Mount & Blade: Warband

If you're looking for Warband mods, try Floris or Pendor, they are the biggest and best available.

I have yet to play a better kingdom building game than Mount & Blade. No other title can really provide the same satisfaction of starting out a campaign alone and penniless, forming your own band of mercenaries, rising in power until you're ready to try for the throne. Sure, other games try to create this experience, but none of them do it as well as Warband. As far as single player titles go, this one's top quality bueno.

Things can get a little crazy when the melee starts.

Genre: Action, Third-person, RPG, Strategy
Release Date: 30th March, 2010
Platforms: PC
Score without mods: 7/10
Score with mods: 9/10
Similar Titles: Total War, Chivalry, War of the Roses

Mount and Blade: Warband is the sequel to the original Mount and Blade. It hasn't changed much, it's the same game with buffed up features and some polish. It's not nearly as polished or pretty as it should be, in fact it still feels like a game in beta. Which is why it's strange that Warband is still one of the best games I've ever played.

Taking a hill gives you a pretty overpowered advantage.

There are two sides to Warband. The campaign map and the battlefield. Most of your time will be spent on the map, traveling from city to city looking for quests and enemies to fight. However, once you make a little progress you'll be repelling armies left and right. There is zero story whatsoever, so don't expect any until you start piling on some mods. The battlefield is the fun part of Warband. When the fight begins, you can command your soldiers around the field at the same time as controlling your character. It's essentially third-person action, combined with real-time strategy. It's a great feeling, sending your infantry into the fray whilst charging alongside your cavalry into the flank. It's far more satisfying being in the combat instead of watching it from above.

The overworld map isn't particularly pretty, but then again neither is the rest of the game.

Warband's combat really is something special. You can make use of various weapon types, including swords, crossbows, lances and even stones. Each weapon has limited functionality, so it's quite a hard decision to decide whether to keep that two-handed claymore for sweeping past people on horseback, or trade it in for a bow so you can nail enemies from afar. Moreover, dealing damage is directly related to physics. For example, if you're running at full speed on a horse and land a blow on somebody, they are going to take twice as much damage as they would if you were stationary. You can swing in 4 different directions, and if you swing in the right direction with your momentum, it will do significantly more damage. This is a unique feature that brings a new element of strategy to battle.

Upon starting your new character, fresh with your own backstory, Warband drops you into the lands of Calradia. From the beginning of the game, you are free to do whatever you want. You can try to besiege a castle at level one, if being hit by 40 arrows in the face is something on your list of things to do. Typically it's a good idea to kick off your campaign by recruiting a few peasants and searching for bandits to get early weapons and cash. Completing quests for villages and lords lands you reputation points and money, both of which become important as you progress. Once you have trained your men into competent swordsmen and archers, you become a formidable band of mercenaries prepared to fight some of the larger forces on the map.

Castle sieges can be really difficult with limited ladders to attack from.

The reason Mount & Blade: Warband is so addictive is because you can choose your route to power. If you want to become a peaceful diplomatic, you can help villages prosper by helping them with bandits and buying them grain. Then you can invest that money into various enterprises to turn a profit every week. Eventually you can join a faction and fight for them, with enough reputation your king might even reward you with a castle or city. Or, you can take the quick route to power. Loot and burn villages, ambush lords and ransom them for money. Take a castle for yourself and establish your own rogue kingdom. This is a fast way to piss off all the factions, but if you're prepared to fight them off you can create your own utopia; recruit your own lords to patrol your lands and manage your finances.

Rolling around the map outmaneuvering armies twice your size and crushing them feels like an entire game in itself. However, when you start conquering provinces and owning lands- it becomes a whole different ballgame. Suddenly you're posed with questions of state, who to appoint as a leader, how many troops to leave in the garrison, and even building upgrades to improve your cities and villages. Instead of going from country to country, you're posed with defending your lands all while keeping your own army strong and formidable enough to counter any threats.

Training peasants consists of beating them unconscious until they get stronger.

Even though Warband is definitely better than most of the medieval war games I've had the misfortune of playing, it's still inherently flawed and feels unfinished. Sometimes attacks glitch and miss or hit when they shouldn't have, and walking up hills slows your units down far more than it should. There aren't many quests and they are a chore to complete, which often makes it difficult to farm reputation with a village or person that you want on your side. It's possible to romance lords and ladies of the opposite sex, but it's time consuming and lacks benefit. Although all these features seem hastily tacked on it's justifiable due to the massive branches of options and mechanics in Warband. Even more so considering it was created by a small indie company. With a higher budget and a bigger team, there's absolutely no limit to how high the Mount & Blade franchise could reach.

