Reseñas recientes de [PHC-MC]Septic

Do I recommend it right now? No, and it kind of sucks to say that as buried underneath the myriad of issues I believe is the grounds for an amazing game.

The positives right now are when something goes right, the sense of satisfaction is immense; the combat is visceral & gory as heck and the enemies are just strong enough to challenge you; if you manage to survive a wave relatively intact, it feels incredibly *good*. I have a lot of love for the Hero units too, even if they're just tanks at this point.

On the flip is the balancing, content, optimisation and bugs; the balancing is just... awful. I get that the devs have probably studied 'They Are Billions' closely, but whereas TAB can be punishing, it doesn't feel like a punishment to play, which is what I have with 'Conan' right now. The waves are so close that there's just no point in having breaks, resources generate at a rate so slow, I think the devs may have actually coded how to journey back in time instead, and then you're met with a resource maintenance fee, so when you finally do get a decent cash flow, you're hesitant to build anything as you'll lose 10-30% of your resource and revenue flow.

Moving on to content; it's pretty thin - you get a choice of up to 3 Heroes (one's a $10 DLC unlock), zero story and what I think are 5 tutorial/SP missions? Without story for context, it's hard to tell really. The lack of story's a little saddening as they have access to the Conan universe plus it was developed by former C&C devs, who used to write the most amazing, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-insane stories for those campaigns, which enthralled me as a kid when I used to play their games. The Heroes, and in fact all your units, move as if they're caught in tar, which is annoying, but just loops back to the weird pacing mentioned above.
It feels like SP was an afterthought here and that the entire game was balanced around coop - I looked at the coop list and there was 8 hosts at the time, so probably like me, everyone wants to enjoy SP instead, meaning the game needs better balancing for solo players.

Optimisation and bugs kind of go hand-in-hand; you can't change the refresh rate in the resolution box, despite the option being there and I noticed some weird lag when I was in build mode whilst moving across the map (see my profile for specs - they're all above the recommended requirements) and I noticed framerate oscillation throughout the game. I don't believe this is due to graphics demand, as they look like Age of Empires III with a HD pack overlay if I'm being perfectly honest so something's amiss there.

This is a game which could have benefited immensely from Early Access to iron out all the kinks in conjunction with the player community. As it is, I have paid for a game with old-school principles which just don't cut it in modern times, where it's either missing content, or the content is mixed up in a confusing and not very satisfying broth. The foundations are solid, it could be a really incredible game and a great gaming experience, but it just isn't right now and I've not had a great deal of fun playing it so far.

I literally cracked a molar in rage after 3 hours of work after I failed to shore up my Eastern Defenses and my Command Centre fell in less than 2 minutes.

Best 700€ I ever spent.

The eggs are ridiculously expensive.

I like the game. Kinda. It has great potential but I feel like I've paid $60 for early access. Starting off with the big annoyance; no Sandbox. A City Sim/Themepark manager with no sandbox. I...

Moving on, and with the above themes; no snap-to-grid, limited buildings and borrowing straight from Tropico - power-junctions and their really annoying pylon friends.

There's a grind too, you hop from Island-to-Island (usually after reaching a 3 out of 5 star rating) and each time you do, a new set of research & dig sites open up, which is great on the one hand, but really it just means you get to do everything you just spent the last three hours doing all over again from scratch. If this is the theme, it kind of feels like it's going to be a 16 hour tutorial before you can just relax and play the game. I complain, but I can kind see why the devs did it this way - modern city sims and the like, can get tedious after a while, unless you have something to distract from the earn money/build thing/earn money format, and I guess this was their answer. The only problem here, is that re-playability will be an issue; once you've played through, why bother doing it again? There's no pace, or dynamic events to really change the outcome, so it's really just waiting until you have the 3 stars and moving on.

It feels like its borrowed heavily from Tropico and that's not a bad thing - Tropico's one of my favourite series, but that game was carried by a pace and random events that could change said pace. Additonally, there were quirky characters, who offered you often amusing side-quests, whereas here I couldn't care less about any of these people *EXCEPT JEFF GOLDBLUM*. Aside from Jeff Goldblum, all the side characters are weird and disconnected - I think at one point, Chris Pratt's character insinuates a 'special' relationship with Blue, then goes on about kissing Bryce Dallas-Howard's character in his next pop-up, in the same way that I'd tell someone the time. The dialogue is next-level cringe, even's Jeff's bad, but he's weird/cool enough to pull it off. This is really a non-issue, I'm just griping at the real problem being a lack of substance; there's not enough buildings, there's not enough depth, the story is like everything past the first Jurassic Park - *shrugs*, there's a lack of interesting & non-repeating features and I feel that a lot of the above will be addressed via overpriced DLC. This is a $60 game, for what amounts to maybe $15 worth of software - it has amazing potential, but considering just 5 additional Dinosaurs cost a stand-alone price of £10/$15, I am making the call now that all the only two good things to come from the movies, past the first (the aquatic biome seen in the last two and the aviary seen in the third) will be charged somehting close to $30. Also, $5 skins - there's 5 skins for Jeeps already and 2 for the Helicoptor, so I've no doubt there'll be $5 skins.

