Warhammer Total Bullshit

Or...
Napoleon Total war 2: Electric boogaloo

I own Warhammer Total War; it's a good game... now there's Warhammer Total War 2... around a year after the first. As a long term fan of the Total War series since Rome Total War, with hundreds of hours invested...

Way too much time wasted...

...I remember when Empire: Total war was followed in short order by Napoleon Total war... Both were inferior entries in the series and there was very little time between them. It's clear looking at these games the same engine, similar rules, nations, etc, these are practically the same game. I attempted to play Napoleon, probably some time in 2015; and it was a buggy mess. Particularly when fighting the AI in sieges especially when they were defending... This was after they had essentially "fixed" the game and weren't offering any more major updates.

The defenders, such as they were, would form up in a line.... this line did not conform to their fortifications and would often cut across them in amusing ways; also they wouldn't advance... or retreat. All they would do is wheel around to face your army and SOMETIMES their soldiers would auto-fire when you marched in range.

Total Incompetence.

...get it?

Anyway, Total war empire wasn't any better, ultimately Napoleon was the better game... but the release of what was essentially a clone that barely did any better was just shocking to me. Of course, SEGA and Creative Assembly have shown themselves to be just as good at scamming their audience as any other AAA publisher or dev so in retrospect it isn't really all that surprising.

All I can be certain of, is that I put off getting either of the above until both were heavily discounted and I still felt ripped off.

With the above in mind... here comes Warhammer Total War 2... And I'm supposed to pony up brand new $60 video game money for what looks like an admittedly large DLC pack?!? Nah mate, pull the other one... it's got bells on!

That's all really, not particularly surprising behaviour from SEGA and Creative Assembly; proving once again that the customer is always wrong, and should always be prepared to throw more money to get something approaching the full experience.

I've had enough of SEGA and CA, I won't pay full price for their games ever again.

Keeper3 - Publishers gonna publish (i.e. be complete arseholes).

Shantae: Half Genie Hero

Half Genie; fully hot!

Ummm hello there Shantae, um... oooh...

I mean, it's good and stuff... yeah!

Full disclosure: I kickstarted this game.

So, a platformer with a character I'd never heard of by developer I'd never noticed... so I kick-started it; WHAT COULD GO WRONG?!?

lol no

I don't remember why, but when I saw Shantae I was ready and willing to kickstart it, for Mighty no 9 I had no interest... anyway, this is about Shantae!

Solid gameplay

I've never been a huge platform gamer, but when you play a good platformer the thing you notice least when it's done right is the basic mechanics of movement and combat. Looking back at my playtime I'd say the basic gameplay works well, shantae just moves well and responds quickly most of the time. One problem I have with the gameplay as it goes on is the dances that let you take animal forms... you end up with 12 of them! It can be annoying as the menu system cycles through the whole 12 in batches of four but at least the gameplay pauses while you do this.

Each animal form has a specific use but many of them can also be used elsewhere for some utility to skip some annoyance in a level or some such.

Ultimately though, it's rare for you to feel like you've been cheated by the controls or game mechanics... the game could be a little harder though?

Lovely graphics, art style and writing

Lovely...

It just looks gorgeous; I love the resurgence of pure 2-D sprites and such. It's great!

Colourful, well drawn and animated, and simple things like making sure the foreground enemies and dangers don't blend into the background. It's just great.

And the writing! It's no Shakespear, but there's humour, warmth and enough compelling story here to make a good experience.

Too much Backtracking

Shantae games are famous for requiring backtracking, and I've never been a big fan of this. I think it's an interesting way of reusing areas but sometimes you just get sick of coming back to area A or B so many times... Still, it's not quite enough to wear out the welcome of the game I just think they could back it off just a little.

Often you'll do everything you can do in a level the first time you go through it... and barely be a quarter done with it because you don't have this or that animal form or you don't have the attack for a form; most forms are helpless initially without the attack for that form; meaning you have to get nearly 24 collectables in order to complete all the levels properly!!!

Ultimately

Shantae is good, it'll soak up 4 to 5 hours on your first playthrough... it looks great, plays pretty good and has a decent story to boot. It is a bit short in my opinion, but it's a $20 game; not like a Kane & Lynch $60 piece of BS.

Maybe kickstarter isn't all bad?

Shutup.

Keeper3 - Quality platformers in 2016/17? No wai!