Recent reviews by Gratuitous Lurking

Despite the Playstation screwery that happened towards the start of the year that cut a chunk out of the playerbase, this still is one of the best horde-shooter type games out there, especially if you're a fan of games like Earth Defense Force but wished it was higher budget. The (current) two enemy factions offer a good reason to switch between loadouts and experiment with the full arsenal, and updates are regular enough that you can take a break for a little bit and be right in the thick of it later. Great for a grind session or just a hop in and shoot everything that moves for a few rounds sort of vibe.

21 hours into the game feels like a good time to start this, and...

I feel like we got spoiled by Obsidian, tbh.

Whereas Obsidion basically made Fallout 3.5, they had a lot more time to not focus on assets and basic engine deals when they made Fallout New Vegas, and arguably Fallout New Vegas is THE best Fallout game because that extra time was used on it's story and world. There was no way that 4 could have fully lived up to the expectations that New Vegas, choronically last in the franchise, could have given.

That does not mean that Fallout 4 is a bad game, on the contrary, it's pretty damn solid. However, it also feels like an inverse of the Fallout franchise as a whole. Whereas Fallout and Fallout 2 started and focused on it's storytelling engine and RPG mechanics, Fallout 3, New Vegas and 4 has steadily evolved the game to a more action setting, one with more shooter mechanics.

By far this shows the most in Fallout 4, whose RPG mechanics have become far more watered down. Subskills are gone, SPECIAL defaultly offer bonuses that skills used to give (sans Hacking and Lockpicking, which have turned into perks), perks have been condensed into a tree based off the main point where each point of SPECIAL unlocks a new 'tier' which contains a perk class, the shooting mechanics have been greatly polished with ALT key used for grenades and bash/strong attacks, VATS for sprint, a slowed-time version of VATS to remove the cheatier use of it freezing time in combat, power armor's new mechanics (oh god is Power Armor so good in this game...) and even an entirely new mechanic, the Settlement system, allowing endless hours of tweaking your personal fortifications in the wasteland.

For all these improvements to gameplay however, there is flaws and weaknesses. Encumbrence is quite rediculous in this, as every piece of junk is useful so a choronic hoarder like me's constantly overencumbered, beyond the first few hours, basically when you help out one of the companions in Concord, the story's quality seems to desperately drop off, the companions, while interesting and with decent character, have INFURIATING AI that either means they get constantly stuck on you, or wander off gods know where, and for reasons that far outpace my tiny mind, you're defaultly punished for installing mods in this game, a first for Bethesda unless you modify your .ini first.

It is certainly a fun and enjoyable game even at the vanilla state, but it's clear it's crying for mods to add the quests, worldspace, and better writing that's desperately needed. Editing the .ini to allow mods is easy enough, but expect to install a load order similar to Skyrim where it goes into the hundreds, unlike the previous installment where all you really needed was like 10-20 mods in New Vegas to improve the game very slightly.

A 1:1 port of a game I used to play on Bluestacks occasionally. Unlike the stigma of most mobile games, this one is somewhat decent- an action strategy/tower defense hybridization, whereas long as you got a trooper on the field, you're still counted as 'alive'. Survive as long as you can, get lots of money, then pour that money into upgrades to continue the song and dance elsewhere.

Some features and controls have been tweaked from the tablet version (such as scrolling the height of the screen with mousewheel) and a few keyboard shortcuts, but mostly this is a one-button sorta game. Your troops can be spawned on circles on the ground, upgraded midwave, and you can even move them on the fly on the battle map as well for a bit more tactical flexability. Add in some grenades, some unlockable air support, map-specific defense measures, and a few different difficulty modes (including a 3-man challenge, where you spawn as few as 3 different troopers and have to survive with just them) and there's enough content to keep in the background while you're doing other stuff.

For those worried about microtransactions, the only ones this game had to start with was purchasing cash directly for more upgrades, and it had adverts. The adverts luckily were not carried over from the mobile version, although the cash purchase is still there and still optional. As the game allows you to grind any level near-infinitely, as long as you can kill the hordes, there's not a huge incentive to binge on the funds.

All in all, a solid little free defense romp that's relatively harmless. If you like it, good, if not, well nothing's stopping you from deleting it and moving on.

