This is one of the most ambitious games I've ever played. It's trying to do a lot of things. Every region has GDP and a lot of the geopolitics are simulated. Also, a lot, if not most of the solar system is simulated. This is hard sci-fi with a lot of space physics simulated from my understanding. You could argue that this is several games baked into one. First of all you have the game on earth, where factions are struggling to gain control over nations, once you get into space, you have to manage space stations and fight space battles against aliens and possibly other factions.

Gameplay Overview

In Terra Invicta you don't control nations directly. You start out as one of 8 factions with completely different goals. One faction wants to ally with the aliens, another wants to exterminate them, a third one just wants to leave earth and so on. You have to influence nations to get some control of them and benefit from their resources. Eventually you'll get into space and start building space stations (stations such as the ISS already exist btw). More stable, or large nations are more difficult to gain control over, so you have to make short and long term decisions on what nations you want. You could take control of smaller, or less stable nations to quickly get access to their resources or maybe try to build them up, or you could try to gain control of ones that already have a space program. Since you eventually want to get to space, and the game uses some real world physics, you'll also have to consider what regions are suitable for space programs (near the equator is better overall). You'll quickly realize how much this game tries to simulate. Every nation on earth has one or more control points with GDP and other information based on current real world data. It doesn't stop there, once you look at the solar system, you'll realize that the game doesn't only have the planets, but also larger asteroids and moons to colonize, or build orbital stations around.

With eight factions that all play differently, combined with a tech tree that deliberately locks certain projects to specific playthroughs, there's a lot of replayability here. I haven't tried all the factions yet. In fact, I've only played two of them.

Agents & Organizations

You interact with nations, assets and other factions by using agents. The agent system is quite complex with different agent classes, traits and stats to determine what skills they can use. Agents are used for everything from taking control of nations to assassinating or detaining agents from other factions. You start the game with two agents but can recruit more as the game progresses.

The agent system, like a lot in this game, is quite deep and complex. For example an agent can give you bonuses to influence in countries where education is below a certain threshold, or only give benefits in certain countries, so you really have to think about how and where you use your agents.

The game also has organizations which you can use depending on what nations and agents you control. A lot of these are real world organizations such as intelligence agencies, military organizations, companies and criminal organizations (SAS and MI5 if you control the UK for example). Organizations will give you all sorts of bonuses and sometimes drawbacks in different areas.

Research

The research system is a great part of this game. There is public research which will benefit everyone. You have some influence over what public projects get picked. Once a public project is completed you'll get access to private engineering projects which only your faction will benefit from. This means you'll have to be careful what public projects you support to achieve your goals. The tech tree is the largest I've ever seen in a game, but you can't, and you don't need to research everything. Some projects only have a certain chance to unlock for your faction in a playthrough, so you'll not always have access to all the projects you want. Having said that, there is always alternatives, and there's a lot of technologies you don't need. The game has lots of rocket engines for example, but you'll only need one, or a few of them. There are also a lot of earth related techs to unify nations, or how to deal with the aliens.

Earth Phase: Geopolitics & Threats

You'll get your first alien contact right at the start of the game, but for the most part the aliens don't have a huge effect on the game early on. The aliens are not your only threat however, especially not early on. Humanity is far from united in this game. Each faction has their own goal, and nations on earth can and will fight each other. This can include an all out nuclear war, which I haven't seen in my own game yet.

Space

I haven't got far enough into the post-release game to give a full account of this section. I'll update the review when I have.

Once you get into space and start establishing colonies (this will take a while), you'll eventually start building a space fleet. The game has a ship designer and real time space battles. It seems very comprehensive. Real world physics are also simulated, which means that transfer windows between celestial bodies matter. It'll sure matter when it comes to how long it'll take you to travel around the solar system.

Terra Invicta is a mix of turn based and real time. You make weekly, biweekly or monthly decisions where the game pauses, but you progress time in real time. Space battles are real time, but can be paused as well. You can either have cinematic battles where you don't have to consider fuel usage, or you can use real world physics, in which case you have to consider fuel usage during battles to avoid having your fleets end up on an escape trajectory where you end up on a course that prevents you from going back home.

