Recent reviews by Nameless Bryan

I check a looked. The future's future is dead. This is the future.

Haven't had a lot of time to play yet, just getting set up. More on that later*.

Early tech impressions: Stunning visuals, Great performance. Game holds up remarkably well. 1070 Ti is overkill at 1440p, max settings. I'm sure you could get away with much lower end hardware without many compromises.

If you played this on PS2 back in the day: Words cannot say how amazing this game feels to be running at 60fps with all enemies on screen, no time dilation, no lag, no stutters.

Cons: Poor ultrawide monitor support. I have a 21:9 monitor, and it stretches the screen, even when you have selected borderless window mode and a standard 16:9 resolution. I was nearly ready to refund the game, but I found a workaround. This won't effect most players, but is so bad that I would not consider keeping the game without some kind of fix.

Fun Facts: The opening sequence spoils the plot of the entire game. No, this was not done for sentimental purposes with the PC remaster. This was how the game was designed from the beginning! Fascinating!

*So instead of actually playing the game, I have been spending my time figuring out this Aspect Ratio issue. I got a solution, so I made a guide for anybody who has the same problem. Shameless plug here:
https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1573271260

tldr; 10/10 would get plot spoiled as kid, grow up, forget plot, get plot spoiled again as adult again.

Leaving a review in part as thanks to developers at Treexy. I had an issue with a mystery driver causing a BSOD (was driver's fault, not a problem with Driver Fusion Premium). They responded & gave pretty good support. I was able to install batches of a few drivers at a time until I found the culprit. Once I identified it, I just rolled back. If I understand correctly, a feature recently added should make it so that drivers can be installed one at a time without rescanning the whole system, saving even more time. I appreciate them leaving a note to let me know about the recent improvement (on Thanksgiving day, no less.)

Some reasons to buy:

If you find yourself being the "tech guy" for friends and family who don't know what drivers are, let alone intall current drivers.

If you have a small fleet of computers to maintain (Gaming tower, HTPC, Work/school Laptops)

If you have an obsession/need for weird add-in cards (pcie wi-fi, sound, ethernet, etc. Possibly capture cards though I haven't tried those personally)

If you've ever been nailed with a shoddy/half-baked driver release tanking your system. (Driver rollback support is great. That's how I was able to diagnose and fix the issue I described at the beginning.)

If any of your hardware has dodgy or out-of-date support, or you find yourself on shady 3rd-party websites downloading a driver and hoping it's not really a trojan/malware.

If you are building a new rig, or build/upgrade often.

Personally, Driver Fusion has helped me out in all of the above scenarios. I will tell you right now anything this software does, you could do yourself for free. However, the time and pain saved running DFP has been well worth the asking price for me. I'm getting ready to build a new rig for 2018, and I'll be looking forward to a quick "one & done" driver solution for the build.

If you have the money and occasionally experience a few of the same scenarios as I did, or you're building a new PC soon, I'd say absolutely worth it on sale. If you have all of the same scenarios as I did or build often, I'd say even full price would be worth it.

The new content is very forgettable. You would be forgiven if you played the DLC and weren't able to tell that anything has been added. The trapping mechanic feels very tacked on. You get no proper interface for interacting with trapped creatures - basically you are given a mind-control gun and told to have at it. At this point, the developers would get a much better response from simply releasing the GECK modding tools and officially supporting mods & steam workshop, as promised.

With the BE expansion pack coming out soon, I thought it was finally time to update my review.

I'll start with the good: CIV BE plays on the classic Civilization formula. If you have played and enjoyed a CIV game, and aren't expecting some kind of revolutionary new gameplay, you may be satisfied with BE. Kudos to Firaxis for putting together an excellent User Interface, not-too-obnoxious tutorials, and a very playable experience.

Firaxis has also supported the modding community, and thanks to the effort of modders, this game kept my interest longer than it could have in the "vanilla" version. Thanks to everyone who helped with unofficial patches & adding onto the base game.

That said, there isn't much new to be had in CIV BE. The affinity system works much like religions/wonders in other CIV-style games.

I was disappointed with how long it took to fix the launch bugs with BE. First and foremost, users with 120hz/144hz monitors were locked into low resolutions (720p). The official word was that, since this was a minority of users, the issue wasn't a priority. I'm happy to say that the issue seems to be fixed today, but for the three months I played, all of that time was spent at a lower resolution and so I can't endorse the graphics of BE.