First off, let's get some obvious history out of the way. Originally, the original team for EC first drew up some hype for this game via making what was basically a wishlist of features, that essentially boasted that they were hoping for a Planetside IN THE GRIM DARK FUTURE. Unfortunately, a lot of the original team was moved around past this point, and to make matters worse, Bandai-Namco, the publisher for the game, put it's foot down and demanded a release date despite the fact the game was still technically in an alpha state. Credit where it's due, the EC team has knuckled down and prepped as best as they can for the release.

I'm not going to use this review to shame on the original idea or other such things. I'm going to focus on what the game is, and whether what we got is fun or not.

STORY
The story is more or less an excuse plot, so thin that I can't even say it's trying to rip off Dawn of War. In short, the various factions have some mysterious reason for trying to hold onto the planet Arkhona, leading to the assault by Chaos Space Marines, Eldar, and Orks with the Space Marines coming to the planet's aide. To make things better, a Tyranid Hivefleet is descending on the planet, infesting many of the underground barracks and facilities for now, but the threat of them boiling up onto the surface is still there.

CHARACTER CREATION AND PROGRESSION
When you first start the game, you start by choosing your faction, followed by your subfaction in the main faction. This mostly dictates cosmetic and taunt flair, so feel free to focus on which one you think is coolest or more interesting. After this point, you can jump into the garrison to brush up on your skills, head into the game, or take a look at your advancements and loadouts. I highly suggest using the game's pre-made loadouts for a bit prior, as they come pre-loaded with modifications, trinkets, and other things to make your first few rounds easier.

Speaking of loadouts, let us discuss progression. Your progression is split into two resources: Experience that grows your rank and grants you Advancement Points, and gainable tokens, which most races call Requisition but Orks refer to as Teef.
Advancement Points are used to unlock various pieces of wargear that you use on your loadouts, from grenades and support items, to Trinkets that offer smaller buffs and Wargear items that drastically increase your stats. Each piece of gear does bring itself Loadout Point costs, which most classes only are able to hold around 1000 Loadout Points worth of gear.
Your Requisition and Teef, meanwhile, are used to enhance your arsenal of weapons via the store. You're able to direct-buy the standard version of a weapon via the use of your resources, or you have various degrees of crates, that will grant you modifications, unique weapon variants, and other useful items.
In addition, however, the shop allows you access to things you can buy with Rogue Trader Credits, a cash-shop currency. This cash-shop currency is used primarily for cosmetic items for your character's visual look, however there is variant weapons you can purchase with RTC to grant you a type of weapon with much more unique visual look. It should be noted that the RTC weapons are built 'pre-modded' however, so you are unable to tweak these weapons like those you can pick off the shelf, and these weapons don't feature any statline different than average for modified weapons. The big draw, is, again, appearance and look, and who doesn't like a plasma cannon with a bunch of warp-tainted flesh stretched over it?

GAMEPLAY
At it's current state, Eternal Crusade is an asymmetrically-balanced team shooter, most of it's gameplay focused along capture location gamemodes. Each faction plays slightly differently, with a major focus of some kind with them. Space Marines and Chaos Marines, for example, are somewhat similar, though Space Marines are more tech-based and focus on general enhancement, while Chaos uses dark sorcery and chaos marks to grant them bonuses as well as maluses. Eldar, with their focus on Aspects, are highly specialized, one of the smallest targets in the game and highly mobile, but don't get nearly as many improvements to survivability., while the Orks are a bit haphazard with their linear growth, have some accuracy issues but can hit hard when they do, and have a unique WAAAGH! buff that triggers if the match goes on too long. In general beyond that, many of the factions share similar elements: Chaos and Eldar both have sorcery as their support class, while Orks and Marines focus on the use of healing vials from Apothacaries and Mad Doks, all but the Eldar's air assault class all have simularities, and so on and so forth.
Much of the controls feel very similar to Warhammer 40k: Space Marine, and it does feel like the game took some inspiration from it. However, while Captain Tidus was a manly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, powered by raeg and executions, EC's treatment of the mechanics is a bit more Reasonable Marines about itself. Cover is a major factor, and death toll's high.
In general, EC's time to kill is surprisingly short considering the 40k mythos, however I don't got much of an issue with it. Remember, every time they wanna say how awesome something can cause damage, they tend to compare it to Ceramite, aka the same material Imperial power armor is constructed of. However, anyone not playing as an Eldar will probably find themselves annoyed at vehicles quickly early on- Eldar start off with Dark Reapers armed with a decently-damaging launcher and Fire Dragoons with meltaguns, which can cause quick damage to vehicles if given the chance, whereas most races will have to rely on their tanks until the faction gets ahold of a few spare lascannons or meltas of their own. Quad-Guns will probably annoy you early on similarly, as these map-placed turrets will mince through even a Predator or Trukk pretty damn fast. Luckily, you tend to only see those on siege-based maps, and I expect they will become less of a concern once advanced weapons filter in to loadouts over the weeks after launch.
Also of note is the Tyranid hive gamemode, which while it is not the main focus of the game right now, it is enjoyably fun, essentially a dungeon crawl facing off against seas of termigaunts and hormigaunts with Warriors acting as bosses. It certainly has room to grow, but it's enjoyable as a distraction from the tug-of-wars of the major gamemodes.

