April 24, 2008 -
Two months ago, raptors were revived in Turok on the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. Rather than ravage the videogame landscape and devour any and all comers, the beasts and their title were met with stiff reviews but commendable sales.Now, the dinos are ready to try their claws at the PC market.A re-imagining of the Nintendo 64 classic, Turok -- the latest project from Touchstone and Propaganda Games -- places you behind the bow and arrow of Joseph Turok and teams you with the ragtag members of Whiskey Company. Seems Turok used to be a member of a ruthless group of mercenaries known as Wolfpack but bailed when the whole baby-killing thing didn't mesh with his conscience. Now an adopted member of Whiskey Co., Turok and the boys are on the trail of his old mentor -- Roland Kane. The leader of Wolfpack has holed himself up on a remote planet, and as our boys approach, they're shot down. Whiskey Company begins to explore the planet, and the mission quickly switches from capturing Kane to making it past the dinosaurs, armed guards as well as mutated scorpions and getting home.
For the most part, Turok plays like every other first-person shooter out there. You switch weapons with the d-pad/mouse wheel, jump, crouch and blast your way through jungle environments, Wolfpack outposts and more. But what makes Turok stand out from the glut of recent FPSs is how you can kill -- such as sneaking up behind a guard, dropping him with a kick to the knee and burying your knife in the top of his head.Now, don't get me wrong; COD4 and BioShock were great times, but as a gamer I always found myself trying to balance my ballistics with reality. In COD, I was trying to save my grenades for those seemingly impossible hallways filled with terrorists, and in BioShock, I was hesitant to waste my Adam in fear that I'd need a powered-up plasmid for a Big Daddy or boss. For most of those games, I felt like I needed to play defensively.That doesn't happen here. Turok takes your reins off.No, the ammo isn't unlimited, but you are fully encouraged to use whatever weapon you want however you want. There'd be times when I'd enter a new section of jungle and find a makeshift guard base with stacks of weapons all over the place. I'd arm the chaingun, run out and blast some dinosaurs, get tired of the gun and backtrack to find something more to my liking. Once I settled on an instrument of destruction -- such as my favorite, the sticky bomb gun -- I could truck back out confident that there was more ammo behind me and plenty of spots to switch to something different ahead.
Secondary fire is a big part of gunplay in Turok. The sticky bomb gun is my favorite because of its standard fire mode -- pull the trigger to launch a bomb that sticks to whatever it touches and pull the trigger again to detonate the device -- but the secondary option of a mini minefield is a brilliant touch -- the same can be said for the shotgun's flare launcher and the SMG's silencer.Towards the end of the game, I was making a solo attack on one of Kane's bases, and the weapon gods were good to me once again. Able to infiltrate the front door undetected, I drew back on my bow and iced two guards before they knew Turok was on the scene. If you haven't caught our videos of this game, the bow is a sick silent killer. You draw back the arrow and then line up your shot with the crosshairs. The longer you hold the trigger down, the harder Turok's pulling on the string. If you let it go with enough force, the arrow will basically staple the bad guy to the nearest wall. Nice.Anyway, with the two chumps down, I moved deeper into the fortress and came across a staircase to the next level and a soldier staking out the top. I switched to the sticky bomb gun, tagged the bad man's leg and blew him to kingdom come. This tipped off the whole establishment that Whiskey Co. was there, and I began mining the hell out of the staircase and surrounding area. Clueless troops would come down the stairs and go boom. When the sticky bomb gun was on empty, I grabbed a nearby chaingun and -- utilizing its secondary fire -- set it up on the ground as a turret. It obliterated anyone able to come down the stairs.
Adding more options to your four weapons slots -- you'll always have the bow and knife but be able to swap out your other two gun slots -- is the fact that you can dual-wield just about every combination of guns. SMG/shotgun, dual pistols, sticky bomb/shotgun -- the world's your oyster. Believe me, there's nothing quite like packing two shoguns and working your way through a hoard of enemies. Add in the fact that you have stealth knife attacks -- forget about guards, you can sneak up on dinosaurs with your knife drawn, follow a button prompt and watch as Turok buries his blade into the beast's head or jumps on its back before slitting its throat -- and parts of this game are sure to get your blood pumping.In a lot of ways, this is first-person Contra -- lots of weapons, jungle, etc. -- but that isn't always a good thing.
Yes, here's the inevitable part of the review where I drop the "But …" and tell you all the reasons that Turok didn't get a 10, but my complaints really aren't all that severe. There isn't a portion of Turok that's horribly broken or annoying -- this isn't a bad game, but in the same respect, it's just not all that impressive.To begin with, the weapons I've spent so many words lauding are cool on the options side but disappointing on the firepower front. If I didn't get a headshot on an enemy, it took a seemingly endless stream of bullets to bring them down no matter what gun I seemed to be packing. When you're in one-on-one combat, that's not too big of a problem, but when enemies are swarming on you -- one instance where Slade and Turok were trying to make it over a tree bridge springs to mind -- the remedial damage your weapons give off is pretty annoying.What makes the annoyance worse is the fact that getting killed by these soldiers is pretty embarrassing seeing as how they're idiots. If we ever know the IGN offices have an intruder in them and I come across Game Scoop's Daemon Hatfield pinned to the wall by an arrow, I'm not going to stand in the exact same spot he was two seconds ago and scan the area -- nor if I see a guy with a machine gun am I going to organize the team to run in a straight line at him.Kane's men don't share this common sense.
Next up in my drawbacks section is the fact that Turok starts off like it's going to have a strong story -- there are flashbacks to Turok's induction into Wolfpack and the mission that made him drop out as well as a building, present-day tension between him and Whiskey Company -- but it eventually falls by the wayside. Once the group realizes they're in over their heads, the mission for Kane is abandoned and they focus on getting home. That's fine, but Kane and his bald-headed crony pop up a few times to say hi to Turok but never to advance the story. This all leads to a boss fight at the end that has no emotional impact because I don't care about catching Kane or even know who he is -- why's he on this planet, why's he so wanted, and why's he screwing with this planet's ecosystem in a way that creates dinosaurs?Turok isn't exempt from my wrath either. I know I talked about the weapon options being cool, but the lack of a run button (à la Call of Duty 4) is pretty upsetting. Our main character is trained to survive in the jungle, kill people with his bare hands and leap from sniper towers, but he can't hoof-it from enemies? There are plenty of times when the dinos swarm, your screen begins to turn red and escaping to take a breath is your only option. There's nothing more frustrating than only being able to speed walk away from certain death.
Beyond AI and controls, what's going to be a sticking point for lots of folks is that the visuals just aren't up to snuff. The graphics in Turok are by no means bad, but you're going to walk up to ledges and trees that have really sharp edges and boring texture patterns -- seeing the seams takes you out of the experience. Beyond things at a standstill looking ho-hum, there are troubles in motion as well. Characters in cutscenes occasionally have an aura of shine around them -- they all look like the light of the Lord is being emitted from their bodies
For the most part, Turok will be a walk in the park for anyone who enlisted in the '07 crop of first-person shooters. You'll head out from a given point, press a button to get an arrow that points at your objective, battle the beasts that appear on the horizon and then accomplish the object to enact the cut scene. However, there are points in Turok that are so frustrating that I found myself cursing the screen and prepared to hurl my precious controller. At one point I was pinned down by a dude rocking an RPG that seemed to have a constant read on me, another stall had me trying to figure out a way past a ginourmous spider tank that didn't end with me going boom, and another time I spent the ten or so continues trying to bring down a pissed off T-Rex. Now, I don't raise these as complaints because I hate being challenged -- I raise these issues because I like being challenged intelligently. Let me ruin the spider tank part for you. This huge tank with arachnid-like limbs lumbers onto the scene, and I stopped moving to see where it would go. Eventually the thing perches itself on a mountain and begins scanning the area. There are a few hollowed out logs and half-walls separating me from RPG ammo, and I figure I need to keep to the shadows. I no sooner step out, this thing's got a read on me, and I'm dead. The game loads, I let it sit, I jump in the log and it starts firing. I wait for a reloading pause or some kind of break, but it never comes. Finally, I make a break for it and end up getting blown up.This trial and error stuff went on for awhile before I figured out that if I just booked as soon as the tank showed up, I could make it to the ammo, slide back and forth from behind cover, and bring the cool tank down in the most anticlimactic way.
Here's my problem with this battle -- it's the definition of linear. Turok's given me all this freedom as to what I can do with my weapons, but in this one instance, I have to run at a specific time and shoot with a specific gun. In real life, my first reaction to seeing this beast wouldn't be to run out and let it see me, but thinking logically derails the experience and left me stalled.Speaking of linear, remember that Contra comparison I made a second ago? Sure, that applies to the fun of blasting the bad guys but it also references how straightforward Turok's levels are. As you cross the plains, you'll find plenty of opposition but not one environment that interacts with you. You're just running across set pieces.Although multiplayer wasn't amazing on the consoles, it's actually even less impressive on the PC. There are seven maps, the weapons from the single-player campaign, dinosaurs, the multiplayer staples such as deathmatch and capture the flag, but there's no way to customize your game unless you host a LAN party. If you choose the quick match option, you'll just get thrown into whatever game is ready to go. If you choose the custom match option, you only get to choose what type of match -- small free for all, large free for all, small team game, large team game, or one of three co-op missions -- you want to go to. You can't choose weapons or maps, which you can do on the console versions of Turok.Oh, and on a love it or hate it note, when you get attacked by a dino or knocked down by a grenade, you'll see your feet get knocked up in the air. When you climb back to your feet, you'll find yourself facing a different direction than before. On one hand, it's a neat drawback to getting hurt, but on the other, it sucks if you're on your last legs and it's suddenly that much harder to speed walk to safety.
Closing Comments
There's no doubt that Turok can be fun, but ultimately, the feeling of satisfaction that comes with slitting a raptor's throat or pulling off a headshot with your bow is lost in the shuffle of swarming enemies, less than stellar visuals and a story that disappears. Do I recommend Turok for folks just looking for a game to run through with two shotguns in hand? Yes, but I wouldn't expect to walk away from playing with your mind blown
8.0
PresentationFrom the heavy bass solo at the main menu to the awesome knife kills and raptor screeches, you're engulfed in this game. Little problems pull you back, but the experience is still solid.
7.0
GraphicsSome of the corners are jaggy, the textures are muted and the guys are shiny, but the majority of the time things look decent enough.
8.0
SoundThe score for Turok is great -- big instrumental pieces accompany big moments. When you're out on the prowl, you'll need to listen for roars to get reads on raptors.
7.0
GameplayIt's a no-brainer that running around blowing up dinos and wielding two shotguns at once is fun, but redundant enemies, linear levels and a lack of firepower weaken the shot of adrenaline.
6.5
Lasting AppealThe single-player isn't super-long but feels right, co-op is cool but could use more missions, and multiplayer hindered by the lack of customization.
7.0Decent
OVERALL(out of 10 / not an average)
Friday, June 20, 2008
Panzer Command: Kharkov
April 23, 2008 - When it comes to gigantic land battles, nothing even comes close to Operation Barbarossa, the codename for the German invasion of Russia during the Second World War. Having become master of Europe, Hitler launched a massive surprise attack on his former Soviet allies that, over the course of a couple of years, would spawn several of history's largest battles. The action around the Ukranian city of Kharkov, known for its tank factories, was particularly dramatic, with the city changing hands several times as it was captured and recaptured again and again.
That historic series of battles is recreated in Koios Works' latest wargame, Panzer Command: Kharkov. Built on the foundation of 2006's Panzer Command: Operation Wintersun, and borrowing heavily from battlefront.com's landmark Combat Mission series, Panzer Command: Kharkov presents a thoroughly detailed simulation of combat on the Eastern Front but is nevertheless marred by some frequent interface problems.
The game is played at the tactical level with the player leading platoons of infantry and individual vehicles and benefiting from off-map resources like artillery and air support. Unit experience and morale rankings along with full ballistics and armor penetration models make Kharkov much more detailed than your average World War II strategy game and, fortunately, everything is laid out in a ridiculously detailed but well organized PDF manual. The only downside here is that the tutorial is a read-along affair, so you'll constantly be alt-tabbing back and forth to figure out just what's going on.
Each battle takes place on a sizeable 3D battlefield and the player is free to adjust the camera to get as close to or as far from the action as they'd like. It can actually be quite fun to follow a specific unit around and check out the battle from their limited perspective. Selecting a unit calls up a variety of stats and status indicators at the bottom of the screen, so you'll always know just how your boys are doing. We definitely would have liked to see some tool tips here and there, though, because some of the icons aren't as intuitive as the designers might have hoped.
