Last Week's Games: Crossword and Thoughts on Hobby Games

Does anybody know?

Time has not been on my side this week with regard to gaming. Work, family and band commitments has meant that the time I managed to find to play games was restricted to this crossword game on my phone, which is a great little app to download and play every so often. It is sometimes quite strange that I can look at a clue for days and not know what it means, then come back to it a week later and have the meaning perfectly clear in my head!

There’s really not that much more to say about Crosswords, though, so instead of that I’m going to talk about hobby games for a bit. There’s quite a bit to say, so this blog is a little longer than usual. I’ve used the tag line on this blog a number of times, and I thought for today I would do a piece about exactly what I mean when I say hobby games:

They’re games that you usually play on a table top with a number of people, normally with some sort of tactile element to them such as cards, dice or moving pieces. And I do enjoy playing them, when I get the chance!

The first board game I can remember playing was Snakes and Ladders; still popular to this very day! While it is a very simple game in terms of its rules and structure, it’s a wonderful little way to engage with people, particularly children. My family played it a lot when I was young, and continued to do so all throughout my childhood. I have fond memories of playing Cluedo, and my brother could play Monopoly at a very early age! 

One of the few times I completed a 40K army.

Getting in to games as a hobby came about when I was thirteen and started collecting Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000. I still enjoy it to this very day, over twenty years later, although I can never escape the feeling that I’m still finding my feet with it to a large extent! I don’t paint or play games with my models anywhere near enough to develop an instinctive knowledge of the games, rules or painting techniques, but it hasn’t gone anywhere and I’ve enjoyed it on and off through most of my life. I even worked for Games Workshop at one point, although I wasn’t particularly good at that either.

But it’s been within the last ten years or so that I’ve really taken an interest in hobby games as a whole. It started with the Games Workshop games, of course, but then my mate Dave introduced me to Yu-Gi-Oh, and while collectable card games are probably the aspect of hobby games I enjoy the least, it was always fun to play with him every now and then. Around the same time I discovered Fantasy Flight games, and played some of their games over the following years before discovering other game developers and publishers. I had always wanted to find out what playing Dungeons and Dragons was like, so I bought a starter set, found a public group of people who meet every week to play Role Playing Games and got involved with that; that’s been a massive part of my social life for a long time! I also started building up a large collection of board games that, while few people seeing it for the first time have a clue what it’s all about, they do find them interesting to look at!

I always enjoy this one!

These days, I play hobby games as and when I can find the time, which currently is not often. I’m fortunate enough to have a steady roleplaying group that I meet with once a month, and I play a few games with my girlfriend and her friends now and then. I make the UK Games Expo an important date on my calendar every year! But I haven’t got the structure in my life at the moment to attend hobby shops and groups regularly. Still, the games are there if I need them!

Hobby games are in something of a “Golden Age” at the moment, where new games are coming out every month and it’s no longer the exclusive domain of unsociable nerds. Nonetheless, there’s a lot of it, and it can be quite tricky to know what I’m talking about, so I thought I’d give you a break-down of what I consider to be the four main categories, and my stake in them:

·        Board Games

·        Collectable Card Games

·        Role-Playing Games

·        War Games

It was my original intention to write it all in this blog post but I found the scope of that was too large for the format my blogs usually take, so I’m going to write them a bit at a time instead, and release them periodically. That should be a bit more interesting!

Last Week's Games: Fallout, Ultra Street Fighter 2: Way of the Hado

It’s been a very busy week in terms of work, band and family commitments so I haven’t had much time to play games. The game I probably put the most time in to was the original Fallout.

I’m not sure what drove me to start playing this again. It was possibly because I watched Yahtzee Croshaw’s review of Fallout 76 on Youtube earlier in the week. He panned it, as most independent critics have, but it took me back to the first game when I realised I never really got very far in it; I certainly never finished it. In fact, the only Fallout game that I managed to beat was Fallout 3, and that was nearly six years ago. But whatever the reason, I got the game out and had another go.

Rest in Peace, Max Stone.

