Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus (2018) by Bulwark Studios

Most immediately striking about this game is the absolutely phenomenal sound design. The ambient sound is superb, making you fearful and near awestruck each step of the way. The soundtrack fits the setting well; it's an industrialized set of organ songs, with heavy electronic and ambient touches. It's the perfect window-dressing for what is essentially a game about transhumanist cultists. Had the Western Roman Empire never fallen in the 5th century, perhaps this is what it would have grown into. I love the strong inspiration of the Christian late Roman Empire here. The usage of faux-Latin for the character's names and their garbled, mechanical voice effects does a lot to impart a certain mood: that of a dark, dreary future populated by these mechanical monsters who seek to eradicate alien life and steal their technology. The entire thing gives you a sense of otherworldliness, like you're witnessing something that's just utterly beyond you. It's difficult to explain until you jump in. I don't know the Warhammer 40k lore very well, but I do enjoy what little of it I've experienced.

Probably my single favorite thing about the game is something rather minor—the aforementioned voice effects. This game does have actual voice acting, but it is relatively rare. The vast majority of the dialogue is read by the player rather than listened to, but the characters speak in their own native language, which is depicted here in sound effects sounding something akin to garbled Latin, and then put through an extremely disorienting voice filter. It is probably a relatively simple process, but the effect goes a very long way to helping the mood of this game resonate as incredibly unsettling. It's amazing, and I wish more games would do something like this if proper voice acting was not an option.

A lot of what I like about this game is in how it manages the mood. The art style, specifically regarding the characters' portraits (see right), is excellent. It reminds me a lot of the art found in Darkest Dungeon—something I loved about that game. In general, there is such a Gothic, uncomfortably dusty and masonwork-like feeling to the entire thing. A lot of the cutscenes feel as if you're witnessing some great cultural crime of epic proportions. The characters each express their own quirks, providing nice wrinkles in this mood; one of them is extremely dogmatic and is constantly citing scripture, which I loved. Another speaks in a computerized set of faux-programming commands, which is equally characterizing. There are so many nice little touches like this that make the moment-to-moment gameplay come alive for me. I think these things are necessary, especially in turn-based tactical games, which can become rather dry if they focus too much on nuts and bolts aspects of the gameplay. You need the impact of these artistic touches to balance things out and give some color to the blueprint of the game.

Perhaps the only thing I'd criticize on these grounds is the actual, in-game graphics. The hand-drawn illustrations used in the portraits are fantastic, but I found the actual polygonal characters during gameplay to be somewhat wanting. The animation is not very good, and they seem like pieces on a game board rather than the semi-living, semi-mechanical abominable personae they exhibit in their character portraits. I would love to see a sequel go all-out with the hand-drawn style, getting rid of the polygonal characters altogether and rendering the entire game in this art style. The artistic effort here is that strong.

As far as the gameplay, I suppose I'm a bit biased, as turn-based tactics is probably my single favorite subgenre of RPG—and a woefully underutilized one, in my opinion. I am glad to see games such as the XCOM revival series, and Divinity: Original Sin using this playstyle. It's not for everybody—particularly the turn-based nature of it—but for those of us who love it, this game definitely scratches that itch. There are a bevy of different abilities, passive perks, and gear to keep the game dynamic and flowing forwards. I've always considered the sign of a good turn-based tactics game to be getting absolutely wrecked in an engagement, then reloading a save and trying it again with slightly differing tactics, only to succeed easily. It's a sign that the emphasis is where it should be—on how you approach each battle—rather than on something like getting an overpowered weapon. The tutorial mission is actually a great example of this: I went from getting both of my tech priests killed, to adjusting my tactics and sending my peon units at Argolekh in suicidal charges, and was able to kill him without taking any damage. It was immensely satisfying.