UI & Learning Curve

Some will argue that the UI and learning curve are the weakest parts of this game, and I must admit, it's very overwhelming at first. The game has so much information and so many things affecting each other, it can be difficult to find the things you're looking for. I still don't want to call it bad, even though recent Paradox titles have better UI. Same with the learning curve, you won't see your mistakes right away, it will take years before you realize you're in a death spiral, but you can also turn things around. Just don't expect to start the game and know everything right away. There is a tutorial now, but it will only point you in the right direction early on. Since information is interconnected and scattered all over the place, the UI could really benefit from a nested tooltip system.

Conclusion

I haven't played this game enough to draw a final conclusion, but I think it's safe to say it's a good game. If you want an extremely complex and ambitious game that tries to do a lot of things, you should like this. Whether or not it succeeds is up to you to decide, but I think it does a really good job, especially considering the size of the development team. If you like grand strategy games, hard sci-fi and some 4x elements, this game could be for you.

I should've written this two years ago, but it's one of those games that you play for a while, take a break from, and then come back to. Darkest Dungeon looks like a very simple game on the surface, but it's actually fairly deep and complex. It's a very classic rogue-like in a sense, but still feels modern.

Graphics

Darkest Dungeon is a 2D game with quite simple graphics. Still, it works very well for this game. The style is beautiful and even if the animations are simple, some camera tricks make it work very well.

Audio

The audio is fantastic. Especially the narrator giving one-liners throughout the game as well as some longer speeches. The game also has nice music.

User Interface

The interface is simple but most things are quite clear, except for some tooltips for skills.

Gameplay

You start out with two characters on your way to a hamlet, fighting two battles to get there. In your hamlet, you can recruit more characters, upgrade buildings and buy/sell trinkets. Each turn in the hamlet represents a week, and you have to complete one dungeon each week. You usually have multiple dungeons to pick from, and it's important to make the right choices with the characters you have.

During a dungeon crawl, characters will be stressed or die. Stress is a very important part of the game and can ruin a run if you're not careful. Characters can also receive positive and negative quirks. Both stress and quirks can be managed at the hamlet, but it will cost you. All combat is turn based, giving you a chance to make good tactical decisions if you know your character skills and enemies well.

Summary

This is a great game, and I recommend it to everyone who likes RPGs, rogue-likes and tactical games. Even if you're not sure if you like it, pick it up on a sale and try it out!

The developer behind this has made a similar style game called planet base that I haven’t played unfortunately.

This game takes place in the early history of mankind (Or should I call it early modern history since we are talking about modern humans?). You start out as a hunter gatherer tribe in the Paleolithic era (Old stone age) and need to survive and develop your tribe into an iron age settlement. I would say the game spans a few thousand, up to maybe 10.000 years depending on how you look at it.

Graphics

The visuals are nice, with a lot of attention to detail. There’s also a sort of action camera to get a close up of any thing in the game, instead of the usual top-down view. It has no practical use but it’s a nice touch.

Audio

Well, the game has good ambient music, audio cues and other sounds expected from such a game. Animal sounds and human grunts (or whatever it is) is also well done.

User interface

The user interface is nice and clear but I would like some more hotkeys and panels. Adding specific villages to a hot key would be nice for example. They have added more panels through patches, so I hope this may be added in the future.

Gameplay

This feels like a quite casual city builder at first, but if you play on higher difficulty or in hard core mode you have a lot of pressure to keep developing your settlement to avoid getting wiped out by raiders that will occasionally attack and try to destroy your nice little village. WHen you are not under attack, it’s all about assigning important tasks and placing buildings. It’s the usual city building stuff plus hunting. Just be careful what you try to kill, because animals will defend themselves and kill your villages. Your villages may also get killed while gathering resources or fetching food, bu roaming aggressive animals (I hate those wolves).