Kharkov plays out in a format that's commonly called WEGO. Basically, the game is paused every forty seconds while both sides issue orders to their troops. Then the game resumes and plays out the next forty seconds in real time with no way for the players to influence the action. Then it pauses again and players can adjust their strategies based on how things progressed. While it's an admittedly artificial system, it's a nice way to merge the cerebral nature of turn-based strategy with the pants-wetting intensity of real-time games. The only problem here is that Koios has added some limitations that emphasize how arbitrary this system really is. In the case of Kharkov, every second turn is designated a "reaction" phase during which your choice of orders is severely limited. i've tried to think of a reason why you might be limited in your commands during one turn and not in another but it still doesn't make sense to me.
There are four campaigns here (five if you count the boot camp series of training missions), each of which offers a look at one of the major phases of the War around Kharkov. Ranging from just a few missions to a lengthy eight-mission run, the campaigns give you a chance to get attached to your units as they follow you from one battle to the next. While the idea of unit persistence is nice enough by itself, the promotions and medals they earn for successful action and the bonuses those confer in battle are really what make the experience particularly sweet. Trying to get a unit's bonus working during a battle while also trying not to put it into too much danger is one of the great balancing acts required by the campaign.
If a full campaign is too much to handle, each of the missions (and a few more besides) are available individually as separate battles. Most of the battles reflect the nature of the war, which means that assaults are much more common than meeting engagements. Nevertheless, there's a nice range of objectives and maps here and the variety is sure to increase thanks to the inclusion of several editors and generators that ship with the game. Any of these individual battles are available in Play-By-EMail form as well.
But for all that, Kharkov definitely stumbles a bit along the way. And it's all the more perplexing because they fail to address some key needs of the genre. To begin with, the "engage" command is a wonderful one-size-fits-all type of order but when you want to get specific about how you want your units to navigate the battlefield, you're in serious trouble.
We can deal with the fact that the infantry have to "mount" houses (even if it still sometimes doesn't seem to work) but there's no excuse for not including a way to plot waypoints for your units. Trying to tell your tanks to do something as simple as going around the left side of a house and then about face to back into a treeline is impossible unless you're willing to issue each step as a separate order between turns. Even in the case of house "mounting," the mount command can't be queued after a "rush" command so there's no way to order troops to run up to a house and go right in.
We'd also wish that the designers had more distinctly separated moving the movement of the entire platoon and its leader. The way the current system is, every order you give to your platoon leader is immediately followed by all of the units he's leading. That means every time you give a platoon leader an order that you don't want the rest of the platoon to carry out, you have to change their moves individually.
The game also fails to provide adequate battlefield awareness. Sure, you can pop little icons up over the units' heads, but it's still hard to take in the big picture without losing the ability to distinguish between your mortar and machine gun teams. It's easy enough to keep it in your head for the smaller battles, but it can really get out of control once the forces start piling up.
We love the true line-of-sight and spotting rules in the game. No wargame worthy of the name would be without them. But as the overall battlefield commander, I'm not crazy about my own line of sight limited by which unit I have selected. In Kharkov only the enemies that the currently selected unit can see are displayed on the map regardless of whether or not there are other friendly units that can see them. I appreciate the intent behind this design but it's really taking things much too far and limiting my own ability to make a sound battle plan based on the information from all of my units.
There's a similar lack of information in terms of path plots and target designations. While you can see the movement and fire orders of your currently selected unit (and even platoon, if you can find the shortcut key), there's no way in between turns to see all the plots and targets at once. This makes synchronizing movements much more difficult than it needs to be and limits your ability to predict how the battle's going to progress over the next few turns.
Games of this type aren't often known for having great visuals and Kharkov proudly continues that tradition. It isn't, of course, that we're expecting the same types of graphics we saw in Company of Heroes; games like Kharkov just don't put that kind of focus on their visual presentation. That doesn't mean that we necessarily excuse flat textures and boxy unit models but there's just so much else going on in the engine (line of sight, ballistics, spotting, etc.) that the concept of whether or not it actually looks pretty seems to have been largely ignored. It's true that the unit designs are realistic (in details if not appearance) but the explosions and smoke effects would've looked old five years ago.
The environments are equally simplistic, with cross-poly trees and big flat textures that tile all the way across the map. There are some nice touches here, like the shadows and the impressive sky boxes, but after playing Theatre of War, we just can't go back to games that don't even bother to hide the seams between the playing area and the flat, featureless horizon. We've also noticed that some of the projectiles seem to garble the textures a bit, and the result makes it look like the soldiers are shooting green laser bolts at each other.
Sound is another area where wargames developers aren't particularly diligent. The sound effects here are fairly thin and few in number, so they grow tiresome rather quickly. The endless symphony of p-tows, rrrrrs, and chukka-chukas will have you muting the game within the first few hours, which is a shame considering the music is actually fairly well done.
Closing Comments
The shadow of Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin looms very large over Koios' latest effort. Not only does it cover exactly the same theater (and more besides) but it also doesn't suffer from some of the more infuriating interface problems that we kept running into in this game. Barbarossa to Berlin also happens to be a bit less expensive than Panzer Command: Kharkov as well.
But based purely on its own merits, Kharkov is actually a very thorough and detailed simulation of Eastern Front warfare. The unit details, the combat modeling, and the missions themselves are more than enough to please more hardcore wargamers. It's just a shame that controlling your units and reading the battlefield require so much more effort from the player.
7.5
PresentationA satisfying choice of theater and lots of thorough documentation. Still, it doesn't go out of its way to make it convenient to play.
5.5
GraphicsLooking good isn't one of the game's goals. Chunky models and muddy textures abound. Good attention to detail on the units.
5.0
SoundP-tow! P-tow! The excellent music is buried beneath a suite of terrible sound effects.
7.5
GameplayBrilliant combat modeling but hampered by a lack of situational awareness and more sophisticated controls.
7.5
Lasting AppealThe battles are definitely enjoyable and the editors and generator give it long legs. Still, the overall enjoyment wanes thin too soon.
6.7Passable
OVERALL(out of 10 / not an average)
That historic series of battles is recreated in Koios Works' latest wargame, Panzer Command: Kharkov. Built on the foundation of 2006's Panzer Command: Operation Wintersun, and borrowing heavily from battlefront.com's landmark Combat Mission series, Panzer Command: Kharkov presents a thoroughly detailed simulation of combat on the Eastern Front but is nevertheless marred by some frequent interface problems.
The game is played at the tactical level with the player leading platoons of infantry and individual vehicles and benefiting from off-map resources like artillery and air support. Unit experience and morale rankings along with full ballistics and armor penetration models make Kharkov much more detailed than your average World War II strategy game and, fortunately, everything is laid out in a ridiculously detailed but well organized PDF manual. The only downside here is that the tutorial is a read-along affair, so you'll constantly be alt-tabbing back and forth to figure out just what's going on.
Each battle takes place on a sizeable 3D battlefield and the player is free to adjust the camera to get as close to or as far from the action as they'd like. It can actually be quite fun to follow a specific unit around and check out the battle from their limited perspective. Selecting a unit calls up a variety of stats and status indicators at the bottom of the screen, so you'll always know just how your boys are doing. We definitely would have liked to see some tool tips here and there, though, because some of the icons aren't as intuitive as the designers might have hoped.
Kharkov plays out in a format that's commonly called WEGO. Basically, the game is paused every forty seconds while both sides issue orders to their troops. Then the game resumes and plays out the next forty seconds in real time with no way for the players to influence the action. Then it pauses again and players can adjust their strategies based on how things progressed. While it's an admittedly artificial system, it's a nice way to merge the cerebral nature of turn-based strategy with the pants-wetting intensity of real-time games. The only problem here is that Koios has added some limitations that emphasize how arbitrary this system really is. In the case of Kharkov, every second turn is designated a "reaction" phase during which your choice of orders is severely limited. i've tried to think of a reason why you might be limited in your commands during one turn and not in another but it still doesn't make sense to me.
There are four campaigns here (five if you count the boot camp series of training missions), each of which offers a look at one of the major phases of the War around Kharkov. Ranging from just a few missions to a lengthy eight-mission run, the campaigns give you a chance to get attached to your units as they follow you from one battle to the next. While the idea of unit persistence is nice enough by itself, the promotions and medals they earn for successful action and the bonuses those confer in battle are really what make the experience particularly sweet. Trying to get a unit's bonus working during a battle while also trying not to put it into too much danger is one of the great balancing acts required by the campaign.
If a full campaign is too much to handle, each of the missions (and a few more besides) are available individually as separate battles. Most of the battles reflect the nature of the war, which means that assaults are much more common than meeting engagements. Nevertheless, there's a nice range of objectives and maps here and the variety is sure to increase thanks to the inclusion of several editors and generators that ship with the game. Any of these individual battles are available in Play-By-EMail form as well.
But for all that, Kharkov definitely stumbles a bit along the way. And it's all the more perplexing because they fail to address some key needs of the genre. To begin with, the "engage" command is a wonderful one-size-fits-all type of order but when you want to get specific about how you want your units to navigate the battlefield, you're in serious trouble.
We can deal with the fact that the infantry have to "mount" houses (even if it still sometimes doesn't seem to work) but there's no excuse for not including a way to plot waypoints for your units. Trying to tell your tanks to do something as simple as going around the left side of a house and then about face to back into a treeline is impossible unless you're willing to issue each step as a separate order between turns. Even in the case of house "mounting," the mount command can't be queued after a "rush" command so there's no way to order troops to run up to a house and go right in.
We'd also wish that the designers had more distinctly separated moving the movement of the entire platoon and its leader. The way the current system is, every order you give to your platoon leader is immediately followed by all of the units he's leading. That means every time you give a platoon leader an order that you don't want the rest of the platoon to carry out, you have to change their moves individually.
The game also fails to provide adequate battlefield awareness. Sure, you can pop little icons up over the units' heads, but it's still hard to take in the big picture without losing the ability to distinguish between your mortar and machine gun teams. It's easy enough to keep it in your head for the smaller battles, but it can really get out of control once the forces start piling up.
We love the true line-of-sight and spotting rules in the game. No wargame worthy of the name would be without them. But as the overall battlefield commander, I'm not crazy about my own line of sight limited by which unit I have selected. In Kharkov only the enemies that the currently selected unit can see are displayed on the map regardless of whether or not there are other friendly units that can see them. I appreciate the intent behind this design but it's really taking things much too far and limiting my own ability to make a sound battle plan based on the information from all of my units.
There's a similar lack of information in terms of path plots and target designations. While you can see the movement and fire orders of your currently selected unit (and even platoon, if you can find the shortcut key), there's no way in between turns to see all the plots and targets at once. This makes synchronizing movements much more difficult than it needs to be and limits your ability to predict how the battle's going to progress over the next few turns.
Games of this type aren't often known for having great visuals and Kharkov proudly continues that tradition. It isn't, of course, that we're expecting the same types of graphics we saw in Company of Heroes; games like Kharkov just don't put that kind of focus on their visual presentation. That doesn't mean that we necessarily excuse flat textures and boxy unit models but there's just so much else going on in the engine (line of sight, ballistics, spotting, etc.) that the concept of whether or not it actually looks pretty seems to have been largely ignored. It's true that the unit designs are realistic (in details if not appearance) but the explosions and smoke effects would've looked old five years ago.
The environments are equally simplistic, with cross-poly trees and big flat textures that tile all the way across the map. There are some nice touches here, like the shadows and the impressive sky boxes, but after playing Theatre of War, we just can't go back to games that don't even bother to hide the seams between the playing area and the flat, featureless horizon. We've also noticed that some of the projectiles seem to garble the textures a bit, and the result makes it look like the soldiers are shooting green laser bolts at each other.
Sound is another area where wargames developers aren't particularly diligent. The sound effects here are fairly thin and few in number, so they grow tiresome rather quickly. The endless symphony of p-tows, rrrrrs, and chukka-chukas will have you muting the game within the first few hours, which is a shame considering the music is actually fairly well done.
Closing Comments
The shadow of Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin looms very large over Koios' latest effort. Not only does it cover exactly the same theater (and more besides) but it also doesn't suffer from some of the more infuriating interface problems that we kept running into in this game. Barbarossa to Berlin also happens to be a bit less expensive than Panzer Command: Kharkov as well.
But based purely on its own merits, Kharkov is actually a very thorough and detailed simulation of Eastern Front warfare. The unit details, the combat modeling, and the missions themselves are more than enough to please more hardcore wargamers. It's just a shame that controlling your units and reading the battlefield require so much more effort from the player.
7.5
PresentationA satisfying choice of theater and lots of thorough documentation. Still, it doesn't go out of its way to make it convenient to play.
