in the end it really doesnt matter what critics say… i have no idea why people still give them any credit or care what they say. they’ve been so entirely wrong so many times… we will have to see how the game is received in general upon release, regardless what critics say…
lest we forget: DOW3, NMS, cyberpunk, and the list goes on… all well received by critics all suicidally flawed
i think aoe4 will do ok, but again, with zero correlation to what critics say… if it does well it will just be coincidental critics score it well
After having seen SOTL and T90 play the campaign I can say I like the history channel style of presentation, although I would have preferred hero units to have at least a bit of voice lines.
In the end it is subjective, the videos introducing the next mission are really good.
Dawn of War III - 77
No Man’s Sky - 61
Cyberpunk 2077 - 57 on PS4, 86 on PC (and it is a relatively good game for PC - just not as good as expected)
So, no, those games weren’t well received by metacritics (which is a cummulation of all critics). This should be a pretty good indicator, since it statistically flattens outliers).
I find 84 for AoE2: DE justified and as expected. It might be the best version of the game but for a 2020 release it is just “good” - not exceptional.
That’s why 83 for AoE 4 is rather disappointing.
Nah man. AoE 2 de was cut some slack because it s old classic. If it was rated as totaly new game i dont think it would be possible to get over such staff like same looking units for every faction and terrible old style movement of units, weak effects etc.
Seems like the vast majority basically say the same thing: ‘Amazing game, but not innovative enough.’
To me it is perfect. RTS does not need innovation, but revival. RTS needs a new very stable basis and not outlandishness and weird mechanics. I very well remember the ‘innovativeness’ of Red Alert 3. A complete flop with its gimmicky units.
Yeah, I don’t think 5 metacritic points above Dawn of War 3 says “amazing game” but let’s agree to disagree.
What I will simply not stand for, however, is trashing Red Alert 3 on these forums, first of all it was not a flop (not anymore than any other RTS has been outside of Starcraft 2) and it certainly was not innovative, it and C&C3 were a return to the classic C&C game mechanics, after the “innovative” C&C:Generals (which was also great.). It took some interesting mechanics from C&C:G, but is mostly a return to form, just like AoE4 takes some good things from AoE:M but is mostly a return to form.
It was exactly what C&C (C&C:RA fans specifically) wanted, it took everything that was great about RA2 and cranked it up to 11. The cheesiness, the graphics, the crazy units, the music. Plus it had extremely fun and competitive multiplayer, and it was one of the few games that pulled of naval combat imo. It’s biggest issue is that it was published by EA, and EA just milks whatever it can and provides as little post launch support as possible before it shuts down or merges studios and shuffles them to the next money cow.
the score is going down from 85 to 82. A good game but not enough.
and i think this review very well understood this game.
"The physics of battle are very weak and yet this seems to be a purposeful attempt to retain the look and feel of the originals, which seems especially unnecessary given the remasters. We don’t know whether that’s the same excuse for why the pathfinding is so bad, but it also seems like it’s stuck in 1999. Everything is clearly supposed to be like this, and there’s no denying the game is entertaining, but nostalgia is ultimately a hollow pleasure and, like indulging in too much cake, you only end up feeling guilty and slightly bilious by the end of it.
Age Of Empires 4 is a fine real-time strategy but it’s nowhere near ambitious or different enough to revive the genre’s fortunes. Given Age Of Empires 2 still has the more robust multiplayer mode (and more options in general at the moment) it’s arguable whether this is even the best game in the series. The world doesn’t need two Age Of Empires 2 games and this feels like a missed opportunity to create a new beginning for the franchise.". In Short: A highly competent but disappointingly unambitious real-time strategy that fails to move either the genre or the Age Of Empires franchise forward.
Pros: As a pseudo-remake of Age Of Empires 2 it works very well, with simple and accessible controls. Four enjoyable campaigns and the asymmetric factions are very welcome.
Cons: The game has far too much reverence for Age Of Empires 2, with the graphics, AI, and general lack of innovation suffering as a result. Multiplayer is currently an unknown quantity and some traditional modes are missing.
While Red Alert 2 was a major success, I’d say that Red Alert 3 was actually the failure that ended the Red Alert franchise as a result of its whacky innovativeness: building on water, boats being able to ‘walk’ on land and units that could switch between two different modes. Especially the Japanese mechu-tengus led to incredibly lame online gameplay where players were just switching up and down between airmode and landmode constantly.
I also wouldn’t say that CnC3 was really a ‘return’ to something that Generals somehow diverged from. CnC3 was at least as innovative as vanilla Generals. 3 factions that differed a lot from one another.
Red Alert 2 was when the series split into whacky and “normal”, especially Yuri’s Revenge which is probably the most loved of the series. Red Alert 3 was certainly not unsuccessful because it was whacky, being whacky is what fans expect (people who couldn’t stomach fighting dolphins abandoned the series at 2). It’s problem was simply that it came out after the golden age of RTS games has passed and it was already a niche genre.
C&C3, as opposed to Generals, was a return to what made C&C - C&C. The universe, the cheesy FMVs, the way you build structures and units. Red Alert 3 kept things mostly intact though it did jazz some things up. It really was just Red Alert 2 dialed up to eleven. People who wanted the more classic game play could play the Allies or Soviets and people who wanted something more different could play as Japan.
Every game has lame online strats, especially early on (like people spamming French Hulks or spinning them around to fire with both cannons), I don’t remember it being worse in RA3 than in any other RTS, the problem is again - EA, that abandons projects very quickly.
Yeah all the transforming units felt kind of gimmicky, think they went a little overboard with that. I also think that graphically it did not age as well as Red Alert 2.
