Steam Sales Review #68: Titan Quest

You’ll have to forgive the graphics because the game was made in 2005…. 2005….. 2005!

WHAT TEH F@#*!

Diablo 2 was released in 2000.

Why does a game made in 2005 have crappier graphics than one five years previous?  I’m sure people asked this very question at the time.  For those not in the know check this out.

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Like I’m really sorry but that’s just terribly odd.  Diablo had already established that you have to give names to loot dropped on the ground and it is just a standard that every single game out there used.  I’m sorry but this is unacceptable.

Oh wait…. Titan Quest was made by downed company THQ… wasn’t it.

Well as it turns out this game was picked up by Nordic Games (makers of Painkiller) as well as were most of the THQ properties.  It’s actually rather bizarre how much of THQ’s shit they picked up.  They’ve actually created a full forum asking people’s opinions on what THQ titles they should develop first.

The popular IPs people want to develop are Red Faction, MX vs ATV, Destroy All Humans, and Supreme Commander.  The Red Faction discussion is definitely worth checking out because anyone who indicates a plot driven RPG with any depth are immediately silenced by the mob of people yelling I WANT A DESTRUCTION OF THINGS SIMULATOR!!!

But I digress, we’re here to talk about Titan Quest, especially in light that there might some day soon be a sequel to it.

The game is based in Greece and so everything is bright and shiny… unless you are in a cave.

This can be compared to Torchlight which is fantasy-cartoony and Diablo which is very dark… this game is very bright.  I’m not entirely sure whether or not this is good or bad.  I know dark works really well in Diablo and I know fantasy works really well in Torchlight…. but I don’t know if sunny really works in a titan slaying game.  Personally when I think of Greece I think of this:

Its dark its epic and the minions of Greece are coming upon you!

The game has some other ‘hits’ against it.

The major one has to do with the class system.  After one level you get to choose your class.

I chose archers.  So all of the weapons I pick up that aren’t bows are useless and I have little to no choices of things to invest into.  Most RPGs tend to go with allowing you to get a little bit of each.  This game starts you off with a dagger and then offers you up eight random trees.

As an archer I realized the game has a fault… everything leashes.  By this I mean there is an invisible leash on them and once they hit that point they will turn around and try and run away.

I did this through the entire game and realized i never actually needed any skills at all.  I just invested in passives the entire way there.

This proved to be very boring.  This can be compared to a game like Diablo in which you mix and match different features from different trees because if you don’t have some magic you will just get overwhelmed and die.  But this game was trying to go for the multiplayer experience in which different styles mix and mash…. but it doesn’t and probably never had such a community.

In the end the game made for a pretty poor single player experience.  The great co-op games of our time (Borderlands and Diablo) were amazing single player games that just got that much better when you add in people.

Steam Sales Review #64: Saints Row 2

For whatever reason I felt a need to purchase Saints Row 2 to catch up on my Saints Row for Saints Row The Third.  I never bought Saints Row 1… I’m not sure why.

But both of these games purchased on sale (2 and 3) were never played and here I am finally jumping into Saints Row 2.  Let’s call this the Saints Row 2 review with the tag line “before they were hitting each other with purple dildos… they ruled the Row.”

So I load up and I’m immediately shown a character creator.  My challenge is to make a character that closely resembles me.

So let’s try it out.

Just kidding!

In real life I look like this:

These days Im’ rocking shorter hair.  I think I got pretty close to myself.

Okay minus the sports bra.

So you are in prison and you have to break out.

Annoyingly any time you have a friend with you you are either about to “Abandon him” or he will get stuck in a door that he won’t let you pass.

After you break out the first order of business is getting dressed.  Now they have this status called “Status” or something.  And the higher statused items happen to be women’s clothing.

All I’m saying is this is the second time my girlfriend walked in on me wearing girl’s clothes in this game and it’s just not looking good.

Not quite the badass we envisioned from seeing the commercials of pimps.

No less than 20 minutes into the game I’m walking down the street and this pimp is beating up one of his girls.

She stabs him to death and all is fine.

Next up they remind you how bad they are at driving mechanics.

Honestly it’s like Grand Theft Auto had an aborted baby and called it Saints Row…. because as always driving is terrible.

The game quickly makes you pull up the mini map and show you all this stuff.

Every icon is something to do…. there is a lot to do.  Alternatively you can just do the main plot line.  But dear god are those a lot of boxes for me to do (I’m a completionist I can’t help myself).

Of course it’s not optional. In order to progress the storyline you’ll have to complete so many of these.  Alternatively you can run around killing gangs, cops, and being a badass.  A bar will rise and you will be told when you can continue the story based on how much you have done in this world.

Most of them however are definitely worth checking out.  My favorite so far is “Fuzz.”

 

In Fuzz you pretend to be a police officer for the TV show Fuzz and get bonus “points” for settling disputes in suggested manners.  In the above image it was suggested that a chainsaw is standard police weapon and it would increase ratings if I used it on a bunch of homeless people.

