Last Week's Games: Sonic Transformed, Catan, Exploding Kittens, Eternal Crusade and 911 Operator...

This week was busier than I expected!

Let's not worry too much about why a Hedgehog who is
the fastest thing alive needs a car...

My new game for this week was Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed, recently downloaded for the Xbox360. This is a kart racing game with the usual line-up of Sonic characters, plus another several characters from Sega’s other properties such as Alex Kidd, Super Monkey Ball, Shinobi and, bizarrely, Wreck-it Ralph. I was expecting to play a few rounds of this and then put it to bed, but I was astonished and delighted by how much fun this game is! I’m working through the World Tour at the moment, which is great for introducing the game’s modes – racing, battles, time trials, drift challenges, that sort of thing. The races are pretty easy – you don’t need to win the race to beat the level; you only need to come third – but some of the other challenges are pretty tough. The drifts, in particular, require a lot of precision. I initially chose Sonic for my play through, because you don’t buy a Sonic the Hedgehog game not wanting to play as Sonic, but when I’d levelled him up as high as he’ll go and couldn’t progress him any further, I tried playing as Danica Patrick, who handles very well. I wondered what Sega game she was from and was surprised to discover that she is, in fact, a real person! I’ve got to the end of the World Tour – just the Bonus levels to do now – but the game still has a lot to offer and I’m nowhere near fed up with it yet, so I’ll keep going for a bit longer!

It’s a little strange how that works out as I tend to prefer games with storylines. Or, at least, I think I do. But a competently-designed racing game has a very addictive “just one more go” mentality that is proving every bit as fun as an engaging plot. I enjoy having a nice balance between the two.

A mixture of non-sequitur and smarmy self-reference
often mistaken for comedy by the same sort of people
who describe themselves as "random..."

Later in the week I had a Wednesday afternoon in Warlords and Wizards, and played an enjoyable game of Catan with a couple of the lads in there which I was very pleased to win! I also had a go with Exploding Kittens; it’s a card game where you have to avoid picking up certain cards from a blind draw. The art is amusing, though very much “of its time,” and the game mechanics work even though it is based on luck. But to be honest I didn’t think much of it. It’s far too reliant on luck for me, and the theme doesn’t lend itself to a compelling plot or reason to be doing what you’re doing. The kids in the shop enjoyed it, and if someone got it out at a party I’d join in, but I won’t be spending any money on Exploding Kittens. A change of schedule means that my regular visits to Warlords and Wizards on Wednesdays have now come to an end, but I will still pop in when I can. It’s a great little shop!

I had a few rounds of Eternal Crusade; what I’ve started doing with that is trying to progress with one character until I’ve reached a Requisition Points Bonus; there are usually three available bonuses worth 1500 points each, and once I’ve achieved one I’ll move on to the next character. The reason for this is that the one you’ve won takes a while to be replaced, and could be replaced with something you could have been working on while you were playing. It also lets me have a go with some of the other factions, which is always nice.

The level I'm stuck on, funnily enough.

Finally, I continued playing 911 Operator, which I originally tried way back in February (I had to go back through my blog to find that out.) It’s odd to play games about going to work, but I really enjoy the core gameplay loop! I think the campaign could have done with fewer cities and a bit more time to develop in each city, as the improvements you make usually only occur once before you have to move on. The map doesn’t make much difference to what’s going on.

Let’s see what I’ve got time for next week…

Last Week's Games: Split/Second, Eternal Crusade, X-Wing, Catan, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Pathfinder

Quite a bit to get through this week…

Get ready to blow stuff up!

My new game for this week was Split/Second, a racing game recommended by Metal Jesus in one of his Hidden Gems videos. It’s an arcade racing game with a TV show-like aesthetic, where you drive in various challenges to compete for enough credits to advance to the elite races – and hopefully the next episode! What I like about this is that this is purely an arcade racing game; there’s no micro-managing your vehicle, no sense of realism in the game. It’s just you against the cars and the environment.

Oh yes, the environment. The main gimmick of the game is that you can, once you’ve drifted enough and been on someone’s tail for long enough to build up your power meter, trigger certain parts of the environment to cause problems for your rivals. More often than not, these come in the form of explosions that throw them off the track, but there’s some fun ones as well. In one of the earlier tracks, triggering a certain point causes a digger to swing its shovel around that creates an obstacle. It works for a couple of reasons: Firstly, you can’t just press the button to ruin someone’s day; it needs precise timing and knowledge of the track in order to make it work effectively. Secondly, certain of these trigger points change the entire layout of the track, so chances are you won’t be racing on the same bit of track on the next lap!

