Recent reviews by TheCoyote

Sequel to Star Wolves: a Slav Jank Space Adventure, Star Wolves 2: A sticky mess is not a good game.

It is quite clear that the scope was grand, the mechanics set up building the larger world of the Star Wolves saga. Failure to deliver on that scope though makes this world dead and filled with boring, repetitive sidequests.

The game throws away whatever balance its prequel had in favor of throwing your way either numbers or damage sponges that puke damage your way. Once you get good at dealing with that nonsense (read: you realize that stacking heavy lasers on things will clear the field fast and win you fights, and building anything else is basically an exercise in frustration) - the game is very easy to beat. The end that you reach is abrupt and unsatisfying.

Somehow, the voice cast in the English version manages to be even worse than SW1, the plot is in tatters and the script can't even be called a bad joke - even when bad, jokes are, by intent, funny.

The saving grace of Star Wolves 2 is the same unique mechanics that made its predecessor stand out as a unique experience. Still, I'd recommend SW2 only if you beat SW1 and want more.

Followed by SW3: Just... why.

Slav jank space adventure tactical game. The music is good, and the graphics, while aged, have a distinct and charming style. Voice acting is hardly present, and horrible where it is.

Offers a surprising amount of depth, but often only one right choice. It will be unforgiving if you don't pick the right choice, but once you get the basic understanding of how the game works - you'll enjoy the sight of your plucky band of space mercs putting in line the space navy, space corporates with guns and aliens.

There's a good community guide that will help you dodge some of the wrong choices and set you on a path of witnessing bosses melt to the might of your lasers.

Followed by Star Wolves 2: A horrifying, sticky mess and then subsequently by Star Wolves 3: Oh god why.

With a political thriller of a plot, visuals that stand up to the test of time even today and a strong focus on stealth gameplay, Splinter Cell is simply a timeless classic.

This is Splinter Cell down to its DNA and what built the series - saving the day, democracy, freedom and peace like in every good action movie, all barbecued in thick sneaky-sauce. While you certainly have some options to harm the enemies, the game penalizes stand-up fighting harshly. Your primary and most useful weapons are, without a doubt, the ability to see in the dark thanks to nightvision goggles and Sam Fisher's godlike stamina.

For fans of stealth games - considering how cheap this one and Chaos Theory can be, it's a sin not to grab them if you don't have them already.

If you want more, definitely check out Chaos Theory - it polishes and refines a lot of what Splinter Cell did right.

Need to make more Processing Units so Ineed to make additional Electronic Circuits so I need to claim another entire field of copper and move the entire factory a bit to open up another transport belts for circuits alone. And all that because I want a giant spider robot that fires nuclear missiles at aliens.

Attention: Addictive beyond all measure

Much like the Pen-And-Paper version, Kingmaker is, at its core, a resource management RPG. The question isn't really as much "Can my party kill that monster?" - it's "What resources do I have to expend to deal with that monster, and will it be OK for me to do so?"

Over the course of your journey you will find potions, wands, scrolls - learn how they function. Learn how you can take advantage of your Barbarian knocking back a potion of Enlarge. That maybe your Cleric could cast the pre-fight Bless from that scroll you found so you can reserve that bless slot in case you need spontaneous conversion into a Cure Light Wounds.

Think of your party as figurines on a board and be glad for one thing - this is a video game. You have a quick-save (with configurable amount of quicksave buffer!) and a quick-load. You're not sitting at a table with a handful of dice and a character sheet, across from a maniac that just raised his eyes from above the DM screen, looked at you and said "Roll your Will Save for me, would you?" right after pondering where the Lich you party is facing is going to chuck a Charm spell...

It may not be the greatest game ever, but it certainly is a Tribute.

Brutal Legend can, in my opinion, be considered an unpolished gem. Some of the game design choices may be a bit hit and miss, and keyboard controls can feel clunky.

What the game lacks in those elements, it makes up in spades with excellent atmosphere - built with great use of various genres of Metal, well-designed scenery and the rather unique voice cast.

Tim Curry, Jennifer Hale (as Doviculus and Ophelia respectively), Rob Halford (Lionwhyte), Lemmy and Ozzy Osbourne. That's to name the obvious ones.

Entertaining to play, and a pure joy if you're a metalhead.

It is, honestly, SPAZ - the sequel. And it's good.

The developers did a brilliant job capturing the charm of the original SPAZ, sprucing it up with lovely graphics, soundwork and adding a few new mechanics that very much feel in place.

The Good:

- The graphics. A lot of work was put into them, the ships really look their part and watching your own grow from a ramshackle contraption built from scavenged junk grow into a fearsome battleship built from cherry-picked parts is just pure joy.

Fans of the original will likely get a blast from seeing familiar strikecraft return - Short Bus and Hammerhead included, along with background graphics that we've seen in the first game. Zoom into a territory segment and spot an old warp gate, a floating sign or a broken up starbase.

- The ship building mechanic. Assembling your ship with a big tractor beam feels cool and I will admit that I cackled like a maniac when I finally got my hands on a Mass Driver. The Synergy mechanic is a cherry on top, adding an additional level of challenge in building a ship.

