Last Week's Games: Far Cry 2, Orcs and Elves, Dungeons and Dragons

Happy New Year, people! I make the usual resolutions every year – eat more healthily, practice my music more, write more songs etc – and I very rarely see them through to the end. However, as this blog series is doing reasonably well (roughly 100 views every week, which isn’t much but it is consistent!) I thought I’d try a new resolution in to it for 2018, and that is: Play a new game every week.

This might sound expensive, but I’ve also got a massive backlog of games, many of which I’ve owned for years and never played. I’m missing out on quite a bit in my collection of games without having to buy necessarily buy any more of them! So I’ll try to find time to play a new one every week. It will be tough, not least because many of them are long-form games that need weeks or even months of play to beat, but I’m up for the challenge and I’ll give it a go!

Funnily enough, sniping's not really
my thing any more...

For the Christmas Holiday week I’ve mostly been playing Far Cry 2. As I mentioned last week, this is a game I’ve owned for years and I’ve got really now! Maybe I’m enjoying games at a different level these days. For example, I like the fact that the separate missions take roughly 20-40 minutes to beat; you can do them in small chunks and feel like you’re making progress. I’ve become somewhat obsessed with hunting for the diamonds. I like the shooting, and the certain sense of vulnerability you get from not quite being able to see due to the haze. I’m enjoying the Buddy system as well, where they give you alternative ways to complete missions, give you more missions and rescue you if you get hurt. Indeed, I was actually quite sad when Josip, one of the buddies who’d been with me most of the game, died because he’d got in to trouble and was too badly injured by the time I’d got to him to help. I find the campaign is moving very slowly, as there’s a lot of faffing about with side missions – but as there’s almost always a valuable reward for these, it doesn’t feel like filler. Open world games have arguably lost their way over the last few years, as there was only so far this could go without becoming bloated, but Far Cry 2 managed to create a compelling world with just enough to do that it keeps me coming back. Whether it’s enough for me to see the game through to the end is a bit of a, er, Far Cry, especially since I’m back at work tomorrow and won’t have as much time for games like this, but we’ll see how we get on. I’d like to see it through to the end after all this time.

The wand talks to you. Yeah,

I also got Orcs and Elves for the Nintendo DS for Christmas and I’ve been playing that when I’ve got a spare few minutes. This is a roleplaying game somewhere between Legend of Grimrock and Fatal Labyrinth; you play as the son of an Elf adventurer and you’re on a quest to find out what happened to the Dwarven King. It’s a roleplaying experience with, from what I can tell, all the fat chewed off: There’s no assigning points to level up, or min-maxing stats, or customisation that I can see. It’s all about dungeon bashing, and collecting loot. And I’m fine with that; it’s a simple enough experience and one that I think works very well on the DS. I’ve not played many games that meld pick-up-and-play with a compelling plot and good gameplay mechanics so well!



I might talk about the orange cover
if it's a slow week...

Finally, I’ve volunteered to run a Dungeons and Dragons game at the Black Country Roleplaying Society. I’ll be running Palace of the Silver Princess, a 1^st edition module converted in to 5^th edition for the purpose. This is a bit of a risky move for me given that I don’t have a lot of time to prepare and run sessions these days, but it’s a simple-enough adventure and I’m hoping to do a lot of the legwork in the run up to Thursday when I run the first session.

Backlog Beatdown: Blowing stuff up with Ace Combat: Assault Horizon

How I came to own Ace Combat: Assault Horizon was a bit of a weird one. I first became aware of it watching Angry Joe’s review of it; this was so long ago that I couldn’t remember the score but it I remember thinking at the time it looked pretty good. I hadn’t played a flight sim/combat game for a long, long time – not since the original Air Combat on the Playstation, and since that game was released before analogue controls were standard, it didn’t handle all that well. But I happened to see a copy of it in Dudley Market, remembered the review, and because I fancied something a little different play decided to pick it up and give it a go.

Playing it, I actually found it to be pretty good. You play as a number of Ace Combat fighters – a fighter, a bomber and a helicopter pilot at various stages of the game. While some of these sections are handled better than others – Turret sections are rarely welcome, for example – the game is generally very good, challenging and varied enough so that it doesn’t outstay its welcome.

I had to get rid of the cockpit view as it just got in the way.
How actual pilots cope with it I don't know.

I am aware that this is part of a long-running series and that Assault Horizon was an attempt to give it a more ‘Arcade’-y feel. The chief innovation in this game was the ‘Dogfight’ mode, which you could initiate if you got close enough to your enemy. As I understand it, the idea is that it’s very difficult to deal with enemy planes up close and personal means that quite a lot of the combat is done at a range. Dogfight mode attempts to rectify this; If you get close and press LB+RB, the camera zooms in on the plane you’re following and you have to keep your missile lock on him long enough to fire one. It essentially becomes an on-rails shooter at this point, and gives the game a somewhat cinematic feel, although you quite quickly recognise where it’s used to set up the set pieces in the scenery.

There is a certain strategic element to this, as you have to pick your spots carefully. The Dogfight mode is designed to make the fights with the more skilled pilots less of a slug-fest – and if your objective is timed, using it takes up time you don’t have. It’s therefore wise not to do it with everything, and try to take some of the smaller planes out with your regular missiles. Recognising when to do Dogfight Mode and when not to is the key to beating the harder levels.

The helicopter missions have been criticised for being rubbish but I actually quite liked the change of pace. This also had a certain strategic element to it. Your missions were rarely timed but it was good to plan your approach, as taking on too many targets at once would rarely end well. It also made flying through terrain a challenge, as the enemy missiles would get you easily if you fly too high. Then again I really enjoyed Desert Strike when I was a kid…

The Bomber missions serve mainly as another change of pace; glorified turret sections and skilled piloting segments would probably not be too much fun by themselves but it balances nicely into the whole single-player campaign.

As for the campaign itself, I don’t play many modern military games, but if I did, I expect they would look a lot like this. An antagonist – not American, who knew – is using a new type of super-destructive missile and it is your job to stop it. The story segments are reasonably-well voice-acted, apart from the lead character who’s a bit of an everyman. The character you remember is Gutz, your wingman, simply because his absolute refusal to take anything seriously makes him the most memorable character.

Now that I’ve finished the campaign, I think I’m done with Assault Horizon. It would be nice to be able to play it in multiplayer but no one’s playing it right now. I might come back and play a harder difficulty if I feel so inclined, but the game was as long as it needed to be and it’s time to move on.