Recent reviews by NickyJ

EmergeNYC is a stunning example of all promises, no deliveries. I became aware of this game soon after it was released 5 years ago, but on the advice of the negative reviews at the time, I didn't buy it. I showed it to a friend, and eventually he did. Two copies, one for him and one for me. I feel horrible for not forcing him to return my copy at the time.

The ideas behind the game are great. Fire trucks, ambulances, boats, helicopters, driving around in the city responding to calls. What sets it apart is that it tries to go beyond the arcadey point mouse, shoot water that other games tend to have. What also sets it apart is that it completely fails at going beyond it. Every tool you pick up has a tendency to disappear, most hoses and up towering into the skybox when you drop them. I can honestly say that in 7 hours of playing, I can count on one hand the number of times I had quit the game. The rest of the times the game crashed before I could quit.

That was the state of the game when I was last able to load a map, which was last year. I can't do that anymore. This latest update freezes and then crashes during the loading screen of each map. Allowances can be made for a struggling developer. Everybody loves an underdog. But after five years, buying this game isn't funding an underdog; It's burning money. As a good firefighter ought to tell you, don't burn your money.

I poured hundreds if not thousands of hours into Civ III before I got it on Steam. It's a classic game that still stands strong, though there are some odd graphics problems from time to time considering it was made to run on Windows XP.

If you buy it, do yourself a favor and download Rise and Rule Revisited, a wonderful mod from CivFanatics: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/rise-and-rule-revisited-epic-mod.549166/

RARR adds countless new units, nations, and technologies to the game. It adds a lot more variety to a simplistic game but fun game.

Coming from Nascar Racing 2003 Season, I can't say that the racing is more realistic or in-depth than the 16 year old version of a Nascar simulation. That said, it's a great plug-and-play Nascar game that's slightly more arcade-ish than simulator for when you don't want to spend lots of time modding or configuring it. With a career mode, it's easy to pour time into.

Aside from details like heavy damage being too easily repairable and not being able to choose the lane you restart in as the leader, there are two major complaints I have:

1. The garage section where you tune the car. For dummies like me, the simple slider for the car ranging from very tight to very loose is a gift that keeps on giving. But the game does give players a chance to fine-tune the cars with exact settings for tire pressure, camber, springs, etc... The problem is that the tuning descriptions are missing. WHY? Why did you not include a couple lines of text to say what each adjustment does?

2. I use a XBox 1 gamepad to race and the gamepad controls in the game are awful. It's slow, it's unresponsive, it's like trying to steer a paddle boat. If I tell the game to use steering wheel options for the controller, it's not perfect but it's playable. I had to go to Youtube to find that solution. Nobody should need to find an obscure Youtube video to trick the game into giving useable controls for a gamepad.

I give the game a 6/10. It would be an easy 8/10 if it fixed its controller settings and included garage tuning descriptions.

Several hundred hours later into the game, I have two different ratings for the game:

Singleplayer: 10/10. The story is superb. It's linear enough to truly be a story, but with an open world that lets you choose when you want to move on with the story. The moral system gives you a fair amount of influence over how you look at the story and the main character. The open world ranges from beautiful snowy mountain peaks to swamps and deserts. Many interesting jobs and people are found in those lands, all of them unique but not so outlandish to be annoying (looking at you, GTA).

Multiplayer: 5/10. The open world has lots to do, but 80% of it is locked behind a pay-or-grind wall covered with suggestions to pay. Each set of skills you can use (bounty hunting, trading, moon shining, etc.) is unlocked through gold bars that you can spend a week or two grinding for, or you can TOTALLY JU$T $HELL OUT $OME MONEY, JU$T CLICK HERE FOR YOUR PA$$. They're cool once you get them, but it gets boring fast if you don't have a solid group of friends to form a posse and play with. Server stability is also lacking. Not as horrid as it once was, but the game has inconvenient moments of crashing after taking your ingame money but before giving you possession of what you bought. Too bad lol, guess you'll have to buy that train ticket again.

Oh yeah, the singleplayer story is about working for a gang of thieves who rob banks and trains, right? Well you can't do that online. But you can buy the content where some nature hippie gets mad at you for killing animals when you hunt for your traders business. Priorities.

30 hours into the game, I give it a 7/10. The graphics are gorgeous, the music and sound all fit perfectly, and the story is entertaining and immersive. Its very much a story-led game, swinging more to the side of Bioware's Mass Effect and Dragon Age than to Bethesda's Skyrim and Fallout. (It even includes reputation ratings, similar to Mass Effect's Paragon-Renegade system.) There are certainly things to do in the open world, but the story is the meat and bones.

There are two parts that keep it from being a 10/10:

• -1 for annoying bugs. Sometimes the game will crash after a conversation or fast-travel, losing significant time spent since the last autosave. I'm stingy and don't like using my limited saves (Savior Schnapps drinks), but sometimes I'll need them if I've gone a long time without an autosave.
  
  
• -2 for the combat. The system is a clunky mix of Mount and Blade's different attack directions (6 in KC:D) and the target lock-on of Assassin's Creed. The system works decently for duels, but is frustrating against groups of 2 or more. Your character will always focus on one person in front of him; you can change who you focus on, but it will always be on one target. There is no third-person mode like there is in Assassin's Creed, so if someone attacks you from the side, you won't see him and it will be incredibly hard to block him, even with a shield.

With better combat and fewer crashes, this would be by far the best game I've played. Without those improvements, it's still among the best. The combat is hard at the beginning, but it's fair. You are the son of a blacksmith and you fight like the son of a blacksmith until you are taught how to really fight. The fun begins when your education begins. I'm still learning, and having a lot of fun along the way.

The game should be renamed "Achievementhunt". That's the only reason I played for more than 15 minutes.

This game is good because it is.

And it also gives me a Steam badge for this review.

And it will give me a second badge for this year.

5 years after posting this review, it's giving me a 5th badge for reviewing it.

8 years after posting, I'm getting more badges for this review.

9 years after posting, the badges. must. flow.

10 years after posting, this is giving me good mileage.