Backlog Beatdown: Going into the breach with Into the Breach

I picked up Into the Breach roughly a year ago, having been made aware of it by the adverts on the Steam info page for FTL: Faster Than Light (both games have the same developer,) and an article on Rock Paper Shotgun where Into the Breach was at the top of its list of the 50 Greatest Strategy Games. I was intrigued by the idea that a game stripped back to the essentials of what makes a strategy game should be such a compelling experience.

Artillery blasts are always fun...

Into the Breach is an absolutely brilliant game. It is a turn-based strategy game where you control a squad of three “mechs,” who have gone back in time to free what is left of the planet from the Vek, an alien race of giant insect-like monsters who are destroying what remains of the planet’s population. The game presents you with four themed islands, which have several stages you must get through in order to clear the island and defeat the boss – usually a variation on an enemy you’ve already fought with more health and a different colour palette. The mission takes place on a 16x16 square grid and is usually quite simple: Stop the Vek from destroying too many civilian buildings, as they are forming a power grid that powers your mechs. What’s great about the battle system is that your mechs move then attack – the Vek attack, then move, then telegraph their next attack. Once you realise that your attacks move the Vek when they hit, you discover that this is your opportunity to strategically plan your moves so that the enemy does as little damage as possible. If enough of the power grid and at least one of your mechs is still operational at the end of four or five turns, you win the battle.

Don't think I've used this weapon before...

Variety is added to the missions by completing additional objectives: Protect specific buildings, destroy certain parts of the environment, avoid killing a ‘Volatile’ Vek that will explode if it takes enough damage are just a few. Your reward for completing these is either more power to your grid, or reputation points that can be spent at the end of an island to kit out your mechs. Once you’ve cleared at least two islands, you can attack the Vek on their base island, and if you can beat that mission you win the game. This mission scales in difficulty based on how many islands you’ve beaten, so you can’t fully level up your pilots and kit out your mechs and hope for an easier time – it’ll be a challenge either way! The game takes an hour to two hours to beat, and there is a plethora of stuff to unlock as you’re going along; I’ve beaten the game, but it will take much longer than that to complete!

The Final Mission is a blast!

The graphics are of a 4^th/5^th (console) generation pixel art style; it doesn’t look particularly special, but it will still look that good in ten years! The sound effects are of a similar standard, with the exception of the soundtrack. The music in this game is wonderful; it strikes the balance of being atmospheric and ambient enough to support the game without getting in the way of the action, but memorable enough to stick in the mind long after you’ve finished playing. Subset Games have a very talented composer in Ben Prunty!

Into the Breach is an excellent game with a lot to offer. While the fact that it is a turn-based strategy game might limit the appeal initially, its presentation makes it accessible to most people. The interface is fine; there’s very little clunk and it doesn’t take you long to figure out how everything works. There is a deeper plot than the one suggested, but apart from the fact that most of the characters have quite distinct personalities, you’re left to discover the intricacies of the plot on your own. The game allows you to uncover its weapons, upgrades and ideal paths at your own pace, and your reward for doing so is addressing the challenges the game presents using whatever option it gives you on each run. A fine game, and one that everybody should at least try.

Final Score: 5/5: Beyond excellent. 
 

Backlog Beatdown: Saving my Bacon with Hogs of War

So Ebay may very well become my downfall in managing my video game backlog. I’ve been ordering all sorts of titles mainly for the PS1, inspired by the game collector and Youtube star MetalJesusRocks. I’ve bought around 15 games so far and I’ve been having a tonne of fun with the ones I’ve played, most of which I’ve previously owned at some point and it’s leaving me in a nostalgic haze.

And what a delight it was to play Hogs of War again…

The idea was best summarised by the Playstation Magazine Demo Disc it appeared on: “Imagine Worms in 3D. Now put pigs where the worms should be, and…” It is a turn-based tactics game in which you control a squad of usually five pigs. They have a limited amount of time to move around and position themselves to attack the enemy, as almost all the attacks are done from a stationary position. The hogs have a certain amount of health each, which is drained with each attack it takes, and the last team standing is the winner.

I had War Pigs by Black Sabbath going round in my
head all the way through my playthrough of this.

Much of the strategy of the game comes from choosing where to put your pigs and deciding what weapon to use. The sniper rifle, for example, does as much damage as a direct hit from a bazooka, however it can only fire in a straight line and leaves you open to a follow-up attack if you don’t kill your enemy straight away and are in an awkward position. The bazooka has area-of-effect damage and can be fired over terrain, but requires you to ‘charge’ your attack to the appropriate amount of power you need for the shot; if you don’t get this right your accuracy will suffer and you’ll very likely miss your shot entirely. Deciding what to use, when to use it, and where to use it from is the key to getting through some of the harder levels of the game.

The game has a campaign mode, where it puts you in a linear series of 25 levels taking over the continent of Saustralasia. Your hogs are somewhat limited in what they can do at first, but you gain ‘medals’ throughout the game as rewards for completing levels and surviving, and you use these to upgrade your pigs. You can take them down a Heavy Weapons route, or Espionage, Engineering and Medic. You can choose them to suit your play style if you want, but you’ll find it much easier to have two of each (you start with a total of 8 hogs) and swap them in and out of your squad as you need to. A fourth promotion brings them up to Commando level, which specialises in all weapons, and the final level is Hero, who can use more or less all weapons and has a few special ones to work with as well.

The true strength of this game is its sense of humour. Your team of pigs is selected from one of 6 ‘Nations,’ very stereotypically based on the English, French, German, American, Russian and Japanese. They all make amusing and borderline-racist remarks when they make their attack in hilariously overblown accents. Plus the cut-scenes, usually “Training” videos, are funny in their uselessness. The whole thing is capped off by having many of the voice-overs done by the sadly-missed Rik Mayall, whose performance brings the cheesy lines and camp over-acting to life.

The game challenges me at the right level; it’s tough enough in places but the campaign took me around 15 hours to get all the way through and that’s quite enough for me. The AI sometimes makes some very strange decisions indeed, and the controls feel clunky – I suspect this was a quite deliberate design decision that adds to the feel of the game. After all, guns are hard enough to use at the best of times, never mind trying to do it with trotters!

I love this game; I regretted selling it years ago and I’ll certainly be hanging on to it for a good long while this time. Maybe I’m getting old, but I found myself thinking around half-way through my play-through that we just don’t get this kind of game in the mainstream these days. Turn-based strategy games are still something of a niche, and in a Triple-A release, the edgy dialogue would be focus-tested out of the game before you’d even got on to Rik Mayall’s booking agent. Plus, it’s fighting pigs; not relatable in any obvious way (though the game has a surprising amount to say about the futility of war!) and a ridiculous concept. You won’t see this on any Youtube advertisement, and if people still make games like this, then they are consigned to the depths of what is now called Indie Gaming. A bit sad, really.

*EDIT*

Chances are some of you may now be thinking: "Well, this seems pretty good, I'll give it a go." If you do, be advised the PC version of this has slightly better graphics and is inferior in all other respects. The main problem with it is that the enemy pigs don't move, they just stand and fire. This is not a bug but was deliberately coded into the game, and I'd like to find out why, because it should be coded out again with extreme force. It removes any challenge from the game and you're basically just playing a shooting gallery. Get it for the PlayStation, or the handhelds if you can.