Recent reviews by LeftClickHero

Introduction
Total Warhammer, as I shall be calling it, it just easier that way, is a great unification of two franchises that just seem destined to be together. We knew this and even Creative Assembly knew this, and they absolutely wanted and needed to get this right.


Gameplay
Well first of all i'll get it out of the way, the game looks beautiful the backgrounds, to the units and how they fight and way to special effects. If you add decide to buy the optional blood pack the battle look brutal.


Now i'll explain the game in 3 distinct playing features to make this easier. Starting off with the campaign map. Here you will control your empire and armies. City building is you build the necessary buildings to recruit stronger and more elite units for all your wars, as well the commercial buildings to help fund them. There is also population buildings that help keep your people happy, and randy and start breeding to produce larger cities. Finally you need to manage physical corruption from both Chaos and Vampires turning your own lands against you and making it harder to fight on your home turf.


Land battles is where you fight for dominance in a region, vast armies clash together in bloody heaps, foots soldiers fighting tooth and nail, artillery pounding flesh and ground into dust and monstrous creatures overshadowing everything. Finally siege battles my fav. Here you either defend or siege a city to gain control over a region. Though sadly this has been vastly reduced in this title to towns with walls as well as provincial capitals. Even then don't expect the sprawling cityscapes you found in Attila, nah instead you fight inside a small part of the city with only a single wall, and that's where the vast of majority and the tide of the battle will be settled. This is by the most disappointing thing for me, as greatly enjoy holding the walls at all costs slowly and pulling back into tighter and tighter areas of movement until its back against the wall last stand in the town square.


Factions
Each faction in unique in some way, whether it be how they recruit units, how their campaign works, how they are meant to fight or how they generally feel. In other words there is an actual effort to makes these faction different to faction in previous games. Example is the Empire, these guys are the most Total War bread and butter of the game. How they play is similar to most human factions, so they an easy choice for those who are scared to enter this new universe. On the flip side is Orks who eat sleep and breed war. Their main source of income comes from raiding other factions, their happiness from fighting and even get a an army just from fighting regularly.


Finally there is the Beastmen Who are a horde of in bred creatures of chaos. Who only live to destroy the the civilised world. The point is there is a good difference between each faction and there will be a faction you certainly won't like. For me there is only two factions I legitimately find fun which are the Empire and the Dwarfs. These factions care for their units whilst other faction have a variety of units that's only purpose is to die in droves in wars of attrition or let the better units do the heavy lifting.


DLC
The big bad wolf that's come to steal everything in your wallet by releasing the games content through a drip feed. What a load of BS that the community will dish out a on regular basis.


CA have had a bad history with their DLC practice and have been burnt in the past, but yet they continue their practice to this game, and the more I think about, it works extremely well here. Hear me out before you slice my throat open. First of all because they are attempting to make every race extremely unique in play styles whether it be in racial features, army compositions, campaign differences or how the whole faction operates, there’s going to be a faction that you just won't enjoy at all.


Take me an an example, I enjoy the classic feel of Total War, so am instantly drawn to the empire and the dwarfs, but I hate horde factions, so why would I think about buying the Chaos or beastmen factions? Not only would I dislike playing them, it would be a waste of money. Do I need to buy all the factions to enjoy myself. NOO!!!!!! You don't need all the factions if there’s 3 you hate and will never play, and you don't even need to buy them to fight them, they are already in game ready to face you. All you do is pay for the privilege of playing them in both single and multiplayer.


Okay so there isn't just faction DLC, CA are kind enough to bolster up some of the faction unit roster a bit by offering lord packs, which contain Lords obviously but also some new units, and units of renown which are just unique looking units with better stats, but they are part of the lore of the faction so it makes them special.


Think of this game like a Subway sandwich shop, you get the bread which is the base game, then you pick and choose what fillings (factions) you want in to eat (play as). That way you didn't buy anything you didn't like or hate, and have a fully enjoyable experience.


Conclusion
I know i've talked a lot of good for the game, I mean there is some bad but for me they are minor, besides the the siege battles being severely reduced to a small box. The game is fast, and I mean fast, 12k soldiers on the fields would last upwards of 20 mins or more, with clear battle lines. Here 15 mins at most. Fights go quick, am not surprised because of the sheer destruction some units can put out but the largest fights can be clustered and chaotic with no sense of slowing down.


