The Future of Total War

AKA Why I hope the next historical TW is more like Three Kingdoms than Warhammer.

After completing my Empire campaign in Immortal Empires, I decided to jump into a Three Kingdoms campaign to compare the experience and some interesting stats emerged that I wanted to discuss. I completed my Immortal Empires campaign in 120 turns – at least, I completed my short and long victory conditions. I decided not to play out the end-game scenario.

In Three Kingdoms, I also halted my campaign on 120 turns. I didn’t complete the campaign, but I did reach a point whereby I would soon (within 20 turns) trigger the end-game and the battle of the Three Kingdoms would commence.

Three Kingdoms obviously can’t compete with Warhammer in terms of faction or unit variety. That’s the strength of the Warhammer series and Immortal Empires. And Three Kingdoms also lacks the spectacle of magic and monsters in its battles. In terms of campaign, however, Three Kingdoms offers a far more engaging and complex experience.

From region, faction and character management to diplomacy, Three Kingdoms makes Warhammer seem rather lacklustre in comparison. Of course, Three Kingdoms was released after Warhammer 1 had already established the core campaign systems that the Warhammer series would follow. As I said in my Immortal Empires impressions post, all of the Warhammer content from Warhammer 1 to Warhammer 3 needed to connect together so the campaign, as a whole, hasn’t really evolved much since Warhammer 1.

The fact that Three Kingdoms has a superior campaign in terms of features and mechanics wasn’t a surprise to me upon playing an Immortal Empires campaign and a 3K campaign back to back. What did surprise me, however, was the battle stats at the end of those 120 turns in each campaign. Remember, Warhammer is a game that’s very much focused on those spectacular battles – those clashes of massive unit, faction, magic and monster variety. And the Immortal Empires campaign, as a whole, exists almost purely to facilitate those battles.

But when I looked at and compared my battle stats, I discovered something quite interesting. In Immortal Empires after 120 turns I had fought 121 battles, but I had only personally fought 29 of these. 29 battles out of 121. That’s 92 battles I chose to auto-resolve. And Three Kingdoms? A game that simply can’t compete with Warhammer when it comes to variety? 84 battles after 120 turns, of which 49 were fought personally and 35 were auto-resolved. That’s 23% (Warhammer) versus 58% (Three Kingdoms). So what’s going on? Why did I choose to fight far more battles personally in Three Kingdoms than in Warhammer?

First of all, Warhammer may be all about the battles, but you can have too much of a good thing. 121 battles in 120 turns is just too many, especially when so many of these battles feel entirely inconsequential. In 3K, I only fought 84 battles over the same turn period but these battles, overall, felt far more important in terms of progressing my campaign goals and as a result, I felt far more inclined to oversee them personally.

And this ties into campaign pacing. The Warhammer campaign has a faster pace than 3K. This means you’ll be rocking multiple full stack armies within the first 20-30 turns whereas in 3K, you’d be hard pressed to afford a single full stack within the same period. It’s not impossible, but you’re more reliant upon smaller armies.

In Warhammer, you tend to skip tier 2 units and move as fast as you can to tier 3. Within 50 turns you’ll likely be fielding multiple stacks of the best units you can recruit – and these stacks won’t evolve as the campaign continues, because they’re already as good as they can be. Now, the way armies work in 3K and Warhammer is quite different so the comparison isn’t exact, but the point is – it takes much longer for you to field a tier 3 or equivalent full stack army in 3K than it does in Warhammer.

This means that battles in 3K take more turns to grow in scale and there’s a more extended period of unit progression (from tier 1 to tier 3) and as a result, the battles never really fall into a repetitive pattern because your army size and unit composition is constantly evolving across the entire campaign.

In my 3K campaign, for example, even by turn 120 with 5 full stack armies (compared to my 11 full stacks in Warhammer) I still hadn’t upgraded all of my units to tier 3 equivalents. I spent over 50 turns in Warhammer expanding and fighting with armies that never changed. In 3K, on the other hand, my armies were changing fairly regularly, right up until the end of my campaign.

