Thread names kinda ironic since I haven't played much recently. But I've got a shitload few of games (if you're European that's a metric shit ton about 50ish kilograms of games).
Although I've been slacking playing much on account of... the sites and stuff. I have been playing "Fallout: The Frontier" in between that though. Everyones shit on it and I don't have much more to add. Its just a poorly executed mess of a mod. They tried way to hard to push some "war is bad" narrative, but in the worst, cheesiest way possible. There were so many cutscenes where they either dragged on for too long, the voice acting was flat or way over exaggerated compared to the scene, or just the Gamebryo engine being the Gamebryo engine, leading to more laughs than the on-the-nose writing was asking for.
Outside of that its far from the "lore-friendly" mod they advertised it as.
I doubt any of you care if I spoil it but I'll put it in a spoiler anyway.
Additional screenshots from "The Frontier"
Besides that I saw that Imperator: Rome got a UI update (something that put me off from the game for quite a while). I'm a fan of Paradoxes crayon map paint sims so decided to reinstall it and give it a go.
While the UI is nice its still way overcomplicated in my opinion. Compared to other PDX games I can't easily figure out what I need, and what I can ignore.
I will put it out there I only have 86 minutes in it, so this isn't much of a fair review if you wanna call it that, but when you compare it to HOI3 arguably the most complex of their 'recent' games you're able to piece together what does what fairly quickly. I did not have the same experience in Imperator. Didn't have a clue how the tech tree worked, and during the first war, I thought I lost a majority of the battles (turns out I was winning them :p) cause the win-loss pop-up doesn't make it obvious from the start, like EUIV, or CKII does.
I'm trying to paint a map, not read a novel. I've got plenty of Visual Novels in my backlog if I wanted to do that.
My experience can be summed up as "What does this button do?", I'm sure if I played it a bit more I'd enjoy it but not being able to bankrupt my enemies in a peace deal is rather upsetting.
If the option to get money was there, then I did not see it, which goes back to my complain about the UI and not making the important things obvious.
Edit:
So I decided to give Imperator another shake after writing this and went from 82 minutes to 5 hours. I still have 0 clue how the family management works, or why it even matters. Most of the time I just paid people off if they disliked me. I barely noticed the consequences from going into the negatives in terms of money, and still find the UI very bad at relaying important info to the player.
However I can see its charm. Unlike EUIV or CKII, this is way more map-painty (which makes sense considering the era it takes place in). I decided to play a country where modern day Yemen is, and sorta built a trade empire, bringing in a whopping 5 ducats or gold coins or whatever the currency here is.
It wasn't until the 3 hour mark that I realised you can change laws and tax rates. Again mainly cause I rarely had a problem with money.
The biggest annoyance that entire play through (which only ended cause the game crashed :p) was barbarians. Impassable tiles spawn barbarians in areas with low civilization. Me being in Yemen this was a common occurrence ... which doesn't make much sense how you're gonna get 12k people together out of the desert but whatever.
Now being uncivilized I wasn't actually able to keep a standing army, and had to rely on levies and/or mercenaries. Mercenaries cost money, which I didn't have enough of to hire and fire them. Especially since the 2x6k mercs cost 200 ducats + maintenance.
This led to me mostly paying the barbarians to leave me alone which while very irritating... no it was just irritating. Again the lack of the UI easily telling me when shit happens always meant they at least sacked one settlement before I could pay them off. Which meant it goes back to 0 civilisation, and starts the spawn barbarian loop over.
Irritating.
Overall its like every PDX game. Don't get it for the first 4 years.
/edit
Not as recent but still within February I gave Superpower 2 another shake. Quite a fun game, I remember accidentally making Cuba self-sufficient during a playthrough.
If I had to describe it imagine HOI3, but with a heavier focus on managing the country and politics. If not that its just HOI3 with a whole lot of sliders and button for you to go through.
If you like sitting around and staring at the news it can be fun to run in the background
or if you like watching India and China nuke themselves to the stone age
So, what're you playing?
Although I've been slacking playing much on account of... the sites and stuff. I have been playing "Fallout: The Frontier" in between that though. Everyones shit on it and I don't have much more to add. Its just a poorly executed mess of a mod. They tried way to hard to push some "war is bad" narrative, but in the worst, cheesiest way possible. There were so many cutscenes where they either dragged on for too long, the voice acting was flat or way over exaggerated compared to the scene, or just the Gamebryo engine being the Gamebryo engine, leading to more laughs than the on-the-nose writing was asking for.
Outside of that its far from the "lore-friendly" mod they advertised it as.
I doubt any of you care if I spoil it but I'll put it in a spoiler anyway.
How the hell did a bunch of deserters get as many vertibirds as they're shown having.
When the courier gets captured, why in gods name would you launch an all out aerial assault, to save him? Would it not make more sense to use the fucking URBAN ENVIRONMENT to sneak behind the Legions (who're in Portland for whatever reason) lines. Rather than have some shitty, nonsensical, overdramatic Call of Duty like fly in scene you could've encouraged using the fucking city, and sneaking around, finding alleyways and hidden areas to reach the courier.