Conclusion

So far, I love this game. If you are interested in a survival style city building game. This is for you. This reminds me of banished, but has more features and resources plus a quite big tech tree, that seem to be growing with every patch. Buy it when you have the chance!

Graphics

The graphics are definitely nice in this game, even though everything is icy. It has some nice effects and I really love some of the buildings. The game has some cutscenes, but these are nothing special.

Audio

The sound effects are nice, and I love some of the voiceover lines. The music is fantastic. You can listen to it on Spotify if you like that kind of music. It works really well for the mood of this game.

User interface

The user interface works fine for the most part, even though I sometimes find myself trying to find specific buildings when things get cluttered later on.

Gameplay

Usually in this type of game, I go for sandbox mode if available. Here however I went straight for the first scenario. I think there is a sand box mode available now, but I haven’t tried it. The whole point of this game is that things get worse over time. You start with a limited set of buildings and very few people, and this game is played over days instead of years, so things happen quite quickly here. You can assign new laws and research new tech to unlock new buildings. Laws will affect the two major stats in this game. Hope and discontent. You’ll have to make quite a few decisions that makes you feel terrible in this game, and you usually seem to end up with some kind of extremist community. On my first attempt I was banished for bad leadership. You grow your population through immigration. The first scenario is basically survival, but on the second one you have to try to keep seeds alive, starting with just a few scientists. Each scenario also has an extra hard survival mode that you can try if you don’t feel challanged enough. The resource management part of this game is nice, and doesn’t feel to easy. During the course of the game you also get a lot of time limited quests from your population, such as heat all homes or treat all sick people. You usually have several options when these quests pop up. If you don’t feel you can do everything they want, you can gain some hope by at least doing something.

Conclusion

If you like the less releaxed type of city building/management games, this is definitely worth picking up. I loved the setthing and how things really got worse over time. In some games it’s the oposite; things start difficult and becomes easy once you get everything sorted out. I highly recommend this game.

Graphics

The graphics range from great to fantastic. The enviroments are very detailed and has high graphical quality. It probably requires a decent PC for the best experience. I like the graphics in this game, not only for it’s quality, but for the great attention to detail.

Audio

Sound effects are great, and voice overs are for the most part ok.

User interface

The user interface can feel a bit clunky at times. For example the inventory system. Replacing gear, something I do quite often, can be a bit tedius.

Gameplay

This is a first person RPG. If you’ve played games like SKyrim, you’ll feel quite at home, except that the combat system is very different (much better IMHO). You start out as a Blacksmiths’  son, without much combat experience, and it’ll take some time before you learn to fight properly. ALso fighting with different weapons feel quite different. The addition of notrition, the need to sleep and repairs is also nice.  Ranged combat is even more difficult than melee before you get used to it. I also usually go to an archery range whenever I switch to a new bow to try a few shots.

Conclusion

Well, if you haven’t noticed already, I’m totally in love with this game. This might turn out to be my favorite RPG of all time. If you want a historical RPG, or just something fresh. Get this game right now!

But now, A year later, after playing EU4 I decided to give this a serious look. Now, 50 or so hours later, I really love this game. Now I’m not sure what made this game seem so overwhelming, even though there are some concepts I still not grasp 100%. I guess the main reason is that you approach things differently. Instead of playing a nation, like in other similar games, you play a dynasty. or rather a member of a dynasty. You try to spread your dynasty while at the same time trying to keep enough land to ensure that your heir will be powerful enough to survive against other claiments. This can be tricky at times, since other dynasties, as well as other members of your own dynasty will try to take what they consdier to be theirs. I use the term “land” ligltly here, cause the game is more about titles. You can hold a Kindom without actually holding any land in it (even though you run a huge risk of getting into trouble with revolting powerful vasals).

Each characters has traits that you have to take into account when arranging merriages and deviding land. Traits can be gained and lost throughout a characters lifetime. This brings an interesting RPG element into the game.

