Games Discussion Thread

First off, let's get some obvious history out of the way. Originally, the original team for EC first drew up some hype for this game via making what was basically a wishlist of features, that essentially boasted that they were hoping for a Planetside IN THE GRIM DARK FUTURE. Unfortunately, a lot of the original team was moved around past this point, and to make matters worse, Bandai-Namco, the publisher for the game, put it's foot down and demanded a release date despite the fact the game was still technically in an alpha state. Credit where it's due, the EC team has knuckled down and prepped as best as they can for the release.

I'm not going to use this review to shame on the original idea or other such things. I'm going to focus on what the game is, and whether what we got is fun or not.

STORY
The story is more or less an excuse plot, so thin that I can't even say it's trying to rip off Dawn of War. In short, the various factions have some mysterious reason for trying to hold onto the planet Arkhona, leading to the assault by Chaos Space Marines, Eldar, and Orks with the Space Marines coming to the planet's aide. To make things better, a Tyranid Hivefleet is descending on the planet, infesting many of the underground barracks and facilities for now, but the threat of them boiling up onto the surface is still there.

CHARACTER CREATION AND PROGRESSION
When you first start the game, you start by choosing your faction, followed by your subfaction in the main faction. This mostly dictates cosmetic and taunt flair, so feel free to focus on which one you think is coolest or more interesting. After this point, you can jump into the garrison to brush up on your skills, head into the game, or take a look at your advancements and loadouts. I highly suggest using the game's pre-made loadouts for a bit prior, as they come pre-loaded with modifications, trinkets, and other things to make your first few rounds easier.

Speaking of loadouts, let us discuss progression. Your progression is split into two resources: Experience that grows your rank and grants you Advancement Points, and gainable tokens, which most races call Requisition but Orks refer to as Teef.
Advancement Points are used to unlock various pieces of wargear that you use on your loadouts, from grenades and support items, to Trinkets that offer smaller buffs and Wargear items that drastically increase your stats. Each piece of gear does bring itself Loadout Point costs, which most classes only are able to hold around 1000 Loadout Points worth of gear.
Your Requisition and Teef, meanwhile, are used to enhance your arsenal of weapons via the store. You're able to direct-buy the standard version of a weapon via the use of your resources, or you have various degrees of crates, that will grant you modifications, unique weapon variants, and other useful items.
In addition, however, the shop allows you access to things you can buy with Rogue Trader Credits, a cash-shop currency. This cash-shop currency is used primarily for cosmetic items for your character's visual look, however there is variant weapons you can purchase with RTC to grant you a type of weapon with much more unique visual look. It should be noted that the RTC weapons are built 'pre-modded' however, so you are unable to tweak these weapons like those you can pick off the shelf, and these weapons don't feature any statline different than average for modified weapons. The big draw, is, again, appearance and look, and who doesn't like a plasma cannon with a bunch of warp-tainted flesh stretched over it?

GAMEPLAY
At it's current state, Eternal Crusade is an asymmetrically-balanced team shooter, most of it's gameplay focused along capture location gamemodes. Each faction plays slightly differently, with a major focus of some kind with them. Space Marines and Chaos Marines, for example, are somewhat similar, though Space Marines are more tech-based and focus on general enhancement, while Chaos uses dark sorcery and chaos marks to grant them bonuses as well as maluses. Eldar, with their focus on Aspects, are highly specialized, one of the smallest targets in the game and highly mobile, but don't get nearly as many improvements to survivability., while the Orks are a bit haphazard with their linear growth, have some accuracy issues but can hit hard when they do, and have a unique WAAAGH! buff that triggers if the match goes on too long. In general beyond that, many of the factions share similar elements: Chaos and Eldar both have sorcery as their support class, while Orks and Marines focus on the use of healing vials from Apothacaries and Mad Doks, all but the Eldar's air assault class all have simularities, and so on and so forth.
In general, EC's time to kill is surprisingly short considering the 40k mythos, however I don't got much of an issue with it. Remember, every time they wanna say how awesome something can cause damage, they tend to compare it to Ceramite, aka the same material Imperial power armor is constructed of. However, anyone not playing as an Eldar will probably find themselves annoyed at vehicles quickly early on- Eldar start off with Dark Reapers armed with a decently-damaging launcher and Fire Dragoons with meltaguns, which can cause quick damage to vehicles if given the chance, whereas most races will have to rely on their tanks until the faction gets ahold of a few spare lascannons or meltas of their own. Quad-Guns will probably annoy you early on similarly, as these map-placed turrets will mince through even a Predator or Trukk pretty damn fast. Luckily, you tend to only see those on siege-based maps, and I expect they will become less of a concern once advanced weapons filter in to loadouts over the weeks after launch.
Also of note is the Tyranid hive gamemode, which while it is not the main focus of the game right now, it is enjoyably fun, essentially a dungeon crawl facing off against seas of termigaunts and hormigaunts with Warriors acting as bosses. It certainly has room to grow, but it's enjoyable as a distraction from the tug-of-wars of the major gamemodes.

