Recent reviews by jmbweb90

This is a really fun and challenging game. There is a surprising amount of depth and you have to really learn the ins and outs of each tower to be good at it. Expect to lookup tips on youtube or the wiki if you don't want to lose many hours through trial and error. It's really satisfying learning how many different towers can syngerize with each other. The game still receives updates every few months that buff and nerf certain towers, but as of right now, the game is the best it's ever been. The game is also very customizable so if you find the beginner maps too easy, you can switch to some harder maps that will really test your knowledge of the game and you can also play on a variety of gamemodes that will change your game experience. One of the best in the TD games in the genre. Just don't make the mistake of manipulating the game with cheat engine or playing online with mods or else you run the risk of being flagged by the game's anticheat and thrown in lobbies with exclusively cheaters who are really bad at the game and like to spam powerups the entire time. You can tell your account has been flagged if you see 2 leaves on the game's setting icon in the main menu.

The biggest downside to this game is that it takes a while to unlock all of the content due to most of it being locked behind level ups and monkey money. You earn money every time you beat a map or after unlocking certain achievements, but it takes awhile to get everything. You can expect to sink at least 100 hours or more in before you can unlock everything. It only serves to drip feed you content and slow the game down. The second gripe I have about this game are that some of challenges rely too much on micro management. You may run into this problem as well when looking up strategies for some of the expert maps or the weekly challenges. Lastly, the game gets much harder when playing in multiplayer as most of the money you normally get will be split between 2, 3, or 4 players. Expect multiplayer games to work like half cash does in singleplayer as you may be lacking the funds to do certain strategies that normally work in singleplayer

This game was great for its time, but I can not recommend buying this game because Assault Squad 2 is better in almost every way. The three things I like better about this game over the sequel are the lighting, the health bars, and the building translucency.

The lighting in the 2nd game is too bright, especially at night, by default where as I find this game's lighting just right and much more immersive. As for the health bars they change colors in this one based on how much damage your guys take starting at green, then moving to yellow, and then finally red where as in the sequel it is just a red bar, gray bar, or green bar in a smaller gray box depending on if it is an enemy, ally, or one of your units. This is personal preference, but it really made units that were close to death stand out more. Lastly, building translucency in the sequel makes buildings and anything in them completely invisible while in this one they are super transparent so you are able to make out objects inside the building that can be used for cover. You are also able to barely see the roof of the building when you get close enough which feels more immersive than having it become completely invisible.

These three things don't really make it worth purchasing this game over the sequel and you would be better off purchasing faces of war if you are looking for fun single player missions. There are also a few missions in here that are not present in the sequels, but most of the missions in this game are super repetitive and not worth getting this game for. The two bonus missions, Christmas and Barbecue, in this game are available as mods for the sequel. Assault Squad 2 also has steam workshop support and even if you factor in this game's mods, most of the older mods have already been ported to the sequel. There are not really any compelling reasons to buy this game unless you are a collector or are wanting to see how far the series has come.

This game offers a very fun and powerful editor which you can sink so many hours into and is why I recommend this game. If you are like me and love to create whacky what if scenarios or recreate historical battles, you'll get so many hours of enjoyment out of this game. However, if you are only looking for a single player tactical game and do not want to use any mods, do not buy this game as you will probably not like it as the skirmish missions get stale pretty quickly since they are all very similar.

If you are looking to play competitive multiplayer, it is a lot more more fun and worth getting this game when it goes on sale. For cooperative multiplayer, your options are quite limited without mods as you are playing the same repetitive single player missions. If you want to play multiplayer against outside of these missions bots, you have to own the airborne DLC and are limited to the assault zones mode.

One thing I do not like about this game is the lighting. They made the maps in this game too bright and it somehow looks worse than assault squad 1. Thankfully, this can be fixed with mods and I would recommend cbyyy2013's Better light settings for this as it makes it look much better than the default and assault squad 1. Without this mod, all of the night missions look like they take place during the evening and there's also a bug where most lights won't even make the area around them brighter which was not an issue in Assault Squad 1. Another thing it does is make the slight blue tint that all of the maps have much lower so that the colors don't look so washed out.

If you factor in mods, then this game is worth buying for full price. The modding scene for this game is very active and can take it from being an ok game to being one of the best tactical games on the market. The robz realism mod is one such example of a very popular mod because of how much it improves the tactical experience and historical immersion, but there are also mods for Star Wars, W40k, Zombies, and pretty much anything else you can think of if you're just wanting to have some fun. The one downside to mods in this game though is that the game can take a long time to load if you have downloaded a bunch of large mods because it copies all the mods you have downloaded from your workshop folder into the mods folder where you installed the game. If your game seems like it has gotten stuck on mounting mods, let it run for about half an hour and hopefully it's done by the time you get back. They fixed this issue in Call to Arms, but unfortunately did not update this game with the fix. If the negatives I have shared have not scared you away, then give this game a try!

While left 4 dead 2 has all the same maps as the original game, it just doesn't quite capture the dark and grim atmosphere that this game has.

One of my Favorite Total War games. It combines turn based strategy (which ranges from okay to pretty good depending on your faction) and rts (one of the best in the series). Unfortunately, the steam version of this game (v1.51) is busted and struggles to run without lagging/stuttering and the only thing that seems to help this is to turn off anti-aliasing then it will run fine except on some of the bigger battles. Have fun trying to get even a steady 30 frames on a "large" battle. The disk version of the game does not have these issues which is why I cannot recommend purchasing the steam version. dxwrapper by elishacloud helps to mitigate these issues, but I still get higher frames on the disk version (v1.5) so that is the version of the game I would recommend. If you can get past the older looking graphics, this game is one of the best the tactical genre has to offer.