Tag Archives: Video Game Review

Rome 2 Total War Review

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At last, almost a decade after the original  Rome Total War – Rome 2 returns to your PC. The game is famous for combining both a turn based grand strategy on a campaign map and glorious real time tactical battles.

After using the useful Steam pre-load feature to install the game before release, I leap straight into the grand campaign as Macedon. The year is 272BC and Macedon is still trying to recover from the break up of Alexander the Greats empire. First impressions are good, the campaign map is beautifully detailed, looks fantastic and is absolutely huge. There are now hundreds of different smaller factions alongside the main ones. The first thing I do is expand a city and I watch in delight as my old wall is knocked down and new buildings leap up out of the ground. Cities expand randomly in any direction and it never gets dull watching it.

It takes a while to get used to the new user interface but eventually I did. Turns now last a whole year which is a bit disappointing since it was nice to see how the campaign map change in winter. I really liked the new diplomacy system. It’s quick and easy to see who’s allied and who’s at war. You can now see in detail why a faction doesn’t or does like you. The AI is a tough negotiator. As Macedon I start off at war with a small town to my east. A couple of turns in and the enemy AI offers me peace but demands money, a few turn later and with my army massing near his border I’m able to bully the AI and he accepts not only peace but he also now pays me a hefty sum. I set off to attack his neighbor instead. It can be a bit tricky to set up trade deals (the AI often demands huge payments) however if you work at it, for example by starting with a non-aggression pact first, you can get them done. As you go further into the game and become more powerful smaller nations will come to you begging for trade agreements and alliances.

Its a positive start but sadly the longer I play the game the more apparent Rome 2’s flaws become. Most of them are with the Rome 2 battle engine. Unfortunately Creative Assembly has completely dropped the ball with this and it feels like a real step backwards for the series. Battles are stupidly quick. Men die in seconds and armies of thousands are lost in a couple of minutes. There’s almost no time to properly position and manoeuvre your troops. It takes all the fun out of the game. Worse still units struggle to maintain any formation or cohesion. Most battles result in one big brawl. That’s fine if its a bunch of barbarians but when my Hoplites abandon there beautiful phalanx and sprint towards the enemy its very frustrating. It’s the total opposite to the joy of of a Hoplite phalanx battle in Rome 1.

There are other major issues with battles. Some bright spark has decided to place capture points on battle maps. It’s beyond stupid. Deploying your troops to defend is now pointless. In old games you could retreat to high ground or some woods to use the terrain to your advantage, not now.  If you lose the capture point you lose the battle. My entire Macedonian army of 2000 men is destroyed despite only losing 11 men in a battle because I didn’t realise there was a capture point.

There are other problems as well. Battles feel arcadey, many of the unit abilities feel manufactured and fire javelins and fire camel archers just seem over the top. What’s upsetting is that almost all these problems could have been avoided with even a small amount of testing or feedback. What’s clear throughout the game is that Creative Assembly’s decision making process is flawed. The battle AI is another weakness. The AI is especially poor during sieges although that has always been the case with Total War games.

Another example of poor decision making is the removal of faction family trees, so beloved by fans. It means you now don’t really care who’s head of your faction much less who might take it over. It’s not helped by some very poor character portraits.

You now choose to upgrade your generals in the way you want. This is not nearly as fun as in Rome 1 where the game would automatically attribute your generals and governors new abilities based on their performance and your actions. Win a load of defensive battles and your general would become a great defender and get a bonus defending, recruit lots of mercenaries for a long time and your general might get a discount in the future. Leave a governor to rot in a small province and he would become a corrupt drunk. Now I win a land battle and I can upgrade my generals naval abilities if I so choose. It makes your generals feel less like real people and it makes you less attached to the game.

Army traditions are great new feature. Armies now develop abilities over time with the more battles they win. Again though this would be a lot better if it was automatic rather than the player choosing the upgrades. The new unit cards have divided opinion but they have really grown on me. They look like units might have done on ancient pottery and they look absolutely beautiful. In some areas the game is overly complex such as with spies, emissaries and champions. The roles of these specialist units are still very unclear to me. Simpler defined roles would have been better.

