In my quest to play all the Games Workshop licensed games, I
downloaded and played The Horus Heresy: Legions. This is a collectable card
came based around the Horus Heresy era of the Warhammer Universe, and was free
to play so I thought I’d give it a go.
 |
| Who can play the better hand? |
I’d never played a collectable card game on the computer
before. I know Hearthstone is the standard but I’d never been tempted to play
it. I’ve played the real thing – I used to play Magic: The Gathering, and
Yu-Gi-Oh. I don’t anymore, because I don’t have the financial structure to keep
up with the ‘meta[1]’
of the games, and even if I did, I don’t play often enough for it to be a
worthwhile financial investment; I intended to do another blog in this later.
So I had some expectations, which I had to shift to accommodate Legions. Your
first card on the table is always your Warlord, and they come with their own
abilities you can use in the game. Legions kicks you off by giving you Garviel
Loken; the hero of the first Horus Heresy books. After that, the game works on
an energy-based system: Each card is worth a certain amount of energy (1-10)
that you need to play it, and you can only play as many cards as you have
energy for. Your energy for the turn increases each turn you play, up to a
maximum of 10. The idea of the game is to reduce the health of the opposing
Warlord to 0, at which point the game ends and you win.
Apart from that, the main difference between video games and
their table-top counterparts is the health system. Each card that represents a
fighting unit has two numbers: Left is how much damage each unit does, and
right is how much damage it can withstand. The number on the right goes down
cumulatively to the attacks it takes, and when it reaches 0, the unit dies.
This is different to the table-top games, where it is usually necessary to hit
a unit hard enough to eliminate it entirely or it loses no defensive power at
all – and rightly so, or the game would get bogged down while the players try
to keep track of it. But I expect the whole point of playing games like this on
a computer is to have the CPU make those calculations for you!
I’ve been having fun with Legions so far; I win about as
many games as I lose. I don’t intend to spend any money on it, and I’m not sure
how much more time I’ll want to put in to it, but for now it’s doing what I
need!
I had another go at Ultra Street Figher 2, getting through
most of the game with various different people and beating it with Dhalsim, of
all people! He’s not the easiest character to use, however it becomes a lot
easier once you remember that you have other options than to use his most
powerful attacks – the lighter ones are often easier to aim. I also played
Street Fighter with my daughter, which was lovely. She’s only 2 at this point,
but she found it engaging! I think the thing with fighting games is that it’s
pretty obvious what you’re supposed to be doing – beating the other guy up.
There’s no tricky platforming, no levelling up or looting; you just press a
button to make a thing happen which she enjoyed. I let her win a few times – I
wanted her to enjoy it – and called time after 10 minutes. I guess for her,
it’s about winning, but it’s also about doing something with her Dad, and with
video games being a large part of my life, it’s great to be able to do that!
 |
| Beautiful... |
Finally, I’ve been enjoying Final Fantasy VII again on the
Nintendo Switch. There’s not much I can say about this game that I haven’t
already, except that it really does look good on the Switch! Let’s see if I can
beat it this time!
[1]
The system by which you’ve only really got a chance if you keep on top of the
latest releases
No comments:
Post a Comment