I spent the vast majority of last week enthralled with the
Horus Heresy: Legions. I mentioned this last week so if you want to know what
kind of game this is have a look at that, but for now I’m going to mention my
progression. I’m getting quite good at the game now, and I can often hold my
own against all but the toughest of decks. I built a few decks around Garviel
Loken and whatever the daily mission objective was, but then it occurred to me
to build a deck out of Loken and a larger percentage of Chaos Cards – the
latter can be applied to any faction, as no legion involved with the Horus
Heresy escaped corruption! This works reasonably well, if not particularly
consistently. The Chaos Cards have some powerful effects but the higher level
cards are also quite unpredictable, and some are as likely to do some damage to
you as well as your opponent. Nonetheless, I’m enjoying the deck!
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| Garro has a cool healing ability, but the rest of his force will need to hit pretty hard to win... |
I also built a deck out of Saul Tarvitz and the Mechanicum. The
Emperor’s Children has been an interesting faction to run since their benefits
are usually tied to perfection – while powerful in their own right, the
Emperor’s Children cards often have a special bonus applied when they use all
of your remaining energy to play them. Tarvitz’s effect of lowering the energy
you need to play a card by one makes this more flexible, and combined with the
Mechanicum, who have some very powerful machines at their disposal, they are a
force to be reckoned with. It doesn’t make much difference to my win:loss
ratio, but it’s a refreshing change of pace that I need sometimes.
I rarely give a free-to-play game much attention, but I’ve
put more time in to Legions than a significant number of games I’ve actually
paid for, so it must be doing something for me!
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| One of the best In Medias Res beginnings I've ever seen in a video game. You don't even know the hero's name at this point. |
On the Switch, I continued with Final Fantasy VII, getting
to the point where you leave Midgar after rescuing Aeris from the Shinra
building. I’ve really enjoyed playing it again, and even more so now that I’ve
been playing pen-and-paper role-playing games for a while and have a much
better idea of a class-based system. This isn’t used obviously in Final Fantasy
VII, but it’s helpful to remember what everyone is supposed to be doing and,
apart from a couple of times when I’ve made a mistake with regard to what
materia everyone has when I have the option to change it, I’ve been doing quite
well.
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| Who's done Lemmings before? |
Finally I’ve been playing a game that was among the first
video games I ever played and has now been updated to a mobile port: Lemmings.
I had a great time with this game when I was very young – to this day, I still
remember my Dad laughing at the first level without really knowing what to do –
and I’ve missed playing it ever since the Acorn Computer we played it on
stopped working. This mobile port is not a re-make of the original game.
Instead, it is an updated version of the game to bring it in line with mobile
gaming. It is, for example, no longer possible to give instructions to
individual lemmings. Instead, the game works on a grid-based system, where you
click the square you want to affect with an instruction, and the first lemming
to get there will do it. For example, if you want a lemming to dig through a
square, you touch the square and press the button when it comes up. The lemming
will either dig across it, or down it, depending on where it happens to be in
relation to the square you’ve clicked.
It works quite well, though it lacks some accuracy that
would be useful. There are certain situations where you have to work to avoid
traps, and it would be really helpful to just get one lemming to where you need
to be. The only way to really do this is to block the other lemmings, and you
have to time it exactly right or you’ll let more through than you meant to.
So, a fun-filled week this week! Let’s see what next week
brings…
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