Recent reviews by Doomer

What more could you want?

Removing auto explore instead of allowing us to set a “pls don’t cross boarders” option? Yeah it’s time to look at Civ 6.


1. The AI hates you and is incapable of forgiveness
2. You can just buy out City States and win through proxy warfare
3. Science & diplomatic victories were rigged in the AI's favour only stalled through military intervention.

So I booted up Civ 6. Chose the Inca, Prince difficulty, world map, realistic starting locations and I aimed for a diplomatic victory.
I achieved it. That was a pleasant surprise.


The game actively deters combat. It does that by having diplomacy be an in-game currency not solely tied to city state occupation/alliances like in Civ 5. Brilliant.
The inclusion of natural disasters and disaster relief efforts is fantastic. You're rewarded victory points for helping other players and that gives you a lot of flexibility in boosting your end goal progress.
The tech tree has been split into Three. Civics (Economic & political buffs) Technology & Programs.
You want to go to Mars? Research the tech, speed it up with civics, then you accomplish the mission by setting a single settlement to the program leaving the rest of your empire & research tree unaffected. Based. Love it.
War Mongering is GONE. The AI will no longer switch to permanent hostilities against you over a boarder skirmish three thousand years ago. There is a grievances system, it’s a tangible resource, and you can even justify military conflicts to reduce the total of grievances earned through war.
Just want to take back a single city? There is an option for that. War goals. Then through donations and alliances you can actively reduce the post war grievances and forge a renewed positive relationship. Chefs kiss.
Spies can be used to sabotage victory process and they're a buildable unit. No more having Ramesses just win unannounced or be stuck with only two spies due to poor early game decisions.
There is a rumour system so you can keep track of the other’s players progress and adapt accordingly.
Cities that rebel become independent nations, and rebellions can be stopped through the assignment of a governor/occupation. This means that when cities rebel against the AI its free real estate.

The happiness system is now per city. Not your whole empire. Blessed be you can engage in damage control if your citizen management skills aren’t up to scuff.
YOU CAN BRIBE AND TRADE WITH BARBARIANS! Huzzah! You can pay them to ignore you, hire units from them or pay them to attack a specific player on the down low.
YOU CAN DIRECTLY CONTROL ALLIED CITY STATE UNITS IN WAR! ... For 30 turns after you pay a considerable amount of money. But still, you can actively open additional fronts during conflict and offset your own weaknesses rather than fully committing to a war economy.
This all makes alternate victory conditions viable, not just conquest. 10/10.


You can't build roads. That took a while to adjust too. They're auto built by traders now.
Workers are consumable. They can repair things indefinitely but can only build new buildings 2-3 times.
There is a city building mechanic now, structures replace tiles, so early game keep an eye on your food because you can absolutely build yourself into starvation.
Units are more robust, harder to kill but take considerably more resources to make compared to Civ 5. Upgrading is the way to go. If you’re an opportunistic capitalist the purchase price for units’ scales with the era. You want mechanised infantry in the information era? $2500+ lol
Giant Death Robot? $7000. Hope you have a strong economy.

Nukes are a multistep process, not impossible but you’re looking a 100+ turns on normal to build up your initial arsenal from research to completion.

The whole spies being able to sabotage victory goals addition? Enjoy having your spaceport repeatedly sabotaged.


Jumping from Civ 5 none of the old reliable tactics work, you can’t rig the great person system at the start of the game, you no longer get direct unit buffs from the ideology tree, games are slower to start. Zombies must be disabled by default- that was weird.

But I enjoyed my first play though, it’s the first time in years I haven’t been forced down the path of universal conquest just to save time.
Looking forward to my next game on King difficulty, going to aim for a science victory next time.

Looking at the state of Civ 7? Six might be the last good Civilisation game and that’s just downright depressing.
Not the best, but when the Devs took away gameplay features to “stream line” Civ 7- going so far as to pick historically dubious faction leaders like it’s a Netflix’s Cleopatra to appeal to the none existent Concord audience things only go downhill from here.

This is it, the last stop of the franchise as the recognisable high bar of accessible economic and military sims.

You just have to look past the atrocious cartoon caricature art style and pry yourself away from a “War is inevitable” mindset.
My diplomatic victory? Only 7.7% of players have ever achieved it. '-_-

This game was never going to be a runaway success, It’s design as a tactical action shooter left it firmly in the shadow of the unreleased X-com: Alliance. An FPS Squad shooter slated for 2001. But releasing this near simultaneously with Enemy Unknown was a detrimental mistake that buried this game.
Which is a shame, because its not bad- despite a few questionable design choices.


