Recent reviews by Nieman

Installed this piece of ass solely to leave this review. Don't be put off by my playtime - if you've played or seen Emergency HQ, this is the same thing.

This series is dead (not that that's any breaking news). And Sixteen Tons killed it. Everyone involved with this garbage, half baked port of an uninteresting, barebones mobile game with predatory monetization should be ashamed.

I'd like to think that the studio forgot what made this series what it is (the modding community - Emergency 4 is almost 20 years old and it STILL has a dedicated modding community), but the reality is that I'm pretty sure that they knew that and just didn't care. Emergency 5's technical belly flop probably killed any chance at this series surviving.

Bad details with this garbage include (but are not limited to):

- Monetization. The best way to kill off a niche series? Make it incredibly unappealing to just about everyone with garbage monetization that locks off content behind a paywall. This isn't unique to the Emergency series, but Sixteen Tons has now shown they're just another case of predatory money grabbers.

The thing that makes it worse is that this series tends to appeal to the younger crowd who are interested in emergency services. It's a pathetic monetization tactic and I genuinely hope that everyone involved at Sixteen Tons in designing this piece of ♥♥♥♥ game loses their jobs over it.

- No vehicle placement/pathfinding. All of the Emergency games have had pathfinding issues, with units always getting stuck due to poorly designed pathfinding. It was one of Emergency 5's biggest issues.

The solution? Remove it entirely! Units can now only deploy to set locations. I get that the main reason this was done was for ease of controls on mobile, but it's still a horrible admission of defeat.

- Unbelievably bearbones gameplay. It's a port of a mobile game and it shows. It's like they took EM5 and stripped it down to require 3 button presses total. It's not engaging, and it's repetitive as hell with a lack of content making the game extremely boring.

- Mobile graphics. Once again, port of a mobile game and it shows. 2D fire textures for buildings on fire. Low res textures and effects everywhere. Emergency 2 level stuff. EM2 at least had the excuse of it being 2002.

Don't waste your time with this pathetic excuse of a game. Go download the LA mod for Emergency 4 and play that instead.

I thought they were exaggerating about Malevelon Creek. How bad could it actually be?

I was wrong. I was very wrong.

This game is absolutely incredible underneath all of the server issues (which is a completely valid criticism). Hopefully it gets ironed out soon, because everyone deserves to experience the hell that is unfolding on the Creek.

Spill oil, brothers.

10/10 great PTSD generator

Online is broken with the exact same issues from 2k22. It's a coin flip as to whether or not a game works. Half the time it will just give the 'a problem was detected' error as soon as the bell rings, or the game will crash for someone in the lobby. This happens with and without CAWs, in normal matches, extreme rules matches, etc. It happens with any arena and any match option configuration. I'd love to think this is just an issue with the release and that it'll get fixed, but it was a constant issue for me and all my friends for all of 2k22, so I have zero reason to believe it'll be fixed this year.

Outside of online being broken, it's a very solid game. Probably one of the best since 2k took over. CAWs are absolutely fantastic this year. But my friends and I haven't been able to consistently play online since 2k19. There's no excuse for these issues to still be around.

I wanted to love this game and followed the development for so long leading up to release. There is and always has been potential for a great game here. But the development has been focused on the wrong things. Instead of cleaning up the very apparent bugs and making the gameplay experience smoother overall (the camera and UI are especially TERRIBLE), they continue to tape on more content. The result is that this game is a massive mess.

And the content that they have added is cool stuff - helicopters, new vehicles, new callouts, a new map, etc. - but none of that matters because the gameplay is terrible, and its been exactly the same since release. And since Raf doesn't ever seem to plan to address the blatant issues with how the game plays, there's no reason to expect anything to ever change. This game has been in early access for 5 years and still suffers the exact same issues it had on release.

Also, just as a reminder, Raf originally tried to sell this game for $50 (check SteamPriceHistory). That alone is embarrassing.

Don't buy this in its current state.

Incredible from head to toe. Worth every penny.

Never been so panicked in my life.

10/10

Call to Arms has come a long way since I last played years ago, and it's one of my favorite RTS games I've played in a while. It feels like an entirely new game since the last time I played, and the content that is there feels fairly well polished and completed. I'm not gonna talk about the multiplayer since I haven't played a single game, but for the single player

Pros:
+ Solid graphics
+ Lots of unit variety
+ Workshop support
+ Manual unit control works well, is utilized well
+ Sound FX and music is good
+ Destructible environment
+ Fairly good campaign
+ Skirmish mode

Cons:
- Loot boxes.
- AI can be extremely dumb
- Stealth doesn't work very well, even though there are quite a few stealth missions.
- Some units can get stuck in odd places (in vehicles or sandbags)
- Cover system can be odd, sometimes guys will look around a corner and not be able to shoot around it for some reason.
- Loot boxes.

All in all, I enjoyed playing through the US campaign and hope they'll add campaigns for other factions. Skirmish mode is fun to play against the AI, but can be frustrating with how dumb the AI is sometimes. Still one of my favorites, looking forward to more from this game.

Best in the series. This game, a game from 2006 runs and plays better than the next game in the series, a game from 2015. Sixteen Tons is the worst developer in the world.

But buy this game. The base game is pretty lacking, but the mods are absolutely spectacular.

"THEY LOOK AND SOUND DIFFERENT TO US! GET IN THERE!"

Made my day.

10/10