Recent reviews by LordXaras

I understand the urge to make a camera control scheme that matches the current standard in RTS games, but you need to actually understand RTS controls and commit to it.

In a modern RTS, A and D pans the camera left and right on your current height plane. And W and S *pan the camera forward and backward* on the plane.

In HW3 with "modern" controls, pressing W and S **zooms in and out**. The *exact same* movement as rolling your scroll wheel. Why? This makes moving around the map so extremely awkward and I don’t need both my middle fingers resting on a zoom control. If you want to actually traverse the field using WASD you have to turn the camera so that you can move around with A and D only because W and S *don’t actually move you*.

The game is clearly able to pan you around on your current height plane, because that’s what happens if you drag with MMB or scroll to the edges of the screen. All you need is to put those camera controls on WASD.

EDIT: A friendly user helped me navigate the opaque meaning of the game parameter toggles and apparently switching from "First-person-style camera rotation" to "Homeworld-style camera rotation" does exactly what I need. So I've changed this review to recommended.

Fun game, devs and publishers very responsive to feedback from the community.

Crashes after intro cinematic. Not great launch experience. Might check back after a few rounds of patching.

EDIT: Came back to the game much later. My problems seem to have been fixed, and the game is very good.

Highly entertaining. Some of the most satisfying PvP I've had in a long time, and I don't really play fighting games much.

Severe performance issues.

I have absolutely no clue what is causing this, as a game of this style doesn't seem like the kind to put heavy strain on a gaming computer, but I have some serious problems with this game. In Kingdom: Classic I would have significant periodic lag slowing the game down and making it choppy and unresponsive for periods. I have seen some people complaining about lag in the late game when you may have hundreds of archers, but I never had any problem with that - my lag spikes come seemingly at random.

In New Lands it's much much worse. Instead of getting choppy every once in a while, which I could deal with, New Lands will completely freeze for up to 10 seconds, then return to be playable but extremely choppy and with no sound until you hit ESC and load the menu. This will happen with only a few minutes between freezes. It's so bad I had to stop before the first day just to write this review, because I have not been able to find any helpful information online and I hope the devs will notice this, because I *REALLY* want to play this game.

PS. Apparently Steam won't let you write a review until you've had the game running for more than five minutes, which also tells me I have a whopping 1 minute on record when I started writing this review. It's that debilitating.

EDIT: After some troubleshooting and a lot of emails exchanged with the devs, the freezing bug turned out to be a sound device issue. I managed to work around it by disabling every sound device but my headphones. The game still stutters a bit, but it's playable. I'm changing this to Recommended.

Someone decided to make a game version of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

If you want a gripping sci-fi tale on a far-away world where factions are locked in a struggle of ideology and human nature (which some try to shed), along with an amazing unfolding mystery regarding the nature of the planet... then check out Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

If you want to play the video game version of that, Beyond Earth is alright.

If you showed me this game and told me that some guy with a time machine brought it from 1994, the golden age of adventure games, I wouldn't question it. Well, maybe the time machine part. For all I know you could have found it in a bargain bin or at Goodwill or something. Maybe your uncle's game collection.

My point is that this is a game that looks and feels and sounds and plays exactly like the best of the genre 20 years ago. Anyone who is fond of classic point-and-click games will like this.

You're driving down a lonely rural highway, going to drop off some furniture at an address that doesn't exist. You're told you need to take a road that doesn't exist to get there, but first you need to deliver a mossy television to a girl who doesn't quite exist.

OK?

Have you ever wanted to behead your uncle for plotting to kill your son and planning to usurp your brother's title to your homeland, only to be thwarted by the Pope sending you to sweat your ass of and get sands in your boots in North Africa and die of a stray arrow, sending your country into a bloody succession struggle leasting for several centuries?

Well you're probably living in medieval europe, in which case you won't have a computer good enough to run CK2 - which is saying alot considering it's not a very demanding game. I mean, step up your game already. Integrated circuits aren't complicated to make.

The guy with the most neon ninja stuff when he dies wins.