Besides some other details, the game is surprisingly well made, with little to no bugs even at release which is very surprising even for CA. The game has a multitude of DLC yeah but i've already talked about that. There is going to be two more games that will connect to this game and act as a standalone game, this world will only get bigger, with the elves to the west, tomb kings to the south, ogres to the west and eventually the demons of chaos and end times will destroy the world once again.

I bought this game for one reason, it was making my freind rage in frustration and I, a masochists, wanted in. He over selled it in my view. Sure the game is hard at times, but its not Dark Souls or any moba inducing rage hard.

I managed to complete the game in about 4 hours in a single sitting, though while I heard people abosulute fail at it like complteing the final level take them an hour or more, I fail to see how they can take so long. Now I just try to beat my old times, beat some of the most skilled players times and maybe try out some of the custom maps when people start getting REALLY good at making them.


The game itself though is amazing fun, such a simple design and mechanic stay on the trucks, dont touch the floor. Again so simple, but when the trucks start doing crazy things like being flipped over, smacked off the course, blown upand then you have to start doding lasers, pipes wooden boards and more it becomes iincredibally crazy. Even more so when start accomplishing some of the speed run times.

The worlds the game are set in are beautiful, each offering their own obstacles unquie to their individual themes. The game itself is incredibally low poly and and the textures dont appear to be demanding so any rig could run it. Though I do reccomend a good cpu for the amount of stuff on screen may bog down soem old ones.


Not much to say really, its a short sweetr sweet, that has it tough moments but if you got good reactions and discovers the routes and tricks you can beat the game in about 4 hours give or take. With the inclusion of a level editor I can only imagine some of the "kick you in the teeth, help you up, then bash you down again" difficulty levels the evil community can create. The price is a tough point but i got my moneys worth.

This review doesn't go into detail of any of the DLCS, they are reviewed separately here:
Automatron - http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/id/PlatinumClient/recommended/435870
Wasteland Workshop - http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/id/PlatinumClient/recommended/435880
Farharbour -
Contraptions Workshop -
Vault-Tec Workshop -
Nuka World -

INTRODUCTION
Fallout 4, it's one of the games that had almost Half Life 3 speculations of hype of whether or it was going to be made. We didn't realise it was, at least those of us who didn't scour the internet for any shred of info, until Bethesda god, Tod Howard, dropped it on us at E3 2015, almost 7 full years after fallout 3 was released.

Well roughly 7 years of development, a treasury of mod inspiration and what do we get? An okay game. Am not going to lie I find Fallout 4 many times better in terms of design, but somehow I don't feel things like I did when I played Fallout 3, or felt like I was part of shaping the future like in New Vegas. Here I can find some great stories and characters, and much larger world with different environments from the suburbs and towns in the north, to the swamps in the south. I have huge amounts of fun playing this game, but it's quite fundamentally different from the previous titles, I feel like I can't associate with them emotionally. It's kind of what like Fallout 3 did, it's so different from Fallout 2 it made many people angry.

Story
It’s a Bethesda game, am right in saying it's no Dragon Age or Witcher epic story. But for the most part i've discovered that the story makes a lot of people question a series of arguments that officials still can't decide on in real life. Bit of backstory, the main problem that you, and many of the NPC’s that you meet, have is the institute and their Synths. These Synths are indistinguishable from a human, they’re much like the T1000 type terminators, but can run but instead of hunting people, blend perfectly in society, or even outright replace individuals. Where the Institute says they’re just tools to accomplish their goals, another group will say they are an abomination to mankind that are a worse threat than the super mutants.

Then there is another group that sees what the Institute has created life that is leashed, and wants to free it. For all intents and purposes a synth is a machine, but yet it acts out emotions, exhibits free will, develop its own wants and desires and above all wants the natural right to just exist and be alive.

There’re 4 groups to beat the game with, each has its own ideology on the subject of artificial life, it is it alive or not. Are synths human or just merely another construct. Where one sees them as tools, one an abomination, another slaves, and the final one doesn't really care. Because of this, there still talks on the questions I have just raised and which end is the good end to this day on the Steam forums.

Gameplay
Over its predecessors, Fallout 4 is regarded as the most streamlined title to date. Whether this bad or good is up for debate on the individual. The most notable change from it older titles is the smoother gunplay, and I won't deny this is fantastic change and what's makes the game more enjoyable as weapons actually feels great shooting rather than just using laser accurate hip fire we had in the past. You will have to play this and older games titles to understand why it's better, or worse up to you. Gun recoil is consistent, accuracy and damage is balanced, there is a peak mechanic which can be easily missed.

