In 2012 an Xbox Live Arcade PC Port of the old classic Sonic games were all made available to the general public. These were re-makes with minor bits of touch up. The original PC Port was in 1996, this one has been adjusted to add in leaderboards and gamepad support.
But are the touch ups enough to make these games worth while. I sat down with Sonic CD… and in two hours I had finished it. Keep in mind that’s about right for what you’re paying. This Sonic game costs $5. If you buy all its only $30. If you decide to ever buy Sonic Generations (which I would recommend it’s an excellent game) you can buy the entire Sonic bundle and all Sonic Generations DLC far cheaper than you could just Sonic Generations alone. So it immediately becomes a worthwhile purchase in light of bundling options.
But is the game very good. That’s an eerie problem for the Sonic franchise isn’t it? In fact, very few of the Sonic games are very good. They’re all very short, they’re all sort of the same thing, and they all suffer from requiring very little skill. The leader boards allow you to challenge for a “top spot” but realistically people will stop using leader boards after a while.
This was the launch title for the Sega CD and was rather mediocre.
When you play the game for the first time you get to see this amazing cartoon cinematic playthrough of Sonic in this amazing graphical form running around. But then it brings you into the actual game which isn’t that brilliant.
None of the levels are also particularly good. They’re all very easy to play very short and really lack a lot of the complexity you find in other Sonic games.
Overwhelmingly this game is only worth a purchase as part of the Sonic Steam package. Otherwise avoid at all costs.
Published by SEGA and ported to PC by Creative Assembly PC Port we have Viking: Battle of Asgard.
Now unlike a lot of games this isn’t a game er-done for PC… it is an almost piece for piece console game ported to PC. It doesn’t get any more beautiful than console and if you have a console, you’re better off playing it on console.
Getting this game started up was a bit of a pain. Upon starting it up it told me to run the Config. I opened the Config did the configuration and closed it off. I then started the game and got the same message. How annoying!
I realized after a while that the problem was the config window. For whatever reasons the buttons like to hide underneath the windows menu that read “Save and Exit” and “Save and Start Game.”
It is a small thing… but it goes to show how poorly this game was ported to PC.
This game on consoles is pretty pricey, $40. But on PC it’s only $15 and can go as low as $2.50. It is a pretty discount game for PC but a very expensive game for console.
So as the story goes Freya really hates Hel.
But for whatever reason the gods always have to work with proxies. So you are chosen to be the champion of Freya. And you have to go off and destroy Hel. And that’s the whole story.
For whatever reason the developers decided to voice every single person in the game except for the protagonist. Unlike in other silent protagonist games where you have manual chat options this one just has you stand and get dictated to like it was your job to save the world or something.
As well the chat itself is kind of odd. The voices will stream normally and “Pressing A” doesn’t actually fast forward it at all.
Instead by Pressing A it changes the text you can read along with the voice… which doesn’t automatically match up with the voice. I know it’s nit picking… but that just seems like something really basic that all game developers should have a grasp on.
The main focus of the game is running around the country side saving vikings who are tied up or placed in wooden cage and then invading a main fort with your main army of vikings and sometimes dragons.
You would think this is epic.
It’s not.
In reality there are so many frigging vikings that you can barely see yourself in these battles.
I don’t know how many times I’m just spamming the X key because I just want to get through the hoards to move on and do the objectives of the battle. It really was not all that well thought our and unfortunately lacks a tonne of polish.
Talking about button spamming they have quick time events. I just don’t get why devs do them though. In the good ole days button mashing was a way to integrate you into the action by having to hit combinations of buttons to do a task. Literally every single task in this game requires you to mash a single button.
Want to land an insanely awesome looking killing blow, Spam A relentlessly.
Want to summon a dragon? Spam B relentlessly!
sdsd
There’s a lot of other minor things that bother me too. Like he’s this big badass Viking superhero who cannot die and is resurrected from by a godess every time he dies…. and yet he has a freightened animation whenever he gets near an edge.
He can full on jump off this super tiny fall distance… but if he walks to it he’ll just do this weird cowardly animation.
There’s so much about this game that is just terribly awkward. Most awkward is you only get about 10 hours of gameplay…. which is awful.
Unfortunately the entire game falls on the gameplay…. which isn’t anything mind blowing by any means. It’s an alright game and the engine and franchise have potential…. but as of right now it’s just an unfinished product severely lacking in customization and replay value.
When the Berlin Wall came down in 1991 a lot of conversations that people were not all that comfortable talking about suddenly became less taboo.
I think in many ways the intellectual idea that Hitler did tones of great things for Germany and might be portrayed as far more evil and cartoonish than he actually was.
I think the idea that the Russians simply won the Eastern Flank of World War 2 with Winter was dispelled by the knowledge that they had the most advanced and powerful tank on the ground.
The graphical quality of Company of Heroes 2 isn’t much better than the original
So once 1991 hit it slowly became more and more popular to talk about the history of Russia, a topic that was once considered to be sign of a red threat in America. In fact there were academic manhunts for people feeling that they were in fact Communists trying to subvert America. Some of these were of course justified in light of the large number of intellectuals who crossed over to the USSR.
