Recent reviews by 𓆚 standardheadache 𓆚

I remember trying to get into this game for Italian wheeled tanks and the German flak barge. Unfortunately, it was pretty grindy and unforgiving towards free players even then. I found myself not really walking away from each mission with much reward, considering the repair costs. This was before free repairs took time, too.

A shame, really. It's got a following, but it appears that following is leaving because it's gotten worse since i played.

I've had friends ask me before, "So standardheadache, you've logged quite a few hours in LOTRO, what do you think of it?" I'd ask the same: for an MMO that's been going for nearly 15 years, it's worth finding out whether it's a sunk-cost fallacy for the remaining 100k active players or whether there's still ample opportunity to hop on as a new player and have fun. With the advent of most of the game going F2P, it's worth taking the opportunity to review LOTRO to hopefully convince more people to try out this throwback to the golden age of MMOs.

And what a throwback it is. LOTRO was competing with Burning Crusade when it came out, and its first expansion was pitted against Wrath of the Lich King and Warhammer Online on the market. Much of its gameplay reflects this, and it has been less modernized than WoW. However, it still fits the bill of what used to be called a “WoW clone”: racial traits that matter, class trait specs that change how you play the game, one class per character, and an emphasis on side quests alongside the main story. The leveling experience has been streamlined where the open world is no longer as dangerous as it used to be, but the story remains a solid way to level in the expansions.

How is the story? It's definitely not as monolithic as, say, FFXIV's, but it also doesn't suffer from making you the most important person in the world, either. Your importance peaks at “incredibly helpful stranger”; you aren't a chosen one or capable of more than the average person, you've just built a lot of trust with important people by starting at the bottom with disparate factions. Ultimately, you become a trusted hired hand, capable of doing things an insider can't or won't do. You are still subject to the cold, the shadow, and dread, all of which are mechanically reflected in gameplay.

Gameplay spans a lot. There's the metagaming aspect, where you customize your trait specs to best fit your desired solo and group roles (which may be different), and the actual hotkey-mashing, rotation-completing you know and love from these sorts of titles. Rotations are fairly concise; key abilities are unlocked via the trait tree for each spec, and there aren't many abilities that you actually use in combat. I usually have two hotbars dedicated to in-combat abilities; for my level 130, two and a half. Each class gets utility skills that are rarely used in combat, and therefore can be relegated to a non-hotkeyed hotbar without much issue.

The classes themselves are par for the course for a WoW clone, with some exceptions like Captain and Minstrel. As previously mentioned, all classes are capable of filling multiple roles, and often have a sustained dps role suitable for soloing as well as a more group-oriented role. Main dps classes may have an ability to lose aggro, while even offtanks have ways to pull aggro. It's recommended to pick a race that complements your class; elves, for example, have a trait that increases bow damage, so it's best to have an elf as a hunter rather than a dwarf for group content. However, picking offmeta can open up unique opportunities for open-world content; hobbits aren't the best for group content ever since hope consumables were introduced, but free stealth and playing possum on any class can get you out of sticky situations and save on repair bills if you aren't a VIP (or if you're a lazy VIP like me and don't pick up your bonus in major towns every couple of days when the VIP consumable resets).

As for the community, it's something that hasn't changed much over time. When I started playing as a wee lad, given the lifetime subscription to keep me quiet and out of trouble, I was never bullied for being a child and never had predators make moves on me. My guild's coleaders were married, and many of them were in their twenties to forties. Now, the average player is between 30 and 60, and my current guild's coleaders are also married, and likely in their fifties. World chat has some definite dad energy.

tl;dr: do I think it's worth it? At risk of sounding biased since I've been with it since year one, yeah, I'd say so. At the very least, it's far more free content than most MMOs these days, and the “grind” to get microtransaction currency has been substantially reduced in importance, so you can spend more time actually playing the game. If you find you can't launch the game through Steam, try downloading the missing DirectX files manually. If that doesn't work, you can always try downloading the launcher through the main website; most LOTRO players don't use the Steam version.

This is actually a Conclave DLC because it gives you the best sidearm in the game mode, change my mind

Halo combat with Portal guns. It integrates these two very different FPS styles seamlessly and combining them adds a new dimension to gunplay. A bit old-fashioned, but it keeps things simple and is free, so what's stopping you from giving it a try?

What might be one of the best games I've ever played is dead.


Nuclear Dawn released on the tail end of the Source game craze, and it shows. While its appearance definitely wasn't bad for the time, it wasn't cutting-edge, either. Hitboxes could be a bit wonky, too. The concept of the game was that in a post-apocalyptic world, there's the loosely NATO and sort-of Warsaw Pact duking it out for control of strategic points and formerly important cities and facilities. Each faction had a limited pick of gear options for specialized classes that, when used by a cohesive team, could make effective pushes.