Leveling your character up has alway been great center point for the franchise evolving your character from start to finish, seeing them go from hobo, to the destroyer of all is immensely satisfying which won't realise until after you start a new game and start from scratch again after many hours on one save. Here they again changed the formula, instead of having hundred long possible perk list they instead organised it all in lovely chart style table, with your special along the top and your special level down the left side. With over hundred perks to choose from with requirements for level and special level there is plenty of room for class building. A lot of people don't like this system though I can't understand why, it includes all of the perks found in the previous two titles , i think one reason is you can get all of the perks, though this will take a very long amount of time as there is total 256 possible perks to be unlocked.

Settlement building is among the popular of nexus mods, and is also the most requested feature players wish was added to the main game. So when it is finally added in Fallout 4 you would expect people to be happy. Well yes, but this is a double edged sword. On one hand you have this settlement building that while can be the biggest pain to place and loo0k great, it will help you in your adventures by providing safe haven, safe storage, shops and workbenches, and doctors. With over 20 places to build in placed all over the map, with careful planning, you should be no more than 5 - 10 mins away from your nearest home. But to get access to all this you have to go through never ending repeatable radiant quests, clearing places in, rescuing people among the things.

Customization
At the heart of a Fallout game is the protagonists and the amount of customization you can do to them. Fallout 4 immediately shows off its all new character creation screen. Gone are the days of sliders and options, now we have drag and slide facial parts, much like how the Sims now handles character making. With the new modified graphic engine you have a myriad of options to play with, being to create a diverse range of characters, some people going as far creating beavus and buthead, Mr. Bean and more.

Dressing up your Sole Survivor has also been expanded with dozens of clothes to choose. From Pre-War garments, to the post war armour padded outfits. On top of these choices is f4’s fantastic modular over armour system. This is basically you get small pieces of metal, leather, or combat gear, slap it over your clothes and gain some some more protection, on top of your items of clothing. These armour pieces can be further customised to suit a variety of situations, from high carrying capacity, reduce all kinds of dmg, reducing the armours weight, and it making it more stealthy.

Weapons have also been giving the customization overhauls, from new vegas lackluster option, to the all new one here. Most weapons will have at least 4 options, different barrels, receivers, muzzles and scopes and more. With a good amount of choice in each category you can turn that pipe pistol into D.I.Y LMG with a long range scope shooting high caliber rounds. Or turn that plasma pistol into a Flame thrower.

Conclusion
Ah Steam word limit, how do I hit so quickly :(? Sadly I am unable to talk more the game in more detail, but I have provided the broad spectrum what what the game offer. You can everything else by looking online.

But outside this, I have more than enjoyed this game, with its extensive mod support, DLCS that provide some amazing modding platforms and offer extreme potential. This game can easily suck you in for 60 hours at least for basic playthrough, and on survival with max amount of exploration, well for me i have put over 178 overs into that particular save and shows so sign of stopping soon.

Personally i'm neutral about this DLC but steam is so annoying and won't let me give it a mixed rating :/ But since i don't have any major negative points towards this pack It going to be a positive

Okay well first and foremost, this DLC does is not required to get max amount of enjoyment out of the main game, instead this DLC merely enhances some gameplay choices.

What I mean by this, it offers nothing spectacular that is game changing, at its most basic form it's a trophy animal hunting DLC. Its main attraction is the ability to build cages in which to trap all of the Commonwealth's nasty critters, from cats to raiders to deathclaws. Using some simple building materials, and bits lure, like caps and ammo for raiders and meat for a yao gai, you can trap said animal release them and kill for their meat.

Now this is pretty nifty if you regularly use the bonuses from eating crafted items, and this a very reliable way of attaining said meat and components. But on top of this, using a special item you can pacify the trapped creature and make it tamed, yes your settlements can now have friendly deathclaws that will help in your defence. Also on top of this you can create your own arena, it's a bit of pain to setup right but once done it can be easily repeated with any number of animals, people and different combination of the two teams.

The pack does also offer a wealth of new decoration items for your settlements, new signs, pictures, wall mounts, power options, new water supply and much more to make your settlement seem more real and look more well built and lived in.