And less armies means you care more about the ones you have. They become far more important and the battles they fight also become far more important. In Warhammer, losing a full stack of tier 3 units is annoying, but I can easily recruit an entirely new stack within a matter of turns. In 3K, losing a full stack is a serious blow that takes time to recover from, especially if you lose the characters commanding those units.

In Warhammer I can just recruit a new general and drop 20 tier 3 units into their stack in a few turns. In 3K, due to the way replenishment, redeployment and mustering works, that’s simply not possible, at least not until you hit the very final stages of the campaign and you’ve unlocked all of the various possible bonuses to these systems via research, character perks or regional upgrades. But even then, character level also factors into unit recruitment – so a new ‘general’ won’t necessarily be able to recruit the same tier 3 units as the higher level commander they’re replacing.

And finally we have battle types. The majority of battles fought in both campaigns were for minor settlements. In Warhammer, minor settlements, despite the faction, all share a small number of template maps that never change. In 3K, however, every minor – or resource, as they’re known in 3K – settlement has a unique map for each settlement type and this map expands and evolves as the settlement grows.

And this expansion based on settlement level also applies to the provincial capitals which grow from small towns without walls to massive, sprawling cities. In Warhammer, a provincial capital always has walls and doesn’t really expand at all so there’s nothing really new to see from Turn 1 to Turn 120.

So let’s sum up, shall we? I fought more battles in 3K personally because 1) there were less battles to fight 2) these battles more were far more important to progressing my campaign goals 3) battles were far more decisive in terms of unit / character losses for myself or my opponent 4) battles took more turns to grow in size 5) there was a regular introduction of new or upgraded units to fight with as I progressed 6) the settlement maps (which make up the bulk of the battle types) are far better in terms of variety, scale and expansion as the settlement upgrades.

It’s not just one thing, but a combination of things that makes the battles in 3K more compelling to actually play throughout the entire campaign – despite lacking the variety and spectacle of Warhammer.

And that’s why I hope the next historical Total War game is more like Three Kingdoms than Warhammer. Warhammer has been massively successful and is massively popular, but I hope CA doesn’t believe that the Warhammer formula is the one to adopt going forward. Three Kingdoms shows us what the future of Total War can be.

Oh, and no more f**king campaign map agents / heroes in the next game please! If you take anything from 3k going forward, make it that.

Gallery: Kayak: Mirage (VR)

God of War: First Impressions

I wasn’t planning on writing a first impressions post for God of War but after playing the game for 8 or so hours, I wanted to share my thoughts on the experience to see how or if my opinion on the game will change once I’ve completed it.

Why? Well, I hate to say it but my initial impressions are kind of . . . meh. God of War is a game that I’ve seen so much praise for. Overwhelmingly positive reviews. GOTY awards. But after playing God of War for 8 hours I’m struggling to understand why.

I was going to put together this post after 4 hours of play but I decided that was too soon and that my opinion might change quite dramatically as I progressed. But another 4 hours later and . . . nothing has really changed. I just don’t get it. Is this really the game everyone has been raving about? Now, don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not saying what I’ve played has been bad. No, it’s been . . . fine. Just fine. Okay. Nothing remarkable, but nothing terrible, either.

Visually, God of War is a good looking game. The music is good. Christopher Judge is great as Kratos. The combat has a nice sense of weight to it. I like the setting and all the mythology stuff. But what I’m really struggling to enjoy in God of War is the gameplay both in terms of exploration and combat.

The game opens with a very ‘cinematic’ boss fight. The way the game seamlessly transitions from gameplay to cinematic is technically impressive but I can’t say I found the fight particularly engaging. Just when I felt like I was getting stuck into the fight the game would take away my control and transition into another cinematic scene.

Following this fight I found myself traversing an incredibly linear path with frequent ‘cinematic’ moments and a lot of slow paced walk and talk. Granted, this is the beginning of the game and there’s plot related stuff to set up but, nevertheless, the opening of God of War is pretty damn slow.