IMMERSION
From an outward view, it does kinda show it's original design choices with how the maps are built. Many of these facilities have roads for vehicles built in a very Planetside/MOBA mindset of obvious vehicle lanes, and the current selection of maps all feel like they come from the same general area of the planet's surface, making it feel like that if you could reach the top of the mountaints you'd see another of the maps. On the other hand, each facility you fight in is full of little details, from strange prop setups that make you question what's truly going on in Arkhona, to the general gothic appearance of it all, I'm reminded strongly of my review of Deathwatch: Enhanced Edition with how the setpieces just work to sell you into the world you're in.

TL;DR
A week ago, I was partly hesitant at the current state of the game and if it would have a chance to, well, even be a decent lobby shooter by the time we reached the mandated release date. The last few patches, however, has eased much of my doubts. I can't nessisarily say that EC does a lot different over, say, Space Marine's near-dead multiplayer, but it has it's own ideas and feel to it, and has enough potential by itself to stand on it's own two feet. Whether we will see it eventually hit the lofty goals the original team set for it or not, I don't feel too bad about opting into the Founder's program ages back and enjoying the ride I've had with Eternal Crusade. See you all ingame, heretics, knife-ears, greenskins and loyalists!

Many people will instantly judge this game due to it being a 'hackneyed IOS port that doesn't belong on the glorious PC engine' or complain about it's more lackluster porting issues.

As a person that's been wanting a decent 40k tactical game, however, this hits more buttons than I ever could have hoped for, considering the starvation of somewhat-cheap turn-based tactical games as of late.

STORY - 4/5
Relatively basic as far as 40K is concerned, and requires a small amount of knowledge of things in the universe to get all the offhand remarks and comments caught. To make a long story short, you're the field command of a tactical squad of the Deathwatch, a coallition of other Space Marine chapters opted in to work with the Ordo Xenos of the Inquisition. In this situation, a sector known as Astolat is under the threat of the Tyranids, essentially space locusts that eat planets bare of any bio-organic life that fuels the creation of even more Tyranids, that are slowly chugging towards the center of the galaxy. Your job: Ensure the Hive Fleet is mired here, and if possible, keep it from passing through the sector. Again, simplistic but servicable for 40k and doesn't pull a 'LOL CHAOS WAS BEHIND IT ALL ALONG!' stick.

GAMEPLAY - 3.5/5

The gameplay is still heavily based off it's IOS roots, with controls almost all capable with just Left Mouse, though some things have been tagged with hotkeys, making a chain of Overwatch setups that much more easier. Each soldier has access to 4 AP (by default) per turn, allowing them to move, shoot, or do other actions with those AP over that turn. As far as my experience with the game goes, Your marines are split into four combat classes (Assault, Devastator, Tactical, and Apothacary) who each have preferred weapons and get special skills depending on the Chapter the marine belonged to, with each portrait type denoting what capabilities and abilities that specific marine may have. Everything in the game has a 1-4 Tier rank as well, so the higher the tier, the more special abilities or stronger the thing is defaultly. The tyranid units, while more numerous in the map, tend to act like cannon fodder to a squad of well-trained marines, though in later levels you will meet tougher enemies, up to and including massive 3x3 tiled monstrosities that require heavy weapons and well-trained marines to take down, and managing where the marines are and where they're going.