I don’t want to come across as overly critical. The game is fun too play and there is a lot that’s good about it. It’s clear that CA has some very talented people and I feel for those in the team who’ve done their jobs extremely well. (Not least the marketing department who have done a fantastic job with trailers and rally point etc.) There’s some fantastic work in this game (The great animations, sound track, huge number of detailed units to name a few), and some good new ideas and features as well. The trouble is there are also some basic mistakes and the battles are just wrong at the moment. It’s more than just poor execution and polishing its about fundamental errors made at the decision stage and you get the strong impression that the game lacked any strong leadership from an overall designer who new what they were doing. It’s a real shame because there are clearly incredibly talented people at CA

You can’t help but think that if you could take the best bits of Rome 1 and Rome 2 you could have an incredible game. All hope is not lost. Creative Assembley are promising a patch on Friday and subsequent patches after that. There is tremendous potential here but you might want to hold off for the moment to see if things get fixed or until the modders start to fix what CA couldn’t.

Overall Score 7/10 (but could be 9/10 with good patching)

 

The Great

Epic Map
Unit Stances (force marches, building forts etc) adds a lot to campaigns
Huge number of Factions and Different Units
Expanding cities
Bringing in fleets – particularly to help with sieges is awesome

The Good

The tech trees and there diversity across different factions
Army Traditions – Great new feature
Diplomacy
Provinces and Edicts – I like the way cities are now broken down into different provinces. It takes some getting used to but it adds an interesting new dynamic.
Campaign AI – It’s early days but it seems to be doing a pretty good job so far

The Bad

Politics – has potential but lacks clarity and feels like your just trying to stop bad things from happening. Huge error to not include Faction Family Trees.
No seasons (1 year turn) – Should be at least every 6 months
Battle AI is weak especially during seiges

The Terrible

Battle Gameplay

Capture points in battles – No need to explain this

Sleeping Dogs Video Game Review

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Unlike my many of contemporaries I knew about Sleeping Dogs a long time ago – it was formerly going to be released as True Crime – Hong Kong, that was until Activision dropped it to focus on ‘more lucrative’ titles. Utterly disappointed, I was overjoyed when developers Square Enix and United Front Games decided on taking up the challenge. Only problem was, I knew that by the time the game would have been released the title would have been in development for near on over two and a half years – and believe it or not, that is a hell of a long time in video gaming land; things move on very quickly and it would take something special for any title to come out on top after that kind of delay.

The first True Crime was something special, a mix of free open world and a gripping crime story at its centre. It played out like an interactive ‘choose your own adventure’ book from the 80’s with multiple paths giving you different endings and incorporating some impeccable voice talent from the likes of Christopher Walken and Gary Oldman. Its sequel True Crime: New York City was a lacklustre affair with little going for it besides the hip-hop soundtrack and evolved graphics. It was little wonder then that the idea here was to ‘reboot’ the series.

The wait for Sleeping Dogs may have been lengthy and done the game no real favours graphically at least, but the wait in development means that what we have here is way better than its predecessors and stands up adequately to most open world titles of its generation.

In Sleeping Dogs you play as Wei Shen, a Hong Kong native who has returned after spending some time in the States. Driven by a desire to avenge his sister’s death, he accepts an undercover op’ to infiltrate the Sun On Yee triad and help take them down from the inside. It’s a typical tale of an undercover cop getting in way too deep and typical of the Hollywood movies it is based upon the story is full of more twists and turns than a rally car racetrack. Similar to another open world title that this is bound to be compared to – Grand Theft Auto – you start out on the lowest rungs of the criminal ladder, completing various missions in order to prove your loyalty and ascend the ranks. This often means that sometimes you will do things like a cop – for example busting criminals or following and doing surveillance jobs for the police – and other times like a triad – delivering drugs, operating drug rackets and beating other gangs to a pulp. Wei’s police superiors suspect he’s getting in too deep and there is this whole ‘brother’ loyalty thing that operates within the gang which means that you constantly have to prove yourself to get in deeper in order to take out the bad guy. No pressure then.

Thankfully the fantastic voice acting and skilful story writing bring this game to life in the way only Stranglehold and Max Payne 3 could achieve; successfully managing to blend English and Cantonese into a compelling storyline on par with the best action films.