The game takes place in medieval europe for the most part, so you don’t have access to the whole world like you do in EU4, however, the most recent expansion adds india to the map. In the original game, you can start in 1066 and play all the christian feodal leaders. Expansions have added the option to play muslim and pagan leaders as well as the option to start in the 9th century. No matter what  start you pick, the game will end in 1453, since this is considered to be the end of the medieval era (The fall of constantinople).

Something that may put people off, is that the game has a lot of DLCs. I’ve picked up most of them by now, but if you are looking to pick this game up, I would start wit hthe original game, and if you like it, pick up the DLCs on sale.

Graphics

THe game uses the same engine as EU4 I think, so if you’ve seen that, you know what to expect. There are a limited number of character faces in the game, but several small DLCs will add more distinct faces for different cultures.

Audio

The sound effects are nothing special, but the music is good for the most part. There are also a lot of music DLCs to add flavour to different cultures.

User interface

As mentioned, the game can be very overwhelming berfore you get used to it. Some things can be pretty difficult to find, unless you know where it is (financial overview comes to mind). It will take you a few hours of clicking around to learn where everything can be found. Some areas could probably have been made more intuitive, but at the same time, once you get used to it, it works quite well.

Gameplay

You start out as a member of a dynasty with one or more “landed titles” and your goal is to make you and your dynasty gain more power, and survive the test of time. A lot of decisions you make will be long term, for example, you marry one of your children, so his or her children will inherit a title. Events will occur throughout a characters lifetime, changing their traits, opinions of other characters and so on, usually involving active decision making.

You’ll also get involved on plots to clain or revoke toties as well as getting rid of certain people. Managing your vasals is another important area that sometimes requires some creativity. You want to keep people happy without making them to powerful. To sum it up, the game is basically a dynasty simulator.

Conclusion

If you can get through the steep learning process, this game is awasome. I would higly recomment this game to anyone who likes strategy games. It also won’t hurt if you are a fan of intrigues such as those found in series like The sage of ice and fire :). Presonally, I really like this game right now, and there isn’t many similar games out there.  For beginners I would recommend picking up just the original game, playing through one game and then picking up all the expansions and DLCs.

Having an affair with your daughter in law can have some inconvenient results

Well, the wrong person inherited all the titles I wanted. This is what happened to the unlucky 1 year old who inherited all my titles.

I’m writing this after having spent about 50 hours with this game. That’s how long I feel it takes to really get a grasp of the game. I still don’t know everything there is to know about the game, but I feel comfortable playing and know what to do in most situations.

Graphics

Graphically, this game looks quite good for a strategy game, even though graphics are not that important in this genre. The most important thing is that the map is easy to read.

Audio

The sound effect are ok, but the music is really great. THis is a good thing since you’ll have to listen to it for hundreds of hours

User interface

Despite the complexity of the game, the UI is quite easy to get used to. It’s quite intuitive, even though I sometimes spend time looking for something that I know can be found somewhere (A lot of statistical

Gameplay

This is a grand strategy game, so expect to spend a lot of time looking at a map. Well, the concept is easy. You pick a nation, and control it from 1444 (or whenever you like to start) until 1821. Theis is a very interesting time period in most of the world, and the experiance may differ depending on what country you decide to play. For example, as England, you’ll start out in the hundred year war, but later on probably end up cononizing, trading and exploring the rest of the world, pretty much staying away from the european continent. ON the other hand, if you picka country such as Poland, you’ll end up in a lot of the big european conflicts. The game isn’t scripted per say, but some historical events will trigger under certain conditions, such events can turn out to be both good and bad. There are also a lot of other events that will trigger under certain conditions, such as big revolts, trade events and formation of new nations. The game has no real goal, even though there is a score system. it’s more of a simulation then anything else. The game has the usual features of other strategy games such as research, but things are structured in a slightly different way. When you first start out, it feels like you have very little control over your country’s progress, but as you dig deeper, you realized that there’s a lot of things to manage. I would recommend starting as a decent sized country without to many enemies. I started out as spain, and I feel that was a good idea. Your wars early on won’t be that complex and you can experiance some colonizing right off the bat.

