This week you intrepid heroes build a snowman, manage resources, and attempt to enjoy some real time 4X.
CHAIRQUISITION:
Game: Northguard
Webzone: Northgard
Devel: Shiro Games
Engine: https://github.com/HeapsIO/heaps
Price: £23.79 / US$29.99 / CA$33.99
Wazzat: Northgard is a strategy game based on Norse mythology in which you control a clan of Vikings vying for the control of a mysterious newfound continent.
Mandatory Disclosure: Pennywise bought us copies
Does It Launch
- It works great.
- Kidding, no option to adjust resolution or run in a window.
Performance @ 1080
- N/A
- I’m guessing it runs around 60 @2160 but that’s a guess since Steam overlay no worky.
Graphics
- Looks like a nice mobile game.
Control
- WASD, logical.
Does It Launch
- yerp
Performance @ 1080
- I mean, no real issues. Can’t see the ferps cuz of no overlay
Graphics
- Holy UI scaling batman!
- There isn’t really a resolution option. You got fullscreen, which only work if you tick the exclusive box
- No poly resolutions for you
- By default on a UHD screen, the UI isn’t scaled and everything is all itty bitty. You have to set that manually.
Control
- Left click to select, right click to do
- Right click also selects all units of a type from the UI
Does It Launch
- That it does
Performance @ 1080
- It comes with something called automatic VSync.
- Couldn’t tell you what it does differently to regular Sync to VBlank
Graphics
- No resolution options.
- UI scaling isn’t particularly impressive, as text becomes a bit blurry at 2x.
Control
- Rebindable controls and several other options to allow you to scroll the map around.
QA Score:
Fun section:
Fun?:
- Venn:
- This is delightfully generic as all hell.
- It went like this.
- Build shit, build more shit, explore, try to keep people happy, colonize, build more shit and you’re two hours in wondering just WTF you should be doing.
- Two hours in I better have the slightest fucking idea what’s going on, I didn’t.
- It has multiplayer but at 6:30 pm on a Saturday a whopping 10 people were playing… in the world.
- I guess it’s kinda like Civ, if Civ was made with crayons, some glue sticks, and a few extra chromosomes.
- If you like games like 0 A.D. keep playing 0 A.D., it’s a better game.
- Sorry not sorry but Northguard left me with nothing more than a frosty hate-boner.
- And apparently the MSRP for hate boners is 29.99.
- Jordan
- They took a 4X game and added some real time elements to it, so you can wait!
- The waiting reduces as you progress, just cuz you have a lot more stuff to do or manage
- Get buildings to get units to gather resources to do more building to get more units
- Also gotta keep your doods happy or they won’t fuck
- However, this is the sort of lonely fun that doesn’t really appeal to me. At least there’s multiplayer
- It’s not like I have any sort of irrational hatred for this game, I personally just don’t find it entertaining
- I can’t really find anything wrong with it beyond it being fairly generic viking game number 87542 and that this particular sort of grindy loop doesn’t appeal to me
- Pedro
- Jordan’s description is perhaps the most fitting.
- It’s a real time 4X with exponentially increasing timers and costs for exploring.
- Which means you’re going to be waiting… a lot!
- But I feel like waiting is not such a bad thing.
- One of the reasons I liked Age of Empires 2 back in the day is because you had plenty of time to do everything.
- Which made me realize, I don’t hate Northgard.
- It’s a strategy game I don’t hate!
- Nothing better to start 2019 than a nice surprise.
Fun Score: