIT???) various items within a stage to then place again somewhere else. This means that finding and getting items constitutes much of the level design, with many items often being blocked by “no photography” zones that prevent you from snapping a quick pic until you’ve done something – generally involving hitting a switch or putting a box on something. These little puzzles are never too hard, but most of the time offer a modest little teaser of challenge and for those who aren’t satisfied, each stage has both a bonus “objective” of sorts to snap a pic of, plus there are time trials for every stage which are genuinely pretty tough.

With all that being said, the fact that the puzzles are kinda easy is a tough sell for a game that bills itself as a puzzle game. After all, if you bought a book of crosswords or Sudoku puzzles and found out that they were all a piece of piss you’d probably feel smug for a couple minutes and then be a tad disappointed. While Snapshot has a couple of puzzles me and my COLOSSAL intellect found a bit challenging (they took MINUTES to solve I tell you), most are pretty basic to be honest. The game’s real challenge is instead not the puzzle part of this puzzle platformer, but the platformer part due to a combination of finicky controls with weird momentum mechanics and how annoying it can be to need to take a picture of something at the perfect moment for it to “solve” a puzzle. To give examples of both, our plucky protagonist can’t just step down from a ledge without flinging himself without gusto, meaning you need to jump for these small little gaps and frankly the jump momentum is also kinda screwed up especially once you start needing to bounce off various objects. As for the snapshotting, the principle is sound but sometimes (i.e. more often than you’d like) you’ll need to do something like place an object while you’re doing a jump so that you can bounce off it or not drown in lava like an absolute loser. Unfortunately this is harder than it sounds because your lovely little camera not only needs to capture pictures exactly, but remembers where things were within the boundaries of the photo, which will then occasionally cause it to refuse to place an object where you actually bloody wanted it. To add insult to injury, you can rotate objects but it controls like absolute arse and you may as well shove a tablet stylus up your bunghole and control it that way for how intuitive it feels. This becomes especially apparent when you need to rotate the objects your deploying, for them to actually be useful. Sometimes you need to remember the momentum of a falling object, so you can rotate it at an angle to use it to shoot upwards so that you can then knock something over. A task which should be easy but due to your pedantic camera rushing to let you place objects, and the pain in the butt rotation controls this can quickly become surprisingly annoying. When playing Snapshot I frequently knew the solution to a puzzle, but would still spend minutes trying to persuade the controls to let me just solve the damn thing and move on with my life.

As mentioned earlier, there is also an additional “objective” within each stage – namely to take a photo of a random object. These are fun to hunt for and generally require either a bit of exploration, but a bit of extra puzzle solving. There are two catches with them however. Firstly you need to hang on to that photo(!), so now you can only have 2 usable photos for capturing and placing objects at a time as opposed to the normal 3. Secondly the game doesn’t believe in checkpoints, I can only assume because the Berlin Wall had checkpoints and nothing related to that odious symbol of Stalinist tyranny can EVER be allowed to infest fun little indie games. As a consequence I quite often found myself 4 minutes into a level, after having spent most of those minutes pissing around persuading to do what I wanted, only to see the optional bonus objective area and scoff. No thanks buddy. I’m not braving insta-death spike walls for the off chance that I can get a picture of a dohickey that doesn’t do anything, in a game where the completion achievements are totally broken anyway. Other than these little bonus objectives, the game doesn’t really have any content outside of the stages of which there are 3 per level, with 9 levels per world and 4 worlds for a total of 108 stages. Which sounds good but honestly they could’ve culled the bottom third and been better off for it, fortunately you can skip around 4 levels (so 12 stages) per world without any consequences. With that being said, you must ALWAYS do the first level with it’s 3 stages otherwise you will be verboten from playing any of the others in that world and thus BANNED from getting the ending.

So why do I think that they could’ve just had less stages and ended up with a better game? Well the simple reason is that most levels follow the same pattern: Introduce gimmick in very short stage 1, implement gimmick in a fun way for stage 2, implement draw out level for stage 3 to prove MASTERY. Which in and of itself is fine, but when the gimmick sucks it means you just get fed up around the end of stage 2 because your character is just ever so slightly annoying to control and the gimmick isn’t fun and now you’ve slipped on some stupid jump so you have to do it all again and half the level is waiting for shit to happen and you already figured out the goddamn solution 5 minutes ago and ugh. My personal “favourite” examples would be any level from World 4 involving the magnetic push/pull because it’s imprecise as fuck and annoying because those levels are riddled with insta-kill spikes, in stages where the gimmick is that you have magnets messing with your momentum. They’re not all BAD but as a gimmick it just kinda sucks. Same with the cloud focused stages, which were fun-ish at first but man once you manage to fall between them it just feels like a slap in the face because it looks like there’s no gap there and then WHOOPS do it all go again lmao. Then sometimes you get a gimmick like the big bombs you can jump off that are just fun and kinda silly but before you know it, you’ve done that level and there are no more big bombs to play with, because we’re onto another shit gimmick at breathtaking speed. My point basically is that it feels the devs came up with like 80 ideas for some puzzles and threw them all in the game, instead of sticking with the best dozen or so. There are meditating monkeys that cause a platform to move between them for example and those levels were actually really fun, because you had to account for obstacles and the platform timing while being able to move those amiable apes around. Then they stopped being in the game 20 minutes later so we could have a bunch of shitty ass magnet levels. To each their own but this is the indie puzzle equivalent of sticking the whole pot of pasta at the wall to see what sticks.

