spelkZERO

sugarfreegamer.com

2009-12-09T12:07:00.004Z

I'm sort of shifting my focus from this intermittent blog to a more defined gaming blog, named sugarfreegamer.com, obviously playing upon the hook of me having diabetes and being a gamer. I know, I know, not much of a hook, but you know, its one that affects me on a daily basis, so I thought it might be of some merit.

Anyway, if you frequent here now and then, shift your attention over at SFG, as thats where I'll be hanging out nowadays, or on The Claw.

Solium Infernum: Turn 9

2009-12-05T20:28:00.003Z

A manuscript has been snaffled up, which can often be worrying, because manuscripts usually mean tooling up Praetors for single Praetor vs Praetor combat. However, a lot of manuscripts arrive in pieces, and are collections so this might be just the start of a collection. Lets hope.

The Conclave has decided to confiscate any Prestige gained from Places of Power this turn, however, there is already a 7 turn Prestige drought, so I doubt this will shake anyones will.

In rolls my Unexpected Tribute event, and what a sight for sore eyes, 5 or 6 tribute deliveries with some really valuable composite resource cards turn up.

Again, the map has become fairly static, especially for me, although with my new found resource glut, I'm figuring on tooling up a Legion or two and making an advance for the Palace of Gluttony that I've got cordened off.

Searching through the Praetors, its time to bag myself a decent one. My eyes are drawn to Naphula's ability to block Combat Cards. In any Legion to Legion combat this may be a decisive power. So I make a bid for the Preator Naphula.

Here you can see my wealth, and the stacking system I've adopted for sorting the tribute cards, so that I can quickly find composite cards, or look through singles, to determine the best mix when paying for items at the Infernal Bazaar.

Finally the wealth goes to my head, and I decide to make a bid for a Melee boosting artifact for my melee bereft 'Chosen of Stal' Legion. The Adamantine Golem artifact adds 4 onto the melee score, but also adds the Stunning Blow special, which if successful doubles the amount of damage, but also reduces the opponents attributes to 0 for the remainder of the combat. My Chosen Legion has a deep infernal attack, and to add some initial melee might soften the opposition with this artifact in place.

Solium Infernum: Turn 8

2009-12-05T10:57:00.001Z

Starting off with a Prestige drought isn't good, but it is across the board for 7 turns, so it will affect everyone equally.

I managed to secure the 'suicide bomber' relic the Orb of Oblivion, so when I get a spare turn, I'll have to tool up my weakest Legion with it.

I am awarded the regency this turn, and as such I get to choose between the existing event card I hold, and a new alternative. Luckily, the new card presented is 'Unexpected Tribute', which is essentially a tribute/resource windfall, something that will help my ichor deficit tremendously.

Theres not much happening on the map this turn, I think the majority of the land grabbing has finished, we're now in the phase were players start to beef up their Legions, play their events, and begin the diplomatic process of picking fights, or psyching out their weakest opponents.

With the prestige cost of making a demand on another, Leverpastej has had his total paired down a little, which has the fortunate knock on effect of boosting me to the top of the Prestige leaderboard. But its early days yet.

Solium Infernum: Turn 7

2009-12-04T20:10:00.002Z

Is seems the Vendetta has been formed, and Leverpastej and Melfice will now come to blows for at least a turn or two.

I've got Renge Darkfiddler on my North Western border, presumably with an eye on the Palace of Gluttony, but in order to make a play for it, he'll need to initiate a Vendetta with me, and until I've tooled up one of my Legions, I'm not ready for conflict.

I'm desperately short on ichor, and even with my high level of Charisma pulling in 4 tributes, choosing 3 of them to keep, I'm not finding much ichor on the slimey dinnerplate. My souls are doing well, and they're important when making bids, because the more souls you can add to a bid, they count as +2 to the overall bid value, so if you really want something, stuff it with a few more souls than necessary. Looking at Legions (not that I want any more to be honest, they're too much to manage, and move, with only two orders per turn) I can't afford any, and Praetors all seem to require lots of ichor, sadly, so I thought perhaps equipping my weakest Legion with a decent artifact might give it some poke if a Vendetta is on the cards.

Out of all the artifacts, well the ones I could afford anyway, the Orb of Oblivion seemed to give me that suicide bomber send off. Rather than stoke one or two of my paultry attributes, if my weak sauce Legion goes under, they have a decent chance of taking the opponents Legion out also. Figuring it might stop an Archfiend in his tracks if I can take out his advancing Legion with a fairly weak one of mine.

If it sounds like a desperate tactic, it is. Without any tribute to beef up my Legions, or secure some Praetors I'm a bit stuck, and the paranoia is starting to set in, especially with Melfice snagging The Beast!

Solium Infernum: Turn 6

2009-12-03T20:23:00.003Z

Let it be known, the War in Hell has begun! Last turn Leverpastej made a tribute Demand of Melfice, and after the Infernal Conclave messangers had passed the message on, the answer returned with a flat denial. Subsequently this rejection is grounds for a Vendetta to be declared upon Melfice if Leverpastej so desires it.

For my Archfiend Stal, theres a shortage of some ichor, and darkness mainly, these resources are needed if I'm to bid on some relics or even a Praetor Hero to add to one of my Legions, boosting their combat ability. So for now, I will attempt to grab some more cantons to eek my prestige higher a little, and I'll have to make more tribute demands of my minions, lets hope the blood and the black come dribbling in next turn.

You can see Leverpastej's and Melfice's Legions locking antlers to the South of my Stronghold, if a Vendetta is called they'll be going at it tooth and claw in the next turn or two.

Its hotting up in Hell tonight...

Solium Infernum: Turn 5

2009-12-02T20:40:00.001Z

On turn 5, it seems the diplomatic demands have begun, with Leverpastej making a public demand against Melfice. And someone is tooling up with Praetors.

A swift turn for me, I was caught by the land grabbing, fiend blocking bug, and had to move both my Legions in place. I saw an opportunity to block access to the Palace of Gluttony, coupled with the chance to close another bridge into my forgotton plateau, so I took it. With both orders taken up, theres no room for Legion buying or Tribute demanding.

Lets see what happens next…

From Fumanstu:

I feel like I should weigh in with some comments here. I’m in the same game and, in fact, if you look at the second screenshot above that’s my legion in dark brown (all legions that don’t belong to you are displayed in dark brown) sitting on the bridge, eyeing up Spelk’s legion.

From the very start of the game, I’ve been aware that the initial phase of the game was going to be about the land grab. So I was pleased when I was able to take a low power POP as my own on the first turn. Since then its been about ensuring that I grab as many cantons as possible whilst trying to ensure that I retain access to as many of the nearby POPs as possible. Even if I have no intention of capturing them at this stage.

So this has led us to the current situation, at the moment I don’t want the POP that Spelk is attempting to fence off but also I don’t particularly want to have the option of capturing it later removed. So the question becomes do I use one of my two orders for the turn in an attempt to move in and grab the territory – I don’t know for sure that the order will succeed though because of the way the game processes moves. It may be that Spelk will go first and in that case my order will become invalidated and I really can’t afford to waste an order at this stage.

Unfortunately for me, I’ve got almost the exact same situation at the other end of my territory. I’m racing with one of the other players to try and secure access to another POP. It’s entirely possible that I could lose out there as well and then I’ll have lost a whole turn, which would be a serious setback.

So do I go cautious, regroup and use my orders to start planning something nasty for later? Or do I go in all guns blazing and hope that the moves work out in my favour and my opponents are the ones that are the losers?

And how long can me and Spelk maintain the uncomfortable neighbourly peace before things start to escalate? :D

Solium Infernum: Turn 4

2009-12-01T20:43:00.000Z

I planned to record my dealings in a Play By Email game of Solium Infernum, but being swept up in a wave of enthusiasm I managed to tick over a few turns before remembering to explain myself, so we join the game entitled “Newbie Death Delight”, at Turn 4.

My Avatar, Stal, the Horse Head Fiend was rolled with Charisma and War in mind, I wanted to boost his ability to bring in plenty of tribute (the resources in the game) as well as be able to conjur Combat Cards for his Legions to equip, making them more powerful. The build was more thrown together out of hearsay from the Cryptic Comet forums, and tidbits gleaned from Quarter to Three forums, and I wanted to keep it simple to begin with, so I would be able to make informed decisions and not wild guesses.

The floorplan of Hell after Turn 4 looks like this from my perspective. Things have already started to slither around, my most loyal Legion The Chosen of Stal has already managed to capture a The Unholy Fountain, a Place of Power (PoP), directly north of his Stronghold (the building with the fiery red aura). This delivers an extra 1 point of Prestige per turn, so already we’re ascending in standing amongst our rivals.

After a quick slew of demanding tribute, I was able to bid for an extra supporting Legion on the Infernal Bazaar. Luckily a soul or two more than it needed secured the acquisition of The Order of Infernal Engineers.

This Legion wasn’t necessarily the best I could have bid on, but it was one I could afford with the meagre tribute I had available at the time. Rather than wait, I decided I’d grab a quick Legion, and start to mark off some of the territory, particularly to attempt to corden off The Palace of Gluttony to the west of my Stronghold. As you capture the unclaimed cantons (hexes) by moving a Legion across them, you effectively block out your opponents. They can only cross your cantons if a diplomatic Vendetta is arranged.

Since I’m currently a bit clueless about the subtle nuances of the game, I’m sticking (perhaps foolhardily) to a basic land control and Legion boost policy for the moment. I fear I might be playing the turns out more like a traditional wargame, but with limited experience of the more esoteric mechanics to employ against your demonic foes, I’ll stick with what I know for now.

During Turn 4, the Turn Log indicates that my rivals are also swallowing up their close Places of Power, as well as filling their ranks with Legions and Praetors (heroes that can be attached to Legions) from the Infernal Bazaar.

The remaining entries in the log show me that my Demand for more Tribute has delivered another batch of random resources I can select from to top up my dwindling pools of souls, ichor, hellfire and darkness.

And lastly the Regency has passed onto Leverpastej, indicating that he will begin the next turn with the first phase. The regency can be important because all players turns are resolved simultaneously, but are decided by the position in the turn phase, with the Regent being processed before those in the phase queue.

Finally, heres the diplomacy status screen, showing all players portraits and their prestige values at the end of turn 4.

As you can see, my early PoP grab has boosted my prestige from 10 to 21, but my Horse Lord rival Leverpastej has pipped me at the post with a prestige of 22. Players can prioritise their threat list (for free until turn 10), and often they’ll sort the list by prestige scores early on, so sometimes sucking up all the prestige initially can focus your rivals against you. Having said that, my reasoning was to provide myself with a base of prestige trickle whilst I can, and the longer the game runs the more prestige I will accrue. Since you have to use prestige to perform the diplomatic procedures to initiate a state of war (Vendetta, Blood Feud and even Insults), I figured its better to have some prestige to play with.

More next time…

HISTORY - Great Battles Medieval

2009-10-09T22:54:00.001+01:00

HGBM, I've only given it the briefest of tries, but from what I've seen in just the tutorial, its got a lot of potential.

Its like Total War, only turn based, with Card based Specials. Now that ticks three boxes of mine in terms of gameplay.

The Total War series have always tried too hard to be too real time, and you often get a sense of too much UI chaos not enough strategy. With the turn based offerings here, and the unit placement being physical boxes on the map, you have more strategy like a traditional turn based hex wargame really. But you still get to play out the action in real time, only its pausable, using the space bar to issue more commands.

The graphics are not bad, a major step forward from previous titles, if the animation seems a little "stiff" in places. The idea of being able to employ certain higher effects provided by the battle cards, feels like it might give you more strategic decisions at the commander level, rather than just fitting the rock/paper/scissors jigsaw pieces together of combat.

Upon pausing the game, you can see clearly where your units are and where the enemy is, because they are highlighted in blocks of red and blue, so it becomes much easier to make offensive and defensive decisions based on layout and positioning, almost at-a-glance, something I'd say you'd have difficulty with any of the Total War series.

I must say from the brief nibble I've had, I like it, I like the turn-based principles behind it, I like idea of the cards, and the boardgame like shuffling of your troops during combat and pursuit.

I'd like to see the cards and the UI to be a bit more ornate and polished, but I look forward to exploring the strategy within the campaign.

Currently only available as a download for the PC at Slitherine's website, but in February 2010 it will be available on consoles.

Gratuitous Space Battles

2009-09-10T06:23:00.000+01:00

http://positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/

You can pre-order this baby now and get a downloadable beta version to play with, until the release version becomes available. Its a bit of a scenario based spaceship designer and tweaker, that then pits your fleet loadout against an enemy and you can watch it in glorious 2d. Its more polished graphically than AI War (at the moment), but its limited to smaller skirmishes and gives you a more fleet based customiser than any resource collection or planetary conquest game. I'm not entirely sure it will match the replayability nor the AI quality of AI War, but it does seem to give you a ship building scenario based tweaker to play with. Worthwhile supporting if you're a space strategy fan methinks.

I've bought it, but I've not given it much time to be honest. Its definitely a game that needs some reading around the types of weapons and what not, because the first mission cannot be done with the default ship loadouts. I haven't quite fathomed out what I want, and what I don't want in my fleet yet. I've played the first scenario about 5 times now, with different types of ships, and all have failed abysmally. You have no idea what the enemy/alien ships are made up of, so its more of a case of learning what works, with trial and error, and sifting through the info on offer.

Theres no direct control of the fleet once you start a battle, you sit back and watch, but there are quite complex orders that can be given, setting target priority percentages, and range max and mins. So its all about the setup. Then its watch and re-assess your setup.

Its interesting, but I think it needs some time to set aside and digest all the information and setup options, before you're going to get any reward/payback from it. The battles are very nice to watch, nice missile/beam effects kicking off, ships on fire, fighter squadrons swirling in for an attack, shields pulsing etc. The trick is deciphering the battles progress into changes you need to make to the setup to be more successful next time.

Worth a punt if you are into space battles and tweaking spaceship loadouts. Like Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, without the storyline, or the 3d. Big space fleets in epic combat. It contrasts nicely with the 4X/RTS style of AI War, you're getting two different mechanisms to play around the space battle arena.

The Myth of Hero Legends

2009-08-28T07:49:00.000+01:00

If anyone has played and enjoyed Bimboosoft's Battle of Tiles on the PC, there is now a game on the iPhone/iPod that plays quite similar to it.

It's called The Myth of Hero Legends and its about a party of heroes, who you position and then slide along, and fight oncoming enemies. The party has mages, healers, fighters and archers/spear throwers, and you manage their physical positioning and their abilities fire off as they commence an attack. You earn experience and gold as you progress through the waves, and you can purchase/bribe enemy types to join your band to help against the onslaught. It has a chinese flavour to it, and the party arrangement isn't as tight as BOT, but its fluidity and smaller scale suits the iPhone better I think.

You tap your adventurer icon to select them or deselect them from the party, then to advance you swipe the screen in a given direction and the selected units move forward in that direction. As you do, the enemy move towards you. So you basically set up a movement and protection formation and advance, and see how the combat turns out. Its essentially turn based. If you healer is near a unit that takes damage he will heal it. If your ranged troops spot an enemy in their range they will fire. Similar you use the fighter as a shield for your weaker support troops. You tap and hold over the units or the enemy to see their stats. Although I don't think there is any equipment management or whatever, but your troops do level up as they do damage to the enemy. So it behooves you to keep all your troops rotated through a position where they can attack or kick off their specials, because thats how they level up I think. You can purchase incoming enemy and add them to your party if you can get them back fast enough. So you can take on their abilities and level them up.

Its right up my street, I can see me putting some time into it, because I was utterly charmed by BoT, and this is a smaller more manageable scale. With nicer graphics. I think its about £1.79 on iTunes at the moment.

Worth the effort if you like turn based party RPG-lite strategy.

Elements

2009-08-22T05:53:00.000+01:00

Elements is a web based fantasy card battler. It has a rather simpler more casual mechanic than Magic the Gathering, but it is obviously inspired by that game.

It relies on a constructed deck to maximise your advantages on the card draws, and the synergy between certain card combinations. Rather than "mana" you have elemental Pillar cards that deliver a constant flow of currency to summon other cards, whether they be offensive creatures, or support cards such as spells, shields or weapons.

Each player has a guarenteed energy slot for their Elemental school (of which there are 12). The player also has an offensive weapon slot, for bonus attacks and a defensive slot for a shield or reflector of some sort. In addition to this, your permanent cards, such as pillars and artifacts or effects cards stack up at the back. Your creature cards are laid up front, where they exert an attack at the end of each turn.

Like in Magic the Gathering, certain Creatures have special abilities which can be activated before you initiate the attack by ending the turn. Some spell cards attack or destroy creature cards, some target the permanent support cards, or even the players life points themselves.

Theres no blocking as such, but each creature has an offensive value, and a hit point value that can be whittled down by offensive spells, until the creature dies.

A win in the game can reward you with gold coins (which you can use to buy more cards), rank points (to demonstrate how good you are, conversely losing a game can forfeit some of those points) and loot attempts (by spinning a slot machine wheel) to gain you some random free cards.

There is a deck builder and a bazaar where you can purchase extra cards, although I've not investigated the player trading mechanism at this time.

The game can be played against the AI at different levels, or you can take it online against other players (which costs gold coins to form a challenge), if they are of a similar skill rank.

The game presents itself well, and delivers a very easy to pick up casual card battler. It also has a quest based system, whereby you complete certain tasks, and you gain rewards. These quests start off as quite easy, such as buying a card, or selling a card, and become harder as the rewards become better, such as gaining a certain rank score.

Since the game is free to play, I can thoroughly recommend the game to anyone interested in a quick blast of collectible card gaming with the ability to change your elemental nature, customise your deck, play against other friends, level up your rank and link your Elements account into Facebook.

Its simple and elegant enough for everyone to play, yet has some complexity to keep card battling gamers amused for a while.

For more information check out the Elements Wiki.

Exclusive Interview with Chris Park about AI War

2009-07-22T07:16:00.000+01:00

I thought I'd pose a few questions to Indie Developer Chris Park regarding his recently released co-operative 2d space RTS AI War: Fleet Command.

UKGamer: What was your original inspiration to make AI War a co-operative game against an asymmetrical AI, rather than pursue a more traditional single player campaign with player versus player multiplayer providing much of the challenge?

Chris Park: Well, to be perfectly honest, my motivations were quite selfish. The short answer is that its simply the sort of game I want to play. The full story is that, since around 1998 or so, my dad, my uncle, and myself have had a weekly RTS session together -- and in recent years, one of my uncle's colleagues has also become a regular. At any rate, we started out with the original Age of Empires (I had already exhausted Warcraft I and II for myself), and then moved on through the AoE series, the Empire Earth series, Empires Dawn of the Modern World, Rise of Nations and its offshoots, Supreme Commander, and also a few outside the genre like CivIV and Neverwinter Nights, both of which were much more shortlived.

For me, that was the most fun I had in RTS gaming, was playing with that group, co-operatively against the AI in skirmishes in those games. There were a lot of other RTS games that I played and enjoyed, such as Star Wars: Empire at War and a few entries from the Total War series, but they didn't support the sort of multiplayer I was interested in and so they got a lot less play.

The problem, even with the other games that we did play, was ultimately the AI. In the earlier entries such as AoE, AoE2, and Empire Earth, we were all less skilled and so we got a lot more use out of those games. In later games such as AoE3 and Supreme Commander, we reached the point of competence much more quickly -- once you're competent at most RTS games, the AI doesn't hold a candle unless it really outnumbers you, which isn't possible when you are trying to play 4 humans against the AI players.

When we were winding down on Supreme Commander, in the middle of 2008, I was looking around at the other possible candidates to become our next RTS mainstay, and I was really frustrated by the fact that nothing matched exactly what I wanted. I had been programming and designing games as a hobby off and on for years, but it never occurred to me to attempt an RTS until then. When it came time to decide on modes of play -- campaigns, skirmish etc -- I chose to focus only on the modes of play that I actually personally play, since those are the modes that I have enough experience with to do a good job with the design. Any scripted campaign I was likely to create, or pvp offering I might try to put out there, is likely to be sub-par for the genre simply because I don't really play those modes enough to know what's already been done, what works, what's been found to be annoying in the past, etc.

UKGamer: Where did you derive the idea of having an escalating AI Progress mechanism (incorporating AI aggressiveness and attack consequences) into the game?

Chris Park: This basically arose out of my desire to have the game be able to support long seiges. The most fun I ever had with an RTS prior to AI War was some 12-hour marathon player-vs-AI skirmishes in Empire Earth. Playing on team islands map types, their AI didn't know how to effectively use transports and so they would get this huge mass of guys on their territory, while they were completely unable to attack us except with nuclear bombers and the like. This made for a very interesting situation as we tried to take the smaller islands, get a foothold on the bigger islands, and ultimately win. We did win, eventually, but it took many hours.

I wanted to have the game design of AI War support that sort of extended seige (with all the feelings of satisfaction that come after winning that), and I think you can see that throughout the design of the game. The AI Progress gives the game a bit of the feel of a turn-based game, even though it is entirely realtime, and I think that not only allows for the seiges (it's original purpose), but also allows for a lot more strategic thinking. The turn-based level of strategy that the AI Progress provides was also a really motivating factor for its inclusion -- I was really impressed by the level of strategy in CivIV (and quite addicted to it in single player), but multiplayer with my group usually devolved into a lot of waiting around for the next turn if we weren't all attacking at once. So I basically tried to duplicate that level of strategy in a realtime context where there isn't any waiting.

UKGamer: What do you think is the biggest selling point or hook of AI War, that would act as the magnetic pull for RTS and strategy gamers?
Chris Park: For me, it's right in the name: the AI. If you're playing solo or cooperatively, you either need great AI or really well-designed scripted campaigns. So far we've seen a lot of the latter in the genre, but almost never in a cooperative context (very recent games like Red Alert 3 and Dawn of War II being the exceptions to that general rule). A lot of people have been really excited by the high unit counts, too, even though at this stage I am so used to them that I hardly remember it's a unique point any longer (that's always a side effect of spending so much time with any one product, and I've heard of it happening to a lot of other software developers).

But mainly, I guess, it all boils down to the fact that the game is actually fun, and a bit different from your standard fare while still feeling reasonably familiar in its overall control scheme. With any RTS game that I've really enjoyed, it simply "felt right," and I'm really happy that AI War is finding a growing pool of players for which that holds true here.

UKGamer: How did you come up with the variety of AI types that are currently in the game?

Chris Park: Some of them, like the turtle and the raider, are simply genre standbys. Others, like the Attritioner or the Special Forces Captain, are really built around highlighting a specific game mechanic or new ship type. Generally I wanted each AI type to feel different enough so that players could recognize over time which one they were playing against without being told. That, and I wanted to maximize the number of possible scenarios people might see; the effect of adding more AI types is multiplicative in that regard.

UKGamer: What's the most outlandish idea for a new Ship design you've ever had, whether it be your own idea or a member of the Arcen Games community?

Chris Park: Hmm, that's a tough one. A lot of the designs that made it into the game are pretty esoteric by RTS standards. Electric shuttles, slow-moving ships that emit giant bolts of lightning that lightly damage all nearby ships jump immediately to mind. So do vampires, which steal health from the enemy ships they attack. The ship that most people have commented on as being outlandish is the Astro Train, however. That ship is held only by enemies, and is completely indestructible (an odd choice for a wargame), but it's not primarily a combat ship. Mainly it just causes disruptions-over time in your defenses, most notably your turret emplacements and minefields, but it can also cause problems for your scouts.

The players have a variety of ways to deal with the Astro Trains, most notably some counter-turrets that protect against the train attacks, and the ability to destroy the train stations, thus causing trains to re-route. These sorts of decisions are not something you really see in most RTS games, where the usual response to a troublesome enemy is just to kill it. When that is no longer an option, and you have to employ some other methods, you get some very interesting and unique gameplay scenarios. There are a variety of other ships that fall under that category in the game, but Astro Trains are the most commonly seen.

UKGamer: Are there any plans for truly massive starships with their own communities of support ships, fighters, bombers and transports?

Chris Park: Yes, very much so! Players have asked for some ships specifically along these lines, and I already had some plans for this, too. The main limitation that caused these not to be in the original version of the game was art. All of the art from the game was either from free sources (mostly Daniel Cook's work), or stuff that I cobbled together myself. I'm a competent artist, but not a great one, and large ships like that are beyond me. Now that the game is out and is actually selling, I'm interviewing artists to contract for some general graphics upgrades, as well as new ships that I simply couldn't do before because of a lack of art. Most of the really massive new ships will probably be in expansions, but there will be a couple in free DLC.

UKGamer: Any chance of seeing colonization of planets, planet resource management and planet defense, come into the game or future incarnations?

Chris Park: My original design for this game actually had planned for a planet-level view (with ground/air/sea combat) in addition to the space-based level. However, through further testing and design, I eventually decided that was simply out of scope and would not only take too much work to develop and test (and largely be redundant with the existing space combat), but I was also worried that would just be too much for players to manage. I've always liked that idea, though, so perhaps in a later expansion a limited form of that sort of thing might make a resurgence. I doubt that will be in the first expansion, though, since its focus is on bringing even more scope and variety to the space-based aspects of the game.

UKGamer: We have seen that you are committed to providing regular free downloadable content (DLC), often incorporating many ideas from the Arcen Games community. Do you think you'll be able to sustain such a regular stream of new content for very long, and how are you deciding which new features to bundle in DLC and which ones to hold back for future expansions to the game?

Chris Park: I think I'll be able to maintain a fairly regular stream of free DLC for as long as there is player interest in the game. Some of the interface additions and other gameplay shifts can be quite time consuming to implement, but usually the additions to the AI logic or the additions of new ships are actually quick and easy by comparison (when I have the needed artwork for them). This game was designed to be modular and easily extensible (from within -- not by outside modders). I still play this game every week with my RTS/alpha group, and we've been basically looking for a game that we could stop and really sink our teeth into for longer than just a year or so (our average time with most other RTS titles). So far we've been playing it for around 8 months, and no one is really getting tired of it yet, so that's a good sign. I'll keep adding to it just for us, at the very least.

