eCoLL77
United Kingdom (Great Britain)
 
 
:Six_Alone:In the early 80s my dad brought Pong home one day and it was just magic to use the ancient controls on our black and white TV. After Pong I played on a friend's ATARI 2600, a friend's Philips Videopac and another friend's Commodore VIC 20. In the end I got a C64 with tape recorder :steambored:. Several years later my dad bought a 8088 (XT) and a world opened for me. Struggling with disk drives and no knowledge of MSDOS, PC architecture and software in general I taught myself. Then one day I saw a Commodore Amiga and I was hooked. :er_heart:. One of my friends went on holiday and he was kind enough to lend me his computer. That was an amazing time.

As time went on, PCs became better and with the release of games like Wolfenstein and Doom it showed how the future would look like. I got a 486DX2 with a 100MB harddrive. More of my friends got into the hobby and together we were having a great time playing all the new releases. Then graphics got so much better with the release of the 3dFX Voodoo 1/2 cards and later NVidia. :dcshocked: Games like Jedi Knight with the neon light just blew my mind. I got into a clan when UT released and for a while I was quite good.

While I remained interested in gaming, real life events and obligations stopped most of my PC gaming in the period 2006 - 2019. I did play DS, WII, Switch and even mobile :mhwno: , however deep in my heart I remained a PC gamer (for a while I did play Guild Wars II - doing midnight raids with friends :LN2SixMono: finding all the bosses).

Now life has slowed down a bit and I have more time again to play all the great games that were released while also enjoying the newer releases :monstertraininferno:.

I'm excited for the future. In Elite you had a text screen indicating your cargo, now you have Star Citizen where you can suddenly see the cargo you purchased. Or Elden Ring that just stuns in level and game design or Forza with hundreds of cars and so many things to do or games like the Witcher III or the Borderlands series. It's great that we can experience this and I wonder where we will be in the next decades with ever more powerful hardware and AI assisted design :zagwow:
Review Showcase
4.4 Hours played
So what's it about?
You are Kyle Crane and you are sent as an undercover agent to infiltrate a quarantine zone in the city of Harran where there is an ongoing zombie outbreak. You soon meet with a gang and a group that fights against the gang.

Your goal is to understand what is going on in the city while building up relations with some of the inhabitants. As you progress you can unlock safe spaces (like in the Division or the Just Cause series). And if you've played Death Stranding you will find a similar concept here: while guns and rifles are present you really don't want to use those. Instead, you rely on melee weapons or even better avoid combat where possible using the amazing parcourse loop.

The good
The start of the game acts as a tutorial: it works well with minor quests to introduce to the different aspects of the game.

The voice acting in general is good to great.

The game has crafting (there are many blue prints to manufacture weapons and helpful items. There are also multiple skill trees that work similar like Bethesa games: using a certain skill more often gives more experience and if you use it long enough you will get more skill points. And as you level up you gain access to better items in the shop, more blue prints etc.

Parcourse is great - I enjoyed jumping through the:-).

The not so good
I don't know why but over the last few years I tried to get into DL but for some reason I just lost interest after a couple of hours. The parcourse part is well done, the introduction is good but then it just became average to me quickly.

The game is old and the graphics are slightly dated; the positive is that performance is good.

There is no manual save – there is auto save only. While it forces you to think twice about taking on hordes it gets frustrating when you miss a jump during parcourse and have to redo it all again which can become annoying.

There is no fast travel.

I get that DL2 is out but why do we need to get a reminder about this every time we start the game?

Bugs and glitches
In general, I had a bug and glitch free experience.

The DLCs
There are 50 DLCs for DL. Most are skin packs and cosmetics but there are some that add new player modes. If you want to get DL it's best to a pack that contains all of them when it's on sale: right now it's the Dying Light: Definitive 10th Anniversary Edition. I don't think any of them are necessary to enjoy the base game but if you can get it for a good price then go for it :-).

Summary
What is good about DL is that you don't start out as a super hero. You slowly build up your skill as you learn more about the city that you're in. Unfortunately, despite trying multiple times to get into the game I lost interest after a few hours. I'll try DL2 and hopefully it will work better for me.

Should you buy it?
If you're into zombies, like parcourse and don't want to be all over-powered at start then it may work for you especially when it's on sale. It is a bit dated though and there is some annoying game mechanics like no manual save and no fast travel. It didn't click for me and having tried multiple times I just can't get in. But that may just be me: it is not a bad game - it's one of those instances where if a friend asks you hey should I get it? I would say maybe.
Review Showcase
So what's it about?
TW:WH1 is a mix of Civilization and the Heroes of Might & Magic series: a strategy game in a fantasy world. You pick a scenario or a large campaign and then you can pick which faction you want to represent. Each faction plays different: there is a lot of variation in units, buildings but also in diplomacy, objectives and research. Most of the game is run from a map setting like civilization but battles are massive and go beyond what you have ever seen outside of the Total War series. You can zoom out or go down to the individual troop while everything plays in real time. Battles are chaotic at first but as you progress you learn better tactics and which units work best together.