Yet in spite of finding a lot of levels to just blow chunks, I’m not going to be too mean to an indie game that was very cheap like 10 years ago and honestly was done by people who just wanted to make a fun game. I think the fact that they have a thoroughly paltry 2% finish rate is indictment enough, but I don’t Snapshot. I don’t get who is earnestly recommending it either, considering that it’s a real hit or miss smorgasbord of an experience that has been forgotten by the gaming industry but you know, you could do much worse than Snapshot honestly. At least the graphics are nice, the game has a cutesy air and a very minimal plot that’s still enough to keep you semi-interested in carrying on. The levels are sometimes bad, sometimes good, sometimes bland but overall there’s enough good stages that it’s worth a quick bash for the curious. As for the soundtrack it’s just pretty good, so thumbs up to the music man. I wouldn’t listen to it outside of the game and it’s not OUTSTANDING or anything, but it’s pretty fitting and pleasant enough. As for the amount of content, well you get over a hundred stages which often have bonus objectives and the time trials are seriously difficult so if you wanted to be an obsessive, this game is actually damn good value for money. For the more casual player, you’ll just get bored before finishing it to be totally honest. You really have to be either PRO-INDIE GAMES YEAH INDIE DEVS RULE SCREW THE MAINSTREAM MANNNNNN or just love puzzle platformers to really care about this one. Yet like I said, I don’t hate and just wish they’d been more prudent about which levels they actually bothered to release. Hell they could’ve just said “here are the main stages, and here are the bonus stages” or something and it would’ve been fine. Sometimes less is more, like if I’d eaten less pies I’d probably be more attractive.

In conclusion then, Snapshot is a game I don’t really recommend despite not hating it and enjoying some of the levels. Unfortunately it’s just kind of a drag for many stages, and while the visuals, soundtrack and the like are charming they’re not enough to push me through a game with some annoying controls. Like WHY does my freaking camera cursor MOVE WITH ME (so now I can’t take a picture of the bounce jump I’ll need again once I land) and why does this then IMPACT MY MOMENTUM FOR JUMPS who the fuck thought that was a good idea???? In all seriousness though Snapshot is an OK/10 puzzle game from a bygone era when indie games were still kinda new and exciting and as a consequence I can forgive the bad levels in favour of the good ones. The developers had to put into making this game a reality because guess what, it’s not yet another goddamn UE5/Unity game. Which means I gave it the benefit of the doubt, played through it til the end with 51% overall completion and… honestly I don’t know if it was worth it. Therefore Snapshot does not get a recommendation, but I’m not gonna give it any particular hatred either. It’s just an OK game. No more, no less, if you got it in a bundle maybe take a look, otherwise meh don’t worry about it.

The post Snapshot appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.

Quick Note – This is more of a “quick look” than a full review as I’ve only played through 2 of the 4 faction storylines. They were both very similar and it seems like all of the factions play fairly similarly, but worth noting in case I’ve overlooked something.

Warhammer 40,000: Gladius is one of those games I picked up for $1 years ago, mainly due to the IP and have finally gotten around to giving a proper go this week on the advice of a friend. I’ll admit that I was slightly skeptical, as the last game in this vein I’d tried was the underwhelming if bearable W40K: Sanctus Reach, a flawed and low budget TBS game that is OK/10 but really lacking in polish and variety. As such I fully expected this to be another middling W40K, of which there are many and to my shame of which I also have bought many. Gladius on the other hand is good-ish, it’s no Dawn of War or Space Marine but it’s actually a decent game bearing the W40K name, instead of a boring game being propped by it’s source material. In this case practice has definitely made perfect, as Slitherine have made a couple of games using Games Workshop’s intellectual property at this point and they do seem to be continually improving, not just in game design but also in polish. As for the game itself, it’s a classic 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) albeit in a simplified form as there is no diplomacy, and somewhat limited resource management. For those not in the know, 4X games are basically a type of turn based strategy game with more of a focus on building an empire and which generally utilise hexagonal grid maps.

As for the gameplay, it’s generally fine if nothing majestically special. You’ve got four factions to choose from in the base game, each with a handful of gimmicks but that generally play fairly similar and have broadly similar units. You can choose the Imperial Guard (no not the aStRa MiLiTaRuM), Space Marines, Orks or Necrons (because this game came out during the OMGOMGOMGOMG NECRONS ARE SO COOL phase that Games Workshop went through after the race got rebooted into Tomb Kings in SPACE). The Space Marines are to the surprise of no one, the babby introductory race and can only have one city making management a doddle, because they also only have to worry about one resource in the form of requisition. In exchange for this handicap, they can deploy mini-forts every 10 turns and most of their units have decent amounts of armour and firepower to make them able to withstand the swarms of other factions which have multiple cities. Then you’ve got the Orks who gain influence from attacking and deal more damage when you’ve got a lot of that resource but are weaker when you’re low on it, plus they have some very powerful late game units and are pretty good in melee combat while boasting decent regeneration abilities. The Imperial Guard are about what you’d expect, mainly lots of units and cities that are expendable but will have low morale if they take too many losses. On the plus side they’ve got decently strong fortifications and some of the longest range artillery in the game. Finally you’ve got the Necrons who can only build cities on certain tiles, but who also can spend resources to rush unit production with those units being fairly powerful and having decent regeneration abilities.

And each of these factions have broadly similar strategies, unless you go for their bespoke campaign quest-lines. You see every game of Gladius is the same, in that it’s either a skirmish game against bots or a multiplayer game against other people and/or bots. As a consequence of the total lack of diplomacy and the lack of customised single player maps, there isn’t a huge amount of variety between games. Especially as each faction has broadly similar units, Tactical Marines will be better than Guardsmen as an example, but they function the same and each unit has an equivalent across factions with some factions exceeding in certain areas. This means that no matter which faction you play, a lot of the units are similar and indeed most aspects of the game are just the same. Tech works the same for all factions. Every faction except for the Space Marines have the same resources to manage (ok Necrons don’t need to eat food but still), every faction has the same XP system, every faction has to deal with the same aggressive native fauna and each faction has the same outpost bonus resource system. As such the game is pretty approachable and not exceedingly difficult to understand, especially as each quest-line pushes the player through the most obvious steps of how to proceed. Then there’s a tutorial system on top of this, although I must confess it’s a bit crap. Basically every-time you interact with something for the first, a pop-up tutorial message appears. Which is great, except for the first two turns where you keep clicking on new things like a unit, or a city, or an enemy, or a resource, or the end turn button and so it dumps a bunch of information on you at a rate that is just unnecessary.