PROGRESSION - 2/5

Easily the most annoying part of the game, and sadly where the port nature comes to bear the most. In order to get more wargear (and marines) you must complete missions, which will grant a random wargear item, and 20-40 Requisition Points (varies by difficulty options, but you can't do difficulty options until you finish the game's 40 or so levels once). These requisition points are used to purchase booster packs, an obvious replacement for a previous F2P cash shop mechanic from the IOS version. This also means that by the time you run into your first major hurdle (like, say, the first Carnifex fight), you may not have the right equipment to face off against it, and thus be forced to grind until the RNG gods bless you with a godly marine/weapon combo for taking down large beasts. The marine's progressions is a bit more tolerable- each marine can gain exp during missions, with most exp to an individual coming from landing killing blows (and each kill giving a small sum to every survivor as well). This banked EXP can then be used to unlock abilities, traits, and level the marine's health/accuracy/crit rate, as far as I can tell the stat buffs are unlimited, with a constantly-increasing buffer of EXP to reach per level. If a marine dies in action, you'll lose that banked EXP however, which makes really grinding a high-leveled marine's exp a bit hard if you're not just tricking a endless-spawn mission for EXP grind (Burning Bridges comes to mind...)

IMMERSION - 9/5

Why yes, I broke my scoring system for this gag, what of it. The setting and presentation of the game is easily the BEST of any 40k game released in the last 5 years, Dawn of Wars included. Viewing the world of the 41st Millenium in a tactical level is why I pine for a Dark Heresy game built like Shadowrun, and while our Deathwatch marines don't actively meet any friendlies in the adventure (as far as I'm aware), the world looks absolutely gorgeous, thanks to the use of the Unreal engine. Even the lowliest of Ultramarine Tacticals have unique visual differences over other chapters that help to show off the units, and the splendor only grows as you get higher-tier units adn the eye candy shows more. The unique chapters for the Enhanced Edition in particular are especially visually delightful, of particular note the Dark Angel Veteran, and the other unique units of the chapters ain't too far off. Another thing, something that not much of the promotional work seems to touch on, is the bantar that goes between your squadmates. Blood Angel, Space Wolf, and Ultramarine squad members will talk between each other, from jabs about chapter stereotypes to musings on if the Emperor would be unhappy about the Ecclisiarchy, to questioning if they are indeed fighting a losing battle for the planets of the sector. The only reason this wasn't marked a 10 was because the Enhanced Edition chapters weren't included in the banter.

TL;DR
It's rough around the edges, and if you are allergic to grinding you'll drive yourself nuts here, but otherwise the averageness of the gameplay tends to get overshadowed by the close-up look of Tyranid Hiveships, torn-apart cities, and corroding Imperial bunkers, and your squadmates talking casually as they mow through hordes upon hordes of the Tyranid menace. If you're looking for a turn-based tactics game where your soldiers aren't made of tissue paper, you can't really go wrong with Deathwatch.

Like GunZ the Duel? Hate the huge focus on the whole 'Style' dynamic meaning you got yelled at for running around with a assault rifle mostly? How about some more fleshed-out dynamic effects, a campain mode that is more then just multiplayer with different rooms and AI, and a good chunk of the fourum dedicated to complaining about no K-Style?

In that case, this is your dream come true. And it. Is. GLORIOUS!!!

It's the madcap insanity of Garry's Mod with the building block simplicity of Legos. Whether you're here for building, modmaking, or hosting the craziest server game ever, or even just like watching other players explode, there's always something to do in here. Anyone who wants a change of pace from thier usual letting-off-steam game should hop in.

P.S. Get the RTB mod to let you see a wide collection of add-ons easy-peasy to start really going nuts. Unless Steam version gets Workshop or something, idunno.

Hard. As. BALLS. Rougelike in a sci-fi setting based off the Sword of the Stars series of games. Taking the role of the hardcore Marine, skillful Scout or mindful Engineer, you must take the monsterous RNG, terrifying acidic creatures, constant threat of running out of useful equipment, or accidentally frying yourself fixing a device, and that's not counting the gauntlet of terrifying beasts that make up the final floor, if you ever reach it...

And you'll love every second of it, if you are interested in the genre.