Conclusion

Right now, I love the game. It’s the best strategy game I’ve played for years. If you want a game that’s relatively easy to learn, but has a lot of depth, I would pick this up right away. Just be aware that each game will take 50 hours plus, especially before you get used to the game.

The plot is similar to the previous games. You end up alone in a sparsely populated area somewhere in the world, in this case in an fictional archipelago. This time around you won’t have to worry about the malarea like in FC2, so you can focus more on exploring and improving your equipment. The game has a basic crafting system that allows you to get better equipment by hunting wild animals and gathering plants.

Graphics

The graphics are really, really good for the most part, with a lot of stunning views, good looking characters, vehicles and animals.

Audio

Great sound effects, not much in terms of music, even thoug hthere is music to add to the feel of the game.

User interface

One of the few problems I find with this game is the user interface. The whole things feels a bit “consoly”. THe inventory system is easy to use, but I feel that some things requires to many clicks.

Gameplay

You start out alone on an island, but the game has more to offer then most first person shooters. A lot of exploration, tons of side missions, a good story so far, and just lots of things to do in general. You gain experiance by killing pirates, hunting, taking over outposts and completing missions. COmpleting missions also unlocks certain weaons. The crafting system could be a bit more flexible. Right now, the way it works is that certain items requires certain hides and sometimes things just get stupid. The game has a lot of stealth elements along with the usual shooting stuff. You can also find a lot of vehicles throuighout the game, and I like the way they handle.

Conclusion

If you want a good first person shooter with some of the best character interaction I’ve seen in a game like this, you should pick this one up. I wish the main character wasn’t as good at shooting, and they should have made more out of the survival elements in this game. The unexperianced main character is surprisingly good at using firearms that he has probably never seen before. Despite the problems, it’s still a good game and worth playing.

The only game I’ve played in this series is AC2, so I can only compare these 2 games.

My impressions of AC2 was, that it could have been a great game, but I felt the port was terrible. I found it really difficult to get a hang of the controls without using  a controller.

AC3 on the other hand, is much better in this respect. The game seem to follow pretty much the same concept, but the controls feels much more straightforward, and during the tutorial, you are actually told what keys to use instead of having to recognize different symbols, and try to remember what key on your keyboard corresponds to each symbol.

The game, for the most part takes place in 18th century Americas. I’m currently a few hours into the game and it is still very linear, however I expect the game to open up a bit more down the line.

Graphics

I must say, this game looks awasome for the most part. Most of the enviremental graphics, as well as  the characeters looks, and moves nicely. This is pretty much expected from a tripple A title. It’s not just the quality of the graphics. Most of the places I’ve seen so far has a lot of detail that adds to the imersion of the game.

Audio

The sound effects and voice acting is generally good so far. There are games with better voice acting, but this is defenitely good enough.

User interface

Well, I can only compare this to AC2, and as mentioned earlier I think the UI is hugely improved. FOr example. Early on in AC2 I got stuck on a roof (or tower) with an objective to press 2 or 3 keys simultanously, however, since I didn’t have a printout of the control options and couldn’t access it during the scripted sequence, I was pretty much stuck. I guess you get used to the controls, but that pissed me off quite a lot. AC3 on the other hand, teaches you the controls early on in a straightforward way. Stuff like “Press F to aim” is much better then just being presented with symbols from a console controller that you don’t own. This has helped me to get into this game pretty much without frustration I was kind of disapointed that a  game with such great potential as AC2 has was missing such a basic thing. The character movement usually feels pretty fluid and intuitive.