However, that said, I think that the nature of the free DLC is going to shift over time. So far there have been a lot of features requested that basically made the game more playable for people coming from other specific RTS titles with conventions different from those I'm used to, or for people with different play styles or preferences in general. A lot of those really come down to polish and usability. I feel like the product we delivered at launch was quite polished and extremely usable, but at the same time it has made some pretty amazing leaps forward since that time. Take that as you will, I guess. Having a dedicated fanbase giving constant, detailed, quality feedback is a real asset for any game. One reviewer called an earlier version of the interface "almost completely fantastic," so hopefully we're getting closer to "completely fantastic" with the free DLC.

Those sort of changes presumably won't keep coming in forever, though -- already I've seen a noticable drop in those sort of "I could play this a lot better if only" requests. A lot of the requests now are more "nice to have" features, or game-expanding features. The latter is where I see the focus ultimately staying in the long term, and as I've said that sort of thing is comparably quicker for me to implement. My original plan with the game was to do weekly DLC for a month after release, and then switch to monthly, but the weekly DLC has been so valuable and such a hit that it's two months since release and I'm still doing weekly releases with no immediate plans to cut back (vacation/holiday weeks excepted). A year from now, I expect the weekly (or possibly bi-weekly) free DLC releases will have quite short release notes compared to now, with just a key new ship or feature or two added in.

As far as how I decide what to hold back for expansions instead of free DLC, that's fairly straightforward: if it affects usability, the interface, playability, or AI quality, it's free DLC. If it's a large new game mechanic or ship that is going to take a lot of my time to implement, then that's most likely for an expansion. Those sorts of features need a longer testing cycle than one week, anyway. Most of the content for the free DLC releases is focused on augmenting the existing game, or offering minor extensions and new options to it, rather than huge game-changing new content. But, that said, sometimes just making significant improvements or shifts to the AI logic, as has happened a few times in the past, can make a huge shift in the game even just from the free DLC.

UKGamer: AI War is currently available on Stardock's Impulse digital distribution client, are you looking to pursue some of the other digital distributors (such as Steam, Gamersgate, Metaboli, Direct2Drive etc)?

Chris Park: Yes, definitely. We're one of the more popular games on Impulse at the moment, and I couldn't be happier with the folks at Stardock, but to really make it long-term Arcen Games needs to have more distribution partners. It's never good to have all your eggs in one basket, no matter how awesome that one basket is -- I've learned that the hard way in past business ventures (unrelated to gaming). We're currently under review at five other distribution channels, but these things just take time. One of the great things about Stardock is how responsive and quick they are, but our experience with them was even quicker than average simply because a staff member saw our inquiry, tried the demo and loved it, and accelerated the entire submission process. So the combination of those two factors has put us out on Impulse far before most of the other platforms even responded to our initial inquiry emails.

I'm very hopeful about getting the game on the other platforms, and given our success at Impulse hopefully that is something of a no-brainer for them. But it's always a challenge for indie titles from little-known developers, so we'll see. A large part of Arcen's future rests on whether AI War really finds a self-sustaining audience or not, and getting the word out through print/web publications, as well as every distribution channel that will take us, is the only way for the entirety of that audience to find the game. There are a few distribution channels out there that have rather unfair terms or royalty rates, and we're avoiding those, but anyone who is on the level is someone we are interested in partnering with.

UKGamer: Can you ever see any future iteration of AI War supporting a 3d graphics engine and perhaps incorporating the 3rd dimension of space into the gameplay somehow?

Chris Park: Actually, probably not. The game wasn't built in 2D as a poor-man's substitute for 3D. I played Homeworld back in the day, but for a lot of reasons just never connected with it. Obviously there are millions of players who did, but it just wasn't my style. When it comes to 3D space games I am more a fan of action-oriented games like the Rogue Squadron or Descent: Freespace games. But, more than that, pretty much every Arcen Games title is going to be in 2D, at least for the forseeable future. Part of me would really like to make a 3D first-person shooter game at some point, but in general I feel like there are more quality 3D games than 2D games coming out these days, and I want to help fill in the gap with quality 2D. I'm a sucker for good pixel art, and I'd really like to develop the sort of games that might have been common in a parallel universe where consumer-level 3D never became common. There are lots of other companies out there that are better than me at making 3D games, and in general I prefer to just play their offerings while making my own games to fill the 2D void.

UKGamer: Have you writing aspirations to include a backstory and AI War Lore in either expansions or future versions of the game?

Chris Park: For me, RTS games aren't too much about the story. I enjoyed the story very much in Warcraft II and its expansions, but I can't think of another RTS title where the story mattered much to me. This is a funny thing for a guy who has written several novels to say -- I still hope to be a published novelist some day, even though my main focus is going to remain software development. But, plain and simple, I just don't feel like every game is made better by having a story. Chess doesn't have a story. Neither does the skirish mode of any other RTS game, which is what I mostly play. I have aspirations to do some very story-centric RPG games in the future, but I don't want to try to graft that sort of thing into an RTS context. I like the fact that players have the freedom to imagine all sorts of scenarios with AI War. They can picture themselves in any of their favorite sci-fi settings, then, instead of any lesser knock-off I could conjure up (there's not a lot of room for quality storytelling in this sort of genre without scripted campaigns).

UKGamer: Do you plan to support the modding of AI War? If so, what areas would you open up to the community? Graphics? Ship behaviour? Star system build and details? etc.

Chris Park: I go back and forth on this. If I ever abandon development on the game, I might just open-source the whole project. Sometime down the line, ten years or so later if sales have slackened off, I'd probably do that anyway. In the meantime, right now I'm basically keeping it closed because I want to act as a gatekeeper for quality and balance. Right now, I'm the content aggregator that takes all of the community ideas, implements them in a consistent and quality way, and makes them available to everybody. Too often with other RTS titles you see the community fragment around a series of mods, often many of which just contain a unit or two that are not cross-compatible with one another.

The way I'm doing it, the overall quality of the game never drops, the community doesn't fragment, and instead of having a lot of little optional offshoots that the majority of players of the game will never see anyway, the player suggestions go right into the core experience that everyone sees. I think that's a win for everyone, but it's only possible while I remain engaged and active with the project. If ever there comes a time where I am not able to fulfill that role, then I'll do something to make sure that someone else can come along and take up the responsibility (or several someones).

UKGamer: As a new indie game developer what do you think you can do to maximise your chances to make the gaming press (both print and web) sit up and take notice of AI War?

Chris Park: With this, I am still learning. I submit a lot of press releases, offer a lot of review opportunities, but of course the majority of those go unanswered because gaming professionals have enough to do with their jobs without looking at a complex game they've never heard of. So mostly it's a matter of getting through the first few tiers of filters first, as far as I can tell -- get as many reviews from smaller sources as possible, get as large and healthy a player community as possible, get on as many of the reputable distribution channels as possible, and then keep sending out those press releases and review offers every so often.

Over the past two months, I've seen a marked improvement in response since we've been on Impulse, and then since we've been doing so well on Impulse and in the few reviews that the game has received. Sites that once didn't respond at all now run the occasional little news blurb about a press release, and occasionally an opportunity just comes out of nowhere like the recent podcast with techZing. Right now it's summer, and so everything is slower even than it otherwise would be, so that doesn't help, but overall things are trending in the right direction.

What major action can I take to really maximize the game's chances of success? I don't think there is any one thing. I don't have any special connections, or inside tracks, or easy paths, or marketing budget. The only thing I know to do is to keep pressing onward with every possibility, to never turn down an opportunity no matter how humble it appears (any publicity can lead to surprising other opportunities, I've learned), to keep writing (hopefully) interesting articles that people see fit to link to, and to keep improving the game through free DLC and player suggestions. Good word of mouth has been invaluable so far. Beyond that, it's just a matter of whether people like the game and therefore choose to give it some coverage. I wish there were a silver bullet, but so far I have not seen one.

UKGamer: Have you learned any lessons so far, whether good or bad, that would help other Indie developers hit warp speed a little faster?

Chris Park: In many respects I don't have enough accumulated data to really give a solid answer to that -- two months isn't a long time for an indie game. Also, I'm really coming to believe that every indie game is going to take a hugely different trajectory. Writing interesting articles works for me because I'm also a writer and there's a lot of unique tech and design elements in play here. On another game, without those talking points, such an approach would be worse than futile. It also really depends on who picks up your game for distribution, where you are able to squeak out some coverage, and where/how big your player base is.

Contests are helpful, obviously -- we entered the PAX 10 but sadly did not win a spot. We'll see how IGF and similar go later on. Having great production values is also clearly important -- I think our slightly-underwhelming art has been a sticking point for some players, but there was nothing I could do about that when all the money was coming out of my pocket. I am not independently wealthy, and taking out a loan for something so speculative as a cooperative 2D RTS seems the height of foolishness. So now that AI War is selling well enough, I'm looking at bringing on an artist to spruce up the visuals and hopefully make the game accessible to a larger crowd. Music in the game is already terriffic thanks to my lucking out in meeting Pablo at just the right time in our respective careers, and I think that has helped win some people over and show that we are serious about the game, not just hobbyists. Professionalism really does count.

Having excellent tutorials and also putting a lot of effort into usability in general has also been a large part of our success, I think. The more complex the game, the more players need to be eased into things. They also need to feel like they are really able to play the game without constantly stumbling or fighting the interface, which can be a challenge in a genre with many varied (often conflicting) expectations. Flexibility in the interface thus becomes key, as does listening to player feedback.

So, thinking about it, I guess that's the number one tip I could give other upcoming indie developers: listen to your players. I really mean it. Don't just nod along and then do your own thing, and for God's sake don't get angry at them for deigning to give you advice. Often their advice is really solid, and even when it's not there's often an underlying need that they are expressing that you should take note of. Big AAA developers have the advantage of giant QA teams, but we indies have the advantage of flexibility. Make the best game you possibly can before release, make sure you have zero open issues on your list when you go gold with any product, but then don't expect there to not be any issues or requests after release. Plan on supporting and expanding your product through at least a honeymoon period with your playerbase, and take their needs seriously. If you treat this as a "take it or leave it" situation, a good number of them will just opt to leave it.

UKGamer: What does the future hold for Arcen Games and Chris Park in terms of games development?

Chris Park: Well, money permitting, I intend to keep doing this for a long, long time. I've been doing game programming and design to some degree as a hobby since I was around nine years old, and it's what I'd like to do with my life if the fates allow it. I'd like to hire a small team of full-time staff with a composer, an artist or two, and another game designer or two. Possibly one more programmer, also. Beyond that, I think we'd be getting too bloated for the sort of lean, highly-creative company I want to run.

I see us making a lot more 2D games, with ever-increasing production values, across a lot of different genres. I really want to make some action platformers, but I also have some very large and involved quasi-Japanese-style RPGs planned. It's always been a personal dream of mine to make a game that could stand in the ranks of Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, or the other greats of that time period. Those are my two favorite games ever right there, incidentally. Those sorts of titles will require a lot of up-front capital, however, so sales of prior games will have to reach a certain threshhold before I can be comfortable taking on such an ambitious project like that.

When it comes to RTS, I think that AI War is probably going to be it for Arcen Games for the next five years or so, if not longer. I plan to keep on adding to the game with free DLC and expansions for as long as there is interest, but I'm not sure I ever see myself making an AI War 2. To go back to the drawing board and lose all the existing content seems foolish to me with a game like this. Instead, in a few years I expect to basically have so much content out there that it is like three or four games all rolled into one, with a solid and ever-refined interface and engine underlying all of them.

I'm all about iterative development and constant improvement, rather than single releases that you just drop out into the wild and then forget. That approach works very well with business software, and there are a few other games (mostly free or indie) that take this approach, but it will be very interesting to see how my particular brand of iterative development fares with the gaming community. Indications thus far are excellent, but I'm also quite conscious of the fact that I'm standing near the start of a very long road. Good thing I love what I do, or I'd never be able to do it.

A very big thanks for answering our questions Chris, and we here at UKGamer wish you all the best for the evolution of AI War and the success of Arcen Games in the future.

techZing Podcast

2009-07-20T18:59:00.000+01:00

There is a rather splendid interview with the developer of AI War: Fleet Command, namely Chris Park, over at techZing episode 10. Chris goes on to explain his development methods and digs deep into the infrastructure behind his AI concept for the game. Worth a listen.

Its also a strange podcast in that the techZing guys seem to talk really, really fast, so either they are slightly speeding up the audio playback for effect or those guys should lay off the coffee! Their chat was amazingly fast paced, and whilst it means you get a lot said in a shorter time, it doesn't give us "slowbies" a chance to ponder on the stuff being said as its being said..

Also check out Chris' AI articles on his blogsite

Designing Games in a Vacuum #1
Designing Games in a Vacuum #2

Designing Emergent AI #1 - Intro
Designing Emergent AI #2 - Queries and Code
Designing Emergent AI #3 - Limitations
Designing Emergent AI #4 - Asymetrical Goals

The Case for Co-op Games

These articles exemplify Chris' close relationship with his gaming community as well as his transparency about the techniques he employs, and not only is it a great insight into the development process, but its also reassuring for fans of the game that he will listen and possibly implement functionality suggested by his playing followers.

Bowesy.net has Closed

2009-07-14T07:56:00.000+01:00

That day has come when Bowesy.net has closed its doors, and I've embraced the draw of spelkZERO's Blog. With much the same information available here, it doesn't mean the flood of Bowesy drivel will stop, it will just continue here more personally, or with articles at my slightly reluctant but alternate home on UKGamer.co.uk blog site.

Ever since I decided to stump up real money to host my own thoughts about gaming, from the gayebyker.com era, through aging-gamer.com, spelk.net and finally settling on Bowesy.net, I've been throwing up blather left right and center about the gaming gems I've fallen in love with. Well its time for me to stop burning cash month after month just to massage my own ego and to deliver the gubbins for free. We're now in the days of free blogspace, free email, free file hosting, free image hosting, free tweeting why on earth would I pump my own coppers into getting my message out there?

Anyway, it still seems a bit of a sad day for me..

Time for my diabetic alter ego, spelkZERO to go into the sugar free heights of gaming in the future.

New Evochron Legends Build Out Today!

2009-07-10T18:26:00.000+01:00

New build of Evochron Legends out today
http://starwraith3dgames.home.att.net/evochronlegends/about.htm

Version 1.108 is ready for download. This update adds the following:

- New warp tunnel textures for jump drives and gates.
- New 3rd person view added, current target perspective.
- Autopilot now automatically controls jump drive for long range/deep space travel.
- Custom city object system now supports separate custom textures (rather than being linked to ships).
- Stations without names will now display their ID number rather than no data when hangar fees are paid.
- Higher frequency of mission participation from Alliance military spacecraft in war zones.
- Separate custom cities can now also be included for each planet in the game.
- Issue with an error message while changing music setting in-game fixed.
- Fix for the mouse-over display showing the wrong planet economy type.
- Multiple cargo object entities (container sets) per sector now supported.
- HUD highlight brackets added for cargo containers not being scanned.
- Version value and check routine added to universe data file system.
- Engine exhaust effect updated for a more centralized appearance.
- Fuel burn rate better calibrated (overall lower burn rate).
- Fix for custom planet textures not loading correctly.
- Planet positions in several systems updated.

The new target 3rd person view offers the same camera controls as the player view mode does, including zoom in/out and panning up/down/left/right. Simply press the default V key three times to access the new view mode. You can also change targets while in this mode.

To update your profile for station ID listing (if you are renting a hangar from a station without a name), simply clear the hangar, exit back to your ship, then restock it and save.

Trine

2009-07-03T07:33:00.000+01:00

Trine is out on Steam
http://trine-thegame.com/site/

Hells bells its a bloody good looking puzzle platformer with saucy RPG leanings. Well worth the effort. I believe its coming to XBLA and PSN but sometime in the future.

Each character really does have clear and usuable powers, with the bow toting ranger girl being the best for getting around the play area with her agility and her grappling line (bionic commando style). The physics solutions to some of the puzzling and experience collection is something to behold, and with the clockwork crate conjuring wizard who can levitate and pull world items theres a lot of jiggling and fiddling you can do to the environment setup. Lastly you have the rather rotund beefy shield and steel toting warrior, who has the pleasure of laying waste to the attackable enemies, or smashing his way through boarded up entrances, or blocking incoming missile attacks. Switching between each of them is a dream, hotkeyed to 1,2 and 3. And you can do it mid-air if you're feeling twitchy skillful. If death for one of them ensues you can resurrect at half health at the next checkpoint orb, similar to Little Big Planets mechanism.

Utterly beautiful to look at, and really a physics based pleasure to play, plus you can level up various skills as your characters gain experience.. I'll be buying this at least on a console just to see how it translates, because the grappling can be a bit tricky with mouse and keyboard controls, takes a bit of mastering..

Mass Effect Galaxy

2009-06-23T21:38:00.000+01:00

Firstly I have to openly admit that I love Mass Effect and I love the Mass Effect Universe, so this "review" might not be as objective as it should. As the game loaded on my new iPod Touch, I could hear the familiar tones of the original Mass Effect game play in the background, very comforting indeed.

This game is an abstraction of some of the elements that make Mass Effect such a compelling Universe to play in. It takes some of the storytelling, along with some of the dialogue and binds them together with sequences minimally animated in a comic book style along with tactical action based combat in small "single screen" arenas.

Taking each part of the blend in turn:

Story: There seems to be a definite storyline rolling along here, although much of the backstory is assumed (from the original game). New characters are thrown at you, with little reference to any existing ones, but they all have a familiar feel to them - Krogans are krogans, Asari are seductive etc. The arc here is meant to be part of the overall transition from the original Mass Effect game to the sequel Mass Effect 2, although it has yet to mesh into anything presented in the second bridging novel "Ascension".

Dialogue: The dialogue in the game is presented to you as alternatives represented by icons, thumbs up, thumbs down, question or exclamation marks. You drag these iconic options up and down, reading the accompanying text and settling on one to submit as your speech. You have to scroll through all options if you want to know exactly what you are saying, but since they're clustered into broad agree, disagree, or lets do it, you can just use the icons as a guide, but you'll be missing alot of the flavour of the conversational dialogue that way. If you're into Mass Effect at all, you'll know this is one of the pleasures of the game. If there is a chunk of dialogue coming from the NPC you're chatting to, theres often a pause, an elipsis and the need to press the continue icon. This would be fine, if the NPC dialogue remained in the same text box, however, you'll have read half of it, and then it will scroll up a box to present the continue option.. something which can annoy you if you're a bit eager to read the text presented, rather than wait for the scroll and continue to land. I'm not certain whether these dialogue options affect what happens in the game, most of it seems to be geared towards progressing you to the next section regardless, however there was one ocassion where instead of diving into combat I managed to convince the old pirate to surrender and have an easy retirement rather than take the "death or glory" option.

Comic Book Sequences: Some of the comic book sequences are really well animated conveying atmosphere and action without many frames being spent. The art is stylised, but fits the Mass Effect Universe perfectly. Some of the detail on the characters really shows through, and snipping it all up, it would make an excellent comic book on its own. I did notice one or two sections that were used again, some of the fight scenes, and the Mass Relay sequence for instance, but overall its enjoyable to see this stuff come to life in another media style.

Combat Action: Combat is presented as fixed packets of top down action, fighting in an arena with obstacles, destroyable items (crates), explosive items (power units), and several weapon toting enemies, often with differing strength. Each screen sized battleground is laid out with specific set paths and bottlenecks, with cover and removable cover. The object being to clear the area of enemies, and then advance through a doorway. There can be power ups (shields and health mainly) littered around the map at key places, or the enemies can drop power ups when they fall. You navigate your character through the area, using the iPod's Accelerometer, so tilting the device gently in a direction will cause your character to begin moving in that direction, tilting it more will make him run. Even though this sounds awkward it works remarkably well, since your fellow will auto fire at any enemy targetted, it becomes a game of movement, cover and line of sight angles.

You have three additional abilities at your disposal, a Biotic Hold, a Grenade launcher, and a Tech Shield sabotager, along with this you can pause the action at any time, to take stock, reset your current target and apply one of the specials. Depending upon the movements and reactions of the enemy in the level, you may have to switch targets to prioritise the kill, this is done by simply tapping on the enemy you want. You can also tap and target on crates and explodable power units, providing you with a useful ability to carve a different path through or to lure enemies into an area like a trap and detonate the environment for maximum damage. Your targetting reticule shows up thicker when you have a much tougher enemy, so you can prioritise your targets and eliminate the weaker ones first. Whilst dispatching the enemy, its always wise to have an escape route, or cover point handy as well as know where the shield and health power ups are.. the early combat levels are quite easy, but later on you will rely on environmental placements of cover, explosives and power ups to make it through. Whilst not providing exactly the same combat experience, this delivers an action based tactical burst requiring some thought to attain success. The Tech and Biotic powers are severely limited to one of each, and their use seemed more circumstantial, whereas I was always spamming the grenade whenever I could. The characters cautious fluid movement along with the gun effects do make it feel like a Mass Effect game despite its top down appearance. Since all combat takes place in a screen sized area, its often fast and furious, but bite size enough to make you want a bit more. Some encounters are a chain of a number of these "rooms", whereas one or two were just a single room.

The storyline does lead you off into the galaxy, and there is a 2d flat galaxy map you traverse in the order you want, but its little more than a number of locations, that you select, and then press the travel button. A part of the game that does feel lacking somewhat, is the absence of any RPG tweaking or party play. You do meet others whilst out on a mission, and you have your sidekick holographically jump in for some dialogue now and then, but you are all alone on the battlefield.

For a short mobile game, giving you bursts of Mass Effect mythos it doesn't do a bad job. For me, its definitely worth the couple of quid, simply to glimpse some more of the Mass Effect Universe.

Upgrade Complete

2009-06-19T19:12:00.000+01:00

I've been recently impressed by a rather nifty little shooter from Armor Games named UPGRADE COMPLETE, which has a total of about half an hours play in it. However, the concept behind the game involves the usual upgrade mechanism, but applied to everything in the game. The game loader, titles, menus, progress bars, backgrounds, graphics, all novelty additions but the upgrade process is also key to progressing in the game itself.

Your ship starts out quite humble with a coin collector and two gun turrets. The ship moves left and right, but can angle as it does so, to provide you with an arc of fire. The enemy descends from above and you have to terminate them upon which they relinquish the valuable coin cargo. Collecting this with the center of your ship adds funds useful for upgrades! Completing the wave successfully gives you a bonus to the funds collected. Back to the shop you can then add more equipment spatially (within a defined rectangle around the ship). Equipment includes magnets to attract the coin to your collector, engines to boost ship speed and agility, turrets, lighting arc generators and missile launchers - all of which can be upgraded using coinage to a maximum of level 5. You have a limit on the number of items you can attach to your shipspace, and therefore a lot of the "strategy" involves working out a balance between firepower and coverage, as well as how fast you want the ship to move and whether you want to maximise your coin collecting abilities.

Placing your firing mechanisms across a wide area as possible is good to sweep the enemies up, but having some forward to soften them up, and some below your main ship, to catch stragglers that get by you is also important. A major part of the enjoyment of this casual blast em up is building your ship, and boosting the parts in a particular order to get you past the next wave, collect as money as you can and begin the re-design process as you add more or better equipment to the mix. The ability to go back to the main menu, and upgrade the system graphics and music options really does stack novelty onto enjoyement. When you have finally pushed on through to wave 20/20, there is still one or two things you can tweak up, to open up acheivements and end screens.

9/10 for providing a novel and entertaining bitesize of retro, yet original gaming. I wonder where you go with this sort of idea in a much more complex iteration of the game.

You'll have to spend $2000 to upgrade me to provide a better review, possibly a 10/10.

P.S. Although the 4 levels of graphics are entertaining, the people I've discussed this with have all agreed that graphics option 2 is the best - and once you upgrade theres no going back... although there is an upgradeable option to start from scratch.. thankfully.

Genre Hopping

2009-06-05T20:07:00.000+01:00

Inspired by the "Genre Aversions" discussion over at Gamers with Jobs, I posed the following question to the UKGamer crew...

Can we all dig deep and come up with 3 games (from the past or present) that encouraged us out of our comfort zone and to hop into a genre we wouldn't normally play in? Sort of, the game that inspired you to try something else, whether it be a totally new genre defining game, or whether its just a game that sucked you in and broke your normal game genre favourites. Sort of name the games, with genre, and then what was it about the game that pushed you into the genre hop.

Since then, I've been thinking long and hard about the genre hopping question I posed, and I must say with a memory like mine its difficult to come up with historically accurate examples of this.. however a few of them immediately stand out in my gaming history..

Tekken - FIGHTING

Which sort of hit me with a double whammy, because it was the game that not only introduced me to fighting games as a genre, but it was also the game that pushed me over the edge and into the money leeching caverns of console gaming. A friend and I had planned a weekend of renting an original Playstation console from Blockbuster, along with the game Tekken. We used my membership card and hefty deposit and began a costly adventure in console gaming. Needless to say, after that weekend, I purchased my first PSX console, and spent the rest of my life funding a life of gaming. I also joined the ukgamer mailing list, or psx-list as it was then. It was 1995.

NBA Live '96 - SPORTS

This PSX game was responsible for my mid-nineties obsession with basketball. And ultimately it lead me into other sports (mainly American ones), where previously I had not tread. As an early teen I was a computer nerd (Vic-20, Commodore 64 were my life), I was always so far away from sports of any kind, that they just didn't exist to me. 1996 and NBA Live '96 changed all that, in the game I found a competitive spirit I'd not seen before, I'd found a game that required team play, but from my own gamepad, personalities I could begin to collect and learn, cool moves and dunks. Suddenly I had stepped into a world of fandom and love for The Game. I began watching basketball, getting US shows on VHS tapes from a mail order company (because I couldn't source any TV with Toronto Raptors games over here). I began going to UK Basketball matches, and watching local basketball matches, as well as creating websites for local teams and generally soaking up all things bball. It broke the ice for me on the sports genre, and I began to eat it all up, with my NFL addicition floating to the surface much later. It even opened up my eyes to football, something I'd never have dreamed of watching, playing as a game..

Colin McRae - RACING

The original rally game on the PSX, was the only driving game I'd taken to, because of the muddy slide physics. Most other driving games left me cold. And although I did hop onto the driving genre for a bit, with Metropolitan Street Racer on the Dreamcast, and Gran Turismo on the PS2, I still only have limited success with driving games, and I tend to gravitate more to ones where you can engage in combat as well (such as the Twisted Metal games).

