Recent reviews by BeardofSocrates

Democracy prevails with a thunderous applause!

Well it certainly has that early 2000s feel to it. Controls take some patience, and units respond in finicky matter. The one good thing though was the map editor. That was a surprisingly intuitive feature.

A strange combination of Men of War and Command and Conquer.

The majority of your playtime will be spent on campaigns missions, which when combined with DLC is quite a nice diversity. You play in the standard European theatres we all know and love.

Gameplay is not realistic, as not many units will fall in a single hit, outside of artillary, but there are realistic elements that you'll find. Some of these are fuel and ammo being essential to operations, true sight, and vehicle damage, It's an odd combination, but I enjoyed it as this simplied the gameplay, and makes it much less taxing for making a mistake outside of managing your supplies. While it might not be realistic, you can't by any means bum rush an objective with a single unit type. Combined arms is absolutely essential, which is an excellent thing implemented by the developers. A combination of infantry, tanks and artillary wins the day, albeit with some issues I"ll get into.

While I enjoyed the campaign missions, they had some very apparent issues to their structure that were bordliner frustrating; this being the 3 star rating. It's fun and easy earning 2 stars, but to get access to the challenge mode you need 3. Basically earning the 3 star rating requires a combination of completing specific comat tasks such as sucessful airstrikes and flaking, and ultimately having a great kill ratio. For the latter a number missions ultimately break this down to using one stratagey over and over again. Send a single infantryman to crawl forward, and have the tanks and artillary take out what he sees. This is the only safe method to go about keeping your army alive, but it turns the mission into a sluggish match. Experimentation feels discouraged, as that will likely lower your star rank.

The best commander in short is the one who can commit the most murder with the fewest casualities.

Typically in RTS titles, mission performance is acheived by accomplishing secondary or hidden objectives, no matter how you approach them. Challenge mode, which is unlocked after earning 3 stars is often easier as you don't have to worry if that one tank you lost is going to cost you your rating. This system left a negative impression on me, and I hope they implement other methods to earn a high mission raitng.

Outside of these problems, gameplay felt polished, minus a few bugs, and it was great being encouraged to use the all the assets of your army.

As an avid RTS player, this game comes across as a concept that must have looked absolutely amazing on paper, but was executed horribly to the point I have to ask, where is the stratagey?

Battles revolve giving voice commands to your units. Each of your units can be upgraded overtime, encouraging the player to preserve when possible however this can be dfficult due to one infuriating aspect. The simplistic design. This is the most Rock-paper-scissors title I've ever played. APC counters air, tanks counter ACP, Air counters tank. That's it, oh and there is some infantry running around trying to survive. There is no reason to micro, just say attack that and watch a rather slow and boring fire-fight. I litterally fell asleep watching this happen. Pathfinding was also an issue present. Watching tanks figure out how to drive down a road isn't exactly thrilling.

Camera is also annoying, though I'm hoping I missed something here. Your camera follows the unit you selecterd to see the area around it, while having a tactical camera to zoom in. Being only able to see your unit in its given area, it's pratically impossible to explore the battlefield, which is dissappoiting as the maps appear well crafted.

Yes, it's a very campy story but the developers do an excellent job of embracing it. If you pick this game up, only do it for the gameplay. It quick, it's zany, and rewards smart play constantly.

Bomber Crew is a strategy game that focuses on managing the personnel of a Avor Lancaster bomber. You'll partake in various missions that surprisingly for an indie title are unique in their objectives. Despite the welcoming colorful art style, this game is not easy by any stretch. You can lose your entire crew by a miscalculation, or just sheer bad luck. Well planning your missions, and preparing your bomber and crew is the key to sucess. By playing smartly you're rewarded with better crew and gear.

While this game nails the essentials of what an RTS game should have there are several aspects I need to criticize.

-Difficulty: Don't get me wrong, as an avid RTS player I love the challenge it offers. A simple mistake can lead to a butterfly effect where one down gunner leaves a blind spot. As you desperately try to get a replacement or revive him, your engine is on fire, the electrical system has failed and your medic has bailed out because you pressed the wrong button. While this is exciting in that one moment, the punishment for failing a mission can be frustrating at times. Retraining a whole crew, and building up your bomber's gear once more can take hours before you're ready to tackle the next mission. While there is a check point system in place through the main story, I don't feel it's adequate enough. Though this is merely opinion based.

-The Grind: This relates to the above. While some missions are unique in their own regard, often you'll be repeating the same missions to train your new crew. Losing a crew is frustrating, not because you were attached to them and making up stories in your head, but knowing you'll be grinding them through the training in an extremely repetitive mission order.

After all this though, completing the final mission feels very satisfying for making it all the way. While this game requires a patient player, I definitely think it's worth a play.

7.5/10 will move my pilot to the gunner seat again!

After investing 60+ hours, and completing everything the game has to offer I hope I can offer some good insight into the experience. This game is likely the best Jurassic park game ever developed, and without that considered probably the best dinosaur park building experience you'll ever find. The dinosaur details are stunning, and authentic to series. From the roar of releasing your T-Rex into your exhibit, to discovering what animals can coexist to create interactions with an emphasis on biodiversity. Seeing the detail put into each creature, it's immediately evident where much of the development effort was put, and rightfully so. While I'm livid to have this game as a reality, since Operation Genesis, there are problems that need to be pointed out for improvements in DLC, or hopefully even future installments.

-The divisions: If it wasn't for Dr. Malcom's input I probably would have gone insane. "Great job on completing that contract, I knew I could count on you!", "Hey, a new contract came through I think you should check this out". Outside of a handful of story related missions, this pretty much all you'll hear. The contracts are nearly the same with each division. For a title with this price point, I honestly expect a bit more to be fleshed out from these divisions. I was legit interested in hearing more from the security division, there seemed to be presence of moral conflict with Dr. Wu running the show. Instead this goes nowhere.