5.5
GraphicsLooking good isn't one of the game's goals. Chunky models and muddy textures abound. Good attention to detail on the units.
5.0
SoundP-tow! P-tow! The excellent music is buried beneath a suite of terrible sound effects.
7.5
GameplayBrilliant combat modeling but hampered by a lack of situational awareness and more sophisticated controls.
7.5
Lasting AppealThe battles are definitely enjoyable and the editors and generator give it long legs. Still, the overall enjoyment wanes thin too soon.
6.7Passable
OVERALL(out of 10 / not an average)
Cleopatra: Riddle of the Tomb
April 23, 2008 - Whether Cleopatra was a hotty or not in real life has been pretty much ignored in entertainment for centuries, so it's no surprise that she comes out looking pretty good in the new PC adventure game bearing her name, Cleopatra: Riddle of the Tomb. Actually, although you meet her a couple times, she has less to do with the plot than the astrologer's apprentice she's counting on. When Akkad the astrologer and his daughter Iris--gotta have a love interest!-- are kidnapped by men trying to prevent him from essentially deciding the fate of the Ptolemaic dynasty by making an important prophesy, Thomas, apprentice/puzzle master is sent after them. Obviously, though, you are the puzzle master, which sort of makes you wish Thomas would work with you a little more as an ambassador of Ancient Egyptian culture (and Greek, since the game takes place in Alexandria, 48 BCE). The milieu is pretty air-tight, and a minimum of background is given. Do you know what an ushabti is? I could figure it out by context, but then I was something of a wanna-be Egyptologist as a kid. Wikipedia can help, and maybe for some this will be a fun part of the experience.
In addition to kilning clay figurines, you'll also unravel Greek codes, and use simple machine science (for example, to operate a catapult). There are a couple sections where you need to identify chemical agents and mix them correctly to make potions, too. Actually, the variety of puzzles is one of the best features of the game, even if you sometimes need to make very precise leaps of logic (e.g. remember keywords from little slips or paper) to find your next move.Taking a look at the inventory screen, it's clear that some of the systems work and some are obnoxious. Imagine an Egyptian backpack with one big pocket and a bunch of smaller, single-object compartments. Every time you pick something up, it goes straight into a heap in the big pocket. You can't even see what you have, because everything stacks together in one place until you either hit the auto-placement button (which I fully expected to be a toggle and was very disappointed to find out otherwise) or manually drag each item to a separate slot. Note that something being in your hand is totally different than being in this pocket, so it's not even like an equipped state; it's just an obnoxious intermediate storage area that we could've done without. You can enable manual sorting of the inventory without this extra step.The text field for reading documents, once you realize that the first couple of papyrus strips you get aren't meant to be read that way until you solve a puzzle, falls on the handier side of things, as does the map, since you can just click a location to return to it rather than haul yourself all over. Even hauling yourself is much less tedious than it could be because Riddle of the Tomb takes a first-person route. Rather than just flashing statically ahead, like in the classic, Myst, you're capable of taking in a panoramic mouse-look view of your surroundings, which is useful for finding bits of things on the ground. Your context sensitive cursor will even tell you the difference between a usable object you can use right away or one for which a specific tool is required.
While the graphics take a simpler route, by not having a third-person protagonist except during cut-scenes, for example, the end effect feels very polished. There are so many games where characters are pouring invisible liquid into a cup, or making weird little motions with their hands to imply putting two objects together. In Riddle of the Tomb, when you indicate to pour water in a basin, you're just given the empty bowl back, and that is fine. The experience is more immersive because you don't feel like the characters are playing pretend.Refreshingly, Riddle of the Tomb is an adventure game that manages to work in some replay value beyond just counting on players having bad memories. When you first start, before even leaving the main menu (done up lavishly like Cleopatra's chambers) you'll select a zodiac sign. Sometimes your horoscope looks good and things will happen as much in your favor as is possible in a game designed to hang you up on puzzles. Other times the gods think you're a jerk and try to make your life harder by adding extra challenges. The different may not be huge, but it's definitely enough that you'll notice and have to think your way around it.
Closing CommentsHigh quality visuals, appropriate atmosphere, and puzzles that go beyond finding keys (even to open doors!) all combine to make a good adventure game. Obviously the genre isn’t for everyone, and for this one you’ll probably want to have at least some curiosity about the post-Alexander Ancient Egypt as well, since the tasks are not usually just shoe-horned into the context. Cleopatra: Riddle of the Tomb can’t just be chopped in half like the Gordian knot, but these puzzles are pretty satisfying to unravel.
7.0
PresentationThe manual is put together well until you get to the inventory page. You figure everything out after a while, anyhow. Immersive opening menu in the form of Cleopatra’s pad.
8.0
GraphicsStill some disparity between cut scenes and normal interaction, but they have the sense to not animate something that won’t look good instead of miming it, like some adventure games do.
7.5
SoundMood music, birds chirping, decent voice acting. It sets the right tone.
7.5
GameplayA wide variety of puzzle solving activities to engage in, from mixing potions to code busting. Sometimes the ancient setting can lead to contextual frustrations.
6.5
Lasting AppealZodiac system with luck makes the game have extra puzzles if your sign is out of favor at certain junctures.
7.7Good
OVERALL(out of 10 / not an average)
In addition to kilning clay figurines, you'll also unravel Greek codes, and use simple machine science (for example, to operate a catapult). There are a couple sections where you need to identify chemical agents and mix them correctly to make potions, too. Actually, the variety of puzzles is one of the best features of the game, even if you sometimes need to make very precise leaps of logic (e.g. remember keywords from little slips or paper) to find your next move.Taking a look at the inventory screen, it's clear that some of the systems work and some are obnoxious. Imagine an Egyptian backpack with one big pocket and a bunch of smaller, single-object compartments. Every time you pick something up, it goes straight into a heap in the big pocket. You can't even see what you have, because everything stacks together in one place until you either hit the auto-placement button (which I fully expected to be a toggle and was very disappointed to find out otherwise) or manually drag each item to a separate slot. Note that something being in your hand is totally different than being in this pocket, so it's not even like an equipped state; it's just an obnoxious intermediate storage area that we could've done without. You can enable manual sorting of the inventory without this extra step.The text field for reading documents, once you realize that the first couple of papyrus strips you get aren't meant to be read that way until you solve a puzzle, falls on the handier side of things, as does the map, since you can just click a location to return to it rather than haul yourself all over. Even hauling yourself is much less tedious than it could be because Riddle of the Tomb takes a first-person route. Rather than just flashing statically ahead, like in the classic, Myst, you're capable of taking in a panoramic mouse-look view of your surroundings, which is useful for finding bits of things on the ground. Your context sensitive cursor will even tell you the difference between a usable object you can use right away or one for which a specific tool is required.
While the graphics take a simpler route, by not having a third-person protagonist except during cut-scenes, for example, the end effect feels very polished. There are so many games where characters are pouring invisible liquid into a cup, or making weird little motions with their hands to imply putting two objects together. In Riddle of the Tomb, when you indicate to pour water in a basin, you're just given the empty bowl back, and that is fine. The experience is more immersive because you don't feel like the characters are playing pretend.Refreshingly, Riddle of the Tomb is an adventure game that manages to work in some replay value beyond just counting on players having bad memories. When you first start, before even leaving the main menu (done up lavishly like Cleopatra's chambers) you'll select a zodiac sign. Sometimes your horoscope looks good and things will happen as much in your favor as is possible in a game designed to hang you up on puzzles. Other times the gods think you're a jerk and try to make your life harder by adding extra challenges. The different may not be huge, but it's definitely enough that you'll notice and have to think your way around it.
Closing CommentsHigh quality visuals, appropriate atmosphere, and puzzles that go beyond finding keys (even to open doors!) all combine to make a good adventure game. Obviously the genre isn’t for everyone, and for this one you’ll probably want to have at least some curiosity about the post-Alexander Ancient Egypt as well, since the tasks are not usually just shoe-horned into the context. Cleopatra: Riddle of the Tomb can’t just be chopped in half like the Gordian knot, but these puzzles are pretty satisfying to unravel.
7.0
PresentationThe manual is put together well until you get to the inventory page. You figure everything out after a while, anyhow. Immersive opening menu in the form of Cleopatra’s pad.
8.0
GraphicsStill some disparity between cut scenes and normal interaction, but they have the sense to not animate something that won’t look good instead of miming it, like some adventure games do.
7.5
SoundMood music, birds chirping, decent voice acting. It sets the right tone.
7.5
GameplayA wide variety of puzzle solving activities to engage in, from mixing potions to code busting. Sometimes the ancient setting can lead to contextual frustrations.
6.5
Lasting AppealZodiac system with luck makes the game have extra puzzles if your sign is out of favor at certain junctures.
7.7Good
OVERALL(out of 10 / not an average)
Monday, June 16, 2008
Europa Universalis III: In Nomine
June 13, 2008 - The Europa Universalis games have always embraced a level of organization and open-ended gameplay that is, without a doubt, a rare and acquired taste. Controlling the political, economic, religious, military, and technological direction of an entire nation over hundreds of years of real history is no easy task, and while things have been streamlined a bit as the series has evolved, it's still a daunting task. When developing expansions, Paradox Interactive has to walk a fine line between introducing new features that complicate the situation and smoothing out some of the micromanagement that bogs players down.
The latest expansion, In Nomine, succeeds quite well. It offers some substantial changes to the core game that tend to limit the momentum of wars and colonial expansion. More vigorous rebels make war exhaustion and distant armies tough to handle, while new colony rules encourage the growth of substantial fleets while also reducing the micromanagement required to maintain them. Mission and decision options give the game a much more focused feel that shifts the game out of the sandbox and into a more historical setting.
Though there are plenty of big additions here, nothing comes close to the new rebel system in terms of how it affects gameplay. Rebels show up much more often now and they're harder to root out in many cases. What makes them such a compelling new element is that the rebels have their own unique objectives and can behave like sovereign nations.
Each rebel group that appears comes with a specific agenda. Some might want to break free and join another empire, others, particularly towards the end of the game, might want to establish their own country. Some rebels just want tax relief, or religious reform. How you handle each type of rebel depends on what they want. Naturally, you can just march in and crush them with your armies, but these new rebels typically have high morale and, in too many cases, unrealistically powerful generals.
When the war exhaustion starts to take its toll on your national morale (and increases the number of rebellions you experience), you might be better off trying to negotiate with the rebels. This is an entirely new option and it's one that you'll seriously need to consider. Unfortunately, some of the rebels actually want you to cede entire regions for them to live in as sovereign nations. But even those rebels who merely want a little tax relief will still cost you a tremendous amount of prestige and bump your centralization slider a bit towards the less appealing end. You'll want to be careful how you spend your prestige though, because it has much more of an effect on your overall morale, stability and income.
There are lots more pirates as well and they can significantly impact your trade and colonies. This means that players who want to have substantial overseas empires will really have to work hard to build up a large enough fleet to discourage piracy. To make things easy, you can actually toggle a patrol order on each of your fleets to reduce the risk of pirates appearing nearby. The patrol option isn't good if there are enemy fleets nearby though, so you'll need to balance the needs of trade and colonial security with your overall war aims. Best of all, Paradox has removed the attrition that friendly fleets suffer in friendly waters close to home, so you're not going to have to keep refitting your fleets every year.
Players will notice that they don't get as many colonists now, but they won't have to send them again and again just to establish a colony. Now individual colonists will slowly create their own cities at a speed based on your new colonial maintenance slider. This definitely reduces the micromanagement required to get overseas possessions up and running. Colonies don't produce tax or production for home empires anymore. This time around, they generate tariffs that make their way across the sea to the home empire. Without a strong fleet patrolling the waters between the colony and the capital, the tariffs are likely to be seized by pirates. Another interesting change is that you won't know what trade goods a province produces until you actually colonize it. This might aggravate some players who wind up losing out on some good commodities but it's a great way to prevent players from exploiting the map and only grabbing colonies that produce the most appealing goods.
Unfortunately, Spain and Portugal's early access to the Quest for the New World and the location of the Azores still gives those countries a significant advantage in colonizing the Americas. Still, focused players can definitely compete with them leading one of the other colonizing powers. Even if your rivals have grabbed lots of territory near your colonies, there's a much easier system now to convert other provinces to your own culture. It makes things a bit more secure for you, but it can also work against you if your rivals start to actively try to assimilate your own provinces.