- The Atmosphere. The 'verse gets its fair share of Dog-eat-dog attitude, and the mechanics back that up. The humour is very much back as well.

- Combat. Slicing hostile ships into bits, watching parts fly off into the distance is very entertaining. For a taste of min-maxed, gimmicky ships there is also the Arena - each station offers simulated battles where you can test various heavily specialized ships for fun and profit.

- Quite fun 4x-lite element. Building up a bit of an empire, hiring captains to work for you - it's actually quite good, fairly polished.

- The Story Mode. Much like the original SPAZ, it introduces certain mechanics as you progress through the game. It's also delightful to see the cast of the original game return, now with voice! If you ever wondered what Carl sounds like, well, you will hear him quite a lot.

The Bad:

- Oversaturation. As the game progresses, ships get more and more armed - and there are more and more effects on screen, sometimes making it difficult to determine what is going on - making some battles confusing.

- Repetitive combat in the late game. Once you have your dream set-up for a ship, many battles can be just curbstomps.

- A rather steep learning curve. Those who have played the original SPAZ will know the strengths and weaknesses of each weapon type, but newcomers to the series will need to pay attention to what they loot or purchase. Much like in the first game, it's very easy to gimp yourself in the early game with an inappropriate weapon setup.

The Your Mileage May Vary:

- The levelling system. I personally liked the progression tree of the original, and while I do see why it was replaced, the current system feels slightly lackluster.

- Simplified resource gathering. The game has shifted, heavily, towards combat between captains and the 4x element, and I personally feel it lost a bit of its "pirate" part. Where the original SPAZ had a very hands-on approach to acquiring Goons or Data - such as, in the case of Goons, raiding a spacelane traffic jam, or space-motel. For Data, the original's equivalent of XP - you could go after a Comet, or... donate Goons as guinea pigs at a research station. To top it off, who can forget sitting next to a mining station and stealing their Rez as they mine?

The sequel replaced those with nodes you can harvest or pillage, and occasionally - Bandit hives and Mining Ops that harbor a certain amount of resources. However, barring bandit hives - which are a typical combat encounter with the rather weak, especially in the late game, bandit faction, and the mining ops which work in a manner similar to the original ones - those are used explicitly from the world map view.

Overall, SPAZ 2 is a title, in my opinion, definitely worth its price - and doubly so if you liked the original and want to see more of Elsa, Carl and Jamison - despite their best efforts at just staying alive and getting rich - ruining everything. Again.

What not to expect: Massively Multiplayer Mass Effect, "Different" Elite.
What to expect: Skyrim In Space.

The game is hilariously big, to the point that playing over the years to perfect an aspect of it will still leave you with several others unexplored.

It's a sandbox. You have a ship and a handful of money. Now go out there, and make yourself something.

So, the "Hype hype hooray" parts you probably read about:

Yes, you can shoot someone in the face (well, ship) and you can be shot in the ship.
In fact, you can do that even in the "safe" zones, if you pull it off right.
Yes, you can join someone's corporation, gain their trust and rob them blind.
Yes, you can create a ponzi scheme.
Yes, you can lie, scam and get rich this way.
Yes, you can become an industrial "god of spreadsheets", manufacturing everything someone else may need to continue their adventure.
Yes, the game has an amazing lore! It's well hidden. Go find it.
Yes, CCP is supporting it. Hell, they're actually updating graphics up to modern standard - including new models for ships.

The gritty:

- You will be getting an alt. And you will likely be dualboxing your main character, and your alt. Certain things in the game are better if you have two different pilots. Say, a pirate and his trusty scammer alt.

- You will not be handed a big battle right off the bat. In fact, the grand battles are spectacular, rare events. Participating in one in a role that you like to fill is an experience of its own. Many fights are resolved in small skirmishes.

- There's politics. I don't mean NPC world politics, I mean player politics. Since the game allows you to plant your flag somewhere... yup, there's gonna be politics. I consider it a good, unique feature - but others may disagree.

The bad:

- Some changes made by the devs can, and will, make you cringe. And no, not talking about 'P2W' (you will find out quickly that killing someone who paid a lot of cash for a ship he didn't know how to fly is a bit of a rite of passage for the more piratey kind of pilot).

- My Arazu still looks ugly.


So, if by a chance you wound up not only reading my review, but reaching this point - how do you take on EVE?

In three ways:

You can shelter yourself from the community, never leave high security space and quit out of boredom.
You can hit low security space, put on your eyepatch and dust off your trusted parrot - get in fights, meet people, join a proper pirate group.
You can take a running leap and slam yourself deep into the political side of things. Take it all with a grain of salt, and don't let the badposting overdose kill you - and you'll find one of the richest gaming experiences.

Now, this was supposed to be a quick summary and I wrote a wall of text. So, I'm off to my watch - there are bad people who don't agree with my space dictator that need to explode, also their space dictator is bad.

XCOM is back.

More dynamic. Equally brutal. Equally tense.

"Just one more turn..."