Sled Storm - PHYSICS RACING

With my foray into the racing genre, I become indirectly involved with other physics based racing genre's such as sledding - with Sled Storm being one of my favourites, the handling and feel of the Sled, and the amazing music that accompanied the game (Econoline Crush, Rob Zombie), I was hooked and was propelled into the world of snowboarding like Cool Boarders, hoverbiking like Jet Moto and speed boat racing like Rapid Racer.

Since I'm a gamer who has a PC gaming pedigree of strategy, roleplaying and action based shooters (FPS and third person) the above genre hops were really out of character and ultimately all console bourne.

Damn those consoles.

AI War: Fleet Command

2009-06-02T21:39:00.001+01:00

AI War is a game that almost passed me by. A 2d space based RTS that sailed past stealthily cloaked and headed for the nearest warp gate 'outta here'. Luckily my Impulse client explore page slyly winked a small ad for the game and like a distress beacon it caught my passing attention.

The game presents itself in 2d, all craft and structures are flat sprites. The backgrounds are rendered 3d planets and starscapes, but are purely for flavour - they do not affect the flow of the game. The scope and scale of the game however is big, you have large planetary systems as your main conflicted play area, interconnected via warp gates into a web weaving and winding itself into a chaotic galactic tapestry. The game setup allows you to randomly seed the generated Universe and select the number of planetary systems available. The connections between systems are "spun" in a chaotic fashion, and they can lead to isolated systems, ideal for defense, or well linked "junction" systems giving you many paths to travel and explore. Zoom is your friend, and as you plan your movements and offensives you will rarely notice the 2d sprites, because your broad strokes of battle will usually be made on the max zoomed iconic representations anyway. The sheer number of units that can be deployed is astounding, 10,000+ is not uncommon. The game was inspired by the similar large scale conflict and zoomed out operational approach that Supreme Commander adopted.

What is not obvious upon your first play with the tutorial levels is the nature of the more strategic scale of operations you will play out. It is your goal to scout and explore a path through the systems to locate specific advantageous enemy structures and either destroy them or capture them. This almost surgical precision applied to your offense is your greatest strength, because if you advance aggressively through the Universe conquering all you meet, you will quickly meet your demise, because with each takeover the AI's aggression turns up a notch. With every conquest, you're essentially stoking the AI into a frenzy and into more advanced tactics to employ against you. A more carefully planned and well considered approach is needed to balance the AI aggression as you make your way forward. Destroying its data centers deny the AI valuable computational resources and thus reduces the AI's aggression level. Capturing Advanced Research facilities will open up to you some of the more specially developed equipment that the AI can use against you, equalising the odds when it comes to tech vs tech conflicts. Another key tactic to employ is to secure your travel lanes, by blockading warp gates and holding the AI enemy at bay whilst you planet hop your way around the most economic and efficient path.

So, in essence, you are:

scouting and pathfinding
exploring and searching out key targets
plugging and unplugging warp gates
capturing planet systems to install resource gathering equipment
eeking out scientific knowledge from new planetary systems
managing your manufacturing and fleet content so that when you find the AI core base you can annihilate it!

The unique draw of this game is that you're plunged into a randomly seeded Universe, where the AI can be scaled in difficulty and tweaked with various play styles into very different opponents. As the name suggests the AI plays a very important role in the games appeal, and as such it can be tailored to your needs, and pacing. The developer has provided a very detailed explanation of the unique features of the AI, from its swarm intelligence to its completely emergent sub-commander logic, and a layer of fuzzy logic applied over it, so that its not always predictable and precise. Another feature is that the game supports up to 8 players working cooperatively against the AI, so gather your disparate fleets to survive, live long and prosper (the AI also scales depending upon the number of players involved in the conflict). Sadly, the game doesn't support player versus player combat, with the main focus of the game pitting the strategic and tactical capabilities of the human player against this finely crafted AI.

There are a large variety of hardware on offer and many of the techs will open up new tactical possibilities, with free downloadable content being available in the form of new community requested features and ships. Some examples of the equipment you can utilise (in addition to the usual range of fighters, bombers and starships) are: defense turrets, mines and mine repairers, tractor beam turrets, laser turrets, long range sniper turrets, missile turrets, force field shields, de-cloaking devices, detectors of incoming ships through warp gates, to name a few, and I've really only scratched the surface in terms of the unit specialisations. I am assured that as you play the game, increasing AI difficulty levels and AI play styles, you will find new uses for existing equipment and you will discover new equipment and new tactical ways to deploy them.

I would recommend watching the video guides presented by the developer to get a feel for how to get started with the game, and to see an explanation of the "bigger picture" strategic game.

Since you specify the parameters of the Universe you play in, there are a lot of replay opportunities and the degrees of AI difficulty and play style will also further add to that, so you're getting a lot of indie-fuelled strategic play for your $20. But you are also encouraged to become part of the AI War community, and participate in its future evolution and development. With DLC already being rolled out regularly, and a planned expansion in the works, you too could be a part of its emergence.

Whilst playing the game, I'm reminded of other games, Supreme Commander, Sins of a Solar Empire, Stars!, but also see glimpses of Battlestar Galactica's desperate plight of jumping through a Universe full of Cylons and having to "box clever" to stem the tide of the AI toasters and jump your way through secured corridors of space, picking up what little resources you can... but then I do have a vivid imagination for those sort of things.

JUMP!

Conquest: Medieval Realms

2009-05-16T07:39:00.000+01:00

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!

2009-05-14T14:28:00.001+01:00

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

2009-05-12T20:57:00.001+01:00

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

2009-05-12T20:51:00.001+01:00

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:

affordable and very re-playable
large explorable universe with factions
freeform open gameplay, exploring, trading, building and customising, racing, fighting, mining, transporting, protecting
the space flight physics (inertial flight actually helps you reduce the cost of fuel)
planet fall, and switch to gravity based flight model
the ability to customise your ship uniquely, by adding, placing and scaling parts
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
the small download (45Mb) and install footprint (130Mb)
single player profile can be used interchangeably on a multiplayer server and play co-operatively or competitively with up to 32 other players
run a dedicated server of your own
part of the StarWraith community

This is Patapolis!

2009-05-09T22:56:00.001+01:00

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

2009-05-09T07:03:00.000+01:00

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

2009-05-08T19:48:00.000+01:00

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!

2009-05-07T06:15:00.000+01:00

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

Spelk but with no added Sugar!

2009-05-06T15:14:00.001+01:00

Demon's Souls: Multiplayer Rant

2009-04-10T16:18:00.001+01:00

I think its time for a rant.

I love the game. But the online component is getting to me a bit.

1) theres quite a faff about to get a co-op game sorted

a) you have to be a revived human to draw others into your game, if you want this, you have to have recently killed a Demon, and not died. Easier said than done in this game.
b ) you have to have your friends in a soul level range +-10 from your main, revived character.. and you have to tell them somehow which unmarked summon point in which level area to meet up.
c) they have to all be in phantom form to join your game, and be within 10 levels and be at the same place
d) you can't talk to them within game, easily.
e) you take them through the level, they get nothing but a share of the souls, you get everything loot wise and a share of the souls
f) If the die, they're booted. If you die, they're all booted. Repeat and rinse the whole getting together scenario, only this time, your a phantom, and you'll have to wait till one of your mates beats a demon boss to be revived to invite you.

2) PUGs are easy to join

a) You can pick up virtually anyone, if your alive, and they drop their stone somewhere you can find.
b ) Most players rush through the levels without thought or concern about you
c) Most players seemed to be tooled up to the bollocks whilst you're a level 6 ranger with a pissy scimitar
d) If you die you're booted, if they die, you're booted. The only way to relay any thoughts or feelings is by a ratings scale which is artbitrary to say the least. Most rank you S or A, unless they didn't like what you did, then they rank you D.
e) If you summon someone into a game, but you've cleared quite a few of the nasties, then you're dragging them along just for the boss ride... I unintentionally did this, and on the way to the boss the guy charged out and got himself killed, so he got no souls reward, and he didn't make it to the part of the level where we could have faced enemies together, let alone have a stab at the boss. With a die once, and you're out policy its very harsh on the summoned player.

3) Black Phantoms are a pain

a) If you're a revived human, you've managed to summon two other phantoms into your team, with all the buggery pokery that that involves, and then a Black Phantom invades your game, stalks you, and takes you out, thus kicking the other players.. you then have to try and be summoned into a co-op game, or beat a demon boss to get to the point where you left off, before this Black Phantom griefer turned up.
b ) You can sometimes hear them coming, but most of the time, they're beefed up "evil" teens, who take you in a hit or two. No level playing field, just added threat, to a game that already exudes threat and loss, particularly in the online game.

So, as a single player game with some "Fable 2 like" ghosts and shadows its great, the messages are a cool idea, the limited death replays are cool. But as a multiplayer game it lacks presistancy between the party assembled, the forming of a party requires quite a hefty starting price, that can be lost so very easily, the joining of a co-op game as a phantom results in little rewards apart from shared souls.. but if you make it to the end and the boss fight, you can then host your own co-op game and draw upon other souls. However, there is always the persistance danger that a Black Phantom will turn up and mess it all up for everyone involved. Theres no method of direct communication, and the party assembled is disbanded if the host dies, and any invited phantom who dies is lost forever. But you can pin a more or less meaningless rating upon that player that will affect their co-op game uptake in the future.

As a single player game and an action RPG with top notch twitch based strategic control, and an artistic bent that ICO itself would be proud of, its brilliant, and well worth the extra 20 quid for import. As an online multiplayer game, it lacks features severely and what it does provide it does badly (compared with most multiplayer co-operative and competitive console games out there)...

Ok, rant over.

I've been approaching the game as a bit of a single player workout for a multiplayer game, but I see now its a single player game with tiny multiplayer novelties. I think I've been coming at it from the wrong angle.

I would say, in its defence, its one of the best single player action RPG's I've ever played... and I've played a bucketload of those.

And the cool multiplayer ideas (the player marked comment system, seeing brief ghosts of others playing, and the blood pool replays), do add to the game - but if you put multiplayer in, and then leave out the basics like communication and party persistance, it gets frustrating to those of us who play a hell of a lot of co-operative multiplayer in both console titles and MMO's. Fable 2 had similar co-op multiplayer novelties, and I didn't get to play much satisfying multiplayer in that also. So for DS, its a bit of a shame. Because if it was setup a bit more robust, or even a bit more like Phantasy Star Online (which had textual communication and party mechanics for four people), I could see me being sucked into this game's multiplayer for months on end.

Perhaps the problem is its an niche game only being marketed to Asia, and I'm judging it against Western multiplayer standards?

Demon's Souls

2009-03-26T14:42:00.001Z

I cannot praise this game highly enough. Its an action RPG by the FROM SOFTWARE people, that really captures twitch combat, and strategy, along with quite a harsh progression, that ups the stakes and makes it even more tense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon%27s_Souls

Its not available to America or Europe at the moment, but can be imported (as the Asian copy has full English text and audio)

You can import it at Renchi
http://www.renchi.com/renchi/PS3_Games_Asia_Demon_s_Souls_AS.htm

Anyway, the key features to the game that make it stand out

* A detailed fantasy "twitch" combat mechanism that just feels right (without remembering strings of combo's), melee, magic and ranged combat all covered.
* Huge multi-pathed levels, that open up shortcuts and exploratory mechanisms of getting around.. some of the parts to a level require actual thought and strategy to get through without dying.. this isn't a chug a health potion diablo game, you need to use the right weapon, time shield blocks, backstabs etc..
* Impressive bosses, with an array of tactics required to take them down
* Online co-op and PvP capability
* Looks absolutely gorgeous, and captures mood and lighting very well, with some stunning set pieces as you fight your way through

Anyway, the unique features are that you play in one of two modes, either as alive, or as a soul, destined to slay demons to revive yourself. As a soul, you'll only have a smaller percentage of your original health. As you play through your single player levels, you'll see ghosts of other players souls online flash by you, for a brief moment, other players can etch ectoplasmic messages so you get tiny twitter style hints and tips (or misinformation from evil players), you'll also see pools of blood where other players have died, and by activating them you can watch their death moments as a ghost figure, so these can give you a warning of trouble ahead. Once you're into the game and have earned your soulstones, as an alive player, you can pick up bluestones and summon the phantoms of other players into your game, and they can help you get through the levels and beat the boss. You collect the souls throughout the level and share it with them.. If they beat the boss, they are then revived back to alive status. If you are a soul, you can lay your bluestone down and other players can summon you to their game.. its quite a unique mechanism for online play. After a level you can rate a player, and their ratings are shown with their bluestone, before you summon them. One thing though, as an alive player, with other phantoms in your game, you can have black phantoms (PvP players) break into your world, and hunt you and your players down!

The game has quite a harsh death mechanism, in that you respawn at the beginning of the level, and remember these levels are huge, and you have to battle everything again. You also lose your current stash of souls collected, but you can return to your blood pool and retrieve these - if you make it that far. You also have some wera and tear on your armour. However, because of this, you will tread very carefully, because getting to the boss is the ultimate aim of the level, but even then you're not secured a win, and so the penalty is just enough to make it very tense, but although frustrating at times, you can make progress, over time, if you shift your tactics, if something is not working and is getting you killed.

Overall, the game is outstanding. And if you're serious about your RPG's and you have a PS3 this is a must grab title. Its a shame its not out over here at the moment, and it comes in a little expensive on import - about 60quid in total for me (but that was with delivery that had it to me in 5 days from Hong Kong).

It mechanism reminds me very much of Phantasy Star Online on the Dreamcast, with its central Nexus and multilayered levels and impressive end bosses.. its just so much more intense, and so much more strategic.. and the combat plays out brilliantly. Top Marks. I was worried about the harsh death penalty, but this is so good, it doesn't feel like a penalty at times it just feels like a tactical lesson.

DRADIS (for Evochron Legends)

2009-02-27T15:02:00.000Z

Well after being inspired by another players' (Warsign) customisation efforts, I thought I'd love to have a go at integrating the Battlestar Galactica DRADIS console into EL. I found a screengrab of the Galactica DRADIS system from a scene in the new series, and thought it would be kind of exciting to mould it into EL's cockpit...

Screen Capture of DRADIS Console from newly imagined Battlestar Galactica series

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="DRADIS"][/caption]

Evochron Viper Mk II

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="498" caption="Viper Mk II DRADIS HUD"][/caption]

Evochron Raptor

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Raptor DRADIS HUD"][/caption]

So here are the files... you can download them and unzip them into your /hud directory.. these files aren't a total cockpit, just custom console screens, NAV compass, gunsights and some warning messages..

DOWNLOAD DRADIS HUD for the VIPER Mk II

DOWNLOAD DRADIS HUD for the RAPTOR

Hope you enjoy the custom HUD's and fingers crossed, with the help of others, we can attach them to custom cockpit designs too.

Funtown Mahjong

2009-02-05T16:13:00.000Z

Tis a proper game of Mah Jong and not just a solataire tile matching game. Its quite well done, its worth a look if you want to play the real game (a bit like gin rummy really). They've missed out a bit, in that it uses its own AI players and their cutesy anime faces, but didnt incorporate NXE avatars into the play. Which would have helped it out a lot - in terms of more mass appeal.

If you haven't played Mah Jong before, I've tried to summarise the rules here, the game itself has a tutorial, but it is a bit wordy... it does however go through all the possible sets you can get in your first game.

Mah Jong for Dummies..
Essentially its quite a simple "collect the sets" game.

The "suits" being, bamboo, coins (they call them dots), characters (numerical kanji) - with a few honour tiles thrown in (dragons, winds and flowers). Each suit has 1 to 9 and each game has 4 of every suit tile in it.

To win, each player picks a tile off the "wall" (a deck) and tries to make

a set of three of the same tile in the same suit (eg, three tiles of 4 bamboo) - which is known as a Pung

a set of four of the same tile in the same suit (eg. four tiles of 5 coins) - which is known as a Kong or

a set of three of ascending tiles in the same suit (eg, 4,5 and 6 of bamboo) - which is known as a Chow (or a straight)

Each player plays anti-clockwise, and instead of drawing off the wall, you have the option of picking up the tile the last player laid and using that (if you can make a set out of it). However if you can make a Kong then you can take the last laid tile in any order, and you reset the order of play (so people can miss a turn etc). Once you pick up a tile from the wall or last played, you have to discard one from your hand.

The winning hand has to consist of a combination of these sets (can also be called melds) and an "eye" which is basically just two of the same tile in the same suit. Thats about it really. The honour tiles are a little different (as theres only four of them), and flowers are just points multiplyers that get instantly replaced when they hit your hand.

Once a player declares Mah jong, his hand is scored and the others receive a negative score, and then play is resumed in another round, and another wall.

It does come across as complex, because of all the weird naming jargon, and the odd looking tile images, but essentially its very similar to the Gin Rummy card game.

Once you get used to it a bit more, its quite a groovey game that should see more people play it on live, and its infinitely more entertaining that the Mah Jong tile matching games..

Lots of info here, if anyone is interested in it..
http://www.sloperama.com/mjfaq.html

Plus Wiki has a decent enough explanation of the game
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahjong

Cortex Command

2009-02-05T16:11:00.000Z

http://www.datarealms.com/

Bloody good game this, imagine Worms, but with proper physics, proper guns, and deformable terrain, with resource collection, in real time. The demo only gives you an hour of gameplay, but after that I was hankering after much more... the only downer is the game is still mid-development, however, they allow you to purchase it, as is, with its 1 tutorial level, and 2 other levels, and the level editor, and the multiplayer skirmish mode. I bought it because I was having so much fun on just the tutorial level, I couldn't stop playing after the hour. Its cheaper to purchase at the moment, because its not finished, but as it gets done, the price will go up, until at final release it will be full price.. its an odd way of marketing, and I'm not sure they'll get enough interest to finish it.. but they should.. its got a whole lot of potential, especially if the level editor is up to scratch.

Its quite a brutal game, to control the 'actors' you have to master jetpacks and the physics of not getting stuck, or smashing into things, every bump will take your health down a notch, ordering new materials, has rockets landing and dropping off, but you can't guarentee that it won't tip over and blast your other men with its exhausts.. very entertaining. Give it a try and play out the tutorial.. I failed the tutorial level about 10 times before completing it, and normally that would turn anyone off, but this just made me want more and more.. amazing.. worth a look anyway.

Iron Grip Warlord

2009-02-05T15:47:00.000Z

http://igwarlord.isotx.com/

As I tried the demo of this game, a sort of tower defense FPS, I was sucked in, even when I didn't know the range of my talents, like building defensive structures or laying trip wire mines and poison gas traps, like buying a better weapon that the standard issue musket with its drawn out laborious reload time, even when I ignored all of this, I still enjoyed the ride. On easy difficulty, the demo map was a twisting winding set of streets interconnected with buildings and basements and ramps and tunnels. The Objective of the game is to defend a Stronghold, against a relentless wave after wave assault from an increasingly resourceful Confederate army. When they start to send rocket launching and flame throwing elites, and I was still taking single pot shots at them from upstairs windows it seemed like a insurmountable quest, but one which kept drawing me to it, like a moth to a paraffin flame. Once you fathom out that your power meter at the bottom, fills up slowly as your AI teammates make kills, you can utilise this power to purchase and build key defensive measures. Pressing 'G' will flip you into a top down, RTS style mode, where you can buy machine gun nests, supply stations, trip wires, poison traps, Anti-tank turrets and the like. Dropping these in place at choke points and crossroads is vital to holding back the flow of multipathing enemies. Pressing 'M' allows you to use some of your power reserve to buy different weapons, and a much machine gun with grenade launcher can come in very handy.
As time progresses, Elite troops wade in, and some take meandering paths, designed to flank you, or keep you at bay whilst the main body of troops march onward to your stronghold. With more and more troops on the field mini-bosses in the form of Officers turn up, with chainguns blazing, and these are tough cookies to deal with. They also seem to dodge in and out of buildings, so laying waste to an officer usually involves pursuit, and thinning his bodyguard minions. Then you find yourself up against Armoured vehicles, in the demo, you are menaced by a tank, a machine gun toting and explosive shell throwing killing machine. These things require repeated shelling or grenading, your molotov cocktails won't make much of an impact here. Setting up a string of trip wire mines will help weather them down. And pumping in MG grenades in from a shielded position might help. In the full game, you will meet up with spider walking mechs with bouncing fireball shells, that can devastate an area rather quickly, torching your defenses.

If your stronghold goes down, and you have the power resources to rebuild it, then get it back soldier, and make it snappy. The game tends to ebb and flow as you run around and find power pickups, and you lay waste to lots of enemies at bottleneck choke points. Downing an officer and taking his chaingun, spraying a path through the advancing cannon fodder can be very therapeutic. If your defenses take a battering, you can swap to your spanner, and start to repair them, whilst dodging the bullets. You can also upgrade the defenses if you can harvest enough power to do so..

So, in the end, you're placed in a tower defense style game, where you can not only lay down defensive placements, but you can go lone wolf and have a gun toting role to play in stemming the flow. Checking the map and reacting to enemy outbreaks down the different paths is one of the main strategic elements to master. And one which if mastered can alter the whole outcome of the conflict. It can turn into a war of attrition, but one in which you're at the frontline, making the decisions and also making the plays with your shooting and strafing and dodging skills. Map knowledge is also key, to turn run of the mill streets into killing zones. You can run the game in single player mode, where your teammates are AI controlled and they do a decent enough job, turning their hand to whatever (laying down fire, repairing mechanisms etc). You can also run a dedicated server, and have people connect to join you co-operatively in the defensive carnage. Or you can join an official server (although at the time, the most people I saw playing on an official server was about 6).

I like shooters. And I like Tower defense games. Put them both together, with the possibility of co-op play, and I can see why it draws me in.

Dwar Fortress Unlocked

2009-02-05T15:21:00.000Z

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

An ascii based "Settlers like" game or a rogue-like if you want, with procedurally generated landscapes and a whole lot of depth. But until now, the joys and complexities of it have been locked away in an interface thats confusing and positively hostile... however, some kind souls have unlocked pandora's box and thrown together 14 x 10 minute video tutorials/guides on how to get started with the magic within...

Video Guides
http://uk.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5A3D7682BDD48FC2&page=1

The Spirit Engine 2

2009-02-05T15:13:00.001Z

http://www.thespiritengine.com/tse2-download.html

This is a nifty little find, a sequel, but its got a lot going for it. Good presentation, in a 2d spritey way. Some believable characters even though the dialogue is a bit OTT sometimes. But what sets it apart is the battles, on a timer, but sped up can become quite arcadey in a way. And the tweaking and setting up of attack chains is very well done. The skillsets take a bit of getting used to, and your party composition is almost certainly going to be Knight, Musketeer and Priest to cover all your bases, its refreshing to have such a complex and satisfying battle mechanism tied up into such a bite-size casual RPG. Well worth the 9 quid if you ask me.

Evochron Legends Launched!

2009-02-05T15:05:00.000Z

http://starwraith3dgames.home.att.net/evochronlegends/index.htm

Those StarWraith people, have released their latest Space Sim Evochron Legends, which updates the graphics and adds more functionality than their previous games. The demo is up for download now.

Space Combat Sims

2009-01-26T13:34:00.000Z

I get these mood swings from time to time, jumping from lilypad to lilypad through the murky pond that is my interests. This month I have been mainly focussed on my eternal quest for a "space combat sim" that suits my needs for a storied world with a cast of humans and aliens I care about, with craft I can marvel at and enjoy and with combat that raises the blood pressure over the threshold weakly held down by my daily intake of Ramipril.

Before we finish filling the fuel tanks, and engage the magnetic catapult shooting us into the Stars, I'd like to confess that I didn't fawn over Elite as a child. I vaguely remember it, and I was too busy playing Gyruss at the time to take any notice of it. So I don't come at this from a rose-tinted cockpit of the imagination fuelled exploration of the Stars that many seem to cling onto. I come at this from inside of Luke's X-wing, I come at this from the helm of the Millenium Falcon, I come at this from the sphinx helmeted Buck Rogers, from inside the Vipers pit of Battlestar Galactica both past and present. I come at this from every sinew in my body that screamed in anguish at the thought that I was born too early, for my "spitfire in space" dream of taking on bogey after bogey in space.

Trading is fine, if it gets you the cash to soup up the combat ships. In fact traders and miners need protection and thats where I imagine myself, not a sleek fighter, but a seasoned support ship with a fleet guardians role. I'm there for the thrill of kill, rather than the slow burning candle of profit and cargo runs.

I've set the scene, I hope, so I can now share with you what I've found out there for us to dip our toes into the dark pool of the Universe. I realise this list isn't comprehensive in terms of covering all that come before. I realise I've not given full credit to the Wing Commanders and the Independance War's of the day.. in fact one of the more enjoyable outings I remember playing was Renegades: The Battle for Jacob's Star, subbing the games music for Warrior Soul's Space Age Playboys CD... but I'm looking from now and into the future..

From what I can gather, the current lie of the land is as follows, in no particular order...

X3: Terran Conflict

I've tried to like the X series since day one, and I've always come away bewildered, and lost. There must be excitement and action in there somewhere, and the later series look the part, space is beautifully rendered, the space stations look gorgeous, but the spacecraft always disappoint. The game(s) always seem to be riddled with very fastidious quests, they seem to aim for sandbox play that involves giving you no grounding to work from, other than to read the fan literature on the web and hope you can make sense of it all. It seems altogether too in depth early on, like if you spend a week on it, and nothing else, perhaps you'll find the spark of enthusiasm and off you go, months of your life sucked away. But for me the games never seem to hold water, it always compromises enjoyment of the Universe, its always a rough edged ride, presumably to keep the previous fanbase happy with what they're used to. I bought into Terran Conflict, because of the promise of an updated UI, and some more user-friendly questing early on. Admittedly it is a step up on X3: Reunion, but its not enough, and the UI is better, they've massaged it into some EVE Online wanna be, but with the most frustratingly complex menu mechanism to perform the most simple and mundane tasks. Obviously theres the key configs, and surely you should be learning those off by heart. But, you know, theres no gentle introduction, theres no adequate tutorial.. and the progress is slow and the combat is few and far between. If you know what you're doing, and you pump up the SETI (time advancing mechanism) you will be able to bear the long hauls around the systems with very little going on. If only someone shook it by the collar and made it into something more approachable, something more substantial it could easily suck EVE Online people away from subscriptions... however, I think the Egosoft people would rather you pay their subscription to the upcoming X Universe..