Missionaries have also changed to work more like the new colonists now. Instead of just sending single missionaries off for a one-time bump, you'll now station missionaries permanently in a province and then adjust a new maintenance slider to determine how well they're funded. The missionaries will stay in place until they've converted the province to your faith but you'll be running an increased revolt risk in any province that you've stationed a missionary. Since this is all proportionate to the level of missionary maintenance, you can adapt to changing situations relatively quickly, while also ensuring that your missionaries are making steady progress towards converting provinces to your faith.
There are a few other notable changes to the religion system. First, there's no stability hit now for going to war with nations of different faiths. This makes holy wars a much more common event. The Pope can also excommunicate Catholic rulers now, so there's no guarantee that you'll stay at peace with your Catholic neighbors. There are also no longer individual sliders for tolerance, so you'll just relate to different faiths in large groups and fine tune your acceptance with a number of national ideas.
Beyond the basic complexities of the mechanics, some players have been turned off of the Europa Universalis series simply because there are no scripted goals. While In Nomine still allows players to define and pursue their own agenda while playing, it also includes new missions and decisions that can give players specific objective that come with their own rewards. The missions are generated randomly but seem to fit whatever the circumstances you're in at the time. The appearance of nearby pirates, for instance, might trigger a mission to boost your navy. A small handful of the missions for the bigger powers have a more specific flavor that help to drive that nation in the general direction that they historically went. While the missions are interesting and offer some nice small rewards, players are completely free to ignore them and go after alternate goals. The only problem is that it costs 5 prestige to cancel a mission outright, which is the only way you can sidestep a mission you don't want to achieve.
Decisions are a little different. These are big policy choices that you'll be asked to make, at either the national or province level. The national decisions include big things like your overall religious tolerance, or the creation of a larger political empire. The province decisions are much more local offering, for instance, the chance to improve shipbuilding or commerce in a particular area. When you're running a more important nation, you'll find that the decisions take some of the randomness and guesswork out of the original game's historical events. Now, instead of waiting until you reach the conditions required to launch the Spanish Inquisition, you can just check your decision tab to see what pre-requisites you have to fill. Even when you get things in line, you'll still have the option to hold off launching a decision until it's most advantageous to you. It gives you so much more control over your empire.
There are plenty of other changes and additions to the game, from new tech levels and playable nations, to new advisor types and national ideas. The economic models in the game have also been changed with new supply and demand rules and improved trading options. When fighting, players can use a scorched earth policy when their own armies retreat within their borders, or detach armies that are besieging enemy towns. The best thing about the new expansion is that armies on the march will maintain their current progress if a change in orders takes them through the same province.
In Nomine does away with all the stability hits for slider adjustments, which means you can be a lot more flexible in terms of how your nation adapts to changing circumstances. Of course, the amount of time you have to wait between changing sliders is going to be limited by the size of your empire and your current government. That makes it actually more enjoyable to play some of the minor nations in the game because you can be a bit more flexible.
Closing CommentsThere are plenty of worthwhile features in In Nomine and they definitely help to add a bit more focus and fun to the whole experience. While the new rebels are an undeniable pain to deal with, their presence helps to limit the outrageous imperial ambitions of the bigger players. I think they're still a bit too strong but they serve as a nice check. New colony rules reduce micromanagement while also giving players a compelling reason to protect the seas. The missions are a really nice touch, but they're more fun (and varied) when playing as one of the larger powers in the game. In Nomine's definitely a good buy for any fan of the original game, and while the streamlining is nice, it's still not quite enough to make the game appealing to everyone.
8.0
PresentationNicely streamlined in some key areas but the rebels are a bit unbalanced.
7.0
GraphicsNot much more exciting than the original. Would be great to differentiate between rebel types.
6.0
SoundGood music overall but the sound effects are still weak and uninspired.
8.5
GameplayGreat new gameplay additions that make the game more sophisticated without making it more complicated.
9.0
Lasting AppealMore time to play, more nations and more options all around.
8.0Impressive
OVERALL(out of 10 / not an average)
The latest expansion, In Nomine, succeeds quite well. It offers some substantial changes to the core game that tend to limit the momentum of wars and colonial expansion. More vigorous rebels make war exhaustion and distant armies tough to handle, while new colony rules encourage the growth of substantial fleets while also reducing the micromanagement required to maintain them. Mission and decision options give the game a much more focused feel that shifts the game out of the sandbox and into a more historical setting.
Though there are plenty of big additions here, nothing comes close to the new rebel system in terms of how it affects gameplay. Rebels show up much more often now and they're harder to root out in many cases. What makes them such a compelling new element is that the rebels have their own unique objectives and can behave like sovereign nations.
Each rebel group that appears comes with a specific agenda. Some might want to break free and join another empire, others, particularly towards the end of the game, might want to establish their own country. Some rebels just want tax relief, or religious reform. How you handle each type of rebel depends on what they want. Naturally, you can just march in and crush them with your armies, but these new rebels typically have high morale and, in too many cases, unrealistically powerful generals.
When the war exhaustion starts to take its toll on your national morale (and increases the number of rebellions you experience), you might be better off trying to negotiate with the rebels. This is an entirely new option and it's one that you'll seriously need to consider. Unfortunately, some of the rebels actually want you to cede entire regions for them to live in as sovereign nations. But even those rebels who merely want a little tax relief will still cost you a tremendous amount of prestige and bump your centralization slider a bit towards the less appealing end. You'll want to be careful how you spend your prestige though, because it has much more of an effect on your overall morale, stability and income.
There are lots more pirates as well and they can significantly impact your trade and colonies. This means that players who want to have substantial overseas empires will really have to work hard to build up a large enough fleet to discourage piracy. To make things easy, you can actually toggle a patrol order on each of your fleets to reduce the risk of pirates appearing nearby. The patrol option isn't good if there are enemy fleets nearby though, so you'll need to balance the needs of trade and colonial security with your overall war aims. Best of all, Paradox has removed the attrition that friendly fleets suffer in friendly waters close to home, so you're not going to have to keep refitting your fleets every year.
Players will notice that they don't get as many colonists now, but they won't have to send them again and again just to establish a colony. Now individual colonists will slowly create their own cities at a speed based on your new colonial maintenance slider. This definitely reduces the micromanagement required to get overseas possessions up and running. Colonies don't produce tax or production for home empires anymore. This time around, they generate tariffs that make their way across the sea to the home empire. Without a strong fleet patrolling the waters between the colony and the capital, the tariffs are likely to be seized by pirates. Another interesting change is that you won't know what trade goods a province produces until you actually colonize it. This might aggravate some players who wind up losing out on some good commodities but it's a great way to prevent players from exploiting the map and only grabbing colonies that produce the most appealing goods.
Unfortunately, Spain and Portugal's early access to the Quest for the New World and the location of the Azores still gives those countries a significant advantage in colonizing the Americas. Still, focused players can definitely compete with them leading one of the other colonizing powers. Even if your rivals have grabbed lots of territory near your colonies, there's a much easier system now to convert other provinces to your own culture. It makes things a bit more secure for you, but it can also work against you if your rivals start to actively try to assimilate your own provinces.
Missionaries have also changed to work more like the new colonists now. Instead of just sending single missionaries off for a one-time bump, you'll now station missionaries permanently in a province and then adjust a new maintenance slider to determine how well they're funded. The missionaries will stay in place until they've converted the province to your faith but you'll be running an increased revolt risk in any province that you've stationed a missionary. Since this is all proportionate to the level of missionary maintenance, you can adapt to changing situations relatively quickly, while also ensuring that your missionaries are making steady progress towards converting provinces to your faith.
There are a few other notable changes to the religion system. First, there's no stability hit now for going to war with nations of different faiths. This makes holy wars a much more common event. The Pope can also excommunicate Catholic rulers now, so there's no guarantee that you'll stay at peace with your Catholic neighbors. There are also no longer individual sliders for tolerance, so you'll just relate to different faiths in large groups and fine tune your acceptance with a number of national ideas.
Beyond the basic complexities of the mechanics, some players have been turned off of the Europa Universalis series simply because there are no scripted goals. While In Nomine still allows players to define and pursue their own agenda while playing, it also includes new missions and decisions that can give players specific objective that come with their own rewards. The missions are generated randomly but seem to fit whatever the circumstances you're in at the time. The appearance of nearby pirates, for instance, might trigger a mission to boost your navy. A small handful of the missions for the bigger powers have a more specific flavor that help to drive that nation in the general direction that they historically went. While the missions are interesting and offer some nice small rewards, players are completely free to ignore them and go after alternate goals. The only problem is that it costs 5 prestige to cancel a mission outright, which is the only way you can sidestep a mission you don't want to achieve.
Decisions are a little different. These are big policy choices that you'll be asked to make, at either the national or province level. The national decisions include big things like your overall religious tolerance, or the creation of a larger political empire. The province decisions are much more local offering, for instance, the chance to improve shipbuilding or commerce in a particular area. When you're running a more important nation, you'll find that the decisions take some of the randomness and guesswork out of the original game's historical events. Now, instead of waiting until you reach the conditions required to launch the Spanish Inquisition, you can just check your decision tab to see what pre-requisites you have to fill. Even when you get things in line, you'll still have the option to hold off launching a decision until it's most advantageous to you. It gives you so much more control over your empire.
There are plenty of other changes and additions to the game, from new tech levels and playable nations, to new advisor types and national ideas. The economic models in the game have also been changed with new supply and demand rules and improved trading options. When fighting, players can use a scorched earth policy when their own armies retreat within their borders, or detach armies that are besieging enemy towns. The best thing about the new expansion is that armies on the march will maintain their current progress if a change in orders takes them through the same province.
In Nomine does away with all the stability hits for slider adjustments, which means you can be a lot more flexible in terms of how your nation adapts to changing circumstances. Of course, the amount of time you have to wait between changing sliders is going to be limited by the size of your empire and your current government. That makes it actually more enjoyable to play some of the minor nations in the game because you can be a bit more flexible.
Closing CommentsThere are plenty of worthwhile features in In Nomine and they definitely help to add a bit more focus and fun to the whole experience. While the new rebels are an undeniable pain to deal with, their presence helps to limit the outrageous imperial ambitions of the bigger players. I think they're still a bit too strong but they serve as a nice check. New colony rules reduce micromanagement while also giving players a compelling reason to protect the seas. The missions are a really nice touch, but they're more fun (and varied) when playing as one of the larger powers in the game. In Nomine's definitely a good buy for any fan of the original game, and while the streamlining is nice, it's still not quite enough to make the game appealing to everyone.
8.0
PresentationNicely streamlined in some key areas but the rebels are a bit unbalanced.
7.0
GraphicsNot much more exciting than the original. Would be great to differentiate between rebel types.
6.0
SoundGood music overall but the sound effects are still weak and uninspired.
8.5
GameplayGreat new gameplay additions that make the game more sophisticated without making it more complicated.
9.0
Lasting AppealMore time to play, more nations and more options all around.
8.0Impressive
OVERALL(out of 10 / not an average)
Grid
June 5, 2008 -
If you have even the slightest interest in driving virtual vehicles, you have plenty of options. For strict simulation buffs, there's GTR; fans of arcade racers can look forward to Burnout Paradise; and off-road fans have DiRT.The team behind the latter, Codemasters Racing Studio, thought there was room in the already crowded videogame racing market for yet another entry, a game that deftly straddles the line between arcade racer and hardcore simulation all wrapped up in a glitzy high-gloss package.So they dusted off the DiRT's groundbreaking engine, renamed it Ego and used it as the framework for an entirely new project: Grid, an unabashedly racing-focused game that takes the skeleton of Codemasters' old TOCA/Pro Race Driver series, slips it into a high-tech skin and imbues it with a modern soul.
The result is an intense, highly focused experience that offers nearly everything a road racing game should – speed, drama, precision, competition, and a sense of hard-won progression. And it does it all with impeccable style.From the opening montage, Grid sets a slick cinematic tone, and it's a theme that carries over strongly into the game itself. In addition to the standard driving views – cockpit, hood, bumper and two third-person – Grid has a full replay system that lets you pause, rewind, fast-forward and change views of your performance. Its best component is a cinematic replay camera that gives you an incomparable sense of the speed, sound and action on the racetrack. Whether you smoke the competition in a flawless GT1 race or crash magnificently in the streets of Shibuya, Grid's replay cam captures it all with intimacy and flair. If you've never been one to view replays of your races in videogames, Grid's cam may just convert you. Although you can review your race as many times as you like immediately after it's over, it's gone forever once you exit the race. With such a great tool at my disposal, I found it disappointing that I could not save my races to my hard drive – not because I wanted to show off my driving skills, but rather because some of my wipeouts were so spectacular that I wanted to share them.