You can collect artifacts and level up your lords (the person that is leading your army) so they become more powerful and give advantages to the troops. The map is divided in provinces and when you conquer all settlements in one province you get additional benefits. Interestingly enough you can’t just control everything: for example as a human faction you are not able to take control of a dwarf city you can you only loot or raze the city. Then there are quests and minor objectives that each give some bonuses.

It may sound complicated but as you start to play you will notice that the in game tutorial does a good explaining the basics. You may have to restart one or two times before you get it but it is very enjoyable. It's one of those games that you tell yourself: I really need to sleep, ok one more turn to do A, B and C... and suddenly it's two hours later and you don't even realise it. The first time you play the campaign it may take 20 hours or so, but as there is a lot of replayability which all the different factions, quests and events you can easily spend hundreds of hours. I found one of the largest challenges is that you become too greedy and spread yourself too thin - the CPU will wait for that moment and then you lose a lot. Finding the right balance between building your economy, upgrading your armies and conquering the land is key to success.

Besides the main campaign there are two additional scenarios and there are Quest Battles (about 20 - 30; some heroes have up to seven different Quest battles others have about two).

The good
Just one more turn... it's been a while since I experience this. It's a really good game.

The game still looks fantastic. The sounds effect and the voice acting are great.

You can zoom all the way in onto individual units or zoom out for a birds eye view. This is done really well.

The map is huge and there is a lot of variety. I also like the in-game events and that the AI will not give up and continue to fight to the bitter end or decides to give up and wants to become part of your empire all depending on how you treat them and who you are.

It's great that diplomacy and trading play a large role; it adds more character to the different factions.

There are so many achievements - great for people that like to earn them :-).

By purchasing TW:WH and the DLC you are able to bring these over to TW:WH2 & TW:WH3. It's a nice touch and I wish other developers would do the same.

I really enjoyed the differences between the races: it's not just different troops or buildings, the research trees vary greatly, tactics differ and even how to engage or not engage can make a huge difference between the races.

The not so good
If you want to play with more than the basic faction you will have to buy DLCs. While not necessary if you're not interested - in the end you will probably buy them. However, the game is great and it got a lot of support of the devs.

I experienced minor slow downs at the biggest battles - likely a limitation of the engine.

Don't start with this game if you have an important week at work or school. All you will think of is playing TW:WH :-).

I found that the late game suffers in the same way when you play Civilization on a large or larger map: there are too many heroes, too many cities, too much micro management and I got bored managing the cities. You can play a race that is nomadic and that kept my interest longer but the end game is not so good. It's also a pity that it takes so long to get the interesting L5 troops - there are ways around this like using the Steam Workshop but it's a pity the vanilla game doesn't offer like a custom mode where you can start with all the units unlocked from the start.

It's a pity you can't apply the tactics of scorched earth to your own cities.

I wish we could build more defensive structures on the map or road etc similar like you can in Civilization.

It would have been cool to be able to have different formations for your troops or at least to be able to rotate your troops into a specific direction other than forwards at the beginning of the battle.

I wish you could instruct the heroes to auto cast spells and enhancements during combat.

It would be better to have an auto level function - especially when you have a lot of heroes there’s a lot of micro management.

Bugs and glitches
In general I had a bug and glitch free experience. Some minor issues are:

I experienced one bug during the tutorial where the AI would not move and the game didn't freeze but just didn't move forward to the next AI. A restart fixed that.

Sometimes the game zooms on a hero in the map while you are actually controlling a different one. Clicking on their name fixes it.

The DLCs
There are 13 DLCs of which six are free. Some add new factions that you can play as, new heroes, a bloodpack (which should be free), quests, items etc. None is required but if you're a fan I would recommend to get these on one of the many sales.

TW:WH1 is in itself a huge DLC for TW:WH2 & TW:WH3

Summary
A strategy game that takes all the good from Civilization, HOMM and then adds more of its own to it. There is a lot to discover and the game still looks great. It's largely bug free and the DLCs add more replayability to the game. What is there not to like?

Should you buy it?
If you're in deep strategy games in a fantasy world then I strongly recommend TW:WH. Just be prepared to deal with "one more turn".
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14.8 hrs on record
last played on 1 Mar
96 hrs on record
last played on 27 Feb
4.4 hrs on record
last played on 19 Feb