Finishing on a more positive note, it isn't a terrible game - it runs well, it has a few neat features (3rd person Jeep/Heli control) even if their charm is somewhat fleeting, and Dinosaurs are always cool. If simply *more* is added, I might even change this review to a thumbs-up, but not right now.

In summary, expensive style over substance.

First off, I want it to be on record that I like this game. I like the aesthetic, I like the premise, I like the way it progresses. What I don't like are the bugs, or more specifically the game breaking bug I personally experienced, which appears to have no fix and leaves me unable to finish the game. This is a shame, because everything else about Xenonaughts is great; it's a love letter to the original XCOM games and a wonderful reminder of what made them so much fun to play in the first place.

You play as a transnational military organisation, with a singular doctrine; protect Earth and its citizens from extra-terrestrial annihilation. Set at the height of the cold-war, you start with one base and a handful of resources, which you must use wisely to increase the overall power and effectiveness of your organisation, and expand to all corners of the globe to counter the Xeno threat. You must capture alien technology and research it along with your own, before building what you've researched. These things cost time, effort and money and will require an upkeep - you also need to manage your soldiers and provide them with the right tools to get the job done. Selecting the right people for the task is crucial when it comes to recovering crashed alien vessels, countering attacks and invading bases(*).

Just like XCOM, your enemies will progress regardless of how far you've developed, so sending soldiers out on missions is crucial if you want to keep pace with your enemies. The combat is unforgiving, which makes those moments when you succeed in your task, all the more rewarding.

I have gripes on this game too (one in particular, as alluded to above) but for starters:

Visibility; your soldiers have a 90° field of vision - they can turn, but it costs movement points (called TU) each time you move. This can be frustrating when you're trying to locate the last few remaining enemies on the map (quite often, a handful of enemy AI will disperse everywhere at random). This is a mainstay from the original XCOM and annoyed me just as much back then as it does today (although forgivable, due to the restrictions in technology at the time). It borders on tedium which can quite often kill your interest in the game after a while, so I offer my two cents; personally, I would prefer a 115° or 120° FOV, which is akin to the human FOV anyway, but would also provide you with enough view to better spot enemies sooner, whilst still being challenging and allowing for enemies to sneak up from behind, instead of left, right and behind. My second gripe comes from personal preference and I can't say that it's "bad" or "good" but rather (again, opinion) it just leaves the game feeling a little light. The base building in XCOM the original and in the modern reboot, felt interesting. It was always at the forefront of my gameplay and I felt very rewarded by the investment I put into it. Xenonaughts base building feels a little pointless as it kind of boils down to, 'pay the money, build the room, get the extra thing'. XCOM did that as well, at least to some degree however as the game progressed, newer rooms unlocked and particularly with the latter iterations, you could even upgrade certain features in the room, which I personally thought was great. At the same time, 'build room, get thing' ethos was there, but the rooms also often had a secondary feature which could alter the way the game was played. With Xenonaughts, you're dependant on research as your only means of development, which sticks you on a very narrow path. Referring back to XCOM, with the secondary features of the rooms, those could often be incorporated into the gameplay and allow you to have a certain choice as to how you approached a problem. I understand that Goldhawk Interactive, is nowhere near the size of 2K games and would have developed this with a fraction of the budget the XCOM series had/has so it's certainly not a criticism here - I think they've done a fantastic job and for the most part, the above is merely praise and feedback.

The reason I am downvoting this game however, is due to the game breaking bug I personally experienced and from the looks of the various forums, many other players have experienced this too. When invading a base and are first detected by the AI, during the Alien turn the game will stop responding and crashes to desktop. This happens regardless of compatibility mode, mods (Xenonaughts supports modding and offers a Community Edition to better provide this) resolution or launcher. There seems to be a memory issue with the crash and the game has been released as 32Bit, so it could very well be something akin to that, however I feel at this point, I've spent nearly as much time looking for a fix to the game, as I have done playing the game and that's not fun whatsoever and for that reason alone, I must state that for me, I cannot recommend this game.