Codemasters paid close attention to the camera in Grid, and not just in replay. The in-game cam works consistently well, whether you're zooming along a straightaway with a cockpit view or drifting around a hairpin in third-person. Even in the menus, Grid is never quite static. You'll always see movement in the background, and titles shift slightly on-screen. In Grid, as in DiRT, choosing an option feels like you're setting something in motion rather than simply clicking a button. Forward momentum is what Grid is all about. Once you create your character and give him or her a name and country of origin, the poor sap gets dumped directly on the track for a virgin race. There's no tutorial. You don't flip through a menu of cars and tracks. It's into a Dodge Viper and up to 100 mph. Finish that race and you're officially a freelance driver, hiring yourself out to the highest bidder in an effort to raise €60,000 toward a car of your own.
A few races later, you have the resources to create your own team, name it, brand it and choose your official colors and design, which will be applied to every car you acquire throughout the game. If you've grown accustomed to the detailed livery creation system in Forza 2, you'll be underwhelmed by the design customization options in Grid. For me, Grid includes just enough visual tweaking. To keep the races somewhat realistic looking, Codemasters had to limit the looks of the cars. You'll probably never see a Master Chief-themed car at Le Mans, and you won't see it in Grid. What Grid lacks in visual customization it makes up for in audio personalization. After you enter your full name, the game asks you to choose a first name from a preset list. If you're lucky enough to have common name, pick your support staff will call you by that name throughout the game, praising you when you best the competition and expressing their disapproval when you slam your million-dollar prototype car into a guardrail. If your parents hated you and gave you an odd name like, say, Talmadge, you're still in luck because Grid includes a list of nicknames you can choose instead. Want your crew to call you "Dumptruck"? How about "Dude"? I went with the former for a few rounds, and it was funny every time I heard it.
Pre-recorded dialogue is a big part of the Grid experience. Your business manager, spotter and teammate (who you'll hire later in the game) are constantly chattering at you, which at first makes for an immersive experience that gives the illusion of a real working race team. If there's an accident on the track, your spotter will alert you over the radio, saying something like, "Whoa, someone spun out up ahead. I think it's Ross Meadows."I was able to recount that line from memory because I heard it hundreds of times. The problem with pre-recorded software speech is that it can get stale pretty quickly with prolonged exposure. A real race spotter might say it just a tad bit different every time, but in Grid, your computerized team members are limited to a few lines of canned conversation, and it begins to grate. And it's not just in-race. Back in the garage, your business manager never tires of telling you (in the same language each time) about the benefits of racing for other teams to make more money, regardless of your preferences. As you spend more time with the game, the dialogue flips from being a cool feature to a bit of an annoyance.It would be more tolerable if your spotter was spot-on every time. Unfortunately, I found his track record to be spotty at best. He'd frequently call crashes ahead of me that never materialized or warn me late of spin-outs that already passed. That's not to say he was wrong every time – just inconsistent. Overall, the voices and audio calls in the game are a plus that add to the experience. But they're certainly not perfect, and they edge toward distraction as the game progresses.
But Grid's core racing experience makes up for its shortcomings. There are three racing regions in Grid – USA, Europe and Japan – and they're all open to you from the second you earn your racing license. As the seasons tick by and you earn more reputation points, higher tiers of competition open up within each area. The more you race and the better you perform in each region, the sooner you'll unlock the next tier there. Winning events nets you trophies, cash payouts and brand-name sponsorship opportunities.Grid is a survey of modern racing styles and manages to include something for almost everyone. There are track races, mountain road runs, street competitions, endurance races and more. All are a blast to race and have unique thrills, drawbacks and specialties.
Want to go extremely fast for extended periods of time? Run a Le Mans 24-hour race, in which each hour is represented by a minute. Day will turn to night and back again as you rush to beat the other cars in your class to the finish line. If you're more into drifting, there are downhill, freestyle and grand prix events to tackle. Touge, tuner, touring, open wheel are all here, too, and each are specifically designed to highlight the special attributes of each class of car in Grid. In its marketing push for Grid, Codemasters has been using the tagline "It's all about the race," a clever attempt to deflect inevitable criticism. Namely that, compared to some of its competitors, Grid's garage is a bit on the small side. There are 45 cars in Grid. And although they're all top-of-the-line racing powerhouses, their number feels limited at times. Some events have only one car choice, which can be a real downer when your only option is a Chevy Lacetti. You also can't tune your cars in the slightest, so if you crave mode understeer from your Honda NSX-R, you'll have to switch to a Nissan Skyline GT-R Z-Tune instead.I did find myself wishing there were more cars in Grid, but I don't have many complaints (Lacetti aside) about the vehicles Codemasters chose to include. From the classic but staid BMW 320 SI to the blistering and exotic Audi R10 TDi, Grid features some of racing's modern icons. You can even get behind the wheel of the Mazda 787B, whose rotary engine earned it both fame and infamy in the 1991 Le Mans. Each car class and individual vehicle in Grid handles differently, and driving in general takes some getting used to. The learning curve is steep but brief, which means you'll crash a lot for your first couple of races and then even out soon after. That is, until you switch to open wheel cars, which will start the curve o' learnin' all over again.
But failing a race in Grid can be almost as much fun as winning thanks to an excellent damage system that's capable of crumpling your car into a rolling mass of bustedness. Using the damage modeling developed for DiRT, Codemasters has created the most dramatic racing crash effects we've ever seen in a videogame. Bumpers fall off when tapped too hard, Le Mans prototypes lose their wings and stock cars lose their doors after spectacular rolls.Take a car into a Jersey barrier at 200 mph. and you'll be treated to a slow-mo cinematic camera effect that captures the impact and makes you feel the crunch in your gut. If you survive a collision but lose a fender, your detritus will remain on the road to harass other drivers until the end of the race. If you're lucky, your car will still function properly, but tough hits will damage your wheels, steering, engine and suspension, affecting your car's handling and performance.To be clear, Grid is not a racing simulation. Although cars look and often feel realistic, the crashes are over-the top and handling tends more toward the arcade end of the spectrum. Take what TOCA used to be and blend it with DiRT's accessibility and you'll have a good idea of what Grid is trying to accomplish. Depending on the track and car you're racing, you'll glance off walls that would total your ride in a sim. Car pulling to the left after a particularly nasty crash? If you're playing the game in standard mode, you can use Grid's Flashback function, an instant-replay system that allows you to pause the race, rewind for a brief period and resume the action from that point. It's effectively a time machine that lets you erase your mistakes a limited number of times each race, depending on your difficulty level. But I also found it to be a learning tool that taught me how to take dangerous turns. Flub a curve, rewind using a Flashback, take it again and emerge all the wiser.
For those concerned about the Flashback tool breaking the integrity of the game, have no fear. Racing in Pro mode eliminates the Flashback option entirely, and it's the only way to upload lap times to the online leaderboards. So if you want to set records using Flashbacks, you'll be doing so in a vacuum. Get serious in Pro mode, and you'll be glad you did once you dip your toe into the multiplayer. With 12 cars online, full damage optional and (from what we've played) smooth no-lag races, things get very intense very quickly online.All regions are open online, and there are several events – including drift, Le Mans, and demolition derby – available to race. There's a full lobby system with matchmaking built in, and hosts can choose to turn both damage and catch-up on and off. The networking code is also split between all the racers in the game but will be distributed on the fly if lag rears its ugly head. Of the three versions of Grid we tested, the PC looked the best. Codemasters gives PC gamers a considerable amount of control over the game's performance with several customization menus. From the level of grass detail to depth of crowd rendering, you can endlessly tweak Grid to your liking on the PC. Grid also fully supports force-feedback racing wheels and allows plenty of customization there as well.
Closing CommentsThere are plenty of other racing games on the market, but Grid captures the soul of the track like none other. The crashes are insane, the races are intense, the cars are coated with style and the overall presentation is just plain sexy. Although its car count is low, customization is limited and the repetitive dialogue grates a bit, Grid's stands out as a stylish but serious alternative to both hardcore driving simulations and over-the-top arcade racers.
8.5
PresentationThe glossy, dynamic DiRT-style menus are back, but without the long load times. Grid is wrapped in a superior package, but the low car count is a bit disappointing.
9.5
GraphicsBeautiful lighting, full damage modeling, great-looking tracks and lovingly-rendered cars, all running smoothly at top speeds? Yes, please.
8.5
SoundThe menu music is great, and the cars purr and scream appropriately, even changing tone with each camera view. But the recorded dialogue gets repetitive too quickly.
9.0
GameplayGrid gets racing right. The tracks are intense, the crashes are spectacular to behold and the cars are a blast to drive.
8.0
Lasting AppealIt will take you a good long while to reach the top of the rankings in Grid's single-player mode, and there's full multiplayer as well.
8.7Great
OVERALL(out of 10 / not an average)
If you have even the slightest interest in driving virtual vehicles, you have plenty of options. For strict simulation buffs, there's GTR; fans of arcade racers can look forward to Burnout Paradise; and off-road fans have DiRT.The team behind the latter, Codemasters Racing Studio, thought there was room in the already crowded videogame racing market for yet another entry, a game that deftly straddles the line between arcade racer and hardcore simulation all wrapped up in a glitzy high-gloss package.So they dusted off the DiRT's groundbreaking engine, renamed it Ego and used it as the framework for an entirely new project: Grid, an unabashedly racing-focused game that takes the skeleton of Codemasters' old TOCA/Pro Race Driver series, slips it into a high-tech skin and imbues it with a modern soul.
The result is an intense, highly focused experience that offers nearly everything a road racing game should – speed, drama, precision, competition, and a sense of hard-won progression. And it does it all with impeccable style.From the opening montage, Grid sets a slick cinematic tone, and it's a theme that carries over strongly into the game itself. In addition to the standard driving views – cockpit, hood, bumper and two third-person – Grid has a full replay system that lets you pause, rewind, fast-forward and change views of your performance. Its best component is a cinematic replay camera that gives you an incomparable sense of the speed, sound and action on the racetrack. Whether you smoke the competition in a flawless GT1 race or crash magnificently in the streets of Shibuya, Grid's replay cam captures it all with intimacy and flair. If you've never been one to view replays of your races in videogames, Grid's cam may just convert you. Although you can review your race as many times as you like immediately after it's over, it's gone forever once you exit the race. With such a great tool at my disposal, I found it disappointing that I could not save my races to my hard drive – not because I wanted to show off my driving skills, but rather because some of my wipeouts were so spectacular that I wanted to share them.
Codemasters paid close attention to the camera in Grid, and not just in replay. The in-game cam works consistently well, whether you're zooming along a straightaway with a cockpit view or drifting around a hairpin in third-person. Even in the menus, Grid is never quite static. You'll always see movement in the background, and titles shift slightly on-screen. In Grid, as in DiRT, choosing an option feels like you're setting something in motion rather than simply clicking a button. Forward momentum is what Grid is all about. Once you create your character and give him or her a name and country of origin, the poor sap gets dumped directly on the track for a virgin race. There's no tutorial. You don't flip through a menu of cars and tracks. It's into a Dodge Viper and up to 100 mph. Finish that race and you're officially a freelance driver, hiring yourself out to the highest bidder in an effort to raise €60,000 toward a car of your own.
A few races later, you have the resources to create your own team, name it, brand it and choose your official colors and design, which will be applied to every car you acquire throughout the game. If you've grown accustomed to the detailed livery creation system in Forza 2, you'll be underwhelmed by the design customization options in Grid. For me, Grid includes just enough visual tweaking. To keep the races somewhat realistic looking, Codemasters had to limit the looks of the cars. You'll probably never see a Master Chief-themed car at Le Mans, and you won't see it in Grid. What Grid lacks in visual customization it makes up for in audio personalization. After you enter your full name, the game asks you to choose a first name from a preset list. If you're lucky enough to have common name, pick your support staff will call you by that name throughout the game, praising you when you best the competition and expressing their disapproval when you slam your million-dollar prototype car into a guardrail. If your parents hated you and gave you an odd name like, say, Talmadge, you're still in luck because Grid includes a list of nicknames you can choose instead. Want your crew to call you "Dumptruck"? How about "Dude"? I went with the former for a few rounds, and it was funny every time I heard it.