Evochron: Renegades

&

Evochron Legends

I have to marvel at what has been done with Evochron Renegades, its a fully fledged space combat/trading sim all crammed into a 30Mb install. I haven't got much history with the StarWraith 3D games at all, so the world presented stands as it is, and its convincing enough, the combat is fluid, the craft are customisable to a degree no other game has in terms of presentation, even if they are a little on the blocky and stubby side (you can tweak the size and shape of the parts you add to the ship). All this and more, economy, missions, and planetfall landings.. its very impressive.. Whether it will hold you, graphically speaking its a good few years behind, but content wise its a bargain and it delivers. Looking forward to seeing what can be done with the forthcoming Evochron Legends. For me, I think this perhaps would be the closest to Elite that we've had. If I had a thing for Elite, that is.

Starshatter

This is a well put together game, that I've bought but only really scratched the surface of. Its quite a complex flyer, with graphics that will pass, although the initial fighters come across as aeroplanes rather than space vehicles. It apparently scales up to large Battlecruisers, but I've not been able to get past the rigorous early missions. Perhaps more time needs to be invested here.. Definitely a labour of love, and very moddable.

Spaceforce: Rogue Universe

Not a bad effort, looks good, flys smooth, however theres no tutorial as such, story is thrown at you in fits and starts, and you will spend a lot of time in space not knowing what you're meant to do next. Getting to the key config, requires 3 or 4 menu selections, and then you'll be guessing what it is the quest wants you to do anyway.. pressing all buttons and hoping is a very poor way to make progress.

EVE Online

A subs based MMO, not exactly seat of the pants combat with twitch controls, more orbit enemy and turn on your gatling railgun. With the new graphics update it does look suitably impressive, although weapons are still tacked on and often look out of place, particularly with the smaller ships. EVE promises much, but it takes a lot of effort to deliver, the RPG side of the game is very tenuous, although during character creation it is hyped up a bit too much. Missions are often, fly here, kill these, go back and get the money. Or theres Mining. Which can become an extremely tedious way to earn money. Without the added adrenline rush of the twitch controls its hard to recommend this game in this batch.. but I put it in here because it is one of the few space combat games that gets the "look" and scale right. With every new expansion I ride the tachyon beam back to the game in the hope it has something extra to give the player, but usually theres no noticeable difference from what has come before.

Dark Star One

Another bright star amongst a number of dull efforts. Dark Star One, is easy to get into, the tutorial is helpful, the visuals are suitably stunning and the combat plays smooth. I was impressed by this game, because of its ability to embrace the story and mix it in with the missions and get you upgrading your ship as soon as possible. The ship itself has an organic component to it, which requires you to collect artifacts often hidden away inside of mined out asteroids. Theres something inherently cool about having to navigate your ship in twisty winding tunnels inside a huge asteroid. One of the few installs that just seems to gel together and make the game flow into interesting territory, rather than you have to mine it out with a web-based laser.

Void War

An overly colourful arcadey indie offering that just didn't gel with me at all. I think it was the powerups in space, and the very amateur graphics. I can see some effort has been put in there, and the game is aimed at an arcade audience, who want FPS but in space, but it just didn't strike a chord with me.

Vega Strike

This is a freeware labour of love, and as such it might ignite some peoples laser assemblies, but it just turned me cold.. even the installation routine had me squirming at the lack of polish.. I suppose I'm not appreciating the cross platform freeware aspect of the game, but you know, I'm looking for something that will kindle the spark to make me play it, not necessarily ride the free lunch train to modsville.

Babylon 5: I've found her

Now then, I was very impressed at this freeware offering, basically a modded version of Freespace 2, with Babylon 5 models and storyline to boot. Interesting things were happening as soon as I was onboard a Fury, and there was a tutorial to coax you into the cockpit early on. Worth the effort if you have a passing interest in B5, or of you like your storied combat to have a space opera theme.

Beyond the Red Line

Another modded demo using the Freespace 2 engine to deliver a Battlestar Galactica (the recent show) hit, and I was even more impressed with this, voice acting was well done, and you were sucked into the atmosphere of it all, the graphics and models were superb and the viper Mark VII's looked and handled like they do on the show. As one of the nuggets sekonded to the Pegasus, you're taken through training and on into a couple of missions in this demo, and I must say, I'd look forward to this becoming a full fledged effort in the future.

Galactic Command: Echo Squad

Theres just something about the whole 3000AD setup that see iteration upon iteration of space combat shooters that just don't seem to be put together very well. Gaudy presentation, awkward fonts and key configs, little story.. and yet theres a whole boatload of them, one after the other, and they all seem to be painted with the same unattractive brush. I've dipped into one or two iterations of this franchise and I've always been sorely disappointed every time. And mostly at bargain prices.

Vendetta Online

Now I did play this a long time ago, and its an online game with free account and paid accounts, I can remember the graphics being slightly out of date, and at the time, I was thinking that perhaps they're not going to be able to compete with EVE Online at all.. but its obviously a niche game for fans.

Allegience

Some online shooter that Microsoft have a hand in, I couldn't get it to install properly. The screenshots looked ok, I suppose. When I couldn't install it though, my patience ran out and I stuck it in the airlock and opened the door.

Tarr Chronicles

I played this a long while back now, and my memories of it are very vague, but again the controls hurdle of SpaceForce comes to mind. Perhaps another visit is in order, one day.

Star Wolves

Another odd ball here, because its not really twitch cockpit stuff as such, but I've written a review of it many moons ago so I thought I'd include it here.

Star Assault

Amateur bewildering effort as I recall.

The Future:

Heresy War

Probably my favourite out of the whole collection, its got instant playability, its got the visuals it deserves, with promise of more when the game fleshes out to a final release. Its action and story and it plays smooth and natural. I'll be keeping my eye on this with baited breath.

Dark Horizon

Again another beauty I just couldn't get to work. My quest had waned enough for me to ditch games that required extensive helpdesk support to play.

Infinity Universe

Black Prophecy

Jumpgate Evolution

Eurogamer.net Game of the Year

2008-12-09T16:16:00.000Z

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=331251

My top five

1. Mass Effect (PC)

The PC version has taken the pitfalls from the 360 version and tweaked them to make the ride even smoother. Its combination of story and action and roleplaying in a believable universe, coupled with the cinematic action and emotional attachment to the characters make it a truly stand out landmark of a game.

2. Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria (PC)

Moria is the first expansion, and it truly mines the depths of Tolkiens tale, enhancing the current experience for all players, whether at level cap, or beginning afresh with two new character classes to play. Bringing in Legendary weapons and all the additional character tweaking that can be done has been another landmark in MMO history.

3. Battlefield: Bad Company (360)

A true multi class multiplayer combat classic. Unlike CoD4 where class hybridisation was king, B:BC is all about teamwork, in a way thats only been seen in the likes of Team Fortress.

4. Gears of War 2 (360)

Epic gameplay adding upon the original in every way possible. A stronger multiplayer lineup, the survival Horde mode adding on top of co-operative play. The best duck and cover 3rd person stylish shooter just got a whole lot better.

5. Resistance 2 (PS3)

Mainly because its forged a niche that makes the PS3 a viable online FPS platform, mixing old school Halo-style combat, with survival style co-operative play, including class interaction that rivals MMO's. Basically because its got me wanting to play online on the PS3, and has forced me to buy a headset after over a year.

Resistance 2

2008-12-01T16:18:00.000Z

I'm knee deep in the single player, and I must say its a vast improvement on the first.. it is setup very much like a CoD game, however, there tends to be a bit more, weapon and ammo considerations to taking out the different types of chimera.. so it can begin to feel a bit survival horror at points. It certainly keeps the tension up, and its one of the few FPS's I've tasted recently that has me physically anxious as I step into a new section. Some of the bosses are spectacularly huge.

I've just had a couple of hours on Multiplayer, and I must say its rather good. I managed to get in on a 60 player Skirmish game (although when I joined there was about 40 players in it) and it has objectives for your squad to complete. These are assemble at a rally point, capture a point, assasinate an enemy player, or protect a friendly player, and the squads do their objectives independantly, although sometimes you're called in to reinforce another squad during one of their objectives. All that keeps the game positively buzzing, theres always something new on the go, and your'e not stuck in a rut doing the same thing over and over, because these objective shift about.

The gunplay is usually fast and loose, especially when you're in a crossfire situation. The longer range guns (fareye and marksman) are popular, as is the carbine - the exotic guns tend to be used less, because theyre all a bit situational, and usually you ain't got time to be situational. It reminds me of Halo combat more than anything else. The environment making a lot of the firefights exciting, more than the different weapons. You have beserker perks, which are little additives, when you've been on a decent killing spree.. ones like discharging electrostatic orbs that pulse damage out across an area, or boost your radar range, see through walls, move faster and retain weapon accuracy.. these add a little to the strategy and perhaps your choice of loadout.. but as I said, the gunplay is almost too fast to be worrying too much about taking it slow and considered.

Skirmish was much better than the team deathmatch, which comes across as almost Quake 2 style combat - mainly because there was always something new on the go, you're always shifting between offensive or defensive, moving in cover as fast as you can, or flanking a clustered group of enemy.. this is going to worth a ride for a while I think.. the only thing is, there'll be an accepted way to loadout, to get maximum kills and when everyone learns the maps off by heart, there'll be plenty of sweet spots for camping etc.. still with more modes than you can shake a stick at, that I have yet to explore, and a co-op campaign that has different maps to the main campaign, its still got some legs.

Call of Duty: World at War

2008-11-17T16:24:00.000Z

I finished it (the single player game) this weekend, and it was the usual Call of Duty experience, lots of chaos being channelled through picturesque and cinematic areas. Obviously the graphics have been touched up, and there are some truly stunning locations, where you just want to sit back and watch rather than actually take part and miss the beauty of it all. The final push to the Reichstag building in Berlin and then the conflict inside it was very atmospheric. The usual gun and drop mechanism was mixed up slightly by the inclusion of Banzai charging japanese troops, who would usually come at you from an unsuspecting angle, or they would climb over obstacles to get that bayonet into you. Countering this required quite precise timing with the right click stick, to perform a knife in the neck saving blow. It did seem a bit hit and miss, to hang your ultimate safety on a very visually discrete command and a very twitchy mechanic. However, in the heat of the battle, when the japanese where thick, you actually found yourself gunning some, turning and stabbing and slashing others with the right click stick, and if you initiate the blade based combat the kill window seemed a lot less picky, than if the bayonet was to come poking at you. So ultimately, if they were getting near, I'd be slashing away frantically anyway. And if any bayonet managed to get through, my stick clicking was already happening so I usually made the tight window and was rewarded with the neck stab. The complement the banzai chargers, and there was an awful lot of them, in most arenas you found yourself in the pacific - the Germans had alsations, snapping speedy hounds of death - luckily they were few and far between in the campaign, but they can be dispatched with a few hurried shots, or again another right clicking life saving throat grab when they open their jaws to bite. The same tactic I used on the banzai chargers worked for the dogs, slash and stab them before we get to the throat bit. Camo decked Japanese soldiers jumping out of ground traps like funnel web spiders were indeed a nice touch to the action, and certainly made you more apprehensive about moving forward in the undergrowth. I think at the end of it all, the extra level of intimacy in combat worked, adding more panic to the gun blazing, when you have to break of your aim, and start slashing, to shrug the blood off your face and resume your salvo.

There were gunnery positions in the usual windows, AA gunning on a flying boat, with swappable positions which made it all the more exciting to have to physically move around inside the aircraft and switch to other positions. There was a tank section or two to add to the mix, although the Russian tanks seemed very stubby and a bit flighty and didn't really feel like the huling tank beasts they should, but then perhaps we've been spoilt a bit with tanks in games recently. The weapons were the usual stuff, with the addition of a flame thrower that actually did feel like a flame thrower with range, rather than just a vestigil torch. Filling bunkers and tunnels with flame was very satisfying indeed. As was sniping German flamer's gastanks and watching the ensuing carnage burst all around. I was a bit saddened that they deemed to drop the british side of things, but I guess they just wanted to juxtapose the closing war in the pacific with the closing war in europe and to add another army might dilute the symmetry. The stylised story animations were well done - imagine an MTV styled quick blow by blow account with silhouetted iconic images, Dad's Army Arrows and actual footage of people being shot dead - the voice talents of Keifer Sutherland and Gary Oldman were excellent. Molotov cocktails were also included and implemented with satisfying flame spread, commplete with zippo lighter and burning rag.

Overall the thrill of the ride was as good as Call of Duty gets, nothing that special in terms of ingenuity, but what was present was a rollercoaster of WWII combat with interesting situations and locations. With the multiplayer game providing longevity - seemingly faster paced than CoD4 - but with the same sort of perks progression - perhaps CoD5 will provide a stop gap for WWII enjoyment until CoD6 comes a knocking? So, enjoyable, but only if you like a) Call of Duty franchise, b) WWII and c) Shooting/Stabbing Japanese and Dogs.

Soundtrack for the Voices in my Head Vol 1 OUT TODAY!

2008-10-28T16:28:00.000Z

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Soundtrack for the Voices in my HEAD"][/caption]

New Celldweller Album is out today, pre-order allows MP3 download.. Its mainly instrumental, but still rock solid Klayton stuff.. meanwhile he's currently working on the new Celldweller Album Sophomore.

Some of the new tracks can be heard on Celldwellers Myspace page
http://www.myspace.com/celldweller

more info...

http://www.celldweller.com

Spectromancer

2008-10-28T16:27:00.000Z

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="335" caption="Combat in the Spectromancer arena"][/caption]

Spectromancer is the next incarnation of the Astral Masters non-collectible card duelling game. Several of the Magic the Gathering designers got together with the Astral Masters developer and have come up with a new game, holding the same level of interest as AM, but with different magic fields, a single player campaign, and an online duelling arena with ladders and tournaments etc. The artwork is as usual top notch, and the game comes across more polished and dare I say it, more enjoyable to play. At a budget price of around £13 its certainly worth an investment if you enjoy fantasy themed card battlers, especially if you like the idea of a single player campaign, where your strategy and tactics have to evolve and shift to overcome advantages of the AI players.

Fable II

2008-10-26T11:33:00.000Z

Some observations after a couple of days play..

I've had it just freeze on me twice, usually in a tomb or cave of some sort, one being on round 6 of the Crucible which was very annoying - since although it says its saving content, it doesn't seem to save in bewteen rounds of the Crucible. Its odd, the game freezes, no response, but the console itself is still working, back to dashboard was ok. So its not a total hang as such.

I was very upset to see the strapping young lass I'd chosen as my avatar to start to become very scarred and very obese, and with any sort of clothing on, ridiculously rotund. Simply because I'd been adding HP via Physique to her so she could withstand battles, and pumping the Toughness for the same reason. She became grotesque and I couldn't love her anymore. I had to throw a shedload of XP spent away, to make her pleasing to the eye again (although the Scars and "Too Human-like" Will lines are still there) - but just as I've made her as I want her again, she's got the HP of a small garden snail.

I also, want to make my character specialise in one thing or another, not have to dabble in many to make her viable. I was forced to take a Will based skill to open a gate to the world.. I didn't like that.

The crafting mini games are slightly amusing for the first few runs through, but attaining the 5th level on any profession seems to be a feat of endurance in terms of physical and mental torture. These press a button at the right time "games" aren't THAT exciting to play. It is true grinding. And yet, one of the easiest ways to make a lot of money. The gambling games all stink if you ask me. Theres just no skill to hardly any of them. The card one has a modecum of tactics, the rest are just tedious luck based money sinks.

The world itself is more linear than say something like Two Worlds, and the equipment, even with augments is dumbed down from your traditional RPG's. Plus theres no Bows that I can find *stomps feet in anger* and they promote the use of crossbows *shudder*.

The world is charmingly realised though, and the combat with the inclusion of cinematic slow-mo strikes can be very satisfying. Performing the 'coup de grace' killing blow on prone enemies can be a bit hit and miss, but overall I like the combat system. The expression system is a breath of fresh air, if a little confusing to begin with. The dog is a good idea, for promoting exploration and treasure finding. He even lends a small hand in combat if he can, by nibbling the throat of prone enemies. Some of the quest stories are intriguing and have a quirky british take on them, with some trying a little too hard to be "funny". The co-op system has yet to be tested out properly, since it seems to be more a help your mates when they need it, rather than a true multi-character co-operative run through the game. However, seeing your friends orbs in game is a unique concept and probably one of the more impressive unique features.

It has a lot going for it. But, it does sort of smooth down the character class system, and I guess thats the price you pay for trying to appeal to the mass market - and some would say its opening up RPG's to the gaming public. The idea of avatar appearance changing through experiences is excellent, but having a pie for health reasons making you fat, or trying to boost your HP a little to endure battles better starts to distort your characters physique, really gets on my wick. I need to be able to shape my character in beneficial and pleasing to the eye ways - like unqiue costumes and weapons, hair colour, hats etc, I don't need my combat tweakings to turn her into a 50 stone WWE wrestling man!!

A letter to Drew

2008-08-26T11:36:00.000+01:00

(Drew is the writer on Mass Effect, he can be found here http://www.drewkarpyshyn.com/)

Drew,

I realise you're a busy man, and I won't keep you long. Just wanted to express my appreciation for your storytelling work on Mass Effect: Revelation, Mass Effect the Game, and Mass Effect: Ascension. Your latest work, isn't quite as informative nor as fast paced as the first installment, but what it does do, it cement even more culture and credibility into the Mass Effect Universe, and for that I am very grateful. I believe, you have a very mature and unique environment in which to explore all sorts of Sci Fi related issues, and I can only praise your writing and your imagination for bringing such a believable and interactive place to life for me to play inside. I'm a mature gamer, and I appreciate works of compelling fiction, but never have I had such a story that hits a chord with my core as Mass Effect. As a child the Star Wars Universe titilated my senses, and I've grown up with an appreciate of fantasy and science fiction, gaming becoming one of my life long loves. Never before has a game, consolidated so much I love and offer me so much reward for investigating the meta-game information available. I soak it all up, and enjoy the bigger experience overall.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you, as a writer, for fleshing out the world around the game, for giving me characters I enjoy, and believe in, and then you set me down in a adult playground to enjoy an epic cinematic experience, flexing my will, and my whims until I emerge satiated and craving more. Then you fill in the gaps whilst I wait for more. Personally I would like to think Mass Effect could become its own franchise in terms of fiction, regardless of tie-ins with the game. I'm applaud all avenues of this Lore support, whether it be more books, graphic novels, TV series etc, but most of all I'd like to pledge my support in terms of a wage earning discerning adult, who would jump at the chance to enrich his pastime by purchasing more insights into the Mass Effect Universe you have created.

Lastly, I'd like to reassure you that although many are willing to criticise your current novel (Mass Effect: Ascension) for not tying into the game, its because they are not willing to let the storyteller join the dots as and when the next part of the Mass Effect tale is told. They want all the answers up front. And for me, part of the beauty of the Mass Effect Universe is the fact that you know theres more to it up ahead, and my faith in your skill to weave a credible and enjoyable yarn placates that yearning, almost teases it until the next game hits the shelves.

Keep writing, keep creating, I do hope more Mass Effect novels become very popular alongside the gaming franchise because ultimately Mass Effect is a tale about humanity in the future, and it is a modern day myth on an equal setting to those myths of Legends from the past.

Kudos to you, Sir.

Necronomicon

2008-08-26T11:35:00.000+01:00

The Necronomicon is a free browser based Cthulhu card game, that has 20 levels of play. An interesting lunchtime pursuit for those of you who are spellbound and pushed over into insanity by the Cthulhu Mythos.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="The Necronomicon"][/caption]

Sryth

2008-07-03T11:37:00.000+01:00

http://www.sryth.com/

Dunno whether this has been mentioned before, but its quite a decent storied single player web based RPG, free to play with some limitations, or £10 for a years sub to open it all up. The story stuff is quite well written and could be the descriptions of a DM, the stats and combat are not bad, plenty to tinker with and level up etc.

Very interesting game, that has me sucked in at the moment... for lunchtimes.. more to it than Dragon Tavern.

Dragon Tavern

2008-06-30T11:40:00.000+01:00

A diverting little web browser game, where you can take your characters out and adventure, and fiddle with skills and buy new equipment. Nothing major in terms of combat mechanics etc, but addictive enough to keep you clicking till you've run out of your daily quota of action points.

50 action points when you start a new character, and 25 action points a day (real time) - so its the ideal lunchtime pursuit.

http://www.dragontavern.com

Avatar Banners

2008-06-23T11:42:00.000+01:00

I found some of the avatar banners I have made over the years and thought I'd display them here:

Airport Mania

2008-04-22T11:41:00.000+01:00

http://www.airportmania.com/

I'm ashamed, but I really like this click management game about airports and airplanes. I'm not so keen on the Brum style graphics but they don't take anything away from the core gameplay of juggling craft in and out of the airport, fuelling, repairing, respraying, passenger drop offs and picks ups, take offs and landings. This would make an excellent game on the DS if they could fit it all on the screen. The unique selling point is that every plane has a sims-like happy bar, and you have manage multiple entities (rather than the usual one waitress serving many pies). You can also stack up actions with each plane, so its possible to do some quite nifty planning ahead, especially if you upgrade your airport to grab a short range radar and find out the colours of the planes coming in and what order. You see
you get big bonuses for stacking same coloured planes in same coloured hangers. Oh dear..

/em I am Bowesy, and I'm an airport maniac, I need help!

Simple Lentil Bean Curry

2008-04-08T11:43:00.000+01:00

INGREDIENTS

1 Bag of Lentils
1 Large Onion
1 Large Punnet of Mushrooms
1 Tin of Chopped Tomatoes
1 Tin of Mixed Beans
1 Pot of Sharwoods Medium Curry Powder
1 Teaspoon of Lazy Garlic
1 Teaspoon of Powdered Fenugreek
2 Splashes of Olive Oil (any oil - vegetable or ghee)

1. Chop up Onion and Mushrooms. Make a large mound.

2. Cook lentils in pan of slightly salted water for 20-25 minutes.

3. Pan fry the onions and garlic in the oil until soft and then add the mushrooms

- cook until mushrooms are soft-ish. Sprinkle on the Fenugreek and mix.

4. Add the tomatoes and mix well. You can also add some Tomato puree if you like.

5. Add Mixed beans and stir well (you can add an extra tin - to bulk it further).

You can also use chopped boiled potatoes instead of beans for a little variety intexture and flavour.

6. Drain any excess water and add Lentils to bulk it up. The more Lentils the better!

7. Give it all a good stir.

8. Sprinkle the curry powder over the top, and gently fold into the mix. Leave to simmer for 10-15 minutes, adding another splash of oil to taste.

The finished product - A simple but tasty Lentil & Bean curry. Serve with naan, pitta or garlic sticks - and a side splash of Mango Chutney.

Desani Moon, Paladin

2008-02-20T11:46:00.000Z

Claustrophobia

2008-02-19T11:44:00.000Z

Sackcloth. Stinking, rancid, sacking, damp and mouldy. The taste is repulsive. Stuffed into my mouth, I can hardly swallow without wretching. Can barely breathe. Every intake seems to choke in minute hairs from the sackcloth, just enough to make you cough violently, stomach clenched.

Head seems free enough, can turn it, but something is strapped hard around my chest. Also restricting breathing. Some stray pin pricks of light shine through like divine torches from the heavens above, but not enough to make any recognisable forms. Just shadows. Angular vapid trails that pace up and down, occassionaly kicking me for fun.

Hands are numb. Tied to something behind my back. Something very strong. Something embedded and unmoveable. I move my fingers but it doesn't register. I feel amputated.

They wanted to know where the goods where.. they beat me hard.. soaked and choked me in blood, whose blood was that? Why soak me in blood? I thought it was my own at first, I held myself waiting for the pain to come. But it didn't, there was no wound on me, not that I could tell. Yet blood freely swam through the sacking and into my eyes, my mouth, congealing everywhere, I could feel lumps of it clinging soggily to my skin. My lashes fused for a while..

*another blow to the head*

The darkness opens up once more. Like a purse being unzipped. These fronds of light, heaven sent, twinkle in, and dance on my brain. Looks like I took it in the face that time. One of my eyes won't open any further.. so for now, the rays only come in from one side. What was I saying? I never talked. The goods location is still safe. They're not getting that stuff. I worked too hard for it. Its my ticket out of this sodden place. It's mine, for the Hosts sake! Sshhh! some chatting.. strain to hear, through the clothing...

Something about time wasting, something about no gold, no nothing, something barely audible about moving out.. or moving on...

Panic rising in me, I want to scream at them, perhaps I'll share the goods? perhaps we can make a deal? I was told there were some gems in the stash, they can take the gems, and any gold, I only wanted the pottery artifacts, they'd reach a fair price in Sharn. I wriggle as much as I can to get their attention.

*another blow to the head*

The familiar dull pulse of my own laboured breath rings around the inside of my darkened prison. The light is so pale. So distant. My eye is completely closed now, and I can feel blood trickling, warm and throbbing, it must be my own. One too many hits to the head. Funny though, I can't feel much pain. I guess my posture has numbed most of my limbs, and my sensory isolation has turned my bodies defenses inwards. Breathing is about the only thing I have left to concentrate on. That and my family... imagine their faces when they learn of my demise. How could I have done this to them? I thought myself so clever, agile and skillful, that I could escape all consequences, and look where its gotten me..

Somethings happening, movement, a strange curdling sound. My breath quickens, as I hear feet scatter away, they're running fast. Theres some sort of commotion. I twitch in place. Its silent. Perhaps they've left? If only I could feel my fingers, I could perhaps get one hooked into the cloth and loosen the binds? Perhaps if I edge down a little, this will free up enough room to squirm a hand free?

There seems to be some suction, cold yet burning surround my feet. Ahh! whats that? Its creeping over me. Burning. It feels as though my clothing is being removed, but not dragged off, more dissolved. The heat, followed by the cold. Oh my Host!, Lord of the Sovereign Host!, WHAT IS HAPPENING!!! Cold and cloying, yet intense heat travels up my body.. I can feel my binds shifting, sort of loosening, if only I could feel my toes, or my legs I could wiggle them free, my knees have come apart. I shift in the place I have been seated for this ordeal. And I can feel my arms coming free! The rolling motion of this suction seems to be encroaching like a scarf unfurling around my neck. I suddenly feel the intense heat of a scald settle on my cheek. White hot, then tacky cold. My arms are finally free! As the saturating mass envelopes my face first the sacking bag, then seeps through, my eyes fill up with bright flourescent gloop! The pain is precise, and acute. I reach forward to pull this off me, to wipe the burning quiensence from my face but it suspends me, rather than liberating me. I'm being lifted off the ground. Burned inside some suffocating coccoon. I can feel it seeping down my throat.. slowly, exploratory, carving a way into my lungs and stomach.

