#410 Everquest

Posted: 19th March 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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225th played so far

Genre: MMORPG
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 1999
Developer: Sony Online Entertainment
Publisher: Sonly Online Entertainment

Wow, feels like it’s been a while since we played an MMORPG. Sure , there aren’t many on the list, so we should spread them out, but it just feels safer to finish more of them at some point… especially seeing how City of Heroes ended less than a year after we tried it out.

Everquest is one of the originals. One of those MMORPGs everyone played and marveled what it was about, cult and stories – you were in or out. This and the upcoming Ultima Online were the originals, which makes them interesting. Surprisingly, it’s still running, which makes me wonder whether it held up…

Our Thoughts

It’s weird to be playing this now. As you may understand, it’s one of those games we kept hearing about and, in a way, I was looking forward to trying it. That was fun enough, but damn… it’s all so familiar. Starting from the first real quest, it’s all familiar – kill a few rats, gather an item or two, bring it back to the quest-giver, rinse and repeat. It’s been copied and imitated by many of its successors and been made fun of in many other sources. You can’t blame it for it, but it feels repetitive and a bit too familiar.

Still, despite that, it does it well. While not that engaging yet, there’s a sense of a story here that I’m sure can expand and draw you in further. It’s not complex, but nice enough. Still, though, despite that, and despite the big open nature of this game, it does not feel like a living world. This isn’t just because of the randomly respawning enemies, but just as much because too many people just stand around, waiting for you to trigger their quest or activity. Places are set up to look impressive at times, but just as much functional rather than realistic. It feels like a waste – some simple behaviour would help make the detailed world more interesting.

Still, this game is huge. We barely moved past the starting area, despite playing over five hours. This is partially due to the amount of grinding, but also the large amount of quests to start off with and, more important, the amount of things to learn. The size seems to not just be worldsize – something that’s almost to be expected – but just as much because of what there is to learn. It seems like one of the ways they’ve been expanding the game by giving people more things to do. Crafting in particular seems a big secondary part – with lots of items being dropped solely to be sold and being used in crafting. The feeling of being overwhelmed is made even worse by the interface, which is full and cluttered. It’s hard to find where to go and what is going on. This all makes the game rather unfriendly to beginners – I just can’t imagine many more people getting into this and continuing to enjoy it.

With that, the game doesn’t feel as dated as its age implies. I suspect the client will have had some updates over time, but it doesn’t feel entirely out of place compared to games from the time, so I’m not sure how much this is the case. Either way, while clearly not as great as something recent like, say, Mass Effect, but it looks surprisingly good.

For me the big no-no of this game was that we had to grind within the first 2-3 hours. If you ask me the time it takes to become truly invested in a game has two windows. You will either become engrossed in the first half an hour or will become appreciative within the first two hours. Grinding is the worst part of RPGs and such a situation happening so soon feels like a major issue for me. Then again this really is a problem endemic with MMORPGs. With RPGs without an online presence (like the aforementioned Mass Effect or Final Fantasy XII) developers are really trying to minimize grinding or at least have feel like an integral part of the game rather than an annoying side-effect. This is probably because there is the re-playability element and the fact that it’s on a disc and that’s all you get. Everquest (like World of Warcraft and Guild Wars) has been online for YEARS. As such they need to stretch their content out… enter the bastardry of grinding. I see why it occurs… doesn’t mean I have to like it or play it. Apart from Guild Wars, I still love you.

Final Thoughts

It’s odd playing this because you really feel like you have seen everything before. It’s like watching Airplane for the first time, everything feels cliched because everyone has done the same thing since. Therefore it is so hard to judge, then again I think that this will be helped when we finish up on Ultima Online.

#829 Fantastic Contraption

Posted: 15th March 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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224th played so far

Genre: Puzzle
Platform: Internet
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Colin Northway
Publisher: inXile Entertainment

Today a short one. While waiting for Everquest to download (who’d imagine that a 13 year old game would require a 7GB+ download? At least  it’s not Aion… that took all day to get) we searched for something smaller to entertain ourselves with. Going through our lists, we came across Fantastic Contraption, which seemed like a charming little game.

From earlier experience, I always loved The Incredible Machine and its spinoffs. While this game looks like it doesn’t entirely match that, the basics seem similar – create a special machine to reach your specific goal. As a certified engineer (despite of a different area), I’m already loving it.

