Recent reviews by Gough Whitlam

crashes constantly

A decent game let down by crappy support and soul destroying load times

absolute garbage

This is by far the most impressive DLC i've ever played. It's almost an entire game worth of content on its own.

New enemies and new assets are everywhere, all the buildings, signs, animals and foliage were added just for the expansion. The story is solid, there's a nice homestead you can build up and even a new deck of cards to play with. The side quests also seem a lot more interesting than most of those in the base game.

It's like Baldurs Gate

10/10

♥♥♥♥ yeah

I'm recommending this purely because the core of multiplayer game play is quite solid and has plenty of variety without things being too OP. On that front the devs at treyarch did a good job. It also has dedicated servers which addresses the biggest problem with BO2 that pretty much killed the game.

Onto the bad
- The entire compaign
- ♥♥♥♥ lobby system
- Same ♥♥♥♥♥♥ approach to overpriced DLC maps that will split the community exactly the way it did with BO2. (because i love paying for maps that i'll never get to play don't you?)
- Promises have been made to the PC community but we all know treyarch aren't going to deliver.

Thoughts: Would be nice if we could just buy the multiplayer and not have to pay for a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ compaign no one wants/cares about. Not only would the devs same a ♥♥♥♥-ton of money but they'd put their focus where it rightly belongs. Would also be nice to do away with this console ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and actually pick what map i want to play.

♥♥♥♥ this game

The game is great and the visuals/art have held up against the test of time. It looks great in higher resultions zoomed all the way out. A lot of people i know seem to think it was a let down after AOE2 but i honestly can't imagine why, the scripted scenes are a little lame and unrealisticly dramatic at times and the squads have a habit of forming up awkwardly but neither of those hinder the experience and everything else is exactly as i'd want/expect from an age of empires game.

Fun for a while, becomes tedious though and silly research objectives can ruin the entire campaign of the unsuspecting player. As for combat it is almost perfect with the exception of a few flaws some of which are gamebreaking.

The targetting can be completely retarded at times, eg; a clearly visible unit with 56% chance to hit not in cover with 115 aim while another unit blocked completely by a wall with a 100% chance to hit. Sometimes you cant even target the your enemies even though your position in cover is perfect, it's really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ annoying when you set the battlefield the way you want, predict your enemies movements perfectly and then cant even target them for no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason what so ever. Simple tasks such as movement sometimes dont register or sends your character at a random position straight towards the enemy because you didnt realise you actually clicked on the roof. Finally there's a distinct lack of psuedo random chance that really ♥♥♥♥♥ things up.

Most of the above i strongly believe is a result of the game being designed for consoles.

As for the good, when none of the above occurs i'd say its the best modern strategy game around. Upgrades are meaningful but not overpowering, you need to find a balance in the way you spread your budget across tech, research, aircraft, satellites and facilities in order to succeed, theres a solid variety of classes with generally a few build options for each, nearly all of which i'd consider viable. Effectively making use of different team comps when your strongest soldiers are wounded can be a real challenge sometimes. Also having loot dependent on how many captives you take or corpses you dont destory (with explosives) opens up considerable bonuses for those that take the extra step in planning their battles.

8/10 (Would be a 10 without ♥♥♥♥♥♥ consolised menus and controls)