‘Exploring’ the environments is also pretty meh. The paths are largely linear, with the odd branching path that either loops back to where you began or simply results in a dead end (because you lack the required story upgrade). And there are treasure chests f**king everywhere. I’m not joking when I say 2 or so hours of my play time has just been opening chests.

Why are there so many chests? It’s like the game is desperate to keep ‘rewarding’ you. But it’s not a reward when it’s not been earned. And very few – if any – of the chests I’ve opened have felt like a genuine reward for overcoming a tough optional fight or solving a neat environmental puzzle. The chests, for the most part, are just there, practically around every corner.

Atreus still hasn’t grown on me. There was a scene early on when I needed him to lower a chain so I could climb up but he kept stopping to mope. I got a button prompt to snap him out of it and continue, but he stopped to mope about three more times before I could finally progress. Maybe it’s meant to be ‘cinematic’ or something but I found it f**king infuriating.

And finally we have the combat which, as I said, has a nice sense of weight to it but it’s also pretty . . . basic? You have a light and heavy attack and a couple of special moves you can trigger on a cooldown, but even though I’ve now unlocked more combo moves and more special attacks (you can only have 2 active at a time) the combat still feels really simple and repetitive.

I could bump the difficulty up from Normal to Hard, but that’s not going to make the combat more complex – it just turns the enemies into even bigger damage sponges. At first, I thought God of War might be like a third person DOOM in the sense that there would be this brutal ‘flow’ to combat as you chain-kill your way from one enemy to the next.

But . . . there’s no sense of flow here. There’s no satisfying way to chain together a series of moves because your moves are intentionally limited – at least, they are at this point in the game and that’s something I’m really hoping will change. The enemies you fight aren’t particularly engaging or smart and there only seems to be one kind of cinematic ‘kill move’ for each enemy type.

That contributes to the feeling of repetition. I don’t care how ‘cinematic’ it is when I see the same animation play out 5 times in a row in one fight. The ‘lock-on’ system is also pretty hit or miss, which makes trying to chain together attacks even more frustrating.

Okay, I need to stop this here because this isn’t a review and I don’t know how things will progress. Maybe the exploration will improve. Maybe the combat will become more complex and engaging. Maybe there’s lots of stuff I’ve not yet seen or unlocked that will radically improve my opinion of the game. I’ll keep going, but right now, I’m not going to lie, it’s a bit of a slog.

Now Playing: Project Wingman

I quite enjoyed Ace Combat 7, but I was a little disappointed by the lack of any official VR support. Enter Project Wingman, a shameless Ace Combat clone that can also be played entirely in VR. And in VR was how I’d intended to play and review Project Wingman. Unfortunately, the VR support isn’t particularly good and I ended up playing the vast majority of the game out of VR.

Project Wingman is like a low budget love letter to Ace Combat and I can’t help but admire it for that. But whilst PW does a decent job of emulating Ace Combat and providing a familiar and enjoyable experience it’s, well . . . just not as good.

Project Wingman features a story based campaign of 21 missions. The story provides the adequate context you need, but the campaign missions lack variety in terms of objectives and are rather inconsistent in terms of difficulty – some are an absolute breeze, but others are annoyingly tricky. And some missions drag on for way too long as you’re faced with multiple waves of enemies (and no mid-mission checkpoints).

Some of the missions feature aircraft ‘boss’ fights, but these are where the game gets pretty tedious because you might be faced with 8 ‘elite’ aircraft at once and you’re constantly being targeted. All you’ll hear is the urgent, rapid beeping of the incoming missile alert system as you slowly whittle down the opposition health bars – primarily with your gun, because your own missiles are largely ineffective.