Our Thoughts

It sounds simple. You have a red package. It’s in a blue background box. It needs to get to a red goal box. You have several types of rods to get it there, as well as wheels that turn clockwise or counterclockwise. To reach your goal, you build a vehicle using this to do so.

It’s a simple concept and many of your solution will likely use variations on the same idea. The differing requirements, however, always require that you adjust your strategy. It starts off with your goal being above the ground, meaning that you need to find a way to keep your package higher up. Later you need to get over blocky terrain, knock over a wall and ride over its bricks, and even switch directions part way through to get to where you need to go. You create mini-tanks, higher triangles to lift you and wheels that pull the package like a horse pulling a cart.

The physics are solid. It’s at times annoying and it takes some time to get used to them, with how the rigidity and gravity will affect the different options. The schoolboy technique of relying on triangles work as they create a stable situations. Lots of cross connections can help, although there were times where removing them for more flexibility got the package there faster.

The biggest frustration might actually be in the environment. The graphics are simple and clean, with nothing extraneous and no cute touches added. This mostly works, but it can be unclear how different background elements affect the path (movable, solid and such), with the main question being how much they actually affect your interaction. The force and weight of your vehicle seems unspecified, which is what can get in the way here. Related to that, sometimes the elements you need to solve the puzzle are hidden out of view, which seems a bit tricky when it makes such a big difference. It just feels a bit less fair.

For me the biggest physics problem was with friction. It is clear by the fact that the wheels have some form of traction that there has to be some sort of friction acting here. As a teacher who, as of writing this, is teaching forces to three separate classes my spotlight on physics is abnormally bright. In terms of weight/gravity this is pretty solid, momentum is okay but could do with a little work… but friction is too patchy to be reliable. Then we get to the concept of weights and counter-weights where it would be helpful (in the creation of a turning force/moment) to know the mass of the red square in relation to our wheels… after some experimenting it can be determined that they are near enough the same.

Final Thoughts

It’s a fun diversionary game and I will probably be back to play the later levels (you gotta love free games) as well as linking to it to students as a way to explain some simple force ideas… simple force ideas because there are some larger physics concepts better dealt with by games like Universe Sandbox and Portal. I’m thinking like a teacher… dear Lord.

#1000 Neptune’s Pride

Posted: 11th March 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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223th played so far

Genre: Strategy
Platform: Internet
Year of Release: 2010
Developer: Iron Helmet Games

 This game has a bit more of a history behind it. When joining my current place of work, a lot of my new colleagues were heavily invested in an ongoing game of Neptune’s Pride. The betrayal went deep and got, at times, quite frightening. I got in a bit too late to join in, but the hatred that flew around the office in my first few weeks was scary.

It’s an interesting entry on its own. A 4X game, similar to Civilization, but multiplayer only and in realtime. Diplomacy is fairly important. Oh, and there’s some documentation… but without playing, that’s not as useful.

Our Thoughts

I’m not entirely sure what to make of this game’s 4X claim. While there are certainly elements of it and the gameplay is based on it, it does not feature the complexity that is offered by many other games in its genre – Civilization (II) and Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri being other entries we discussed on the deeper end of the spectrum, or even Medieval Total War, which featured more focus on the in-battle strategy game.

For example, where most other games allow you to work on your internal development – how to create economic growth, balancing that with research, military power and so on – this is reduced to four options in the game. You can spend a certain amount on increasing a star’s economy, industry or science or you can create a fleet. All of this costs differing amounts of money, but after that it’s all straightforward. One point of economy gives you $10 per day, one point of industry is a ship per time period, and so on. Different stars have the same resources, just different upgrade costs. There’s some strategy to it, but it’s not as involved as you see in other 4X games, and it’s just not as fun in that area.

The game’s strength, then, lies in its multiplayer. Rather than a pure realtime experience, the game seems to focus on being a coffee break experience. You have a fleet, and when you want to expand your empire, you send it away. Depending on the stars distance, it takes from a few hours to a day and a half to get there. Your research can shorten that, but it’ll always take some time. This means you have to think and plan ahead and hope your scanners reach far enough to warn you of upcoming attacks.

The decision making behind it – making and breaking alliances, invading and deciding who to go for, finding your strengths and how to grow or conquer – is what becomes interesting.

The same simplicity carries through in the game’s interface. It’s abstract and the only bit of art is that of the players’ species, who have an alien drawing representing you. These are frightening and look amazing. Beyond those, however, it’s all numbers, dots and mini ships. Interchangable and simple, it’s all reduced to a couple of numbers and some basic names. Nothing too clever, just all matter of fact. Nothing more is necessary, and suitable for a simpler indie game like that, but it’s worth remembering there’s nothing here. Just as your upgrades are abstract, so is everything else in the game.

Final Thoughts

Due to the amount of time it took to play this game (two weeks during lots of small breaks) Peter didn’t have a chance to participate, hence no comments from him.

This game works well as a multiplayer 4X game, and it can be a blast to play with a larger group – especially when you properly get into the diplomacy side of it. On its own, though, the game pales a bit in comparison with the other games, and it doesn’t match up for that. It’s a game where you need the right friends.

#811 Auditorium

Posted: 7th March 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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222nd played so far

Genre: Puzzle/Strategy
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Cipher Prime

Slightly more tenuous as an internet link, Auditorium is available for download on Steam, iOS and other places. It started out as a flash game though, and the demo is still available as such. For the reason why this matters, you want to look at our introduction to Cursor*10.

Though the name may sound like this is a music game, it’s billed as puzzle/strategy, manipulating and generating music rather than creating it or having it involved in gameplay. It feels weird, but probably makes sense somehow.

Our Thoughts

It’s odd. Music is part of the game, but not the focus. The basic setup: As you play, you direct streams of light – perhaps representing sound, but something like that – and get it to fill a ‘counter’. As you do so, more music starts playing. Your goal is to fill all of these ‘counters’ until the full music plays.

There’s a few tools to help you do this. The most commonly used is a… thing that helps you redirect the streams. They’ll redirect the flow of light… things to go in the direction. Most of the early puzzles come down to this – changing the direction of the flow to reach the counters. You can manipulate the strength and range of this, but that’s where it goes. Another one, possibly responsible for the more beautiful looks, creates a sort-of cyclone that makes the flow rotate around it until it flies out again.

Another part of the abstract beauty the flows create is the colouring of the streams. Some counters need specific light colours to charge and play their music, and to make things so you need to direct the flow through coloured circles.

All of this is learned by doing. The game features no tutorials, but slowly builds up the difficulty of the puzzles so that with a bit of experimentation, you always know what you’ve got and where to go. That doesn’t mean it’s easy – some of the later puzzles require precise placements and some lateral thinking to come to a solution. Insight here is necessary.

As alluded to earlier, this ends up looking beautiful. The particle-based system means the stream isn’t consistent, and the trails of colours each dot leaves makes for nice streams. The music that accompanies it suits the graphics, soothing and slightly exciting. It makes for a lovely combination between the two. The thing that I especially loved is how each colour was linked to a different instrument and how the richness of the music is linked directly to how many circles you feed.

I’m not entirely sure where the strategy elements come in, but the graphics and music make for a soothing, fun experience. You won’t ever get stuck for too long or get frustrated, but as a game to wind down after a busy day, there’s little that can beat it.

Final Thoughts

This game does what Child Of Eden boasted a few years later, a true experience of synesthesia (a condition where you can hear colours and taste words). It is beautiful and well worth going beyond the original demo, as we have done.

#566 Samorost

Posted: 3rd March 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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221st played so far

Genre: Adventure
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2003
Developer: Jakub Dvorsky
Publisher: Amanita Design

Another entry in our internet gallery, for reasons we discussed a few days ago.

When leafing through the book, we see a lot of screenshots of the different games – not all have one, but a lot do. Most can be fairly generic – you know, for a shooter a couple of standing with their guns out, in strategy games soldiers in a top down view. In space RPGs… yeah. Some are more interesting than others, and while some are generic, they do give some idea of what the game is and what to expect.

Some, however, are more obscure and give you less of an idea. Samorost is one of thoese. It might just be a generic green coloured screen with some brown blobs at first – you scan the page, don’t look what’s on there – but a good look does make you wonder. Green hills, an Asian-looking man (also based on dress) and people working in the background. What is going on?

