Settlers 6 Review

Settlers 6 is a Real Time Strategy game, which to be frank does not really reflect at all the Settlers series or rather the original title or its three good successors. It takes the macro management as well as the unlimited expansion of population completely away and leaves the player with a game that mostly plays itself. You still build the old buildings to gain the resources but then you can't do anything really all you can do once you have the complete basic economic base is sending streams of units to the enemy since you have no more population as space to expand further. You can't use you economic power expand further and thus build more units because simply there is not the cap limit all you can do is watch slowly the soldiers be trained and I mean slowly because it is a process that is even slower then in the originals. But in the original games it didn't matter because there was always some economic concern that would keep you busy even when you were waiting on the units to be trained. Basically Settlers 6 is a crippled version of the original series just like Settlers 5. If you are looking to play some old school settlers I suggest playing 2, 3 or 4 all three are good and all three can be played on XP and Vista.
The Graphics are ok and fully 3D but then again if you have nothing to do then even staring at pretty graphics seems awfully dull.
Atmosphere is lost completely and as for AI and Balance well those both don't really matter since you are basically playing a RTS with unit limit, which is slow paced but still C&C/Dawn of War style. So basically you send hordes of units against each other and then do that until one has build the wrong type of units/defenses and the other can actually begin damaging the opponents lair and which point the game is almost over.
The interface is very simple in fact it is so simple that you don't even have to think to do anything...since the little things that you can do are brightly advertised and all the player has to do is click the big button to which for some reason no arrows a pointing but bright colours do the trick just the same.
It is a lot like playing AOE3 utterly boring the game itself has nothing really to offer to the player. The pace is to slow to make the combat interesting and to uneventful to make it worth the wait. Basically you will end up staring at some town in the middle ages then to eventually only watch the soldiers fight in old settlers tradition.

The Score:
Gameplay 3/10 You click some bright buttons and the rest is on auto-pilot.
AI 1/10 AI...yeah well it has way to much control basically the game is a self contained AI.
Graphic 4/10 YAY 3D RTS...wait old news nothing really outstanding here either.
Storyline 4/10 OK Story...but how many players play RTS games only for the story?
Sound 2/10 Pretty uneventful and like the general game dull.
Balance 1/10 Yes it is so balanced that you can send troops against each other for hours...to no effect.
Atmosphere 2/10 Atmosphere...oh you mean that thing from the old settlers games? Yeah that is gone.
Interface 3/10 So simple that a four year old could play this game sleeping...and still win...
Design 5/10 Design is decent.
Overall:2.7/10

Final word
Settlers 6 is another proof that good preceding titles do not make a good successor, like settlers 5 it is not really a settlers game and very boring at the same time. If you feel like banging your head on your desk, staring paint dry or even at a blank screen...grass grow etc. then Settlers 6 might be an alternative but I' am sure you can find something better to do with your time then that. So overall Settlers 6 is definitely one of the worst RTS games I have ever played.

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Mass Effect (PC) Review

Mass Effect is a third person shooter with a strong RPG component. It is a strong one track storyline it does allows for some variations along the way bot overall does not alot off deviation. The Gameplay is very direct, but the vehicle portion is very sluggish and at times uncomfortable. While you are playing with colleague AIs they do not really help for the most part it plays like a solo-game. The game does allow the user to change gear and modify the gear to some extent.
The AI is generally not as impressive as we have seen in titles like STALKER or Far Cry, but it does give you a decent run for your money. The friendly AI is close to useless because it has a severe waypoint sickness which often fails with the most basic tasks...like leaving an elevator.
There are a lot of videos to tell the story but those are all in-game sequences since the programmers seem to have had the wish that the costume gear could always be seen. Which is how the rendered videos were lost...
The Graphic is very unimpressive neither it nor the physics engine have big points that have to be mentioned. The game does not suffer under said graphic it is adequate and allows even a slower PC to run the game. I explain the lack of high level textures and physics with a Console release, I suspect that EA did not want to do two sets of graphics. So they set out to let the PC run with console graphic. This decision only stands out when the camera is zoomed in close to something in a video when you can see how low the textures are, and if you look at the faces of the characters.
The storyline is definitely one of Mass Effects major strong points, it is quite intriguing and allows for some immersion. A nice degree of detail is supplied and it does have a good means of telling, there are also several smaller side stories which provide background and sometimes just fun. However the overall storyline is very linear, we have seen some games trying on player directed endings in some games. But generally most games are still based on a strict storyline which does not deviate whatever you may want to do.
Sound effects in combat are adequate, all conversations are spoken and subtitles are rare considering the volume of speech that is a lot background chatter as well as every conversation that the character has. This makes the it far more interesting to play Mass Effect.
The game balance is acceptable, it often tends to lean on the player's side and makes it very easy to complete missions. However this guarantees progress for players and limits the time invested in running around without knowing what to do to move on or simply dying over and over again without finding away to complete some impossible mission. Mostly because there is nothing hard about completing these missions.
The Atmosphere in Mass Effect is good it emerges the player in the story and makes the game almost addicting while playing it through.
The interface is rather simple everything is provided in tips and information to the user you can always ask some AI what now? And they will tell you, the interface itself is mouse based. Conversations as well as combat and movement are mostly done via mouse the keyboard provides little help.
The General game design is quite good, while playing Mass Effect I was reminded off Tron 2.0 also a good game for Shooter/RPG marriages which had a good storyline and interesting characters as well as a intriguing universe.
Overall Mass Effect is a game worth playing.

The Score:
Gameplay 7/10 Generally decent gameplay but sometimes just odd. As well as bad control off vehicles.
AI 4/10 Enemy AI is decent but the allies are plain horrible.
Graphic 6/10 It looks a bit old but its EA so what do you expect they cut cost where they can.
Storyline 10/10 Great Story.
Sound 7/10 Voice for all characters, in combat the sounds seem a bit flat or miss a few shots here and there.
Balance 6/10 To easy most of the time.
Atmosphere 7/10 Pretty good, but suffers under graphic and sound as well as balance issues.
Interface 6/10 Generally good but there are somethings that are not ideal.
Design 8/10 Quite good design wise they did come up with some interesting things at this front.
Overall:6.7/10

Final word
I would say that Mass Effect is a good game providing around 12 hours off solid solo playing and fun. After that you will most likely be hunting achievements or have stopped playing the game. Mass Effect mostly gleams with its strong storyline. The learning curve is under an hour so it will take no time to pick it up.

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