When I take a step back and look at the overall composition of Warband, it's nothing less than fantastic. There are dozens of cities and keeps owned by different factions, all with their own economy. With some memory and a little perseverance, you can make money by transporting the right goods from town to town. Lords recruit armies and trawl across the map, picking off bandits and fighting their enemies. Over the space of a couple of months in game time, factions go to war and try to conquer territory. If you're not careful, you can indirectly help a faction by defeating their enemies, and then they will spiral out of control and take half the map. Dozens of companions can be found in taverns, who level up just like your main character. You can even throw some epic gear their way, if you want them to be a monstrous killing machine. My point being, every individual feature of Mount & Blade: Warband needs work, polish or an overhaul. However, when all those single pieces come together as a whole; it forms a beautiful game worthy of every fanatic collection.

Tournaments are a good way to rack up some cash, if you win anyway.

What's funny is, this is all just the core Warband game. You still don't know about the best part. Mods. Mount & Blade has one of the finest modding communities in existence, rivaling that of the Elder Scrolls and Total War. From small to complete overhaul, if there's something you want- you can find it. You can change the size of battles, add in story elements and even monsters. You can download packs with dozens of new units, or even entirely new maps. Don't like playing games with sub-par graphics? Download some HD textures and voila! Pretty. There are overhaul packs that make Warband feel like an entirely new game.

It's gotten to the point where I physically cannot stand playing the core Mount & Blade. It's a brilliant game, but it reaches near perfect with some of the mods you can download. If you're looking for an overhaul to make Warband so much more; try Floris or Prophecy of Pendor.

Why don't more people know about Mount and Blade?

Mount and Blade: Warband is the kingdom building sandbox experience of a lifetime. I can put this franchise in the 'god-tier' category with confidence. Which is why it's genuinely surprising that it doesn't have more of an audience. In Mount&Blade you can grow from a peasant to a commander, and eventually even a king. What's more, it's got fantastic combat that pits you on the battlefield alongside your troops, allowing you to command your ranks while in the center of the fray. You can tell you're playing something truly amazing when a game has irritating bugs, a distinct lack of polish, and awfully optimized graphics; but you can't bring yourself to stop playing it.

You start out alone in the world. Eventually you can wield an army of hundreds.

There are currently 3 Mount & Blade titles on the market, with the 4th in development. Each game runs on the same engine, with the only changes being various adjustments to improve the quality of play. If you haven't heard of this franchise yet, either do a little digging or just buy Warband. The original Mount and Blade is a little outdated, and the newest edition Fire and Sword has a few unsightly design changes that make it less fun. Warband is the one to buy.

Although the original campaign can easily soak up a good 30+ hours of your time and still leave you with stuff to conquer and finish, what makes Mount and Blade a timeless game of outstanding quality is the gigantic modding community. The base game is a mod enthusiasts paradise. There are so many complete overhaul packs that you're essentially buying a dozen games in one. I've racked up over 200 hours on Warband so far, and I only spent a couple of hours playing it without mods.

The world map is gigantic, and you can conquer all of it.

If you're looking for one of those games that you will never regret buying, look into Mount and Blade: Warband. More specifically, do some research into the mods you can get for it. It's essentially free DLC. Take a look at Prophecy of Pendor and Floris, both are gameplay overhauls that introduce around a gigabyte of awesome changes. If you're interested in multiplayer, you can also try out CRPG. My point is, if you want it; there's a mod for it on Warband. The goal of this article is to raise awareness of an under appreciated franchise. If you haven't heard of Mount & Blade, then take a look and try it out. It's cheap!

Dead Space 3

I only managed to clock in about 5 hours on Dead Space 3, and the reason for that is that it really isn't my cup of tea. It's an alright game, but I can't get behind it. Why? Because Dead Space 3 is designed to shock you. Every corner you turn some terrifying creature tries to leap at you and give you a fit. But when you take those scary moments away, what does it have left? A weak shooter with bad mechanics followed by pretty cool weapon customization.

Hanging out of spaceships in precarious positions seems to be a popular theme on this franchise.

