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Category: Video Game

XCOM: Enemy Unknown vs Tiny Tower

Published October 9, 2012 by Leprekawn

I love strategy games.  They allow for a pacing and approach allowing you a chance to theorize and consider.  Not as frantic and panic stricken as Fighting games or Racers.

Inside that genre you could ask me about almost any title and if I haven’t played it I’ve played something similar.  Whether or not I heard about it is another matter.

Mid last week I picked up a free smartphone game ‘Tiny Tower‘ also available on iPhone (more on that in a moment).  Tiny Towers sets you in a managerial position of operating a highrise starting with the first floor.  The lobby is in itself nothing special as I started on Android.  As a casual game it’s pretty solid, much akin to Game Dev Story what ate my weekend some months back.  You make income from tenants living in your residential levels to work in your various merchant levels.  Each floor you add gives you space to fill with merchants as you wish, each tenant working in a store unlocks the ability to ‘stock’ an additional commodity.  Stocked commodities sell, earning you cash you use to buy more levels.  Each floor can have one of six options, each option having many many variations.

Your tenants each have their own array of stats indicating where they’d best be situated and a dream job.  Placing a resident in their dream job does two things.  One, you get paid 2 Bux you can use to speed up stocking or trade for cash.  Two, one of the three commodities gets doubled for it’s output vastly increasing the profit margin from restocking fees.

Many of the concepts will be familiar to anyone who’s played a mobile/facebook game in the last three years.  The concepts of Do x, Get y are very similar.  It’s the Magic Money approach that caught me off guard and keeps me playing.  The Bux you earn from various tasks ‘can’ be bought with real money as with many games.  But they can also regularly and easily be earned by just playing the game.

Visitors will show up periodically including VIP’s that reward you in cash or Bux for helping them get where they’re going.  All in all, I can play this like a Facebook game and plug in for five minutes every hour or so.  Or I can keep playing, sending visitors along their way and making progress as I go.  That being said, I’ve logged more hours in Tiny Towers than I thought I might.  I had fun and for ‘Free’ I can’t suggest anything other than Try It Out.

XCOM has a rich and well respected history as turn-based strategy with strong combat themes.  The core idea is that aliens are attacking Earth and you’re the only line of defense.  I haven’t actually played the latest incarnation but everything I’ve read and seen suggests it’s a quality addition to the XCom lineage.  A word of caution, XCOM is and has always been a strong mix of Long-Term strategic resource management and Tactical effort.  From my understanding this isn’t a ‘fast’ game.

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Where have I been? Summer 2012 Edition

Published September 21, 2012 by Leprekawn

Summer was an ugly dry-spell for gaming as my interests are highly focused.  I played a significant amount of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning after the parent studio closed shop.  It was in the news, you can google the closure and read all about it.

I saw the closure as an opportunity to strike early and fast.  And so I bought a copy of KoA: Reckoning at barely under release price new.  I bought all of the extra quest DLC, hoping to avoid any future cutoff on account of the studio closure.

And then I played for nearly a week straight.  My girlfriend went out of town to visit family and so I spent more time focused on it than I might have normally.  Anyone who liked Fable but had some second thoughts I will heartily recommend to this game.  It’s great, it’s that single person quest game in a style similar to Fable but without some of the naggling mechanical breakdowns.  And sweet mother of god.. it’s long.  40 odd hours in and i’m only maybe 2/3 through the main plot and some of the side quests.  I wholly expect another 10 or more hours out of clearing all the major milestones.  This is a great game with crafting, questing and boss-style fights.  An Xbox exclusive, definitely worth checking out.

Late August saw the release of Guild Wars 2 which I already talked about.  I’ll just take this time to say it’s worth it.  If you like MMO’s, are tired of the classic quest grind but still want that fantasy ‘save the world’ experience, then this is for you.  I’ve invited a number of my friends to play and all my mmo-centric fans are enjoying it.  It’s a highly social game, rewarding you for helping players from a defeated state and for assisting them in combat.  Nobody’s penalized for partying, no xp share fractionalization for joining up with your four chums.  I’m still up to my eyeballs in thrill for the game even after three weeks of exposure.

Mid September saw the release of Borderlands 2 which is challenging FTL for what scraps of attention Guild Wars 2 is leaving behind.  Borderlands 2 is a FPSRPG.  That is, you shoot guns and do quests and get xp from the First-Person perspective.  And boy howdy does it have guns.  The first game had a randomization system proving that no two guns will ever be exactly the same.  Story tells that the sequel only does it better with refinements to this and other systems streamlining an otherwise well-structured system.  More of the adolescent humor dotted with quality plot development. This is the B-Movie Action Flick you’re going to go see with your friends even though you know it’s just going to have big muscles, guns and explosions.  You know what you’re getting in Borderlands 2 and dammit, I want to play.  But I’m holding out, Borderlands 2 is a co-op game and there’s no good reason to play alone if you don’t have to.