IMMERSION
From an outward view, it does kinda show it's original design choices with how the maps are built. Many of these facilities have roads for vehicles built in a very Planetside/MOBA mindset of obvious vehicle lanes, and the current selection of maps all feel like they come from the same general area of the planet's surface, making it feel like that if you could reach the top of the mountaints you'd see another of the maps. On the other hand, each facility you fight in is full of little details, from strange prop setups that make you question what's truly going on in Arkhona, to the general gothic appearance of it all, I'm reminded strongly of my review of Deathwatch: Enhanced Edition with how the setpieces just work to sell you into the world you're in.

TL;DR
A week ago, I was partly hesitant at the current state of the game and if it would have a chance to, well, even be a decent lobby shooter by the time we reached the mandated release date. The last few patches, however, has eased much of my doubts. I can't nessisarily say that EC does a lot different over, say, Space Marine's near-dead multiplayer, but it has it's own ideas and feel to it, and has enough potential by itself to stand on it's own two feet. Whether we will see it eventually hit the lofty goals the original team set for it or not, I don't feel too bad about opting into the Founder's program ages back and enjoying the ride I've had with Eternal Crusade. See you all ingame, heretics, knife-ears, greenskins and loyalists!

ACTUAL SPOILER FOR SAINT'S ROW IV AHEAD:



Just how this game can be set IN the Saints Row universe on a future Earth has me scratching my head, though. After all, Earth gets DESTROYED in SR IV, and that's not set in the distant future.

EDIT: According to a comment on that very same article, in one of the endings of Gat Out Of Hell, God recreates the Earth, but the Saints never come together. So maybe Agents Of Mayhem is set in an AU? I kinda hoped Gat Out Of Hell wouldn't be canonized, because it's a bit toss.

80 days - To travel around the world, west to east from London to London. In what is a story based game about adventuring, route optimization, wondrous stories and relaxing rides through an alternate 1872 as the valet to a well known gentleman who has made a wager.
Along the way you will need to manage funding, items, packing, and selecting the routes to follow. It sounds simple, but it is complex enough to keep you busy.

To get it out of the way, yes, this is phone game. Do not let that scare you off, all it truly means for you as a PC gamer is that even your most outdated toaster can run it, the controls are simple and they do not need to be any more complex to do what you need to do. Game mechanics themselves do not suffer either, with a great majority of your options being simple choices in dialogue. Choices that actually do matter many times, with stories to tell you that I found surprisingly pleasant and interesting to read.

You can embark on an adventure and enjoy a richly filled world while balancing your own interest at exploration and your task as valet to keep monsieur Fogg in good condition and comfortable, on track to win his wager. It is not difficult to make it in 80 days if you try and plan things out in advance, but often there will be opportunities and potential rewards just a little off your chosen path. A lot of tempting things can drag you out to somewhere you didn't intend and it can both be a great boon to your funds and travel time or a disaster. With every city and most travel lines in the game having their own or connected stories, you will need multiple playthroughs to see them all. And even then it may not be likely unless you actively try.
Losing is alright as well. The wager won't bankrupt you, and you will be able to just try again. After all, why bet only once? A playthrough will take about an hour, perhaps a bit more or less depending on how much of a rush you are in.

But then there are some things that you should probably not get very hyped about either. Racing other people? Live multiplayer feed? Unless you actively go looking on the map for them, you likely won't find others except near the start. Even then, there is no interactions with them and I have yet to notice any sort of multiplayer feed. At best there are some icons on the map of where others went before you, and some things you aren't told and have to find out the hard way(Leaving a train at a midway stop when you have a ticket to the final destination of the train voids your ticket. You aren't allowed to get back on with the next train passing by. Some routes don't let you resume at all if you buy only a partway ticket, and so on)
The game is surprisingly easy to break as well, crashing or freezing if you try to do too much at once. A good autosave system helps with this, so you likely won't have issues- Just start it back up and you're back to where you were.
But in the end, these are small issues that don't actually hold it back.

80 days is a great game that tells you a story, while giving you full control over the story it tells, with excellently fitting graphics and amazingly done mood setting. Its flaws are few and easily forgivable, with a very competitive price to make it definitely a worthwhile buy.