Now I’ve mentioned the quest-lines above which are a good idea, however much like the tutorial pop-ups in the implementation is a bit janky. You see, the way it works is that you’re given objectives to complete such as “go to these 3 spots with a hero” or “build these 3 buildings” which is fine. The problem is that W40K: Gladius loves to spawn enemies that interfere with those goals as soon as you receive the complete the previous mission, which means that players who try to go through the quest-line quickly will end up getting their cunts kicked in. Much like the campaign in Supreme Commander, it’s often better to just leave objectives nearly completed until you’ve been able to build up your armies and defences, with the final quest missions always involving a sudden explosion of enemies bum-rushing you which can be annoying to deal with. While it does make for a great show-piece battle, it is often overwhelming and if your troops are out of position due to dealing with enemy AI factions or just unlucky with where Gladius chooses to start spawning things, then it can be very tedious to deal with. As for story elements they’re pretty light on the ground and the game doesn’t have any voice acting or a memorable soundtrack. Visually it’s perfectly fine and the units and buildings do “sprout” quips in text form above them when they’re in view which is a nice touch, but it still feels like this a game with a modest budget which I’m sure it was.

And that’s about it for W40K: Gladius, because that’s really all there is to the game if you don’t pay extra for the DLC packs. Which isn’t necessarily a slight on the game’s honour, as I found it to be an enjoyable if basic 4X strategy experience. You don’t really have to worry about grand AI alliances, extensive resource management, convoluted tech trees or bonus extraneous game features. You just build units, build cities, upgrade the cities, gradually research better units and try not to get overwhelmed by either the AI or the newly spawned quest enemies (should you go for the quest-line). Nothing about the game is particularly high quality, but the combat is fun enough and if you go for the four faction quest-lines it provides a decent value for money. As such W40K: Gladius is a game I don’t regret playing and would kind of recommend, but you know it’s just fine. Nothing to kick yourself for missing, but worth a look for fans of the IP or who are looking for an approachable 4X / TBS game.

The post Warhammer 40,000: Gladius appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.

Quick Note: Want more Peggle? Get Peggle Extreme from Steam for free.

At the time of writing I’m drunk on Christmas Joy and so haven’t been able to play anything that requires extended periods of isolation (due to the commitments of having family and friends) or particularly complex systems as I’ve either been bloated on food or just plain drunk. In spite of this handicap I’m still consistent in my desire to produce 1 review per week, come what may, and so I’ve taken a look at the Peggle series which I picked up during the Christmas Steam sale for a whole 124 great British pennies. Having basically forgotten about the games since they were relevant wayyy back in 2007ish I’d also forgotten just how fun it is. For the uninitiated, the Peggle games feature a (largely) stationery board is filled with a mix of Orange, Blue and Green “pegs” or dots which you shoot a limited number of balls at from the top of the screen. The main challenge is that you never have enough balls to easily hit the Orange pegs one by one, so successfully gaining extra balls and aiming shots so that you can hit a bunch with a single shot is the aim of the game. To add further complexity there are multiple Peggle “masters” that each give you a special ability when you hit one of the rare green pegs, alongside a purple peg that is randomly selected from the remaining blue pegs on each turn before you take each shot and which gives you a considerably higher amount of points for hitting it.

And generally you’ll want to hit it, while not explicitly aiming for it as gaining 25,000 points from a single shot is one of the sure-fire ways of getting an extra ball in your roster. Fortunately as you hit orange pegs you’ll fill up that bar on the right and thus increase your score multiplier for each peg hit. There are some other mechanics in play such as the fact that you can get multiple balls from one shot, albeit with the required score scaling upwards (so initially 25,000 then 75,000 and so on), the fact that stages might have moving hazards or teleportation “bubbles” that move the ball elsewhere and even stages where the pegs themselves move around. As mentioned above there are around 10 Peggle Masters across the games, each with their own ability and while you’re initially “stuck” with one of them for 5 levels, you’re able to select the one you want for the last 5 and then all of the myriad challenge maps. You’d think this would mean that the first 50 or so levels of each game are essentially a tutorial, but honestly some of the latter stages can be a challenge so it’s more of a gentle campaign curve than anything.

In terms of differences between the games, there aren’t many which is why I’ve bundled them all into a singular review. Peggle Deluxe is the base game with 9 masters, 55 “normal” stages and a further 75 challenge stages that are unlocked once you’ve cleared the normal ones. Peggle Nights is a stand-alone expansion, offering a further 55 stages with one extra master and then a batch of 75 more challenge stages. Finally Peggle Extreme is a freebie quasi-demo made in collaboration between PopCap and Valve, with 10 normal stages and then a further 5 challenge stages. Extreme features (for want of a better word) various Valve characters and sound effects, but is otherwise just an extra batch of content for free on Steam. Every game features a “Duel” mode where you can play against other players, albeit on your own stages taking a turn at a time to compete for the higher score. This duel mode is also used on occasion for the challenge maps where you duel an AI to try and beat their score. That’s about it for the series depth, as the challenge really is trying to figure out how to control the ball’s mechanics as you aim to shoot as many pegs as possible across each stage. There are tricks you can perform to increase your score such as sliding your ball across a large amount of blocks, pinging your ball from a non-blue peg to another non-blue peg across a large distance and so on but these don’t impact your ability to gain extra free balls.

Before wrapping everything up I’d just like to take a quick moment to praise the game’s soundtrack (which features Ode to Joy and a handful of original background tracks) alongside it’s charming and simple art-style. Everything is inoculated with a good sense of fun and the game is challenging enough you can’t blitz through it without thinking, but it’s also not so challenging that you’ll get particularly stuck or frustrated. Well, some of the challenge maps not-withstanding but the clue is in the name! The master abilities are also nicely implemented, ensuring that each player will have their own favourite (mine is Master Hu, an owl with the ability to tweak your shot to make it 200% more Zen and get a bunch of extra pegs) while the master’s themselves are sweet enough that this can still be a kid’s game. It’s altogether a great example of a Casual game, as while the budget was small the focus to detail is still there and it can run on basically any system without ever feeling short of content or effort.

So in conclusion then, the Peggle games are great fun and perfect for lazy holiday seasons or as a gift for more casual gamers. The sort of game that like Tetris or Mario Kart, can basically be enjoyed by anyone in spite of their circumstances. Considering the ludicrously cheap price, I’d urge everyone to give it a go even if they normally consider themselves to be too HARDCORE for such trifling little cutesy games. My only real complaint is the fact that Peggle 2 ended up a console exclusive game for… reasons and as a consequence is only available on Xbox 360 and Xbox One. While they can be emulated easily enough, in the meantime pickup the Peggle pack for practically nothing and have some fun 8)

The post Peggle Deluxe/Extreme/Nights appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.

First up is the wannabe Star Fox imitator “Redout: Space Assault” (henceforth referred to as “AS”) which in spite of the name has nothing to do with the quasi-popular high speed racing game Redout, aside from one or two shared sound effects. Now Redout was widely seen as a spiritual successor to Wipeout on it’s release and while it did have some differences, that inspiration was pretty nakedly and unabashedly worn on it’s sleeve. Space Assault is a similar attempt to piggy-back off a formerly popular but now dormant IP, and unfortunately it completely and utterly sucks. The first of AS’s myriad issues is that it’s a mobile phone game port (yay!) which is not disclosed anywhere on it’s Steam page with the exception of the mixed review section. Now I was willing to let this one slide, against my better judgement, as I thought that a Star Fox clone didn’t really need many controls as the whole point is that it’s an on-rails shooter. So all you’d really need is the ability to shoot and do a modicum of movement across the screen, which theoretically a smartphone could handle. Alas the game handles poorly and has a weird feel to it that I can’t quite put into words, but essentially you always feel a little sluggish and the enemy projectiles have the same issue. This means dodging them can be weirdly annoying, an issue that really makes the game a pain in the butt. To make sure it wasn’t just a SKILL ISSUE I went and played the original Star Fox on SNES, only to discover that I didn’t have that issue at all and so it was just AS living up to it’s moniker.

But(t) of course just having weird controls and a suspect pedigree wouldn’t be enough for me to totally drop the game, as I’ve beaten around 600ish releases and honestly a lot of them had some issues. What makes AS so wretched is just the lack of any redeeming features. The story is cliché and bear in mind, this is cliché within the context of videogame writing. It is so, so, aggressively bland and utterly fails to provide even the flimsiest reason for the player to engage with it or care about any of the characters. These characters also don’t do themselves any favours because their dialogue is below “Direct-to-DVD sequel” levels and it feels like every line of dialogue was cranked out by a bored intern on a single, lazy afternoon. The voice actors meanwhile appear to be totally aware that the plot, writing and characters are all a big pool of wank because they put zero effort into their roles. In space no one can hear you scream, so why bother having any dialogue with emotion, wit, charm or warmth? I can only assume they had random members of staff perform these lines because honestly everyone has the same accents (despite ostensibly being a diverse international group) and no one can act. As for the rest of the sounds, you’ve got standard PEWPEW space laser noises. Alongside a totally forgettable OST with some occasional attempts to insert PUMPIN electronic music during the action sequences. Last but not least, you’ve got a missile lock-on noise so enjoy a slightly tinny beep beep beep every time an enemy shoots a missile at you – which they do quite frequently!

And you’ll need to frequently avoid those enemy missiles with a half-hearted barrel roll feature as you have a Hull strength life bar and a regenerating Shield. So far, so Sci-Fi. But for some reason a bunch of random attacks just ignore the shield, to the point that in the early game it’s pretty much 50/50 as to whether you can regenerate any damage or not. Fortunately the developers have included absolutely 0 penalty for dying (I guess it’s a phone game so they know the controls are garbage?) …Well that’s not entirely true, as you lose the money you’ve accumulated thus far in that mission when you are instantly respawned exactly where you died. Although as the money can only be used for really, really lousy upgrades that barely make a difference (e.g. you need to buy the missile upgrade ten times to go from shooting 3 missiles per salvo to 4) AND you get most of your money from objectives and upgrade cards (you can equip one of these at a time, and they do really exciting things like increase your shield bar by 6%) it’s a very light-touch punishment. Speaking of the missile upgrades, you have two main ways of attacking the baddies; your normal laser weapon which can be swapped during the game for a variety of equally useless types and missiles which are much better because they do more damage and auto-lock on. You have infinite ammo for both, but the enemy health bars have been deliberately designed so that you’ll need to constantly spam both weapons to clear through everything in good time. This wouldn’t be an issue, but some missions just abruptly end after around 3 minutes if you didn’t shoot enough of the bad guys down. But don’t worry, as the missions are very bland anyway and you’ll probably not even notice that you’re replaying them as they’re basically all premised around doing the same thing against the same enemies (seriously the Act 1 boss and the Act 2 boss are the same). To it’s credit the game does have some “free flight” missions where it dumps you in space surrounded by the same props that it uses in every other mission, but this time you need to find the enemies as they won’t come to you! This would be more interesting if your space ship didn’t feel really slow and, there was like, stuff going on but alas these missions blow chunks too. Oh and once you beat all the 48-ish missions the game comes with, that’s it as there are no other gameplay modes. Probably for the best to be honest.