I played Split/Second for a couple of hours and I was really enjoying it so I’ll definitely be playing some more!

I carried on with Eternal Crusade, there’s a live campaign running over the next few days where you have to win five battles for a large reward of Rogue Trader Credits. These are used to buy weapons and armour that affect the character aesthetically. They’re no better or worse than the equipment you can buy; they just look different. This is the Micro-Transaction element of the game; you can pay money for these things but since it wouldn’t increase my level of enjoyment of the gameplay, I certainly won’t be spending money on them! But if I can get enough RTC to get an upgrade for one of my guns, I might do that. Otherwise they’ll just sit there gathering e-dust!

I found myself with a little more time to be out and about than I normally do, and on Wednesday I went in to Warlords and Wizards and had a game of X Wing with my old friend Mason. I’ve known Mason a while and his collection of Imperial ships has grown in that time! I took on his force with my Trenchrunners, and had a run of good luck in the beginning of the game. However, the ferocious abilities of Quickdraw, as well as the support provided by a local shuttle, meant it was a very hard game that I eventually lost. Great fun though, cheers Mase!

Then on Friday I had a game of Catan with a couple of young lads who go to the shop. They’re getting quite in to it now and with that comes a certain amount of skill. I got off to what I thought was a good start by heading straight for the ports, but they managed to break up my Longest Road, and one of the lads won the game on at least three bought victory points. Well done!

All sorts of different roles...

We also had a quick game of One Night Ultimate Werewolf; I had the app on my Kindle Fire and we sat down for a four-player game. I was the Werewolf with one of the other lads, and I tried to bluff it to claim to be the seer; they saw through it eventually but time had run out by then and we all voted for the Troublemaker. Great fun!

Finally on Sunday I continued Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords with Dave, Victor, Morgan and Ian. For the first time, I’ve run a campaign all the way up to level 8, and the lads were happy to level up!

I’m expecting a quieter week next week, so see you then!

Last Week's Games: Shogun: Total War, Warhammer 40K, Get Bit, Zombie Dice

Let's see who's standing at the end of this battle!

My new game for this week is Shogun: Total War. The Total War series is one of the ones I’ve been meaning to have a go at for a long time, and while there are a lot of games out there for it now, I have an almost obsessive need to play games in sequence, so I’m playing Shogun first. I played through the tutorials, which was just as well since the interface is unlike any strategy game I’ve ever played. I also had a go through the campaign, but I didn’t really have much of an idea of what I’m supposed to be doing; building up an empire is obvious but I found that battles are not to be entered into lightly! I did, however, have the foresight to set the win conditions up to something other than total domination. I remember playing Star Wars Battlefront 2’s Galactic Conquest mode with my sister years ago, during which I discovered that the problem with potentially endless campaigns is just that – they take ages, and you’ll lose interest in it long before you reach the end. I set up the win to take a certain number of provinces, and to survive for 70 years. But I think I might go back and restart, with a better idea of what I’m supposed to be doing.

I wonder if my need to play video games in sequence hampers my enjoyment of them somewhat. Am I missing some great games because I haven’t played the first ones? Anyone who’s played the Witcher series would probably say that I am; The Witcher 3 looks to be the best game in the series but I haven’t bothered with it because I haven’t played the first two to completion – and I’m unlikely to find time to do so! It shouldn’t matter with Total War because they’re stand-alone campaigns; not sequential storylines, but lately I’ve become interested in finding the core mechanics of the game before jumping in to the arguably-better later versions. Assassin’s Creed is a good example of this; I’ve missed the better games in the series because I wouldn’t touch them until I’d beaten the first. So I’ll see what Shogun: Total War has to offer. It looks really interesting and I have enjoyed it so far, but I want a little more out of it.

I continued playing Eternal Crusade on my laptop, but was pleasantly surprised when on Sunday I managed to go in to Warlords ‘n’ Wizards in Netherton and play the real thing! I got to play a game of Warhammer 40,000, using my Salamanders against Chaos Daemons. We played the Ancient Relic mission, which requires you to take and hold one objective for six victory points. I won because the objective way in my deployment zone. It was a good game but we had to it call early, and for my next one I’ll be using a substantially smaller army because I found myself looking at the rules for the new edition of the game far too often; it’s only my second game. Nonetheless, I like how the vast majority of the new rules are working out; especially how the templates have been removed so there is a point to Frag missiles now!



