Gaming Achron Review

Achron introduces time travel to multiplayer strategy games, but is it any good?

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2011/09/06/achron-review/1

 

Fortunately when this game appeared on Steam a few weeks ago they priced it at £23 which was too much for most people to risk it. Where as I would took a punt at £10 (or less) I too avoided buying it until some reviews backed it up.

Now it looks like the reviews have justified the caution and this game is not worth it. The developers / publishers were greedy, if they had put it on steam for £7, they would of sold loads before the reviews and made a killing. Oh well, just wait for EA to steal the time idea and stick it in C&C:TimeWars

 

As I have already posted in the Gaming forum - Avoid. the state it is in its not even worth £2.30, never mind 10x that price. I feel totally ripped off and I wish I could get my money back.

 

Yup, this is why I didn't buy it and why I'm always cautious buying games that register themselves to accounts, be it Steam, EA or what ever. The only time I ever throw caution to the wind is the Steam sales as the prices are so low.

If I buy a digital or retail title that ties itself to an account, find it awful then I can't get a refund. If it was anything else, you wouldn't have a problem under the SOGA or DSRs. We have some of the best consumer law in the world, yet we can't get a refund for anything digital tied to an account. Sure I see the reasoning, piracy etc but if there was a proper system in place that you could get a refund and the title be removed from my Steam/EA etc account I'd be all for it. Brink is one of those titles I paid a fair bit for, found awful and was stuck with.

Just seems silly in this day and age.

 

23quid!..ummm why?

 

How do you go about confirming if a game registers to an account or not be it online purchase or physical media? I am definately going to do this in furture prior to every purchase so any pointers would be much appreciated.

I had a look at Dust on Steam when I heard about all the refunds by Steam due to ubisoft applying always online DRM which it supposedly shouldn't of had but couldn't find mention of this on the Steam store page.

 

That sucks :/ what made you decide to purchase it prior to reviews?

 

It's a game I have been looking forward to for some time - an interesting game mechanic and I wanted to see how they had worked it in. The game was THAT BAD I never actually got to a bit you could control the timeline. That's how muc h fail this game is.

 

Well most games are these days unfortunately. You can check to see if it is Steamworks, ie it registers to Steam as standard on this wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Steam_games

I mean for certain titles this is a good thing, you buy retail, its normally quite a bit cheaper than the Steam Full Price and you just pop the key in. Problem is if it turns out to be a lemon you are stuck with it. I have actually found Steam support to be excellent, so I expect if you moan long enough then you might get somewhere.

As for the others, you'll just have to do some research before you buy, usually a good google can come up with the info.

 

Whilst it's what I wanted from Steam, the ability to disassociate a key from your account, it is also a massive security risk. Imagine someone logging into your account and selling off all your games. They profit regardless if the Steam account is restored.

However for boxed copies this wouldn't be an issue if the key was never shown in the account and since you have the physical copy all would be well.

 

Hmm maybe, but I'm sure they could make it so that was near impossible. Only refunding back onto the card it was paid from, the key is then voided and can't be used again etc.

I still think they should at least try, its the main downside to Steam.

 

Sorry, wasn't clear enough, games that are steamworks bought from the shops would obviously be impossible for steam to refund but possible to disassociate the serial, however how can you check it's the real owner of the account?

Look at the dirt 3 promo leak, although it's a little soon but the only fix seems to be to take away the game from peoples accounts and ask them to request the key again, not so good for those that bought or traded for a leaked key they had no way of knowing had been stolen or is real but now they have go back to the seller and get another key.

Sent from my E10i using Tapatalk

 

I saw some good reviews of this elsewhere. It made me quite interested, I'd love to see how the time travel works. But some other reviews made it sound so bad I doubt I'll ever get it.

 

Actually, for once, they don't have to steal it. At its core, Achron was originally going to be a highly modular time travel mechanic engine that would be easily portable to any type of game--at all. They built the entire engine around this concept...the game just kinda evolved around their testing of it. Once people caught wind of it, they started clamoring for a proper game. Originally, it was just two dudes working on this thing--I don't know how large the team is now--and neither of them were really game developers.

Taken in this context, it sounds like they did exactly what they set out to do--create a stunningly brilliant time travel mechanic. It's too bad the actual game sucks balls, I'll buy it once the price has come down a touch just to support those guys.

 

Meh... I say the mechanics of the game looks like a real novelty, so damn it im gonna get it...

BTW... this guy seems to having some good fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96HpdrTljAk

and that's just one of many videos of gameplay from him... yeh, im getting it

 

Tho I must note I see he has some dedication to the game... maybe he's part of the development team
or something who knows!! ... he just seems to be enjoying it a lot

Also to note, that gameplay its still from beta version!

 

Once again, flabbergasted by the Bit-Gamer scoring system... Pirates of the Black Cove - with not one single positive comment in the review - got 60%... Achron, which at least manages to deliver a new concept to the field of RTS, gets a measly 35%...

 

Pirates worked and was, at it's base, enjoyable. This doesn't and isn't.

 

Just got a reply back from Steam regarding a refund for Achron - "All support for this product goes through a third party"

I bought this defective product from you Steam. Do something about it

 

Bummer, seems more like they released a tech demo of a new RTS engine, rather than a proper game. I was hoping the game mechanic would catch on and get licensed or used on a proper commercial or indie game it seems very revolutionary.

Too bad it sounds like the current form is what happens when a programmer tries to make a game all by himself. I'm guessing they released it in it's form to drum up some needed capital. Only saving grace would be to the sell the engine to some one else