Rome II is the game that just keeps on giving, though admittedly a stream of updates was to be expected following the initial launch which was greeted with shouts of anger and frustration about bugs and poor balancing. Things have certainly come a long way with five major patches having been delivered thus far and more certainly on the way.
We haven’t only seen patches though as the game has been changing with more than just bug fixes.
It’s been an interesting week, all things considered – Steam has gone from happily sitting upstairs on your desktop PC to charging into the living room and demanding your full attention. Short on space, I’ve been running the whole ‘PC under the TV’ thing for almost a month, so Valve announcing their amazing new Steam Machines was a bit of an anti-climax for me. I am still however curious about their rather odd-looking controller, which seems to finally be looking towards making controller-based gaming a little more palatable for PC users.
But what have we been playing this past seven days? Let’s take a look.
The evenings are starting to draw in close, the weather is on the turn, the Eurogamer Expo is coming at the end of the month and oh yes, Grand Theft Auto V is coming out this week. If there is one title which might serve to keep the limelight off the new console launches in a couple of months, it will be GTA which I am sure will still be all over the place. Be that for the right or wrong reasons, that isn’t for me to say. I do know though that Our Week in Games next Sunday will see me talking about the game. Back to today, hit the jump and see what we have been playing.
I have fond memories of the Total War series, I spent many an hour playing the original Rome and the two Medieval titles. Empire was interesting, but I was never able to sink my teeth into it like I would have liked. The Shogun title meanwhile never really stuck with me, I just don’t have the interest in the history or the understanding of the culture to really invest. Rome II then is a welcome return to the time periods which initially got my attention.
It has been a hectic weekend finally actually moving my PC and starting to live in my flat. Not a long intro at all this Week, so let us see what Our Week in Games has been…
With a gentle whisper the embargo for coverage of Total War: Rome II has lifted and I would assume that many sites are going live with their reviews. We here at The Reticule are in no rush to deliver our Verdict’s right away, and thanks to my flat moving and two job shenanigans I’ve only managed to play about 8 hours of the game so far. In a game of this size, that really isn’t enough time to really dig into everything. What I have done though is gather some brief early thoughts together, which you can read after the break.
The next couple of months are shaping up to provide fans of Grand Strategy (capitalised because they are Grand of course) games with a difficult choice, do they go for Rome II: Total War or Europa Universalis IV? It is most certainly going to be a good time for those who like to pretend they can rule the small known world in either the time of the Roman Empire or the whole globe across three centuries of monarchistic back-stabbing. How best to see how these two games shape up than with two videos which were released to the wild today.
While Nick was busy actually playing Rome II, I wimped out. I’ve never been one to get stuck in the nitty gritty of the real-time battles in the Total War series and the fear of getting obliterated caused me to sit back and let Nick get involved. Of course, Nick got a bit blown away too. The key difference, rather than being wiped out by the army with a clear strategic advantage, had I played, I would have taken that advantage and squandered it.
Sun Tzu has very little to say about attacking an entrenched force that holds high ground, consists of greater numerical superiority and contains elephants, chariots and what can only be described as ‘great balls of fire.’ What he does say about the matter basically boils down to ‘don’t bother.’