Second up on the naughty step is a game that broke my big fat clogged heart, as it just has such a great concept. Big Mutha Truckers 2 (henceforth referred to as BMT2) is an attempt to marry Crazy Taxi with a big dumb parody of truckin’ across all 48 continental US states. Unfortunately this parody is really, really dull and is very predictable with every character falling short of the “amusing but played out” archetypes they’re aiming for and instead feel like a very uncreative pre-teen designed them. But it’s a quasi-budget release, so it doesn’t matter if it’s dumb and unoriginal so long as it’s a dumb kind of fun. After all, no one was that bothered when the Simpson’s made their own crazy taxi rip-off even though it had extremely familiar characters and very little original gameplay ideas. Unfortunately BMT2 is just… bad when it comes to the actual moment to moment gameplay and it feels like it was really, desperately hoping it would be carried by it’s tongue in cheek characters and world. Alas this doesn’t pan out, as neither the gameplay nor the writing is above D-tier and so you have two shoddily put together halves colliding to form a weak whole. There’s really not much to be said about the writing, other than the fact that every character is summed up in their entirety the first time you meet them and after a few encounters you’re just bored of them. You’ve got the Hollywood airhead, the douchebag celebrity, an Area 51 inspired alphabet agency spook, a couple of hill-billies, a generic greedy millionaire businessman and a corrupt Russian who spends the game on his big ass yacht. You go between these KOOKY, ZANY, THIGH-SLAPPING characters to earn cash by moving items that one of them will sell you on the cheap, to another character who is willing to pay more. Ostensibly there’s some strategy to this, but… there really isn’t. Just buy the cheapest items and Keep On Truckin’ til you make a profit while trying not to let the stale, repeated character quips get you down.

And trust me, I don’t enjoy writing this as the game has a sort-of heart to it. You can tell the developers wanted to make an amusing game, but much like with Cel Damage the humour is simultaneously going to go over the heads of the well-behaved kids and yet isn’t funny enough for the grown ups. It’s just stuck that awkward spot, much like a stand-up comedian who’s bombing because their material just isn’t that good. You don’t hate it, but you do wish it would end if only to save everyone’s sanity. As for the gameplay, as mentioned above it’s pretty basic and while you can use the money to buy upgrades they don’t really make that much of a difference, because pretty the whole game is split between two activities. The first is driving from character to character to make that sweet, sweet money. The second is compromised of missions, which also involve driving from place to place but have a bit more effort put into them even if they’re still pretty bland. The big issue here is just that the driving mechanics aren’t very well implemented, so you have a game that’s almost entirely based on driving and the driving isn’t very good. Sure there are some moderately entertaining environmental hazards (and the cops) to watch out for, like UFOs stealing your cargo, but these are little sprinklings of inspiration that are trying to distract you from the fact that the core gameplay mechanics are bad and that the game just isn’t funny. Unlike Redout Space Assault this game does have plenty of content, but most of it’s locked behind delivering enough cargo to store up money so you can the next mission which plays the same as the grinding so that you can then grind so more to unlock the next mission and so and so forth. There are one or two features that are actually OK, such as the ability to set a time limit between destinations with lower limits providing a larger delivery bonus (which encourages and rewards skill) and a variety of radio stations ala GTA including a talk show with a decent amount of content. It’s just that none of it is good and there’s a reason that this franchise died on it’s ass with mediocre reviews. If you played this game as a kid, hang onto those memories and do not bother revisiting BMT2. Especially as the current Steam port is so busted that even basic Steam features like the overlay and screenshots don’t work.

Last but not least in our trinity of tedium, we have Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop which is the sequel of sorts to Alien Swarm the throwaway Valve project that was most notable for letting the player receive a free TF2 hat. Unlike either of the two preceding games, I didn’t pay anything for this one but instead came across it while searching for a free game that I could play with a friend on his lousy laptop. As such you might argue that it doesn’t deserve it’s place on this list, as it’s literally free and to my knowledge doesn’t even have a monetisation system due to the fact that it’s a labour of love from a dedicated modding community. Yet in spite of the potential for a cute little underdog story, I’m including it here for the simple reason that neither me nor my friend enjoyed it. In fact the more we played, the more frustrated we became as while the game has some good ideas it’s also riddled with questionable design choices that got on our collective tits. Due to it’s price I promise not to be as mean to it, but still why the fuck does the infestation system require you to place a medkit down and then wait for some god damn long? Who thinks this is fun? Who thought “oh my goodness we’ve made the game BETTER take THAT Greg Coomer”??? There’s a ton of content in this game, but also a lot of WHY’s that remain on our minds after playing through the first campaign and mutually agreeing that we are not going to bother with the rest because fuck that noise.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself, because many of you are probably asking “what the hell even is Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop?” Well I’m glad you asked dear reader, as it’s a top-down shooter that allows up to 4 player co-op in which your team is split between around 8 characters and 4 classes. Each class has two characters who are slightly different in terms of their stats, but these stats don’t seem to matter that much anyway so I think this is more for the advanced players to care about. As me and my buddy were casuals only playing the game because we were running out of options, we just went with a medic (because otherwise you are guaranteed to die) and a Tech Marine because they’re mandatory for most of the missions. Once you’ve chosen a character you get a surprisingly extensive unlock system, where you pick 1 weapon, 1 weapon or utility item and then one equippable item. There’s a variety of guns, but also some more interesting tools like a deployable sentry turret, a medkit that heals the squad, an ammo pack for the squad and a bunch of other things that aren’t weapons per see but are useful tools for the entire squad. Then there’s that utility item which is generally a bit mediocre, such as the ability to weld the occasional door, take a bit less damage (not that matters much), lay down mines, take a personal medkit for emergency heals and so on. Once you’ve picked your squad and your gear, you’re then able to play through any of the game’s approximately eleven multi-mission campaigns. These missions might have sections where you need to use a certain item to clear the path, such as big rocks that need to be destroyed with a mining laser or hive-growth that needs to be destroyed with a flamethrower (or a mining laser). Unfortunately the game doesn’t tell you if this is going to be the case, but in our experience the map-makers are generous enough to provide those items when they are needed to prevent you from being totally stuck. Now as for all these shiny new weapons, they’re generally pretty varied but they all have not that much ammo which is a problem in a game where you are shooting things a lot. Missions do tend to give you some more ammo every now and then, but generally speaking you need to be careful with your shots (especially as friendly fire is enabled) and even your reloads as reloading a magazine throws any remaining ammunition away. Plus reloading can take a surprisingly long time for a game in which even the basic enemies can knock you around like a pinata, which is somewhat negated by the introduction of the active reload system that’s also used in Gears of War.