The front cover of the original X-Wing game.

Robots. Swimming away from a freaking shark.

I also had a game of Star Wars: X-Wing against the same guy, and managed to win with my tournament list consisting of 1^st-wave ships and characters. I was pleased that running the Trenchrunners worked, and I also learned not to fire Proton Torpedoes against a ship that has lots of shields and R2-D2, who recharges them!

I played some board games with Kirsty as well. The first was Get Bit, where you have to play cards to have plastic robots with detachable limbs swim away from a shark. There were the beginnings of a really good game in there but I wasn’t familiar enough with it to be able to explain it well enough for Kirsty to really know what she was doing! We also played Zombie Dice, which requires almost no skill other than pushing your luck. It is, ironically, brainless fun, which at the end of a long day is exactly what we needed! 
 

Last Week's Games: New Super Mario Bros, Diggy's Adventure, Hey, That's My Fish!

This week, I’ve been very pushed for time with work, gigs with the bands, playing video games took something of a back seat for me! But I managed to get some games in.

This happened quite a bit...

The first one was, to my surprise, New Super Mario Bros on the DS. I happened across someone who had the same game and we had a go with the multiplayer mode; Mario vs Luigi. In this, you have to collect five stars before your opponent does, using power ups and platforming to hamper your opponent any way you can. There’s a lot of fun to potentially have with this mode, however I should point out that the person I was playing against is very young and there was something of a disparity in skill level, so we didn’t play for very long!

The Dark Angels...

I continued my eternal crusade on, er, Eternal Crusade in those evenings where I had a bit of time. I’m still enjoying it, and I’m becoming a lot more familiar with the different classes now. I’m still absolutely hopeless at it, typically finishing somewhere in the bottom third of the leader board, and against players who have been playing since launch I haven’t got a chance. I’m also starting to notice the fact that there’s not really that many maps. It could do with a few more, to vary things up a bit! But on those times where I manage to sneak up behind someone and one-shot kill him, or capture a control point, or take out three guys at once (the latter happens at very infrequent intervals!) it’s really good fun, and I think this will see me through a long time yet.

With a chin to rival
Buzz Lightyear...

My new game for this week was Diggy’s Adventure on my Kindle Fire. This is a game where you have to make your way through a top-down cave by digging through collapsible squares of sand, gravel and the like. Each dig takes a certain amount of energy, and if you run out, you either need to manage your resources to make it last longer, or buy some more in micro payments! It’s competently-designed, doesn’t take itself too seriously (either that or the developer’s writing team had the week off!) and was a nice enough way to fill half an hour. But there’s not much challenge in the game that I’ve been able to see, apart from a couple of lever puzzles that are easy enough to work out. I guess later on there’d be an element of resource management in there, where you dig just far enough to achieve your objective and come back and clear the level later (the game rewards you for clearing the entire level.) There’s nothing wrong with Diggy’s quest, but like with most mobile games, I’m not sure how long it will keep me engaged.

Damn that robber!

I went in to Warlords and Wizards again and had another game of Settlers of Catan, where it got very competitive! We had to call the game early due to time allowance, but it was a pleasure to play again and I’m looking forward to the UK Championship at the UK Games Expo! I’m not expecting to do very well, but it will be interesting to play some different games with some different people. I also continued painting some Chaos Space Marines, I’ve nearly finished them now which will bring me up to 20.

Brutal but fun!

Finally, I had a few games of Hey! That’s My Fish with my Mom and my girlfriend Kirsty. It’s a really nice game to play because it doesn’t take itself too seriously, the rules take about a moment to work out (apart from working out what order to place the penguins in, I didn’t need to refer to the rules even once,) it’s really good fun and surprisingly tactical. I won the first two games and my Mom won the third. We helped her out with a move at one point near the end which turned out to be the deciding point, but as long as everybody is having a good time, it doesn’t really matter who wins or loses. I know that sounds like a very wishy-washy thing to say but it is absolutely true!

Last Week's Games: Kill the Bad Guy, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Catan

This week, I played two new games…

Splat!

The first was Kill the Bad Guy on the PC. It is a puzzle game where you have a “bad guy” taking a pre-determined route in a city-like setup; the objective of the game is to kill him and make it look like an accident. You can drop a piano on their head, start a car so it goes flying in to him, make a power line fall on to water that he’s walking in etc.

