Recent reviews by Ghanem

So amazing! I played all the original Descents (1, 2, and 3). This is an excellent continuation that captures all the magic of the originals. Outstanding!

Wildly exceeded my expectations. Coming from Supreme Commander:FA I wasn't sure what to expect. The gameplay is a bit different than SC:FA but extremely fun. I play only single-player and the AI is challenging. Running OC'd i7-920, 12gig RAM, OC'd GTX980 and the game is extremely stable and fluid, with all settings on High. Enjoyed a game tonight with almost 4k units on field and there was no perceptible slowdown or hitches. The graphics are amazing -- it is very rewarding to make large armies collide just to view the amazing light show that results.

This is an extremely fun game well worth the asking price, especially if you already have the original AotS. I hope Stardock continues to improve on it and continue to push the envelope of PC gaming.

EDIT: Wanted to mention too I'm running DX12 with very impressive performance. As mentioned, all settings on high, with VSYNC enabled and I believe I'm getting 60+ FPS since the framerate never halves. I was worried since I'm not running an AMD card, which apparently is more optimized for Async Compute, the latter which AotS leverages heavily. The fears were unfounded, however, as I could not ask for better performance with the nVidia GTX980.

Surprisingly fun game -- highly recommended if you like open sandbox-style games. Makes you appreciate the tremendous logistics and skills to move heavy loads (e.g., fuel, lumber, etc) through rough and muddy terrain. The truck, mud, and water physics really make this game special.

You'll have a lot of fun and learn a thing or two about driving large industrial trucks through unforgiving landscapes.

The one RTS I always come back to. So much fun and countless hours playing against the great Sorian AI.

About 4 hours in and I'm enjoying this game. I consider myself fairly hard to please with contemporary games that seem to cater to console. The game has run flawlessly for me so far (i7-920 o/c'd to 3.2ghz, nvidia gtx760 mildly o/c'd, 12gigs triple-channel RAM, Sound Blaster ZxR). Performance was choppy until I lowered textures to Medium and shadow maps to High. Now runs very smooth. Doing this also eliminated the irritating input lag. Some pros and cons:

+ game design keeps you on edge of your seat and wanting to play on. There are multiple "event-layers" going on simultaneously that really work to keep you riveted and the pulse pounding. It's compelling.
+ great graphics, especially lighting
+ adjustable FOV, but see cons

- shadow effects are great, but your own character doesnt cast a shadow. ARGH! Come on Techland!
- audio is not positional, at least not in 2.1 (stereo). This is really irritating in this day in age.
- audio mixing is poor. This game is all about ambience, and sound is such a major contributor to that. I only complain since just a little bit more effort in this department could make this game truly mind blowing.
- FOV is adjustable, however, it seemingly has no impact on your own character. i.e., if you increase your FOV, you visual range increases for everything except your body and items it's holding. This makes things look weird.

These negatives detract from the overall immersion of an otherwise solid game. I hope Techland continues to build upon this very solid foundation. This game has turned out to be very fun and extremely compelling for me. Techland has done something wonderful here.