Graphics aside, gameplay is pretty "meh." If you've played a Civ-style game you have played BE. The affinities are nice, but they are basically the only way to customize units. I would have preferred more in-depth options to specialize my military.

The quest system is interesting until you realize that most quests are simply A/B choices - and the majority of those have only one right answer. Would you rather have 1 extra trade route at every city forever, or +1 energy from each trade route? Don't worry, the answer will be pretty obvious by the time you start. Unfortunately, the AI will cripple itself by making the bad choices in some quests.

Units are somewhat bland. Firaxis didn't bother reskinning the units, so each player's armies look identical. Flags next to the unit names are used for identification, but since factions share similar flag icons/colors, scanning through the map could be a pain (Which faction had a star in the flag? Oh right - all of them). Some useful mods will change soldiers' shirt colors so you can tell at a glance who is who.

What I found most disappointing really, was the diplomacy system. All factions share the same dialogue and, based on affiinity, the same strategy. Three affiinities, three playstales, one personality.

Verdict: CIV BE has the personality of a cardboard cutout. The addition of Quests/Affinities can't substitute for real innovation. If you MUST play CIV in space, there are better alternatives. I could reccomend this game at around $10 - 15 USD price point.

Some alternatives to try:
Warlock I or II: A fantasy-based CIV clone with a much gentler price point and lots more to do with the military/research(spells). Warlock games also lack in-depth diplomacy systems, but make good with much more interesting battles. Warlock I in particular is a great bargain, as it is not too terribly different from II.

Endless Legend: Another fantasy-based strategy game, but breaks the mold a little from Civilization titles. Possibly the best strategy game out there right now, and polar opposite of BE: customization galore, interesting quests/objectives, bursting with character. Professional reviews and multiple GOTY awards say more for EL than I ever could. As a nice touch, EL gets frequent updates/bugfixes.

Endless Space: The debut game from Amplitude, creators of Endless Legend. If a sci-fi setting is your thing, can't go wrong. Endless space is set on a galactic scale, so you are doing away with traditional hexes altogether. Despite this, lovers of the 4X strategy formula will be quite at home with an experience that is both in-depth and easy to learn. The only draw-back for me is that the AI goes off the handle and has a tendency to "cheat" in higher difficulties. Look out for Endless Space II coming out possibly in 2016.




Original Review -
This is just a placeholder recommendation until Firaxis add 1920x1080 resolutions to the game. Looking forward to playing whenever they get around to that.

"I don't often play F2P, but when I do it is Hawken."

Hawken plays more like an FPS than a simulator. Think a little more Armored Core, a little less Mechwarrior.

The Good:
Environments: Best world design of any game in its class. If nothing else, download it just to see the levels. In cities, Bladerunner meets Dubai. Gameplay-wise, the maps are challenging to learn but provide a lot of different approaches.

Gameplay: Not everyone in the community agrees, but I like the fast fights with little respawn time. You can snatch victory with a well organized last minute push. Likewise, you can't get too comfortable with a strong lead - you have to work to keep it. Seiges are the exception to the rule, and can seemingly last forever. Still a unique & enjoyable gameplay mode though.

Immersion: AAA polish when it comes to the mech interiors, the splash pages, the garage and the HUD. Loving attention is paid to little details, like wondering if your clunky old CRT mech will pass all of its pre-flight checks.

The Not-So-Good:
Let me start by saying that anything you need to win can be unlocked by playing (Game Currency, or Hawken Points, are free and accumulate as you play). There is no pay to win, although you can certainly get a head start by spending some cash to unlock gameplay essentials early. Nothing uncommon there.

That said, paint jobs, cosmetics, and customizations are mostly Paid-currency only. I wouldn't mind, but each customization has to be purchased separately for each mech. Think buying hats for your toons in Team Fortress, but you have to buy them separately for each class. Considering that, I don't think the Paid Currency, Meteor Points, are a good value right now. But the Nemesis pack is pretty good if you can get it and want a head start. Unlocks most mechs with enough left over to trick one or two of them out.

Also the physx and the open nature of some maps have been scaled back since beta. Sad, but necessary to get reasonable frame rates I suppose. There is still enough complexity to keep the maps interesting. Hopefully they will be able to take some of the forcefield "bumpers" out in the future though.

Overall, highly recommended that you try Hawken if you are a mech fan, or if you enjoy FPS and are just looking for something different.