Well…. I couldn’t help myself.  I did it.

It’s similar in fashion to the timed group activities type quests in which you have to chain together a bunch of events as fast as possible.  It keeps you active and you’ll probably do all of these in one bunch because of how addictive they are.  They could have honestly made an entire cops themed DLC and I’d be fine paying $10 for that.

My least favorite mini game is um…. this.

Basically you have to spray your “gang sign” on the wall before you die from rival gangs kicking your ass while you are spray painting.  Spay too far out of the lines and you lose.

It’s kind of lame because it’s a very complicated image he’s painting with a single paint can.  I feel as though this was s lost opportunity instead of the Paint by Number that it ended up being.

Another mini game worth mentioning is your standard zombie survival game.

In this one there is limited weapons in an arena and you have to survive as long as possible with a group of people.  Just an added co-op bonus… if you have friends that own Saints Row 2 and want to play it…. that is.

A lot of people complain about the latest two games that they are just quirky and weird and that the series used to be at some point serious.

I just don’t see it.

This entire play has been joke after joke after joke with my girlfriend walking in the room from time to time as I’m trying on a bra, or slicing a cop with a chainsaw, or beating up homeless people, or stealing a car with a tow truck.

This game is excellent and definitely worth buying.  However I will caution people who hate Grand Theft Auto type games… it’s obviously not going to be for you.

Steam Sales Review #56: Supreme Commander

I have an admission to make.

I never played Supreme Commander when it came out.

It wasn’t through a lack of interest, but a lack of functional computer.  It’s only more recently in my life that I’ve had a “power rig” that can run any game and it’s only in recent years that they’ve made computers cheap and affordable that can run all games on any level of graphics.

Only six years ago when Supreme Commander came out graphics cards were going at around $450.  Those same graphics cards that were needed to play this game cost around $30 these days.

2006 was sort of a breaking point for computer owners who all realized it was time to get a new rig.  In that year Mass Effect 1 was released for PC and console.  It was only a couple of years earlier that Elder Scrolls 4 came out with a tenth the graphical power.

It came a time when the majority of PC owners were falling behind the majority of console owners… for a little bit.

And now here we are in a world in which PCs are very affordable and on the verge of dying off completely.

So as I load up Supreme Commander I see a caution sign:

Oh God this company went bankrupt…

Is this game still on sale?

Check, still on sale.  Regular price $14.99 purchased as a part of the THQ bundle less than $0.50.

*Phew*

Alright.

So I have option of playing Multiplayer which has no one in it, so that’s out.

Looks like it’s single player.

The game was designed with mods in mind of which there are eight.  None but one has been updated in over six years.

So I decided to play campaign unmodded.

How do we describe the campaign.

Take a chalk board.

Take your nails (make sure they’re sharp)

Now scratch the chalk board.

The campaign of Supreme Commander is like running your finger nails down a chalk board.

It is long.

It is tedious.

It is painful.

It is… challenging.

So the story of the game is kind of similar and become basically the standard for this type of game (see Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion).  You have a cruel Earth faction that decides to subjugate a person and they split off.

In this case it is the half robot half people types who are distrusted heavily.  They split off to form their own faction.  Not long after they launch an attack on Earth causing the Earth to become a United Earth Directorate type.

On another world a group of aliens are found and humans settle with them.  The humans and aliens learn to co-exist and the humans learn “The Way” from the aliens.  The aliens are wiped out and the remaining humans now under the religion of “The Way” learn.

So you’re thrown into probably one of the hardest campaigns I have ever played.  It’s not hard in the sense that you really have to be on the ball.

It’s hard in the sense that it is heavily scripted and if you do not have everything prepared exactly properly for the situation, you’re screwed.

In terms of gameplay you get to be this thing:

This is your commander unit which is a builder.  On top of this it’s also the King on the chess board.  If it dies, you lose.  It also happens to be one of the most powerful units you own.  Yep that’s my “ride.”

From here you go through the campaign in which you are slowly introduced to the most complicated RTS I’ve ever played.

The first mission has about the same amount of detail and options as a full RTS game has.

Now don’t mistaken the size and scale of this game as a compliment.  The first tier of the game features 14 units.  There are four tiers, that’s over 60 units in the game that you have to learn about.

The game also has a unit cap…. 1000 units.  Yes…. 1000 freaking units.  It’s insane I know, but very possible.

It’s all because of the economic system.  Basically you can start building as many units as you want.  Your total income in is divided amongst the various buildings and defensive structures that require that resource.  This means that you can have 10000 simultaneous building units, and that’s all fine.

I started the game off on the hardest difficulty, big mistake.

After only three missions I switched completely to the easiest difficulty.

Unfortunately the difficulty scaling doesn’t quite work like most games.  The game doesn’t get any easier ala units take more damage or there are less of them.  Instead everything stays the same and objectives are made simpler.

What a kick in the nuts that this is.

I felt that I shouldn’t do a full review of this game until I could finish it, all three campaigns.