Our Thoughts

That was quite an experience. Samorost, on its own, is a fairly simple adventure game. Point and click, like Myst or Sam & Max Hit the Road, simplified to not have an inventory or actions, it really comes down to finding the right spots to click on the screen. There’s a few places where it’s difficult to find the right place to click, but it’s easy to work out what to do, assuming there is much to do. No need for hints, just keep trying.

The story, to be honest, is as simple. Your character looks out the window of its spaceship and sees another approaching. You need to make sure it moves in another direction so you don’t crash. For some reason, you can’t change your course, no, you have to change the other ship’s direction.

To do so, you go on a long journey around this asteroid/space ship. It’s covered with grass, plants and trees, its hills inhabited by all sorts of people (such as the previously mentioned person) and creatures. You don’t interact with them beyond their (usually slight) involvement in puzzles, making them far more part of setting the atmosphere.

That atmosphere is really the reason for playing. It’s stylized, bizarre, at times a bit frightening. It feels insane, but most of all, beautiful. It’s worth experiencing, that’s for sure.

The question is, though, whether it’s worthy for the list. There’s more games like this out there, with more interesting puzzles, possibly a better design. Still, according to the list, it’s supposed to have revived it – a claim I can no longer verify, but can believe. As such, perhaps a historical curiosity. Beyond that, nice, but don’t expect much of it.

Final Thoughts

This is another game that is over in a flash but I for one can see it’s position. The slightly collage look adventure game has become such a staple of free gaming that even BBC Bitesize has a version interspersed with literacy and numeracy questions for SATS revision. It’s well worth playing the ‘sequels’ if you like more of the same.

#824 Cursor*10

Posted: 27th February 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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220th played so far

Genre: Puzzle
Platform: Internet
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Nekogames

For those of you who keep up with MMORPG, you might have realised we recently got a slight shock. While it’s closed down when you read this, we only recently found out City of Heroes was closing down. With that worry, and our ongoing concerns about Reset Generation, we realised one thing… we’d better get those online games done, so we’re actually able to play them before they disappear. Not necessarily a worry for most of them and hopefully we’ll get an early warning, but why risk it, right?

With that, we’re starting off playing a few smaller games that are easier to cover. I’ve played a bit of Cursor*10 already, as well as some other Nekogames, and it’s a simpler game by nature.

Our Thoughts

Cursor*10 is a short game. I mean, I know that’s not entirely unexpected for a free Flash game, but it somehow feels worth mentioning. It is, after all, that short by design. You get 10 cursors, each of which lives for about a minute. You play one after the other, but in a change of format, the previous cursors still come back to help you finish the game. This is necessary – the earlier cursors are needed to press buttons to make the stairs to the next level pop up, or click a box 100 times to open it.

Aesthetically, the game is simple – very few embellishments are there (except for the congratulations screen at the end). It’s simple line art, pointing you to what you need to do. What each thing will do might be unclear at the end, but you’ll soon figure it out.

The mechanics are what makes it interesting. The first time you play, you’ll get annoyed with yourself. As you have no idea what you’re doing, your earlier cursors are an embarassment for you, wasting time when they should help you solve puzzles. As you figure the game out, it becomes easier and you can actually start to plan ahead.

An additional challenge is in getting the highscore – by clicking small pyramids along the path, you get extra points and get rewarded based on the amount of points you click.

Don’t expect a lot of gameplay out of this, but as a game, it pushes you to keep trying until you succeed. And then asks you to try more of their games, really.

Final Thoughts

Okay so it looks like we are phoning it in somewhat but what else can you do with a game that can be completed in less time than an episode of Adventure Time? A unique time waster which would make for an interesting take on co-operation and time travel… wait what?

#139 Nebulus

Posted: 23rd February 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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219th played so far

Genre: Platform
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1987
Developer: Triffix Entertainment Inc.
Publisher: Hewson Consultants

As, in Pong and Beyond time, holidays draw to a close and we get ready to get back to fruitful work. It’s been fun, but we’ve got to make money (if only because we need to get more games to finish this blog). With it, we move from one reason for not gaming to another – where before we were out doing other things instead of gaming, we will now be too busy to do so. Don’t worry, we’ve got a big backlog built up (we’re not talking about the Christmas holidays here!), so we’ll keep posting, but we’ve been using some time to catch up on our gaming. The big change is that I have started my NQT year which means goodbye and so long to the time during the weekend that I would have usually been able to devote to this blog. It’s a bit of a blow of me, especially since we have made over two years worth of posts and we are so far in (and have spent what must be getting into over one thousand pounds) that we need to make the best go of completing this that we can. Once summer comes back around and I have written a lot of lesson plans things will start to get easier again… but that is such a long way away.