FTL is a space strategy game in the likeness of Rogue and Rogue-clones.  You have a ship, a crew and a series of random events based on where you send your ship.  At a measly 10 bucks I tried it out on a whim since I passed on the Kickstarter they ran several months ago.  I’m amazed and pleased.  Simple gameplay with a structured plot you can replay to experience random events every time.  A game I can pick up for five minutes and not spend 2 1/2 minutes just loading.  More of an rpg than really a space game, your crew gains xp, fights off boarding pirates and aliens and douses fires when necessary.  I recommend checking youtube as the screenshots don’t really do it justice.  And for my strategy/rpg fans surely you should give this an extra close look.

And that, was Summer 2012.  If nothing catches up to me in the interim, we’ll be talking again near the end of Fall.

-Mercator

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Published September 19, 2012 by Leprekawn

I stopped in Vanjir’s Stead briefly, having just come East from Demon’s Maw.  Provisions were high on my list and as I prepared to trek North, back above the treeline, I chatted briefly with the few Norn dwelling there.

Seemed Ice Wurms were causing some trouble at the edge of their stead and they were paying well for people to see about dissuading the abnormally active beasts.  A task I assured them I’d look into as I headed North.  I was searching the edge of Dredgehaunt for anything of note as necessitated by my membership with the Oder of Whispers.

How I let them dispatch me to the mountains again I’ll never know.

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Skritt

Published September 18, 2012 by Leprekawn

I’ve seen Skritt in many places.

I’m no Durmand Priory researcher so I keep my ramblings to a minimum.  But I’ve begun to think they followed the Asura.  Anywhere I find Asura I’ve also found Skritt.  The number of them vary but the presence is unmistakable.

What confuses me is the varied nature of their hostility.  Some are cutthroat merchants.  Most are aggressively territorial.

I wasn’t terribly surprised then as I crossed the Rootangles and neared Ruins of the Unseen.  The area was rife with Skritt activity as they swarmed out of their burrows and attacked anyone within sight.

When it was done, I was told by a nearby Asura that this happens often as a side effect of his research.  I didn’t inquire on his research, Asuran theology is heavily mixed into their academic teachings and I wasn’t in the mood for another debate on The Eternal Alchemy.

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Lornar’s Pass

Published September 17, 2012 by Leprekawn

It should be noted I don’t like Lornar’s Pass.  I hate it in fact.  If the biting winds didn’t chill to the bone, then the sheer drops from thousand-foot passes makes travel extremely treacherous.  Nestled between Grawl, Dredge and the nested Griffon’s, there aren’t a lot of safe havens to make camp if that wasn’t bad enough the lowlands are rife with wurms.  Larger than what you might see in Queensdale which alone makes me long for warmer climes.

I’d tell you why I was there but I can’t recall at this time.  I’m sure it will come back to me.

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Caledon Forest

Published September 17, 2012 by Leprekawn

To call it a forest is to extend the dotted line around your understanding of the term ‘Forest’ and move it back a few leagues.  Caledon is more of a coastal swamp with occasional dry hills crawling with whatever climbed out of the deeps in the Sea of Sorrows.

It was there I met Lithiaria, a mesmer like myself.  She was struggling with grubs the size of a Kryta Hound.  I was looking for something I wasn’t sure about so I stopped briefly to help her.  It didn’t take long for her to request my company while she assisting the various people living in Caledon.  Roughly three days passed while we battled Nightmare Court, giant spiders and Skales.  I was still looking when we took some brief time to camp out at a fort in the middle of the forest and rest briefly.

I met a trader, moving west into Metrica Province, who was able to trade me various items I needed to finish my tailoring project, the Masquerade.  It cost me greatly, but I feel a price worth paying.  We’ll see how the long-term amusement holds me.

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Published August 30, 2012 by Leprekawn

I stood there.  I watched as blood seeped from my wounds, as life faded from my eyes I knew intimately.  My skin paled, blood drained from the cheeks and the eyes closed offering an end to the sudden and rapid decline.

In a flash it was gone, shattered into a myriad array of glass-like splinters that vanished into the air.

This is going to be a long day.

 

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Mid-Summer Distractions

Published August 13, 2012 by Leprekawn

I played three games this weekend that will later likely receive their own discussion.  Each is awesome for it’s own reasons.

