Recent reviews by LordBlade

A truly amazing tactical experience. Battletech really captures the spirit of the tabletop game. Giving you a MASSIVE amount of options in mechs, loadouts and strategies to use.

The game itself is challenging. The AI will happily punish any mistakes you make. But with caution and proper planning you can take on any mission. Just don't expect to make it out without taking some hits. This isn't as easy at the X-Com series, though it does have a lot of similarity to the strategy sections of those games. Position is vital, as is keeping your units on the move to keep your evasion boosted.

And beyond the epic combat is a rather deep mercenary sim, where you manage your merc company. Recruiting pilots, gathering and maintaining your mechs, picking ideal loadouts for various missions, picking who to work with and who to annoy, finding the right balance of jobs to keep yourself afloat without having half the galaxy gunning for your hide. There are various random events that occur on your ship as well, as cramming a bunch of pilots into a tight space for months at a time isn't without its incidents. Dealing with morale, personality clashes as well as basic problems like system failures and such can be tricky.

Graphics wise the game's quite good. It's not the prettiest game out there, but the mechs are well designed and detailed, the levels are intricate, and the explosions have some night oomph to them. The music and voice acting is also of good quality.

All in all, if you're a fan of Battletech, turn based strategy games, or just giant robots, this is definitely a must have for your collection.

Dawn of War the MOBA is not really worth the money.

They took all those aspects from DoW2 that people loved, like the level/RPG stats, gear management, diverse and unique units, interesting campaign with options... and threw it all away.
Now you have a basic MOBA setup, where you send endless wave of samey troops (each factions units are basically the same with a different skin, Banshees can somehow lose to Tactical Marines in melee, which shouldn't ever happen) to take down the enemy's shield/tower/core.
Except that the end game always comes down to the hero units, who much like in Heroes of the Storm or DotA, are the real power on the field. Matches are long slogs of who can kill the other's hero first and make the bigger push. There's very little tactics or strategy as was used in previous games. Now it's basically just hit them with a bigger swarm and win.

An extremely dissapointing game, with little value to it. It's no surprise that the devs basically up and abandoned it.

Another fun entry into the series.

Yes, the game has some flaws (they all do honestly), but it's still a great game overall.
The graphics are great, the music's good, the combat system is different than what we're used to, but still quite entertaining. And the new open world style is pretty decent.

Honestly the only real issue I've been having with the game is that some parts of the open world are quite empty. It feels like most things are within a short jog from the roads and towns. The further out into the wilds you get, the less there seems to be. Though it's not that big an issue as it does make sense. You're in the middle of nowhere, so you shouldn't expect to find much. :p

I've got a decent system from a few years back, and I'm running the game perfectly on max settings. So it runs great.

Total Warhammer II brings us more of the same, but that's not a bad thing. It's an overall expansion of what the original game gave us, with the ability to bring all that content in for a new combined world. The only real downside is there's a LOT of content to buy as DLC if you want to get the full experience. But if you're a Total War fan or a Warhammer Fantasy fan, this game is definitely one to look at.

Crawl is an excellent entry in the "friendship destroying game" category. Grab your friends, grab your controllers, and get ready to screw each other over endlessly.

Definitely 2017 Game of the Year material. This game takes everything that Shadow of Mordor did and improves upon it. A truly epic experience.

The combat system from the first game has been fine tuned and improved up. It's more fluid, more impactful, and the fights against the captains are even more deadly with a whole slew of new abilities to contend with. Along with that is the new and improved Nemesis system, where orcs can actually adapt to your tactics mid-battle. Trying to cheese off an orc with arrows? He has a chance of adapting and becoming arrow-proof, forcing you to change your strategy mid-fight. This vastly improves the "development" of orcs that the first game had, which was pretty much just a random crap shoot when they leveled, now letting you design some truly lethal orcs yourself.

