Conquest: Medieval Realms

I've only played through the first and second scenario in the first campaign. Its not a bad game if you like boardgame territory grabbing. The key to winning seems to be divide and conquer.. all about cutting the enemies supply of money by slicing territories in half and reducing their income so they can't support the army raised. If the territory does become financially compromised, then you simply lose your men, and the surrendered flag shows up in their hex. This can lead to devastating defeats, if you're not protective enough of your territory.



Units face off against each other based on level, and there are no exceptions to the rules a level 2 unit beats a level 1, a level 3 unit beats a level 2. So you have to make sure you have the coinage to purchase the appropriate levelled unit. In order to gain cavalry and ranged units, you have to spend some money on converting forest land to archery ranges, and building stables. You start with pikemen. You can buy a higher level unit straight off if you have the gold, or you can buy lower levelled units and upgrade existing ones with them. Their zone of control regardless of unit, is a single depth ring of six hexes around your units current position. Although you can attack by moving onto a lower levelled unit's hex. Your movement will be restricted if there are higher level units exerting zones of control in front of you, or defensive buildings such as forts and castles.

Presentation is very boardgame, and the miniatures are well realised. The UI is very minimal and functional, obviously done on a budget, with the art assets mainly being tied up with the miniatures. There are some historical facts included in the campaign, which is a nice touch to add some credibility to the very abstracted boardgame presentation. The second scenario in the War of the Roses campaign, is actually at Sandal Castle in Wakefield, England (a place where I lived and played as a teenager) and I was quite disappointed to see that the castle grounds are depicted as a mere large hexagonal set of walls. Not quite a historically accurate abstraction of the place I used to climb over all those years ago.. but you know, it was exciting to finally see a wargame depiction of the siege at Sandal Castle.



There are a one or two niggly issues I have with the game, first the miniatures don't drag and drop as you'd want, as you pick it up with a left click on the mouse, the unit drops to well below the mouse cursor, and you place the unit by putting the mouse cursor over the destination hex, and sadly NOT by placing the miniature down over the hex. This single very nitpicky interface quirk, really did drop me out of the illusion that its a boardgame with lovely metal miniatures. Secondly, there doesn't seem to be any feedback when the AI executes its turn, all its moves are resolved in an instance, and your carefully laid plans and defences just disappear or shift about without much in the way of understanding at what the enemy has done. You can often read what might be coming next from the AI's current position and indeed, you strategy is probably geared towards this, but it would be that much more rewarding if there was an option to play out the enemy's actions, or at least have some sort of summary of what happened on a piece by piece basis. The tutorial option on the menus mentioned tutorial scenario's, but from what I can see, the tutorial consists of three pages of information with diagrams to explain the game.

The game does support network play, and even comes with editors for custom skirmishes or scenarios or even custom campaigns, so I'd wager there is a lot of replayability, especially if a modding community gets off the ground. I cannot really comment on the effectiveness of the network play, since I've only really dabbled in the single player game.

Overall, for the money, its worth a go if you enjoy the more abstracted gameplay of a territory grabbing boardgame. Whether the AI can stand up to the more seasoned wargamer, I'm not sure, but with the ability to play against human opponents it could become quite a "chess like" battle of wits.

UKGamer.co.uk goes Live!

I've been on a mailing list for 15 years now, it sort of grew out of an original playstation mailing list, discussing games for UK folks. Well, after all these years dwelling in the underground I've finally managed to motivate myself and a few others on the list, to get a blog site going. Check it out.

Advanced Tactics: WW2

It has to be said all this WeeWar stuff has got me into a right lather about strategic war games, but WeeWar is a bit light, for those quick lunchtime sessions, so I've been looking into other similar games with much more depth.

I was recommended Advanced Tactics: WW2 (which is more of a war game engine with a comprehensive scenario editor), and it has totally enchanted me.



The level of depth to the play is quite refreshing for someone who plays a lot of lightweight strategy and is always frightened off by the proper 'grognards' stuff. The supply mechanism alone is worth its weight in gold, because now you have to factor in logistics as a major part of the battle. Chains of supply, and troop movements are all necessary. It comes across more like a Steel Panthers with added depth. The interface is a bit quirky, but it does the job, and the photo stuff is a nice touch. Plus it even supports bonus cards and research trees for unit upgrades. Anyway, I could spout on all day about this feature and that complexity, its no easy ride to begin with, because the tutorial scenario is very brief and the manual is more of an interface and rules list than any sort of instructional guide.. however, there is a decent community on Matrixgames forums, and looking over their AAR's (After Action Report) has opened the game up a bit more for me, after my tentative steps into getting my ass handed to me by the basic training scenario.