-More unique missions: When I saw Isla Sorna as the final map I was very excited at the possibility of maybe creating a nature preserve or seeing some of the remains of the old facilities, instead it's basically round them-up and put them in a Zoo. Why? This goes against everything Hammond advocated for in the Lost World film. Islands feel like randomly generated maps with slightly different building conditions. These need more character, and unique challenges.

-Dinosaur Behavior: You'll be hard-pressed to find another dinosaur title with the amount of interactions here, but there are some issues present. Animations were very overused. When fights occur, often the models will clip because of this. Not a huge deal, but a a greater variety of of animations would be appreciated. The biggest problem though is every dinosaur has a vendetta against your guests. Every-time, even if it's a medium sized herbivore, they have nothing but death in their eyes if they breakout. You'd think the T-Rex escaping would be the biggest concern, in terms of body count, but often it's the herbivore stampeding over your visitors. I understand the name of the game is Chaos, but this is ridiculous. An example of this was Isla Sorna, where you have some herds of Stegosaurus wandering around. The moment they see even the slightest bit of park ground encroaching into their sight, death is in their eyes. You'd think the animals would be cautious of this unfamiliar world approaching them, instead it's kill everything they can see!

-Visitor behavior: Overall it's pretty good, models are diverse, and watching them awing the interactions is fun. However there is one huge issue, when your dinosaurs escape, and they will, some crowds will run into the exhibit while repairing the fence. WHY!?!?! Trying to get them out is nearly impossible, while your star rating takes a dive from a couple being devoured every few minutes. It's like they have some death wish or dino fetish. Let Rangers have the ability to save them from their stupidity.

-Difficulty and Consequences: For the amount of people I wound up getting killed in the park, I should have been neck deep in lawsuits. Visitors deaths have practically no real consequence. In the Isla Nublar scenario, you can set a variety of difficulty modifiers which is very much appreciated,; adding one for guests deaths could help as well, especially in the other islands where it's easy to build a $100,000,000 bank account.

-Dino Stats: This kind of all relates to this. Your dinos have a comfort level, if one attribute falls below the threshold, their is a risk of a breakout. Having a UI to identify if your exhibit is optimal, for what your about to release would greatly reduce this, and guest body count. It's easy to fix forest/grass needs, but social needs can quickly create chaos. You may release 4 of one species, but need 5 meet the threshold. By the time you successfully incubate that highly desired 5th, your dinos are killing all in sight.

-Ranger activity: In other tycoon games, staff often take care of basic needs while you manage the essentials. This helps make the experience feel like you're all in a team effort to create the ultimate animal exhibit experience. Here you need to direct your staff to do EVERYTHING. Feeder empty, dino is sick, fence is down, animal on the loose. You need to direct your staff to manage each of these. For a small park, this is a non-issue, but as you increase in size it's difficult to actually enjoy what you've created as you're constantly dealing with small issues that your staff should be able to handle themselves, without your direction. Creating the ultimate park, with all of the species, is an awesome feat, but it's boggled down by constant micro-management that should at least be optional.

-Building variety: Not a huge concern, but it was evident throughout my game-play. You're given your standard guest buildings, but this coming from the creators of Planet Coaster I can kind of expected a bit more. Benches, lamp posts, and other decorations would be a great addition. The addition of even a few rides, that have been depicted as present from other Jurassic Park games, would be great to. Lastly it would be nice to see your visitors interacting with these more. For example the cocktail bar has an always empty upper floor, it would be neat to see your guests sitting around and enjoying a drink together.

-Island Size: Isla Sorna is YUGE! Why are we limited to such a small portion of it. You can practically have both a park and super sized safari going by the lore. Same with Nublar even. Through knowing what dinosaurs can live with each other, it's not too challenging to create an all species park, but this can come at the cost of visitor satisfaction. Let us build the ultimate park without being completely constrained. Seeing a landmass far larger than your actual park all around you, is a major tease to the potential of your island.

Despite all this, again this is one of the best park builders I have played in a while. If you're even the slightest bit of a dinosaur enthusiast, this is an essential title to your library. Everything feels authentic to films, and the input from film characters is always interesting. Upon improving much of the above, this would easily be an amazing game but for now 8/10. :)

Don't be fooled by the subpar graphics, there is a lot of fun to be have here! The game follows the D-day landings up to the capture of Carentan. The gameplay is somewhat similar to Red Orchestra 2; for both infantry and tank.

You have your officer class, machine gunner, riflemen, ect. Tanks are limited to the Sherman M4A2, Firefly, Panzer 4, and Tiger 1. You have a driver, hull gunner, and main turret operator. Team work is essential and very rewarding when the AI manages to figure out what to do.

In the current alpha build, the game is limited to the AI only. Like Red Orchestra 2, the AI leaves much to be desired. On some maps, they will behave competentnly and put up a stiff resistance, but on many others you'll probably be frustrated at certain points. One that comes to mind was positioning a tank in a defensive position. I took over the gun and the AI took over the driving. Instead of staying put, we drove off into complete confusion. For moments like these I wish there was a way to issue order to the AI outside of the officer class.

However, when there is PVP content, I can see these gamebecoming amazing!

TLDR: Very fun tank and infantry play. AI needs work.

It's a free kid friendly pizza adventure, tycoon game! Try it out! :D

Go Green Army!

The humor is as satisfying as the combat controls, which is excellent! The world felt more itneractive than I expected, for the all sillyness your army insues itself in.

My only gripe is the difficulty can feel a little incossitent at times. You may enter a dungeon, and esily dispatch all of the enemies only to face a boss that is killing you non-stop. However, the extra challenge might be a good thing to you.