14 DAY TRIAL // Andrei Dumitrescu: In two weeks I will go to Vienna on a much needed holiday, and during the weekend, as I look at the sites that I plan to visit I am also thinking about the video games that use the city or the world around it as a setting.
Weirdly, no Assassin’s Creed or other open world title has chosen the capital of Austria as their playground, which is weird given the amount of impressive architecture that seems to be present there and the impressive imperial legacy of the country.
So I will probably have to satisfy my need for historical gaming by firing up Europa Universalis IV in order to see how quickly I can make Austria the biggest power in Europe, crushing the Ottomans and the French and dealing with the problems of the HRE.
Otherwise, Total War: Rome II – Emperor Edition is now well entrenched in my play time, currently using Marc Antony as a character, and I will also play some FIFA 15 matches.
Andrei Dobra
My weekend will be spent with quite a few different titles, starting mainly with Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor on the Xbox One, as I'm quite eager to see what Monolith has managed to achieve with the new open world action adventure experience.
I have to admit that, while the title set in the Lords of the Rings universe wasn't on my radar, thanks to the many gameplay videos and demonstrations released in recent weeks, it's certainly piqued my interest.
When I won't be simply walking through Mordor, I'll jump back into Dota 2, as the massive changes made by Valve to the game with the new patch 6.82 have once again sparked my curiosity. I want to see how the map has been changed and how the main heroes feel after the balance tweaks.
Radu Haulica
This weekend will most likely be dedicated entirely to Endless Legend, Amplitude Studios' latest turn-based strategy game. I loved Endless Space (in spite of its many flaws, among which the lack of rally points, which is pretty much a deal-breaker in most cases), and Endless Legend takes the elegant interface and empire management mechanics and gives them a healthy infusion of fantasy.
In addition to this, the team really tried to offer a fresh experience, somewhere between the classic space-based 4x gameplay of its previous strategy game and the overall outlook of the Civilization series, and so far I like what they've done with the title.
As a more personal perk, the game is also full of flavorful descriptions, and I would have certainly liked to find more, in the style of Alpha Centauri's tech tree descriptions, fleshing out the fantasy world of Auriga and making the entire experience even more immersive, but I'll take what I can get. Creating a solid turn-based empire management video game that isn't a copy of Civilization is already enough of an achievement.