Do you like generic 3rd person shooters, with little or no variation on the theme and no personal investment whatsoever? Then good news, this is the game for you! You play as a part of an elite, special ops unit whose friend-of-a-friend gets killed and so you enact bloody retribution by murdering as many poor Latin American people as you can, in an open world environment full of recycled Far Cry 3 textures! Story? Haha, you don't need a "Story" because the real story is the friends you make along the way. Not your actual friends, because they can't afford to buy the game, but random pubs. all of whom wish for you to "kill yourself"! Self-Esteem!

Grind, grind, grind yourself into depression by repeating short, played-out scenarios with little risk of failure and next to no incentive to keep playing! If you're tired of grinding away, feel free to stop by our store to pay *even more* money, to short-cut your way through unlockables - felt that €90 was too much to pay for the full edition the first time? Pay half that again, to afford at least* a dozen unlockables, from an item list well in the hundreds!

(*no custom lists, choose from our bundle-packs only, purchases not refundable)

Bought into the hype? Well, jokes on you sucker, there's no chance you'll be able to refund this game, because we all know that you're just going to keep telling yourself that it'll "get good soon", until that two-hour mark is up and the crippling existential dread sets in at the realisation you've wasted your precious time and hard-earned money on a faded dream.

Ghost War PvP is pretty good tho'.

I honestly thought this would be a real treat to play, but it's just… it's just terrible. It has so much wrong with it - thematically, it's spot on; they captured the essence of Warhammer 40K perfectly but that’s it. Everything else is just badly thought out. It’s a grind for starters – a horrible, boring grind that gives mediocre rewards for frustrating gameplay. Missions are repetitive, AI is either insanely overpowered or weirdly underwhelming and there is way too much emphasis on micro-management, which quickly becomes tedious as you must hop from ship-to-ship to stop them from steering into an asteroid field, or mine, or enemy ship. There’s a priority feature for enemy ships that seems like a great idea on paper, but it doesn’t seem to work if you leave your ships to auto (which for your own sanity, you’ll end up doing. Trust me) as they’ll waste special attacks smaller craft, with lower priority (which they’re not even attacking), simply because they’re closer.

All in all, a disappointment and I regret playing it for more than two hours as this is the only game I’ve played in long time, where I’d like to have returned it for my money.

TakeTwo’s recent actions have been appalling – where Rockstar have actively engaged in the Modding community for nearly a decade, going so far as to showcase many mods on their official blog, their parent company in TakeTwo have just destroyed all that hard work and effort, and forever soured the relationship between the modding community & Rockstar Games.

This has nothing to do with game hacks, and even if it did there are other ways this could have been dealt with and the OpenIV team would have certainly treated the misuse of their program as a priority & worked to patch any exploits hackers may have found to misuse on GTA Online. The unsurprising truth is that it boils down to TakeTwo not making enough money ($700 million from Microtransactions alone – GTAV has made over $3 billion and counting since release, on a budget north of $250 million) and it seems that they believe that through this heavy-handed approach, that they’ll somehow safeguard microtransactions.

The worst part is, this has done nothing to stop hackers at all, because most (leaving as “most” until evidence to the contrary has been provided) hackers don’t use OpenIV.

The game is good, mods made it better and TakeTwo is run by Satan.

Edit: Rockstar have finally convinced TakeTwo that prohibiting OpenIV was a bad idea and they have have now reversed their cease & desist order. This is a great victory for player controlled content & modding and as such, I will be amending my review to reflect this. The game's still good, mods make it better and TakeTwo is remains to be run by Satan.

But good job Rockstar.

Taught me that I wasn't a true man until I ate a Pork Bun.

Possibly the best life advice I've ever received.

If there was ever a game that deserves a full, ported-to-next-gen update, this is it (I know, I know, 'Skywind' but honestly, when was the last time the modders posted an update on that?).

Despite the clunky graphics however, this game still sets the bar for the Elder Scrolls series - the story(s) is vast and immersive and the devs did an amazing job of creating a world you can lose yourself in for literally days (ignore the gametime on my Steam account - I had this on CD-ROM back in the day and collected well over 1500hrs). The still, very active community is testament to the endearing features of the game, and mods have allowed Morrowind to continue its appeal to existing players and newcomers alike.

All in all, if you’ve the spare funds and haven’t played it yet I’d certainly suggest investing.