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: X-Wing, Ticket to Ride, Castlevania, ZombiU

This week I played a surprising number of games…

The first one was Star Wars: X-Wing. I’m playing through the main campaign mode and I’m about two thirds of the way through the first episode; I’m enjoying it so far. I like how there’s always a specific objective you need to work within the game parameters to achieve; there are escort missions, combat missions, missions with specific targets to destroy, rescue missions and everything in between. You might be forgiven for thinking that’s standard, but the game doesn’t hold your hand. You get a briefing, and then you get dropped into the mission – after that, you’re on your own. You get some support in the form of wingmen and updates from your computer, but you need to work out how you’re going to tackle the mission; the game doesn’t tell you and your wingmen won’t win it for you. Quite often, you’ll work it out through trial and error – but that’s a positive thing; it puts some necessary thought into the process of beating a level.

Also, there’s a risk of you getting captured or killed in the game. Again, you might think this an obvious point, but let me explain: If your ship gets destroyed when you’re on a campaign mission, one of three things will happen. If you auto-eject, you’ll either be rescued by the Rebels or captured by the Empire. If you can’t eject because of bad luck or a systems malfunction, you die. If either of the latter two happen, your character can be revived, but he loses his rank and experience and is demoted to Flight Officer, the second lowest rank.

In this edition of the game this doesn’t make much difference, but in previous editions, this could potentially have an effect on your wingmen. You could have several pilots on file, and before you launched a mission you’d have the opportunity to deploy these pilots into the ships that would be flying with you – the higher their rank, the more competently they would fly. You’d run the risk of them dying but you’d also have a wing of pilots you’d created and nurtured yourself. They even had pictures! This was removed from the Windows version of the game I’m playing, presumably to streamline the experience, but it also removed the potential for some X-COM-like storytelling in there in addition to the main campaign.

Great game.

I also spent some time in Warlords 'n' Wizards, a new hobby shop in Netherton, and managed to have a game of Ticket to Ride with one of the lads there. Most people who play this know what a great game it is. I won the game, but with Ticket to Ride, the time between playing the game for the first time and understanding what you have to do is quite short, and the guy I was playing picked it up very quickly, so he had a lot of fun as well. That’s the mark of good game design, in my opinion! I might talk about it more in depth on a slow week, but it’s a very well-designed game that everybody should play at least once.

Hard game!

I dug out the WiiU and played a couple of games on that as well. The first was the original Castlevania, and I’d forgotten how brutally hard that game was. I’m going to have to exploit the WiiU’s infrastructure to scum-save the game, because there’s no way I’m going to finish it any other way. Some might say I’m not getting the true experience if I play it with an option to save, but these old games were designed in a time where the length of the game was extended by its difficulty. I’m having fun with Castlevania – but I’m not looking to get bogged down.

The other one was ZombiU. This was an interesting take on the Zombie game genre, because it functions like a Rogue-lite: you take a survivor up until the point where you die, and then when you take over as another survivor, you have the opportunity to fight your previous character – now a Zombie – and pick up your old equipment. I’ll talk a bit more about it next week! 

Last Week's Games: X-Wing and Final Fantasy II

This week I’ve found myself short of spare time, so I didn’t play many games. But I get to talk more at length about the games I did play, so here they are: 

The main game I played was Star Wars: X Wing. I talked about this last week, but I’ve been getting really in to it again because of how the game plays. It is a space flight simulator; there’s all sorts of different controls and buttons and you have to use most of them at some point in order to succeed. It’s challenging for a number of reasons, the main one being the power distribution system, but it’s not insurmountable and is still a lot of fun.

I'm pretty sure this is the edition
of X-Wing I am playing...

I beat the A-Wing proving ground: a track where you have to fly through gates and shoot targets, some of which shoot back. The track is the same layout no matter what ship you’re in. There are eight levels you have to beat in order to gain the reward for it; a flight badge. You have a limited amount of time to beat it, which gets progressively smaller as you beat the levels. If you miss a gate, you incur a penalty of 15 seconds; for some of the middle levels, that’s disastrous. Also, the targets shoot more aggressively in the later levels, and in the last one, they even shoot you from behind – but if you shoot them, you gain 2 extra seconds to complete the level. There are certain stages that are all but impossible to beat without this.

The challenges in the proving ground are more or less substantial depending on what ship you are flying. The middle tier levels have the tightest time and usually present a significant challenge, but less so with the A-Wing as it moves fast enough for time to be less of a consideration. It doesn’t do such a good job at boosting its shields though, and for that reason, the later levels with the more aggressive targets were more challenging. If your systems start to shut down then you’re in trouble; if your guns are taken out then you can’t fire back, if your shields are knocked out you’ll be destroyed in seconds, and if your flight control or engine goes then you lose a lot of time getting them repaired. Despite all this it was a surprising amount of fun addressing the different challenges each level presents, knowing that there is way to beat it if you can only get it right.