The campaign, whilst overall pretty fun, does have its share of problems beyond just the lack of mission variety and the inconsistent difficulty. The aircraft selection isn’t great, nor is the weapon selection. There’s also way too much dialogue during missions. In one mission the characters never stopped speaking resulting in me yelling at the screen for them to shut the f**k up. You can’t really pay attention to what’s being said and some of the VA, to be frank, isn’t all that good. It becomes more of an annoying distraction.

Visually, Project Wingman is a little rough around the edges. It’s what you’d expect from a low budget Ace Combat clone. It’s not great but it’s not bad. It does the job. The music is pretty decent but, once again, not as good as in AC. And I guess that kind of sums up PW as a whole – it’s like Ace Combat but just not as good.

Once you complete the campaign there’s an additional mode called ‘Conquest’. I thought this might be some kind of strategy-lite mode in which you claim territory on a map, and each territory offers a different terrain, enemy types and objectives. And it sort of is like that, but it’s also, unfortunately, a rogue-like, which means that if you die during a mission, everything resets.

You can keep any credits / points you earn to unlock new aircraft, but the next time you play, you’ll need to start back at square one. It’s . . . really not that fun when your progress keeps getting reset. I know some people like that kind of thing, but I’m not sure it’s the right choice for this kind of game. I’d have preferred a more straightforward ‘conquer the map’ type mode free of any story in which I can progress at my own pace and unlock new aircraft and weapons as I go.

So what about the VR support? As I said, it’s not good. The performance is a real problem. Some missions are . . . acceptable, at best. Others are practically unplayable. But even if the performance was perfect there are other, rather glaring issues, the worst of which is the UI.

No attempt was made to redesign the menus or UI for VR and they’re f**king terrible. They’re a pain to navigate and hard to read. Trying to select aircraft and weapon slots has you instinctively leaning forward, trying to squint at what you’re looking at because everything is so small and fuzzy.

The cockpit UI isn’t much better as subtitles (I’d recommend turning them off) and other mission specific text floats on the periphery of your vision making it hard to read and also blocking your view. The core targeting UI also floats awkwardly in your face, clipping through the entire cockpit, making it hard to see exactly what you’re aiming at. You can increase the text size of targets and other UI elements, but this just clutters your screen even more, making it even harder to see what the f**k is going on.

VR support in Project Wingman is a bit of a mess but there are moments when it really does blow you away. The feeling of speed as you race low across an ocean. The rain streaking across your cockpit in a storm. Banking hard into a massive dogfight between dozens of aircraft, missile trails criss-crossing the sky . . . there are moments when PW is absolutely glorious in VR but only moments.

It’s those moments of greatness that I wanted for the entire game but sadly, fleeting moments is all we get. If the performance issues are fixed (and frankly, PW does not look good enough to suffer these kind of problems) and the UI completely redesigned, then PW is a game that I will happily play again, entirely in VR.

But until then, the VR support just isn’t good enough, and although the game out of VR is still fun, it’s just not as good as Ace Combat. So if you’re looking for a game like this and you don’t have / care about VR, then AC7 is the game I’d recommend. And if you do have VR and want an AC style VR experience, this may be the best you’ll get, but that doesn’t make it good.

6/10

Suburban Killbot: Top 10 Best Games

Back in 2016 I put together a list of my Top 10 Favourite Games – games that, for one reason or another were important to me, though not necessarily the best games I’ve played. I thought it might be fun to do another Top 10 list but this time of the best games I’ve played since starting this blog.

Most of these games are, unsurprisingly, the games I’ve given my GOTY award to, but there’s a couple of exceptions – Breath of the Wild and Horizon: Zero Dawn, neither of which took my GOTY prize, but only because I also reviewed them in the same year as my top 2 titles – NieR: Automata for BOTW, and Half-Life: Alyx for Horizon. In order to make space for them on this list I had to relegate two GOTY winners – Dark Souls and The Witcher 2.

Links to the original reviews are included below.