Ahem. If you check out the steam discussions many will complain the AI is underwhelming, which it half-true. The companions are lobotomised, until you get them to level 5. Then they become responsive and more importantly have enough health to not immediately keel over & die to every encounter.
Any orders you direct to your squad are immediately carried out, they even change texture to illustrate they’re following your commands. Their actions are queued and each class has their own set of unique abilities all designed to synergise.
Support casts Disrupt, you use the ability levitate, then Recon uses Critical strike.
Congrats!
You just killed everything except for a Muton or Sectopod. If you time it right.

Commands are done through a proto Fallout 4 VATS system where time slows down, and there is even a mass effect dialogue wheel for interacting with characters. It’s neat.

The squad is limited just to three which sucks since the player counts as a unit.
Mind control is a late game action which really adds tactical variety. Deployable drones, Turrets and Silacoid’s all work surprisingly well.
The combat is satisfying once you level up your roster of companions. Don’t worry about the permadeath, you can simultaneously send new recruits off to do automated missions as you play which levels them up.
A Total party kill is easily replaceable with no disadvantage, just customise the new squad to look like the old.
By the mid game I didn’t need to micromanage my companions anymore, they could tank most things, the AI automatically avoids grenades to the point they’ll never be hit. It’s nice… You just have to get them to level 5 because the starting health pool and their lack of abilities really screws with the AI’s capability to dynamically react.
These soldiers were lobotomised in the early game, they do get better.


You will never fight more than two mutons until the final level, you will only encounter a maximum of two Sectopod’s, only a handful of optional side missions have Sectoid’s swam you on mass and the Outsiders and all their variants can be managed systematically. Difficulty has no bearing on the mechanics.
It just nerfs your abilities and turns everything into a bullet sponge if you raise it.
Whilst I completed it on Commander difficulty, I did replay a little bit on novice and the early game was more enjoyable. The spawns didn’t change, only the enemie’s health.
Call me old fashioned but a Muton shouldn’t have more health than a Sectopod, quadrupedal tank. But on commander oh boy they do.
There is no intended difficulty unlike in classic X-com or Enemy unknown. Play around with it.
Find a comfortable balance between your damage output and the enemy’s strength.


It's no secret that a bunch of X-Com fans rejected Two & Chimera Squad because it betrayed the core themes of the franchise.
The indomitable human spirit adapting and overcoming Alien, Lovecraftian and interdimensional threats. A rag tag group of rainbow resistance warriors isn’t X-com.
The idea that we’re in waters so uncharted that despite have an entire facility, bureau, military or even a full-on megacity at your disposal. And you’re still on the backfoot is X-Com. It’s the best of the best having to rise beyond their limitations to save humanity. It shouldn’t be a plucky underdog story.
It’s a war of attrition between the best & brightest and the horrors of the uknown.

The Bureau, X-Com declassified gets this. It understands the necessity of having an established facility which is impressive considering there is zero research or base management.

Everyone around you is a highly trained professional from various background selected to defend humanity. It’s X-Com with a little more personality and a stronger than average narrative.
Is it a good narrative?
Eh, it has major pacing issues. There are only 7 mainline and 7 optional missions. But it doesn’t playout as predictably as the classics or Enemy Unknown does, someone was having fun writing this and whilst its brevity takes away from the intended emotional impact…
It has more going on than most 7th gen shooters.


A lot of people state this game doesn’t run on windows 11.
I have the dreaded 24H2 build and it runs perfectly. First time booting the game did take several minutes but every start up afterwards was immediate.
I’m running an Integrated RTX 3050 4gb, hardly cutting edge stuff for the 2020’s and the game ran with out a single crash.
The cutscenes are pre-recorded in 720p with some terrible compression. It looks bad.

There is full controller support right out of the box, plays well with my 3rd party Xbox One controller. No issues.
The texture work is surprisingly great, you can read almost all the chalkboards, posters and graffiti present in the environments. It adds to the conspiracy latent atmosphere the game is striving for.


For $2 of $5 it’s a fun little distraction, it’s hardly the betrayal Spoony [Godspeed my sweet prince, find the help you need] led me to believe it was back in 2012.
It’s far from the worst entry in the franchise.
Sure, if Alliance was playable this would be a redundant entry (Unless you really liked the cold war aesthetic) but as some one who brought this after sinking 150+ hours into Enemy within in the space of two weeks, yeah this has the X-Com spirit I yearn for.

10-15 Hours of gameplay, if you get the DLC then I could see 20 at a push. There is no new game plus or randomly generated missions everything in this game was purposely designed which is something of a lost art now-a-days.