Talion's skills themselves have been rebalanced. You won't be quite the combat god right from the start as with the last game, but you do build your way up there. The new skill system focuses on unlocking main abilities and then unlocking modifiers that add functionality to them, of which one can be active at a time. You can switch active modifiers at any time, allowing you to tweak your skillset to suit the battle.

The new inventory system rewards you with gear as you slaughter your way through the orc army. Each weapon and armor item has one of many possible bonuses, and a further bonus can be unlocked by fulfilling various requirements (such as killing enemies who are on fire, or stealth killing orcs). It's not quite Diablo levels of random loot, but the system allows for some variety (you can keep various bows, each with it's own element, depending on your needs).

The game is split up into multiple regions. Each one has a fort that you must eventually capture to conquer it. This is essentially practice for the last act of the game (the titular "Shadow War") where you will be battling for control of outposts with the enemy trying to reclaim what you have taken. The new outpost system is massively entertaining. You recruit orcs to make up your siege force and unlock various bonuses to help in the battle. Claiming an outpost is a matter of fighting through the defenses and claiming various control points within the outpost, which are guarded by captains. Once all points are owned you can challenge the warlord in command in a one on one battle... along with his grunts of course.
Once you own an outpost, you will assign orcs to the various points and again have options to help with the defense which you can unlock (such as stronger walls, special zone guards and mines).

There are online siege battles which you can do infinitely. These are not direct attacks, so you never actually harm another player, and players who siege your outposts don't affect your orcs. Instead the game essentially takes a snapshot of someone else's outpost, and imports it to your game for you to siege.
The revenge missions from the previous game return as well, where you can take on orcs that have slain other players. These missions will reward you with a special vendetta legendary set along with the regular XP and such.

Honestly the weakest point of the game is the story. It's not terrible by generic video game story standards, but it does take some massive liberties with Lord of the Rings lore. One of the main issues is Shelob being able to transform into the stereotypical "evil seductress" woman. But the story isn't really the selling point, so while it could be better, it doesn't affect the actual gameplay.

The game does have a loot box system, which naturally has been blown massively out of proportion by people who have never even played the game. There are two forms of currency, Mirian, which is earnable in game, and gold, which you need to buy with real money. Not once are you EVER forced to spend real money to purchase loot boxes to progress the game. Even the ones purchaseable with Mirian are never required to advance. And despite what the trolls might try to make people believe, there is no massive grind or any sort of imbalance put in place by the loot boxes. You're not cut off from content and nothing is hidden behind a "paywall".

Overall, this is probably one of the most fun games I've played. The challenge (especially on Nemesis difficulty) is intense. The orcs are entertaining and varied. And the gameplay is smooth and beautiful.

Definitely one of my favourite games to lose endless hours to.

The game combines many different genres into one seamless package. You have a great mix of strategy (turn based and real time), role-playing, trading, text adventure and open world exploration. The story is simple but well presented. You can dive into it with ease, or just ignore it and go explore the galaxy, coming back at your leisure.

As you play you'll earn XP to level up your pilot, allowing you to improve various skills. These affect your combat abilities, trade prices and other such things.

The main gameplay element is a turn based, top down, strategy mode, where you're flying your ship across the stars, visiting various systems, planets and space stations. It's very well balanced, with a huge assortment of equipment that you can deck your ship out in. Each ship has a varied number of slots for different equipment, along with a max amount of cargo and gear your can carry. Picking the best ship your play style, be it heroic Ranger, trader or pirate, is important. As is knowing what targets to go after and when it's best to just run away.

There are also wormholes you can dive into, which will take you to random places in the galaxy. However inside a wormhole you have to face various enemies in an action heavy top down shooter style of play, where all your weapons have their own firing styles.

But just flying around in space (as awesome as it is) isn't all the game has to offer. Going to various planets will let you take missions for the different factions. You can have simple trade missions (or just focus on trading freelance to make money), you can escort others or be asked to take someone out, you can also be sent to take on the Dominators, an evil robotic foe made up of three unique factions. There's also ground missions where you will play out real-time strategy missions, constructing your own robotic armies to repel the Dominators.