1) NieR: Automata

Visually, NieR is great, though a little rough in the open world. The soundtrack is fantastic. As I said, I can’t recommend the PC version of NieR as it is, but maybe things will change in the future. The issues I experienced did have a negative impact on my experience, but the fact that I was willing to persist with it should give you an idea how impressed I was with the game itself. It’s one of the most unique and interesting titles you’ll play this year, both in terms of narrative and gameplay. (Review)

2) Half-Life: Alyx (VR)

If you already own a VR system then it’s a must buy – it’s a new standard by which all VR games will be compared. But if you don’t own a VR device yet, would I say to pick one up just for Alyx? That’s a tricky one to answer, but I think I’d have to say no, not unless you’ve got money to burn.

However, if there are other VR games you want to play in addition to Alyx, then now is a great time to jump on the VR train – just be aware that Alyx is the new bar by which VR games will be judged, and it may be a long time before we see another game compare. (Review)

3) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Despite my criticisms and odd irritations, there’s no denying that the overall experience of playing Breath of the Wild was incredibly engaging, engrossing and most importantly – fun. It’s one of those rare titles that comes along and reminds you why you love video games so much. Breath of the Wild was a joy to play. (Review)

4) Yakuza 0

I began Yakuza Zero not sure if I’d like it, and the slow opening hours made me a little concerned. But once I’d got stuck into the game, I absolutely fell in love with it. It’s a game that really shouldn’t work – you’ve got a serious, fairly dark central story supported by absolutely wacky side content.

And yet, Yakuza Zero finds a way to balance everything perfectly. It’s an experience, that’s for sure. Overall, I couldn’t recommend Yakuza Zero more highly. It’s a wild ride, and more than worth the asking price for this PC release. Pick it up, you won’t be disappointed. (Review)

5) Total War: Warhammer

Total War: Warhammer stands as one of the best in the series, an almost perfect blend that breathes new life into the franchise in just the way I hoped it would. Before Warhammer, I’d felt Total War was growing rather stale. But now, to me at least, it feels as fresh and exciting as it did all those years ago with the release of the original Shogun or Rome. (Review)

6) The Witcher 3

The Witcher 3 provides an extensive and comprehensive Witcher experience. Even after completing the game (120 hours) I still want to keep playing. It’s flawed, but fantastic. It can be exhausting at times and occasionally overwhelming, but it always manages to pull things together and keep you on track. It’s bloated, messy, frustrating and wonderful. And for all its problems, it’s still one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played. (Review)

7) Cyberpunk 2077

It’s pretty hard for me to recommend Cyberpunk 2077 in its current state. I’ve really loved it, but your experience may not be quite as smooth as mine. A friend of mine couldn’t even launch the game, let alone play it. So no, I can’t recommend it. Or, I’d say it’s currently a ‘play at your own risk’ kind of situation. If you can wait, I’d say wait. If not, you’d better accept this is far from perfect in its current state.

But that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it. I did. I had an absolute blast. And if the developers can patch those bugs, smooth out those rough edges, reintegrate a lot of those little immersive features they apparently cut and introduce the new kind of content I’ve described here, it will go down as one of the best games ever made. I guess the question is: can they do it? I sure hope so. (Review)

8) Horizon: Zero Dawn

Horizon Zero Dawn was excellent from start to finish. The few weak points – the human enemies / villain and the rather simplistic upgrades / modifications – don’t detract from what is one of the best games I’ve played this year. The main quest is engaging, the side content (beyond a handful of exceptions) is all worth your time with unique narratives, characters and encounters. The combat is great with a variety of tools and enemies with a welcome focus on player creativity and tactics. (Review)

9) Astral Chain

Astral Chain is a fantastic and enjoyable experience. It’s got a substantial quantity of content and plenty of gameplay depth to keep exploring beyond your initial run. It’s a timely reminder of just how colourful, unique and crazy video games can be. It’s pure arcade, action packed fun. (Review)

10) Alien: Isolation

Alien: Isolation initially struggled to win me over, but when it did, I was completely hooked. It’s an incredible piece of work and in many ways, it’s amazing it was made at all, given how risk-adverse AAA games have become. Isolation certainly isn’t going to be a game for everyone but I think a lot of people will come to adore it, despite its imperfections. (Review)

Now Playing: House of the Dying Sun (VR)

House of the Dying Sun is a tactical space shooter that you can play in or out of VR. I played it primarily in VR so that’s what this review will focus upon, but I did try a few missions out of VR to compare the experience.