I will add the marketing for this game did it no favours, like seriously. This isn’t a bad game it’s just that everything surrounding it, including its marketing absolutely betrayed it. Heh. I guess there was betrayal after all.

Its a walking simulator Some one got filtered before building the racetrack, firing ranges or reaching the Distro south of Lake knot city

I had already experienced the game previously on the PS5, but I only got as far as South Knot city. My [ex]wife hated the fact I would construct roads as I went along. She wanted me to just rush through the game. After finally completing it I know this is a game that can not be rushed.
You would completely miss out on the experience which is Death Stranding.

I knew I loved this game by Episode 7, the game play loop of delivering materials to characters who all have their own evolving stories [read your mail for the love of God] is down right therapeutic.
Despite this game having lots of horror & combat, it's my comfort game. I would unironically live in this world. That said-
Episodes 9-through-13 threw me through a loop.
Up until then you're free to play the game as your own pace. No urgency. You can prioritise what ever missions you want, just ignore the story and do side quests galore.
Then when plot hits the game shifts gears, requiring you to speed from locations and things become extremely combat orientated. Walking sim? Sure, every walking sim has three different rocket launchers with three forms of ammunition.
And that's without spoiling the surprise that awaits you at South Knot city. I implore you to stick with the game if the initial tutorial of the East coast frustrated you. The game has so much more going on mechanically than juts keeping your balance and avoiding BT's.

But this shift in the games focus really impacted my experience and left me frustrated at the last eleventh hour change to a more generic game play loop. Boss fights not withstanding. It's not often I get to engage in virtual wrestling & boxing back-to-back in a "walking simulator".
Thankfully episode 14 was a massive return to form, it reinvigorated my love for the game despite the aspects I had become disenfranchised with.
Episode 15, now that is hiding something special. Something that made the whole experience click. That it was all worth it, no. It was all essential for my appreciation of this one moment of unbridled beauty in an otherwise apocalyptic struggle against extinction.

Are the character names dumb? No, not if you look at it from the perspective of a none-English speaker who thinks using foreign words are cool.
Is it confusing? No, not in the slightest. The narrative is just heavily skewed to the final episodes. Everything is explained, if you read the mail and data logs to a obsessive degree.
Does it hold your hand? Yes, but there are three distinct moments of immersive gameplay which fly in the face of all of the messages & directions you receive upon high throughout the rest of the campaign.
Is it hard? Depends, are you going to use lethal force? Because if so good luck! Your actions have consequences.

I've never experienced a game with such a sense of community and collaboration. You should definitely play this online, it's a single player game but once an area joins the UCA (This is the driving plot point) you get to access all the structures built by other players, them to your developments & you can interchange weapons, cargo, supplies & likes as and when you wish.
It's a single player game where you're never alone. I simply adore it. It makes me want to boot up the game to ensure other players have a good experience so I repair and upgrade structures because when ever I get a notification that other players have donated resources to my structures it hits me in the feels.

I probably will play this for a little longer just to keep on keeping on.

If any of my ramblings sound appealing buy it, play it. Stick with the game until you reach South Knot city if you feel its too slow in drip-feeding you new content the game is a slow burn until the building catches fire and everyone panics in the aforementioned final episodes. After which things return to normality.

I've never had a favourite game, but I do now.
The Death Stranding is beautiful.

Oh, from one porter to another here is a free tip. The first prepper. Yeah remember that name? When you meet him you'll need to rest in between completing his orders or he won't award you any stars. Delivering in bulk isn't effective. Hopefully I just saved you from a hour or two of frustration.

Yet sadly this is not the best entry of said franchise. It is however an extraordinarily good game & this is a perfect remake.

Plug in a controller once the main menu starts, the game will detect it.
If you start the game with a controller plugged in, unplug it at the main menu & plug it back in. The game will detect it.
It's crazy old school, but it works.

Despite a popular misconception you do actually control Lagi woops I mean the Blue Dragon. You in fact need to do this to dodge projectiles and environmental obstetrical. However lets not fool ourselves, you don't get to control every aspect of the Dragon.
You can pitch up & down, yaw left & right, slow down & speed up.
But in the end you're riding a beast, a pure type. It on a journey and whilst you can encourage it. You are a passenger. It's not going to turn around or dive bomb at your behest.

My play through on steam took 0.8 hours, Normal difficulty, with an 88.0% total accuracy rating, Single death on level 4.
Now a lot of that originates from decades of muscle memory, this is a near perfect remake. But Sega is asking for $20 for what equates to 45 minutes of game play.
You do unlock a new game plus upon finishing the game on hard [access to the shadow menu] and the photo mode is intuitive. But unless you're out on a mission to create content, this is a hour long game. Two-to-three if you're a new player as it runs of a lives system and if you run out of lives its a restart from level 1.... Don't fret there are only 6 levels.