So far, this all sounds familiar to the point of being passé.


The RTS layer. Regardless of whether you were the commander or a footsoldier, you were always aware of the fact that buildings were sprouting up along power lines, areas were being reinforced, and forward spawn points were being set for what felt like an organic shooter. This isn't to say the average soldier couldn't do much, either: as the commander researched new gear, they could take the fight to the buildings.

This gave unique opportunities like sabotaging power sources to bring down branches of networks, sniping turrets out of their effective range, and generally being pesky enough to make a difference. On one map, there was a rarely-used tunnel that led directly to an enemy main base, and you could destroy the structure that's required to make buildings if nobody paid attention to you, setting back the enemy team and sometimes winning you the match. Often, the main objectives were also sequestered away from buildable areas, so infantry could test their skills in close quarters with the enemy team without having to stare down a gatling turret barrel.


However, the game rode on the principle of player integrity and good sportsmanship, and in public lobbies this couldn't be assured. Often, teams would blame their commander if they lost, and the commander would blame their team. It also meant that there were times where, regardless of role, you felt out of control - commanders could only do so much to take a point, for example, and infantry couldn't make up for a lack of well-placed and equally well-defended spawns. Now, the 24-hour peak at the time of this review of concurrent players is 16, and they're often in the EU, meaning you're out of luck if you're in the Americas or Oceania.

Ultimately, it wasn't the right game for the market, and it paid the price. The FPS/RTS hybrid genre once again hit a setback, one it may never recover from.

F

thanks Obama

Valve is losing touch with their player base fast, and this is the next big sign after Artifact's subpar release. In an attempt to remain on top of Epic Games and Fortnite, Valve made their flagship shooter free to play and added a copycat game mode. This isn't what Counter-Strike is about. This isn't what anyone who owns Counter-Strike wants. This is yet another detached game company shooting itself in the foot in 2018.

Easy to learn, difficult to master, and packed with countering mechanics. Turtling is difficult to do due to the comparative weakness of base defense buildings to the average attacking force, but you can definitely still steamroll. Reminds me of the PC gaming market when I started playing PC games, and that's a good thing.

If you haven't had the opportunity to play this gem before, there's no better time. This is the earliest non-RPG game I've played that presented a major choice that significantly altered the outcome of the story. While its rocky initial release in 1999 meant that it was hard to find a legit copy of it before now, this finely retextured, modern OS-compatible update looks and runs great. It feels great, too: as far as I can tell, this is the original engine, so all the vehicle maneuvering and weapon handling seems the same. If I had to mention one negative, it's that if you aren't used to 90s video game voice acting, you may be offput by some of the lines. The majority of it still holds up though!

If you're willing to step back to a more vibrant time in the gaming industry where devs weren't entirely sure what their audience wanted or what would make money, then this FPS/RTS won't disappoint.

EDIT 3/2/18: Some missions appear to have some AI bugs (on mission titled "The Dark Planet" particularly). I personally managed to take it a step further on that mission and botch the objective scripting. While I personally have had no issues with audio sync and framerate with a 1060, it appears others have had those issues. Review's still positive because beyond these issues, it's the first time you can buy this game in almost two decades, and someone with a bit more passion for games than Activision now has the license to this franchise (though future entries will most likely be titled "Combat Commander" instead of "Battlezone" if they come about).

EDIT 3/3/18: I got a friend request before that first edit and accepted it; when I woke up, it turned out to be someone who had worked on scripting that mission. He worked on rewriting the mission .dll and I playtested to make sure it was as foolproof as possible, and the fix should be out shortly, if not already! If there were a way to give a stronger recommendation, I'd certainly do it to see such active community support for such a classic game.

There's been a lot of talk since November on the discussion boards involving uninformed consumers not understanding how this iteration of Total War works DLC-wise. For that reason, I'd like to take a second to tell you, the potential customer, what you're getting into, and why I still feel it's worth it.
tl;dr at the bottom.