Hero Academy

An amusing turn based strategy game where your team of dudes trash the other guys’ team of dudes.  It’s Multiplayer only with challenges in place to hone your skills and amuse you between turns.  A game doesn’t take a lot of time overall, but you can spend minutes with an individual turn just trying to decide how best to beat the snot out of your opponent’s healer.  Undo/Redo buttons in games is an insane addition to the “I can do that better” pursuit.

It’s only 10 bucks via Steam for us PC users or if you’re IOS enabled, I highly recommend you pick it up via your phone/tablet first (the character packs are cheaper).

Symphony

One look from across the room hooked me.  I love brightly lit games that don’t try to fool you with fancy sprites.  Thusly, I loved Geometry Wars and still do.  Symphony takes a similar approach with wireframed enemies flooding into your vertical scrolling battlefield.  Oh right.. the battlefield is your music.  Each level a song from your music collection you select.  Each level completed rewards you with a random upgrade you can unlock and upgrade via points you earn.

Like a weird combination of Gradius, Geometry Wars and Windows Media Player.  It has varying difficulty levels and of course some songs are harder based on tempo and where/when enemies come in to attack you.  I thought Dragonforce would be hard, but Rush’s 2112 was particularly abusive with it’s changing tempo.

My only complaint is that it doesn’t support songs over 10 minutes in length.  A rude discovery to be sure, I was enjoying it so much I started to envision practicing on my self-described Endurance Level with a select 45 minute track of Going Quantum’s Dubstep mix.

<cries>

Also 10 bucks and totally worth it.

EVE Online

I continued and continue to play EVE.  Not being one of those games you eventually ‘beat’, I pursue stronger economic footing and that right mix of people that makes playing consistently personally rewarding.

I left Etoilles Mortant LTD, a corp I’d been with for nearly a year after LMCG and I parted ways.  EML brought some interesting game services to my attention.  Namely, a ‘can system’ with connected API where you could check a website and see what you’d deposited and it’s relative value and what the corp noted as your owed amount.  A number of other services were available from the page I visited.  Services I think are incredibly handy and every corp should have.

I’m off to Lost Dawn Chaos, a multi-wing Corp with it’s foot in Mining, Missions and a host of other activities.  I’m liking them so far, the only thing I could ask for more is a corp with a stronger PST population.

I’m realizing potentials now that I wish could have been expressed to me a year ago, or two years ago.. Oh what hindsight will tell you at every turn.

 

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How I Spent my Summer Vacation

Published August 1, 2012 by Leprekawn

I recently found myself with a bulk of vacation time and so escaped from work, turned off my email and stocked up on hot pockets. What follows is a rough accounting of my journeys through the gaming landscape and my occasional stops.

Kingdoms of Amalur: the Reckoning

I’m something in the order of 40 hours committed to KoA:R with an end in sight far down the road.  If I had to guess, I believe I’m another 10 or 20 hours shy of the end by the way I’m playing which is doing roughly 70% of the side quests that get offered to me before getting bored and moving the plot along.  So far, I’ve really enjoyed KoA:R and would definitely recommend it to my Fable-playing friends.  The combat mechanic gets a little frustrating at times, as I can’t dodge around enemy swings and often get ‘juggled’.

There’s a definite order to the quests and a progression they don’t illustrate very well.  I nearly skipped over an entire region of the game styled after some rocky badlands.  It was only by nature of my curiosity that I followed a side-quest through the mountains and into the arid countryside to discover this area.

It’s a large game, varied in colors and styles and easy to pickup and play.  I’ve enjoyed my time with it but by Wednesday evening I’d had just about enough for a bit.

EVE Online

I don’t play often, largely I keep my account active to maintain skill training so that when I do play I’ve cleared 33 day training humps.  I played a fair bit, 2 or 3 hours at a time through my break.  I made money, I lost money.  Tried my hand at marketing.

I found I’m only really good at PvE combat.  That is, I can fit a ship, shoot stuff and generally advise new players on skill progression and ship selection for what they’re looking for.

To date, I’ve lost every PvP encounter I’ve entered.

EVE is a Sandbox MMO, what you do is more a matter of imagination than anything else.  If you’re tired of the Theme Park MMO (of which World of Warcraft and many others are part) then you might give EVE a spin.  Drop me an email and I’ll send you an invite and can give you some rudimentary advice on where to start or what to look at.  There’s a lot of resources and frankly, much of it is rampant with biased opinion.  malformedfork (at) gmail

League of Legends

A friend of mine talked me into trying it out.  Free to Play, you’re offered a selection of Champions from various worlds each week and given the chance to throw down with other humans or against a limited AI.  By Limited, I mean you’ll wind up fighting Trundle Bot more often than you care to count.

