Recent reviews by a_serious_noob

Frostpunk in space.

This game enabled me to work in the launch industry and launch rockets to other planets in real life. Not even kidding.

Cons: Having been on the brink of being a tolerable game; this most recent update just killed the remaining faith I had left in the Anno franchise (and Ubisoft). It really breaks my heart because I have put in hundreds if not thousands of hours total into Anno games ever since anno 1503.

The first true signs of trouble were when they moved to Anno-online, a freemium game that became just a complete grind, a huge waste of time to build even a modest city. Nevertheless I had extremely high hopes for Anno 2205. The trailer and gameplay footage had me absolutely stoked, and brought back the little kid in me. I had hoped that Ubisoft had seen the errors of their ways (of course they haven't, since addictive freemium games are a trashy yet extremely profitable business model.) However any hope was dashed when it became apparent 10 hours into Anno 2205 that they are still trying to expand their customer base to the ultra-casual crowd and find "creative" ways to keep players away from actual city-building.

I tolerated the stupid side quests where you go look around the map for containers or send out your command ship to pick up some idiot fisherman that got stranded 20 feet away from a bustling space-port, because they were completely optional, and was a good way to pass the time and wait for resources to collect up during early stages of the game. However with the most recent update, I find myself doing less city building and more time-wasting. Those optional side quests became jaw droppingly stupid, in the form of calamities that will absolutely wreck your delicate cis-lunar economy unless you spend 10 minutes scouring your maps looking for containers, or buy up virtual stocks of some failing company that will cost millions only to reduce your income. Those same companies somehow have millions of dollars in reserve constantly to purchase stocks in your level 90 company, chewing away at your profit margins). Sure you can turn off the features; however they were introduced because users were complaining about how brain-numbingly easy the game is, therefore people like me who were looking for a challenge would max out the difficulty. Unfortunately they chose the easy way out instead of actually sitting down and come up with a good game design, they just made it more painful. Furthermore, rare resources needed to build expansion modules on producttion buildings have to be farmed with quickly-repetitive combat missions and uploads from a freaking freemium mobile game add-on. Though granted the mobile game is well made and decently fun; 3 hours into it I thought to myself "wtf am I doing? Why am I spending my previous free time on a mobile game just to be able to improve my Anno in-game buildings?!"

The gameplay is decent. Sure it's oversimplified, but with the complex economy and global market, I thought focusing more on the rate of production instead of pure quantities was a nice touch. However even on the highest difficulty, the gameplay was comparable to moderate level of Anno 2070, which I adored. By the 40th hour mark, I was spending 60% of my time grinding through the same 6 combat missions to get rare resources to power my vast and quickly expanding city-states. It became apparent with the latest update that all the old guard who made the franchise that we used to love have all either left or been overpowered by people who are not strategy gamers. WIll they make money? Maybe. Will they change? Probably not. They'll probably make more freemium games and DLC's. Will I ever buy another Anno game? Only if the reviews are overwhelmingly possitive, but I will no longer give them the benefit of the doubt and try out a game that isn't a blockbuster.

RIP in Peace.

Pros: The graphics, sci-fi production lines are nice.

If you're an obsessive micromanager who has the time to burn 20 hours per mission, this is the game for you! I didn't mean to be sarcastic either. This game is long, but incredibly rewarding. The game is set in post-apocalypse Earth, where pretty much everyone's dead and most of the old world is underwater. You, armed with early to mid 21st century tech, set out to settle what was once uninhabited land, sometimes terraforming the island to a pristine eden. That is of course if you choose the way of the Eco's. If you're a douchebag and want to mess up the rest of the arable land for economic profit, go for Tycoons. While you're at it you can nuke the hell out of everyone.

This is a very engaging city-builder that requires careful management of resources. Overprodution and inefficiencies are heavily punished, while improving your lands' ecology, or ecobalance, is rewarded. A must have for any strategy game addict out there.

Part of a hugely succesful RTS franchise, Anno.

One of the best fps's I've ever played. The campaign was pretty good, while multiplayer is amazing. I've played the battlefield series since 1942, and this is by far the best, even though the rest were already on the top. Graphis is amazing without being too much of a strain on your computer, and it is i7 friendly! I can alt tab and back immediately with little lag nor black screen of death.

Absolutely great game that has a slight learning curve but once you get a hang of it it'll be the fastest 110 hours you ever waste!