An Update and some brief reviews

If you haven't figured it out based off of my inactivity, I've given up on Stalin vs. Martians for now. I will return to it in the future however I need a very long break from it. So, I've been working through my last run of Eternal Darkness. Hopefully I will complete that this week and will be able to post a review of it before Halloween. For now, though, I've decided to do some brief reviews on what I consider to be my favorite games of all time. I wrote a list like this a while back, but it's changed slightly sine I compiled it and I want to expand it from 11 to 30 (I kept adding games to the list as I went through my Backloggery...). I should note that in some cases on this list, I have placed a series, not a game, in one of the slots. In all of those cases, this is because I've loved every game within those series and have decided to just lump them together so I can fit more games on the list. Anyway, here is number 30 on that list-

30. Heroes V (including Tribes of the East)

Let me cut right to the chase and say that the Heroes of Might and Magic series has a special place in my heart since I grew up playing it. So, when I saw that Ubisoft had picked up the license for that series after 3DO folded, I knew I would be buying Heroes V at some point in the future.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this strategy game series let me quickly break it down for you. The game is completely turn based and revolves around you controlling a Hero and a Castle. The Castle allows you to spawn monsters for the Hero to take along with him as his army. The Hero can also get spells, artifacts, and siege machines from either the Castle or the map. The battles play out sort of like chess, with you moving around stacks of Monsters ranging from 1 to well over 9000 (meme reference intended...). Heroes V carries on this lineage except unlike the previous games is in 3D. Tribes of the East and Hammer of Fate (the two expansion packs) add to this further by giving you alternate upgrades of your various monsters to summon, something that's never been done before. It should also be noted that you don't need to own a copy of Heroes V to run Tribes of the East (which is awesome). The only games I have from this set are Heroes V and Tribes of the East and this is likely how I'm going to keep it.

The game carries on the lineage of Heroes quite well. The atmosphere, strategic elements, and overall design have been kept in tact and because of that, I have to say that I love this game. It's fun to see all the different units I knew from my youth blown up into full 3D models and changed to give this game and even better art direction. The game still has the Hot Seat mode which allows you to play a multilayer game at one computer which is probably the best reason to buy this game. However, there are flaws that hamper the Heroes V games. The campaign mode is ridiculously hard and unlike previous games, there are no cheats to help you. So, not surprisingly, I got stuck on a mission and haven't touched the campaign since. The move to 3D has made it a little harder to click on things that you want to go to or pick up however this doesn't effect the game play much since you can correct it with no problem. Most of the monster abilities are never explained forcing you to experiment until you figure out what each one does. The graphics and art style look like a rip off of Warcraft III and finally, those extra advanced forms of every monster in the game don't seem to add as nearly as much strategy as it should.

All in all, though, I still like this game a lot. It's not my favorite game in the Heroes series by a long shot, however I'm glad that Ubisoft made it and look forward to whenever the create Heroes VI.