Partially that manifested in tackling some big names, such as recently Mass Effect. Another part is that we’re trying to play a number of smaller games, so we can increase our backlog in a shorter amount of time. Nebulus is the latter.

Nebulus is an interesting game, one that aside from looking nice and colourful has its own peculiarities. The world scrolls around you, while you stay steady on the screen (reminiscent, for me, of a couple of Kirby’s Adventure levels), with it being a tower attack game, rather than tower defense as we’ve seen more often recently.

Our Thoughts

As we’ve seen before, such as with Plok and Eledees, cute, friendly graphics don’t always say much about the difficulty of a game (similar to The NewZealand Story and Raving Rabbids which have both induced tantrums). Something similar partially applies here – while the enemies are fairly scary, standard fare and the towers are boring, you play as a rather cute green hippo thing. It soon won’t be, but the initial view is misleading.

 This game is tough. Frustratingly, controller-throwing tough. It doesn’t necessarily need to be, but that’s how it ends up being. First, most important, throughout the game you’re on a time limit. You’ve got 100 seconds to make it up the first tower, gain 20 more for the second tower, and that goes on. That may sound like a lot, but it isn’t. You see, when you get hit, you don’t die straight away (that’d be too much), but you do fall down the tower, having to climb back up – yeah, past all the obstacles and tricky jumps you barely made before.

And that’s where the frustration comes in. You see, the game doesn’t play fair. Your first death – I can nearly guarantee this – is at the start of the first level. You go three steps to the right, just past a door, and the floor disappears under you. As you’re on the lowest floor, you fall into the water and die. That’s it. Try again. At least restarting doesn’t matter much at this point.

Still, that’s all memorization. More difficult, though, are the more random events. You can avoid your enemies and all, but every ten seconds, a sort of diamond ball thing launches from the side. It travels faster than you, you can’t jump over it, so the only way to deal with it is to get to a different level before it gets to you. Not easy if you have a long straight path to cross.

One more flaw, though, at least in the original versions – thanks to the limited number of buttons, jump and fire share the same ‘button’. This means you can’t fire when you’re moving, and can’t jump if you’re standing still. It feels a bit inconsistent and hesitant though, making you miss several jumps due to its flakiness. Incredibly frustrating.

A unique selling point of this game is how you move… or that you really don’t. Much like the Planet Express ship in Futurama your character never really seems to move; instead the scenery moves around you as you remain in the dead centre of the screen. A bit of an oddity but worth mentioning nonetheless.

It pays off in the end though. If you can sit through the frustration and persevere long enough (and if you’re as stubborn as I was when playing), you’ll make it past that first tower. It takes memorizing the route and a lot of work, but it’s an awesome accomplishment. It’s one of those games where you feel like you can win and when you do, because of the unfairness at times, you feel like you really won. No handholding, no help, just awesome. Worth it.

It’s a sign of the times, but the game is its own kind of amazing. It may not look like much and very much trades in old-time difficulty, but that makes winning it a proper reward. And the scrolling graphics, circling around the tower, with all the work done to make it look nice and slightly 3D, it looks nice and ahead of the times. Awesome game, absolutely. Just give yourself the time and don’t get too frustrated.

Final Thoughts

Yet another game in the genre of ‘harder than it looks’. If you can get the timing correct this is not a long game since the number of levels are in the single digits. However, the seeming unfairness of this game prolongs it’s playtime in an almost exponential (mathematical impossibility I know) fashion. If only these games were not so addictive…

#979 Reflect Missile

Posted: 19th February 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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218th played so far

Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: DS
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: Q-Games

Sure, we covered some famous games. A few days ago, we had Mass Effect, we started off the iconic Pong, and covered all sorts of big games in between – SimCity, Final Fantasy VII, Portal and more major games. Often, however, the more interesting games are the more obscure ones – The Path really got to us, Facade was amazing and probably most amazing, Flower recently had a big effect on us when Peter managed to finish it.

