I still find Civil War Generals 2 to be a really fun and challenging game. The visuals are still perfectly readable and charming.

Similar to the 1997 point-n-click Blade Runner game. The rights to all the aspects of that movie were such a mess that the developers decided not to use any footage or audio from the game because they honestly couldn’t figure out who owned what, and made it follow a new main character which was an obvious “Not-Deckard” who was chasing replicants in a similar but ever so changed variation on the plot of the movie.

That’s why I called it “16ish”. It is probably taking some liberties to improve the graphics that wouldn’t have been available in the 90s, but it is trying get those nostalgia neurons firing. Point is, the aesthetic is intentionally not photo realistic, so missing out on Arnold’s face isn’t the biggest problem in the world.

The headline seems a bit overly snarky and dismissive of a small studio dealing with the kind of licensing problems that just come with big properties and image rights to expensive actors. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened in a game.

It sounds like without the image rights, there won’t be any closeup cutscenes of Arnold’s face, but given that the game play is a 16ish bit throwback aesthetic, it actually doesn’t seem as distracting as it sounds.

I mean, this looks fine to me:

Maybe they aren’t allowed to do an accurate Arnie voice impression, but if all the character audio is crunched up to feel more retro, that might not be a problem either.

I really enjoyed it as an XCOM combat-ish game that felt like there was work done to make it feel like it belongs in the Gears Of War universe. It’s not infinitely replayable because the campaign has mandatory side-missions that are generated from a limited template and begin to feel stale once you’ve seen all the templates, and by the endgame you have so many special abilities unlocked in your squad that it kind of drifts away from any semblance of feeling like combat tactics and into a puzzle game about min-maxing abilities to combo chain them together (this opinion might read a little oddly but if you’ve played enough turnbased tactical games you notice many game riding this line, with some going extreme one way or the other). It is worth a sale price though if you need a turn based combat fix.

The expectation that it was an open world modern style Fallout game does seem to be a theme among people who didn’t like it. That wasn’t helped by pre-release marketing that emphasized it came from the studio that made New Vegas (despite the writers and game leads all being different).

I went in to the game without expectations and found the structure of the game closer to a classic BioWare RPG. Rather than a single huge open world it was a series of curated hubs to travel between. At those hubs there was space to explore but it was more limited and curated than a full open world. The more curated approach meant that the game could be designed with certain builds in mind since players would interact with certain areas coming from known directions, allowing alternate routes or quest solutions for different builds to be placed.

Accepting it as a hub based RPG that leaned into a specialized build made the game click for me.

Setting aside prices, I’ve seen an unexpected amount of sourness directed at the first game. While the first game wasn’t a greatest of all time RPG and had flaws, I found it overall enjoyable enough and it was clearly a project with some passion that I didn’t regret sinking time into it.

I expect similar of the sequel, with hopefully improvements based on feedback from the first game. I plan to have fun with the game, and it is a bit tiring to see things like the pricing prompting people to badmouth the game itself when they are separate things.

Am I going to pay $80? No. No I’m not. This is a single player RPG though. There’s no FOMO of getting left behind on the multiplayer unlocks or the lore of a new season. It’s a singleplayer game. Put it on the wishlist and buy it on a sale. Simple as.

The last Black Ops I cared about was 2. I could almost feel the developers of that one screaming that they wanted to break out of the COD mold. It actually had a lot of cool, if underbaked ideas. There were the sidemissions where you commanded an NPC squad ala Brothers In Arms, there were the pre-mission loadouts where after beating a mission set in the past you could go back and load up with future guns, there were multiple endings driven by choices in the missions.

There was a lot of stuff going on in that game which if it had been given a longer development cycle than the COD treadmill, and more freedom to stray from COD mainstays could have been something interesting. All of the above features could have really been pushed and refined beyond the small implimentation they ended up as. BO2 also tied the setting back to the cold war era roots, which makes it far more interesting that the cutout metal angular girder future design that is just the most generic looking thing ever. Call Of Duty Advanced Warfare was forgotten for a reason and it’s disappointing that Black Ops ended up eating all its aesthetics.

None of this matter of course, since no matter how many story trailers they release or how much people like me talk about what could make single player good, in the end the series is kept alive by tweaked out multiplayer addicts so I suppose it is all just a waste of time to think about.

objective

MEDIA APPRECIATION DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY, GOOD NIGHT!

I feel like Wasteland 3 improved on your complaints specifically, and in general it was a lot more tightened up. WL2 while good just sort of seemed to go on and on and on, especially when you go to LA and essentially have to start over. The game world was just too big, and much of it pointless.

WL3 presents the central conflict right from the start, which is a faction based dispute. Dealing with it involves radiating from the central location and then going back to it. It builds more faction investment by creating ongoing interactions with them, and quest choices will affect standing with factions which have tangible effects in the game world (certain vendors will or won’t trade with you, certain factions will staff your HQ, different factions get equipment based on quest choices, and certain endings and location outcomes vary). I think this helped make it feel like less of a drag than WL2’s mystery which was sort of vague and didn’t really involve much back and forth with the player until the end.

WL3’s combat is a lot snappier. In WL2 assault rifles were overpowered so much that combat was just sort of a lot of midrange shooting. WL3 arguably overcorrected by making assault rifles possibly the worst weapon type, pushing to have run’n’gun SMG or shotgun party members, 1 or 2 snipers per party, and specialists like leaders, hackers, and medics playing important varied roles.

WL3 uses talking heads for important characters, and they convey a lot more personality. With recruitable special NPCs there is actual voiced party banter, and special NPCs have their own loyalities which can make them leave a party under extreme circumstances. Non recruitable major NPCs also have more memorable personalities, and given that many of them represent factions you have to decide which ones to make friends and which enemies, which can be tough to call if you are playing blind.

That came out four years later.

Me, but when I gave the stripper money in Duke Nukem 3D.