Okay now for the points of argument. Number 1, i've checked the Nexus everyday since the game's release and though there are a few mods where you can setup very basic arenas, they mostly require you to enter some command code and for some like me i don't want to use the commands, or it does not do the way Bethesda does, by which I mean kind of lacking in the realistic side of things. Besides with this DLC, should a more creatures mod come along adding 100 different new enemies to hunt and kill, this DLC pack may actually prove useful in hunting the more elusive ones for their valuables which makes this DLC a very good modding platform for others to add more detail and content into their creations. To put things into perspective, if this entire pack was done by one guy and modded it, it will probably one the best mods for a long while, but since Bethesda made it, it's all “should been in the base game, should've been free, modders somehow and have done it better but i won't provide examples as evidence, we can do all this with console commands”. Double standards in the gaming community nowadays.

Number two the price range for me in England, when it's not on sale it's £4 reasonably cheap it's the equivalent of a meal at mcdonalds. So you won't be putting a dent in your account. I got my worth out of it, use all of the items added in most of my settlements.

Finally my main gripe is, you can only build the cages at settlements, while the DLC offers the chance to be some sort of hunter, you can't actually set lures and traps for critters in the wild, but at the same time I can understand this I will forget about the traps i've set, but at the cost of immersion slightly I will let it slide.

All in all me personally I feel like I never needed to use the animal cages, i mostly wanted more building options in settlements, it's a flavour DLC just adding some more metagaming things to do when you are bored of the constant fighting in the Boston city ruins, and sometimes it's nice to watch 3 Deathclaws you captured, take on some of your settlers in the arena.

Automatron is the first DLC release for Fallout 4, because of which there were a huge amount of hype and speculation on what it offers. From the trailer you can get the basics of all the content this pack will add. It offers pretty much everything the game needs imo, brand new companion of who dont give a damm on what you do so no "I dont like that Blue, thats naughty". Shut up piper am stealing this Mini Nuke. It also offers 2 new dungeons both are very clutter filled, and loot filled, and the final boss dungeon is the largest and most difficult in the game, for me at least. We also have a new raider gang called the Rust Devils, who will occasionaly pop up in the wastes, along with their custom built robots and their new modular armour made out of scavenged robot parts.

There is also new armour, some new PA pieaces, new weapons, and a variety of new robots to encounter, but obviously the main big deal of this DLC is the abillity to create and customize your own robot. Now to clear some things up. People were mad when this was released and not because of the price to content ratio, which ill admit is quite stretching if you dont take its full use. But mostly they were mad because modders have already added these things to the game -_-. No they didnt, sure in the past there was a mod called RobCo Certidied for New Vegas, and while it does offer similar features and new unuqie ones like robot controlled animals, Automatron is the first of its kind for the game. I think people got heavily confused with mods that allow you to build preset robots in settlement building mode, robots like the protectron or Mr Gutsy. That is a mod for the game but automatron takes things to the next level.

Robot buildinng is delightfully simple and easy to do, due to the fact it uses the very simple and easy menue system of armour and weapon customization. Oh I should say to get most use out of the customisation, you going to need to invest into Robotics Expert, GunSmith, Science and one or two other perk trees, this is only to maxmise your options when creating but you can easily get away with some specilising early on. Since it uses the same system as armour and weapons, what ever upgrade you select you can see the benifits it provides. Some robot parts can do singular things like increase movment speed, and some can do mutiple like bonus carry weight, more energy dmaage and more health.

Many of the robot parts unfortuantly you can not craft right away. Most parts can be found on the automatron style robots employed by the Rust Devils and the Mechanist, and many of them are leveled, so many of the sentry bot parts wont start dropping untill lvl 50+, but this is to balance it out, and the fact most sentry bot parts for max potential requires many perks in other skills.

on top of all this, there is also a small story added on. At level 15 you will get a radio distress signal, going there you will encounter ADA under attack by mechanist bots, from here you will aquire robot crafting stating to create and customize your own robots, kill the Rust Devil boss and hunt down the Mechanist in a huge underfround factory Bunker.


To conclude this is a great feature/content pack, adding a new named companion, you own created robot companion, 2 new dungeons, small story line, new radiant quests, new enemies to fight and then some. for £8 it may be a little to stretching but after playing the game from the start with it enabled Ive managed to to get the full use out of it, since when i first bought it I rushed through it on a lvl 80 character. I seriously reccomend this pack, mostly in part for the potential modding capabillties for people to create their own robot types, am pretty sure someone has added to robots from New Vegas already, and I hope one day they will create a biological version too. A deathclaw with Mirelurk claws, i shall call him Monsiuerr Clicky.