Sadly, though, the difficulty scaling throughout the campaign seems to be somewhat off. I believe this is due simply to having so many different abilities and so much different equipment present in the game, which had to have made it difficult to balance everything. The beginning of the game seems very difficult; you have small pistols which do 1-2 damage, and if you try and face up a Necron Destroyer with those weapons, you're going to get your butt kicked. However, once you get to mid-game, you are cruising; if you know what you're doing and you've thought about your Tech-Priests' builds, you're probably going to be able to deal with everything that comes your way rather easily. And by the time you get to the late game, you'll be steamrolling everything. This is definitely not scaled like XCOM 2, which is quite difficult and punishing. It felt rather like Final Fantasy Tactics to me, or any other game in which you can break it completely if you progress your characters the right way.

I did read that they patched the game to make it more difficult, and it isn't a total breeze, but if you build smartly, you'll still probably watch your power level grow considerably as the game continues onwards.

Although this might be a controversial opinion, I don't believe that completely breaking a challenging game by becoming overpowered via intelligent character building is necessarily a bad thing. While this is a detriment to enjoyment for those who like to be challenged, it can also be quite rewarding; there's a sense of growth in power when you go from getting killed against one Necron Destroyer, to slaughtering everything in your path just 20 hours later. It imparts a sense of what the Adeptus Mechanicus do within the fiction: they may be ill-equipped at the start, but they will learn more and more about your technology and adapt it to their purposes to such an extent that they will use it better than you will. And then they will kill you all because you had the nerve to exist in the first place.

If I did have a complaint, probably it would be that some of the tomb events feel a bit arbitrary. There are sometimes instances of selecting an option in an event room and having the results of your choice play out in an unexpected way that felt rather arbitrary.

I know nothing about Bulwark Studios but this is such an engrossing, carefully crafted game that I'm very excited to see what they do from here on. I'll be watching their future games closely, and I'd recommend Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus to any fan of the genre of turn-based tactics. If you like the Warhammer 40k setting and you're not too averse to turn-based gameplay, give it a shot—you might enjoy it. But if you dislike other turn-based games, this one likely will not sell you on the subgenre, and there will be little for you to enjoy here unless you're an absolutely rabid Warhammer fan.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Dota 2 (2013) by Valve

I finally feel qualified to write a review of Dota 2, since I'm just exiting the stages of being an absolute beginner in Dota 2 and finally progressing into the "novice" stage.

After nearly 1,500 hours over a period of 6 years.

I remember reading a news story a while back during the release of the hugely popular Witcher 3 in 2015 that was speaking about how many other games had lost thousands of players, all of whom had flocked to the big new game and were engrossed by it. Except for Dota 2 players, who continued to play to their normal numbers and weren't distracted by another game releasing. The writer came to the humorous conclusion that Dota 2 players are probably just not aware of the existence of other games.

Although I love other video games, that's still easily understandable for me, because Dota 2 is by far the best competitive game I've ever played. It sucks people in and devours them, dominating their every waking moment. I know people who don't play any other games, just Dota. And I understand why.

The sheer amount of variance between games and the bevy of differing mechanics enables the player to continue playing for thousands of hours—as I have—and still feel utterly amateurish. There's so much to learn, and so much to think about while you're in the game. The game isn't so much a test of how mechanically skilled you are, or how fast your reflexes are, but your ability to multitask and make a multitude of complex decisions in a small amount of time. Do you have vision? Are smokes of deceit available? What's your next item? Who is killing you in fights, and what can you do to prevent that? Have you used your shovel when it's off cooldown? What about midas? If you win a fight, should you Rosh, or take objectives? When's the proper time to split up and farm? And those are just the in-game, micro-decisions. You've got vaster ones to make as you continue to play the game. Which heroes feel stronger this meta? Which items? Which strategies are working?

Friends and I often talk about our "forever games", ie. the game that you will probably play for decades into the future, because you'll just never get tired of it. And that's Dota 2, for me. I began playing in 2014 and I've taken a significant amount of time off here and there (most recently, for the past 2 years, only to come back once again). If you're looking for a forever game, Dota can certainly be that for you. But there are a few significant hurdles in the way.