The game is pretty, sure it a Unity game but the art style has been carried over from the classic games flawlessly .
Yet if I'm being objective its less visually impressive then Orta from 2002.
Now bare in mind Orta could be considered the most graphically impressive original Xbox game ever published, whilst this was built to run at 60fps on the Nintendo Switch. Its a beautiful game, but it doesn't aspire for the uncanny valley, photo realistic look of Orta.
This was done to facilitate a perfect representation of what the Saturn original would look like not bound to 320x224, no redesigns or liberties were taken. It's not a AAA masterpiece but its the best adaptation anyone could have asked for. The soundtrack remains untouched from the original too, same with the dialogue and all of the cutscenes are beat for beat perfect.

This IS the gold standard for a video game remake.

I purchases this day one when it launched on the Nintendo Switch, only the lack of physical copy prevented me from pre-ordering the thing.
The day one launch had performance issues, Joycon stick controls felt stiff which all but required the use of the gyro aim & some times the lock on would be ineffective when fighting certain bosses.
These were all fixed & patched out on the Switch within two weeks.
The steam launch is flawless, none of these issues are present within the game.
Why did I pay $25 for this at launch?
Because the Saturn is my favourite console, I've played the original Dragoon trilogy on physical hardware, even Saga/Azel [although that was a burnt copy] along with Orta for the Xbox. My current Saturn is modded with Fenrir. A Micro SD Card replacement for the optical drive and I still boot her up from time-to-time. I wholeheartedly believe the Saturn is a misunderstood gem & THIS is its defining franchise of that console.
Supporting this remake was something I was morally compelled to do as a Saturn nutcase.

The dream for many was to support this & then hope to see a remake of Panzer Dragoon II: Zwei. Saga/Azel will NEVER be remade, Skies of Arcadia is higher up on the pipe dream list of Sega RPG re-releases. But there was a real hope that Zwei would receive some love. After all it is the better game of the two original rail shooters- and this already recieved a PC Port back in the 90's & a Xbox port hidden within Orta as an unlockable.
This should have been a stepping stone to a superior sequel.
But it's been four years. This remake stands alone as a miracle, the almost isolated celebration of Sega's glory days in Japan [Where the Saturn outsold the N64] and it darkest hour in the west. It's on sale for $2 on G2A, whilst I implore you purchase it on steam, the asking price is too high for the content provided for a none fan to just jump in.

Please play and appreciate this classic.

So I brought this at launch... For the Team Fortress 2 cosmetics. Look it was a different time.

12 years later I finally felt like playing X-Com. Clocked in almost 150 hours in just under a month.

It's extremely good. Highly recommend an Xbox controller as its surprisingly intuitive & comfy.

Enemy Within is a mandatory purchase. It adds so much more variety.

This may be the best DLC of any game ever, the base game feels like a glorified tutorial after installing it.

Enemy Within is the complete experience.

EXALT could have been fleshed out a bit more, they keep pace with your genetic modification, amour & weapons for the first 1/3rd of the game- then stall. They'll prove a major challenge if you want to try & rush them, allowing them to linger will result in you gaining a definitive advantage once Plasma weaponry is researched.

The unique scenario missions are great, I would have loved a whole game focused on the Fisherman horror level. It's a great back door pilot into a potential Terror of the Deep remake that was never produced.

Oh yeah.
X-Com 2 assumes you failed Enemy Within, the franchise ran with the bad ending.
You may feel burnt if you ever played the original trilogy from the 90's. Lord knows I am.

This is the last true X-Com game. Tonally speaking.
It's the indomitable human spirit adapting & thriving against a relentless enemy. We aren't underdogs on the run. We're defenders of our home. F*** X-com 2, mechanically its great. Narrative its, to quote a long lost friend. A Betrayal.

It's Sony Vegas Pro in all but name.
All the features you expect are still present, although they may be obfuscated by the "user friendly" simplified user interface.
It covers all the basics, is on par with Final Cut's sabilities, will suffice until you eventually advance onto After Effects.


No .MKV Support.
Quicktime requirement.
It cannot render vertical/mobile videos above UHD/2K- Which is expected with the software's age
When rendering the default output settings you chose will over ride your preferred settings- so read what you're clicking.
It's not steam family friendly, the activation is bound to your steam ID.

Mobile apps such as YouCut honestly have this beat on accessibility, but for old school editors like myself it's a familiar & comfy experience.

One of the rare few games where 500+ hours of game time still labels you as a filthy casual.

10/10

I do wish mods didn't disable achievements.