My best Robot: sentry bot body, legs and arms, has over 600 weight capacity, two Mini Nuke launcher on her back, a explosive bullet equiped Minigun, and giant sawblade for CQC, it head it the assaultron head laser, capable of knocking vertibirds out of the sky. I call her Aveline, the battering ram

Dirty Bomb is F2P game developed by Splash Damage, the studio behind Enemy Territory, and is published by Nexon America. The game itself is full of action and is set at an incredibly fast pace. It pits 2 teams of 6-8 players against one another, one attacking and the other defending and each player must use a Merc who has varying weapons, skills and augments.

Sounds like Team Fortress 2 almost doesn't it? Well it's not,because we don't have a million weapons and hats ruining our steam inventory and meta game balancing. As good as the F2P market is locked down by TF2 and DOTA, Dirty Bomb IMO is a good competitor as it has the action, the easy to grasp controls, its quick and easy to get into the game, easy to learn hard master, as is the motif with character skill based games. But i can also understand why it's not as popular as it could be, mostly with balancing issues, an illusion of P2W and sometimes really bad matchmaking.

Gameplay
Like I have said before, the gameplay is set at a very fast paced, but it's balanced in a way that can make it slow. It's normal to see people jumping off and over walls to get to better positions, or to increase their speed to get objectives faster. But as often you see that, you will see long corridors of death that defenders are trying to hold for the win, bringing the game down to a slow crawl until you overcome it. It all depends on one team's skill to quickly get into the perfect positions faster than the other team can take advantage of.

When it comes down to pure player skill, it's another thing. You can take things slow, but you will have to learn to pick up the pace, getting into ideal position is important, especially when it comes to setting positions to take on the other team's position. Gunfights at range are very fickle things because of this, grinding through a defenders well fortified position is tough unless the attacker are well skilled, prepared and fast. Fighting them at range is the most promising, but many of the weapons have little damage at range, especially with the damage fall off and aiming down sight doesn't help much against small targets because of the recoil. In fact most the time firing from the hip is your best option. Tracking player movement with your weapons learning their recoil and weapon spread can help, get those headshot right.

Mercenaries
there are close to 20 different mercenaries to choose from, who are split into different categories which are slayer, support, engineer and medic. Each type obviously has different roles to play, slayers only job is to be on the front lines killing everything in their path, engineers go in behind them and complete the game's objectives. Some characters can fill a second role quite easily, Fletcher is an engineer but with his weapons and skills, he quite a capable slayer character too. The characters themselves look incredibly well designed, heavy hitting mercs are usually large, carrying immense amount of armour and equipment on their backs or body's, smaller mercs are light carrying very little and will zip around the level.

I would be lying when they saying how good many of the mercs, obviously there will be the absolutely best top tier characters who shine anywhere, then there would be the ones who are good at times, then the very situational ones. A top tier example is Fragger, he is a combat power house, 150 health armed with two of the strongest assault rifles in the game and he chucks a very powerful grenade to kill multiple mercs instantly. He just shines no matter what player has him, or what situation, he will will get the job done.

You won't be able to change much about a merc, except maybe their loadout card. This card will have different weapons and augments which can slightly change the style of play the merc can do. There are 9 of them in total, none of them are really OP, there is one that obviously the perfect embodiment of their playstyle, where others tend to make the more aggressive and some just so situational and useless. Obviously the augments are the cause of the change of style, and they are regarded by the community as useless, what actually makes the character good is their skills and the weapons you are most proficient in.

Mercs however are locked, and you must have enough in game credits to unlock them. This is where people become idiots and fail to seek out information which they can get by playing. Credit generation most of the time is slow, I will admit that, you will get at most 150 to 200 per 15 min game, double that on stopwatch, and even more on ranked. Mercs however cost 30k-50k credits, so you can see why people get a bit mad. But Splash does do many things that help settle these woes. Every two weeks they offer 3 mercs on rotation to try for free, they added the ability to earn credits by accomplishing missions, which you get by normal play or by doing specific things, and these refill every few hours and can reward 500-1000 credits per mission. Finally once a day you can claim the first match of the day and first win of the for each of the games which give you 500 credits each.