Gameplay

If you’ve played earlier instances of Assassins creed, you pretty much know what to expect. Early on, the game is very scripted without much freedom, but as mentioned I expect this to change.  Expect to spend a lot of time leaping from roof to roof and climbing stuff. Evne though the game has a main story, there are also side missions along the way. I’ve been trying to avoid reading up on the plot, but it seems like the main character (or the one you play when doing the time travelling thing) will take part in the american revolution and war of independence. SO far, I’ve nly seen parts of Boston, but I expect to be able to go to other key historical places of the time, we’ll see. So far I haven’t had to make a single decision on my own in the game whitch is a bit dissappointing. The dialogues and scripted events have been very straightforward. Maybe this will change later on as well? The combat, so far has been very easy. I’ve been shot at with pistols, and attacked with swords and (I think) bayonettes but nothing I couldn’t handle. The combat system overall feels quite simplistic. The blend of history and science fiction in this series has always felt a bit weird to me, but it works for the most part. Sometimes some features feel a little out of place while trying to get imersed into the historical setting.

Conclusion

If you enjoyed the earlier games of the series and wnat more of the same, I expect you’ll get a lot oout of this game. If you expect complete freedom to explore and do whatever you want, or have a lot of choices to make right from the start. Chances are you’ll give up the game fairly quicly, if you don’t find the story compelling enough to continue playing just to see where it’ll take you. After my earlier experiances wit hthe series, I didn’t expect that much out of this game, but so far, I find my self enjoying it enough to want to continue playing. It seems like they’ve done a uch better job with the PC version this time around. It doesn’t hur that I really like 18th century setting either. If you don’t have this yet, and have any interest at all in the series, this is the game I would pick up. Especially if you can do it during a sale.

Metro last light takes place in  russia (I think), in a dystopic future where people spend most of their time below ground. As the name suggests, a lot of the game takes place in the metro. The Metro universe is based on a series of novels by the Russian author Dimitry Glukhovsky (not sure I spelled that correctly 🙂 ) but I don’t think it follows the story of these novels.

I didn’t play the original MEtro 2033 (a prequal to this game), but even though there are references to events in that game, Last light is definitely playable without having played the previous game. Something I wouldn’t say about a series like Mass effect for instance. The game is a single player FPS with focus on stealth. It’s probably possible to shoot everything, but that doesn’t seem to be the best approach to the game.

Graphics

The graphics on the PC are outstanding for the most part, with a lot of emphasis on detail. I’m not sure how the game will look and perform on lower end system, but on my new 4th gen I7 with GTX 770 it runs really well. I like the amound of detail they’ve put into some items as well as the envireoment.

Audio

I find nothing to complain about wihen it comes to the sound effects, but the English voice acting is a completely different story. I’ve heard the Russian voice acting is much better, but so far I’ve been using the English version and it ranges from average to terrible. The developer’s are Ukrainian and I feel that they didn’t put that much effort into the English voices.

User interface

Not much to say here, it’s an FPS, but you have less information on screen then in most other FPSes these days. Something that adds to the imersion of the game and I don’t mind this at all.

Gameplay

As mentioned this is an FPS, but it’s not Doom, half-life or CoD. On the other hand it’s not an FPS RPG like  Fallout 3 or Fallout NW either. Stealth is pretty much a necessity, especially on higher difficulties. There is also a ranger mode available that’s soposed to force you to be even more stealthy. In the world of Metro, you buy and sell stuff with military grade ammo. This can also be used in the weapons you find in the game, but for the most part you’ll use “dirty” rounds.  You’ll spend most of your time in the metro since you have to wear gas masks when going outside. The gas mask has replacable filters that last about 5 minutes. If you are easily scared, you might have some problem with this game since you’ll spend a lot of time in dark places and the amound of detail put into the game really adds to the overall dystopic feel of the game. So far the game is super linear, but hopefully you’ll be given some more freedom later on. If the linearity is a problem, I think you may want to look at some reviews before purchasing the game, since this is a first impressions article. In terms of gameplay I don’t really know where to place this game. It has a little bit of Deus Ex HR, but since it’s post apocalyptic Fallout 3 also comes to mind.