Reflect Missile squarely falls into the latter camp, the unknown title that is actually so obscure, it doesn’t have its own Wikipedia page – sure, not a major distinction, but telling all the same. It’s less artsy and high brow – more an indie shooter – but it may still work.

Our Thoughts

Reflect Missile is an incredibly straight forward shooter. The aesthetics are seemingly retro, although on DS they look so off that they don’t actually feel retro somehow – futuristic, but off. Still, ignoring the slight oddness in the aesthetic mix, this feels like a game we could’ve seen released 20 years ago. Not because of the conrols – which we’ll get to in a moment – but the game plays like a thirty year old game.

The idea is simple. You’ve got these missiles that are spaced at the bottom of the screen, three, five or seven sets of them. Each set has between one and three missiles, most of the time, of a few different types – usually one that reflects and bounces around, but there’s also a driller and a bomber. These go around a typical Arkanoid/Breakout-style screen, with blocks arranged in different patterns that you can break. Rather than breaking all the blocks (which would be difficult with the few different missiles you have), you need to break a few special blocks, flashing blue, green and red.

To help you out, you get a few power ups – double your power ups, turn reflect missiles (see what he did there?) into a bomber and so on – which can be helpful, but it doesn’t help all that often either.

A simple idea that’s fun, but quite dated – surely it could have been done before. The one thing setting it apart, however, are the controls. Rather than using a joystick or such to control your angle, you use the touch screen, rotating it between the missiles. It sounds neat, but is quite difficult – as you shoot the moment you lift your stylus, a slight lack of attention after pressing down for a while, it’s easy to miss a shot. Add to that the rotation can become quite impossible if you don’t press down at the right time – you may not be able to make the angle without moving your stylus again so you can move further over, which is so instinctive it creates several missed shots.

Another thing that I need to work out is why they produced a game for the DSiWare store without making much use of the cameras. It’s a small point but one that needs to be made.

While flawed, however, the game gets addictive. Because of how short the levels are, it’s easy to try one more time and see whether you can make it that time, which can be incredibly time-consuming… but then again, if it draws you in this far, that’s what it should do, right?

As fun as this game is better versions of the ‘limited geometry shooter’ have since been made and are available for cheaper than this was. When you have played some of these (such as the addictive Stupid Zombies) the sparkle of this game is a little bit duller. It’s unfair to make this comparison since three years have passed and things obviously move on.

Final Thoughts

Since Stupid Zombies is an iOS game it obviously won’t be available to everyone (then again how many people have a DSi or 3DS). In fact even making a comparison with a game that was a twinkle in the developer’s eye is a little but unfair… still… if I can save you some pennies… then I shall.

#768 Mass Effect

Posted: 15th February 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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217th played so far

Genre: Action/Role-Playing
Platform: PC/Xbox 360
Year of Release: 2007
Developer: Bioware
Publisher: Microsoft

We’ve discussed my love for Bioware games before, starting with special pick Baldur’s Gate II, moving to Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire. Part of the reason for this fast tracking is, in fact, because this was the game Peter really wanted to play. I’ll leave it to him to explain fully, but in this case the addition of shooter mechanics to the list seems to be what Peter really liked.

For me, my initial reception was a bit mixed. Playing through the intro section on the Xbox for a bit, I found that the shooter mechanics didn’t work for me – to be fair, this was one of the first time I played that way, so practice improved that. It was not the best introduction for me either since it involved a lot of me having to swoop in every now and then when Jeroen got pissed off.

More interesting though, this is a slight experiment into a new way of playing for us. As we both look forward to playing, we’ll be playing simultaneously, me on the PC, Peter using the Xbox 360. Saves time, means we both get a chance (using different character styles) and giving us room to compare.

Our Thoughts

Although Jade Empire wooed Peter earlier, it seems like this has caught Peter’s imagination enough that he’ll keep playing. There’s a good reason for it. The game combines its RPG and shooter elements really well. The RPG skills are mostly take it or leave it – if you want to, you can let the game auto-level anyway, learn a few mini games, and play it as a shooter with a lot of conversations if you want, turning it into something more approaching a JRPG. Alternatively, you can go in-depth, setting up all your equipment and stats to spec, tweaking it to how you prefer to play.

The shooter mechanics, in the mean time, can be set to use target assist, making the success of your shots mostly depend on your stats, or having you play mostly with how well you shoot yourself. Your stats still play a part, but it’s just as much an action-frenzied shooter mode. The success of your shooring still depends a lot on the upgrades and weapons that your have kitted out your characters with, after all it’s always better to have armour piercing bullets.

One thing that’s been interesting to see here were the differences between the platforms in controls. In particular your tactical options – the PC brings up a tactical HUD when you press the space bar, allowing you to give controls using your mouse, saving you from having to learn many complicated key combinations to order your squad around or use rarely used options.

Still, I suspect that you’ll be disappointed if shooting is the only thing you focus on. The initial area you had into – after a few introducing conversations – feature some bigger battles, but soon after you’re left in the Citadel, the central area the story revolves around. Even if you only do the mandatory missions, you spend quite a bit of time here figuring out what to do and where to go. If, like us, you instead go out to explore and play through side quests, you’ll easily spend five hours here just reading, soaking in the atmosphere and doing many good (or evil) deeds.

The world is filled with many interesting characters. Although you can’t interact with a lot of NPCs – unlike, say, the many NPCs of Baldur’s Gate, Bioware didn’t write conversations for the otherwise unused NPCs, probably to save on voice acting – the ones that are there have a nice amount of personality. Their missions are interesting too – you can tell Bioware has been learning how to write these more as time goes on, as none feel unnecessary in the grand scheme of things and pretty much all are interesting, with few Fed Ex “give this package to someone else” type quests. Even better, often these side quests lead into each other, making the story ever richer.

Still, beyond that mention must be made of the amazing world building applied. This is the second time, after Jade Empire, Bioware got to create their own world instead of licensing their own, and it seems like they’ve made even more of it than before. The codex is invaluable, summarizing the information about everything you encounter in your travel – races, planets, technology, history and so on. It makes for fascinating reading and stays a good reference work.

Your role on it is fascinating. A lot has been written about it (especially in reference to the third game’s ending), but in the early games, it really feels like a race to prove yourself. It’s pretty gripping so far and makes you wonder where it leads.

All of this even ignores the look and feel of the game. As suitable, the game has evolved in graphics, leading to some lovely vistas. The game actually mostly avoid putting in lots of eyecandy – while there are balconies and larger views, these are mostly functional, showing how life on colonies and around the world work. They’re not showing off, they just show what they have, and the hustle of space travel outside, for example, looks as good – not as magnificent, but also not showing off as much. Sound use is good too, but it feels like in this area, later worlds might allow for better views.

As mentioned earlier we played this game at the same time and chose to construct different characters so we could explore more of the development in the game. Jeroen went for a guy, I created a woman. His is heroic and born to fight, mine is a survivor. This was further differentiated in our choices in class and level ups. This works for this blog but also for us since we play very differently. I enjoy shooters a lot more whilst Jeroen likes to stop and think. This game is actually really flexible to your play style and Bioware need to be applauded for this.

To be honest the main differences between the Xbox 360 and Windows versions are the controls. The Xbox version really does lend itself more to the real-time shooting rather than the squad based tactics (although those are not exactly a strength in this game) since switching weapons and activating abilities have not been that well mapped to the controller. Similarly the interfaces for choosing weapons and upgrades is far easier to use on the PC due to the mouse and keyboard.  So whatever version you get depends on how you like playing… so choose wisely.

Final Thoughts

Writing this up after five hours of play really is not enough to start doing this game justice since we only just got off of the Citadel and began or steps into space. This does follow the rukles we earlier set to protect us from giving up this blog after playing games we were bored with (such as Metal Gear Solid and Utopia) but it means we won’t have the best opinion on games such as these… which just means we need to play these for pleasure afterwards.What a drag!

#899 Demigod

Posted: 11th February 2013 by Jeroen in Games
Tags: , , , ,
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216th played so far

Genre: Strategy
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: Gas Powered Games
Publisher: Stardock

Okay, I can not believe it took me this long to play this game. I have always been a sucker for games that tap into the world of mythology. Whether it be God of War, Okami or Age of Mythology I have devoured these games. With a name like Demigod this game struck me immediately and, like The NewZealand Story, has been in my sights for a rather long time. In fact there are not many of these games that immediately struck my attention from their name or screenshot… guess that means it is time to read more of the blurbs.