I feel the doors closing, darkness creeping in, I feel the radiant heat, but the light is fading fast. Perhaps its time to go, after all. The choking has stopped, I managed to drink the stuff down it seemed to lessen the trauma. My arms now feel heavy, my legs light, I was being turned in and around, possibly upside down, my eyes could see, the sacking had gone, but only the pitiful light seemed to dance blurry on my scorched lenses.

My greed, is my shame. My downfall. My last breath, shall rise and be expunged from this mass, shouting the name of my family, carrying the last tone of my love to them. My mother. My lost father. My sister, how sweet she is. And my close brother, Taerl.....

The ooze settled itself to feed. The little halflings body was but a small meal. But having had two fully grown human brigands already, it only needed a small meal to satiate itself. Budding season was upon the ooze, so nurishment was needed to nip off a dozen tiny fledgling oozes and keep them growing.

Androse the Giant

2008-02-14T11:47:00.000Z

The cheek of a deer exploded, as a steel tipped arrow rifled through the animals head. The lolloping corpse crumpled to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. No sooner had the carcass hit the sodden floor, than it was being raised up into the air, like an offering to the Gods, held aloft by colossal hands, nurturing the fallen beast. The hands began to dance around the deer's injury, teasing and moulding in a fashion, slow and steady, firm but gentle. It was as if the beasts head was made of clay and it was being restructured and renewed. A long brooding chant echoed around the vicinity, as the hands enveloped the head, tunnel like, in a finger to thumb grasp. From within the clasp, a darting tongue lapped about and tasted its surroundings. The mammoth palms peeled away gracefully, and the deer shook its head, twitched nervously, and bolted for cover. It was as if not a scratch had been inflicted upon it. The hands came to rest by a man's side, contented at a job well done. The hands belonged to a giant sized fellow, only known to a few as Androse.

Fade swung down from the branch she was perched on, to survey her kill. Still proud at the accuracy of the shot, and hungry for some food after so long going without. Still wary, she would dart between tree to tree, using their trunks as cover. As she approached the small clearing where she expected to find a culled deer, she found only flattened grass, sprinkled with blood. Even the arrow had gone, nothing but a few tufts of raven feather left where the flights had been shredded upon entry. While her mind puzzled over where her quarry had gone, her stomach audibly yearned for the meat lost. The darkened forests of Caerwyn yield very little berries or fruits, the nearest morsel of nutrition coming from minute shoots that the boars like to eat. Perhaps its the soil, or the foul swamps that hinder the spread of fruit bearing foliage? No matter what, Fade had spent best part of this afternoon, stalking a suitable deer, picking the right moment to strike, and now, she would go hungry. Large tracks near the kill site, suggest something enormous dragged the fallen beast away, surely Ogres and Trolls wouldn't be this far south? Besides the freshly laid tracks didn't give off the scent of a dark largekin. It was more human, pungent in its own right, but not acrid. Fade took out a spare coiled bow string and started gnawing on the core to satisfy longing for something to chew. Besides, it comforted her. And with string in mouth, she bounded up into the tree canopy, to find a place to rest. Perhaps she'll hunt tomorrow and have some luck?

Androse had a gift. Bestowed upon him at birth. It was a gift of growth, although tiny and vulnerable at birth, he grew throughout his childhood at a rapid rate. When it was noticeable, the stigma of witchcraft was bestowed upon him and his family, and they were forced to leave their home to seek refuge in the forests. His mother frail and his father long dead, it wasn't long before Androse was alone in the forest, and still growing. His life was gentle, his soul carefree, his heart captured by the spirit of the forest and its dwellers. Long gone where the times when he wished for human companionship, humans had spurned him and only seemed to bring trouble. So he spent his days nurturing the wild, learning about its medicinal qualities and applying them where he could. Big as he was, he seemed to be able to live off mere scraps the forest would bestow upon him. A few bowls of boiled and mashed groosebush root would last him a few days. He wasn't disfigured in any way, he wasn't grotesque as such, just outsized. Combining salves he would pumice all day, Androse found he could mend injury quite easily, by channeling his growth through his hands and into fallen animals. It pleased him so much, his reason for carrying on, alone, but content. "Guardian of the darkened Vale" he like to call himself. However recently, more and more animals were being struck by sharp branches with glinting metal leaves. These evil spears from above were raining down almost daily and he had trouble keeping up with the amount of injuries caused. He suspected a dark tree spirit summoned by Orcs, probably. His utopian dream of arboreal harmony was bound to be attacked by the darkness sooner or later. If only he'd prepared for it.

Icy cold dawn arrives and shards of sunlight twinkle through the canopy to wake Fade. Her stomach is also aroused, and begins cramping on a regular basis. Nimbly clambering over tree top she spans a wide arc, always alert, looking for any movement below. A flutter of birds swoop by, as Fade spied a rather plump rabbit nuzzling around a clearing of vegetation. With bow drawn she moistens the string with her tongue, tasting her prey roasted on an open camp fire. Her arrow nocked silently, the bow whispers to her as she draws it back. A clean kill, a head shot will ensure no suffering. Fade squints and looses the arrow at her potential meal. Outrage befalls her moments before the arrow strikes, when an enormous hand is thrust forward sheltering the rabbit, a flesh built cave to hide in. Fade's arrow digs into the hand but richochet's off to the side, with only a mild scratch to show for it. In mere moments, the hand has scooped the rabbit away, and only the ghost rustling of a bush is left behind. Fade tries to follow this protector, but although heavy on foot, he seems to be light on tracks, and soon the trail goes cold, across a stream. Fade drinks deeply to quench her thirst and stave off her hunger once more.

Androse is sure a dark imp stalks the canopy top, he can see it made visible when it moves. His imagination begins to spiral wildly out of control and he conjurs up armies of these tree borne imps slaying all the forest fauna. This makes him angry, an emotion Androse has not dealt with since the death of his mother. These imps will not plague this forest. He decides he will hunt the imps down, at night, climbing the trees if he has to. He fashions some rope shoes to help with trunk climbing and gathers up his wooden tools to use as weapons if he has to. Androse waits patiently for night.

Fade is weakening, she can feel it, her bow is heavy and cumbersome, her feet slip where once they would hold fast. She needed food desperately. Perhaps a night hunt was needed? Whatever it was guarding the beasts of this Vale, she needed to catch it off guard so she could survive. Dropping to low canopy, trunk jumping, Fade made silent progress through the trees. Her elvish vision making the task a lot easier since any life would shimmer and glow slightly. At last, she spotted a badger making its way to a ground swell, no doubt a placeÂ where it has caught mice and other vermin before. As best she could, Fade squirmed around a gnarly oak, to get into a firing position.

Clambering heavily through the forest came a small troop of orcs, four in total. No doubt scouting for flesh themselves. They showed no concern for the forest, chopping at anything that dared get in their way, clearing swathes of foliage and hacking away chunks of trees, leaving only resin seeping wounds behind. The Orcs spotted something high up in one of the trees. It was unaware of their presence. They were over-exited and foaming at the mouth about the prospect of a feed. This kill looked like it could feed their clan hut for a day or two. Slowly and noisily they approached the tree, assembling at the rear and forming a body based platform, climbing one onto the others, to reach. They thought to try and pull it out of the tree and savage it on ground rather than clumsily fighting it in the canopy itself. The Orc on top, reached forward and attempted to grasp a limb.

Fade quivering with deprivation, was pulling her bowstring again, but without the strength to gain full extension. Her mind was focussed on exerting every ounce of will she had left, to make the strike. The badger waddled into the clearing, and Fade let the arrow loose, expelling all her hope behind that arrow. She must eat soon. The arrow struck the badger behind the ruffled collar and it yelped as it choked for air. Twitching and squirming for a moment till its life ebbed away. Fade closed her eyes in relief, this kill will save me. Tugged back into reality, something grasped her leg brutishly. She immediately thought it was the protector and his huge crushing hands. She fell backwards from the canopy and hit the ground hard, blacking out.

The Orcs had hit her twice on the head again just to make sure she was out. They wouldn't kill her yet, they wanted to keep her flesh succulent and fresh, till they manage to drag it back to the clan tent. Perhaps they'd have some of the flesh on the way though, it had been a long time since they felt pulsing blood gush down their gullets. They started to strip the leather Armour from her body, licking at the wound on her head, to taste the crimson nectar and to fuel the excitement of the catch. Taking a crude blade they raised it to chop a leg off at the knee, they could satiate themselves with that for the journey and claim it was lost in the confusion of the melee.

A big hand clasped the raised blade from behind and crumpled it as if it were a dock leaf.Â A mammoth kick landed on the back of the surprised Orc, snapping the spine and stomping it to the ground, crushing it dead. A wooden spoon with its handle sharpened at one end was jabbed into another orcs throat, it staggered backwards and squealed like a stuck hog, gurgling to its grave. One of the Orcs fled in panic, whelping loudly. Finally, another huge hand descended from above, and wrapped its fingers around the skull of the remaining Orc, the fingers began to grip hard, like a five pronged vice. The hand applied pressure steadily and calmly with almost mechanical precision. The Orc's head was crushed and contorted, until the inner contents spilled out readily, through whatever broken gaps where made to its outer shell. With a snapping motion, the five fingers released their grip and shook themselves clean, spraying the bloodied matter and fluids around. Androse the giant sighed in relief that the carnage was over. He looked down at the prone figure, Armourless and he saw that she was as vulnerable as any injured animal in his forest. This was no dark imp that plagued the area, this was an emaciated elven girl who was in some desperate need of help. Androse smeared a salve over his palms and gently placed his large hand over her head, massaging it, in very tiny circles. As he raised his hand away, he could see she was stirring, so he quickly gathered her Armour together and with the corpse of the slain badger, laid them neatly beside her. Looking around for a suitable gap in the flora, Androse disappeared off into the thick forest depths.

As she lazily regained her sight, Fade caught a glimpse of the protector, the owner of those massive hands, a gentle giant who seemed to have saved her from these foul orcs. Woozy and unsteady she pulled on her Armour, grabbed her bow, and saw the dead badger laid out like an offering of peace. To Fade, it was a meal fit for a Queen. She hurried off into full cover as soon as she could. Making her way to a shaded mountain crag with enough tree cover so that she could light a campfire and start preparing and roasting the meat. She devoured the meal greedily, but with the satisfaction of knowing that it was blessed by the protector of the forest. Whoever he may be.

The following day, no splintered attacks came from above to fell the beasts of the forest. Androse nodded contently as he went about his business. As nightfall approached he went gathering Shan moss for some poultices he needed. Bent over, busy stripping stones clean, Androse didn't notice the Orc pack hurriedly crossing the stream behind him. They'd spotted him. And what a meal he would make for the clan. Word had reached the Orc hideout, when the surviving Orc arrived back and told tale of a huge fleshman, who laid waste to the others with his bare hands. The chief rallied his warrior caste and sent them out to find this fleshman and cull him. Before Androse could react, the Orcs were upon him. Two either side, dragging his arms down with two more clambering up his back, biting and slashing at his shoulders and neck. Androse jostled from side to side to shake the clawing fiends, but there were too many of them, overpowering him despite his size and innate strength. Deep bleeding gashes in his back were weakening his grip on consciousness, bruised and battered his legs and arms began to buckle and fold, until the giant man was sprawled out face down in the mud. Orc teeth still snapping at his body, clubs and blades still pounding and raking his skin. How the mighty have fallen.

A blazing sprite seemed to shoot past high above the fighting. It erupted into a plume of sparks falling to the ground and igniting all dry material. Another burst and more sparks. Just enough to worry the orcs and cause them to flee in fear. Androse rolled over on to his side, parts of his clothing burning slightly, fizzling in the pool beneath him. Down from a high treetop leapt Fade, two more flame arrows smouldering in her back mounted quiver. Androse moaned. Using all her strength Fade managed to roll Androse into the muddy waters covering him in thick peat based bog. Androse become a little more lucid, his eyelids flickering momentarily, his body shaking in shock. Fade splashed muddy water on to his face and silently gestured for him to stand up. Androse didn't think he could muster enough strength to get up, he was still bleeding heavily. But after a stumble he rose more determined and tottered about on his feet. Fade pushed him towards a dense area of forest, where a large oak tree stood. Androse bumbled about and staggered in that direction and the little elf girl encouraged him with her boot. He wasn't sure whether he was awake or it was some kind of dream. But the pain was real. Before he made it to the thick stumped tree, he could see the elf girl flitting around the tree trunk. Fade was stripping great wads of bark off the tree whole. As tall as she could make them. Her blade carving into the tree just enough to take the top layer of bark off, that would hold fast as a single intact piece. Again and again she did this, stacking up quite a pile of thick bark strips. Androse fell forward and collapsed against the bare trunk, he managed to twist his body round to see the elf enclosing him in these strips of bark. Initially he began to panic, but Fade touched her lips with her fingers in a hushed gesture, and calmed the battered giant man. Fade danced around him, panelling him up against the tree, and covering him with the bark strips. She daubed wads of mud in between to make the strips stick to him. Once he was encased completely, she unfurled some bow string from her belt pouch and began to tie the covered man to the tree itself, grafting as best she could the "tree man" to the tree. She jumped up over Androse and into the canopy of this bold arboreal resident, where she cut leaves rapidly and dropped them on top of Androse, covering any remaining body parts that could be easily seen. Once he was hidden, she bounded across to other trees and climbed high to gain a vantage point.

Androse wasn't totally comfortable, and he wasn't quite sure what was going on. His wounds were still bleeding, the pulsing pain he felt in all his limbs told him he was in a bad way. He kept zoning in and out of lucidity, he couldn't willingly stop himself from moaning to cope with the pain. Spooked but not dissuaded, the Orcs returned tentatively. They split up and scattered more, searching the area as they moved, to determine what sort of sorcerer conjured these flaming projectiles. They expected the fleshman to be still laying there prone and bloodied. They were enraged to find he wasn't. Sniffing the air, desperately trying to gain the fleshman's scent, they paused when they heard a muffled moaning coming from a dark forested enclosure. Cautiously they investigated the noise. The Orc at the tail end of the party dropped to the ground silently, an arrow protruding from his face. Unaware, the remaining orcs were lured onwards towards the siren call of an injured victim. This time two orcs fell in rapid succession, arrow borne whispers flashed by and stuck the first in the throat, and the second in a soft point of his armour under the arm and into the ribcage. The two remaining orcs turned and panicked. Weaving back and forth trying to search out the source of these lethal projectiles. They crouched low and leapt around, the moaning now haunting them, stalking them. In terror, they reeled backwards and knocked into the large oak tree. The slender dark figure of Fade dropped out of the canopy and landed softly like a cat on all paws. The moaning behind the orcs grew louder and more constant. The dark figure approached them menacingly. The orcs panicked again, and rushed forward to attack. With a swift motion, Fade parried the blow and took his arm off at the joint, with her razor sharp dagger. Knocking him to the ground as he stumbled past in pain, she landed a side kick on the second advancing Orc sending him reeling back towards the oak tree. Turning to face the back of the first Orc, Fade sunk the dagger deep into the base of its spine and pushed downwards disengaging its pelvis. As the other Orc hit the tree, Androse howled and toppled forward snapping the bow strings, releasing him and bringing his full weight to bear down upon the orcs body. A jet of blood spewed from the Orcs mouth as its internal organs were crushed and chopped by its own skeletal shards.

Androse shook his head clear, the caked mud had helped stem the bleeding, and his natural ability to regenerate had began to reinvigorate him. He knelt down, catching his breath and pausing to look at the elf who saved him. She walked towards him, kissed his bloodied cheek, and without a word placed a wad of Shan moss in his large protective hand. He closed his fingers around the precious gift, cherishing the offer. She turned and walked slowly away, increasing the pace until she was running, fast enough to bound up into the canopy. And she was gone. Androse never saw her again. But every year he would pay tribute to her by culling and eating a badger in her honour.

MUDQuesting

2008-02-13T11:47:00.000Z

Well I've beem at it again. Sniffing around the horde of MUD's that there is to find one that has the breadth and depth I want, as well as the interface features to make it highly usable. I've also cobbled together a list of things I deem important to me for a MUD to appeal:

Free to play

Coherent Fantasy theme

Newbie friendly - gentle introduction

ANSI Colour - clear display

MAPS at location, city and world level

Flexible Configuration and Customisation

Large enough playerbase

Information steeped inventory and equipped

Extensive help system

Clean but informative combat

Formations/Groups allowed

Logical and attainable Questing

Persistant World with solid Roleplay

One that I foundÂ very interesting at first is Legends of Karinth, it has a well versed set of descriptions and a good mapping system, but sadly (I think its still in beta) the playerbase is almost non existent. It seems to have plenty of votes on some of the MUD listing sites,Â but when I've logged in, theres only been me, another player and perhaps an AFK admin. Which is a shame really, because it does have most of the requirements I've been looking for in my MUDquest. I particularly like the ability to scribe your own spells, name them, tweak their power and duration etc.. very nice.

Dipping into another pool, I come across a MUD that might possibly tick all the boxes. Its called Medievia and boy does it look and play good. It has its own font for the map options.

It has a rather large playerbase, 80+ on every night. And it does draw you in with a nice tutorial and a info packed website (the only real downer is that it doesnt have a community forum, to discuss the game outside of the game). Still bashing my way through the Warrior levels at the moment, apparently your progression through Medievia is all about moving through all the 4 main classes before sub-classing and specialising, so you get a taste of the action from all angles..

/em hoped he had someone to form up with and take on the ASCII horde!

Fadewyn Moon

2008-02-08T11:49:00.000Z

Fadewyn Moon, an aspiring bow maiden and blade mistress. Her Elven beauty masking her sometimes unpredictable but determined ferocity. Her tenacity to pursue and overpower with skill or brutality sets her aside amongst her peers. Take arm with her, and she will serve you loyally without question. Take arms against her and some say the scorn of a begrudged elf can be unimagineable. Attuned with beasts and forest, she will not hesitate to heal as best she can, but also slay with cold precision and logical calm. For the most part, 'Fade' is a polite and pleasant elven girl, with a sly demeanour that can be unsettling, but once you know her is almost reassuring.

Savage 2

2008-02-06T11:55:00.001Z

S2Games has released the followup to Savage: A Battle for Newerth, a remarkable multiplayer hybrid game bringing together first person shooter, third person melee and the overwatch planning of a real time strategy game. Savage 2 is bigger, better and even manages to squeeze in RPG elements and online achievements into the heady mix. Basically its PvP, Humans versus Beasts. You have aÂ HQ, and must defend it at all costs. You have an army of players who can collect resources and fend off enemy attacks, with gun, spell or blade. You can have a Commander who is in charge and sees the whole arena in a top down RTS view and who can organise the troops on the ground and give them dynamic objectives as he sees the battle play out. Ultimately the Commander is very important to the success of your team, but also the willingness of the troops on the ground to follow his plans, do their best to stem attacks and keep their teammates alive. Total teamplay from the ground up to the commander is key to winning the battle. Each player can select a character class to play upon entry, depending upon the amount of personal gold they have and the tech buildings available. Classes vary between the two races, but you generally have a mix of melee and shooters and magic users through to demonic beasts and huge behemoths of destruction. Getting the balance in the team can be tricky, but with a clued up set of players you can bring a whole plethora of strategies into play, especially with a sharp Commander at the helm. The Savage format gives you choice, most have close quarters and ranged combat abilities, some can set traps and turrets, some can heal, some have pets, there is a lot of variety in there. And getting to grips with each class can be an adventure in itself. As the game progresses and you earn personal kills and gold, and as the commander builds up your base and remote outposts you acquire more tech and more classes open up to you.

In Savage 2, it takes the Savage formula, tidies it up graphically and gives you the added feature of an RPG-like progression of your characters within the match. You gain stats points to customise your strength or your speed, or endurance, you can even find or be awarded items that you can carry over on your player details, as well as earn experience. The metagame outside of the matches played is very polished and you can see all the stats for each match, and even download match replays to mull over your failed strategies later. You can even award kudos points to your commander and other players. Since Savage was always a niche fantasy based multiplayer game, I think strengthening the community features will secure its fanship for even longer than the first game. Its a crying shame that such a well crafted, multi-faceted team based Fantasy PvP game gets so little attention. You can download the game and play it for 5 hours straight on trial, before you decide to buy it. The only caveat I would add, is that your online experience will be affected by the people you play with.. play a game with a less than talented commander, or solo-ist teammates and you'll probably come away feeling frustrated. However, play with a Commander who has a bit of spirit, and players who are willing to accept his judgements and calls to arms and you'll see the glory of a properly constructed team game come into play. And you'll probably win. Since Savage 2 has just been released, now is a very good time to join the community and give it a try..

Pirates of the Burning Sea

2008-02-06T11:55:00.000Z

Since the game is still hot on the shelves, this isn't a comprehensive in depth review. Having said that, the tutorial seems to guide you swiftly through the three main mechanisms of play. Armed combat, Naval Combat and Exploration/quest gathering. I must say the first thing that hit me straight away is that I've seen this sort of thing before, a few years previous. 1999 on the original Xbox a game called Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat. Except it was a single player console game, and there wasn't as many quests. Your character configuration is not as varied as you would like, but there are enough costume decisions make you look the part. The classes you can play didn't seem to have much in the way of defined variety, they all come across a bit the samey, with perhaps just factional differences. A Navy person would be similar to a Privateer, but more regimented sort of thing. A Pirate is just a Privateer but evil. Obviously many people are coming to this game because of the popularity of Pirates of the Caribbean, and indeed there were quite a number of variants on the Jack Sparrow theme running around the villages.

Privateer

Questing seems to follow MMO tradition, with a bit of textual flavour, kill a few brigands, sink a few ships and heres some money at the end. Villages and outposts are like instanced city hubs, and some quests actually step into a personal instance of the city, for you to tackle a specific enemy. These hubs seem quite small and have just the basic NPC's for trade, and questing. Although plenty of NPC's are milling about so that they don't seem empty places.

Armed Combat

Every now and then you will be drawn into armed combat, whether in a town or on a ship (mainly for boarding purposes). Melee combat doesn't seem to be the games strong point. Its in there, and you have a few skills that you need to juggle to make the kills, but the swordfighting animations didn't fill me with enthusiasm or excitement at all. In fact theres no tactile feel to the combat, you press a block a couple of times to build up your fencing power and then you press a main attack or a finishing move. I'd have preferred a much more "twitch" based combat, where position and sword strikes matter more than building a series of skill keystrokes. The skills are gained as you level up your character through questing, and the skills on offer range across the fencing and defense, through to naval combat prowess and even ship endurance.

Ship

Where the game does shine is in its naval combat, battles on the sea are quite frantic, require a measure of skill to position the boat at its optimum firing solution, selection of appropriate ammo (sail/mast ripping grape shot, anti-personnel shot to assist boarding etc), and damage management. One on one encounters include a lot of zig zagging in and out of the wind, to get a strong position to let rip, multi-ship encounters are where it gets interesting, trying to find gaps in the enemy's position to sail in and release your salvo and have the wind behind you enough to get out of there before your shredded. Although I haven't tried any grouped fleet battles, I think this is the area I would be most excited about.

Exploring the Open Sea

Apart from specific questing you can venture out into the Open Sea and join in generated ship battles there. In Open Sea, your ship moves much faster, and you don't see the crew on board. This is your main travel mechanism, between ports and cities, and anyone venturing into the trading business will no doubt be in this mode quite a lot. There is a whole player based economy, but with my limited try out, I haven't managed to delve into that yet.

Overall, I'd have said Pirates of the Burning Sea will be a curiosity for most, with the naval combat fuelling most of the enthusiasm for it. The Armed combat and character progression simply fuelling the fitting out of your ship for combat purposes, or for travel and trade. I'll play around with it for my 30 day free allocation, but whether it attracts masses to the game I'm uncertain. If you enjoy real time naval combat from days gone by, its worth the price of admission to experience that with others in a multiplayer environment.

Achaea

2008-02-06T11:51:00.001Z

http://www.achaea.com

One of the most popular and very deep MUD's. Its steeped in Lore, and seems to contain a whole breadth of options I've rarely seen in a MUD (well since the last time I played one). Also, I think it supports grouping and grouped combat as well as having a nifty MUD client ready to spawn from the web page itself, complete with compass and health/mana bars etc..Â the initial tutorial hand-holds you through most of the basic commands, and there doesn't seem to be a shortage of people online willing to offer you help if you need it.

more MUDing

2008-02-06T11:51:00.000Z

I'm having real trouble sifting through the vast quantity of information on offer with Achaea.. theres just so much, and it can be overwhelming...

So I've been dabbling with The Realms of Despair (RoD), a MUD I used to play years ago, which is much more simpler in its execution and its a bit more action orientated... which has ultimately lead me to another MUD that is a balance between the two.. it has more to it, more flavour than RoD, but isn't quite as overpowering as Achaea.. its known as Dark & Shattered Lands.

With all these MMO's out, I shouldn't find myself sucked into a world that has only text based descriptions, but theres just something pure about it, its like having Fantasy Grounds without the graphics. Having said that it does have a world map, that scrolls with your character as you're exploring.. which is a welcome addition to give you an overall feel of structure and environment - something many MUD's lack.. Oh and in DSL its an enforced Roleplay MUD, so noe vanity names as such, your name is vetted upon creation I believe. Anyway, I'm sure this MUD fetish will go on and on...

MUDQuest

2008-02-06T11:50:00.000Z

Whilst exploring the plethora of MUD's available to play, to find one I will settle with, I've gone from verbose complex MUD's through to quite brief action orientated ones, and then some. I found a very popular MUD the other day I decided to try out, that does have a great mix of complexity with newbie friendly hand holding. Now I'm not sure whether its popular because many many people are playing it, or just that it actually requests you submit a vote for it everytime you log in - something which seems very odd, and goes against my nature - but which I'm willing to do if I can delve into its depths and enjoy it. This MUD is called Aardwolf and it is a very friendly MUD indeed, in terms of coaching you through your early years, as well as providing you with tools that facilitate the downsides to only having a text based world to play it. It has an ascii based map not only for the wider world (like Dark and Shattered Lands) but also for your local journey's, so you're no longer left blind without much of a clue about direction. You don't need to buy software to help you map common places, to build up speedwalk strings to get from A to B. You can see it all on an ANSI coloured ascii map, with a symbol key. Not only that but it also gives you a list of speedwalks from recall points to popular questing areas. Something which I thought would be looked down upon by the MUD vets - who had to build their own lists. Anyway, the customisation of the MUD seems very accessible, the combat and skillsets seem very involved, but simple to run, and generally it feels like a good world to play in. The MUDquest continues..