Pre-recorded dialogue is a big part of the Grid experience. Your business manager, spotter and teammate (who you'll hire later in the game) are constantly chattering at you, which at first makes for an immersive experience that gives the illusion of a real working race team. If there's an accident on the track, your spotter will alert you over the radio, saying something like, "Whoa, someone spun out up ahead. I think it's Ross Meadows."I was able to recount that line from memory because I heard it hundreds of times. The problem with pre-recorded software speech is that it can get stale pretty quickly with prolonged exposure. A real race spotter might say it just a tad bit different every time, but in Grid, your computerized team members are limited to a few lines of canned conversation, and it begins to grate. And it's not just in-race. Back in the garage, your business manager never tires of telling you (in the same language each time) about the benefits of racing for other teams to make more money, regardless of your preferences. As you spend more time with the game, the dialogue flips from being a cool feature to a bit of an annoyance.It would be more tolerable if your spotter was spot-on every time. Unfortunately, I found his track record to be spotty at best. He'd frequently call crashes ahead of me that never materialized or warn me late of spin-outs that already passed. That's not to say he was wrong every time – just inconsistent. Overall, the voices and audio calls in the game are a plus that add to the experience. But they're certainly not perfect, and they edge toward distraction as the game progresses.
But Grid's core racing experience makes up for its shortcomings. There are three racing regions in Grid – USA, Europe and Japan – and they're all open to you from the second you earn your racing license. As the seasons tick by and you earn more reputation points, higher tiers of competition open up within each area. The more you race and the better you perform in each region, the sooner you'll unlock the next tier there. Winning events nets you trophies, cash payouts and brand-name sponsorship opportunities.Grid is a survey of modern racing styles and manages to include something for almost everyone. There are track races, mountain road runs, street competitions, endurance races and more. All are a blast to race and have unique thrills, drawbacks and specialties.
Want to go extremely fast for extended periods of time? Run a Le Mans 24-hour race, in which each hour is represented by a minute. Day will turn to night and back again as you rush to beat the other cars in your class to the finish line. If you're more into drifting, there are downhill, freestyle and grand prix events to tackle. Touge, tuner, touring, open wheel are all here, too, and each are specifically designed to highlight the special attributes of each class of car in Grid. In its marketing push for Grid, Codemasters has been using the tagline "It's all about the race," a clever attempt to deflect inevitable criticism. Namely that, compared to some of its competitors, Grid's garage is a bit on the small side. There are 45 cars in Grid. And although they're all top-of-the-line racing powerhouses, their number feels limited at times. Some events have only one car choice, which can be a real downer when your only option is a Chevy Lacetti. You also can't tune your cars in the slightest, so if you crave mode understeer from your Honda NSX-R, you'll have to switch to a Nissan Skyline GT-R Z-Tune instead.I did find myself wishing there were more cars in Grid, but I don't have many complaints (Lacetti aside) about the vehicles Codemasters chose to include. From the classic but staid BMW 320 SI to the blistering and exotic Audi R10 TDi, Grid features some of racing's modern icons. You can even get behind the wheel of the Mazda 787B, whose rotary engine earned it both fame and infamy in the 1991 Le Mans. Each car class and individual vehicle in Grid handles differently, and driving in general takes some getting used to. The learning curve is steep but brief, which means you'll crash a lot for your first couple of races and then even out soon after. That is, until you switch to open wheel cars, which will start the curve o' learnin' all over again.
But failing a race in Grid can be almost as much fun as winning thanks to an excellent damage system that's capable of crumpling your car into a rolling mass of bustedness. Using the damage modeling developed for DiRT, Codemasters has created the most dramatic racing crash effects we've ever seen in a videogame. Bumpers fall off when tapped too hard, Le Mans prototypes lose their wings and stock cars lose their doors after spectacular rolls.Take a car into a Jersey barrier at 200 mph. and you'll be treated to a slow-mo cinematic camera effect that captures the impact and makes you feel the crunch in your gut. If you survive a collision but lose a fender, your detritus will remain on the road to harass other drivers until the end of the race. If you're lucky, your car will still function properly, but tough hits will damage your wheels, steering, engine and suspension, affecting your car's handling and performance.To be clear, Grid is not a racing simulation. Although cars look and often feel realistic, the crashes are over-the top and handling tends more toward the arcade end of the spectrum. Take what TOCA used to be and blend it with DiRT's accessibility and you'll have a good idea of what Grid is trying to accomplish. Depending on the track and car you're racing, you'll glance off walls that would total your ride in a sim. Car pulling to the left after a particularly nasty crash? If you're playing the game in standard mode, you can use Grid's Flashback function, an instant-replay system that allows you to pause the race, rewind for a brief period and resume the action from that point. It's effectively a time machine that lets you erase your mistakes a limited number of times each race, depending on your difficulty level. But I also found it to be a learning tool that taught me how to take dangerous turns. Flub a curve, rewind using a Flashback, take it again and emerge all the wiser.
For those concerned about the Flashback tool breaking the integrity of the game, have no fear. Racing in Pro mode eliminates the Flashback option entirely, and it's the only way to upload lap times to the online leaderboards. So if you want to set records using Flashbacks, you'll be doing so in a vacuum. Get serious in Pro mode, and you'll be glad you did once you dip your toe into the multiplayer. With 12 cars online, full damage optional and (from what we've played) smooth no-lag races, things get very intense very quickly online.All regions are open online, and there are several events – including drift, Le Mans, and demolition derby – available to race. There's a full lobby system with matchmaking built in, and hosts can choose to turn both damage and catch-up on and off. The networking code is also split between all the racers in the game but will be distributed on the fly if lag rears its ugly head. Of the three versions of Grid we tested, the PC looked the best. Codemasters gives PC gamers a considerable amount of control over the game's performance with several customization menus. From the level of grass detail to depth of crowd rendering, you can endlessly tweak Grid to your liking on the PC. Grid also fully supports force-feedback racing wheels and allows plenty of customization there as well.
Closing CommentsThere are plenty of other racing games on the market, but Grid captures the soul of the track like none other. The crashes are insane, the races are intense, the cars are coated with style and the overall presentation is just plain sexy. Although its car count is low, customization is limited and the repetitive dialogue grates a bit, Grid's stands out as a stylish but serious alternative to both hardcore driving simulations and over-the-top arcade racers.
8.5
PresentationThe glossy, dynamic DiRT-style menus are back, but without the long load times. Grid is wrapped in a superior package, but the low car count is a bit disappointing.
9.5
GraphicsBeautiful lighting, full damage modeling, great-looking tracks and lovingly-rendered cars, all running smoothly at top speeds? Yes, please.
8.5
SoundThe menu music is great, and the cars purr and scream appropriately, even changing tone with each camera view. But the recorded dialogue gets repetitive too quickly.
9.0
GameplayGrid gets racing right. The tracks are intense, the crashes are spectacular to behold and the cars are a blast to drive.
8.0
Lasting AppealIt will take you a good long while to reach the top of the rankings in Grid's single-player mode, and there's full multiplayer as well.
8.7Great
OVERALL(out of 10 / not an average)
Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor Review
May 12, 2008 - As the name suggests, Twilight or the Arnor tells the final chapter in the Dread Lords story. Picking up after the galaxy-shattering events of the previous game the new campaign sees the Terrans making one last effort to snatch power from the Dread Lords, this time by gathering a number of crystals that...you know what? Let's just skip that part. The campaign story may be a little predictable but the overall impact of the scripted missions is impressive. While the sandbox mode is still to be preferred over the campaigns, the unique setups here are well worth exploring and we particularly like the challenge of having to achieve specific objectives against enemies that are already far ahead of us in terms of advancement.
Like most Gal Civ players, the open-ended game is still what draws up back again and again. This new expansion includes even more replayability with completely unique tech trees, an even more ridiculously large map, tougher AI, better graphics and sound, a more convenient interface and a whole host of minor tweaks and add-ons that are sure to please fans of the game.
To begin with, the new Immense galaxy size is just insane. Our recommendation is that you don't undertake it unless you have a few months to spare. Just hearing that it takes the fastest ships several turns just to get from one side of the galaxy to the other is enough to intimidate even the most die-hard strategy fan. Still, if you want to play in a galaxy that's 24 sectors on each side, you're welcome to it. We have a similar feeling about the improved AI. While it's far beyond our ability to tell whether the hardest difficultly level is even tougher this time around, we can still say that that challenges and behaviors of the enemies in our games are still as satisfying as ever.
And that's particularly good because, even with this expansion, Gal Civ II still doesn't have any proper multiplayer. While it was easier to forgive before the release of Civilization IV, it's tough these days to accept the Metaverse as anything more than a poor substitute for real head-to-head play. With that said, the AI in Twilight of the Arnor and the wide range of experiences available are more than enough to keep up happy until Stardock finds a way to make multiplayer a reality.
The tech trees are unique in a number of ways. First, the techs are just organized differently. The Yor, for instance, have to unlock their diplomacy technologies before they can even consider researching trade technologies but the Terrans only have to research gravity control before they can start developing their trading technologies. The warlike Korath have a single technology available right at the start that unlocks a wide range of military tech lines that other races can only reach much later in the game. Some other races, like the Yor, don't even have access to some of the techs that the Korath can get. Where the Terran gravity control tech line leads to a number of intrastructure improvements, the same technology gives the Korath access to a number of interesting technologies that help them use slave labor to improve their empire. These are just a few general examples of how this works, so keep in mind that each of the game's twelve races have their own unique trees that offer very different play styles.
These technologies also lead to unique planetary improvements. While many of them have the same basic effect (increasing research, production, etc.) there are some interesting penalties and bonuses that are specific to each race's version of the more general buildings. And even better, the overall flavor of the improvements suits the race they're assigned to and that adds a lot of personality to the game. Just look at the different types of buildings each race uses to boost morale and you'll learn a lot about the philosophical differences between each race.
Twilight of the Arnor adds a new victory condition via the control of Precursor crystals scattered throughout the galaxy. If you can construct a starbase around these crystals you'll start earning points towards an Ascension victory. The trouble is that there are only five of these crystals on a map and the other races will definitely keep an eye on your progress. Since the starbases around the crystals can't be upgraded to defend themselves, you'll have to protect them with your fleets and the spread of your influence. While we like the new victory condition and the focused fighting that occurs around the crystals, the whole thing seems a little arbitrary. Earning 1000 Ascension points certainly isn't easy, but there's no real sense of meaningful progress or purpose beyond just racking up points. When you try to win through conquest or research or diplomacy there's a greater sense of competition and momentum than you get from the Ascension victory. Maybe we're just prejudiced against a victory condition that transcends the conflicts with other players. I mean, how can it be called a victory if no one loses?
If you thought the Death Star was cool, you'll be particularly intrigued by the game's new Terror Stars. These massive ships require months of intensive research, several constructors and a few additional weeks of warming up before they become operational. Once they're ready, you'll be able to destroy nearby stars and, consequently, any planets, starbases or ships within a substantial radius. Once the damage is done, all that will be left is the Terror Star itself and a lot of asteroids. Truly, no Galactic Overlord should be without one.
But like the toys of most Galactic Overlords, this one serves vanity more than convenience. One of the main problems is that the technologies required for the Terror Star don't have any other benefits, so you wind up spending several dozens of turns with your research focused exclusively on this one weapon. And then, when it's built, it moves slower than anything else in the game and has absolutely no defenses, which means you have to tie up your fleets with escort duty when they could just as easily be blockading planets while your troop ships move in. It's definitely true that its star-killing power is a tool you'll want in your arsenal, but from a cost-effectiveness standpoint, we wonder whether or not the time and energy it takes to build them would be better spent elsewhere.
When we consider graphics for an expansion, we usually have to limit our comments to the new additions. In the case of Twilight of the Arnor, however, Stardock has substantially increased the texture detail on the all the ships, which really brings the core game up to date. The new ship textures show all sorts of complex shading, cool panel lines, glowing lights and all the other stuff you'd expect to see on a futuristic spaceship. Better still, Stardock has managed to reduce the memory requirements for these textures so you're getting a game that not only looks better but also runs better. Animated ship parts have also been included, so you can add a little bit of life to your custom ship designs. It's not a huge deal, but it's a nice touch. The planetary invasion screen has also been revamped a bit to show a little more life, but even so, it still boils down to watching the number of soldiers tick down to zero. While it's probably not appropriate to have anything too distracting here, it's nice to see the developers at least tried to spice things up a bit.
As expected there are tons of smaller improvements that you probably won't notice unless you're a die-hard Gal Civ II player. The interface has been streamlined a bit, so you'll have a little more access to certain types of information this time around. The computer can also design ships for you automatically if you'd rather not mess with the shipyard. If you like building your own ships (and you totally should) there's much smarter sorting of all the various parts this time around. It would be nearly impossible to call out all the changes that the team has made to the game but there's enough packed in here that Twilight of the Arnor feels less like an expansion than a full-blown sequel.
Closing CommentsThere are no two ways about it: if you like space strategy games, you have to play Galactic Civilizations II. And if you play Gal Civ II, you have to play Twilight of the Arnor. Just based on the improved graphics and the unique technology trees, it's well worth picking up. Sure, the terror stars are too costly for their limited applicability, and yes, the Ascension victory seems to sidestep the point of actually playing the game, but when you balance that against the numerous other improvements that Stardock has made, there's no way we can't recommend this to anyone looking for a deep, rewarding, utterly captivating turn-based strategy experience.