So the game itself is free, it has a lot of content, why is it in the did-not-finish triad? Well aside from the counter-productive nature of the game having eleven freaking campaigns which feels a tad excessive frankly the biggest issue is just that most of the enemies are annoying to deal with. You’ve got the standard grunts who can almost stun lock you, as their attacks knock you back a little bit and can mess you up more than they otherwise would. Then you’ve got ranged enemies which love to hang out just off-screen while pelting you, big fat enemies that eat up a lot of ammo then explode, annoying little enemies that spawn into the game world with a little jump that makes them temporarily immune to gun fire and are too quick to melee. Plus there are flying enemies that are a fucking pest because they’re so small and fast, spawners that spawn in those little enemies with their stupid little jumps constantly and are a chore, especially as when they die spawn more. Wrapping up the selection of annoying enemies are levelled up ranged baddies that fling explosives at you and finally (from what we played anyway) a boss monster that is immune to damage from the front and takes a lot of bullets being fired into their ass to give up. Oh and of course I almost forget the small infectors who will take you from full health to fully dead (no respawning btw) in about 6 seconds unless your medic deploys the tiny medkit with it’s tiny healing radius next to you. An action that takes slightly more fumbling than you’d hope for, and if you’ve split up or they’re picking their nose it’s over for you. As a bonus if the medic dies, then everyone who isn’t a medic can’t take their medkit tool so after that it’s basically sudden death. Did I mention that the basic bitch enemies are almost constantly respawning? Because once you combine that with the skimpy amounts of ammo, the game does become a bit of an endurance test. Can you and your friends manage to get through an entire campaign without getting frustrated at the game? Great, then go do another 10! The scoreboards tell you if your friends bothered, and I can safely say that all of mine gave up around the end of the first campaign. Because this is a game with a lot of love put into it, by people with questionable test in videogames. It’s the quintessential problem with the fan project, namely that the fans are really into the base game and so they’ve made a game that’s only going to be of interest for people who really into the base game. Imagine if they made L4D3 but each player had a specific type of mini-game they’d occasionally have to do, and if any of your team died you got to eat a big mouthful of shit. That’s basically the Alien Swarm: Reactive drop experience. A great game for those who really want a 4 player co-op top-down shooter that requires coordination, but a bad game for those who don’t have 3 friends with those interests. The best I could do was one additional buddy, and he kept dying which meant that I slowly lost the will to live. After clearing out 3 of the boss enemies, avoiding infection, fighting through the whole map and then rushing our way back out, I died at the final hurdle because the extraction objective wanted to make things more exciting by taking even fucking longer than it usually did. Oh and did I mention my buddy kept dying because you can’t see shit in most of the areas of each map, as everything is made deliberately dark so that the game can have a spooky horror vibe. Either find 3 patient friends with plenty of co-op top-down shooter experience, or crank the brightness up and hope for the best. Either way, it’s an acquired taste much like that freakish Corsican cheese that’s filled with maggots and mould. You might have a great time and I wouldn’t think less of you for doing so, but we didn’t and that’s why we cut our losses.

And that’s the trio, each of which I’m proud to say are in different genres and from developers (or modders) of varying pedigree. Unlike the slightly meaty promise at the start, I didn’t end up HATING all of them and in fact consider Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop to be fairly impressive in it’s own right. As for the other two however, they can eat my big fat arse as they are fucking garbage and I am mad that people are inadvertently still paying real money for them. Of the three, I’d give Alien Swarm: RD a tentative chance of redemption as we all love modders really, but the other two should be avoided at all costs. Especially Redout: Space Assault as the developers really should know bloody better than to shit out such a woeful and half-assed game. If you disagree with my take on the worst Starfox clone I’ve ever had the misfortune to play, then get on your bike. At least Big Mutha Truckers 2 was trying (albeit failing) to be entertaining and to offer something a bit different. It had heart, if not only brains or intelligently designed gameplay. Redout: Space ASSault is the definition of a bland, boring, ambitionless, uncreative, tedious gaming experience. They couldn’t even be bothered to avoid repeating the boss fights. Fuck that game. I did hate it, and Big Mutha Truckers 2 was a Big Mutha Pile of Poo (don’t complain about this petty and childish insult, it’s exactly the level of dialogue and writing from that game) even if it’s not quite so reprehensible because intention matters. In conclusion, Redout: Space Assault is fucking woeful, Big Mutha Truckers 2 is a Mutha-Trucking disappointment and Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop is just a bit of a pain in the backside.

The post The Did Not Finish Triad (Part 1 of ??) appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.

Quick Note(s) – Unfortunately the game can have some issues running on Windows 11, so be sure to run the “vcredist_x86” installer located in the Steamapps/common/Dawn of War Soulstorm/VCRedist folder. If you aren’t running the Steam version, you’ll need to download and install the Microsoft C++ visual redistributable 2005. As for those of you who are looking for mods, I’d highly recommend the Unification Mod which adds a disgustingly large amount of units, factions and maps to the game. Other mods are also available on moddb.com (just follow the previous link and click on “Dawn of War” underneath the name of the mod).