Unusually for me, I shied away from creating a character in favour of using one of the pre-gens – Max Stone. He is the strong, combat-orientated archetype, and while he lacks the subtlety of the other characters, and the roleplaying opportunities of a created one, this time around I just felt like flattening people and blowing things up so that’s the character I chose to use. I got as far as the Radscorpion Caves before getting killed, after grossly over-estimating my own ability.

I started again as the same character, except I made him into a woman and called her Maxine. I found the idea of a muscle-bound goddess running around through Fallout’s wasteland an intriguing prospect, and I feel that female characters don’t have to be faces and thieves all the time! This time, after arriving at Shady Sands I went on to Vault 15, as there was opportunities there to increase my experience points and level the character up to the point where she might survive the Radscorpion caves. This worked up to a point, but I still found myself having to go back to Shady Sands to get healed by Razlow – though, if you give him a Scorpion Tail, he does it for free. I manged to clear out the caves after a few goes.

And here I hit the same wall I very often do when playing Fallout – I have no idea what to do next. Do I go to the raiders and clear them out? I tried that a few times; it didn’t go very well. Do I head on to Hubtown? I gave that a go but died after smart-talking to the priests there, I can’t remember what they’re called off-hand. Do I go to Necropolis? I tried that as well and nearly died, though I was surprised by how quickly Maxine heals. Don’t get me wrong, all of these options are valid to try, at least – but as you’re on a time limit, I can’t get my head out of the idea that I’ve messed the whole thing up if I pick the wrong direction. I’ll probably give it another go a bit later on.

The boss of the game is boss hard...

Also I had a go with Ultra Street Fighter 2: The Final Challengers on the Switch, specifically to play the Way of the Hado mode. This is a first-person section where you control Ryu, and use the motion controls on the joy-con controllers to do his special moves. I’d played it before using the Switch screen, and found it a laugh, but quite difficult to do. This time, I plugged the Switch into the dock and tried it like that. I found it a much more enjoyable experience, and the moves a lot easier to perform. I still struggle with the Hurricane Kick, as I can’t get the motion quite right and more often than not it thinks I’m doing a Fireball, but it’s fun to try!

When you’re playing, you can increase the stats of your character if you beat one of the three available stages. I’m not hitting quite hard enough yet to be able to beat M. Bison, who appears right at the end of the final stage and is very difficult to beat, but I’ll keep trying! This is very much the Switch’s gimmick so it’s worth using this mode to explore what this iteration of Street Fighter II has to offer.

Last Week's Games: Dungeon Master, Colonization, Murder in the Alps, Chainsaw Warrior, Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords

I started this week having a go with a game I haven’t played for a while: Dungeon Master. Some of you may remember I started playing this game back in April, and I didn’t get very far with it! This was partly due to the clunky nature of the game mechanics being a lot more work than fun in many cases, and also, looking back at the date stamp of the blogs I did last year, I discovered Eternal Crusade a couple of days later. I was a little better at the combat last time, and I understand how to work the spells now, but the latter still isn’t going very well. This could be because I’ve picked four heroes that don’t have a lot of mana about them; apparently spells are a crucial part of beating the later game so it might mean another re-start to pick a more balanced group of heroes!

Always more fun with a funny name...

Later in the week I tried Colonization again, and after a couple of hours of play I did what I always do whenever I play a 4X game – realise I’ve messed it up completely and will need to start again. I anticipated this and kept things fresh by entering my name as a famous person from the relevant country every time I do. England is the obvious one as I know some of the names, and I had the entire English Colony of America headed up by Rowan Atkinson at one point. In my current play-through that I’m almost certainly going to have to abandon, the Dutch are being led by Ruud van Nistelrooy. It’s completely useless but it’s fun to think about!

A murderer amongst you... but who is it?

I carried on with Murder in the Alps as and when I had the time, and ended up beating the third stage which I think wraps up the whole of the trilogy. Currently there is one other episode available and another four planned, according to the list of levels you can choose from, and I’m quite glad that I got to the end of an entire trilogy of levels – getting to the end of a story-based game on a mobile device is no mean feat – without having spent any money on it. I wonder if it’s worth doing a review at this point.

