Recent reviews by Facepalm Full O' Napalm

Best game since Sliced Bread: The Game

CA really outdid themselves. Truly.

Their ability to completely bust their older titles is simply unmatched. Firstly, the move to remove all chat abilities from the game was a masterstroke of genius. A "minor technical update" indeed, it didn't affect my ability to play whatsoever. Who needs to be able to talk to one another in a multiplayer game? Finding buddies to play with and organizing groups in a lobby is overrated.

But it's recently been topped off by their new Mona Lisa: Silently removing the mod manager. Shogun 2 is such a masterpiece that downloading mods of which fixed broken sounds, performance stutters, AI mishaps, and compatibility with newer hardware is completely unnecessary. Awesome stuff! Oh, and I hope you were satisfied with the mods that were already downloaded because now you're stuck with them for the rest of your Shogun 2 career because there's no way to remove or configure them and Steam will automatically reinstall them as part of Steam Cloud.

CA's response to this? Ever so gracefully hidden away in the Steam comments of a thread pointing out the above defecation. They mention that an update will soon be on the way, but we already know what kind of "improvements" are included in those. And as such, I am correct in predicting they'll improve this classic even further!

For a short period of time, there was a workaround for those unsatisfied with the removal of mods or chatrooms (the audacity of these folks, boggling) that involved swapping the Steam beta build from the main build (CA's masterpiece, stripped to the nude core) and the pre-2022 linux build (brilliantly named to prevent non-curious Windows users from swapping over). This fixed new performance issues introduced in the main build and allowed the continuous use of the mod manager. Pretty handy stuff.

Remember that proposed patch that CA was going to give us? The one hidden in a thread on Steam somewhere? Well, it arrived. A question that may arise is "Did they fix the problem?" And that is a fair question, but CA entirely forgot to define what the "problem" was in the first place. The problem being that people used a workaround to get the mod manager and stability back into their game. And thus, they patched in a way to break the workaround builds. as well as the main build.

On top of this, the devs even saw fit to remove "Workshop Support" from the Steam store page right at a major Steam sale and after they "fixed" all the "problems" that made Shogun 2 great, and left it in a truly "realized" state.

All joking aside, CA's tomfoolery, trolling, and otherwise degenerate malicious updates to their older titles to discourage their use and to promote the new fecal matter that they keep spewing out is intolerable. Top unprofessional-ism from the U.K.'s largest video game developer was unexpected, but unsurprising. I would suggest steering clear of anything they release, as Shogun 2 isn't their only victim. Empire, Napoleon, and Rome 2 are also being hit by these insane deployments and the company itself either doesn't say anything about it and sneakily updates them or brazenly announces that they are doing it with some snarky Steam forum post and go "woe is me, buy my new stuff and all the DLCs" when they're called out on it. Absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Can't crossplay with older generation consoles, the whole reason I bought this heap of burning excrement so I can play with my brother. Back 4 Blood, another piece of garbage, and Borderlands 3, a fun piece of garbage, are both able to handle this with ease but Battlefield is beyond that, supposedly.

Oh, and this game still looks like ♥♥♥♥, by the way.

*Note: This review is mostly for people that are coming from the previous version of the game and who wonder if the upgrade is worth it. New players might be able to find something worthwhile in the review, however.

Let's skip the minotaur-crap and get down to the numerous bugs and poor decisions in this version. Here goes

Ever since Anniversary Edition (AE) released, the ragdolls of slain enemies will get stuck in midair. As far as I know, they've never mentioned anything about fixing it so it's likely a permanent issue. It is also worth mentioning that ragdolls don't even trigger sometimes, so they sit in an unanimated idle pose for all eternity.

The AE Team put annoying, overpowered, idiotically designed monsters in random locations. Most can one shot early characters and even outrun fleeing players. Others can spawn infinite amounts of zombies which is insane. By the time your character can face them, it's no longer worth the XP or items.

The AE Team also ruined the atmosphere of a few areas. For example, the gorgons had a pathway leading to their lair, littered with stone statues of humans and a cyclops (you know, a cyclops that you probably spent a few extra minutes trying to kill a few hours back. THAT cyclops.). And tense music played all the way there. Well, they put random generic gorgon mobs in that area now. What a way to ruin the mood.

Summoned pet AI gets stuck more often and usually stop moving all together, which is fatal during heavier battles where you may need to rely on them. Previously in Immortal Throne (IT), they usually only ever got stuck in areas like Babylon, where elevation got them confused. Now? They get stuck almost anywhere at random.

When an enemy drops an item, generally rings and weapons, they occasionally become stuck in an infinite physics cycle where you can't pick them up. This was a problem in IT, too, but not nearly as much. If Grim Dawn, a game that runs on the same engine, fixed this issue AE can, too.

Despite whether or not you own the Ragnarok expansion, items that are new in said expansion, such as throwing weapons, will still drop from chests and enemies. The catch, however, is that you can't pick them up and use them. This causes a number of problems ,such as the fact that you're missing out on potential money from any magic itemes that drop, but it also means that those unusable items might replace the spawning of an actually useful item to your character build. They also spawn very often. Good luck *not* finding a "small torch" blue weapon multiple times in your playthrough.