In the first place theres no way they'd have nearly enough vertibirds to even consider that operation if this was "lore-friendly".
Then theres the Shermans. How did a bunch of WW2 tanks survive, not only scrapping in between World War 2 and 2077, but also the nuclear holocaust.
Fallout already had its own tanks, and considering you released it after Fallout 4 came you, you have models to go off, and this would've been way cooler to see driving around than a Sherman
[video=youtube]
Then theres the Space Enclave and the flying aircraft carrier
Just why?
Why would you do this.
I mean... yeah nice you made a space station, ...yay?
But none of it serves much of a point. You stole lines from Wolfenstein, and put in one of the most obvious references to Dead Space, considering the character was just named "Isaac Clarke" point-blank.
Space Carrier
When the courier gets captured, why in gods name would you launch an all out aerial assault, to save him? Would it not make more sense to use the fucking URBAN ENVIRONMENT to sneak behind the Legions (who're in Portland for whatever reason) lines. Rather than have some shitty, nonsensical, overdramatic Call of Duty like fly in scene you could've encouraged using the fucking city, and sneaking around, finding alleyways and hidden areas to reach the courier.
In the first place theres no way they'd have nearly enough vertibirds to even consider that operation if this was "lore-friendly".
Then theres the Shermans. How did a bunch of WW2 tanks survive, not only scrapping in between World War 2 and 2077, but also the nuclear holocaust.
Fallout already had its own tanks, and considering you released it after Fallout 4 came you, you have models to go off, and this would've been way cooler to see driving around than a Sherman
[video=youtube]
Then theres the Space Enclave and the flying aircraft carrier
Just why?
Why would you do this.
I mean... yeah nice you made a space station, ...yay?
But none of it serves much of a point. You stole lines from Wolfenstein, and put in one of the most obvious references to Dead Space, considering the character was just named "Isaac Clarke" point-blank.
Space Carrier
Additional screenshots from "The Frontier"
Besides that I saw that Imperator: Rome got a UI update (something that put me off from the game for quite a while). I'm a fan of Paradoxes crayon map paint sims so decided to reinstall it and give it a go.
While the UI is nice its still way overcomplicated in my opinion. Compared to other PDX games I can't easily figure out what I need, and what I can ignore.
I will put it out there I only have 86 minutes in it, so this isn't much of a fair review if you wanna call it that, but when you compare it to HOI3 arguably the most complex of their 'recent' games you're able to piece together what does what fairly quickly. I did not have the same experience in Imperator. Didn't have a clue how the tech tree worked, and during the first war, I thought I lost a majority of the battles (turns out I was winning them :p) cause the win-loss pop-up doesn't make it obvious from the start, like EUIV, or CKII does.
I'm trying to paint a map, not read a novel. I've got plenty of Visual Novels in my backlog if I wanted to do that.
My experience can be summed up as "What does this button do?", I'm sure if I played it a bit more I'd enjoy it but not being able to bankrupt my enemies in a peace deal is rather upsetting.
If the option to get money was there, then I did not see it, which goes back to my complain about the UI and not making the important things obvious.
Edit:
So I decided to give Imperator another shake after writing this and went from 82 minutes to 5 hours. I still have 0 clue how the family management works, or why it even matters. Most of the time I just paid people off if they disliked me. I barely noticed the consequences from going into the negatives in terms of money, and still find the UI very bad at relaying important info to the player.
However I can see its charm. Unlike EUIV or CKII, this is way more map-painty (which makes sense considering the era it takes place in). I decided to play a country where modern day Yemen is, and sorta built a trade empire, bringing in a whopping 5 ducats or gold coins or whatever the currency here is.
It wasn't until the 3 hour mark that I realised you can change laws and tax rates. Again mainly cause I rarely had a problem with money.
The biggest annoyance that entire play through (which only ended cause the game crashed :p) was barbarians. Impassable tiles spawn barbarians in areas with low civilization. Me being in Yemen this was a common occurrence ... which doesn't make much sense how you're gonna get 12k people together out of the desert but whatever.
Now being uncivilized I wasn't actually able to keep a standing army, and had to rely on levies and/or mercenaries. Mercenaries cost money, which I didn't have enough of to hire and fire them. Especially since the 2x6k mercs cost 200 ducats + maintenance.
This led to me mostly paying the barbarians to leave me alone which while very irritating... no it was just irritating. Again the lack of the UI easily telling me when shit happens always meant they at least sacked one settlement before I could pay them off. Which meant it goes back to 0 civilisation, and starts the spawn barbarian loop over.
Irritating.
Overall its like every PDX game. Don't get it for the first 4 years.
/edit
Not as recent but still within February I gave Superpower 2 another shake. Quite a fun game, I remember accidentally making Cuba self-sufficient during a playthrough.
If I had to describe it imagine HOI3, but with a heavier focus on managing the country and politics. If not that its just HOI3 with a whole lot of sliders and button for you to go through.
If you like sitting around and staring at the news it can be fun to run in the background
or if you like watching India and China nuke themselves to the stone age
So, what're you playing?
Last edited:
