Recent reviews by A Good Joe

The Total War series has always appealed to me both for its historical accuracy and its gameplay mechanics. Well, out of the blue, the developers of the game released a patch that turns half my Roman generals into women.
What’s the big deal, it’s just a unit icon, you say. Well, in this game you’re supposed to manage personal relationships and entourages for your elite troops. They breed and produce offspring whose family tree is up to me to manage. Only now, none of it makes any sense! I can’t act out those realistic stories about my heroic Roman Generals, or feel like I’m truly operating the Roman Empire, in this game anymore. Instead, every time I open this game to escape from modern reality and have a bit of fun, I’m instead treated to another modern, revisionist social justice brainwashing session.
I used to recommend this game to young people who wanted to learn more about the ancient world and the Roman Empire in particular. I can’t do that in good conscience when the game goes to such lengths to seem historically accurate, then intersperses some very inaccurate mechanics into the game just for the sake of politics. Imagine a bunch of kids thinking that half the generals of Ancient Rome were women!!!

It's the most innovative shooter I've played in years.

An ambitious concept given a low-effort, cash-grabby implementation. Pass.

Not to be a spoilsport, but, like "Surgeon Simulator", the whole thing here is basically trolling the player with a frustrating control scheme and cameras. If that's your bag, you've found a home here. It's not mine.

Now this is a pretty unique offering! Less game and more simulator and infodex, World of Guns offers the opportunity to explore, in considerable depth, the construction and functionality of real life firearms. Want to understand exactly what happens when an AK trigger is pulled? Think you'd enjoy practicing field strip and full disassembly of a sizeable and growing range of primarily modern combat arms? If so, then WoG provides a high resolution 3D environment with a high emphasis on technical accuracy that you'll find worth your time. It breaks new ground for a number of niche audiences, and shines light on a path that has "AAA and beyond" written all over it.

A few features I'd like to see: user remappable keys, more sandbox-y physics, greater depth around materials, and support for swappable parts and user part mods.

For fans of the X series, synonymous as it was with fathomless depth and expansive open-world breadth, the experienbce of playing this dumbed-down rather than simplified, hollowed out rather than pruned version is like being forced to watch one of the great master painters, a Da Vinci or Michaelangelo, deface their works with excrement for pocket change at a freak show. Have yourself a better time than that, try one of the endless new Albion Prelude mods.

For those new to the series, just trust me and go buy X3: Albion Prelude instead. Yes, you'll need climbing gear for the learning curve. Yes, it's worth the effort.

I paid over $300 for lifetime access to this game during the open beta. A few months after release, they nixed the subscription model and made it free to play. So far so good, I'm not mad... grow the community.

But now I come back in the hopes of finally getting to play a mature Trek MMO endgame, and they want another $150 from me for the privilege?! I already gave you THREE HUNDRED BUCKS, the equivalent retail cost of *FIVE OR SIX* AAA titles. In my whole life, I might have spent $450 on *Mario* titles. WoW. GTA, maybe. But this?! THIS?!?!

No! $#(*&&! no.

Emergence!

Simply awesome.

Mount Everest-like learning curve aside, this is the best realistic combat sim available.