- Oct 2, 2003
- 3,692
- 1
- 76
I feel like posting some mini-reviews for the two games I've grabbed from the sale. I'm broke right now so I'm not all-in like many others. :hmm:
The first is Cities XL 2012.
I really like the way that this game is designed. You have different levels of residential which corresponds to different levels of industry and commercial. Lvl 1 residential(un-educated workers) work at lvl 1 industry... etc. Each level (up to lvl 3 I believe) has more demanding needs; lvl 3 commercial needs good hotel access, for instance. It's too complex to cover in detail but I thoroughly enjoy it.
The downside is, this game is buggy as hell. On high screen resolutions much of the text doesn't fit in its placeholders or isn't centered properly; giving it a really poor look. Also the text size isn't scaled properly for high resolutions therefor you can't read anything without squinting really hard. The tutorials are mucked up, for instance it might tell you to build an industry area far away from your residential, then it locks out the roads button so you are unable to build a road to it.
Seems like a great game, it needs polished very badly. I will be playing this some more, and I really want to keep playing it, it's just borderline on my tolerance level for buggyness. The state that this game is in is unacceptable in my opinion. This is the problem with pc games in my opinion, good concepts with shitty execution. They shouldn't be allowed to offer this game for money in its current shape. Fix your shit and you'd have a good game. The game says '2012' in its title for crying out loud! It should properly support todays common resolutions. This is the very reason why I've decided to stay away from new releases at premium prices for now on. Developers, you are destroying yourselves because of this.
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic:
For some reason I've completely neglected all Star Wars games, I've never played a single one. For ~$2 I couldn't pass this one up. It appears to be built using possibly the Neverwinter Nights 1 engine? It's also appears to be using the d&d rulesystem from nwn as well.
After reading and watching many reviews, they give the impression that this game is more epic than any Star Wars movie you'd ever seen. That got me quite excited. I havn't played it for very long but I'm getting the sense that it is going to be pretty epic. I'm a bit turned off by the emptiness of the large areas as well though. The ambition of the game feels like a Mass Effect 1 (version 0.2) if that makes any sense. It has all the ambition but without todays technology to make it happen.
I really dig the combat. It's definitely not for everyone though. It's like nwn1, real time turn based with the spacebar as a pause button. Attacks and skills are done using a D20 system. Blasters are treated the same as an archer, melee is treated like melee. Combat animations are surprisingly very nice. So far everything has voice-overs.
I can't wait to dig deeper into this game. The interface is clunky though, with a strange right-click and hold to move camera around, wasd to walk, left click to interact with objects. Most interact-able objects dont appear to be clickable unless you are facing them directly and right next to them. This is really annoying.
EDIT: Can't launch KOTOR anymore.. it launches minimized and cant seem to bring it to front. Fucking hell.
Please see the existing Steam sale thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2257242 or if you want to discuss those specific games, there are existing threads where you can do so. You can find them by using the search function.
Thanks.
Anandtech Moderator
KeithTalent
The first is Cities XL 2012.
I really like the way that this game is designed. You have different levels of residential which corresponds to different levels of industry and commercial. Lvl 1 residential(un-educated workers) work at lvl 1 industry... etc. Each level (up to lvl 3 I believe) has more demanding needs; lvl 3 commercial needs good hotel access, for instance. It's too complex to cover in detail but I thoroughly enjoy it.
The downside is, this game is buggy as hell. On high screen resolutions much of the text doesn't fit in its placeholders or isn't centered properly; giving it a really poor look. Also the text size isn't scaled properly for high resolutions therefor you can't read anything without squinting really hard. The tutorials are mucked up, for instance it might tell you to build an industry area far away from your residential, then it locks out the roads button so you are unable to build a road to it.
Seems like a great game, it needs polished very badly. I will be playing this some more, and I really want to keep playing it, it's just borderline on my tolerance level for buggyness. The state that this game is in is unacceptable in my opinion. This is the problem with pc games in my opinion, good concepts with shitty execution. They shouldn't be allowed to offer this game for money in its current shape. Fix your shit and you'd have a good game. The game says '2012' in its title for crying out loud! It should properly support todays common resolutions. This is the very reason why I've decided to stay away from new releases at premium prices for now on. Developers, you are destroying yourselves because of this.
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic:
For some reason I've completely neglected all Star Wars games, I've never played a single one. For ~$2 I couldn't pass this one up. It appears to be built using possibly the Neverwinter Nights 1 engine? It's also appears to be using the d&d rulesystem from nwn as well.
After reading and watching many reviews, they give the impression that this game is more epic than any Star Wars movie you'd ever seen. That got me quite excited. I havn't played it for very long but I'm getting the sense that it is going to be pretty epic. I'm a bit turned off by the emptiness of the large areas as well though. The ambition of the game feels like a Mass Effect 1 (version 0.2) if that makes any sense. It has all the ambition but without todays technology to make it happen.
I really dig the combat. It's definitely not for everyone though. It's like nwn1, real time turn based with the spacebar as a pause button. Attacks and skills are done using a D20 system. Blasters are treated the same as an archer, melee is treated like melee. Combat animations are surprisingly very nice. So far everything has voice-overs.
I can't wait to dig deeper into this game. The interface is clunky though, with a strange right-click and hold to move camera around, wasd to walk, left click to interact with objects. Most interact-able objects dont appear to be clickable unless you are facing them directly and right next to them. This is really annoying.
EDIT: Can't launch KOTOR anymore.. it launches minimized and cant seem to bring it to front. Fucking hell.
Please see the existing Steam sale thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2257242 or if you want to discuss those specific games, there are existing threads where you can do so. You can find them by using the search function.
Thanks.
Anandtech Moderator
KeithTalent
Last edited by a moderator:
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