IGN Ratings for Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor (PC)
9.0
PresentationStardock went even further than it needed to in terms of the quantity of additions. There's enough here to almost qualify as a sequel in itself.
8.5
GraphicsMuch better textures overall and they use less memory so the game runs quite a bit better. The new invasion screen is a step in the right direction.
8.0
SoundBetter music overall this time around. The sound effects are better than expected for the genre.
9.5
GameplayIt was great before. More options and more variety only add to the appeal here.
9.5
Lasting AppealThe new tech trees vastly enlarge the range of strategies and experiences you can find here. You really won't even miss the multiplayer.
9.1Outstanding
OVERALL(out of 10 / not an average)
Like most Gal Civ players, the open-ended game is still what draws up back again and again. This new expansion includes even more replayability with completely unique tech trees, an even more ridiculously large map, tougher AI, better graphics and sound, a more convenient interface and a whole host of minor tweaks and add-ons that are sure to please fans of the game.
To begin with, the new Immense galaxy size is just insane. Our recommendation is that you don't undertake it unless you have a few months to spare. Just hearing that it takes the fastest ships several turns just to get from one side of the galaxy to the other is enough to intimidate even the most die-hard strategy fan. Still, if you want to play in a galaxy that's 24 sectors on each side, you're welcome to it. We have a similar feeling about the improved AI. While it's far beyond our ability to tell whether the hardest difficultly level is even tougher this time around, we can still say that that challenges and behaviors of the enemies in our games are still as satisfying as ever.
And that's particularly good because, even with this expansion, Gal Civ II still doesn't have any proper multiplayer. While it was easier to forgive before the release of Civilization IV, it's tough these days to accept the Metaverse as anything more than a poor substitute for real head-to-head play. With that said, the AI in Twilight of the Arnor and the wide range of experiences available are more than enough to keep up happy until Stardock finds a way to make multiplayer a reality.
The tech trees are unique in a number of ways. First, the techs are just organized differently. The Yor, for instance, have to unlock their diplomacy technologies before they can even consider researching trade technologies but the Terrans only have to research gravity control before they can start developing their trading technologies. The warlike Korath have a single technology available right at the start that unlocks a wide range of military tech lines that other races can only reach much later in the game. Some other races, like the Yor, don't even have access to some of the techs that the Korath can get. Where the Terran gravity control tech line leads to a number of intrastructure improvements, the same technology gives the Korath access to a number of interesting technologies that help them use slave labor to improve their empire. These are just a few general examples of how this works, so keep in mind that each of the game's twelve races have their own unique trees that offer very different play styles.
These technologies also lead to unique planetary improvements. While many of them have the same basic effect (increasing research, production, etc.) there are some interesting penalties and bonuses that are specific to each race's version of the more general buildings. And even better, the overall flavor of the improvements suits the race they're assigned to and that adds a lot of personality to the game. Just look at the different types of buildings each race uses to boost morale and you'll learn a lot about the philosophical differences between each race.
Twilight of the Arnor adds a new victory condition via the control of Precursor crystals scattered throughout the galaxy. If you can construct a starbase around these crystals you'll start earning points towards an Ascension victory. The trouble is that there are only five of these crystals on a map and the other races will definitely keep an eye on your progress. Since the starbases around the crystals can't be upgraded to defend themselves, you'll have to protect them with your fleets and the spread of your influence. While we like the new victory condition and the focused fighting that occurs around the crystals, the whole thing seems a little arbitrary. Earning 1000 Ascension points certainly isn't easy, but there's no real sense of meaningful progress or purpose beyond just racking up points. When you try to win through conquest or research or diplomacy there's a greater sense of competition and momentum than you get from the Ascension victory. Maybe we're just prejudiced against a victory condition that transcends the conflicts with other players. I mean, how can it be called a victory if no one loses?
If you thought the Death Star was cool, you'll be particularly intrigued by the game's new Terror Stars. These massive ships require months of intensive research, several constructors and a few additional weeks of warming up before they become operational. Once they're ready, you'll be able to destroy nearby stars and, consequently, any planets, starbases or ships within a substantial radius. Once the damage is done, all that will be left is the Terror Star itself and a lot of asteroids. Truly, no Galactic Overlord should be without one.
But like the toys of most Galactic Overlords, this one serves vanity more than convenience. One of the main problems is that the technologies required for the Terror Star don't have any other benefits, so you wind up spending several dozens of turns with your research focused exclusively on this one weapon. And then, when it's built, it moves slower than anything else in the game and has absolutely no defenses, which means you have to tie up your fleets with escort duty when they could just as easily be blockading planets while your troop ships move in. It's definitely true that its star-killing power is a tool you'll want in your arsenal, but from a cost-effectiveness standpoint, we wonder whether or not the time and energy it takes to build them would be better spent elsewhere.
When we consider graphics for an expansion, we usually have to limit our comments to the new additions. In the case of Twilight of the Arnor, however, Stardock has substantially increased the texture detail on the all the ships, which really brings the core game up to date. The new ship textures show all sorts of complex shading, cool panel lines, glowing lights and all the other stuff you'd expect to see on a futuristic spaceship. Better still, Stardock has managed to reduce the memory requirements for these textures so you're getting a game that not only looks better but also runs better. Animated ship parts have also been included, so you can add a little bit of life to your custom ship designs. It's not a huge deal, but it's a nice touch. The planetary invasion screen has also been revamped a bit to show a little more life, but even so, it still boils down to watching the number of soldiers tick down to zero. While it's probably not appropriate to have anything too distracting here, it's nice to see the developers at least tried to spice things up a bit.
As expected there are tons of smaller improvements that you probably won't notice unless you're a die-hard Gal Civ II player. The interface has been streamlined a bit, so you'll have a little more access to certain types of information this time around. The computer can also design ships for you automatically if you'd rather not mess with the shipyard. If you like building your own ships (and you totally should) there's much smarter sorting of all the various parts this time around. It would be nearly impossible to call out all the changes that the team has made to the game but there's enough packed in here that Twilight of the Arnor feels less like an expansion than a full-blown sequel.
Closing CommentsThere are no two ways about it: if you like space strategy games, you have to play Galactic Civilizations II. And if you play Gal Civ II, you have to play Twilight of the Arnor. Just based on the improved graphics and the unique technology trees, it's well worth picking up. Sure, the terror stars are too costly for their limited applicability, and yes, the Ascension victory seems to sidestep the point of actually playing the game, but when you balance that against the numerous other improvements that Stardock has made, there's no way we can't recommend this to anyone looking for a deep, rewarding, utterly captivating turn-based strategy experience.
IGN Ratings for Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor (PC)
9.0
PresentationStardock went even further than it needed to in terms of the quantity of additions. There's enough here to almost qualify as a sequel in itself.
8.5
GraphicsMuch better textures overall and they use less memory so the game runs quite a bit better. The new invasion screen is a step in the right direction.
8.0
SoundBetter music overall this time around. The sound effects are better than expected for the genre.
9.5
GameplayIt was great before. More options and more variety only add to the appeal here.
9.5
Lasting AppealThe new tech trees vastly enlarge the range of strategies and experiences you can find here. You really won't even miss the multiplayer.
9.1Outstanding
OVERALL(out of 10 / not an average)
Mass Effect
May 27, 2008 - In many ways Mass Effect could easily be an incredible Star Wars role-playing experience. After all, it has all the elements of that classic space opera, like memorable aliens, killer droids, and a special order dedicated to maintaining balance throughout the galaxy. Plus, there is the tiny little detail that BioWare has a history with this sort of thing. However, if it were a Star Wars game then Mass Effect probably wouldn't be anywhere as interesting or cool as it is. That's because discovery has an excitement all its own, and Mass Effect introduces us to a deeply immersive new galaxy full of stories and mysteries.First, here's a disclaimer: I played Mass Effect on the Xbox 360 last year and it was an excellent and engrossing game then. The PC game is identical in terms of content, and yet I still found myself engaged and enthralled by the universe. In fact, I caught quite a bit that I missed on the Xbox 360 with the PC game, like a number of side quests that I never knew existed. So if you've already played the Xbox 360 game, there's still plenty to discover in the PC game, plus you can enjoy higher resolutions, faster load times, more save slots than you can shake a stick at, and the precision of the keyboard-and-mouse controls, to just name a few benefits. And if you haven't played Mass Effect, then you need to.
There are so many reasons why Mass Effect is so appealing. It's got a typical BioWare plot, which means that there's a mystery that's so well thought out and told that everything clicks into place during the big reveal. Yet it's also a game made by sci-fi fans for those who love sci-fi. There are so many elements borrowed and culled from decades of science fiction and movies, and there are countless moments that will remind you of Star Trek or Aliens or Firefly or some early John Carpenter movie (the electronic score is very Carpenter-esque, too). There's even an effective film grain post-processing effect that makes the game feel like a 70s or 80s sci-fi movie, before digital filmmaking and CGI made everything look and feel too clean.Here's the premise of Mass Effect: Several hundred years in the future humanity has joined the galactic community after finding alien technology on Mars that opens up interstellar travel. We uppity humans are seen as too ambitious in a galaxy run by a UN-like council populated by ancient alien races. You play as Command Shepard of the human Alliance military, and BioWare lets you role-play as either a male or female character. There are pre-rolled characters that you can select or you can create a custom character with a unique face.When a rogue spectre--one of the galactic council's special agents--attacks a human colony on Eden Prime, you're tasked with hunting him down. It's not that simple, though, as invariably epic themes such as extinction on a galactic scale kick in. So you must zip around the galaxy in a very sleek starship, explore alien worlds, engage in futuristic firefights, and unearth the overarching mystery. There's also a cast of human and alien characters that can grow on you, like Wrex, a krogan killing machine with a blunt, sardonic personality. And this wouldn't be a BioWare game without one or two romance possibilities, as well.
Mass Effect's story goes beyond just simple character interaction, though. You have a wide degree of freedom to see how your story unfolds. BioWare offers basically two paths: the path of goodness and decency (the paragon) or the path of ruthlessness (the renegade), and often the choices presented to you can get under your skin. The game does an incredible job of introducing you to sympathetic characters whose fate you later get to decide. These can include members of your very own party to large numbers of innocents that you meet along the way.This is also a game about exploration and combat, as you'll explore vast facilities on foot, drive around alien landscapes in an all-terrain vehicle, and engage enemies using a variety of sci-fi weapons and armor. Here's where the PC game improves on its Xbox 360 cousin, as it features a new tactical combat interface that lets you give individual orders to your two squad mates. There's also a useful quick slot toolbar that you can drag-and-drop special abilities to, letting you access them with a tap of the keyboard. This translates into greater tactical control during combat. The precision of the mouse and keyboard helps to a degree, but this isn't a pure action game, so it doesn't matter if you can put the cursor directly on a target. What matters more are your character's stats and the stats of the weapon that you're using. Still, I was able to get through many battles on the first attempt, which is in contrast to my experience with the Xbox 360 game, where I died-and-reloaded in many of those same battles multiple times.
The combat system of Mass Effect is dynamic and deep. You can play through as a soldier, which makes it not unlike a third-person shooter where you have to use cover to shield yourself from enemy fire while popping out to shoot back. However, the other classes in the game let you tap what are called biotic and tech powers. You or your allies can use abilities such as singularity to send enemies floating in the air, letting you unload into them. (There's physics in the game, too, so pounding an opponent with enough force will send them hurtling through space.) Then there's the intricate weapon and armor system, with upgrade slots for almost everything, including different types of ammunition. At the same time, if you're not an action fan or you lack lightning-fast resources, Mass Effect is fairly forgiving, as you can pause the action at any time to issue orders to your teammates or you can tweak the game settings to give you a generous aiming reticule.If there's a complaint about Mass Effect, it's that many of its side quests recycle the same formula: go to planet X, land in the Mako rover, roll around the landscape until you find the objective (which usually recycles the building design from previous missions), go in guns blazing, and you're done. There's not a lot of variety here, but to its credit Mass Effect makes these detours fairly quick, so it's not like you're getting bogged down by them. And while the game finishes on an excellent note, it feels like it finishes too soon. BioWare has made no secret that this is just the opening chapter of a Mass Effect trilogy, so the company has sprinkled potential future plot threads throughout the game. And maybe it's just me, but it seems that BioWare's games used to be longer than Mass Effect. For instance, Mass Effect's main plot would have constituted but a chapter in Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights. So for better or worse, Mass Effect will most likely have you wanting for more.