Neriak

2007-12-28T11:56:00.000Z

As I stumble through the dark, a brilliant indigo light draws me. Having spent months wandering through the forests of Nektulos, and finally emerging into the blazing dry sunlight of the Commonlands, I've gripped the starched mountain pass and hugged the dry pumice to emerge into the forest bowl known as the Darklight. Meandering past pocked craters and river gouges I finally cross the bridge over Innoruk's Scar, and behold the stories were true, the City of Hate, Neriak stands before us!

Luckily the Teir'Dal have also annexed a part of Neriak for Foreign Quarter so Ogres have free passage through to these slave areas, so I pass by the Teir'Dal Dread Guard easily, yet I feel their hatred towards me almost seep out of their armour. In Neriak I will always be an underclass, to be used and abused at their whim. They have a busy forge, creating more and more of the necessary equipment to kit out their ranks and furnish their city with ornamentation worthy of the palaces of Maj'Dul.

Delving deeper into the Nerian warren, you come across the Spires of Innoruuk, built to whorship the God of Hate himself. Their architectural beauty just amazes my simple Ogre tastes, I'm almost overwhelmed by their craftmanship.. dominated by it.

Have to keep hurrying, so that the Dread Guard patrolling this area keep their attention on other things.. I'm followed for a while by an Asari Guard, he seems very suspicious of me.. luckily he was distracted for a moment by a gathering of floating imps, kept as living gargoyle ornaments I think, they haunt most of the halls of this mighty place.

The Teir'Dal have constructed a place for the appreciation of their arts, the Nightsong Opera House, a three teired building of enormous beauty, I could stand and stare at it for many days...

but the guards are tracking me now. The Haunting Sirensong drifting out from the building lulls me into a sleepy state and I almost topple off the edge of a precipice.. this city is not very forgiving of bumbling fools... trip or stumble too near the edge and you will plummet hundreds of feet down onto stalagtite spikes. Even the Frostfell celebrities are not immune to a good spiking.

At the end of the warren, is the mighty Darklight Palace, flanked by the House of the Teir'Dal family D'Morte.

And Vampires. I had to make a quick retreat, fending off these biting shrews.. I don't understand why they are tolerated, the Dread Guard doesn't venture this deep..

For all its beauty there is always a price to pay, and I for one am willing to pay it. For the God of Hate, Neriak take me as one of your own!

Pox Nora

2007-12-17T12:02:00.000Z

http://www.poxnora.com

A hybrid between a turn based strategic battler (like Advance Wars) and a trading collectible card game. The client can be downloaded for free, and you get 8 sets of 'cards' (champions) - although in game they look like miniatures - to play with. If you want your champions to gain experience and have equipment then you need to buy some sets.
As a free battler for quick games during lunchtime this could be a good effort.. as with most collectible games though, the first hit or two is free, but you'll probably want more..

It looks and plays really smoothly..
http://www.poxnora.com/images/screenshots/dow_02.jpg

Gods: Land of Infinity

2007-12-17T12:01:00.000Z

http://www.gods-game.com/

Its a very well done Homebrew style RPG, with first person roaming, and chatting, and a turn based combat mechanism (ala Final Fantasy). Not sure its worth real money, but its worth having a look at the demo and seeing how the small independant developers are having a crack at some 3d RPG's.. and with a God called Arswaargh you just can't go wrong..

Ballerium

2007-12-17T12:00:00.000Z

http://www.ballerium.com/

Free to play.. a Massive Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy, comes across as a Warcraft III clone, but with persistant multiplayer capabilities. From the brief play session I had, it was interesting to try and get a grasp on your unit types, but the game seems in desperate need of a decent tutorial. You spend time just wandering (very slowly, I might add) around barren environment, looking for a city to go into (as the start up blurb suggests). But once there, theres no easy instructions into getting established, and the normal well trodden RTS routes, seem all but a distant memory. So it does drop you in deep, without much of a clue what to do. Could be of interest to some RTS types looking to see how the genre can be moulded into a persistant world setting.

Alien Shooter 2

2007-12-17T11:59:00.000Z

http://www.strategyfirst.com/en/games/AlienShooter2/

If anyone is interested, you can now buy Alien Shooter 2: Vengance from Strategy First as a download only game ($19.99). Its been out in the States on shelves, but hasn't surfaced over here, I've been on the lookout for it for ages..

Shadowgrounds kind of overshadowed it, with its proper 3d graphics and gorgeous lighting (especially in Shadowgrounds:Survivor), but Shadowgrounds tends to be a more personal closer perpspective shooter, the aliens are more difficult to die but a lot less in number.. which spoils it a bit. Alien Shooter 2 with its 2d isometric view (and some nice light effects of its own - only in 2d) does hordes of aliens that can be swathed through much better, and its further back isometric view affords you some tactical advantages when it comes to using environment and layout to bottleneck those alien swarms. Also Alien Shooter 2 has a lot more RPG progression in your character and its stats than Shadowgrounds. Top games for the "marine gunning alien action" genre, but Alien Shooter 2 pips Shadowgrounds by sheer numbers of swarming foes.

Bruce Parry does the Amazon

2007-12-15T11:58:00.000Z

Bruce Parry of TRIBE fame, begins his journey..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/amazon/sites/map/index.shtml

He's using Googlemaps and video/blog entries along the way to tell the story interactively as he heads along the Amazon river. The expedition will culminate in a 6 part show in Autumn 2008, but you can follow it as it happens at this blogsite. I'm a big fan of Bruce, and I love this info tracking stuff when its focussed on a journey and a project.. onto Google Reader you go Sir!

Bellatorus

2007-12-11T12:02:00.000Z

http://www.bellatorus.com

Bellatorus is a 3d rendered and much more polished card game version of one of my oldie favourites known as 'ants' - which was based on a game called Archomage.

http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=3761
http://www.antanasijevic.com/ants.html

Anyway Bellatorus seems to be more slick and looks much better, plus it has the fluff option of zooming around over your tower base, or even following an avatar through the base in 3d. You get to see buildings emerge as you request them, and even resources thrown into the air from the people generating them.

I used to love playing Ants, and always wanted a much more convincing graphical version of it, and I guess Bellatorus is it. Nice.

Mass Effect

2007-12-03T12:03:00.000Z

I've finished a Normal run through Mass Effect in about roughly 25 hours. I would say it has been one of the most exciting and involving pieces of game play I've had this year. I must declare the fact that I come to Mass Effect prepared, in that I'd given enough time to read the prequel novel to the game beforehand. I enjoyed that novel and its story immensely. It was good, believable Science Fiction. Continuing that story into the game itself, was a big part of the experience, because I was able to step into that universe and take an active (if fairly predetermined) part in it. Places and races I'd imagined through the writings had become tangible and interactive. The pleasurable fog of imagination had been gently blown clear to reveal a living and pulsing environment where I could explore (and sometimes scrutinise) individuals to my hearts content, where I could exercise control over bursts of action, and decide what parts of the unfolding destiny I would delve into next. The prequel novel is by no means a requirement to enjoying Mass Effect, and if you question the right people, you get a summary of the books plot explained to you fully. But, what the prequel did was whet my appetite for this world, tease me with tidbits for the epic scale of the tale about to be told in the game.

I could wax lyrical about the game in terms of my emotive attachment to the character I created and controlled in that world. But I'd like to get across not only the cinematic euphoria that you open up along the way, but the mechanics by which they assemble this journey.

Highlights of the game:

Story: I've mentioned the Story already, a very adult and convincing story that takes place in a very believable setting. Drew Karpyshyn http://www.drewkarpyshyn.com, the writer, has certainly won me over and I'll be looking forward to sampling his other titles.

"Acting" and dialogue: Normally imparting a lot of dialogue to the player can slow things down, and hinder any sense of forward flow. Players begin to skip over sections in favour of tasting the action based "sweet spots". Bioware has managed to craft a mechanism by which NPC's can perform their lines with believable acting. Coupled with excellent voice acting, natural conversational flow and concise trimming of the information presented, their ability to impart story elements in a fascinating and engaging way is probably one of the games major achievements. I have been guilty of dialogue skipping in the past in many info heavy RPG's, but Mass Effect had me positively excited at the prospect of learning more about a character or about a story hook, wanting to delve deeper into the conversational tree and unearth more treats.

Mako: Much of the planetary exploration is done via the Mako, an all terrain vehicle, resembling an armour plated moon buggy. I found the Mako a joy to drive/pilot, I believe many people found the controls to be awkward. I think if you come at the Mako as if it was a Warthog from Halo, you'd be misjudging its elegance in control. Whilst it does have a similar point and move interface the right stick is primarily used for aiming the main cannon, or artillery shot. Moving the aiming reticule left of right will attempt to adjust the Mako's direction in small increments, if the left stick (for throttle) is pushed forward. However, the left stick is the key to controlling the Mako, not the right stick. Point the left stick hard left and the Mako will move forward in that direction, left. Move the stick back and the Mako will move backwards. So its entirely possible to circle strafe an installation or enemy using the left stick to determine the Mako's direction, and the right stick to aim the cannons. This coupling (and independence) of the two sticks makes the Mako a very manoeuvrable vehicle indeed. Plus on top of this you have the jump jets, that can launch the buggy up in the air - particularly useful for overcoming difficult terrain and avoiding slow moving rocket fire. The machine can turn on a sixpence and is very adept at climbing up steep mountainous landscape. I had nothing but fun with the Mako, driving it and positioning it for strategic shots was most rewarding. Escaping and taking cover and repairing it was necessary at times. It is a powerful armoured transport, but its no way invincible. The Mako physics were a real treat, once you understood and adapted to the controls.

Action: I found the combat to be fast paced and tactical. A major step forward in terms of going real time and ranged, from the turn based approach Bioware used in the Knights of the Old Republic games. What was extremely satisfying was the fact that if you died taking one particular approach to the combat, you could load the save game, change your tactical approach and see obvious advantages and disadvantages quite clearly. The gunfights are more Rainbow Six than Gears of War. But they still delivered the action based adrenaline surge, with the satisfaction of seeing different RPG tweaks and modifications manifest into victories or defeats.

Classes and Difficulty: The three main classes, plus the three hybrids give enough breadth for you to try the play through with a few characters and still see different approaches to the same tactical combat situations. The mix of ranged weapon types, with biotic powers and technological devices creates a very interesting mix for your characters development and those of the main accompanying squad members. You also have 6 squad mates who you can pick and choose from, with their fixed class/race representations. So you could play through with the same character build, and just choose different squad members to ally with and possibly have a different approach to combat situations. The variety on offer fuels your enthusiasm for creating a different build, and playing through again on a harder difficulty setting. As soon as I'd completed the game, I'd already mapped out what I wanted to be and how I was going to approach it on my Hardcore play through. I must say, as hardcore ramps up the enemies health and resistances, it does turn the game into a much more tactical experience.. and part of me wished I'd done it on Hardcore from the start. The combat now has to be thought out almost before the first shot is taken. And with a single run under my belt, I can now feel my way through parts of the game I didn't explore with my first character. I think the game has succeeded in creating something which is at least re playable and still entertaining for two or three passthroughs. Unlocking the specialist armour and arms in itself is a draw for some people.

Music: It may not appeal to everyone, but the almost vangelis like musical score sits very well with the art direction and general theme of the Mass Effect world/universe. I found it enhancing during combat situations and mood setting in most places. I like the enjoy game music outside of the game too, Anarchy Online's soundtrack still being an all time favourite of mine, and I think Mass Effect's musical score has a similar appeal.

Lowlights of the game:

Squad AI: There were a number of times when your squad members get stuck, or move somewhere inappropriate and get chewed up. I found if you paid close attention to the commands you sent your squad, holding them back mainly and opening up long range or crossfire opportunities, you could minimise these 'errors of judgement' on your allies part. But sometimes they hinder your movement in narrow corridors, sometimes they don't move when they should - stuck on environment.

Unlocking/Decrypting Mini-game: Adopting a very simple key tap process to give the impression of a complex hacking task is a bit too much like over-simplification. If they could have varied it slightly for different operations. Added some other mini-game mechanic in there to keep the process time dependant and interesting it might have helped. As it is, its hardly a 'mini game' and even lockers/containers that are deemed HARD, seem very easy to tap open. Its not a major downer, because it becomes just a pedestrian task to have to do, to get at the all important loot.

Elevators: A loading mechanism, that seems to be used very often in the game. The world of Mass Effect is littered with Elevators. And whilst you do get a chance to listen to some snippet of radio chatter, or your squad members banter, it only serves the purpose of slowing down the game with long inactive pauses. I realise with such a lot of information needing to be loaded its more aesthetic than a loading screen. But the long elevator rides do wear away at some of the enjoyment, possibly keeping you back from exploring places, simply because you cannot bear another long pause of doing nothing. I used most elevator rides to spin the camera round and admire my character's outfit and other attributes.

Exploration: In addition to the main storied planets, you can explore Uncharted Worlds. Essentially some of the planets in each galaxy, star system can be explored. Whilst this was a welcome addition, in terms of including side-quests (assignments) to the main story, the reality was that only one planet per system usually allowed set down, and then once there only one or two curiosities were available for you to drive up to and investigate. Sometimes you'd have to assault a base or check out an anomaly, but the bases tended to be built around a very limited set of tiles, often encountering the same base type on a number of Uncharted Planets. The freedom of the Uncharted Worlds is a real plus point in terms of longevity from Downloadable Content, because I can see a lot of scope for including additional content through this exploration mechanism, or even randomly generated assignments, the ability to do this is there, whether it is on the cards at Bioware I'm not sure. The limited implementation and repetitive use of tile sets at the moment take away from the feeling of galactic freedom that the game seems to promise.

Graphical Glitches: Some frame rate slowdown when the combat becomes very frantic and littered with enemies. That was the main graphical downer for me. And I must say it only happened a handful of times. People have reported the texture pop-in being a major cause for concern, but I didn't find that annoying really. It meant less time loading in elevators or in game transitions and more time in game. So there were few seconds of low texture mapping till the proper textures were loaded up, it was a price I was prepared to pay.

Overall:

Bioware had me, as I delved into their prequel novel. I was sold on their concept of bringing a believable science fiction universe to life, where I could take part in the main story line, and explore the nuances of the details left in all the sub-plots and side assignments. Mass Effect is going to be a trilogy, but the first installment was satisfyingly brought to a close without leaving a frustrating cliffhanger. The game world has enough depth to open up the story for the next games to come, I think Mass Effect will become a very popular vehicle for Sci Fi RPG's on the 360, and I'm hoping they will boost the games longevity with key downloadable content, building upon the uncharted world mechanism they have in place. Despite the few niggles and mechanisms that don't seem to work that well, I think Mass Effect has pushed the envelope significantly forward on what we will expect in our action RPG's in the future. What worries me is how can I watch other games dialogue scenes without having the same level of "acting" and lavish story detail? They've set a new bar for NPC interaction, and I doubt most games will be able to hurdle it.

Mass Effect, well worth your time and money, if you have any interest in good Science Fiction, Tactical Action, and Character progression/tinkering.

HellGate: Sight Seeing

2007-11-05T12:04:00.000Z

Piccadilly Circus (in a bit of a state after the demons started partying there..)

The Houses of Parliment (as viewed from a drained River Thames basin)

This next shot doesn't do the scale of the conflict justice, but my task was to help the local Templars out defending an area in the basin of the Thames river, activating the shock turrets, whilst chipping away at the horde of Vortex Guardians that were swarming the area.

You can see the shock turrets laying electricity streams onto the giants, and the downedÂ templars, I'm just about to run in and start hacking at their shins, if I can find some medi-stims in my armour pockets.

Lastly a shot of how not to take down a flying Ravager. These demonic vermin, scurry about avoiding your blades, and then pounce a long distance at your face..

Hellgate

2007-11-04T12:11:00.000Z

The more I play Hellgate, the more I fall in love with it. I'd sort of sidelined it, after the beta, as a distraction that was ultimately souless. As an FPS it is poor. If your'e wanting to play this game in first person then you're probably coming at if from the wrong angle, buy Bioshock, or Timeshift, or Blacksite, they'll probably deliver in the first person shooting department tenfold over Hellgate. Wheelmouse your expectations backwards, and take on the third person perspective, better still take up a tech sword, splash damage boomstick or kit yourself out with some attack droids and inhibitor drones.. and you'll be ready to take on Hellgate as the action fest it is meant to be.

This is Diablo. In the future. But with the demons. And guns. And robots. Played in sumptious 3d gore-o-vision. There are six classes on offer, which all play different enough to warrant your exploration of them. The game provides London tube stations as hubs for you gather quests and tweak your kit, with generated instanced quest locations to dive into and test out your latest action hero. The game has single player and multiplayer modes, both of which follow the same storyline, and quest progression. However the multiplayer mode allows you to group up with others. Although it offers a paid subscription for additional functionality in the multiplayer game, this is probably only something Hellgate fanatics will bother with. You get 2 character slots for single player and 3 character slots for the multiplayer game - so your average Joe will have enough slots just out of the box, to explore most of the game with the classes they want. The nutters who want to pay the subs fee, get another 20 odd slots, can make guilds, can hold more items in their stash and inventory, as well as download content that has been promised in the future.

So, taking on the demonic hoards, whether single player or solo-ing on a multiplayer server, is a rewarding affair, mainly because you get frequent rewards, theres a lot to tinker with in terms of item upgrading with slotted additions, item breakdown to constituent parts, and the forging of new items from those parts. Theres always something to tweak after each high octane blast of action. And the station hubs provide more or less everything you need for that tinkering process. You'll also be climbing the skill tree, slowly but surely, experimenting with new skills, seeing how it fits in with your overall idea of the character. I think the most rewarding experience in the game, is taking on a new skill that sounds "cool" and then taking that skill out and seeing where it fits in to the chaos of the combat. Grabbing a high arc swing of your sword that is meant to take down otherwise unreachable enemies in flight, and then scrapping with a room full of sonic bats, and dropping high arc's, to see your futuristic character leap into the air, and slash her weapons hard down grounding the bat, and finishing him in one swing.

The damage caused by the weapons can be quite specific, such as fire direct, or electric splash, so its worth having an array of specifc weapons set up to tackle certain enemy situations. Tailoring the spectrum from close panic striken direct damage, to rocket launchers that hit floating entities, and fire splash guns that lay a carpet of napalm for that added area effect, slowly gnawing away at the enemy, slowing them down and controlling the flow of seemingly endless minions of beelzebub. I think one of things that strikes you as you play through, is the variety of attacks coming from the enemies side, and the variety on offer from the player side to counter this. Theres nothing that new about roaming hordes, mini bosses, and then lovely tough bosses to take on. The areas are fairly consistent, broken streets of London, underground tunnels and warehouses, or staggeringly epic halls of hell - but a lot of the time the area adds a hint of flavour to the combat, but isn't the main thrust of the dish, its the combat that slaps your tastebuds around and satisfies you at the end of the meal.

There are mechanisms in place, common to MMO's, for travelling swiftly through the world - station terminals that will port you from station to station, as long as you've visited it before. There are recall gadgets for piping yourself out of an instance temporarily (or not) - so you can complete that quest, tinker with your set up, sell up etc. Although some instances have recall blocked.. if they're end quest lines, or boss levels. Death is handled in a way that doesn't seem to harsh, you can pay a sum of money to resurrect where you are, or you can enter the current instance as a ghost at the beginning, and then you can be resurrected when you get back your deathstone.

The game seems to have some sort of memory leak at the moment, so after a few hours play, shutting it down, your system will need a reboot for it to start performing again. There are moments of intense slow down, which is a shame. Because a lot of the time it does come across as stunning to look at, with lots of atmospheric lighting and weapon/spell effects on the go.

There doesn't seem to be an online community as such, the time I've spent on the EU server, has resulted in lots of silence, no co-operation, only one group. The grouping tactics haven't yet revealed themselves to me. Apart from melee characters get in up close and personal, and ranged ones don't. However, I can see this game being very enjoyable if a small group of friends decide to take it on, with characters all levelling at the same pace, enjoying the thrill of the action as they progress together through its challenges. Whether MMO style guilds and co-operation takes off, I'm not sure.

So, I reckon Hellgate is pushing the action RPG onwards, taking what Diablo did so well, but twisting it third person, removing the endless clicks, and giving it almost an MMO lick of paint - but with a candidate for "twitch" action mechanics on offer rather than your usual queues of special attack keys. This is the new Anarchy Online. Sci Fi action in bucketloads. But at your own pace. In your own futuristic armour. Lovely Jubbly.

The Witcher

2007-10-29T12:18:00.000Z

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=86156

An action RPG, using the much enhanced Aurora toolset 2007(NWN2), so you can play it top view (diablo style) or Over the Shoulder OTS (almost Gears of War style). The world is beautifully realised, much more grittier and realistic than Two Worlds (or even Oblivion),Â with a strong storyline by Andrzej Sapkowski (http://tinyurl.com/2k6gch ) behind it. I've only dabbled in it for an hour or two, but it does seem to be another sound action orientated "free roaming" RPG game with good presentation and a selection of unique skills to explore.

The one area that is difficult to get to grips with is the combat mechanics. Basically if you're in OTS mode, you expect it to play out weapon strikes by clicking and holding your left and right mouse button.. but since its all based around a point and click mechnism from a top down perspective, to get the hang of it, you simply click the opponent at the appropriate time, to build up a chain of weapon swings. So it's not entirely free form and real time as such. You tap out the battles key strokes, when your icon turns into a flaming sword. Get the tap wrong, and you lose the chain, and sometimes can fumble the strike.. initially I struggled to understand this mechanism. And I would almost constantly be interupting my own attacks, making me seem inept at battle. But as you get into a rhythm with the game, it starts to click (forgive the pun) and you see how this almost turn based sort of timed combat actually works and is very cinematic and pleasing to watch. If you play it in top down mode, and you've played NWN/NWN2 you should find the combat easy to slip into to. I think its just the perspective change, and your expectations of real time sword swinging conflict with this "rhythm tap" style game.

Did I mention its an 18? And theres every encouragement for you to get drunk and have intercourse with some of the female NPC's you come across? It's all very artistically done, and I'm pelased it has such an adult approach to the gritty fantasy world. It kind of makes it a bit more exciting to be honest. In fact some of your key combat skills rely on you being drunk to perform them! Now then!

Well I've only scratched the surface of the game really, there seems a complex alchemical system built into the game for potion creation, the day and night phases of the world affects the encounters you have, and the starting quests are full on, no gentle lead in really, which is good.

I think if you like action RPG's, such as Two Worlds, Diablo, you'll like The Witcher.. even those of you who fawned over Oblivion will see this game has merit. Whether you can get on with the Aurora way of combat, is another matter though. But as jarring as it is at first, I can say after 15 minutes or so you should slip into it with ease..

Eye of Judgement

2007-10-29T12:17:00.000Z

Well this sort of game is right up my street, and its easy for me to see why it causes a lot of excitement, real cards initiating on screen summonings.. move over Yu-Gi-Oh! If you want a totally unbiased and well balanced review, then look away now. I must confess I am a card-a-holic. I love everything to do with cards. I have collected weird and wonderful variations on playing cards, I have buckets of collectable and non-collectable card games. I'm a recovering Magic the Gathering Online user. I've dabbled in Decipher's Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game Online. So.. where does this leave me with Eye of Judgement? As a fan, I think. By default.

Having said this, I must say I was sceptical about the setup, it seems an awful lot of faffing about to knock out a game of cards... but then the draw of physically performing the summonings was too much to turn away from it. It was easy enough to get the thing hooked up, apart from the folded creases in the material playmat, which irritated me more than the camera. The tutorial videos went through the whole process from setup, to play. Sometimes, being a bit too thorough in their slow paced re-iteration of the same facts. I was dying to jump in and get started, but I forced myself to watch their videos... so I wouldn't hit the game confused in anyway whatsoever.

The cards themselves were a bit of a disappointment, mainly because the artwork is contained in a very small band across the center of the card, with lots of seemingly extraneous fluff and whitespace, with the runic "bar codes" at the top and bottom of the card. The card text is tiny too. A "squinter" as us oldies call it. So I'd prefer more outlandish splash of artwork, but presumably that might hinder the card recognition system. And still, you're seeing all the 3d renderings moving about on screen after a summoning, so you don't need too much artwork on card. I suppose coming from a card loving background, an expectation to see some luscious art in hand was mistakenly there. But I'd have made the text a lot bigger. Because you use that when deciding on which card to lay from your hand.

My first game against the COMP was a bit of a disaster. In terms of strategy and winning. I lost. But I must say, the thrill of laying cards down and performing summonings physically, rather than with the controller, is very tangible. I suppose it takes the best from both worlds, proper card battling at a table, and computer controlled card battling, and melds them together. The game itself, is played out on a small board, made up of 9 square "fields", and comes across as a more complicated version of noughts and crosses really. But the complexities are layered on in terms of elemental field types (each square possessing two elements, one on its upper face and one on its underside) - water, fire, earth, wood - where summons are affected by the elemental type of the field they are placed upon. Other complexities involve direction of attack, and vulnerability of back attacks. Some of the summons have multi-directional attacks, some include direction changing in their attacks. Spell cards add to this by flipping the fields and changing the elemental field type, or changing the direction of a unit. So from such a small play area, there are quite a few options and strategies that can be built upon to make sure you secure the 5 fields out of the 9 to win the game.

The battles themselves are often a simple animation and the resulting attack and defense numbers are resolved. Not as elaborate as one would have liked, but the battle animations are functional, and you do get to see your units rendered and in motion. If a unit is killed, you have to remove the card from the play area. There are four special action cards that you use to perform things like designate a target of attack, or to end your turn.Â You have 30 cards in your play deck, and you can buy boosters and themed decks (from early November allegedly) to tweak your deck. In the box off the shelf, you get 30 cards in a starter deck and a booster with 8 random cards. So with each box you do have a slight amount of variation from the rest of the people who bought the game. I can't see me delving into buying a lot of booster packs, and what not, trying to compete online, because thats not really where I derive pleasure from such games.