Visually, the game is . . . basic. It reminds me a lot of the original Homeworld – the 1999 edition that is, not the remaster. And you know . . . I’m totally okay with that. Everything is blocky with simple textures, but it’s a clean visual style that’s easy to read even when things get hectic.

And the audio is also evocative of Homeworld with a lot of radio battle ‘chatter’ between ships. The music though is more reminiscent of the Battlestar Galactica remake and it really gets you pumped up during dogfights.

There’s a campaign mode with 14 missions to complete, each with primary and bonus objectives. As you progress through the campaign you’ll unlock new ships to your fleet – 3 additional fighters, 3 destroyers and a single frigate. You’ll need these (and the new weapons you’ll also unlock) to tackle the higher difficulty settings.

Completing the bonus objectives on a mission will grant you points you can spend to purchase various upgrades or equipment for your fleet and you can change the load out of each ship type prior to mission launch. Only by ship type, unfortunately – you can’t assign individual load outs to individual ships which would have been nice and really let you customise your fleet.

There’s also a tactical RTS style mode in which you can pause the game and assign orders – where ships should go and who they should target – but I must admit, I’ve not yet found any situation where it’s actually necessary to use, which I’m kind of happy about because it’s also pretty awkward to use in VR and, thankfully, you can issue simple orders (protect, attack, defend) in real-time just fine. It is useful though for simply switching between your different fighters and taking direct control of them and that’s where you’ll have the real fun in House of the Dying Sun.

The space combat feels pretty good but it’s also a little rough. The cockpit feels . . . too big, I guess? I never felt as immersed within it as I should. The scale of the ship also feels a little off and this makes precision flying kind of dangerous as it’s so easy to clip another object or ship and instantly be destroyed.

There’s not a great sense of impact when you use weapons or (and this is the worst part) when you take damage. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a lot of fun to fly and fight, but it’s lacking in a few ways that would really immerse you within the action.

The real problem House of the Dying Sun has though is the lack of content. I played through all 14 missions on the default difficulty in under two hours. The missions are all incredibly short, even if you play for the bonus objectives. And there’s no real variety to the missions at all – you warp into a map and must destroy a single (primary) target and a handful of optional (bonus) targets. Then . . . you warp out.

Some missions, even completing the bonus objectives, can be completed in 5 minutes or so. And the maps don’t offer a good variety either with just slightly different space backgrounds and slightly differently sized space rocks to fly around.

That’s not to say the game doesn’t have good replay value though – the additional difficulties and the short nature of each mission actually encourages repeat play. There’s no lengthy cut-scenes to sit through or tedious ‘fly to X’ or ‘scan Y’ stuff. You warp in and start shooting almost immediately. 

The story aspects are kept to a welcome minimum but they’re . . . neat, I guess? They give you some context for why you’re blowing shit up and I guess that’s all you really need. There’s also a ‘challenge’ mode in which you can fight increasingly tough waves of enemies which adds a little more value.

Overall, House of the Dying Sun is a fun, if limited, VR space shooter. I picked it up for a few quid in the sale and I can’t say I feel I haven’t gotten good value out of it, but the regular RRP seems a bit steep. It obviously can’t compete with the content or production value of Star Wars: Squadrons, but I never expected it to.

I’d certainly recommend you pick up Squadrons over this, but House of the Dying Sun isn’t a terrible alternative and I really do like the visual style and audio. It’s the closest I’ve come to feeling like I’m playing a Homeworld VR game and if that’s something that sounds appealing to you, be sure to give it a shot on sale.

6/10