I also enjoyed the A-Wing historical missions; they’re less challenging and a relaxing change of pace. Here’s where a lot of the genius of the game design comes in to play: The missions rarely take more than a few minutes to beat, and you can play through them quite quickly, but there is a reward for each one. It’s a graphic of a badge on a display uniform; not much in itself, but because the game shows you a tangible reward for doing these training missions, you have the incentive to beat them all.

I started the main campaign mode as well. More on that next week!

These hornets are a threat at the beginning.
Not for long...

I also progressed with Final Fantasy II. I love the Final Fantasy games but rarely see one through to the end; the first game is the only one where I’ve managed it so far. I’m having a lot of fun with it, and I’ve arrived at the point where I’m heading for Mysidia Tower. I’m playing it on my Gameboy Advance, although I find that the game is best enjoyed when I have my phone to hand. I don’t know whether it’s a design error in this edition of the game, but whatever command is supposed to display the world map isn’t working! I’ve had to call up an image of the world map come up on more than one occasion so I can see where I’m supposed to go. The game itself isn’t all that challenging, although I am aware that the difficulty level was re-balanced for the GBA editions.

So, what’s next? More of the same, or will I try a different game? Will I even have time? We’ll see…

Last Week's Games: Streets of Rage 2, Vectorman 2, Bioshock Infinite, Star Wars: X Wing and Final Fantasy II

I’ve picked up and played quite a few games over the course of this week. Let’s see what they all are: 

Some cosmetic differences to the
characters in the game, funnily enough...

First game I had a go with was my favourite game of all time, Streets of Rage 2. I’ve waxed lyrical about this game many times before, and I still get it out every now and then because I’ve only got one thing left to do with it now: try to beat the game on the hardest difficulty without cheating. I tend to use Max for my play through, which might seem like an odd decision because of his speed, or lack thereof. However, at 20,000, 50,000, and every 100,000 points thereafter, you get an extra life, and this happens far more quickly with Max than with the other characters because you score more points for his high-impact grapple moves, and I can make up for his lack of manoeuvrability with his sliding tackle. I can therefore rack up a huge amount of extra lives in the early game, which generally keeps me going until the 6^th – or if I’m very lucky, the 7^th stage.

I didn’t manage it this time; I fell down on the one part I always manage to mess up on – the elevator on the 7^th stage, where there’s a huge ‘minor boss’ rush section and barely any room to move. Max isn’t great at manoeuvring and against the high-speed ninjas, it’s a struggle. It tanks most of my lives, with barely any left for stage 8 if I’m fortunate enough to get there. On this occasion I did, and I got as far as the boss rush in the elevator and finally died to Z.Kusano. Next time…

The other game I had a go with on the same disc is Vectorman 2. I’m after the achievement points for this one, and to get them I simply have to get to Scene 11. The problem with this is that the game is boss-hard and I can’t get past scene 5. It’s a throwback to old-school gaming where you have to study a level to find all the secret areas and power-ups. I wish I could wrap this up a little more quickly but this game was designed at a time where the longevity of the game could be increased by its difficulty!

That's the bit I've just done, if you're wondering...

I played Bioshock Infinite as well; I’m slowly going through it. For me, with the Bioshock games, the story takes a long time to get going. I’ve played all of them up to this one (not the DLC though,) and found myself having a standard experience for the first few hours of the game, before the story and the stakes ramp up in the second half. I’ll keep going at it; one of the better qualities of the game is that it is divided in to sections that you can play through for roughly an hour or so at a time – it’s not necessary to sit down and beat the whole thing in one go.

I played Star Wars: X Wing on my laptop as well. I had this game in several iterations in my youth, and enjoyed it immensely at the time. It harks back to an era of flight simulators where potentially any key on the keyboard does something, and while the control schemes can feel a little contrived sometimes, it’s probably closer to the experience of being a fighter pilot than an arcade shooter! I’m trying to get through all the Y-Wing training and historical missions; while the latter are easy enough, the proving ground was very tricky, as the lack of speed meant I needed to be on it with my targeting!

I continued the game of Civ IV I mentioned last week but I found I was getting stuck in a rut, so I don’t know how long I’ll keep that.

Finally, when I was necessarily restricted to a handheld, I was playing Final Fantasy II on my old Gamebody Advance. I tend to play this one very small bit at a time, in this case the rescue of Princess Hilda from the Palamecia Coliseum.

Am I going to play as many games next week? We shall see…