Anyway, Eye of Judgement is a niche novelty product, and in its current state, it has enough going for it, to provide a rather entertaining distraction from your normal console gaming. I can't see it winning over any of the casual gamers, because of the strategy elements and the involved setup to play it. But it does serve as a card lovers wet dream, and so far the AI opponents set to beginner have given me the run around once or twice, so there is mileage there in just the single player experience. I've yet to take it online and play someone who is as daft as me for buying it, but thats planned. For the online experience, you have to scan your cards in to a custom play deck, and then as you are playing an opponent the game itself will shuffle your custom deck and tell you which card to draw next, preventing player cheating at stacking the cards. Having to shuffle through your 30 cards to find the next draw does seem to go against normal play, but I can see in the interest of fairness its the only way it could be implemented easily.

Right, I'm off to have another wet dream, and summon some bikini clad elven archers...

Depths of Peril

2007-09-28T12:20:00.000+01:00

http://www.depthsofperil.com/

Take a fairly rough around the edges Diablo II clone, add to it some 4X style diplomacy and conquest, and you have Depths of Peril. It's an intersting idea, taking your standard click based hack and slash action RPG, and meld it with a faction based trade and conquest ethos.Â Every game you play, you set the parameters for the world, the
difficulty of the monsters, the number of opposing factions to your own - and then you forge a hero to go out into these areas to perform quests from the settlement hub, to level up, gains new skills, gain influence, cashand loot - as well as try to recruit others to your party and your faction (or in game its called Covenant). Once you've got a few members, and you've decorated your Covenant hut with relics and tomes of knowledge, plus placed some guards to defend the place. You can begin to start allying and ganging up on some of the other Covenants who are AI controlled factions, running similar heros and recruits around the world trying to gain the most influence and power and utterly destroy the other factions. If you are Allied with other factions just make sure when you destroy the bad guys, you have the top level of influence within your alliance, so that you can claim the win.

Despite the 1990's graphics, it can be quite involving when you begin to use your hack and slash hero, to stock up your hut based barbarian "empire". I like the scope of the game, to make a balance between the decidedly average (in terms of graphics and complexity of quests) killing and questing sprees and the empire building (basically collecting bonuses and hired hands), with the diplomacy of joining some factions together to then turn and wipe out the weaker ones. Good effort on the hybrid gaming idea.

Geon: Emotions

2007-09-21T12:21:00.000+01:00

Its a weird one, it combines a few elements of other games into the gameplay, all played out on a reversable map area made of squares sometimes twisted into loops and ramps etc..

.. essentially you have to ..

collect pills to fill a meter
collect "emotion" power ups (you can only have one at any time)
when your meter is full you have to get to the edge of a map and flip over, making a run towards the goal area (usually in the center of the maps) to score.
All the while keeping an eye on your opponent who is doing the same, to try and score in your goal, except he's on the reverse side of the map, and you should be able to peek him and his whereabouts through the semi-transparent tiles.

I think the key to it is, using a logical path through the pills to make sure you've easy and quick access to the goal and also to keep your eye on the opponent, if he's filling up his pill meter faster than you, its key you hit him with something that will suck it back down again. Even on the smaller areas it is tricky to collect and watch your opponent at the same time. I'm sure after a good few plays I'll get the hang of it.

The Emotion power ups, have different functions, like the blast through one that allows you to stomp the pills out of your opponent if he's in your vicinity on the opposite side of the map/track. There are ones that obscure the tiles, ones that allow you to speed ahead, and some powerslide into your opponent. Basically most of them are spoilers to make your opponent lose pills, or slow them down, like traps, or boosters to make you go faster, or shield you from your opponents spoilers. Getting to grips with these and their combinations is where the strategy comes into play.

Worth a look-see though, just for the oddness of the gameplay mechanics.. not a puzzler though, as such, think pacman/kulaworld but in a head to head to spoil or score goals against your opponent.

Two Worlds

2007-09-10T12:21:00.000+01:00

Mayhap I verily like Two Worlds, Forsooth.

I was looking forward to this game, heralded as the next Oblivion.. not that I hold Oblivion up as the definitive console RPG game that everyone else seems to do. Anyway, I grabbed a copy of Two Worlds and hurdled into it with both feet fervently jabbing my medieval stirrups into my horses sides. I was bitterly disappointed to see such a awkward and ugly game crumble in my hands. The graphics just jarred with me from the off, nothing was crisp, nothing was easily read or sometimes even identified in the user interface. The single player character customisation was singularly under whelming, I couldn't change gender, the hairstyles available were all very similar and limited to about 5 in total - and the colours supported seemed even less. You could mess with the characters stature - chest size, arm length, eye shape, nose width and length but nothing seemed to define your character as anything but this bland hero. So onwards, into the tutorial, some combat, some magic thrown about, haphazardly as the targeting mechanism shifts according to distance away from you, rather than have any focus on one enemy. Some chatting with blurred and shaky NPC's, the chatting itself being laden thick with Ye Olde English, almost too thick for any credibility. Sort of the way people who don't play RPG's think all RPG's are voiced. The stuttering and frame rate issues didn't help, the blatant halts for environment loads had me wondering if my 360 had crashed at times. I did begin to enjoy the freedom and the combat, particularly once I'd secured a mount to ride. There is a decent game behind this cranky port, its not so much Oblivion as Diablo, which is a plus point in my opinion.

I decided I'd try out the PC demo, I wanted to see what this game looked like with graphics I could be comfortable with. Needless to say, the PC version of the game is crisp and looks the part. At last. The scenery looks good, the Armour and your character crisp and defined, and the interface isn't garbled and just plain works as you'd expect. I went out and bought the PC version. Very pleased with it. In terms of features it has a large continent that can be explored at your leisure, or in a focussed manner as you progress through the main quest line or side quests. It has a very pleasing combat mechanism, in that its easy to use and looks good in third person. The console ranged combat (archery and magics) targeting mechanism leaves a lot to be desired, but in the PC version is well suited. The archery in particular requires you to draw the bowstring and control the power of the shot, with many enemies attacking you from all sides this becomes key when you're timing your shot in between taking melee damage and the shot being interrupted. It has a readily accessible alchemical process for manufacturing your own custom potions. Harvest crystals/gems and plants from the world, and combine them freely. It also allows you to take multiples of existing equipment and combine them to boost the stats, so if you find another sword similar to the one you're wielding, pick it up and combine it, to gain an increase, this also applies to Armour, shields, quivers and jewellery. The magic system allows for a five school spell card collecting game, with each spell card also having booster cards that can be combined with them to tweak your spells. You find spell cards as loot, or you can buy them from vendors. One of the nicest features is the horse travel and combat. They have really taken horse travel to another level with this game, in that your horse feels and moves as a horse would. With it shying away from steep drops, and only following land it can feasibly travel. This can lead to some interesting refusal issues with such a undulating landscape, but it makes you truly appreciate the road system when you want your steed to get up to a proper gallop. Press forward to make the beast trot at a gentle pace, or hold forward to make it increase speed from a trot to cantor to gallop. You can also take swings at enemy from your horse if you are wielding a single handed weapon. Something which can be boosted with extra damage using the riding skill. I can imagine it being quite tricky to become proficient in mounted combat, mainly because of the larger turning arcs your horse has to take compared to most enemies. Imagine the jousting style PvP combat of the online game though. Which leads me on to ..

The 360's online mode allows you to create an RPG or PVP character (and this time you can select gender). There seemed to be "arenas" created where you could adventure or battle with your online friends. These arenas seemed to be various portions of the main map, but with invisible walls marking them off. The enemies present in these online worlds seemed to be much more difficult than the standard single play, presumably for team combat to play a part. I only tried one arena, as an RPG character and was promptly hacked to pieces for the next 10 minutes by another player, which didn't do a great deal to endear me to the experience. The PC's online mode seems to be more modelled on Diablo's Battle.net, and it is indeed called Warnet. You log in to the warnet servers and you enter into a multiplayer zone (usually a city) where you can assemble and buy/sell/tweak, then you take yourself off into an instance pretty much like the 360's arenas. With its own quests and harder enemies to battle. Returning to the city hub, you bring back your experience and equipment. I can see this aspect of the game, giving it some life in the online community, much like Diablo II did. And I'm itching to try it out to see if there are party mechanics at work here.

Overall I'd say Two Worlds is a great game, if you're looking for something approximating to a free-roam, story filled Diablo style game. It doesn't take itself too seriously as the dialogue can be very "hey nonny nonny", I believe intentionally so. If you like good visual combat, looting and tweaking a lot, and riding around a vast lush landscape on a horse ready for battle at any moment, then Two Worlds is worth a look. If you want to see it in its full glory I'd say buy the PC version. The 360 version will suffice if its all you've got. Is it the next Oblivion, probably not. But for me, its better than Oblivion. I'm likely to see this game through to the end, and the ride feels far more enjoyable.

Puzzle Quest

2007-07-29T12:24:00.000+01:00

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=75377

I must say I've been playing this for a while now, and it just gets etterer and betterer. Wrapping an RPG around a sophisticated "bejewelled puzzler" has really got me hooked. Its got all the things ou want in an RPG, levelling, items, quests, taverns and crafting(!), lus its got an RTS-lite style city building aspect. Its quick enough to play on short journeys and involved enough over time to still be of interest, and not just a novelty. I suppose your mileage will depend if you like the "bejewelled match 3 or more style play". The cunning thing is, the four coloured orbs are mana, and you have certain skills/spells you can cast only if you have collected the correct mana to fuel it. Also you only do damage to the enemy you're fighting against, if you match up the skulls, and do your best to prevent setting up your enemy for skull matches. Each opponent seems to have specials of their own, which adds a lot to the change in strategy you have to adopt, making each matching session slightly different. Along with bonus quests where its more like a traditional puzzle, and you have to find the correct solution to clear the map, there are also crafting puzzles where the objective is to take out hammers and anvils, to boost your chances to create a special item. For a surprisingly simple match 3 formula, they've managed to weave a lot of
variations into the mix, and theme it with a good dose of fantasy RPG.

Zenerchi

2007-07-29T12:22:00.000+01:00

If you like the match 3 sort of games, and want something a little different, then this is a blast.

http://www.reflexive.com/Zenerchi.html

Its based on spinning wheels, to Â match the 3 or more coloured tiles, and then dump them out through a central reserve for points. There are blocking tiles, and holding tiles, and energy balls that link two wheels together. If you match 5 you get a powertile, which can be saved for extra points at the tally up, or you can double click it to take out its surrounding tiles. Useful for ridding yourself of troublesome blockers.

It has a fairly slow intro tutorial to get you into the swing of it, and it runs two modes a timed mission/level based one, and a zen mode which just lets you continue until you attain the victory condition. It seems overly simple to begin with and you wonder whether its almost too simple and perhaps dull.. but when you start to understand the tricks and lining up strategies it soon becomes addictive and you'll find your 60 minutes of trial time sucked away..

Hanafuda Game

2007-07-11T12:24:00.000+01:00

My homespun Hanafuda game is still alive and kicking, although terribly dated now, with only 800x600 resolution supported, and XP will no doubt have trouble playing the music files. Still, it is a solid AI behind it, that I had help with designing, and the game itself is fun if a little simplistic and too prone to luck. If you have nothing better to do with your life, check it out.. the cards are still lovely to behold..

Hanafuda @ Underdogs

Settlers of Catan

2007-05-02T12:25:00.000+01:00

Catan is great! Played the 'Learn as you play' game this morning. Actually played it twice, because you got to 7 victory points and it wouldn't let you continue unless you unlocked it, and the unlocking mechanism wasn't in place! So I waited half an hour, and then played again, and could finally unlock the thing to finish the game. I was so pleased I won. Even though they're all set to easy AI. I managed to haggle another player into throwing a lot of grain cards at me, and then I used the Port Trading to swap them out for the rock card I needed to bag the city and 2 victory points to 10 to win! I'd read the rules a while back from the board game I have, but never actually played them. However, the Learn as you play option is excellent and gives you the gist of the game in a few minutes really, although getting a handle on the strategy needed is going to take a while I think. Primarily a capture and trading game, it seems ideal for XBLA. Its going to have the snug play that Uno has but with a bit more strategy meat on the bones.

The screen fonts are a bit small, they are readable if you are close-ish to the TV. This is common, because nearly all the card/board games etc have really small fonts.. (hearts, spades, outpost kazloki, Wik?) not to mention that zombie game. Having said that the game is all about icons and the main body of play doesn't require much in the way of text. So once you're through the tutorial game, you're about done with the squinting.

Looking forward to taking part in some Catanning..

Advent Rising

2007-03-28T12:26:00.000+01:00

http://www.adventtrilogy.com/

I grabbed this off Steam for the PC the other day for $19.99 and was pleasantly surprised - I remember when it first come out on the Xbox and I toyed with the idea of buying it then, but wasn't sure.

It's like a 3rd person Halo-esque adventure that has Jedi style powers thrown in. The FMV is well done, although a bit flaky in the delivery at times, the audio stutters a bit, and the lipsync seems to be slightly out, but the story unfolds at a rapid pace and is an interesting and adult sort of sci fi yarn. It has Orson Scott Cards backing, since he scripted it, so that puts it above the usual european sci fi bullshit that rolls out from the likes of Jowood. The FMV does suffer from the "I'm from an Xbox" syndrome, similar to the recently re-leased Jade Empire special edition. But the in-game graphics are suitably sharp and sweet. Control with a keyboard can get a bit awkward at times, but mainly in the acrobatics area, the combat running and gunning is standard WASD and mouse look fare.

There are some nice set pieces, with space ships crumbling beneath you, and the action is always frantic. Nice array of weapons on offer, and duel wielding is standard from the off. When you begin to develop force like skills, such as lift, push and pull, things get very interesting. Later you develop shielding and blast force skills too. Stealing weapon skills etc. The combo of arms and force skills does seem to give you plenty of options when it comes to the boss fights, but the majority of the normal combat sees you usually adopt your favourite techniques and stick with them. Plenty of buggy and tank driving in there too. If you want you can flick to 1st person perspective, but I found it much more cinematic and natural in 3rd person.

Drawn in by it really, mainly the story, the alien lifeforms you meet and the immediacy of the action. Suprised it was very much overlooked, but then again, parts of it are a little flaky in places. Staggering about when trying to negotiate ledges etc. Very nice art direction, very cinematically put together. They did plan a trilogy, with a game on the PSP too, but sadly, it didn't receive the attention and it all went bad I think. Apparently the PC version is a bit more bug free and spruced up compared with the original Xbox version.

If you like Halo'ey action, it could be worth a butchers.

Lord of the Rings Online

2007-03-19T13:25:00.000Z

Well, initially disappointed in it, I've started to warm to it again. Second beta client in.

Graphically, they've gone a bit too astray from the Peter Jackson vision we all know and love. The world is a bit too cartoony. A bit too colourful and 'feathered cap' for my liking. Where is the gritty mud soaked realism Wingnut films threw at us in 3 hour chunks? With Dungeons and Dragons Online login/update mechanism reskinned, the entrance to the LOTRO client is a bit too familiar. When you're in there, waves of deja vu wash over you, whispering Guild Wars and Asherons Call in your shell like. The world is well crafted, with some areas showing off sights to be dumb struck at, but mostly, you get the feeling, that this isn't the MMO of the film of the book.

The initial quests you are thrust into are simplistic, but flavoured enough in LOTR lore, for LOTR fans to be swept up in joining Elrond in battle, or seeing Gandalf and Gimli. As tutorial quests they do give you basics in a nicely presented way, although they get a bit tedious if you're on them for the 5th time (rolling different characters). Then you have a mini-area to play in and get your feet. Similar to Guild Wars, you get a tight knit area to run some quests and cut your teeth, with the skill progression, and the beginnings of your character tweaking. Once you've eeked out all quests and you've camped one or two bosses, with plenty of others, you get to run through another storied instance into the bigger world of Middle Earth.

You're more or less plonked into this without explanation. And the subtleties of the game are gleaned by plenty of chit and chat on the /ooc channel, or a brief search on the web for info-packed fan sites. The player achievements are very welcome, and you gain traits and skills and increases in your damage as you level up.

The combat is good in that many of the special skills you posses act in chains, so that you are always planning a chain to lay down on the enemy. Keeping you interested, and not just mindlessly mashing buttons. However, some of the melee combat is a bit weak willed. Doesn't feel satisfying. And the combat animations (as well as most of the player animations) feel awkward, mistimed and gangly. Since I played an archer (Elven, from Mirkwood, obviously!), there is satisfaction in coupling a double shot, with a barbed shot, which them adds a damage multiplier to a melee hit when they come up close and personal. Plus you have traps (which lay invisibly), with which to hold your pray and get another shot off at them. It may sound like the combat is rubbish, but its not, its just animated a bit rubbish. The combat actually works well, and the combinations you can lay down do always keep you in the action, especially with the variability of misses, evades and blocks coming into play. If only I could duel wield earlier than level 20, I'd have my Legolas clone with big daggers from the films. I do however have an attack that jabs the enemy in the face with an arrow. A personal favourite of mine.

I must say, I've found the LOTRO community to be about as hostile as you can get. Not Neocron hostile, but Guild Wars hostile. Theres a lot of trouble with having a multi-laguage server, being inundated with reams of french or german doesn't help sift the info. Also, asking questions rarely gets an answer, and forming fellowships (teams, parties) seems to be against most players religion. Being in a ravine full of players as well as menacing orcs, and then being jumped by three of orcs instead of the planned one, you'd expect the player populace to help out a bit. After all, you've spent some time plinking your mirkwood arrows into their beasts to help them out with adds. But no. They'll happily let you die. Some, will exploit the aggro of a helper, so that you help them with the damage, and attract the beasts attention, then they'll happily wander off to let you deal with it, and they'll take the experience reward and come back for the loot too.

I do like the idea that you kill animals in the field for their skins and bones to craft stuff from, rather than just because we needed something to kill. All your quarry seems fairly natural for the area. And a hunter, does indeed feel like they're hunting for their wellbeing, and not just because we need to kill x of y.

Lets try and summarise everything, I like the setting, that goes without saying. I'm not massively keen on the overly colourful rendering of it, but some areas I've seen are really well built (The Shire for instance), the characters are semi-realistic, but with a cartoon bent that Asherons Call suffered from, long before the WoW machine with its "art direction" come on the scene. The combat system seems satisfying enough, if only it was animated better to provide a bit more feedback. The crafting system seems to follow current convention, but its heirarchy and hopefully accessibility will remain to all, and not just the dedicated few. At least the client runs fairly well on lower end machines, we're not talking the juddering monster that Vanguard is here. However it doesn't come across as having the class or style that the DDO engine has.

I can see myself spending a while in the Shadows of Angmar. I enjoy the lore behind it. I enjoy the classes (especially the archer, where archery counts as the main attack skill and not just for pulling - something Asherons Call 2 did well) and the races - although I'd like to have seen a female dwarf option - sexists! I'd like to see how organised grouping works out, because at the moment, theres very little fellowshipping going on at the lower levels. If you prefer your MMO'ing with a bit more grind and substance, you'll probably want to tackle Vanguard. If you want the cartoon art direction and immediacy of WoW, perhaps WoW is where you should be, or Warhammer Online when its released. If you want something that leans between Guild Wars and WoW, with a lot of established Lore behind it (that could be trashed and ruined), and follows the likes of Asherons Call 2 then LOTRO might just be for you. If you can't decide, why not pick up the client and the beta key they're offering and join in the world now?

I think I'd like to be involved with a Legends LOTRO guild, so please show your interest in these forums and we can sort out a start up on the 14th April (when the pre-orders get access to the servers)

Lux Delux

2007-03-09T13:26:00.000Z

Probably not what Conquer clubbers want to hear, but, I had my first few games of Lux Delux Online this evening, and bugger me if it isn't hard and fast speed Risk.

http://sillysoft.net/lux/

Managed to set up a game with me and my bro, and two bots. Playing through, combat is speedy and all on the right click. However its still all about the Risk. There are seemingly endless maps and the game comes with a map creator if your'e feeling artistic.
Alot of the online games have turn limits imposed, so say 30secs or 50 secs, so it plays very fast indeed. Some of the players who connected to our game as guests and then had a session when I ticked a new game over, were quite robust players, used to the speed Risk game.

Obviously could be a groovey game to get some folks together and have an evening of playing through some of the 400+ maps available. Top stuff. Conquer Clubbers into Risk big style should enjoy Lux and its offline/online capabilities. It has a selection of bots with different AI skills, and you can even try your hand at programming their AI code if you're up to the job.

Give the demo a try at least, if you're sucked into CC. And for 13 quid, Lux Delux certainly delivers that Risk fix when you're not CC'ing it. :)

Age of Empires

2007-03-08T13:29:00.000Z

I've been giving this a bash recently, grabbed it at Â£19.99. I do like the overall presentation. The medievil/semi historical touch is very nice, on a handheld that has so many saccharin cutesy RPG nonsense. I like the combat animations too, very nicely done, not cartoony, not too pixellated that you can't get a feel for whats going on. My biggest criticism is the crowded nature of the game in play. Get a few isometric 3d sprites next to each other and you're in trouble to find which one is which, without having to skim over them individually to see their info in the top screen. Target selection does seem tricky, and can lead you to do a dance with the redo menu over and over before you get it right. But I'm using the stylus, not the d-pad and buttons. Taking a village for instance requires you placing iso 3d units in front and behind, and then defensive units spawn on top of the 3d building sprites and it just looks overly messy. Cavalry units taking up the most space and making it even more difficult to see whats going on. Its nice to see the iso sprites moving about and what not, but sometimes I just want an overview of what units are where so I can think about the strategy and not worry about placing wrong units in wrong positions etc.

I must say it has some clout for a handheld strategy game. And even the initial tutorial levels give you something to think about (specifically stopping the battering ram knocking down your church). Worth a punt for that sort of price. But it does have some interface issues, with crowding on the screen. Perhaps I'll try it without the stylus and see if its less frustrating?

Ghost Rider

2007-03-08T13:28:00.000Z

Saw this yesterday. Wasn't too bad. Although I didn't think Cage was the right man for the part.. looked too Ted Danson with his dodgy wig on, and too old to be Jonny Blaze. They should've just stuck with the guy who did the young Jonny stuff. Some of the action scenes were nicely done. Lashing the bike around the skyscrapers etc. Villains were a bit too panto buffy for my liking. Wasn't sure whether the Elvis pointing was something Cage added in himself, but it was like seeing him from Wild at Heart all over again, only with more chains and flame.. and a raggedy ass wig. Everytime he "lit up" on command towards the end, I wanted to shout out "Flame on!".. Spawn is much more sinister than Ghost Rider though. Didn't quite understand why the cowboy Ghost Rider from many a moon ago had to ride with him to the cemetry. He knew the way. But it did set up a nice shot of bike and horse all a flame riding into the distance together. Now he's got this out of the way, lets get MJS back to doing Daredevil 2 shall we? ;)

Conquerclub.com

2007-03-08T13:27:00.000Z

Imagine online Risk, with a full mechanism behind it for tracking your friends, for joining new games, and for ranking your progress. Once you've imagined this, then take a look at http://www.conquerclub.com.Â Whilst not acutally stating that this is Risk, presumably for copyright reasons, this is the nearest thing you'll get to web based Risk on a large scale. Theres the classic maps and tweaked classics, but there are a number of specialist maps with some unique play inside of them. There are also a few modes of gameplay that deviate from your standard Risk, but add a lot to the enjoyment. Assassin is one of my favourite, where the winning condition is to eliminate a specific player from the map, if you can do this, then you've won the game. All other players have separate targets and it becomes a game of bluff and elimination rather than the usual fortify and conquer. The games can be set up to play freestyle, basically realtime almost, where the last player to take their turn ticks over the round. If you've got other players hotseating then this can be a fast and furious session of speed Risk. There is also the mechanism for sequential play, where players take their turn, and each player has up to 24 hours to complete their go, these games can be much more slower paced and well thought out, and are ideal for the lunchtime at work sessions.

You can sign up to Conquer Club for free, and have up to 4 games on the go at any one time. However, you can't initiate games. Paying a small fee per annum, roughly about 10 quid, allows you to participate in any number of games, and also set games up for private play with your friends. Well worth the entrance fee, if you ask me.

Excellent Risk based gaming site, very affordable, with hours of play ahead of you. Top marks. It makes playing Risk cool again.

Dreamlords

2007-02-22T13:29:00.000Z

http://www.dreamlords.com

I bought into the Dreamlords game, you can pull the client and pay 19 odd euros and off you go. The idea of lunchtime web based management, readying yourself for evening 3d play really appeals to me. Sort of keeping the enthusiasm pot on the boil throughout the day. The web client is nicely done, if a little slow to respond. The 3d RTS client though is a bit rough around the edges (and I'd previously decided not to buy the game based on the fact it looked like another rough around the edges RTS game - and I've bought far too many of those in the past). I want to like it. But the first few missions/quests have been quite tedious. And many of the encounters on the starting map, are exactly the same. So the grind is there. If you want an MMO-ism. I've just got to the point where I can have some different units, but getting your cities off the ground seems to be a slow process. Being dumped into a guild by default was a bit of a shock, mainly because most of the guild spoke italian and not english. I've still got some hope left for this game, and a months play paid for, I intend to delve deeper... but I'm not sure it will ever climb out of the doldrums of curiosity rather than soar to the heights of Planetarion.

Fantasy Grounds

2007-01-22T13:30:00.000Z

I spent a week or two in preparation, building a character from scratch, levelling her to level 9 and trying to fathom the myriad of spell combinations I was allowed. I assembled a portrait, attempted to conjur a token for her to be used in game, using Neverwinter Nights 2 screenshots, or ones from the Vanguard beta, trying to capture a believable top-down view of a female dwarf in a state of relaxed readiness, with a two handed bastard sword clutched tightly in her hand.

