PC GAME: Off-Road Drive - Review

Well,

Nothing like jumping from playing a RTS to doing a bit off dirty racing.

Here, we have a game which is just what it says on the package. A full 4x4 racing game based off real life off-road rally racing. As far as a game goes I will focus on 3 main aspects here, Gameplay, Graphics and Playability.

Now although my PC isnt as top-notch as it could be, the graphics on this game do look very nice. Although there is a lack of settings and changing any of the 3 options in the Settings didnt make any noticeable different the game still played fluidly and looked nice. And even though there are hardly any changeable options, this doesnt affect the game as it is. The only issue I noticed was that a few of the Thailand maps look very overly-orange, like an Essex girl with a spray tan, but then again the USA maps did feel very realistic so I can overlook this to a degree. So for the graphics, very nice!

The gameplay itself is very easy. The standard Up, Down, Left and Right for controls, Spacebar for handbreak but then its get a little fun using the 4x4 drive mode, differential lock and low/high gears. These driving options make for a fun race especially when you have a deep river or tall rockface to climb.

It must be said though, a major problem I had which was ultimately annoying, was at times I would get just stuck in the mud like above. I could run the same piece of track 5 times and get stuck at random times, in the same or different bits. This was most prominent using the above vehicle on Mud Pit/Loose Road exits. Every time I got stuck it meant having to restart the map, running the whole track again and hoping not to get stuck.

Not sure if its a compelte gameplay thing which I think it is, or I'm just a shit driver...

And the last part, Playability. Even though the getting stuck part gets really annoying the game itself on a whole is very fun and I can see myself coming back to it when I'm looking for a change in a racing game compared to the "ultra-realistic" games like the new Need For Speeds, where you spin out more than Catherine Wheel on Bonfire Night.

All in all, its a fun game to play. There arnt too many maps so anyone who is a bit race savvy can have it done in about a week or so, so IMHO the £29.99 price tag on Steam is a bit high, but it is worth about £20 as it is a nice game, the tracks themselves are well designed and the timings do give you a challenge.

Graphics: 7/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Settings: 4/10
Overall Rating: 7/10

Playing Again: Probably

PC GAME: Legends Of Pegasus - Review

Greetings,

While having some time on my hands I decided to jump back to my sci-fi gaming routes and see what was new on the market.  Here I found Legends Of Pegasus:

This game describes itself as a 4X, but then again when it comes to this genre we have to measure again SOASE (Sins Of A Solar Empire). I must say LoP (Legends of Pegasus, as I will refer to it) does not really fit into this category. Considering in Sins you can scroll in smoothly between viewing ships in a planetary orbit to a full solar system, LoP hardly does this...

As far as graphics go, the game itself is very beautifully created, with detailed high-quality models that dont have the over-subscribed poly-count that most modern games are using now, but then this is marred by having no fine-tuning graphics settings like a cheap Xbox port. The textures themselves show up nicely, the mapping quality is lovely and the planets are very pretty on the eyes.

The GUI on the other hand is more complicated, its not as intuitive as you would think, and there is a major issue I noticed with the tooltips when hovering my mouse over objects, as it doesn't stay there for long. Another issue too is that the GUI is not as thought out as it can be, and not enough clarification on what you need to click on. While in Planet mode I wanted to destroy some houses (because I'm evil that way), and finding the Demolish option taken a couple of minutes, as its a kind-of hidden diggery thing icon called Tear Down.

I must say though, one feature which I liked very much was the Ship Editor, which is a full layout system which allows you to fine-tune just what you want installed on your ship. In here you can specify engines, power modules, weapons and even the specific types of Armor if you going again enemies with Antimatter, Projectile or even stone weaponry. This is both a good and bad feature though, as although it is very fun to use, it can get tedious after a while, and the system is plagued by the tooltip issue and a lack of description between the types of weapons. While playing I found at least 20 different types of projectile turrets, ranging from single, double, triple or quadruple barreled, standard and long-range, and different star ratings, and above all this no major clarification in the tooltip stats (which are a pain to read). I just wanted the Spud Gun Launcher...

Another interesting feature is the Planet Mode, which looks very similar to the screenshot, though in the Update 1.02 version I was playing was a little more complicated. Its easy enough to drag and drop which buildings you want to construct onto an empty space on the planet, although I still have no idea what each colour means as this was never explained, I guess a tutorial wouldn't go amiss on this game either.

On the left hand pane you can fine tune many options, like how much to fund your ground troops, or to tax the hell out of your citizens, or even how much your TV budget can be. For people who like fine control over these options I'd say revert back to something like SimCity 4, this aint your cup of tea...

For the last section, Overall Gameplay. While the main game itself plays as a full rip-off of Civilization V, once an enemy fleet appears it automatically swaps to a badly-controlled RTS game. Trying to accurately select units and move them into the battle was hard enough, and even setting some flanking options not only did bugger all, but made me waste time and loose a portion of my ships.

And there are also many other things this game falls flat on its face and fails at. The lack of controls in itself is disturbing, and is made even worse when my WASD camera controls just decided to stop working, making me have to move the camera with mouse-scrolls and edge scrolling, the settings menu itself is very bare. The interface names still look like development stage information as if the game was still in a Beta stage, the cutscenes and sound kept cutting out leaving me to close and reopen my save-game and miss the story.

The game although fails alot, what it did do right it was ok with, the 3D graphics were continuous and no glitching errors, the explosions and battle sounds never gave me a problem and the Create-O-Matic Ship Puzzle Generator was fun, having to fine-tune a ship for speed, strength and firepower.

All in all, this game had the best of intentions, and looked great, but now turns out to be (at least for me) a serious letdown, a waste of time and the bastard love child of Firaxis, Maxis and Relic...

Welcome

Greetings,

And welcome to the new blog. Posts will start soon with a plethora of subjects and content. We all shall enjoy the fruits of my labour!