Recent reviews by mad kitten

It still has plenty of bugs and balance issues, as well as some unimplemented features, and the pace of development is slow. However, even in its present state, it's a worthy successor to Warband, and a lot of fun.

Makes nukes great again.

In VR, this game is amazing; I would even go so far as to say that it by itself is sufficient to justify the cost of a high-end VR headset. It's really hard to explain, but it's basically non-stop interactive eye candy, where you get to decide how you interact - you can fight the enemies (and the pretty is them blowing up), or you can just run away and watch the glowing fractals instead, or chase meteors etc. The "screensavers" - which don't have any fighting, but many of which are still interactive wrt flying around - are also great.

Despite abstract particle graphics, it does benefit from higher resolution. I've played it on HP Reverb G2 (2160x2160 per eye), and dialing the rendering resolution up and down has a noticeable effect. It might not be as good on Quest etc.

Go and read the Kickstarter page for this project. Basically, everything that they said they'll do there, they did.

And it turned out great. There are no real surprises here if you're a fan of the genre, it's all exactly as it should be and as you remember it being ... just more of it, masterfully executed and nicely polished.

Wolfenstein: The New Order. A massive disappointment. Why is this below-mediocre clone of CoD singleplayer calls itself "Wolfenstein"? Why do the visuals look like they're from 6 years ago, despite the game having super-heavy hardware requirements and 50GB (!!! WTF) install size.

Oh, and the reviews? Filthy lies, every single word. Let me quote from Wikipedia (and yes, I read this _after_ I tried to play the game):

"Reviews praised the combat mechanics of the game. Daniel Hindes of GameSpot felt that the intensity and variety of the combat in the game has granted the series "a breath of fresh air," and believes that it managed to fulfil his nostalgic expectations from the series. Metro's David Jenkins said that the combat in the game is the "real deal," and named it one of the best recent single-player shooter games. The stealth sections of the game also received praise, with Simon Miller of VideoGamer.com lauding the shooting and stealth mechanics, naming the former as "solid."

It's railroaded, heavily scripted run-forward-and-gun-things-down. Oh, but occasionally you get to perform a STEALTH TAKEDOWN from behind! With a knife! And the game won't even tell you when you can do it (except for the first time you're presented with an opportunity) - you have to GUESS! So novel!

"Colin Moriarty of IGN considered the narrative and characters one of the best points of the game, stating that it's where it "really shines." Metro's Jenkins also praised the story, stating that the mix of tones is "bizarre but obviously intentional."
Bah. Dialogue feels like it's written by first year journalism students. Characters are wooden. Overall, D-, but ultimately F for not even trying.

"The graphical design of the game received commentary from reviewers. GameSpot's Hindes praised the visual design. Taljonick of GamesRadar stated that the game's level design contributes to his enjoyment of the shooting sequences. He also praised the size of the levels, enjoying the possibility of participating in a large gunfight "with some sort of plan." Digital Spy's Liam Martin shared mixed commentary on the design, noting that the character models are animated well, but the game is "hardly a shining example of next-gen graphical potential."

With respect to "next-gen graphical potential", let me make this crystal clear. This game looks like a typical Xbox (360, that is) game ported to PC, in terms of visuals. Which is to say, crap if you compare it to any game that fully utilizes the potential of the modern PC graphics hardware. I have to note, though, that rendering water like that has been considered faux pas for, like, 7 years now. Since Crysis. The first one. [Have the makes of the game heard of that game, Crysis? They should probably check it out.]

Level design? There is one? There's a lot of pu-retty scenery, that's for sure, but the iron cage that you're confined to is small and highly linear, as usual. Did I already mention that this feels a lot like CoD singleplayer? Yeah, I thought so.

TL;DR: 0/5, don't waste your money. Wolf3D is better. Seriously.

If you have played the past installments of the series, here's a brief overview. First of all, this is definitely AoW as we knew and loved it. Game mechanics is closer to AoW2/SM than it is to AoW1 - there are domains, you don't need siege units to take out walled cities (tho they help), lots of various buildings with a tree of what is needed for what, can build settlers and found cities etc. Overall I'd say changes to core mechanics compared to SM are relatively minor, and focus mainly on tactical combat, where we now have flanking and a more clear mechanics for ranged shots. All in all, if you liked AoW series, and especially AoW:SM, highly recommended. Personally, I still think AoW1 is the best of them all, but this one is still plenty of fun. Oh, and the soundtrack is awesome and very much reminiscent of the very first game.

If you haven't played AoW before, but remember the name "Master of Magic", then you can basically think of this as a remake of MoM. Again, if you liked that game, you will probably like this.

If neither of those ring a bell, the short way to describe this would be Civilization crossed with Heroes of Might and Magic, with some special uniqueness of its own.

The Civilization part is the global map where you capture and/or build cities, manage them to grow their population, build various buildings that improve growth/production/gold/mana/research or produce units, and research spells and special abilities. There's also a HoMM-esque aspect to it as the map is littered with loot and special gold/mana/research producing buildings, typically guarded by NPC mobs. However, unlike HoMM, the global gameplay is definitely geared more towards city management.

When it comes to combat, you can either auto-resolve it, or go into tactical mode like HoMM. Now the big difference here is that, where HoMM is basically two armies of 6 unlimited stacks of units battling on a very small map lined against each other, in AoW you get the combat map produced out of the hex that's being attacked (on the global map), plus the six hexes surrounding it - and all the armies on them! Each army consists of up to 6 units (which CANNOT be stacked), and can technically belong to a different player, or independent mobs (some of which will fight each other). So you can have up to 42 independent units in combat, controlled by anywhere from 2 to 7 players, and with a large combat map which presents plenty of opportunity for maneuver - flanking, retreating to form a line etc are all very common here and have to be learned to fight efficiently, plus the terrain is full of buildings, trees and other obstacles that can be used as cover or to break up enemy line. Consequently, battles typically last longer than in HoMM, especially large city sieges, and are far more tactically challenging - superiority in numbers by no means ensures victory.

Another HoMM-like-but-better thing is hero and leader development. You get the usual system with hero classes, experience points accumulating from kills etc, invested into various skills and traits. There is inventory, too, to be filled by loot from various ruins after evicting their occupants.

All in all, this is a solid high fantasy 4X game that is rather engaging and a lot of fun.