None of the individual elements in Sleeping Dogs are the best-in-class; graphics are above average but nothing to write home about; club scenes don’t sizzle the way they do in Max Payne; dance floors are empty compared to the heaving floors seen in Payne 3. Character models tend to look like plastic dolls when viewed up close, and some gestures characters make are rigid and unnatural. Rather shamefully too, there are some repeat palette and character models seen akin to The Amazing Spiderman game of late.

Sleeping Dogs’ combat mechanic is lifted straight out of Batman’s Arkham Series with one button used for countering attacks and the other used to initiate a combo, there is a slight variation – holding the attack button down and you deliver a hard attack. But come on; lets be honest it is standard fare. I found the counter attack button to be rather sloppy; sometimes countering and other times failing to do so which was annoying as well as frustrating when you are surrounded by enemies and have limited life. Where Sleeping Dogs differs to similar systems is with the emphasis on environment attacks. The circle button is used for grabbing and once you have hold of an opponent held you can deliver a number of combos to eliminate them. In most places once grabbed you can drag enemies to certain objects around you and use these things to finish them off for example throw them into a fish tank or whack their head into a speaker. These environmental finishers are satisfying to see and later when you are surrounded by enemies you realise that doing a finisher can get rid of some opponents quickly and thus give you more time to take on the more powerful assailants uninterrupted.

One criticism that can’t be levelled at Sleeping Dogs is the capturing the atmosphere of Hong Kong. The market place is a good example, loads of people populate it, you hear people chattering, market sellers screaming at you to buy their pirate DVDs, cooks fry things up in restaurants, merchants hock their wares at the marketplace, and dancers perform at a street festival it’s all very enjoyable and when you do find a market seller you like the clothing of you try to go back there – just as in real life presumably. This city may not be accurately modelled on the real thing, but it nonetheless has a powerful identity all of its own. 

Driving in Sleeping Dogs feels good. Arcade style handling makes it easy to hop into any vehicle and tackling corners in no time. Like another title – Driver – sometimes you have to escape police presence or take out other Triads in their vehicles. Here it is done with equal merit; Cars spin out of control, explode or flip over and any passengers in the car you are in give you the respect you are owed. Later there are shoot-outs that involve shooting out the tires of pursuing cars which, whilst not particularly challenging is still thrilling and later in the game Wei also has the ability to perform action hijacks, leaping from one vehicle to another and forcibly taking the driver’s place. It’s an outrageous move that gives Sleeping Dogs a bit more of that Hong Kong action movie feel.

Big Guns aren’t a major focal point in Sleeping Dogs as the action tends to centre on Martial Arts. When shoot-outs happen they are loud, brash and in your face. Gun combat makes use of the now standard cover system, and though it doesn’t quite measure up to the intensity seen in other games, there are more than a few dramatic touches. You can vault over tables or other objects, you can slip into a slow-motion aiming mode, taking enemies out as you speed forward. You can also mix up combat and gunplay together, for example you can quickly disarm an enemy and use his gun to take out others. There are some memorable cinematic scenes for example one shoot-out takes place in a hospital with nurses and doctors becoming involved in the fray – very good indeed.

In all sandbox games you have a staple of side missions. Sleeping Dogs is no exception; here there are loads to do, from taking over drug rackets to sending out a message to other gangs to helping people that your gang protects. You can even try your hand at Karaoke. Everything helps to raise your ‘face’ the currency in this game which equates to respect. The city is huge and there is a lot to do. The game is far from linear but in contrast is at its best when it is and the story is unravelling.

Regrettably there is no multiplayer in this title – and for that it may always come second place to the likes of Grand Theft Auto and Max Payne. What it does do is incorporate a system similar to the Auto Log mode whereby in certain tasks and challenges you are measured against your friends and other players. Certain missions can be replayed too. This keeps a certain level of replayability but not much.

My verdict

True Crime…um sorry Sleeping Dogs may be a title that we have we have waited wei too long for, but is well worth playing. Yes, graphically it is not out of this world but the storyline is compelling, the gameplay interesting and immersive and more than able to stand its own against other titles in its genre. With the Limited Edition of the game costing the same as most premium titles it is a bargain and should be snapped up pronto.

9.1/10