Back in those simpler, halcyon days of 2004 the developers at Relic took the (Warhammer) world by storm by releasing the original Dawn of War game. Now this wasn’t the first Warhammer 40,000 (W40K) game by any means, and in fact it was the 8th game to be released that took advantage of the setting. What it did do however, was enable players to play as multiple factions within an immersive setting (sorry Rites of War fans, but that game was slowwww and not particularly immersive) that was fully 3D. The combination of three popular factions – and the Eldar too – resulted in a hugely popular RTS game, especially as both the gameplay and audio design were excellent. Unlike the other goliaths of the space, such as Starcraft, C&C Generals and Age of Empires 2, the game was fast paced and highly rewarded an aggressive play-style, as resource nodes were spread across the map and holding them was the key to victory. In many other RTS games, resources were spread around but generally you’d need to build up your forces and faff around with villagers to build up the structures required to properly begin harvesting the tiberium/cash/gold/whatever. In Dawn of War however, you just needed to capture them with infantry and while it was encouraged, you rarely had to fortify them with a listening point structure (which would need to be destroyed before the enemy could capture it). This subtle little twist meant that it was your army not your villagers that were responsible for growing your economy. Compounding this design decision was the fact that you needed to control as much of the map as possible to receive these resources, as tech upgrades played a minimal role in the economy side whilst your builders could barely do anything (although the secondary power resource was entirely generated by the buildings they constructed). Of course this led to the game giving more aggressive players a significant advantage, which meant that the games were often quick and fast paced with the loss of your army often ensuring you’d lose your resource points which then meant that you were at a resource disadvantage which would then result in you getting ground down under waves of enemy forces. There was a mechanic to compensate for this (slightly) wherein resource points and power generating structures would decay over time, enabling turtles to cling on and eventually negate much of the disadvantage they were facing, but this mechanic in most cases took too long to have a significant effect on the battle.

Without going into excessive detail, I’ll briefly explain the mechanics of Dawn of War for those who haven’t played any of the games in the series. Like most RTS games you start with a mere HQ and a builder unit, who can then produce all of the production buildings in your faction alongside power generators and listening points. You’ve got multiple unit classifications (such as heavy infantry, demons, vehicles and so on) but generally there are 3 main types of unit on the battlefield. Infantry (who are the only ones who can capture requisition points), heroes/characters that are powerful but can get bogged down in combat, and then vehicles which are powerful and often heavily armoured but are require lots of power and aren’t available in the early stages of the game. These units are then either focused on melee or ranged attacks. Most weapons are good against certain types of units, with anti-tank weapons often (but not always) being hopeless against infantry and vice-versa. Furthermore each unit can have multiple abilities, and most units can purchase upgrades that are applicable to that one unit. There are also a range of technologies which can be unlocked that provide a bonus to all units of a certain type, both those you currently have and those you might build in the future. All infantry units can be reinforced to add squad members, which costs resources and requires a modest wait as they’re produced. Units in combat suffer a big penalty to reinforcement times but they can still be reinforced. As for the resources, you’ve only got two to worry about. Requisition (the main resource) and power (the secondary resource), which are obtained through captured points on the map & listening posts and power generating structures respectively. Finally there are two types of points on the map(s) worth noting – Relics which let you build your superheavy unit (max 1 at a time) and critical locations which you can’t build anything on or next to. As such the game revolves around building infantry squads to capture points to gain requisition, so you can afford to build power generators which will let you build your more powerful units and begin unlocking research items.

With that hasty summary out of the way let’s return to the review. Back in 2004 Relic decided that they should continue to build up momentum after the launch of the original Dawn of War by engaging in a classic strategy which has largely (but not entirely) been neglected in recent years. They did this by releasing two expansion packs, Winter Assault (WA) in 2005 and Dark Crusade (DC) in 2006. The former added the Imperial Guard race to the game and added some new maps, a handful of new units for the existing races and two short but challenging campaigns. The latter was considerably more ambitious and included two races in the form of the Necrons and the Tau Empire, while also adding new maps, units and more importantly totally overhauling the campaign structure. Both the base game and WA had fairly standard RTS campaigns, taking the form of around a dozen maps (in WA’s case spread between the two campaigns) that weren’t particularly connected with each other and were basically skirmish maps with some extra challenges and timed NPC spawns/attack waves. Oh and of course they had little cutscenes, which elaborated on the plot and served to motivate you. DC on the other hand replaces the standard campaign structure with a new hybrid campaign that features a turn-based map comprised of multiple regions, each of which needs to be taken in skirmish battles. Each faction can move their single army (represented by their command) across one region per turn, and if this region isn’t owned by them then a skirmish battle will break out. Each region has a strength ranking associated with it from 1 to 15, which determines the AI difficulty and number of AIs to be faced on that map. The difficulty of these maps ranges from one easy AI through to three Hard AIs, with the maps themselves being the same that you encounter in the Skirmish and Multiplayer modes. Every faction is present at the start of the campaign within their stronghold region, a bespoke custom map that is particularly challenging and if these strongholds are conquered then that faction is defeated. As these armies fight across the map they’ll gain new regions which enable them to recruit “Honor Guard” units that are stronger versions of regular units and which spawn with the commander in every battle (unless they’re wiped out in which case they need to be bought again). Some of these regions even offer a faction wide bonus instead of a new honor guard unit, such as enabling you to attack any region except strongholds in one turn or to enable you to spend resources on building structures before an attack begins. Finally there are also feats that commanders can achieve such as winning 3 battles or killing a certain amount of enemies, which give them war-gear points that can then be spent on… war-gear which grants them more health, attack and some other benefits or even abilities. Victory is achieved by eliminating every other faction from the map, which means you’ll need to win every stronghold battle.