A problem with the game's engine somehow makes it freeze up, much like multiplayer lag but it occurs in single-player instead. This seems to happen more often.

Killing a dozen enemies at the same time will cause the game to freeze up, accompanied by the collective death screams of the vanquished which is borderline ear-rapey at times. Not an AE specific problem but it never got fixed and it's annoying.

The AE Team, for whatever reason, swapped ragdolls for death animations on a few enemies. It seems out of place in a world full of flying corpses. They're also not as satisfying to see, especially when you do a large amount of damage that would otherwise send them flying into orbit.

You can no longer destroy the power statues of the final boss (of the base game) that he uses for his abilities. Because of this, he's able to spam extremely powerful abilities often during the entire duration of the fight with nothing stopping him.

Speaking of the final boss, his death sequence is also broken: Previously there was an effect used that looked like he was being sapped into another dimension and exploded when it finished, launching his bones everywhere. Now in AE he just kinda stands there like a statue until he faded away lazily.

Steam Cloud implementation is completely broken, crashing the game on exit and keeping it in a constant synchronization state. This is a problem with many games but it's only fair to warn you that AE has it, too.

And many more. To say that the release was incompetent would be an understatement.

There are a few good things, however.

You can now see how long a shrine's power lasts when activated. Previously you either guessed or had to hover your mouse over it.

Although it is broken in more ways than one and animations look derpy at fastest speed, you can increase the game speed. Titan Quest is a very slow game, some might love this option. However, don't use normal as it is actually slower than non-AE and should be renamed "Slow motion"

"Enhanced" graphics options for those that can't live without bleeding eyes.

Pretty much everything Steam has to offer, AE put it in. Cloud sync (not that it works), achievements, trading cards, and Hell even workshop support. Some mods are fantastic but most of the oldies from Immortal Throne no longer work with AE

The AE hud looks better than the original. It's much nicer than your health and energy being in a corner somewhere out of sight, for sure.

THQNordic support, whenever they actually answer back, are good at what they do and can answer quickly and with details.

Multiplayer has been re-enabled but good luck playing with randoms without getting kicked or some other crap. Glad to see the effort was put in to get it back up and running, though. Unironic good job!

TL;DR If you have the option to get Immortal Throne: Do it. This version, in its current state, is not worth the problems it brings. TL;DR

How to beat this game:

Step 1. Buy as many broadhead arrows as you can. Buy gas bombs for extra win.
Step 2. Pretend to be an Elder Scrolls' stealth archer
Step 3. ???
Step 4. Profit!

Clunkiness Incarnate.

A nice, short, and sweet Half Life 1 mod made by one of the original creators at Valve. If you need more info than that, you get to whack marines with a toilet plunger.

A simple but fun first person shooter that reminds me of Left 4 Dead and Killing Floor being mixed together. The gameplay is fast and bloody, the voice acting is horrible, and you may need friends so I definitely suggest anyone with a dollar to buy this!

Here's a list of key points about this mod.

Graphics: It's a Half Life 2 mod. An ugly Half Life 2 mod. Most of the textures and models are low quality and the lighting is lackluster most of the time. Effects and water are what you expect from the source engine, however.

Music: When there is music, it's often just generic medieval battle music. Nothing special but nothing terrible either.

Difficulty: It's definitely harder than clicking left mouse on an enemy until they're dead but the combat is certainly not as deep as other games in the genre, although this mod probably was the sparking point for such titles.

Cinematics: Don't expect any.

Story: Little to none is displayed here. On the other hand, its successor, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, does have a story.

Content: A few maps available to the player. What was surprising, however, was the number of classes (9) which are all cool but most feel similar to one another. To accompany this, there is a decent variety of both melee and ranged weapons for them to use (these feel samey as well.)

Controls: Horrible. Just awful. The melee combat is slow and clunky. Rarely do you feel like you actually hit your target. Moving around is almost as bad. Ranged combat is serviceable but does feel awkward.

Gameplay: There's two teams, the Agatha Knights and the Mason Order. One plays the defensive role while the other is the attacker. The attacker needs to complete a series of objectives in order to win whilst the defenders must keep them from doing so. It's an old but gold game design and still holds up. There's also other gamemodes but this will probably be the main course for players. Moving forward, the game should run smoothly on whatever system you're playing on as the Source Engine is still a stable masterpiece for potato computers while also being bug free in my time playing this.

Multiplayer: DEAD. Like, no, completely dead. Not even a player the last time I checked. This is offset by playing with bots but they rarely know where to go, much less actually fight.

Price: FREE, but that doesn't mean you would want to try it out.

Verdict: The mod is difficult to enjoy with the numerous problems it has and the fact that there's literally no one to play with. There's no reason to ever play it and I would never recommend this to anyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9odzlxOpP0