The day arrived, and sat amongst a glut of player handbooks, PDF files, web sites and character sheets, I wound myself up into a state of frothy panic. The last time I did proper pen and paper roleplaying was when I was in my early teens. About 20 odd years ago. And even then the Dungeon Master (DM) had coaxed most of the numbers and details out for me. So my Dungeons and Dragons experience was very rusty to say the least. Obviously I've played many an RPG since, PC based mainly, Massive Multiplayer a-plenty. But you see a lot of the mechanics of combat and spellcasting are all done for you. You learn the progression paths, but you don't know the numbers down to the modifiers. Or at least I don't. So, here I was, invited into a long standing campaign (the players involved had been playing together for around a year, every week), with only a vague grasp of some of the intracacies of the process. Once again, panic took over, so much to learn, so much to remember, so much confusion. Just calculating my Base Attack Bonus became a quagmir of anxiety. My main concern was turning up, and being unprepared, coming across as a bumbling old fool without the first clue of playing a pen and paper game. I didn't want to upset their flow, with my ineptitude.

Luckily, I should have remembered the key fact that the DM is there to coach his players who are unsure, to help them along, and during the myriad of processes he was involved with, he managed to throw some tips and information my way to keep me on the correct path. About 30 minutes into the game, with our introductions and story settings in place, I'd found my stride. The off-the-cuff-banter is where I like to think I shine. I love waxing flowery about a storyline, and interacting in character. Thats my thing. The combat and character progression is there to serve the situations and interactions rather than become the main focus to the game. So with very little in the way of number crunching or dice rolling, we'd set off on a journey and the characters had already formed bonds and alliances that could become the stories in themselves. I thought to myself, "after many years trying to find this sort of experience in numerous MMO's, all failing to some extent, this is where my Holy Grail lies". I guess its sort of like masturbating with your imagination. Where theres enough time to soak in situations and react in a thoughtful and well versed way. Even the action can go at the pace of the story. That's not to say it was taken at a pedestrian pace, theres plenty going on, it's just you have your turn, and you can make it as brief or as elaborate as you want. The emphasis is on you, to create something from what is available. That's what I love.

The Fantasy Grounds (FG) client performed very well, with its lifelike representation of a tabletop, with the rollable dice, and the reference documents, and maps and even top-down miniature like tokens. You can propose movement, by dragging your token to where you want to be and the DM approves it, so it does represent quite a communal tabletop. Very impressive indeed. Your character sheets are all stored on the server, but have local copies for you to view. You drag modifiers direct from the character sheets to add to your dice rolls. Your dice are as close a representation to the physical die that I can imagine. Just roll them onto the chat box to have your result plus modifier included in the displayed result. You can setup attack modifiers in your hotbar and just drag them onto the modifier stack, you can setup common rolls (without using the dice) by entering them as a command, and dragging the command to the hotbar. You can write notes on a notepad and then share them with all the other players. Very useful for a brief paragraph describing your character, if you are new to the party. The chat modes are there for in character, out of character and action/emotes. Allowing you to finely tune and embelish your movement and attack actions with descriptive text, along with mood and emotives. You can even draw on the map (if the DM allows it) to explain something to the group, or show where an area of effect spell may land. Tokens are easily scaled to the maps and they follow the scaling when the map is zoomed. Character portraits and supporting story documents are all shared via the client effectively. I'm looking forward to the upcoming release of version 2.0 of the FG client, with its updated interface and new functionality.

By the end of the evening, after 4 and half hours of play (with about half an hour of preparation beforehand) we'd brought two parties of adventurers together, introduced each other, and formed some bonds across the divide from new players and old players. We'd set off on a journey through an underground labyrinth in the hope of reaching a dark elf stronghold to thwart the plans of a Vampire there who was building an army to opress the surrounding lands. In the caverns we'd encountered a horde of trolls who we had to defeat, and then found that they were only servants to a wyrm. Defiant yet terrified our party was stood facing off against a dragon, when we had to close the session, till next week. As you can tell, I'm still buzzing with the excitement generated by the game. And I'm much more at ease with the idea of throwing a few dice to keep the adventure ticking over.

R6V: Looking Good

2007-01-05T13:31:00.000Z

With the wonder of the Xbox Vision web cam, you can plaster your face (and your brothers) on the special ops team in Rainbow Six Vegas, and play through the story in co-operative mode. Top dollar! Something about seeing yourself and your bro work your way through the terrorist infested building.

Flae

2006-11-29T13:33:00.000Z

A Fae Illusionist with a dark heart, but a good soul.

Gears of War

2006-11-27T13:34:00.000Z

Well I completed GoW co-op with my brother, on Hardcore. And blow me, I loved every single minute of it. After laying down the main man at the end, I wanted more. I've heard people saying its nothing special, but playing it through even on the single player campaign (which I did initially on Casual mode) I thought it was exciting stuff. Well put together. The action is sweet. Heightened on co-op mode. And the multiplayer mode takes frantic close combat to another level. One which promotes active teamplay, covering each others back, helping downed team players back up again. Games like Battlefield 2 and COD2/3 to some extent allow players to glory in the solo play, medics get little time to perform support duties. Your team mates are usually respawned and off to get a bigger gun(tm) before any of the subtleties of team play can kick in. GoW is down to wire and dirty. But with the help of another you can make it work. The cover mechanism can be a bit fiddly at first, but after a few levels, you get confident with it, and it does become second nature. The concept of the perfect reload, adds to the game immensley. Now even emptying a few rounds to reload and hit the sweet spot in the heat of a firefight becomes all the more important. The finishing moves, whether chainblade or kerb kick are well executed and crucial in some of the multiplayer modes. Put em down and keep em down. The Kryll light and dark concept is fantastic, fancy that, an insta-death mechanic that works to enhance the game and tension and doesn't really soak it in frustration! The beserkers, oh the beserkers...

I have to say I bought into the Halo franchise big style, and it was what tipped me over the edge into the Xbox world. I can safely say, GoW is my next Halo, and I've already bought into their world now. Bring on GoW2 and 3! This game makes you bat shit crazy! Onto Insane co-op now.

Fastcrawl

2006-11-27T13:33:00.000Z

http://www.pawleyscape.com/fastcrawl/

I was impressed with this beauty, I had to buy a copy. It's great for a quick play, and although it doesn't actually allow you to specify the characters in the party, it rolls up a random bunch and a random dungeon romp, usually with a quest of killing some boss, somewhere deep in the dungeon. You can customise the length of adventure, so a short one has about 3 levels in the dungeon and takes about 20-30 minutes. You can also customise the difficulty which may affect the time your romp takes. Although its a simplification of party based fantasy combat, it really works with just the right amount of complexity to keep it interesting. It's very good for explaining party mechanics to enthusiastic children. Position affects Melee/Ranged combat, there are cold and heat resistances, additional damage, duel wielding, and even a barebones skill tree to climb, each level you go down in the dungeon. Obviously this doesn't make much of a difference in a 3 level dungeon, but it can start to examplify character skill specialisation in deeper dungeons, where your two clerics are differentiating into a spell based damager and a party healer. The loot that drops is sufficiently tweaked with pros and cons to make judgement calls on its use become a key part to winning battles. Plus theres a resource management game in that you use supplies to take each move as well as a quota of supplies to rest fully and heal and mana up. There are out of combat potions that can be used (no in-combat ones, sadly), as well as scrolls of various kinds, including resurrection which becomes important if you havent got a cleric, or haven't specced him with the resurrection skill yet. Although there is no in-combat resurrection.

I guess the fun of the game comes from having to deal with whatever party makeup you are given at the start of the game, and then customising them, and playing them out in the combat well enough to win the game. It probably won't be a viscious challenge for your average RPG'er, but I've heard the road ahead is tough if you stick it on insane mode. Future enhancements planned are having storied dungeon quests, perhaps a dungeon editor for submitted content, and the ability to generate your own characters. All of which will make this pleasant quickie crawler much more sophisticate, but won't take away its 'quickie' charm. Although there is no save game as such, if you do have to quit out of a game, the state is saved until you continue next time. Theres no library of saves to go back to, but there is an ability to continue with your current foray.

I like these abstract concoctions where quite complicated gameplay can be made accessible and addictive. More like this please..

Sabian Mortis

2006-11-26T13:31:00.000Z

An evil Teir'Dal Necromancer.

Call of Duty 3

2006-11-15T13:38:00.000Z

I finished COD3 single player campaign last night. And I must say I've thoroughly enjoyed it. There have been one or two bugs that give me a dry slap (sticking in scenery mainly), not to mention its hung the 360 about 5 times in the whole run through. So I was very careful to save the last checkpoint. Overall though, I'd rate it better than COD2 in terms of throwing you into a combat situation. The set pieces were sometimes a little cheesey - the unarmed combat didn't really play heavy in the game at all, apart from the scripted encounters. I liked the mortar, artillery and flak cannon stuff. The tank pieces were well done, not as exhiliarating as the COD2 desert romp, but taking a Sherman through normandy town streets and having to battle in close quarters was groovey. The guns seemed much better overall, more realistic, better feel to their handling. The rifles especially had me excited, accurate, but slow bolt loading. Smoke was essential in this campaign, or at least I thought it was. My brother claims he never uses it. But its saved my bacon a few times, whiting out MG's and tanks line of sight. The characters were much more believable than before- still a little stereotyped - but you found yourself getting quite attached to some of them. Looks great. I'd love to see it play on a HD setup. Multiplayer does the Battlefield style thing really well, although I'm not totally familiar with all the modes yet. Thumbs up from Bowesy. Now we can look forward to MOH:Airborne and Brothers in Arms 3.

Gore Bloodfeud

2006-10-16T13:39:00.000+01:00

Warforged Blademaster.

Jellied flesh and broken bone slip and slide off the Adamantine plated thick set body. A constant flow of blood seemed to trickle across the surface making the contstruct glisten and shimmer in the twilight. Assembled and given life in the great Forge of House Cannith, this Fleshcleaver was birthed through magics thought impossible, its sole purpose to dismember fleshed opponents. Many Warforged were created as generic battle machines, kitted out with all manner of combat accessories to enable them to face other similarly equipped 'forged. However, behind all battle hardened 'forged troops were soft fleshed Masters conjuring their orders of war. Gore was assembled to strike hard at these fleshed leaders. His Adamantine plates could pierce and shred flesh even without the bladed weapons of Valenar blood steel they were adorned with. His body coloured with scarlet to ensure maximum fear in his enemy. Blood would run constantly over his thick skin. The warband Gore was assigned to, became known as the Strikeforge, a collection of fleshcleavers designed to act as strike troops in battle, dropped in behind enemy lines and afforded the purpose of stripping flesh from bone, spilling blood and cleaving the minds of the fleshed ones who control the 'forged armies. Taking out the Masters slowed the advancement of the conjured troops. Each warband would be assigned a single master, one who would remotely control their position and combat goals. Always fine tuning the strike, adjusting the kills. After the demise of Cyre towards the end of the Last War, Strikeforge found itself decommissioned.

Fleshcleavers were deemed far too dangerous to be allowed into normal circulation. Many were dismantled. Some without the tight control of a Master were found to have turned renegade, following other less controlled Masters, even following other rogue 'forged units as if they were fleshed leaders. Gore was lucky, he was traded to a small outpost requiring his strength primarily as a work unit. The Master he was assigned to, didn't care of his blood soaked past, he was only concerned about how much lumber he could chop or stone he could split in a days work. Culling trees or stone did little for the Fleshcleavers state of mind. Battle tremours would take over him, and he would decimate houses and vehicles sub conciously. The tremours grew more feirce and darker, uncontrollable, his basic instinct, to cleave flesh, had come back to haunt him. A dark day indeed came about as Gore surfaced from a tremour having slain six fleshed workers. Blood trickled past his eyes as he realised what he'd done.

Immediate deactivation was demanded. As they assembled around him to dismember his body and unhook his mind with dispelling magics. Something inside him engaged. His inner core split slighty. The tremours that took six lives had only been a taste of what power could be unleashed with a Fleshcleaver unhinged. Gore collapsed in a pool of blood. He rested. The bodies would noticed with the coming daylight. The blood would run into the water supplies and give away his position. He would require a new Master. Someone who could command the Fleshcleaver mind. Someone who could contain a killing machine that walked a fine line between dutiful service and tremour induced chaos. Gore would search out such a Master. Eternally.

Chromehounds Online

2006-07-17T13:41:00.000+01:00

The online game is pressing a lot of the right buttons for me. Its a deliberately measured team battle that requires good team communication above all else. Admittedly if your team members have a flair for building decent mechs then that helps, but even your average Joe who throws together something reasonable can shine in battle, if the Commander plays the strategy right, and the team forsake personal glory for the win. I'm fond of mechs, especially big stomping ones. Ones that just exude a massive heavy presence. You can really feel the weight of them. The slow pace of their movement only adds to the charm of the game, plus it gives you a strategic breathing space in the online game. You can think about how to react. You have that time. That's not to say the action isn't intense, it certainly is, once you're in the thick of battle, but theres the build up, the pursuit, the capturing of the vital COMBAS towers (COMmunication BASes - I think) that allow you to communicate with your teammates and your commander to spot enemy movement on the map.

I like being part of a team. I like supporting play. I like sacrifice for others or a higher goal. I like stomping mechs with big fuck off guns. All of these are catered for in Chromehounds online. There are several 'classes' that you can play, but the mech engineering system allows for you to build hybrids, in fact it positively encourages it. So you can play as a Soldier with frontline guns such as machine guns and short to medium range cannons, you're the main combatants up close and personal, or you can play a Heavy Gunner, a slow moving set of long range artillery on legs. It's all about trajectory fire and bombardment with a Heavy Gunner. You can play a Scout, a speedy tracked, wheeled or hover car style vehicle, ideal for capturing COMBAS towers, or sneaking to the enemy base, outside the radar range and attacking it. You can play a Defender, a heavily armoured and much slower version of the Soldier, taking the hits and holding out, rather than damage dealing. Defending the base top priority. You can also play as a Commander, a vehicle that is usually fast, and that can survey the whole of the map using the radar system from its spinning satellite dish to the other captured COMBAS towers. Out of all the classes you can play, the Commander is probably one of the most important ones. A Squad battling without a Commander, has lost its long range senses. You are then reliant on the visual range of your team, and any AI controlled support such as gun turrets and arms bearing walkers that come as part of the bonus of capturing an associated COMBAS tower. Commander-less squads are at the mercy of fast paced scouts and their ability to weave undetected through the terrain to land devastating blows on your Base. A Commander orchestrates the battle. The team are his tools, so having a good mix of long and short range hitters is vital. Capturing COMBAS's gives the Commander much wider vision, the ability to detect enemy well before they're in visual range, allows him to command his Heavy Gunners to bombard specific sectors on the map, to try and soften them up as they converge for the main battle. The Commander can also spot the "run and gun" scouts making a beeline for his base. With a squad full of mech tweaking players, and the ability to create hybrid mechs, you can see there is much room for improvement to cover your squads needs.

Chromehounds online isn't a game you can really solo well in. You can form a clan of one mech. And you can arrange battles between other stubbornly minded folks. But mech on mech death matches on maps that were designed around a squad of 5 or 6 with a much wider cover of abilities, is just missing the point. You need to join a clan, that will organise into squads signing up to the battles available. The persistent War involves squad vs squad battles in key areas of the map, securing these areas and opening other areas in the web of connections to the enemies cities and captured areas. It is quite like Planetsides global map depicting the war, however Chromehounds battles are not massive zones, they're map based instances where squads will clatter it out and shift the momentum of power. Each of the three superpowers, Tarakia (story wise funded by the Americans, and subsequently adopted by American players), Morskoj (similar to the Russians, and unofficially adopted by European players), and Sal Kar (story wise funded by the Chinese, and unofficially adopted by Asian players) will promote certain key offensive or defensive battles with more merit so that players who take part in these skirmishes will see better returns on their wins and subsequently they will level up in rank, allowing them to take on more hardened players from the enemy states. The higher the rank of the skirmish, the higher the rewards for the victor. High ranking players cannot take part in low rank skirmishes, to prevent 'ganking' as such. The War is quite fluid, and it ultimately results in a win for a single nation who eliminates the other two. So far, since the servers have been online, Morskoj has won a single round. I'm not certain what advantages that gives the Morskoj on a global level, perhaps more special equipment is available via the lottery, I don't know, but once the war is won, the map resets and it begins again. Taking last night for example, Morskoj were down to about 22% occupation of the map early evening, and there were worries about being wiped, but this morning after lots of key battles, they had turned the tide and secured about 70% occupation once again. So there are dramatic swings in power to follow. If a superpower is eradicated altogether I believe they can still take part in skirmishes in the hope of liberating their capital city once again. Since I've not been on the receiving end of an eradication, I'm not entirely sure whats open to you.

The battles themselves are quite involved. You assemble your squad in your clan lobby, a place where you can watch the war progress and chat with teammates, or do some shopping and then tinker with your mech, and your Commander will either join or host a skirmish and the squad mates will then select a squad rendezvous in the Neroimus War, and everyone will join the mission lobby, where you can look over the map, put the final touches to your mech, chat about tactics and select a base (you normally have 2 or 3 locations where you can set up your headquarters, so the enemy never quite know where your base is, even on these maps with known terrain). Once your squad is ready for battle, everyone flags themselves up as 'ready' and then the enemy squad is notified of this. There is a 15 minute time limit on mission lobby duties, which allows for enough time to assemble and brief your squad, but if both squads are ready, the battle begins immediately. If one of the squads pulls out, you then have the option of playing the mission against AI opponents, but the rewards for victory are considerably less. Once in the battle, you're free to roam, capture towers, defend bases, snipe from hillsides, whatever your Commander wants. Certain tactics seem to have become popular for quick wins. One of which is annoying as hell, if you are not prepared for it. It involves fast scouts mounted with only melee weapons. Big pneumatic spikes that can do considerable damage to a mech, or more importantly a base. So you've got your well balanced squad, you're all capturing towers and providing cover, whilst keeping your eyes peeled for the enemy. Four fast enemy scouts zip round the periphery of the map, land at your base, and before your Heavy Gunner can turn his turret, they've all stuck their arrays of six pneumatic spikes into your base and 'bingo', its Game Over. The number of battles where this has happened is on the increase. It seems players will always gravitate towards cheap wins like this. Still, after a couple of spike beastings you start to evolve your defensive line, with mines, and defenders. Last night I was on as my Heavy Gunner with a pair of kick arse Morskoj Howitzers mounted for bombardment, and my double front loaded Cannon, and we had a team playing 'spikers', Commander shouts out fast moving enemy inbound, luckily across my path, so I turn and ready my cannon, in he comes, fast as you like, so fast have trouble keeping my turret turn on him, he was speeding to the base... however, he clocked me, a slow Heavy Gunner, usually easy meat for speedy spikers, they outspin you and stab you hard in the back. So, he altered course, thought he could rack up a kill on the way. What he didn't anticipate was my turret turning system board installed in my cockpit, nor did he suspect that I'd get my howizters pointed low at him as he made a close charge. Boom! Spiker covered in flames, I'd also taken some splash damage from all the incendiary flying about, he was stunned, he attempted another run, keeping close in on my very slow frame, I was back peddling, and laying down Howitzer damage like it was going out of fashion. He was surprisingly well armoured for a scout. Still, time to jam my twin cannons up his arse and Wallop! As I backed away I noticed my Cannon cam was out, in fact my Cannons were but a twisted wreck, but the spiker had stalled, and his cockpit was flaming, and it was only a matter of time before 'bingo!' he went up in a cloud of satisfyingly black smoke and flames. My legs were damaged quite badly so speed was even more hindered, my main twin cannons were out, but I was still around, and he wasn't taking the base anytime soon. After that glowing incident, I managed to struggle my way up to the top of a snow capped mountain, following my Commander very carefully through a bed of mines. He was chain gunning the floor to try and clear the majority of them. To support him in a full frontal attack on a very heavily armoured defender. Broken but not down yet, I unloaded the remaining Howitzer rounds into this defender at point blank range almost, 6 or 7 blasts later and he was almost down. Unfortunately he'd peppered me with rockets too many times and I was down and out. Kicked out of your mech and doomed to run around the map as a very small, very slow, very fragile infantryman. Still, you can keep an eye out for the action and even still participate in some recon as such, its just you're very vulnerable to being stomped on, or taking splash damage. It's good stuff though. We won that battle, and I'd manage to quash a scout spiker. A proud moment for me.

There are a lot of bits and bobs you can put on your mech to enhance it, but its always a balancing act with power, load (weight), and physical mounting slots. There are night vision for night missions, although take part in one without night vision and you see some spectacular lighting shows when the combat starts. There are heat sensors, mine detectors, mine layers, bomb scatterers, more Armour plating, cooling radiators, even fan based propulsion systems to allow your mech to 'jump' slightly. Plenty of variety, plenty of scope for tweaking. Most players in my squad have several mech designs set up for the different classes. I'm still at the early stages of perfecting my Soldier and my Heavy Gunner. But you can tweak and then take it out on a trial sortie, and just see how it performs in basic combat. Inside a squad, you have the support of the other mechs, so you can afford to fiddle a bit and try stuff out, as long as you perform reasonably well.

Overall I am in love with the game. The single player game gives you enough to get a grip on the basics. Its often gritty and too dependant on scripted AI allies, but it does give you a place to train your mech piloting skills. The Scout and Commander missions are particularly stand out for me, I enjoyed them immensely. They reveal how different the classes play. Especially the Commander, you spend most of your time on the map screen, ordering other units about the map to capture COMBAS's and attack or defend areas. The Commanders role in this game reminds me very much of the Commander role in the online game Savage: Battle for Newerth, big responsibility, but ultimately satisfying if you can gel with your team and evolve to combat situations that arise. The Online game is where its at, and while the interface can be very quirky in places, sometimes downright not nice, you struggle with it to open the door into these tough fought war zones, where true teamplay has an area to shine through. As I said in the starting paragraph, it presses all the right buttons, most team based games just don't cut it, people don't gel into a team well, they run off and solo the tank or the helicopter, theres no overall Commander holding the thing together. In Chromehounds, to win, there usually has to be a Commander, and because its squad based, it almost requires you to join up with people and work together. Not really for soloists.

A stand out moment, that will typify my love for the game, is when we marched our mechs up to the river separating the two warring forces, the enemy trying to lower the bridges and make a crossing. We shot out the bridges. We piled our mechs into the water. And we water walked them across the river bed to the other side, emerging like an army of mechanised sea devils, no sooner had the water dripped off chrome pistons, than we rained hellfire onto the enemy. It was a night mission. We all had our cockpit lights on to ensure we wouldn't commit friendly fire. Amazing sight. Not bad for an online game.

Chromehounds

2006-07-13T13:55:00.000+01:00

Chromehounds, a game I've had my beady eye on for a while. A game that seemed to get a large amount of stick at least around the gaming websites, before I'd managed to secure a copy. So the vibe was negative, Mech fans were slating it, review websites we're marking it low, everyone who was anyone had an opinion on the game, and I'd only secured a copy on the morning of its release 7th July 2006. I booted it up with some trepidation. And played through the first few missions. Perhaps I'm not critical enough, but with a bucketload of prepping to be totally disappointed with the game, I wasn't. It looked good. The Mech style was gritty, realistic, the way I like it, remiscient of Mech's in Ring of Red on the PS2. Only more real. Shiny chrome pistons. No glam and glitz of the MechAssault series. I should stop calling these things Mech's, in this game they are Hounds. These hounds had weight behind them. Slow, measured weight. Deliberately lumbering and large. A big criticism of the game from the early previews/demo play, was that they moved too slow. And that the slow pace was rampant amongst the whole spectrum of Hounds available. Even the scouts with their unusual inclusion of tracked and wheeled mobility were considered morbidly slow. There is some degree of truth to this. But, I feel the game is being judged harshly if its not looked at as a whole. The single player missions are well crafted, enough to give you a taste of what it is like to employ tactics and strategy as part of a scripted team. You follow scenarios and play your part, almost being tutored in what will work and what won't. But its in the online game, where a slow determined pace is valuable for a squad of players to inform and control each other. To win battles in Chromehounds online, theres no room for lone MechWolves. Your hound is part of a pack. And the pack requires time to direct. The slowing down of the hounds gives a sense of weightiness. A sense of scale. You will brush large trees aside. And stomp upon soldiers tickling you with their gunfire. Tanks are mere toys to be crushed. A lot of the combat and searching for the enemy online is fairly slow paced. But it can be riddled with tension. Blind other than the voiced commands from your leader, you endlessly search the horizon for an intruder. If you work as a team, with supporting abilities, you can devastate an un-coordinated opposition. Parts funded from combat, or captured and won in a lottery can be much more effective than the initial parts you gain via the single player missions. And to see scouts out in the field, you'll swear they're fast, and you try and land rocket, shell and grenade on them.

Ultimately, its a game for people who enjoy large Mech combat. The extra cohesion necessary to capture the appropriate communication towers so that you can freely talk with your commander, and spot enemy and give tactical directions, only enhances the large scale explosive combat. The single player campaign, gives you the basics. And contrary to what the majority of reviewers on the web say, I thought it was an enjoyable lead in to the online game. Somewhere you can hone your Hound and try out some things you wouldn't want to take online. Once you've found yourself a decent squad and you've started taking part in the persistant world war, making a difference, capturing enemy parts and capital cities, it all becomes very addictive. Tweaking hounds with different combinations to fit in with your squad members. Then testing your mettle in the heat of the piston pumped battle. Not everyone will take to it. Especially if they only scratch the surface that is the single player campaign. This is War! It's begun!

The Oily Tears of a Cyberman

2006-07-09T14:08:00.000+01:00

Mulling over the final episode of the new Doctor Who series 'Doomsday'..

The cheesiest moment, being that bitch, after becoming a Cyberman, rebelling and proving that she 'served her Queen and her country' by shedding an oily tear! FFS! Give us a fucking break, you big gay bastard! Cybermen, filled with oil, shedding an emotional tear.
Jeysus!

I enjoyed the Cybermen vs the Daleks, I wish it could have been a bit more CGI and spectacular than it was.

I think the trouble with this new run of Dr Who, is that they seem to rate the Assistant above the Dr. They base all the stories around the emotional content of the assistant. Even the Dr gets emotionally involved, they had Eccleston cry over her, and now they've got the googley eyed whacky smiled new Dr to cry over her. It makes me feel like they cheat the Dr out of his power. His power to remain detached and control even the worst case scenarios. The new series has put him in the periphery and has made the assistants plight the main focus. Just feels wrong. They should keep the sentimental cheese to the
minimum too.

My nipped loved this episode. But mainly because there was a battle between Cybermen and the Daleks, and also because Rose was meant to die. But she didn't. Because we have to keep it all optimistic and nice, yet milk the teary emotional stuff, rather than focus on the Timelord who is meant to be the star of the show!