If you have some time, and you are interested in complex fulfilling wargames then give this AAR a read, it has pictures and turn by turn based explanations. Its by a person who has just begun exploring the AT game, so it also presents the beginners view on things, and some of the old vets chip in here and there to help out.

This really spices up the tiles and hexes for me, and gives a blow by blow account of what he encounters and how he reacts to the games AI.

There is a scenario building community here, complete with a Scenario bank full of downloads for extra games to spend hours mulling over..

Its been a while since a PC strategy game has caught me by the nollocks and worked me up into a frothy latte. Worth the entrance fee, and I'm ashamed I've put this game in the same mail as 'WeeWar'.

Evochron Legends

Evochron Legends (EL) is a space combat, mining and trading simulation set in the Evochron Universe. Since it is a simulation, it will take you time to come to terms with the mechanics of basic space flight, navigation, mining and trading - but the investment of effort early on will pay out later. The demo of the game is time limited, but the tutorials for the game don't count against this. So it is encouraged that you play through the tutorials one by one, taking in the information presented. Although they can be daunting at first, with the 'wall of text' presented to you, that text is accompanied with spoken word, which helped me ease into the cockpit. I can see that without the tutorials, just diving in may leave you lost and abandoned. I can also see why people try to skip over the tutorials, their enthusiasm and impatience egging them on to get flying and fighting, but since the finesse of combat and all other matters are derived from your basic skills as a pilot in a void using Newtonian physics, I'll stress it again, these tutorials and the information they impart is the key to opening the wonders of the Pandora's box that is EL. Once you "get it", you'll uncover the depths that the game offers.

The Evochron Universe is a seamless experience, once you are in the cockpit, there are no zones or loading screens to bother you. You have a fulcrum warp drive which you can use to jump through space, and there are connected jump gates between systems, but it is equally possible to use your fulcrums to get to any system if you are a good navigator. Another plus is the ability to Planet fall and switch to normal flight avionics, and drop through the atmosphere and land on planet based stations. You can even land gently on the planets surface and go strip mining by focussing your mining laser downwards. The Universe is distributed about systems and they all have their points of interest and anomalies, as well as a main storied mission that you can choose to follow throughout the game. At space stations, you can enter the shipyards, or trade in precious goods, or re-fuel and re-arm, or take on local missions, such as cargo drop offs, ship protection, enemy ship destruction, races, solar panel cleaning, and asteroid clearance. You can even read the local news, and market changes, as well as get a feel for your standings with the various system wide factions, whether that be with the military, or the rebels. Your reputation amongst system factions influences equipment and costs, and how various other craft will react to you. To gain very good reputation with one faction, you may need to actively lower reputation with another by hunting and destroying their ships.

The game is an evolution of the StarWraith series of games, dating back many years, particularly Legends is a sequel to the Evochron Renegades (ER) game, with updated graphics, and many features requested by the previous games players. In fact one of the key selling points of this game is that you're not just buying into the dry downloaded software, you're actually supporting the StarWraith community, you're enabling the developer to continue evolution of the series. Uniquely, we have a dedicated person as the games sole developer, Vice, who takes a very active part in his community. He is willing to listen, to evaluate and to modify the game based on ideas and suggestions presented by his player base. A sort of symbiosis exists whereby the developer nurtures his players through his game, with hints, tips and advice, and they feedback, enthuse and cultivate his community and popularity by word of mouth.

The game is a simulation and as such, you are encouraged to master inertial flight, and the use of the IDS (Inertial Dampening System) which ultimately controls where you're going and how fast, and how much fuel you will expend. Firing your afterburner with IDS off, and zero thrust, will hurtle your craft in a particular direction at maximum velocity, cutting the burners will maintain that velocity without expending any fuel. Meanwhile you can spin on your axis and take in the sights, or gun down incoming missiles, or perform those 'flip on a sixpence' Viper turns you see in the likes of Battlestar Galactica. Switching on the IDS, engages a whole array of thrusters and compensators to maintain your position and direction set by your steering and your main engines. Learning to take advantage of inertial flight and its manoeuvring possibilities, especially in combat, is the key to being a good pilot in EL. Combat can be very hectic and you'll spend a while getting used to missile interception or avoidance (with countermeasures) as well as utilising beam weapons to drain your enemies shields, and particle cannons to blast holes in their hulls. I'll warn you now, the game can be quite brutal and unforgiving in terms of there are so many ways to die, my advice would be quick save often and learn from your mistakes.