10/10 for style, though.

On Saturday I had a go with another Games Workshop licensed game: Chainsaw Warrior. I bought this in a Steam sale at some point and I didn’t pay a lot of money for it, which is for the best because it’s not that good of a game. It’s based on a board game that’s dungeon-bashing with cards, except that games have come on a long way since 1987 when it was released and it shows. The point of dungeon-bashing games is to go in with as good a chance of winning as possible; apart from selecting your equipment at the start of the game there’s almost nothing you can do to affect this and most of it relies on Random Chance. I know that with a Games Workshop game that’s like complaining that grass is green, but it doesn’t make for a hugely engaging experience. Thankfully it doesn’t last long!

I actually got to run a dragon. A proper dragon,
that fights and everything! My players killed it.

Finally on Sunday I carried on with Rise of the Runelords, with Dave, Victor, Morgan and some of their friends. I’ve been running this campaign for over two years now and I’m pleased that a solid core of the group that originally started it are happy to keep playing! Currently we’re at Fortress of the Stone Giants, and I’m really enjoying running this dungeon. What I’ve found with the current edition of the game is that when you have a group of players who know exactly what they’re doing when it comes to optimising their characters, it’s very difficult to frighten them with encounters they can easily beat. Some of the monsters I’ve been putting them up against - Deathwebs, Redcaps and modified Stone Giants – have been capable of doing them some serious harm, and I’ve been able to use terrain and traps to a good effect as well. The result is that it feels less of a grind for my players, and it’s a lot more fun for me.

Last Week's Games: Murder in the Alps, Super House of Dead Ninjas, Colonization, Ultra Street Fighter 2.

Last week, I managed to beat Regicide (see my review here) and after finishing a game that took me 60 hours to complete, I got right on a ‘Pick Up and Play’ kick, where I play a few games for a bit and move on. I know what games I ought to have been playing – Kingdom Hearts isn’t going to be finishing itself, and all the games I’ve bought as part of a series I want to collect would probably be a bit more significant if I played them every now and again. But picking up another 40+ hour campaign is something I’m rarely in the mood to do after beating a game of any significant length, (not that it should have taken me anywhere near that long to beat Regicide but somehow that’s where we are.)

I bet it was always cold though.

I initially looked to my phone, specifically Murder in the Alps. I discussed this last week, along with the reasons I was enjoying the game and a little cross with its payment model. However, I carried on playing and watching videos, getting to the end of the first two stories. It’s pretty good in an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery way, although all of the working out is done in the script – all you’re doing is finding the hidden items. The first story was pretty good, the second was ok but disappointingly short; I’m wondering whether Nordcurrent frontloaded their main efforts into the first story to engage people, and put less effort into the rest? I suspect we’ll find out as we’re going along.

A brief moment to collect your thoughts, then...

I tried a game on the PC that I’d been thinking I should look at for some time – Super House of Dead Ninjas. This is a fast-paced Rogue-like game where you play as a Ninja jumping down the rooms of a tower, slashing, bombing and, er, shuriken-ing your enemies as you go through. It reminded me of Rogue Legacy, unsurprisingly, but this has a much faster pace. Generally speaking it’s a solid experience, and does a lot to promote the “Just one more go!” vibe! As a pick up and play game, it’s excellent, though I don’t know if it will keep my interest into the long term.

Hopefully I'll build a map like this at some point.

One of the games that came up on Rock Paper Shotgun’s 50 Greatest Strategy Games was Sid Meier’s Colonization, and I’ve had that game for a while so I gave it a go. This purports to be an offshoot of the early Civilisation games, focusing more specifically on the period of history when what we now call America was colonized, up to the point where they achieved independence from European control. It was described as a far more focussed experience than Civilisation, and I believe it; rather than tell a sweeping tale of the dawn of the earth to the end of the Space Race for whatever that’s worth, Colonization focuses on a specific part of history that defined the people in the country that made the game, and educated me (I’d never really thought about the War for Independence before.) On the other hand, it’s an old game and not that easy to play; if you don’t know what to do in what order then you can fall flat on your face quite quickly. It’s my intention to keep on with this, but I’ll be using a lot of guides to get through it!