Isaac Clarke comes back as the protagonist from the previous two games, mentally crippled from the traumatic events he experienced from slaughtering his way through two games of scary zombie action. A marker has been activated on the moon, creating a plague of Necromorph. The markers alter the DNA of corpses which turns them into bloodthirsty death machines that shrug off shots to the head. As the only one to survive previous marker outbreaks, and convinced by his missing girlfriend, Isaac is dragged into the fray once again. Although I didn't like Dead Space as a game, the story captivated me. It's one of the better Sci-Fi tales I've experienced.

These cracker ass cultists brought on the apocalypse because that's what cults do.

So what are you getting if you buy the third main title in the Dead Space franchise? A survival horror third-person shooter. In space. Sadly, that's about it. Oh, aside from the creepy zombies that morph dead bodies into creepy masses of death. It's got an indie feel to it, but that's because the graphics aren't great and the mechanics aren't polished. If you are a survival horror enthusiast, Dead Space is a brilliant choice for you. If not, then you might find it questionable like me.

Necromorphs are actually pretty scary enemies, and there's plenty of them.

My main issue with the Dead Space franchise is that it was overwhelmingly disappointing. After all the reviews and excited friends I have dealt with, I really expected more. Sure, the zombies crawling out of every nook, crevice and cranny scared the hell out of me. I wasted countless bullets spraying at corpses. But the awful mechanics just irritated me to no end. The kick function was terrible, and barely served a purpose except in situations you were probably already dead. Many of the guns were completely useless, and only became a viable choice after upgrading them a lot. Picking up and moving objects with Kinesis could have been a fun and potentially amazing mechanic, instead it's just an annoying minigame. The graphics were sort of blotchy, I really expected them to be better. All in all, I found myself focusing on the bad parts of Dead Space 3 instead of enjoying the good.

I bet he's getting used to hanging out of spaceships in precarious positions by now.

There are a few good features to Dead Space 3. Unlike the first two games, the awkward horror situations have been replaced in favor of more action. Instead of being forced into a cramped vent just so something can make you jump out of your skin and suffer organ failure, it feels more like a run and gun. With the added function to roll and take cover, Dead Space 3 definitely feels more dynamic than the previous two games.

Being able to control your character out in space is pretty awesome. Up until the Necromorphs start to do the same thing. Then it's just scary.

Another cool aspect is the UI. Every part of the ingame interface is accessed through your spacesuit. Instead of pausing the game and bringing you to a menu, you can view your inventory while playing since it projects itself from your suit.

The best part of this title is the weapon creation system. Once you collect enough materials, it's possible to create all manner of death dealing guns. For example, crossing a cryogenic torch with a rocket launcher allows you to freeze and then shatter anything. You can combine a lethal shotgun with a diffractor to put everything everywhere on the ground; while you casually step up to each one and blast their brains out. Honestly, this is the only thing that kept me playing.

It's a shame that Dead Space 3 has a few really cool mechanics that get bogged down and held back by the rest of it. Visceral games have tried to innovate since the previous games in the Dead Space franchise, but it doesn't seem to be enough.

I really like the gun customization, you can craft some scary stuff.

You can slowly time when your enthusiasm for Dead Space is going to run out. Early on in the game when windows explode and cretinous devilspawn starts trying to claw your eyes out, you will empty every clip in your gun at it and then stomp on the corpse until every limb is splattered over your suit. Several hours later, you will be targeting limbs with precision shots; and things leaping out of every corner won't even phase you. That's when I became disinterested.

Most games are easily criticized, but the best of them keep you so intrigued, entertained, or just plain frustrated that you completely forget to complain about the awful things. If I look at Dead Space objectively, it's a good franchise that does exactly what it says on the tin. However, when I look at it personally- it's a lackluster title that loses value the longer you play it.

I can understand that Visceral Games have created a game that a lot of people will enjoy and appreciate. I am not one such person. As previously stated; it's not my cup of tea. So if you're interested in it, it's up to you to make a judgement call.

Max Payne 3

Rockstar have always been known for creating iconic games. I haven't played a bad game developed by Rockstar yet. Max Payne is a franchise known by every veteran gamer. When the first title in the series was released in 2001, it was an instant classic and a step forward for TPS gaming. The slow motion bullet time effect and advanced graphics were an instant hit for the market. 11 years later, we have the third edition of Max Payne, bringing back the linear third person shooter we all love so much.

Max seems to find himself narrowly avoiding more than one Hollywood special effect.

Genre: Action, Third-Person Shooter
Release Date: 15th May 2012
Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Score: 8/10
Similar Titles: Uncharted, Alan Wake, Red Dead Redemption