Recent reviews by The Smoking Bat

I cannot for the life of me recommend this game. There are numerous reasons why.

Something is off with the engine and how it saves games. Mind you. I have played this game over 3 different rigs. Each with varying levels of sophisticated hardware.
At a certain point in a long campaign, the game will crash and you will lose all progress. This is probably why in later installments incremental autosaves were made rather than just the one.
2nd, cavalry has almost no use against standard infantry. No matter the difficulty its pointless to use them. Only ones worth using are the dragoons due to garrison bonus.

Finally, the AI has a nasty habit of preferring star forts. Itll never meet me in open battle even when the odds are stacked against me.

Hopefully the spiritual successor does better. I'm still gonna play it as it is otherwise good, but be warned you will run into the issues I have. Its honestly a game I would recommend as a mixed report. Unfortunately, steam does not have that.

You have been warned!

Im gonna tell you why I cannot for the life of me recommend a game developed by Petroglyph, master creator of Empire at
war.

One word: lines.
Why are my men running a line backwards? Why do they get out of the trench then move all the way back? AI Cohesion? Its abysmall. I thought TW was bad, but nope. This takes the cake. How did they go from Empire at War to this??

2nd, how does the AI know where my Arty is but I cant see them? Mind you, theres no way theyve spotted it and if they have there's nothing to show me! Even TW gives important notifications such as if a General is under attack or men are about to crack! I don't get any of that!

Finally, back to the lines. Firing lines to be specific. WHY, WHY IN GODS NAME, WHEN I TAKE A TRENCH, THE MEN LOOK BACK THE WAY THEY CAME AND NOT FORWARD!? That makes no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sense!!!!

I cannot recommend this game. It is either buggy or poorly designed. I could care less about DLC. Don't say a game is done when it clearly isnt!!!!!

I haven't played a Aliens game since AVP came out many moons ago (colonial Marines doesn't count).
There are pros and cons. Since the cons are the most aggravating, I'll start there. You'll see why in a bit.

Cons:
MY GOD MARINE GO WITH THE SQUAD! The few times I reloaded a save was because one or two Marines would decide the path was better in a different direction. Which was also in the path of a xeno.
Pathfinding needs a tiny bit of polish. I only mention it since it happened maybe twice as an issue. By then I would catch it.

Sometimes the X option to cancel an order would be an entire square and unclickable unless I made the Marines sprint.

Lastly, story is good up until the end. maybe its cause I want more? But the general consensus is there is much to be desired.

Pros: if you've played xcom and are used to countdown mechanics, you're in for a treat. If you don't like those mechanics, you're in luck. Due to the difficulty of the game, every facet of it is customizable from the start. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND PLAYING AS EASY AS POSSIBLE FIRST GO ROUND. The devs do not shy by saying it is difficult...take your time walking.

2nd, the atmosphere harkens back to AVP but from a top down perspective. Anytime that motion tracker went off I got nervous from the beginning, but by the end, just like AVP, I felt seasoned enough to take it on.

Lastly, my god the attention to detail is on par. They did do their research, and injected their own spin in a way that makes sense! TAKE NOTES OTHER COMPANIES.

Now get to the APC Marine! MOVE IT!

UPDATE 11/20/2024
You guys have to get your ♥♥♥♥ together before releasing another update.

MISSION COMPLETE.

UP UNTIL TODAY. SAY NO TO PSN! LET THE GALAXY BURN, THE TERMINDS AND AUTOMATONS SHOULD TAKE OVER UNTIL ITS REMOVED!!!
April 2011: Hackers Access Personal Data of 77 Million Sony PlayStation Network Users
May 2011: Personal Details on 25 Million Sony Online Entertainment Customers Stolen
June 2011: Sony Pictures Website Hacked, Exposing One Million Accounts
November 2014: Hackers Steal 100 Terabytes of Data from Sony Pictures
August 2017: Hacker Group Accesses Sony Social Media Accounts
September 2023: Sony Investigates Alleged Hack
October 2023: Sony Notifies Employees of Data Breach

Ahhhhh pathfinder kingmaker. A game that rushes you to make complex decisions, and forces you to deal with threats that you may not have the capibility to do so, or the drive at the end game.