Graphically speaking Evochron Legends isn't at the front of the pack, however, what it lacks in bloated textures, it makes up for in disk space conservation (the is a 45Mb download, with a 130Mb footprint) and artistic beauty. Some of the scenes available in the game are simply breathtaking.



In customising your spacecraft, EL surpasses most other space combat sims in the flexibility of your ships overall appearance, with many of the upgrade able parts (engines, wings, cargo holds, fuel tanks, shields) having distinctive looks, but also in that you can change the positioning of the parts, and their scale in all dimensions by using the custom slider bars. So you can build a truly unique vessel, symmetrical or not, with components you place and size up. Your craft's hull for instance has a specific form, but what you do with the components attached to it, is completely up to you. All of this, and the spaceships look like space travelling craft, some space combat simulations struggle at delivering believable vessels, but EL manages to give you flexibility and integrity. The game's visuals are also scalable so that you should be able to get the game running on quite a low specification machine and still enjoy it.

Both the multiplayer and the single player experience are interchangeable, meaning you can load a pilot profile and play offline, save it and then take the same pilot profile onto one of the player hosted dedicated servers. The servers can host 32 players online at any one time, and the software and configuration files are available for download, so you can run your own private Universe if you want to. Knowing that you can log onto a server, and continue your gameplay, only be able to chat to other pilots, or have them join you in some co-operative missions, or even go head to head against them in Player versus Player (PvP) combat, is extremely exciting. The StarWraith Community forum is a considerate, mature, friendly and very helpful place to converse about the game, and to organise meets and match ups online. So you're never far away from someone who wants to impart knowledge about the game, or who is willing to give you a coaching session online. In fact there are a number of clans there that have grown together through the development of the StarWraith games and who like to take part in organised leagues. Theres even a Capture the Flag style setup in one of the systems for players to experience more than just your normal deathmatch style PvP game. The main difference between the multiplayer and single player game, is that the multiplayer game doesn't affect your faction reputation.

As much as possible the developer has built the game to be mod-able. You can change a lot of the HUD and interface, textures and ship models, you can customise all manner of gamepad controllers and joysticks, and you can even set the game up for TrackIR's 3d head control mechanism for managing you in cockpit viewpoint.

The game has a few rough edges, it is a labour of love, and it has a number of idiosyncrasies ("close up" low textures, quirks in the interface etc), however, if you are willing to be a part of the StarWraith community, your suggestions can help forge the future for this game. Imagine being a part of the process of something so inspiring and so exciting... that is what EL opens up to you. For example, since launch last week, and ultimately down to many suggestions on the forums, the game has gone through 4 or 5 patch iterations, including function changes to the Nav console itself, and more multiplayer information linking and optimising. This is community based 'hands on' gaming at its best.

Overall, you just can't find a more compact and elegantly evolved space combat simulation game. If Elite had a cool big brother this would be it.



Some points to note:

1. affordable and very re-playable
2. large explorable universe with factions
3. freeform open gameplay, exploring, trading, building and customising, racing, fighting, mining, transporting, protecting
4. the space flight physics (inertial flight actually helps you reduce the cost of fuel)
5. planet fall, and switch to gravity based flight model
6. the ability to customise your ship uniquely, by adding, placing and scaling parts
7. the ability to play as a twitch pilot doing missions, and combat and mining (asteroid and planet surface) and trading, fuel scooping from stars and nebula
8. the small download (45Mb) and install footprint (130Mb)
9. single player profile can be used interchangeably on a multiplayer server and play co-operatively or competitively with up to 32 other players
10. run a dedicated server of your own
11. part of the StarWraith community

This is Patapolis!

Having not played anything worth while on my PSP for well over a year, I was inspired by Tom Chick's adulation of Patapon 2 to pick up a copy. Luckily it was marked at £19.99 in GAME, however, they were having a sale on PSP games and it come in at a rather remarkable price of £9.99.

I was intrigued by the way it was claimed that the game married a 2d side scrolling Real Time Strategy game with a rhythmn action game. Before playing the game, I couldn't imagine how it worked. After an hour or so in the game, I can honestly say that "they've only gone and done it Rodney!". The Marriage is a success, so far!



As a person who chokes back a lump in his throat and a tear in his eye, when any rousing beat is played to marching armies.... having the ability to play "war drums" to command your small eyeball troops really does fuel your growing excitement in the game.