Game modes
There are 3 Game Modes, objective, stopwatch and execution. There is also the ranked mode but that only has stopwatch games for the moment, and it is unclear if the other modes will be added for future seasons. Objective mode is simple, complete your objective first. Attackers have a multi stage set of objectives which they must complete under a time limit, these being destroy, escort and repair. On the other side, defenders have to stop the attackers accomplishing their objective until the timer runs out.

Stopwatch is the exact same as objective mode with one twist, the attacks have 15min to complete all of their objectives. After which the teams will swap and the once defender now have to beat the attacking team's time, or get further than them if they failed to complete all of the objectives, You can also draw if both teams fail at the same point progress. Execution is the search and destroy of Dirty Bomb, nothing new except for the games mechanics allowing people to be rived and use character and what not.

The maps that you play each have their own charm, as well as their own grind of death point. For some maps this can be the start like in bridge’s funneled corridors in order to get to the ev, or Dome’s pit of death delivery point. Other times it's halfway through the map like church's long street or even train’s blocker carriage. Regardless of attitude you will come across certain of objectives on each map that are just a pain to do. The EV escorts are most hated, largely because their ease of being destroyed by almost everyone with an explosives weapon, which is the vast amount of merc on the roster btw. Still I suppose it's a skill in itself to quickly repair it with an engineer, but it's annoying for the defenders to get a cheap win because they can stack explosive skilled characters.


Conclusion
So what do we have? A well made F2P game, that is still currently in its beta phase, so it's continually adding more mercs and maps, balancing and improving them. It has albeit small but a very dedicated community, its own competitive mode and ranks and the game is very easy to get into and enjoy. But yet we do have a potentially rage inducing game because it doesn't follow the current motif of many shooter games on the market, as well many of the issues i have already stated. In the end its a free game, you lose nothing but time and potentially happiness or boredom by playing, and you could always remove it if you really hate it.

Have a good day :3

WARNING VERY LONG
I suppose I should write a review, since Inquisition's story has finally ended, now begins my watch, for the next Dragon Age game.

INTRODUCTION
Dragon Age Origins was first released by in 2009 and was met with great acclaim, for its fantastic world design, setting, story, basically it was one the best RPG games of the decade, i say "one of" and not "the" mind you. Being released between both fallout 3 and new vegas, Dragon age had some considerable competition. Luckily it hold its own and more, with great storytelling, characters and some great gameplay.

It definitely was not the prettiest game at the time, I mean the character looks can be anywhere from pretty and handsome in rare cases almost exclusive to companions, to plain old ugly appearances. There isn't much variety in customization, armours are simple recolours for the most part, weapons and bows too. Honestly the looks are definitely one of the worst parts of the game, just too little uniqueness in armour and weapons to make you and you party stand out from any other ordinary grunt, unless of course you enjoy that sort of thing.

STORY
I’ll try not to spoil too much, as many choices affect not situations and the ending in this game but also in the sequels too.

You will have an origin story, by choosing your race and birthplace, either being, human, elf or dwarf, and being birthed in the slums, nobility or mage. Oh and the singled out dalish elf. Each of these will affect some dialogue options and give racial traits, it can also make some things easier or harder depending on the quest at hand. With these picked you will take part in a battle as a soldier in the Grey Wardens, an ancient order of protectors whose sole purpose is to defend life against the darkspawn and blights.

After the being defeated at the battle you find out you're one of the last surviving members of the order, and is up to you to gather allies for a new army for one last battle, or the spawn will overtake all of thedas. Thus begins the main quest, along the way you will help out random strangers, groups of mages and mercs, decide the fate of magical order and dalish clan, find a lost piece of ancient dwarven history and find the remains of the bride to the Maker, the creator of life in the known world.

So this is a huge story with many quests and side jobs, they can be incredibly drawn out each main segments easily takes out a hour or more depending on difficulty. But you use this time to stockpile potions and arrows, find the best weapons and armour for each of your 9 companions, all find additional support for your army. All of it eventually paying off in the epic finale at the end of the game were it all comes into play. This is one of the main reasons why this game is so great still stands today, as a great piece of storytelling.



GAMEPLAY
The game play likes a old fashioned RPG, where you will control a party of characters assign specialties and classed, equip them as well. So it mostly strategy based combat, assigning orders, positioning, setting priorities and tactics and more. Alongside this combat is alose magic and consumables which also affect your allies if they are caught in in it area of effect making for carefully planned attacks. Through your character's skills, you can buff and debuff units, effectively controlling the battlefield. It is very difficulty explaining it completely, but such examples can very easily be found online, or if you have played it's much like Baldur's Gate.