Our Thoughts

Okay, so the only really mythological character to feature as a playable character in this game is Sedna from Inuit mythology… apart from that they are all created for the sake of the game (which sucks as I was hoping to play as some actual factual gods and/or goddesses). In retrospect this makes sense (and actually is a bit of an insult to Sedna) since the plot of this game (if you can call it as such) is that the Gods have wandered off somewhere and these demigods are playing war games against each other to see who will get promoted or take over or something equally as inane. Either way it makes sense that Ganesh, Artemis or Loki don’t feature in this game since they are actual factual gods. Oh well. It’s worth noting, though, that others contain similar religious references – Regulus, for example, is a fallen angel, while Erebus is an ancient sort-of god of darkness.

The point of this game, if you could gather, is that you assume the role of one of these characters (ten in total) and play various skirmishes against your fellow demigods. The game itself is a real-time strategy heavily influenced by the Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients whereby you are directly in charge of fighting with and levelling up your hero without being in actual control of the wave after wave of soldiers that fight for your cause. Other things you are able to do in this way include the upgrading of your buildings and portals to further improve your defense and offense capabilities.

The main way of getting ahead, in fact, is in improving your hero. Using some basic RPG tactics (you level up and every level get to improve or add a skill) your hero gets specific powers. This can be a basic stat upgrade for each, but more important is improving other stats. These differ depending on the hero. For example, Rook is a large building-type monster, reminiscent of Shadow of the Colossus. By upgrading it, you can add the power to leech life from building or erect your own defensive towers, but, even more awesome, you can get it to grow towers on its shoulders, containing archers, trebuchets or other upgrades that attack enemies on their own. Others gain the ability to drain life, grow a field of thorns that attack and trap enemies, or allow them sniping abilities from the other side of the battlefield. Each hero feels unique and quite powerful through that, and each is a different playing experience.

In many ways this game is very simple but things are made less so by the complete lack of documentation with this game. This made the first skirmish rather one sided since the majority of it was spent figuring out what each button does and how the differences between each demigod can affect their playabilty. After this you tend to get the hang of things andyou can start having a lot more fun. However, a lot of this fun depends on online multiplayer or how happy you are playing skirmishes by yourself. It’s annoying since there is a huge scope for a campaign mode or at least an actual story but the plot has to be stitched together from character biographies.

This is not a complete dealbreaker because there is enough variety in the characters and game modes to lend itself to hours of challenging fun. The game modes are incredibly standard so it’s not worth going over them here since the real stars of the game are the characters. This motley crew of a vampire, minotaur and other fantasy creatures ooze personality and the character you choose really influences how well you do in certain game modes, yet it does not feel broken in any way. The characters that steal the show are The Rook and The Queen of Thorns (although the angel that references R. Kelly and Mr. Mister is also pretty awesome). The Rook is a towering creature with archers in his shoulders (much like a wooden Collosus of Rhodes) whilst the Queen of Thorns is a barely-clad fairy who rides in a rose-chariot on the top of four golden beetles.

One of the things that’ll draw you in as early are the game’s graphics. While one of the things you forget about after you get into the game further, the game is often gorgeous. The models are nice and detailed, in particular the demigods, adding a lot of personality to the characters you can pick between. It’s amazing how much the game can keep going, too – plenty of enemies, detailed god models and plenty of stuff flying around without a single problem. It looks amazing and big, and works both zoomed in closely and from a large distance. There’s a seperate mention here for the buildings, which look nice, especially your citadel which keeps upgrading. It’s a gorgeous game.

Final Thoughts

There are few DotA type games on the list, and it seems odd the original (which already spawned its own genre, heavily contested now between several companies created a sequel) isn’t on the list. Still, out of the options this is a good version of it, with a fun, strategic gameplay, good AI support and stunning graphics.

The only oversight is that there’s no singleplayer mode, which feels especially obvious now. You have to guess how the game works and what your options are, which takes time and may mean you’re facing a tough first few games. Perhaps for a sequel?

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