This game is expensive. A bit more than the DLC list lets on. In order to get the full experience out of this game, you need to own the prior Total War: Warhammer and its DLC as well. This allows you to play with the factions from the first game and the factions from the second game in a map encompassing both games in a campaign called "Mortal Empires". You do not need to have the first one installed to play its content in the second one, and you do not need to buy the blood pack again. They just leave that out of the initial release so they can market it as T for Teen. Take that, ESRB! But yeah, off-sale, at the time of this review (2/14/2018), you have to spend

$213.90 USD

to play the whole game. "Sheesh," you must be thinking, "That's a steep entry fee!" Well, I doubt you buy games off-sale these days (I know I don't), and it's important to know that not all the DLC is necessary. You could get by spending $74.38 for 1 and 2 during a sale (TWWH2 usually goes 10% off and the original 50% off) and picking up the free-LC that came with the first installment. If you participated in Make War Not Love 2018, you received The Grim & The Grave DLC for the first installment free. If you want to play Greenskins in Mortal Empires, I'd recommend having The King and the Warlord as well, as it provides you with early-game armor-piercing units (Nasty Skulkers) and a lord tailored towards goblins, who are probably going to be a good chunk of your early armies (and, if you're Skarsnik, your armies through the entire game). That's all I usually use, since most of my hours clocked are on Bretonnia, a free faction from the first game. Even then, that's no small chunk of change, and it begs the question, "Why is it so pricey?"



This is probably the only way Sega agreed to make something so in-depth; anything less would've been either not funded or would've faced serious cuts in content. Keep in mind that the end goal is to put every tabletop faction from Warhammer Fantasy into the game as a fully-functional, playable faction. CA wanted to make the whole game, so they were forced to piece it out. By piecing it out, Sega could gauge interest (by the first one) and retention (by the second one), each time having the option to pull the plug if they thought continued investment would not be profitable.

Does it suck? Yeah, strategy's a dying market, and while it's nice to see a big publisher at least try to give it attention, they want the results they see in other genres here. I've been lucky enough to receive most of the series as gifts; I've personally spent about $100 on it and have what is currently the full collection.

Considering I've gotten almost 800 hours out of the two, I think that's a fair price (about $0.13/hr). I spent about that much on Warframe when I was into that, and my friends frequently drop that same amount on gacha games.

Even divvied up like this, there's still some noticeable omissions, Mods make short work of that, though. Kislev, while primarily still an Empire reskin, can be led by Katarin the Ice Queen; Averland, by the Mad Count; Parravon, by Cassyon. The Southern Realms have a fairly high-profile rework that I'm partial to as well. Games have been partially developed due to time constraints for a long time, but modders always rise to the occasion.

Unfortunately, one thing that doesn't seem to have a fix in the works is the fact that there is no naval combat. According to CA's representative on Reddit, Grace, "Naval combat will only be in autoresolve. Warhammer Fantasy Battles is principally a game about land warfare, so that’s where we’re choosing to focus our efforts in terms of full battle simulation." So if you were that one guy in Shogun 2 who got hyped every time his fleet got intercepted, this might not be for you.


I honestly believe CA has a strong passion for doing this franchise justice, despite everything that's been thrown at them. It shows in the little things, like the flavorful faction mechanics and the strikingly honest dev diaries. With how well this game is selling in revenue, judging by Steam's "Best of 2017" listings for "Top Sellers", I think this game is going to be supported for at least the next year or two, at which point it will continue to be supported partially in the form of Total War: Warhammer III's merger of 1, 2, & 3's maps and factions. Eventually, we'll have access to CA's dream from the start: every Warhammer Fantasy faction sharing a world together.


Other people have probably said this better than I can. If you've played Total War, you'll adapt quick enough. Magic slaughters clumps, monsters fill an infantry support role similar to tanks in the 20th century, and the threat of death from above further pushes the ranged meta the series has always been a bit guilty of. Once they close in, though, melee fliers can tear through most archers, definitely meaning they're worth their salt.

If you haven't played Total War, there's a turn-based strategic overworld where you make decisions for your faction (remember to build economy!) and, when your army encounters an opposing army or settlement, it becomes a real-time tactical battle where you control the units you amassed. Melee in the front, archers in the back, cavalry flanks from the sides or harasses the enemy. After the enemy's morale is shattered and they're routing, you've won! Or you can autoresolve and not spend a second in the field. Like a nerd.


I would recommend adding Steel Faith Overhaul to your modlist, as it addresses some campaign map imbalances currently ailing Mortal Empires (anemic Dwarfs, off the top of my head) and provides a few new toys without bombarding you with a plethora of unbalanced options *cough*Radious*cough*. Feel free to pick and choose in the Workshop! A man's mod setup is his self-expression, after all. I've also penned a comprehensive guide on playing Carcassonne, a Bretonnian subfaction, which you can find here! Now you too can tackle the least-played faction from the original game and turn them into crusader extraordinaires!


Get Total War: Warhammer 1 when you get this one because Sega was cautious about this venture but Creative Assembly's trying their darndest anyways. Total War gets a bona fide fantasy makeover and it's gorgeous. SFO > Radious. Toodles!