DIFFICULTY
This is another main great point of the game, it is naturally hard, even on the easiest difficulty. The game will often throw a number of enemies at you either being a small horde of easily dispatchable grunts, to a mini boss or two, as well as mix of troops. Magic is also your worst enemy as if left unchecked a mage will destroy your team single handley.

As for the difficulty settings, it changes it artificially, increasing unit health, damage and defence, as well affecting certain other stats. But despite all of this, even on easy there is plenty of leeway in how you can build your characters, but as you go up you will have to plan your builds accordingly or suffer a painful, live die and repeat scenarios.

COMPANIONS
I feel like I should bring these in as if you get into the game, you become invested in their story, to the point like many other people, you consider them Friends/Family for you Warden. Here's two examples of my favourite ones. Leliana, she's an assassin Bard turned religious sister. She's confident but sweet, very calm and has an interesting backstory and quest to boot as well has her own origin DLC story, where you can gain a an amazing set of armour for you or her.My second is a dwarf warrior exilce called ohgren, hes allways drunk and allways randy, constantly trying to get it on with your female compainons or you, and trys and excuse to talk about the dirty stuff.

There 8 of them in total, 3 Warriors, 2 rogues and 2 mages and a dog, there is also a unique dlc companion who is a stone golem, and is very interesting one at that. Also depending on your game choices you can get another warrior to join your party at the expense of another. These characters are lovable and hateable in their own ways, each can be customized and leveled individually, each have their own speciality for combat. Through combat they can sustain injuries and if not treated or treated, will lead to their eventual death. Doing they don't like too much, or do something that goes completely against them, will make either leave or attack you.

They all have extensive dialogue and backstory each will have their own personal quests that will give them bonuses or special weapons and/or armour. If you take an interest in them and start improving their approval of you, they will get bonus their base skills like constitution furthering a specialty.


CONCLUSION
Okay the graphics aren't great, the environments are vast and empty ,customization is limited, overall game is difficult and has many unpatched bug that can break quests. But this is a tiny proportion to what you’re getting, a huge world of fantasy, filled with a few hours worth history reading, rememberable characters, epic story and potentially almost a hundred hours worth of fun. There are many little thing I haven't mentioned yet, like how there is a modding community, DLC’s offer post game content, that will give rewards for your next playthrough, how actions caused here will affect many details of the next game, and the actions of the sequel will affect the sequel-sequel.

This is definitely worth a look at the very least, or even just a read of the timeline or sotries embedded within the game.

Welcome to the single most edited, redone, reevaluated review the game has, you are now looking at the Dead Island: Epidemic review MKIV.

15th October 2015, was the last day you could of possibly played this game, so why a review for it, how do I do this and make people want to to get into it and play? This is not a review of sort I guess, instead it will be advice with my personal opinions to back the advice up to hopefully encourage you to act upon it.

So what's the Stitch? Well kim Possible, to start off with I would of never played this game if it wasn't I got offered an early access key, nor would I have played if my friends did. This means I could have completely missed this game because of my own complacency with the games I had at the time. There are more game out there than you think, it’s not just what the media is showing or what your favorite youtuber is playing currently, yes they may be good games, but they are not the diamonds in the rough no more.


This game was the diamond for me, was one the best games I've ever had the pleasure to play, beautiful to look at, and was some intense fun. I wont say no more about it because it is meaningless at this point. I met some of the most amazing people playing this game, people who I will never remove off my friends list even after years of not speaking purely because of the memories i share with them.

Dead Island: Epidemic - Almost 2k hours of fun, over 400 screenshots saved, over 50 friendships made, over £150 spent but to me priceless, and a never ending love for a game that still wish to play, but can't.

You’re not a gamer because you play what is popular, you're just a player, you’re a gamer because you play games that are fun to no one else but you, despite all the games problems.


I will never forget this game, So what was my advice? Don't just play what you know you will enjoy, or games that have a huge marketing campaign, play games like this, that did nothing to get my attention, I found a key for it on some random forum and thought why not, because from these games, comes game studios you will love as much as the big triple A studios.

Have a good day, and I hope you enjoy all your games as much as I have enjoyed DI:E

PlatinumClient