Recent reviews by Llama

X-Com for beginners. And I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way.

The game has taken some major decisions - characters can't die - or the mission is over and you have to redo it. This means that a large part of the strategic nuance that made X-Com so brutal is entirely gone. You no longer have to worry about sending rookies to a difficult mission, or whether you should skip this one out and take the penalty - because your team is always ready for action - you don't ever lose them.

Worst that can happen to them is them getting hurt and given the "wounded" status which gives a penalty which can later be removed. But they're still full health and ready to go for the next mission.

So yeah, strategically speaking, it's pretty impossible to lose.

Tactically, the battles are now divided into rooms, and therefore much more contained. There's a myriad of special abilities (both yours and your enemies) which makes the game quite fun and less about shooting (and missing).

So in short, if you want to play X-Com without the stressful difficulty, this is a good game. But if difficulty strategic and tactical combat is what you're looking for, you'll be disappointed.

This game is amazing. The premise and gameplay are so simple - you're an analyst for a very surveillance-heavy system, and you have to trawl through websites, private conversations, and devices, to collect pieces of pertinent data to keep the country safe. And you do so by clicking on things and dragging the data to the profile.

But underneath the simple exterior lies a very compelling story, and an underlying nagging feeling of whether you're doing the right thing or not, and whether anyone should really have this power.

CK2, only better.

It keeps the core gameplay that made Crusader Kings 2 so wonderful as a storytelling game where you really get attached to your character, but made every single part of it so much better.

Instead of the flat graphics and characters, now they're fully animated 3D models. Instead of complicated arcane systems, now there are descriptions everywhere and helpful overviews, hints, and tutorials to ensure you don't get lost. Instead of a simplistic lifestyle system, now there are trees and choices and RPG elements. Instead of your dynasty being nothing more than a score at the end, now there are targets and unlockables to work towards.

In short, it's CK2, with everything that made the series great turned up to 11, everything that wasn't so good has been fixed, and yet, even though it's chock full of content, it's incredibly accessible.

The most obvious game to compare this to, is the Sim City series, and everything in this game simply one-ups them at every turn. If you like city-building, then this is THE go-to game at this point.

It's THE space 4x game, nothing else seems to compare.

And it gets rather frequent updates which change certain things drastically - with both citizen management and combat manoeuvring rebuilt from the ground up.

And it's one of those games where you spend 20 minutes setting up a brand new species, and you get - in some cases - a completely different game.

This game is ridiculous, fun and ridiculously fun. It's one of those games where you kill large numbers of enemies - but you do so using ridiculous weapons. Or sometimes you might fuse two of those weapons together into something more ridiculous - like a X'mas wreath with explosives stuck in it. Or a triceratops mask with flames coming out of it.

Or just mow down zombies in a vehicle made from a hearse and a tow-truck.

Its just relaxing fun. Sometimes you just need something like that.

Reminds me quite a bit of Dwarf Fortress, with nicer graphics and a less vertical learning curve. The AI director makes the game always get progressivly harder, so lulls of "everything is working fine", quickly turn into a horrible firefighting (literally and otherwise) exercise - keeping you on your toes at all times and preventing the game from becoming a slog.

I can't recommend this game enough.

Brilliant storytelling but dastardly hard. I've played this game many times and the few times I felt I was getting somewhere, I had it all taken away from me with an unfortunate error which lead to my death (I play Ironman mode, though you don't have to). The storylines however are what really make the game. If you're alright with less emphasis on gameplay and more on stories, then it's great. If not, you're going to be disappointed.

There are far better citybuilders out there which don't look like they've been designed by 10 year olds.

There is a reason that Lucasarts owned the point and click genre for so long, this is one of the reasons. Not as good as (say) the Monkey Island series, but you can't go wrong with a game like this.