What I've been playing Archives

What I’ve Been Playing: Rome 2 Total War

I’ve been playing Total War series games since Rome Total War first came out back in 2004 and I fell in love, as did many others. It was a revolutionary game by being the first attempt to make such a strategy game on such a massive scale. Over the years the Total War series has expanded and entered many different eras from the Medieval era to the Napoleonic era. Every good franchise though needs to return to its roots so Creative Assembly came out with Rome 2 Total War; I was stoked and wanted to play this game till my fingers fell off, sadly the love affair is short lived.

What I like :

It’s Rome! I fell in love with the time period before and I still adore it to this day.
The interface has been given some practical changes since Shogun 2. I can now load up Rome 2 and instantly just launch right back into my campaign
The campaign map looks beautiful to say the least

What I dislike:

It’s…unfinished (What a shock). The game is full of glitches, bugs, and crashes to the point that any internet forum is overcome with reports of them.
I hope you have a supercomputer to run this game or at least $800-$1,200 to spend on building one; the game may not be as demanding as say Battlefield 4 but it still requires a serious build. Here are the specs.
The AI is still way too passive and dumber than dirt. The AI is extremely passive to any military advancements you’ll make and when they do decide to respond it’s usually with just a ton of poorly equipped armies thrown at you with no organization at all. On the battlefield it’s just as bad, I hate having to chase down fleeing range units and it’s just too easy to defend against waves of soldiers being thrown at you with no tactical planning.
You can’t win. I have put 30 hours into the game so far and have two campaigns running (Rome and Macedon) and have reached the point where it’s just impossible to continue. The game is a balance between military conquest and keeping your populace fed and happy, sadly once you expand to a certain point the people will just become unhappy. This in turn will halt any expansion and force you to garrison huge armies into provinces to keep everyone happy and under control. Failure to keep the people happy will cause a revolt and unlike Total War’s of old where a revolt is a small pathetic army, a revolt in Rome 2 is a closer to a full scale invasion force.
The graphics don’t resemble those of a finished $60 game that requires the computing power of god to run. Honestly, Medieval Total War 2, a now seven year old game, would look better than this running on max settings

I really really wanted to love this game and finally get a finished product from Creative Assembly but they just failed to deliver. I’m stuck with a buggy and unfinished product again and am currently waiting for them or the modding community to fix this game. If you really want this game wait till Christmas time when it drops in price but, if you can’t wait I’d suggest going to the www.twcenter.net and finding a mod to overhaul this game.

What I’ve Been Playing: Payday 2

I’ve been waiting for this game for quite a long time and two days into playing, I am in love.

Payday 2 is a team based game where you are a squad of criminals who embark on various missions. Doing so, you receive cash which can be used to buy new weapons, new masks, and can be also used to customize all your gear.

What I love:
-The first Payday was also team based but just wasn’t very good at it. The HUD was too limited, the missions could be done without a team, the classes showed no major difference, and you really never needed help. In Payday2 the HUD now shows your entire team, their health, armor, ammo, and equipment. Each mission requires you to work with them and use their special skills to accomplish each heist.
-Every time you level up, you gain a skill point that can be used to level up certain classes. Now thankfully each class is significantly different from one another and each has a special ability
-The first Payday had..uh maybe 5 or so missions? Now we have upwards of 12 missions (probably more) and certain missions has various parts to them.
-I love being the bad guy in a game, it’s something you rarely are in video games. There’s a certain essence of “badass” about it.
-The guns! Oh how I love the choices of them all! The first Payday was limited to just a hand few, Payday 2 has over 9 standard weapons and just as many secondary weapons.
-The graphics! Oh this game looks beautiful compared to the last game. Then again a video in 360p would look better than the first Payday.
-The options to do each Heist are endless. You can stealth it or go in guns blazing. A door can be opened in four different ways, cameras can be taken down in numerous ways, locks can be broken or picked; Oh the choices are wonderful!

What I dislike:
-Nothing honestly.

Bonus section! What I hate:
-The leveling system is just stupid. Each skill costs 1 skill point and a large amount of cash. To “Ace” a skill requires three points and an even larger amount of cash. Tier 3 level skills cost three points and a six figure cash amount….
-The guns are so expensive that I want to cry. A G36 rifle costs $200k and each upgrade can vary from $10k to even more. Thankfully we don’t have to pay for ammo, otherwise I’d quit.
-Grinding every level. I’ve put five hours into the game and hit have hit level 24. Once I hit 24 I spent the next hour playing a serious heist, earned a ton of cash, but gained next to nothing in experience. The grind begins.
-Crime.net. I don’t even know where to start with this. In the first Payday, you simply went to the multiplayer menu, selected a map and difficulty, and you were shown the available games. For Payday 2 they introduced Crime.net. A large, constantly updating map which shows all the available heists, their difficulty, pay, experience, lobby leader, and the open slots available. As nice as it sounds, having all that info shown to you, the map is glitchy move around, it updates too slow, and new missions aren’t able to be set up by yourself so you must play what the game says you must.

-You’re being shot! In a normal first person shooter, when you’re being shot at a red arrow or something of similar nature pops up in the direction you’re being shot from. It’s a tried a truth method that nearly ever shooting game uses. In Payday2 a half red circle shows up from what part of your is being shot it, in example an enemy can be in front of you but shooting at your left arm, thus it’ll show your left side is being shot. This has completely confused me and led me to be spinning in circles to find a guy who’s probably just right behind me.

Don’t get me wrong, I will max out my level in Payday 2 and continue to play this game till I find something more exciting to play with my friends. It’s a fun fun game and can be replayed till time ends. I love being a criminal, love the new improvements they’ve made, and love the gameplay. It’s not a perfect game, but I’m quite alright with that.