Conclusion

If you don’t mind the linearity, this game is really really good. For some reason, half-life comes into my head while playing this game. I like the world and a lot of the small details they put into this game. I’m not a huge fan of the genre, even though I’ve played a bunch of FPSs. This game fels different in some way and I expect to play more of it. The graphics and overall imersion in this game makes it more apealing to me then most other FPSs Add the stealth elements to that and you have a game that stands out from the rest of the genre.

I want to start by saying that I haven’t played a 2D platformer in like 20 years. I bought this more out of nostalgia then anything. The original Giana sisters came out back in the late 80s and had some controversy surounding it, since it was basically a Mario clone. It was however, still a good game, with an awasome soundtrack. The original game has been ported to several platforms, including IOS.

Now, almost 25 years later, the sequal has been released. As I said earlier, I didn’t expect much from this game, except from a great soundtrack and some nostalgia, however, this game is actually realy good.

You play as two different characters (sisters?, incarnations of the same sister? whatever) and you can and must switch between them to bypass obsticles throughout the game.

Graphics

The graphics in this game is very impressive for an indi game, and without knowing much about PC platformers, I think this is the best graphics I’ve ever seen in a platformer.
It’s usually quite easy to distinguish between stuff in the foreground that will hurt you, and things that are just parts of the background.

Audio

The sound effects are nothing special, but the music is freaking awasome. One nice touch to the game is that the music changes as you “twist ” between worlds, while still staying synchronized.

User interface

I play this game with mouse and keyboard, and even though it’s probably easier to play with a controller, it’s still very very playable with just a keyboard. You’ll learn what keys to use when fairly quicly and then you play pretty muc hwithout thinking about that you don’t have a controller.

Gameplay

I’ve pretty much covered everything already. This is basically a 2D or 2.5D platformer. I haven’t ran into that many difficult puzzles, but there’s a lot of places where you have to figure  stuff out quickly if you don’t wanna die. If you play in standard mode, you have infinite number of lives but it will heart you rating if you die to much, or don’t collect enough coin in a level. That brings me to the starring system. You get stars for completing a level, and certain levels require a set amound of stars from previous levels. This can be annoying if you have to go back and replay stuff you didn’t like, but it brings some challange to the game. You can also play the game in Score attack, Time attack, Hard core and Uber hard core mode. The Uber hard core mode gives you only one life.

Conclusion

Since I’m not a fan of platformers, I wouldn’t pick this up at full price, and if you are you probably already own this game. If you can pick it up on a sale however, it’s definitely worth it if you have the slightest intrest in this genre.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution takes place in a not to distant future where human augmentation through inplants is possible, but not available to everyone. There is an ongoing struggle between the people who are pro augmentations and those who think modifying humans in this way are morally wrong. This theme is an important part of the game, and brings up the classic question of how far sciance could and should go.

The main character: Adam Jensen, is (even though, it’s not by his own will) an augmented human being. He gets his augmentations so early on that I don’t consider it a spoiler. He gets involved in a big conspiracy involving very powerful augmentations.

The game consists of several “City hubs” with a main plot and a lot of side missions. The hubs are fairly large and (at least for me) fairly easy to get lost in. It’s not a true open world game but while withink a hub, you can move around freely before moving on to the next one. The missions are fairly good and usually have several solutions and sometimes leads to other side quests.

Graphics

Overall, the graphics are really good. Their are more important things in a game like this, but it doesn’t hurt that most of the game looks really good. There are some exceptions however. Some of the scripted cutscenes and “Take downs” (more on this later) looks weird. As I’ve already stated though, this doesn’t take away much from the overall experience.

Audio

The sound effects and music of this game is great. Most of the areas in the game has music in the background that adds to the overall atmosphere and feel of an area without being repetitive. Many places also have people talking to each other. You can overhear some interesting conversations, some of which can give you hints to quests or just add to the overall feel. This gets me into voice acting. The voice acting in this game range from quite bad to really good. For some reason, I really like the voice of the main character. As in most open world games, some of the general chatter can be repetitive, but I really haven’t found as much of this here as in other games.