A neat game with a built-in progression in the form of talent-like ‘Masteries’ and Runes.  Fights earn you points, points you spend on runes or permanently unlocking Champions.

The only downside to the game in general I found is that if you like say Lulu (this adorably random fae sorceress with her faerie companion) and want to play her all the time you can buy her either with points purchased from real money or with earned points.  But if you enter a match with another person who has Lulu and wants to use her, it’s first-come first serve and you’re likely out of luck.

The upside is that you can usually find a range of Champions that meet your play style or interests.  It does require some research both in-game and out.

I like the game and I’d recommend it to a few of my friends, but I’m hard-pressed to begin comparing it.  That’s the problem with cornerstone games.  You use them to describe other games, but how do you sum up quickly the game that forms the corner?  Try it, it’s free.  Also one of these premises where if you note me as your referrer then I get bonus points.  I never turn down bonus points.  EgoProvince is my handle in-game.

Portal 2

Went from “Haven’t played at all” to “Fully beat the multiplayer portion” inside of six or so hours.  Not terribly long, the puzzles tricky but not impossible in complexity.  A fun romp and fortunately if you want more there are some quality user-generated maps out there.  Not a game I’d recommend to everyone, as this game has the power to induce motion sickness.  It did to me the first time I watched.

Crimson Alliance

I picked this up last summer during XBox’s Summer of Arcade or there abouts.  A cheap little arcade excursion you buy access to the game through purchasing one of the class packs.  For 10 bucks I got the three classes available.  After that it’s a skill-based button smasher with 4 or 5 hours of content.  I’ve given it more than that, as I pursue higher scores and try to perfect my technique.  It really shines when you have more people and are able to employ strategies beyond dodge, slashslashslash, dodge.

City of Heroes

I’m eagerly awaiting Guild Wars 2 and at present CoH is the only game I have access to that really scratches a particular adventurous itch I have.  But I haven’t played since around January this year and though the game is Free to Play I haven’t felt the interest.  I was reminded at the end of my vacation as I tried to login several times and was turned away by the low-grade textures and the stiff animations.  It’s showing it’s age.  If I weren’t looking at prettier, smoother, more refined games in my near future I might look past the failings.

I do eke out some measure of reward from CoH, it’s not without it’s merits.  It’s one of the few places you can build a team of -anyone- and get stuff done.  Full team of Blasters, check.  Totally doable.  Full team of Tankers? Yeah, slow but manageable.  Full team of Controllers? Yeah, I hear of those regularly.  It’s been descibed to me as MMO on training wheels.  And I rather agree to a point.  There’s room for deep technical builds in the mechanic they use, but right out of the box it’s the easiest MMO I’ve ever played.  Yes, even easier than WoW.  Not to say faster, but certainly easy to pick up a character and ride all the way to 50 without knowing what you’re doing.

Unfortunately, for all my time with City of Heroes I’m afraid I may be soon for retirement and never going back.  Only time will really tell.

EPIC SPELL WARS OF THE BATTLE WIZARDS: DUEL AT MT. SKULLZFYRE

Ridiculous and quick to play, this is a card game I picked up a month or two ago and it took me this long to find someone to play with.  It’s great.  I’m just going to say that.  It’s easy to play, the mechanics are simple and it goes fairly fast once you have the basics under your feet.  Much like Robo Rally, you can lose your footing pretty fast as I had to give up a precious artifact to my opponent what cost me the game.  Sad times, but such is the way of things when you bargain with dark powers and throw hastily constructed spells back and forth.

Totally a beer and pretzels game and easily increased fun as you add additional players.

Hunter Prey

A movie in the style of Enemy Mine about some aliens tracking an escaped prisoner after their ship crashes.  The audio is tricky at the start as they were helmets and are semi hard to understand.  Don’t fret, you aren’t missing much as I was able to keep up with the plot through to the end.

Conan: the Barbarian (2011)

I like it, but I’ve been a fan of Conan since the original movie with the Governator.  My only complaint against the movie is that the evil witch-daughter really needed to use more of that magic she was huffing earlier in the film.

Sneakers

A relaxing film about some computer nerds and espionage.  It’s relatively quiet and I spent Monday night curled up on the couch nursing a headache while I watched this for my third or fourth time.

Closing Comments

And that concludes my Summer Vacation.  Seven days of games, pizza, soda and sleepless nights.  See you all next time!

-Mercator

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