As you match the drum patterns with the 4/4 timer, pata-pata-pata-pon, your troops begin to gingerly move forward checking for danger ahead, pata-pata-pata-pon, they start to pick up the pace, until your third combo, pata-pata-pata-pon, has them blustering forward with gusto and momentum, singing proud and jubilant. You spy an advancing enemy coming in from the right of the screen. Its time to pound the drums of war! PON-PON-PATA-PON! Your troops taking up arms with grimaces on their eyeball faces they begin their attack, PON-PON-PATA-PON!, thrusting spear and sword, tossing javelin and axe, PON-PON-PATA-PON! again your drumbeat combo has them in a kill frenzy. The music and chanting, drumming and caterwauling from your troops, some of them leaping into the air with bloodlust is an envigorating sight to behold, I must confess.

The more you advance in the game, the more troops you can specialise, and tweak your army's content and formation. Recruiting new troops in, collecting resources as your march and hack and slash your way through each level. Pounding down walls, and raising towers and barracks with flame and poision, accompanied by the backbeat of your triumphant hammering on the Patapon drums. If you have an ounce of interest in conflict and rhythm, then you'll love this game. Tinkering with your troops, and mixing in your battlefield commands using tempo and timing, is a reward in itself. If you miss a beat, or drop the momentum, your troops will sigh and calm, and sluggishly lose their morale. So timing is everything. And I can almost guarentee that the beat of war will have you tapping your feet, nodding your head, and on some occasions have you positively dancing with elation.

The level of intensity the game presents to you, requires a lot of focus, but for brief sessions at a time, so you can safely participate in the game in bursts of pure enjoyment. Its not quite the battle of Thermophylae, but its marching to the beat of the Patapolis phalanx..

Memorable Game Music

The first in-game music that I remember totally gripped me, and more or less turned me into a PC Gamer who decided game music had enough credibility to be listened to out of game was the soundtrack to Anarchy Online. It wasn't just ambient space music, it actually had recognisable melody and quite pacey sections too.



Other more traditional fantasy based games and console titles that have haunting or memorable music that I still play nowadays are:

Diablo 2 (PC)
Dragons Blood (Dreamcast)
Divine Divinity (PC)
Neverwinter Nights 2 (PC)
Phantasy Star Online (Dreamcast)
Primal (PS2)
Sled Storm (PSX)
Zone of the Enders (PS2)
XGRA (XBox)
Flow (PS3)
Snakeball (PS3)
Two Worlds (PC)
The Witcher (PC)
Mass Effect (360,PC)

Basically a lot of game music tends to be background ambient or orchestral, but very few actually affect you in an emotional way, in a way that you become familiar and attached to the music and the excitement tied up with playing the game.

Oh, and I remember being enchanted and disturbed at the same time by the music out of the PC title "The 7th Guest" many moons ago, and I often think I hear snippets of other music that sound like it. Spooky.

Allies vs Axis - AKA Plants vs Zombies

Whilst playing through Popcap's Plants vs Zombies, I can't help but think about how many "serious" gamers might be turned off by the overtly low res cartoon graphics (that admittedly do lend the game its "charm" and artistic style).


Imagine if you will a more dark and gritty implementation, still with stylised art, but less colourful, loony and throwaway. Perhaps take the art style of a game such as Disciples for instance, or for the wargamer sub in Allies vs Axis (with Sunflowers being supply trucks, and peashooters Artillery guns, and walnuts entrenched soldier fortifications) and then the game may cross more boundaries and not be taken as a cutesy casual game.

As it is, I like the game very much, I think the game has a lot of depth, yet it presents its depth as frivolity. Which works on one level. But, I feel, boiling down the mechanic and tweaking it for a real time (but abstracted) conflict in more "mature" settings would elevate it in the global strategy community.

It seems as an all round gamer (with a job, family and responsiblities), who delves into casual abstractions (sometimes distractions) as much as console stalwarts and nitpicking niche strategy titles, I yearn for more credible casual titles, condensed "quicker play" games that have great game mechanics, but don't need the rainbow of the fat brushed primary palette nor the cutesy cartoon art style to appeal to the so called "casual space".

I guess ultimately what I want is a more abstracted almost boardgame mechanic that is often applied to casual games, but with the mature artistic flair and appeal of full blown titles, rather than the "fisher price" glitz and glam of a traditional Reflexive/Popcap title.

I suppose I should make it clear that I am virtually in love with the game Plants Vs Zombies, and would urge people to snap it up and gorge themselves on it now. I even find the viral marketing they did beforehand charming to some extent, and I "get" the jokes they present during the game. I just think it would make me more happy if the game was presented more credibly rather than as a bit of a joke. Stacked up against Stalin Vs the Martians, PvZ blows them out of the water, with tangleweed.

UKGamer lifts off!

It's time our 15 year old mailing list community had their own blog.

Spelk but with no added Sugar!