And there's my personal favourite, the text adventures. Many missions presented will give you missions that play out in a classical text adventure style. You're presented with various scenarios and have lots of options on how to proceed. These missions vary vastly, from hover bike races, to testing experimental weapons, to capturing rare creatures to pizza making competitions (I'm not kidding). They are wonderfully written and present a very fun way of handling special events. This style is also used for the prison mini-game, which basically happens any time you're arrested by one of the factions. You can be a model inmate and follow the rules, try and survive being a snitch, or try to be the Don of the prison. Along the way you'll be focusing on keeping your mind and body sharp, taking part in talent contests, cockroach races, dealing with contraband, and all sorts of varied and surprising prison activities.

Graphically the game is wonderful. The graphics are detailed and crisp, and just flying around space is an amazing visual experience. The text adventure sections have hand drawn pictures to go with them. The only part of the game that's a little more simplistic is the RTS battles.

As for sound, there's some great musical scores to the game and quite well done sound effects. There's no speech, so you don't need to worry about hearing it over whatever else is going on in the game.

As for replay value... the universe is randomly generated each time you play a new game. There will always be certain home systems and home worlds that appear, but where they are and what's around them, along with what space stations are available (which you can fund to help construct more of) will differ each time you play. Missions, ships and equipment will vary each game as well, so the course you take through the game can vary greatly. Definitely a game you can come back to again and again.

A very fun top down pixelated Roguelike.

The game itself is quite simple to play, but has a lot of depth to it. You can play the stealth role, sneak into places, crack safes, pick locks, cut your way through windows... you can also drop a cyanide pill into an air conditioner to murder everyone in the building. Never said stealthy had to be pacifistic.

Combat is super fast paced, but not all that complex. Melee is basically a lot of moving around, trying to get into range and hit the enemy and then backing off so you're not hit in return. It can be quite hectic when you've angered several NPC's at once. Guns are a lot more dangerous and require quick reflexes to try and avoid (though something like a shotgun will generally hit you regardless). All weapons have limited uses, with melee weapons breaking after a while and guns running out of ammo. A big part of the game is figuring out when combat is worth the risk.

There are various missions that you will get on each stage. These can involve stealing an item (either from a safe or an NPC directly). Rescuing prisoners. Destroying targets. Sometimes it's simple, other times you'll spend ages trying to figure out how to get around security. Completing missions earns you rewards, failing them simply ends them. To complete a stage you have to finish or fail all the missions given. Though there are sometimes secondary objectives as well.

There's a lot of characters to unlock and choose from. Each having their own strengths and weaknesses. Characters each have stats they're better or worse with, and often some sort of useful special ability, along with some quirks. Who you pick will be a big part of how your game progresses, however there will also be a lot of situations that change how you play based on items you find in game (finding a bunch of lockpicks will let your soldier put his gun aside for a while).

All in all, the game is quick and fun and has a lot of replay value (as most Roguelikes tend to). Definitely a good game to pick up for those who like the genre.

One of the best Roguelikes of all time, alongside other greats such as Nethack, Tales of Maj'Eyal and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

ADoM has a massive amount of depth and complexity, yet is still very easy to get into. It's not hard to pick up the basics, but mastery is another matter. You'll quickly learn how to survive, and more importantly learn what will pretty much guarantee a painful death.

A well detailed world to explore. A massive number of items to play with. A staggering number of enemy types. A great deal of quests. And a hell of a lot of challenge make ADoM one of the finest Roguelike experiences available.

A faithful recreation of the actual board game. If you're a Witcher fan, and enjoy good objective based board games, this is definitely one to grab.

Gameplay itself is straightforward, but there's a lot of depth and strategy involved. Deciding which quests to go after, weighing the difficulty of completing them against the points they award. Choosing what path to take, what upgrades to go for, as well as when you work with other players or to focus on yourself.

It makes for a great game to sit down with friends with. Highly recommended.