Shocking.

Finally, when I had slightly under an hour to spare last night, I had a go with Ultra Street Fighter 2 on my Switch. I can usually take or leave fighting games, but Street Fighter is probably the ultimate pick up and play game if you’re playing in single player mode, and a nice way to fill 40 minutes. I set the difficulty as high as it would go and played through most of the game as Ryu without losing even once, which I was quite pleased with. I eventually beat it as Vega, and was quite pleased to see his ending sequence substantially different from what I was used to (Street Fighter II: Championship Edition, where it was a text scroll.) It’s not a new game but most of the updates are in the right places!

Backlog Beatdown: Killing the King with Warhammer 40000: Regicide

I bought Warhammer 40,000: Regicide last Summer when I was on a Games Workshop kick. It was my intention to go for a complete collection of all the Games Workshop licensed games, and Regicide had the added benefit of me having seen some coverage on it from TotalBiscuit. It looked more of an oddity than anything else, but I managed to see it through to the end.

On this level, you have to kill, not capture, the enemy...

The game is essentially Chess set in the 40K universe, using the Space Marines and Orks as chess pieces to simulate the battles.  How Regicide differs from Chess is that once you have moved, you can use abilities of your pieces on an Initiative Points system to attack your opponent. This works on a percentile mechanic, and usually amounts to shooting them, or attacking them in close combat if you’re in an adjacent square. It takes longer to eliminate a piece using this method, but if you focus enough attacks in one place, you can take out entire armies without having to capture anything; the usual method for Chess. This is augmented by additional abilities from the various pieces: Devastators (Bishops) have the ability to focus their attacks to do more damage at the expense of being able to move, Assault Marines (Knights) have increased attack power after they move and can also throw Krak (anti-armour) grenades, and so on. This creates an additional strategic layer to the game and sets it apart from either Chess or 40K in a way that, for the most part, works reasonably well.

The game is presented well enough; the graphics are fine and the sound is good. The music is thematic, and loops in a way that runs just underneath your attention level and doesn’t distract. And the sound effects are all in the right places; the guns have a nice kick to them and the close combat attacks sound nice and meaty. The voice acting is competently-performed, and has no surprises for anybody familiar with the 40K universe; tough hulking warriors for the Space Marines, and barely-intelligent growling from the Orks.

The takedown animations are suitably brutal...

The bulk of the game revolves around the Campaign; a series of 50 levels that put the Blood Angels against the Orks in various different deployments and scenarios. There are primary objectives that you need to achieve to beat the level: Eliminate a certain piece, move one of your pieces to a certain square, use a certain ability on a specific piece. There also are secondary objectives that you can complete to achieve a higher score, and these tend to be more specific: Capturing a piece rather than killing it, don’t lose any of your pieces, use a certain ability in a specific place. Depending on the mission these can be very tough, but they make for a fun challenge! However, the level design isn’t always on point. Granted, there is only so much you can do with an 8x8 board, but some of the objectives are designed in such a way that the only way to achieve it is to replay the level over and over again until the AI makes a mistake. That, coupled with the random number generation, means that some of the later missions in particular are won more through luck than judgement.

Sadly, this is all the game really has to offer in its current state. Skirmish games of Regicide – as close to chess as the game gets – is probably enjoyable against a live opponent but the servers are almost completely dead and it’s all but impossible to get a game. If you’re going to play ‘Hotseat’ (both players on the same computer,) you might as well just play chess or 40K. As the points you acquire from the campaign are used to unlock customisation options like different skins and weapons for use in the Skirmish mode, there’s not much incentive to get those either. The single player can be fun, but the sometimes unfair difficulty and RNG makes it frustrating more often than not, and renders the game very difficult to recommend on that basis. I enjoyed it, but it’s a 40K game; I was always going to like it. I don’t necessarily know if anyone else will.

Final Score: 2/5. If you’re sure.