Except that I don't. Nobody does. A animated series on the S.P.E.C.I.A.L system? Great. A 15 second teaser for the Big League perk? Fine. Achievement list leak? Pedestrian. The first page of the manual that just describes the button mapping? Desperate.
Bethesda has kept the news stream about this game down to a torturous drip. The thing is... no critic has actually played the game yet. I think they were shown a closed doors expo a while back and everyone loved it, but nobody has kicked it's tires.
We've heard big talk about how ahead of schedule they were, how the game was finished the exact second it was announced. Let's hope this vow of silence is to preserve surprise and nothing else. May your inevitable bugs be cosmetic, Fallout 4. We're all ready for you.
Also the next Tomb Raider is launching the same day. That's just... stupid.
And for the first time in a long time I wasn't at least 30% disappointed in it. The GTX 980 is a knockout. I paid $700 for my 780 two years ago and this $500 number wipes the floor with it. I could fry an egg on the old guard, but this puppy is almost cool to the touch!
Holy crap, you guys. Holy crap. Wanna max out GTA V? This card. Right here.
Remember, turning humanity into a collective hive-mind is a "victory" scenario.
But first things first, lemmie set the mood:
I may have been a early booster for Civ: Beyond Earth, but eventually I came around to the consensus. The folks who claimed it was an overpriced re-skin of Civ V became more right than I wanted them to be. But I really liked the dense and overwhelming tech tree and little things like how your military upgraded itself for free was a huge relief.
And unfortunately, Rising Tide is not the momentous step forward it's biggest detractors want. But it fixes my biggest and most personal problems I had with the game. So if I'm being perfectly honest... two of the best games I've ever had in "Civ" were with Rising Tide.
The most obvious changes are the overhauled diplomacy system and aquatic settling. What's something the original Civ, shackled to human history, could never do? Cities in the ocean! While it is a neat trick and potentially makes the most boring part of Civ worth fighting over, it's no where near as game changing as what happens when your supposed trade ally drags you into a war on two fronts.
Pretty and functional.
But lets get the little stuff out of the way. For one, the tech web is much more user friendly. Stuff like wonders and units are now color coded and there's a handy search bar if you just can't remember what to research to get those handy solar collectors. I always forget those. Also most techs give a little affinity xp instead of large payouts and you can combine affinities to unlock special upgrades and units. Want your gunners to be able to heal automatically every turn? How about a dedicated medic unit? They make defensive builds much more fun
AI players also won't bee line to the easiest victory anymore, resources are much easier to find, and you can mod your leader's traits to upend the vanilla game's draconian restrictions on health. I reached a point where I was sending out three settlers at once with a 40 health level when I was finished! They'll uh... probably patch that out eventually.
It also seemed like I was just making more money (scuse' me,"energy") in each game overall. Even jacked up the difficulty to see if that changed anything. Loosening the purse strings just made the game more fun. Though certainly not any easier. No, my biggest enemy is still not having a plan for the end game. But I haven't even touched upon the best part of this... slightly overpriced expansion.
I say slightly because the soundtrack is honestly worth $20 to me. Two more glorious hours of work from 3 amazing composers. Kirkhope, Knorr, and Cohen completely outdid themselves again. But they still aren't the best thing about RT. That would be the completely overhauled diplomacy system.
Diplomacy is now all about deals. Every Civ generates diplomatic capital that can be spent on deals with other nations. Give Bartra 10 DC per turn and have your outposts grow 30% faster. They'll also ask you for such an arrangement netting you more DC... but possibly giving them a severe advantage. The thing, the brilliant thing, is that these deals get stronger if you ally with that country. There are deals such as "every trade route that nets resources now nets 3 times as many" that are totally worth defending the weakest player in the game from a war on multiple fronts.
Polystralia was single-handedly bankrolling my entire military's supply line. I couldn't support a force half my size without him. The AI felt threatened by a couple players, saw how much the others feared me, declared war, then promptly hid behind my skirt.
I thought I had that game in the bag. For once, the end game became the most interesting part. I made peace with some leaders, bulldozed over others, and that was singularly the best game of Civ I ever played. Rising Tide made that possible.
I'll never forget it.
Though I wish the leaders would text me less in between turns. They're all really clingy.
That was your best work yet.There's nothing to say that hasn't been exhausted by every game critic alive. So here's my spoiler free 2 cents. The cameo I was holding out for happened and the arc of Handsome Jack came to a spectacular close. Then the whole final act happened and that was just super awesome gravy. I couldn't be happier, I don't remember a game that has made me laugh out loud this much. I really can't. Though Witcher 3 got some good jabs in.
You deserve better then what I've been. You may be a metaphor for my creative work ethic but that's no excuse. Two reviews are forthcoming this month and at least 15 posts total. May I loose a finger should this not come to pass.
Bethesda software remembers. And that got more asses in seats than anything they'd ever done, so they went with the same gambit on Fallout 4:
Aaaaaaaaaand... I love it. I love it, love it. That is the entire Fallout experience expressed over one minute of live action. I am all for this to become a launch tradition.
In the beginning, I only liked Beyond Earth. There weren't enough leaders, the draconian health system kept your colony under 7 cities at the best of times, and the trade route system was OP as fuq'. The trade route thing was fixed pretty quickly, but Firaxis needed to take a cold, hard, look at their game and make several changes to it's foundation if it didn't want to just be a re-skin of Civ V.
They've done it. They've really done it. I'd like to finish a few more games before my formal review, but I am having a god. Damn. Blast.
