Railroad Tycoon 3

2 stars (The developers confused "family friendly" with "childlike") - I was addicted to Railroad Tycoon 2, but unfortunately it wouldn't play under my new operating system. I was thrilled to find RT3 and eagerly awaited its delivery. Unfortunately, RT3 has lost much of the complexity and the underhandedness that made RT2 so much fun. For example: - in RT2, only industries or resources inside your station's field of influence would be serviced by your trains. In RT3, each station has a vague, undefined "area of influence" that goes beyond the size of your station's shown field. Is that feedlot, grain farm, or mine close enough to your station so you don't have to build another closer station? Good luck figuring it out. - in RT2, one could designate different loads for cars in the same manifest. This can't be done now. This makes it very difficult to produce goods manufactured from more than one type of raw material. - the graphics are very comic-book like, and would more appeal to children around the age of three than they would adults. Very unattractive and simplistic. I would have even preferred a 2-D model with more sophistication. - the business models have been vastly oversimplified, and the AI companies are not one thousandth as cutthroat as in RT2. This is a bad thing. Historically, rail companies were not paragons of industry; for a historical sim to be realistic, it has to reflect the true conditions of the industry. The rail business in RT3 appears to have been emasculated, perhaps to appeal to young naive children, but it's lost much of its interest for adults. - creating new maps and new scenarios is much more complicated in RT3 than it was in RT2. - the weather is a useless, worthless feature that eats memory. Yes, you can turn it off, but it still takes up a lot of space in storage memory. I did not much enjoy RT3. It appears to have lost much of the detail that made RT2 so enjoyable (wasn't it great to finally get iron *and* coal, send one tr...
Jack of All Games :: World Building (Builders) :: Simulations :: Strategy (Strategic) :: Simulators (Simulation) :: Action :: Computer Games :: :: Railroad Tycoon 3

 

Stronghold 2

5 stars (Excellent Medieval SIM) - If you are looking for a great castle sim, with a challenging combat/siege warfare system, look no further. I'm a medieval history buff, and have always been interested in everything from combat to politics to feudal life. This game, while not perfect, is a fulfilling escape into the world of knights and barbarians. As far as hardware issues go, I have had none. My computer exceeds the recommended specs and I play with all settings maxed in 1600x1200x24 resolution (AMD Athlon 64 3500+, 2gb Corsair PC3200 RAM, PNY GeForce 6800GT). However I would not recommend that someone who has only the minimum or even recommended system requirements turn on all the eye-candy. Castle siege scenes can become quite demanding on both the processor and video card, but if you have the hardware it is quite beautiful and realistic. I haven't encountered any in-game bugs - at least none that have impaired my gaming experience in any noticable way. This seems to be a very well designed game, and although it may still be a work in progress, the foundation is there for a very fun, replayable game. The support staff and developers seem dedicated to continuing to update this game and provide help for users who encounter problems. I would highly recommend this game to anyone interested in historical sims, real time strategy, or castle wall demolition. 4 stars (cool) - On my computer the game worked flawlessly. The game is very cool with hardly any cons. The cons are that the stupid peasants poo in the middle of your town and you have to build a gong farmer. The dungeons and punishment in the game is easy for any body that doesnt get it. You build a courthouse, a guard post, a torture guild, a punishment, and whenever the criminal has his bag out you click on the guard with the black staff then on the criminal then he will bring him to the dungeon to await his punishment. In this game though whenever I do free build where you build from scratch it jus...
Jack of All Games :: Military (Wargames :: Historical (historic) Recreation (Recreations) :: Strategy (Strategic) :: Military (Tactics) :: Adventure :: Action :: Computer Games :: :: Stronghold 2

 

123 Copy DVD Plus

123 Copy DVD Plus ...
Jack of All Games :: CD Recording (Burning :: Burners) :: Computer software (programs) :: :: 123 Copy DVD Plus

 

Muvee Autoproducer 4

Muvee Autoproducer 4 ...
JACK OF ALL GAMES :: Editing :: Video :: Home Publishing :: Image Capture Capturing :: Graphics :: desk top publishing :: desktop publishing :: Professional Design :: Multimedia :: Graphics :: Muvee Autoproducer 4

 

Blitzkrieg Anthology

Blitzkrieg Anthology ...
Jack of All Games :: Military (Wargames :: Historical (historic) Recreation (Recreations) :: Strategy (Strategic) :: Computer Games :: :: Blitzkrieg Anthology

 

Star Trek- Shattered Universe

4 stars (Not bad, not bad at all) - Okay So this isn't Halo, but it isn't half bad, I bought it on an impulse, I was really going for a sports game, but it turned to be a good desicion, Sulu can be annoying but all in all the action isn't bad, and for people who actually like Star Trek it is fun. I like the Wraith fighters, and the unpredictable objectives. All in all it ain't bad. Thx 4 stars (The true voice) - I found that this game was very enjoyable. It was original in the world of star trek. The controlls could have been better but were acceptable. It also could have benifited from a co-op mode, but overall it was a great game. 1 stars (Whoa what a mark on Star Trek gaming) - Im not really sure what this drivel is. This has to be the worst concept for a game I have ever seen. There is no way, a fan of Star Trek developed this game. Had to be some goofball who enjoys pitiful flight simulators. Stay away from this title. ...
Jack Of All Games :: Adventure :: Action :: Microsoft :: Xbox (x box) :: Video Games :: Kids (Children) :: Computer software (programs) :: :: Star Trek- Shattered Universe

 

John Deere American Farmer

3 stars (Great potential, needs polish) - While this game is a lot of fun for the first few days, I found myself bored by the end of the week. The farming gets very repetative and tedious. Your family members have a poorly designed morale system. They get tired of doing the jobs very quickly, and to boost morale you must buy some "leisure" items (such as a swimming pool or a trampoline) and they can't use them. Instead, you let the family member stand there for a long (...long) period of time and their morale recovers. No matter how many leisure items you have it doesn't seem to replenish morale quickly enough. You can hire employees which don't have morale, but they are moderately expensive, and not that smart -- which brings me to AI: The artificial intelligence for the people in this game needs work. They will often take the longest route from point A to point B, wasting valuable time (you are on a time constraint to plant and harvest your crops). You can't always get them to stop doing a task you've given them, either. On several occasions when having workers operate the combine (the machine that harvests the crops), after they have harvested the field you can't give them a new command because the old one to harvest the field is still active for some reason and the task wouldn't cancel. To fix it I had to fire the employee and rehire him/her. There are a number of bugs in this game that aren't too bad. Mostly, this game has a lot of irritations. The camera gets very old extremely quick, the AI needs a lot of work, you can only assign one task per employee at a time (there's no queue), the windows and menus have annoying (but easy) navigation, the time goes by too fast even on the slowest setting, you have to store all of your equipment out on the field because there's no garage or anything for them -- so finding your equipment can be a chore. And the one thing that bothers me the most is the cursor. It's a little slow and difficult to control, and you can't a...
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