One trick to beating these campaigns is the fact that you can actually Alt+Tab and the game still runs.  This gives you enough time to quickly play a guilty browser based pleasure while you wait on your buildings to be built.  With insufficient power and mass this process can take some time.

So after ten hours I was on the fourth mission of the first campaign…. this will take some time I thought.

20 hours in I made it past one more mission.

40 hours in I was stuck.

50 hours in…. I quit.

I officially quit trying.

It’s okay to create a game that is challenging.  It’s not okay to create a game that is challenging because of poor design.

And that’s what Supreme Commander is.  It’s a game that has awkward mechanics that make the game far harder to play.

It’s most definitely not worth buying and I do not recommend it.

Thumbs down!

Hopefully Supreme Commander 2 is a little bit better.

Company of Heroes 2 Update

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.

Why Didn’t Warhammer 40K Sell?

After the THQ auction occurred it seemed odd that there were a number of titles that simply did not sell.  Some of them, like Destroy All Humans, seemed obvious because of how nothing has really been developed for that game.

So in this article I’ll explore reasons why the Warhammer 40K license was not acquired by anyone ranging from least likely to most likely.

#1: Poor Sales of Space Marine

What killed THQ was the poor sales of three games: Homefront, Red Faction: Armageddon, and Warhammer 40K: Space Marine.

Homefront was acquired by Crytek because…. they were making Homefront 2 already.

Red Faction and Warhammer 40K however were not acquired.

It would seem that a likely reason might be how little they make at market.

Crytek purchased Homefront at a $500,000… quite a cheap purchase.  They were commissioned to build Homefront 2 six months ago.  It is believed that a large portion of the game was already completed.  If some other studio was to pick up this game presumably they’d be able to steal Crytek’s work and just re-brand the game.  To me this purchase seemed like an interest in making a game.

But for Red Faction and Warhammer 40K it seems clear, low sales.

Warhammer 40K Space Marine was supposed to be an RPG that set the stage for Warhammer 40K Online.  It was supposed to tell the story that would act as a guiding vision for the MMORPG.

In the end the MMORPG was cut and turned into a Co-Op RPG.

But Space Marine didn’t do so hot.  It did so poorly that four months after launch they added in all sorts of “overpowered” weapons to the multiplayer and began trying to sell the game on multiplayer.

It was a disaster… and it’s not even because it was a bad game.  The campaign was fairly long and the multiplayer was kind of fun.  It just so happened that people were sick of on-rails shooters and were ready for something new.

Had Space Marine been a commercial success like Saints Row and Company of Heroes… someone might have bought it.

#2: No Relic Attached

All of the studios and all of the licenses were sold separately.

There was a specific interest in having certain properties be bought with certain studios.  Relic for example was purchased by SEGA with Company of Heroes.  Volition Games was purchased with Saints Row.

It makes sense that whoever wanted Warhammer 40K also might have wanted to purchased Relic.

However with SEGA taking Relic and only wanting to publish Company of Heroes 2… who would want Warhammer 40K?

It is believable that there is a developer out there who could do the license justice.

Generally when you receive an unfinished game from a studio the end result is not all that… fetching.

No better an example can be found with Team Bondi and Rockstar Games.  Team Bondi was working on a new adventure detective game that would show off some new groundbreaking technology.  But Team Bondi went bankrupt before they could finish the game.  Rockstar Games finished the game and added in some DLC.

If you play the game through without the DLC it feels like something is missing.  If you play the game with the DLC it feels like these particular missions have a very different feel from the remainder of the game.

This is exactly what would happen to Warhammer 40K’s Co-Op RPG.  It could be picked up by Gearbox (creators of Borderlands) very easily.  But then the game would just transform into Borderlands in space…. but Borderlands is in space….. you know what I mean!

The point is that without the studio that was working on it… working on it… it would almost seem pointless to acquire the IP.  Any studio that picks it up would almost have to scrap the entire game and start over.

#3: Warhammer 40K Belongs to Games Workshop

At the end of the day Warhammer 40K’s sale was not a unique intellectual property like Company of Heroes or Saints Row… it was a license.

It was a license with Games Workshop.

Who knows how terrible this license would be for a developer/publisher.

The folks at Games Workshop knew that their product was valuable and have worked exclusively through THQ since Warhammer 40K’s first RTS game.

The games up until Space Marine did pretty well on sales.  And Game’s Workshop knows this.  Last year THQ signed a new agreement for the license which was originally set to expire this year.

It’s likely that Game’s Workshop seeing THQ in a desperate time wanted a better share of the profits.

Because of this it is likely that the Warhammer 40K license is highly unprofitable and just did not look all that inticing to investors and game developers.

Honestly it just doesn’t sound like a good deal.  Who wants to develop a game in which all gameplay elements and plot devices have to be approved by a tabletop game maker?  Then after all that you release the game and you owe them a tonne of cash?

It just doesn’t make sense as a business model.

In the end my best estimate is that all of the highly profitable almost complete games were purchased and there were just so many reasons not to want to get Warhammer 40K.