First off, I don't think I've ever engaged in anything with a steeper learning curve than Dota 2. There are more than a hundred heroes, of whom you must learn every single thing. All of their abilities, the items they will build, their power scale timings. And then there are hundreds of items you must learn as well. And you've got to apply all of this thinking on the fly to how it affects not only your hero, but your teammates' heroes. It's such a massive amount of knowledge to compile, and it's changing all the time. Nine out of ten players will try this out for 5-20 hours and set it down, utterly bewildered by what they're doing wrong as they get mercilessly brutalized over their first 10 games or so. So it certainly helps to play with a more experienced, exceptionally patient friend who can show you the ropes. And if you stick it out, and play a few hundred hours, you'll find that you can begin to gain an appreciation of why this game so dominates the passions of so many players around the world.

I can talk about how the sound design is fantastic, how I dislike some of the character designs, or any other of normal-video-game-things, but the real focus on reviewing Dota should talk about two things: 1) The incredible job IceFrog and Valve do at balancing a game with so many disparate parts and how having such a deep set of mechanics to learn keeps players coming back for tens of thousands of hours, and 2) the infamously cancerous community surrounding the game.

Dota 2's infamously contemptible community is easily the games worst aspect

I'm not going to blow smoke; many of the players populating Dota's servers are unkind and delusional. I've had literally hundreds of games in which I've watched a player roam into the enemy jungle, try and fight 3-4 enemy heroes, die stupidly, and then proceed to flame their teammates for not following. Or the players who, the moment you die, will jump on your mistake and adopt an air of superiority in scolding you, and trying to correct the way you play—despite being the same rank as you. Everyone playing Dota 2 seems to believe that they belong at a far higher rank than they are, and everyone else is at fault for their placement.

The core component to the toxicity surrounding this game is a stunning lack of awareness of the player's own deficiencies, and the deflection of blame towards anyone else possible. Sure, there are trolls who run down mid, and there are people who refuse to actually support. But these are relatively rare in my experience. What wears me down from playing Dota consistently is the sheer amount of toxic communication and blame-game playing. If you play this game, you've got to have a thick skin. You'll be criticized mercilessly and blamed incorrectly. And it's constant. This happens nearly every game, even if you have a decent behavior score (8000+), as I do. Even I'm not exempt from this behavior—there have been plenty of times in the past when I've engaged in bitter exchanges with teammates. It's something that just comes with the territory of playing such a difficult, highly competitive, intensely human game. Emotions run high and we say things we regret.

That said, I do believe the game's in a better place now than it has been in years past. Supports are more likely to pull, gank, and buy smokes and deward. Individual couriers have done a lot to improve player relations in-game and prevent arguments—it's hard to believe now that you'd sometimes get games in which supports would refuse to buy a courier. And, perhaps most important, Role Queue is a huge, fantastic development—you now no longer have 5 carries every single game. And to deal with such rampantly poor communication etiquette, all you've got to do is mute other players liberally. My personal rule of thumb is to mute anyone who begins suggesting items to other players (these people often have a false sense of superiority that leads to flaming teammates when things go poorly), or begins to broadcast the slightest amount of negativity. I've never regretted muting a player, but I have frequently regretted not muting them. I've even gone through dozens of games with everyone muted on both sides, just enjoying the game itself in lieu of any communication whatsoever. Learning to use the mute buttons liberally is the fastest way to truly enjoy playing Dota 2. But you'll still likely end up having days where Dota 2 is the best game you've ever played, and days where Dota 2 is the worst game you've ever played.

There's also the esports scene around Dota, which is incredible. The International is the best esports tournament in the world, and the Dota client itself has amazing features for spectating games by high-level pros, whenever you want to. I personally enjoy spectating games from Player Perspective, so I can analyze what high level players are doing differently than me when I play.

Reviewing Dota 2 is not like reviewing any other game. It's the deepest, most rewarding competitive experience I've ever had with a video game. But it's also the most infuriating and mood-ruining. Striking a healthy balance between these things is key. If you have the determination to learn the game, a thick skin, and a modicum of intelligence, you'll probably adore this game. And, best of all, you can get all these thousands of hours of enjoyment out of the game without spending a single dime. All the heroes are free so you have a complete playing experience right out of the gate, unlike other, similar games on the market.

And maybe you'll play it forever, like I will. Give it a shot. It's free, after all.

⭐⭐⭐⭐