Dawn of War: Soulstorm (DoW:SS) continues this trend and by and large as the campaign is the same, with one big difference. Namely that you now need to defeat eight other factions instead of a measly six. As a consequence the campaign is lengthier, even if the gameplay itself hasn’t changed very much. There are also a few more bonus regions, so that there’s roughly one per faction alongside more stringent routing between areas (i.e. the map now has more choke-points) which gives the campaign a modicum of extra strategy. These two new factions in the form of the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar are of course one of the major selling points of the game, as at the time of release every faction with models was represented with the exception of the Tyranids. Much like the rest of the factions these two have their own unique units and voice acting although I must confess that I’ve always found the Sisters of Battle to be a bit boring. You see both the Sisters and the Dark Eldar have ways of gathering up a special resource (faith and souls respectively) that enable them to activate abilities, but generally these abilities don’t do that much. For the Dark Eldar these abilities are on your toolbar and can be popped at any time and anywhere that you have vision, and while the ability to enable a squad to detect infiltrated enemies is useful, the rest are kinda meh. As for the Sisters of Battle these abilities are used by certain squads and often require that you research a piece of technology to permit them to be used, with these abilities also being kinda… meh. To gather these resources you either build upgrades on your listening posts (Sisters of Battle) or have to send your builders to gather souls (Dark Eldar), with the former being super boring and the latter being a potentially interesting mechanic that gets squandered. This is because the Dark Eldar buildings can build themselves, the builder only has to start the construction process and is then free to go do something else. So far, so good as this fits with the asynchronous nature of the factions within the game. One of these buildings can be upgraded to produce souls though, so what ends up happening is that you build up your base, build a couple of these buildings (which are required for increasing the amount of squads and vehicles you can field in battle) and then have your builder sit in your base gathering souls. There’s no risk/reward ratio to consider from having your slaves wander around the battlefield, but then again as previously stated the abilities kinda suck anyway so it’s not a big deal really. Either way even with these lame abilities I still think the Dark Eldar are the more interesting faction, especially as their most basic infantry unit can infiltrate (letting them turn invisible and still attack enemies).

As for the other big selling point of this game in the run up to release, it’s also a bit underwhelming. Across Dawn of War and the first two expansions all units had been ground units (well except a handful of hovering ground units), which meant that the inclusion of Flying Units in Dawn of War: Soulstorm was HYPE. Unfortunately the engine just can’t handle flying units and as such these aircraft basically just acted as hovering ground units, which were still cool but were also just vehicles that could ignore some terrain. Ironically enough the developers of Dawn of War: Soulstorm (at this point the original developers at Relic were working on Dawn of War 2 and as such this expansion was outsourced to Iron Lore studios) didn’t want to add “flying” units initially and instead had planned to add some units that were commonly requested by the community. Sadly Relic insisted that Iron Lore get to work adding flying units, which while still useful and having some minor battlefield uses were relatively half-baked and a disappointment for many players. The Imperial Guard for example were bequeathed an aerial bomber, but it couldn’t really conduct bombing runs and as such just hovered around occasionally using a souped-up grenade ability. In spite of these flying units being half baked however Dawn of War: Soulstorm remains the definitive edition of Dawn of War, as it has everything that the other games had alongside a lengthier campaign, even more maps, more factions and of course more units. As a consequence of being the most feature complete Dawn of War game, it’s also the one that still retains an active community both in terms of being able to find multiplayer matches and with regards to the modding community which is still adding new races, maps and units to the game to this day.

Which of course begs the question, why is Dawn of War: Soulstorm still so popular? Well aside from the gameplay as mentioned earlier, and the sheer variety of units and races that you can play as, the game also has a handful of features which have kept players coming back. Part of the game’s enduring popularity is the way in which the game has managed to faithfully and accurately capture the W40K setting, with it’s bombastic units and fantastic voice acting. While strong voice acting is not unique to Dawn of War: Soulstorm, the game is absolutely brimming with memorable quotes delivered well by actors who clearly relish their roles. Every single unit is quotable and while they don’t have a huge pool of quotes, there are enough to avoid repetition whilst not too many that they fail to remain lodged in your mind. The depth and range of the performances are strong, while the writing clearly reflects an understanding of the lore of the W40K universe. There are some weird quirks in the game’s narrative, such as the Imperial Guard stronghold having legions of ostensibly rare Baneblade tanks and that weird screed against Metal Boxes by the Chaos commander, but generally the tone is faithfully conveyed and each unit and character acts as they should. Bolstering this performance is a handful of canny gameplay decisions, such as engaging (almost) every unit to engage in either melee or ranged combat, which ensures that even weaker units can successfully bog down stronger foes in ranged combat or try to force them to run around in circles. The game also has a “sync kill” system wherein units have special, pre-baked animations which play when they defeat enemies in melee combat. While these help to give the game some cinematic flair, they also have a strategic purpose as units are immune to damage while these animations are playing which can be abused to tank certain enemy weapons for the benefit of your less durable units. The combination of asymmetric factions, a high variety of units, fast paced gameplay and a host of little ways to tip the scales of a battle produce an engaging and enjoyable game, while the beginner AI settings are generous enough that newbies don’t need to fear getting completely and utterly stomped.

To summarise then Dawn of War: Soulstorm is an enduringly popular game because it is the successor to a great base game and two expansions which were of an equally high quality. By taking everything that had gone before it with regards to a strong, fast paced gameplay system that offered plenty of tactical depth across all nine factions the game ended up being a complex RTS experience that was still eminently approachable. Unlike many of it’s contemporaries the game was able to bypass a slow starting phase and encourage players to dive straight into the action, which had a strong blend of melee and ranged units to keep matters broadly balanced. This was then reinforced by an AI system that starts off weak enough to not overwhelm noobs, while being difficult enough at the higher levels that the game provides a significant challenge. Add to this a lengthy and replayable campaign mode, alongside fantastic voice acting that helps to immerse the player and you have a vast and engaging RTS game. The fact that the game has a huge quantity of maps, units and mods only cemented it as a long-lasting game that is suitable and indeed recommended for all RTS fans. If you’re a fan of the setting Dawn of War: Soulstorm is still one of the most commonly recommended games nearly 15 years on, whilst RTS players would be remiss to skip it. Even those without much experience with the setting or the genre should give this game a shot, as it’s approachable, memorable and riddled with content – plus it’s exceedingly cheap due to it’s age.

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