I noted in my original review of Civilization V that I expected an espionage system of some sort to be added in an expansion. I also stated, in a February edition of the Civilization Polycast webcast that I expected an expansion to be announced soon. I was right on both accounts!
I’ve spent a lot of time with Gods & Kings in the few months since its release, but I’m disappointed to say that it hasn’t quite lived up to my expectations.
The expansion isn’t a complete let-down though. It does include some significant enhancements to the core experience.
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683c642f-1a9e-43a4-b6c8-4e88c8cbe789|2|5.0
Tags:Civilization V: Gods & Kings, Civilization V, Sid Meier's Civilization, Civilization, Firaxis, 2K Games, expansion, PC, Steam, strategy, grand strategy, turn-based strategy, tactics, religion, espionage, navy, review, Civilization IV, Civilization V
I finally published my full review of Total War: Shogun 2 recently in preparation for writing this review of that game’s second expansion: Fall of the Samurai. Fall of the Samurai is the second expansion for Shogun 2; the first being a “prequel” Rise of the Samurai. I skipped Rise, but when I saw the trailers for Fall, I just had to hop onto Steam and download it.
This expansion is the most contemporary Total War game to date, taking place during the same time period as the American Civil War. We’ve already had two Total War games that utilized rifles and cannons. I started my fandom of the series with Empire and went on to play Napoleon. I enjoyed both games, but eventually started to find the battles became very automatic and mechanical. There just wasn’t too much tactics beyond just lining your infantry up and shooting at the other guys.
Having not played the earlier games very much, like Rome, Medieval, and the original Shogun, I was really impressed with how fun Shogun 2 was. The traditional melee units made the battles much more engaging and fun, and really made me realize just how bland Empire actually was.
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30f43459-cee3-48d3-922e-018cc75805c3|1|4.0
Tags:Total War, Total War: Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai, PC, Steam, strategy, grand strategy, expansion, real-time strategy, history, Japan, the Creative Assembly, Sega
This review is exceptionally late! Even later than my reviews usually are. Shogun 2 was released almost 14 months ago, in March of 2011. I purchased it at that time, and spent several weeks playing it with the intent of writing a review. That review was never published though, and has been sitting on my computer for a whole year. With the recent release of the Fall of the Samurai expansion, I decided I'd dust off that year-old review of Shogun 2 and publish it.
So, here it is:
With Shogun 2, the Creative Assembly is taking its Total War franchise back to its roots by revisiting feudal Japan (the first game in the series was Total War: Shogun). Unfortunately, I never played the original Shogun. I started playing Total War when Empire was released, and subsequently played Napoleon and Rome. I consider myself a fan of the series now, as it makes for a great change of pace when I need a break from Sid Meier’s Civilization.
Shogun 2 blows the previous Total War games out of the water in almost every conceivable way!
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97c66df3-de69-413f-9005-e1cd40a22f2d|1|5.0
Tags:Total War, Total War: Shogun 2, PC, Steam, strategy, grand strategy, expansion, real-time strategy, history, Japan, the Creative Assembly, Sega
Today is a sad day for fans of Atlus' critically-acclaimed PS3-exclusive game, Demon's Souls. Hot off the heels of my Dark Souls review, the announcement that Dark Souls will be ported to the PC, and new rumors that DLC is in the works for Dark Souls, Atlust just announced that the Demon's Souls servers will be shut-down at 11:59 PST on May 31st, 2012.
We knew it had to happen sooner or later, and the shut down was already delayed at least once (it was originally scheduled to happen shortly after the release of Dark Souls). It just seems like this is way too early. The game is only two-and-a-half years old!
It's also really too bad that FromSoftware and Atlus don't seem to have any plans to update the game to support some sort of P2P, direct IP/TCP, or proxy-server multiplayer set-up. I know it would defeat the idea behind the online components, but something would be better than nothing. Letting the fans connect to each other directly, or to set up their own servers would be nice, but I'm not even sure if it's technically possible given the structure of the PlayStation Network.
UPDATE (June 1, 2012): Atlus extends server operation indefinitely
Just found out that Atlus has extended the operation of the Demon's Souls servers "indefinitely! [More]
de948236-194a-4156-b811-5dd2bf379a55|2|1.0
Tags:Demon's Souls, From Software, Atlus, Sony, PS3, PlayStation 3, PSN, PvP, co-op, multiplayer, Dark Souls, Namco/Bandai, PC
This post is a continuation of the post Anything and Everything - Upgrades for Civ V (Part I), in which I listed upgrades/changes I would like to see in the turn-based strategy game, Civilization V.
The list on the original post was a compilation of forum posts that I had made in Kevik's Civilization V forum topic: Anything and Everything We Can Add to Civ V [More]
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