But where am I going with this. Well Enemy at the Gates was probably the pivitol point in which we knew that Russian history would be popular. The movie didn’t do well in the box office but became a huge cult classic and out sold most videos on VHS, DVD and eventually Blueray.
Now Soviet stuff is everywhere. Everyone is trying to re-make the success of this movie.
In the gaming world there are a large number of Soviet titles. The total list would be too many to name but I can say with some certainty that Heroes of Stalingrad, Men of War, and Call of Duty have all touched sides with the Soviets.
Company of Heroes however has not.
One of the strengths of the Company of Heroes franchise was that it told stories that were less popular. While the Company of Heroes franchise was being made the Soviet stuff was just all too popular.
Instead Company of Heroes took the high road and told stories of every single American, German, British, and Canadian battle that most games really just were not touching up on. Their final expansion breaks down some very specific story heroes that basically no one really heard of.
I was immensely touched by the story of legendary The Desert Rats.
So when Company of Heroes said they were taking the sequel on the Eastern Front I sat here questioning exactly what sort of story they would tell.
I think the famous Russian directive that all people caught retreating would be shot was a popular theme of most Soviet themed games.
Some things are better left unchanged
This was in the game, but had little to no effect on the gameplay, it’s just to set the game and time period.
Instead they choose to tell the story of a turn coat Russian who is upset at his own command and chooses to betray them in light of their murderous policies. It takes us through a large number of not famous battles (other than Stalingrad of course) that most people have never heard of. The rare number of Soviet WW2 history buffs out there would be impressed with what they are seeing.
But enough about the story.
What of the gameplay.
How does the gameplay shape up for the sequel to one of the highest selling games of all time?
Not that well unfortunately.
The original game was $60 with two $40 expansions. After the years these went down to nickels and dimes.
This is roughly the same game with 3 less factions… and it costs $60.
At that price point it’s a bit steep. There is very little that has changed in terms of gameplay, even the graphics look very similar to the 2006 release.
For those unaware of the series, Company of Heroes 2 is a strategic RTS. This means you take points to gain resources and rally out units to counter the enemies units.
Like most of these you have to go through a technology tree to unlock various units. It’s basically the same thing again.
Unfortunately with this game if you enjoyed Company of Heroes you actually are forced to buy Company of Heroes 2, as the massive multiplayer community has mostly shifted.
The campaign represents 12 hours of gameplay (on hardest difficulty) and if you’re not really looking to get into a multiplayer game this is definitely not a game for you.
If you’ve never played Company of Heroes, there’s really no need to play Company of Heroes 2… you’ll enjoy Company of Heroes Complete far more.
One of the big problems with Company of Heroes 2 is the name is not fitting for what it is. The original Company of Heroes told inspiring stories from both the allies and axis about the men on the ground who were heroes at certain battles. The story arch of COH2 is about how the Russian people are all cowards and treasonous people…. not of the almost 26M people who gave their lives for war.
Not sure if it was because the game wasn’t selling as many as they hoped or the pre-order bonus was too good.
SEGA has decided to change the pre-order bonus.
The original pre-order bonus setup by THQ was tiered so that first tier was two Team Fortress 2 hats, second tier was Warhammer 40K Cawn of War 2 Retribution, and tier three was a General’s cache filled with skins, generals, and Steam dollars to purchase future DLC with.
So the new offer still includes the Team Fortress 2 hats, the only thing that was unlocked from the tiers. There is now a free piece of DLC called Theatre of War which includes a new mini-campaign from another part of the flank. There are two skins for tanks. The final piece, and most controversial is the four generals.
The four generals are a little controversial because obviously they will be selling these generals as DLC. This means people who pre-order will have a tactical advantage on those who do not.
Generals in Company of Heroes 2 will operate like selecting your Air,Ground,Tanks path did in Company of Heroes. The difference is that different generals can be slotted in and out to give various powers and advantages.
Well not much in Company of Heroes 2 news since the SEGA acquisition. They have changed the Steam page to in fact state Sega is now the publisher.
Interestingly enough they also removed the beta offer which originally came with pre-ordering the game. SEGA of course infamously hates beta testing their games, so it’s entirely possible that it just won’t happen.
Amazon sent out a letter to all of their pre-orders announcing a March 31st launch date. This launch date has been neither confirmed nor denied. It is suspect however that March 31st was going to be the original launch date before THQ went bankrupt.
The beta was originally intended to be at the end of January and take us into March 25th in which the game would launch. However as people at Relic were getting laid off left and right and the future of the company was in serious peril they opted not to have a beta test.
The game of course has not been cancelled and SEGA fully intends to push forward with this title.
SEGA in acquiring Relic needs time to re-organize the staff and import their SEGA franchise to the dwindling studio.
Guessing when this game will be out will be difficult.
Generally speaking sales dip in June and July when it is hot out and less people are interested in video games. However by August games sales picks up. I wouldn’t suspect a Company of Heroes 2 release until at least mid-August.
TheGameGuru.Me 