Spoiler: once you reach the last curse, your kingdom will begin to fall and your forced to find the location where you can stop the being causing all of it. no matter the preparation, stats, NOTHING, you will lose if you dont pander to the way the story is told. its god awful. i honestly tried to give this game a shot, but unlike rogue trader which handles it better, there is no option to turn this off, or implyment that you have to find the final portal. its all just, LETS GO KICK HER BUTT. not, HEY, WE SHOULD GO THERE OTHERWISE WE'RE GONNA LOSE.

the kingdom stats suck.

the companions suck.

hell i was the only guy character in my party since all the characters that i could even possibly mesh with are women.

there is a bias towards them. piss poor script writing that states "she", in the stats of an item, even though technically it should be gender neutral.

god...i hate this game so much. my ex did too and shes a bigger fan of this stuff than i am. one thing we can agree on.

bottom line, until they update it to make it to where specific kingdom difficulty stats can be further chosen, STAY. THE HELL. AWAY.

I hate race against time mechanics. Its a dated concept. The idea thtat I have days to fightt, unlike a normal insurgency, is beyond maddening to me.
So yeah. If you want that, then by all go ahead. If you're not, stay away. Thats the one thing that ruins it and therefore I cannot recommend.

Relic, Ca, SEGA, whoever reads these, and decides to push it for review towards the pitch and feedback department. Hear my plea, my word of advice, and my warning.
My own story can go back almost 30 years, during the "golden" years of gaming in the 90s. During that time, I have seen games come and go, rise and fail.
But none were able to compete with DoW when it came out in 2004. As a teenager at the time, struggling in middle school, it was both an outlet and a gate way. It enabled me to funnel my frustrations in gory, fantastic battlefields. And its story telling were next to none, in a format I could understand. To this day, I owe my 40k allegiance to this storied franchise.

Come 2017-18, everything changed for you guys. You resurrected this franchise after dabbling in DoW II. An IP that still divides us to this day. Enter DoW, the game that I pre-ordered, foolishly, all those years ago. Hoping to have the same spark.
I was naive. Foolish, as I mentioned. And a lot less skeptical. But after hearing the reviews, I was scared. And until today, I was still holding out a glimmer of hope.

It was unfounded. I tried playing the tutorial, because the concepts seemed so alien. And now I understand why everyone was so angry. The fact that we have deviated so far from a strategy game to a DOTA style competition shows how bad this project was mismanaged.

But I'm not angry. I'm just disappointed. I wish I could turn back time and return this. It is as if when the model God Splitter that I got in the collectors addition snapping in half by accident was a premonition to this. This is where my plea comes in.

Never, ever, EVER go for the trend! Trail blaze. For gods sake, this screams the DOTA and other formats. Both my plea and advice. That is what you did with the first one!

And a warning.
Should another title be made, never attempt something like this.

There is hope. You have 4 early entries that can use some uplifting to god hood. A new engine, new graphics, new tool sets for the army painter and updating path finding. These are all possible. If toys for bob can recreate a game as faithfully as Spyro, it is possible to re-imagine the next. Not recreate, re-imagine, uplift, glorify, materialize it.

It is my hope, and the hopes of many, that this slight we call DoW 3 can be avenged.

And to all who critic my words, know that the majority of the community stands with me in this argument. All of us in our hours.

Thank you.

Never thought I wouldn't recommend a 40k game. Thankfully I got it as part of a package, but still. Diablo in space...diablo should stay diablo. Change my mind. Ugh.

way better than starfield. dont even have to play starfield to understand why. almost everything is seemless.

If I have to watch a video on the tutorial of the game then I want my money back. No game I've ever played has ever had that and it doesn't make any dam sense.