There's a built-in timer in Mass Effect, so I know that it took me 19 hours and 9 minutes to get through the entire game. Of course, I had played Mass Effect on the Xbox 360, so I was able to blitz through the story for this review. If you approach the game at a more leisurely pace and take time to do more exploration, there's easily another 10 or 15 hours of gameplay here. There's also a considerable amount of replay value, too. In fact, the game encourages it, since you can beat the game and then start a new one using the high-level character you just used to finish the previous game with. This means that you get all the experience and skills that you finished with, as well as all the weapons and equipment that you have. Or you can roll a new character and explore different story paths. (There are unique quests depending on what you choose for your character's background or if you strive to be a paragon or a renegade.) Finally, there are a slew of achievements that you can work toward, but unfortunately these aren't Games for Windows -- Live achievements, and that means that they'll have zero impact on your overall gamerscore if you're a points hound.As you'd expect, the PC game looks quite a bit sharper than its Xbox 360 cousin, provided that you have the hardware for it. I played on a dual core system with an Nvidia 8800GTX card and it looked incredibly sharp at 1680x1050 resolution. The frame rate was fairly steady, too, though there was the occasional hiccup now and then. I was surprised to see how much of a CPU hog it is, as both cores on my processor were constantly maxed out whenever I played. The PC game doesn't really feature any graphical enhancements, and it uses the same textures, but it still looks better on the PC screen than it does on an HD television. And the texture popping problems exhibited in the Xbox 360 game were pretty much missing from the PC.This is also an excellent sounding game, especially on a surround sound system. The voice acting is simply superb, as the large cast brings an incredibly varied range of characters to life. In fact, voice acting doesn't get much better than this. There's the occasional familiar voice, like Keith David as a famous captain or Lance Henrikson as an admiral, but for the most part BioWare enlisted a large number of professional voice actors to deliver the lines for many memorable characters. Moreover, it isn't just the performances but it's also the quality of the material the voice actors had to work with. Key NPCs have moving stories to tell, stories that tie into the overarching history of the universe. The music is also powerful and haunting, as the electronic themes capture the desolate and lonely nature of space, but they're also capable of ramping up in urgency during battle.
Mass Effect doesn't feel like a port, so don't hold the fact that it arrives six months after the Xbox 360 game against it. The interface feels like it was built for the PC, and there are a slew of improvements here that the Xbox 360 game will never get, like an improved inventory system. It's also nice that there are pretty much as many save slots as you need, which is a big improvement over the Xbox 360 game. In that version you frequently had to overwrite previous saves, which made going back to experiment with different story paths difficult.
Closing CommentsIt almost goes without saying that BioWare remains one of the very top single-player RPG makers on the planet, and Mass Effect only reinforces their position. This is easily one of the best RPGs on the platform in recent years, delivering a terrific new universe, a fun blend of action and role-playing, and a deeply satisfying story. If you have any love of science fiction or space opera, then you owe it to yourself to check it out. There are hours upon hours of joyful discovery here, and an undeniable love for science fiction, as well.
9.5
PresentationMass Effect features master videogame storytelling with a very clean and intuitive interface that's been enhanced and improved from the Xbox 360 game.
9.0
GraphicsThe visuals bring to life a brand new universe in a convincing manner. The PC game delivers sharp visuals but it does require a fair bit of horsepower to do so.
10
SoundStellar voice acting that's some of the best ever done, along with an original, haunting electronic score that fits the subject matter perfectly.
9.0
GameplayThis is a top-notch RPG with a deep combat system that's an excellent blend of action and role-paying.
8.5
Lasting AppealThere's quite a bit of replay value here, whether you start over with an existing character or roll an entirely new on to explore different story paths.
9.2Outstanding
OVERALL(out of 10 / not an average
System Requirement
Windows XP or Vista2.4G Intel Processor or 2.0G AMD Processor
1GB Ram（XP）；2GB Ram（Vista）
GeForce 6000 Series（6800GT and above）Radeon 1300XT and above（X1550、X1600 PRO，HD2400 for minimum requirement）
12GB HDDDX9.0c Sound Card：
Recommend System Requirement
Windows XP or Vista2.6G Intel Processor 2.4G AMD Processor
2GB Ram GeForce 7900 GTX and above RadeonX1800XL and above
12GB HDD DX9.0c 5.1 Sound Card
There are so many reasons why Mass Effect is so appealing. It's got a typical BioWare plot, which means that there's a mystery that's so well thought out and told that everything clicks into place during the big reveal. Yet it's also a game made by sci-fi fans for those who love sci-fi. There are so many elements borrowed and culled from decades of science fiction and movies, and there are countless moments that will remind you of Star Trek or Aliens or Firefly or some early John Carpenter movie (the electronic score is very Carpenter-esque, too). There's even an effective film grain post-processing effect that makes the game feel like a 70s or 80s sci-fi movie, before digital filmmaking and CGI made everything look and feel too clean.Here's the premise of Mass Effect: Several hundred years in the future humanity has joined the galactic community after finding alien technology on Mars that opens up interstellar travel. We uppity humans are seen as too ambitious in a galaxy run by a UN-like council populated by ancient alien races. You play as Command Shepard of the human Alliance military, and BioWare lets you role-play as either a male or female character. There are pre-rolled characters that you can select or you can create a custom character with a unique face.When a rogue spectre--one of the galactic council's special agents--attacks a human colony on Eden Prime, you're tasked with hunting him down. It's not that simple, though, as invariably epic themes such as extinction on a galactic scale kick in. So you must zip around the galaxy in a very sleek starship, explore alien worlds, engage in futuristic firefights, and unearth the overarching mystery. There's also a cast of human and alien characters that can grow on you, like Wrex, a krogan killing machine with a blunt, sardonic personality. And this wouldn't be a BioWare game without one or two romance possibilities, as well.
Mass Effect's story goes beyond just simple character interaction, though. You have a wide degree of freedom to see how your story unfolds. BioWare offers basically two paths: the path of goodness and decency (the paragon) or the path of ruthlessness (the renegade), and often the choices presented to you can get under your skin. The game does an incredible job of introducing you to sympathetic characters whose fate you later get to decide. These can include members of your very own party to large numbers of innocents that you meet along the way.This is also a game about exploration and combat, as you'll explore vast facilities on foot, drive around alien landscapes in an all-terrain vehicle, and engage enemies using a variety of sci-fi weapons and armor. Here's where the PC game improves on its Xbox 360 cousin, as it features a new tactical combat interface that lets you give individual orders to your two squad mates. There's also a useful quick slot toolbar that you can drag-and-drop special abilities to, letting you access them with a tap of the keyboard. This translates into greater tactical control during combat. The precision of the mouse and keyboard helps to a degree, but this isn't a pure action game, so it doesn't matter if you can put the cursor directly on a target. What matters more are your character's stats and the stats of the weapon that you're using. Still, I was able to get through many battles on the first attempt, which is in contrast to my experience with the Xbox 360 game, where I died-and-reloaded in many of those same battles multiple times.
The combat system of Mass Effect is dynamic and deep. You can play through as a soldier, which makes it not unlike a third-person shooter where you have to use cover to shield yourself from enemy fire while popping out to shoot back. However, the other classes in the game let you tap what are called biotic and tech powers. You or your allies can use abilities such as singularity to send enemies floating in the air, letting you unload into them. (There's physics in the game, too, so pounding an opponent with enough force will send them hurtling through space.) Then there's the intricate weapon and armor system, with upgrade slots for almost everything, including different types of ammunition. At the same time, if you're not an action fan or you lack lightning-fast resources, Mass Effect is fairly forgiving, as you can pause the action at any time to issue orders to your teammates or you can tweak the game settings to give you a generous aiming reticule.If there's a complaint about Mass Effect, it's that many of its side quests recycle the same formula: go to planet X, land in the Mako rover, roll around the landscape until you find the objective (which usually recycles the building design from previous missions), go in guns blazing, and you're done. There's not a lot of variety here, but to its credit Mass Effect makes these detours fairly quick, so it's not like you're getting bogged down by them. And while the game finishes on an excellent note, it feels like it finishes too soon. BioWare has made no secret that this is just the opening chapter of a Mass Effect trilogy, so the company has sprinkled potential future plot threads throughout the game. And maybe it's just me, but it seems that BioWare's games used to be longer than Mass Effect. For instance, Mass Effect's main plot would have constituted but a chapter in Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights. So for better or worse, Mass Effect will most likely have you wanting for more.
There's a built-in timer in Mass Effect, so I know that it took me 19 hours and 9 minutes to get through the entire game. Of course, I had played Mass Effect on the Xbox 360, so I was able to blitz through the story for this review. If you approach the game at a more leisurely pace and take time to do more exploration, there's easily another 10 or 15 hours of gameplay here. There's also a considerable amount of replay value, too. In fact, the game encourages it, since you can beat the game and then start a new one using the high-level character you just used to finish the previous game with. This means that you get all the experience and skills that you finished with, as well as all the weapons and equipment that you have. Or you can roll a new character and explore different story paths. (There are unique quests depending on what you choose for your character's background or if you strive to be a paragon or a renegade.) Finally, there are a slew of achievements that you can work toward, but unfortunately these aren't Games for Windows -- Live achievements, and that means that they'll have zero impact on your overall gamerscore if you're a points hound.As you'd expect, the PC game looks quite a bit sharper than its Xbox 360 cousin, provided that you have the hardware for it. I played on a dual core system with an Nvidia 8800GTX card and it looked incredibly sharp at 1680x1050 resolution. The frame rate was fairly steady, too, though there was the occasional hiccup now and then. I was surprised to see how much of a CPU hog it is, as both cores on my processor were constantly maxed out whenever I played. The PC game doesn't really feature any graphical enhancements, and it uses the same textures, but it still looks better on the PC screen than it does on an HD television. And the texture popping problems exhibited in the Xbox 360 game were pretty much missing from the PC.This is also an excellent sounding game, especially on a surround sound system. The voice acting is simply superb, as the large cast brings an incredibly varied range of characters to life. In fact, voice acting doesn't get much better than this. There's the occasional familiar voice, like Keith David as a famous captain or Lance Henrikson as an admiral, but for the most part BioWare enlisted a large number of professional voice actors to deliver the lines for many memorable characters. Moreover, it isn't just the performances but it's also the quality of the material the voice actors had to work with. Key NPCs have moving stories to tell, stories that tie into the overarching history of the universe. The music is also powerful and haunting, as the electronic themes capture the desolate and lonely nature of space, but they're also capable of ramping up in urgency during battle.
Mass Effect doesn't feel like a port, so don't hold the fact that it arrives six months after the Xbox 360 game against it. The interface feels like it was built for the PC, and there are a slew of improvements here that the Xbox 360 game will never get, like an improved inventory system. It's also nice that there are pretty much as many save slots as you need, which is a big improvement over the Xbox 360 game. In that version you frequently had to overwrite previous saves, which made going back to experiment with different story paths difficult.
Closing CommentsIt almost goes without saying that BioWare remains one of the very top single-player RPG makers on the planet, and Mass Effect only reinforces their position. This is easily one of the best RPGs on the platform in recent years, delivering a terrific new universe, a fun blend of action and role-playing, and a deeply satisfying story. If you have any love of science fiction or space opera, then you owe it to yourself to check it out. There are hours upon hours of joyful discovery here, and an undeniable love for science fiction, as well.
9.5
PresentationMass Effect features master videogame storytelling with a very clean and intuitive interface that's been enhanced and improved from the Xbox 360 game.
9.0
GraphicsThe visuals bring to life a brand new universe in a convincing manner. The PC game delivers sharp visuals but it does require a fair bit of horsepower to do so.
10
SoundStellar voice acting that's some of the best ever done, along with an original, haunting electronic score that fits the subject matter perfectly.
9.0
GameplayThis is a top-notch RPG with a deep combat system that's an excellent blend of action and role-paying.
8.5
Lasting AppealThere's quite a bit of replay value here, whether you start over with an existing character or roll an entirely new on to explore different story paths.
9.2Outstanding
OVERALL(out of 10 / not an average
System Requirement
Windows XP or Vista2.4G Intel Processor or 2.0G AMD Processor
1GB Ram（XP）；2GB Ram（Vista）
GeForce 6000 Series（6800GT and above）Radeon 1300XT and above（X1550、X1600 PRO，HD2400 for minimum requirement）
12GB HDDDX9.0c Sound Card：
Recommend System Requirement
Windows XP or Vista2.6G Intel Processor 2.4G AMD Processor
2GB Ram GeForce 7900 GTX and above RadeonX1800XL and above
12GB HDD DX9.0c 5.1 Sound Card
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