It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure how well it’s pulled off. It’s not a good-looking game; the environments are deliberately designed to be very drab. It’s pretty easy, at least in the earlier levels, to work out what to do; the challenge is in timing and force. For example, one of the stages involves launching a car over a ramp and in to the bad guy. Do this with too much force and the car will go straight over his head, but too little and the car won’t go far enough to reach him. How much force to use is precise, and the build-up metre is very sensitive; it takes a second to fill the whole thing. There are other objectives too, such as finding a passport hidden in the environment, and catching a tooth that comes flying off the bad guy when you kill him. Secondary objectives add to the way you kill someone, but that’s usually described in very vague terms and not easy to work out. I’ll give it another go, but I hope I can find a bit more fun in it than I currently am.

Monkey is performed by the
always-excellent Andy Serkis

The other new game was Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. This is a Post-Apocalyptic action-adventure; you play an agile but brutish thug called Monkey, who escapes slavery with a vulnerable but tech-savvy young woman called Trip. Trip binds Monkey to her using a slave headband, and he now has to guide her home, initially through what was once New York. First impressions of the game are good, because it breaks out of the usual desolate wasteland that forms the basis of most post-apocalyptic adventures. The adventure occurs roughly two hundred years after the apocalypse, and nature is starting to reclaim what was once modern New York City; traces of civilization are still there but the environment is surprisingly lush and green. The game plays well; less fluidly than I’m used to but it better contributes to the idea that the stunts and combat moves that Monkey pulls off are quite difficult to do. I’ve got a little way into the game and I’m looking forward to coming back to it!

And I continued playing Eternal Crusade; I’m still enjoying playing the game. I’ve played multiplayer shooters before like Gears of War and Gotham City Imposters; arguably better games but I suspect I’m enjoying this one a lot more for the 40K setting!

Always a pleasure to play this...

I went in to Warlords ‘n’ Wizards in Netherton and played The Settlers of Catan with a couple of the people there. I’ve often described this game, borrowing a quote from Yahtzee, as the game to play “if you’re a bit strapped for cash in the run up to Christmas and you need to lose three friends as quickly as possible.” A harsh description, and one that doesn’t necessarily fit the nature of the game about settlements where no one gets killed. But it’s very competitive, with the trade mechanic being almost entirely a matter of personal choice and establishing how one can benefit from a deal. I like it because it is a self-contained game; you don’t have to micro-manage optimal army lists or paint models to play. You go in with the materials that the game gives you, and your wit and experience which you have to earn – there is a lot of skill involved!

I signed up for some tournaments; one of them is Catan. This will be happening at the UK Games Expo in June, and I’ll be playing Dominion there as well, which I haven’t played yet, but I like deck builders! I’ll be playing X-Wing at a tournament in Stafford in July, but more on that later… 
 

Last Week's Games: Eternal Crusade, Shadow of the Horned Rat and Drop Assault

This week I’ve been mostly playing Warhammer… 
 

If you don't like the taste of salt,
steer clear of Eldar...

I’ve been having a pretty decent time with Eternal Crusade; I’m starting to find my feet a bit with the game and the different classes now. I enjoy running the Heavy class if I’m Chaos, the Jump Assault class if I’m Space Marines and the Slugga if I’m Orks. It’s still very rare that I achieve a score beyond the bottom third of the leader board, but if I place anywhere other than the last position on the table then I’m happy. I’m up to level three with those three factions and I’m enjoying finding the different ways they can advance, although I find it curious that a lot of the buffs you can give them mean less points for certain weapons (you equip your characters on a points-buy system.) When your points limit is 1000, you’d welcome having to spend less on your weapons – and if there was anything else you could conceivably give them in their place, you probably would. As it is, knocking 100 points off your main weapon doesn’t do you much good when all the other equipment slots are full and there’s nothing else you can give them.

Also as I don’t play this style of game very often, I’m not used to the nastiness that very often permeates their multiplayer communities. As it stands, it seems to be a faux pas to play as Eldar, as their hit boxes are slightly smaller and their weapons do a lot of damage. They also seem to be very well co-ordinated. As for me, I don’t really mind; I’ve played against Eldar and won. But I find myself spending a fleeting few seconds wondering if people making those remarks would say that to people’s faces. Maybe they would.

Wow, this looks dated now...

I’ve also been playing Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat. This was a game I borrowed off someone years ago when I was still at school. I think I still have the disc somewhere but I’ll never get it to work on my laptop in a million years, and I’ve got it for the PlayStation but the controls are very difficult on that. So I downloaded it again of GOG and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying playing through it again, although the game is very difficult and I found myself stuck on the same levels I was stuck on all that time ago. I’ll probably keep playing it though!