User interface

There isn’t much to say here. The UI does what it’s soposed to and it does it well. Inventory management is quite easy and it’s always easy to find what you’re looking for.

Gameplay

The game is played from a first person perspective for the most part, with the exception of some, for the most part unnecessary cutscenes. This brings up the concept of the Take down system mentioned above. You can incapacitate people by using a non lethal take down (basically walking up to someone and pressing a key). This will take care of enemies without having to kill them, and can be a good solution to many situations. I think you can actually play through the entire game without actually killing someone with a few exceptions. This brings me to the most annoying part of the game: Boss fights. From what I’ve heard, the boss fights in this game were outsource to a different company and the original developer wasn’t to happy with them, however they are there and I have to talk about them. The first one almost made me stop playing the game, cause I got there with weapons that made it really difficult and these fights only take away from the overall experience of the game. They are few and far between however, so, for the most part, those shouldn’t bother anyone to much. This game, however isn’t only about killing stuff. The main story and the multi layer quests is better then you’ll find in most games. This game calls itself an RPG, and RPG  for most people today means statistics, leveling and character development (even though this can be debated and I don’t agree with it). You gain experience by doing all sorts of things; Talking to people, completing quests, hacking computers and taking out enemies). For the most part, you gain more experience by using non lethal solutions to problem, something that can push your gameplay in a way that I don’t like. While playing, I usually don’t care and I just take the solution I feel is the most righteous thing to do or whatever suits me best. In terms of leveling, you gain praxis points that can be used to buy augmentations. Augmentations are basically the skill system of this game. When it comes to weapons, I don’t feel that any weapon is more powerful then another in most cases. Everything has it’s advantages and disadvantages, with the exceptions of the silly boss fights. Same goes for the augmentations, even though I’ve found a few that would be really difficult for me to do without. There’s quite a few weapons to choose from, but I usually use what’s at hand, and what I can find ammo for, since your inventory space is quite limited, even with inventory enhancing augs. I’ll usually find myself switching weapons several times during a long mission depending on what my enemies are using. This will depend on your accuracy and the difficulty level you play on off course. Even though I have been talking a lot about combat and such here, I want to emphasize that the most important part of this game is the storytelling and character interaction.

Conclusion

In 2011 we saw quite a few great games, and this is no exception. If you like a game with some action, that also has a good story, this game is a must. I really don’t have much to complain about in this game, despite what I’ve said above. I highly recommend this game, and if you want quests to be more challanging, I recommend turning off the quest tracker waypoints in the options.

Company of heroes is a Real Time Strategy game set during world war two. Before I picked this game up, I thought it was pretty much like Men of war, but after playing the tutorials and a few missions, it feels more like a  standard RTS with base building elements and resource management. Don’t get me wrong, the campaing missions I’ve played so far plays pretty much like Men of war, but the game feels more like a standard RTS then a WWII battle simulator or whatever you want to call it.

I’m always a bit sceptical to games trying to be somewhat authentic, while at the same time time incorporating base building and resource “gathering”., however this still seem to be a fun game and I’ll keep playing it.

The campaign is set on the western front in 1944 (like most other WWII games). It seem to focus on the operations in Normandy. It would be nice if it had some different campaign, I mean, WWII is more then just just the invasion of France, but the existing campaign seem to be well done.

Game play

I haven’t played enough to say much about game play yet, but it’s the usual RTS stuff. You start with some units, establish a base and build more troops. You can also upgrade tropps and gain special abilities and spend command points to get artiliry strikes and stuff, so the game seem to have pretty good strategic depth.

Graphics

For a game from 2006, the graphics are really nice. They also mix in cut scenses during the campaign to enhance the experiance. THose cuts seem to be  well done thus far.

Audio

Sound effects are good, and the game has a really nice soundtrack.

Conclusion

If you like RTS game, this game is definitely worth a try, especially considering the price 6 years after the release.