My new game for this week – I’m on a bit of a Games Workshop kick – was The Horus Heresy: Drop Assault for my Kindle Fire 7. This is essentially a clicker game popular on mobile devices – click on a thing, wait for a thing to happen, click on another thing to make another thing happen, build up more resources so you can click on other things to make other things happen. I wasn’t expecting much more, frankly, but I find myself disappointed that I didn’t get more. It’s supposed to re-enact one of the key moments of the Horus Heresy: The Massacre on Isstvan, but that was a swift and brutal massacre, not a full-blown campaign.

At no point when I was playing
did it get this exciting...

To be honest it’s not a canon I have much interest in exploring. There’s a series of 42 books on it, and I read about the first ten, but they’re so unforgivably grim and bleak that I couldn’t bring myself to read another. Not when I know perfectly well how it all works out anyway, given that the result of the Horus Heresy is what the entire Warhammer 40,000 universe is built upon. If there’s some form of interactive media that’s going to make the journey interesting, I’m probably not going to find it on a mobile game. There’s nothing wrong with Drop Assault, but I didn’t find it very entertaining.

I also had some time in Warlords and Wizards on Saturday night painting some of my Word Bearers. It’s a really nice atmosphere in there and it’s a pleasure to sit down and paint some models for a few hours. I’m looking forward to getting my Word Bearers on the gaming table, but one thing at a time; I’ve still got a load of cultists to paint!

Last Week's Games: Eternal Crusade

I started this week knowing I wasn’t going to have much time, so I was only going to be able to play a few games. By the time we got to the end of it, it was only one…

My new game for this week was Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade. I bought this last week as part of a War bundle from Steam; a lot of the Games Workshop licenced games had come up on there and as I hope to do a complete retrospective on them at some point, I thought I might as well buy it. I didn’t intend to try any of them straight away as I have things to be getting on with, but then it came to my attention that Eternal Crusade was a multiplayer-only online shooter. Now, I’m not very good at these games, and my laptop hasn’t got a particularly fast hard drive so games like this don’t run especially well, but I thought I’d better give it a go before the servers die out.

Funnily enough I'm not sure it looks this good
on my laptop...

The game allows you to choose from one of four Warhammer 40K factions: Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Orks and Eldar. Being the sort of player I am I initially started off with Chaos, but then I had a look at the structure of the game; if you want to get in to a battle you have to choose from a number of areas on the campaign map that only two of the factions will be involved with. Far from remaining loyal to one side, I created a character for all four factions and decided to play as whatever the battle needed at that point. I spend the most time playing as Orks, funnily enough…

As for the game itself, it plays like the multiplayer mode to Space Marine than anything else. You have a mixture of classes taken almost straight out of the 5^th Edition rules: A standard Troops class that can capture objectives, a Heavy Support class with big weapons, a Fast Attack class with a jump pack or similar, and a healer or support class. Some other heroes are available for a price. You start with standard equipment; more can be unlocked as you’re going along and gain experience in battle. You have a certain amount of time to capture a few areas, and if you can hang on to your captured areas before the time runs out, you win. There is also a mode where one side has a limited time to capture all the areas, and the other side has to defend it with limited reinforcements.

I have really enjoyed Eternal Crusade so far and I hope I continue to do so. I have heard some questions raised about the game’s quality; I don’t play a lot of games like this so I don’t know which ones do it any better or worse, but it seems alright so far. I’ll probably try to get what play time I can out of it before the servers go dead, and since I’m enjoying levelling up my characters and playing online matches, this could be a while!

Anyone want to help campaign against the tyranids?

But there is something I do need to be careful of – addiction. I’m not very good at controlling this at the best of times, and I’m noticing the familiar patterns. Eternal Crusade has a quick but very entertaining core gameplay loop, and more than once this week I’ve found myself still playing at some ridiculous hour in the morning after telling myself “just one more game.” It’s certainly not going to help me get through my backlog, since this isn’t a game you beat in the usual sense; even the Player Versus Environment is a bit of a non-starter since no one seems interested in playing it. It does have the potential to get in the way of my work/life balance if I’m not careful, and while it is my intention to keep playing, I’m glad I’ve resolved to play a new game every week – I’ll need something to distract me from this.

So, a new game for next week then. Also, I might get a war game in at some point; I’ve not done that for a while!