Christmas in Cairo.. Seriously!

Croteam‘s Serious Sam: BFE was half-price in the Steam Sales, so I got copies for Tim and myself, along with a copy of Serious Sam: The Second Encounter which was on for less than £2.

One of Steam’s Great Gift Pile objectives was to decorate the Christmas tree in the first level of the game: the achievement Christmas in Cairo, so the game got bumped on the playlist while I’m trying to get some of the objectives completed.

I expected Serious Sam: BFE to be much the same as the previous games in the series.. over the top shooting with lots of guns, more than enough ammo and silly numbers of enemies.  I didn’t expect it to look quite so good, though!

Doing my usual climbing around on stuff, I found some Parkour secrets.  Nothing huge.. a bit of extra ammo or armour.. a few extra enemy encounters, such as the two Kleers I met in a small alleyway.  I’ve played through the first level twice now, specifically looking for secret areas on the second run and even then, I didn’t find them all.

There’s a nod back to a previous Sam, with a single Kamikaze running at you, then Sam screaming back after he’s dealt with, then even more Kamikazes appearing..

I reloaded my save to get an extra couple of turns at this section.. one shot stalls the Kamikaze, with the second finishing him off, and you can get a nice Chain Explosion if you make him blow up his friends 😉

Decorating the tree turned out to be one of the last things to do on the level.. and when I got there, I realised I had to go back a little bit to collect some of the decorations.  I’d killed all the Rocketeers out in the open, clearing the area before running through to the museum.  However.. Christmas! 🙂

Coal Collector!

The Great Gift Pile objectives are turning out to be a mix of quick and easy tasks and longer, more difficult challenges..

Atom Zombie Smasher: KringleJammer was fairly easy to get, as was the Rock of Ages: Snowball War.  Audiosurf: Candy Stripe required only the collection of red and white blocks in a line, but it took me a while to find something on my PC that played at the right pace to generate the blocks I wanted.  “Still Alive” was giving me blue blocks, so wouldn’t do for this!

Beat Hazard: Survive Christmas 10 required me to survive for 10 minutes.. and it took far longer than that!  After several attempts of under five minutes each, I realised I had unlocked some perks which might help: the Ultra DLC added Micro Missiles and a Reflect Shield which just about let me last long enough to complete the objective.

A harder achievement was the deliberate loss of a game in Fate of the World, where instead of trying to save the world, I led it towards global thermonuclear war and the Let it Glow achievement!  After a few attempts I ended up consulting the internet for tips on how to get the ‘right’ ending.. it turned out to be a rather tight list of instructions while hoping for the right random numbers to be generated each turn.  I think actually winning this game, as opposed to playing for an achievement, will be next to impossible as all territories seem to get annoyed with you very quickly! 😀

For another deliberate loss, I also tried to nuke Santa in DEFCON.. but found his movements too unpredictable, the AI too eager to react, and my supply of nukes too low for me to get him.  I quickly got bored of this, so I checked out the tips on the net again, and reduced the number of cities to 5 per territory, but then found the game crashing almost as soon as I launched a nuke!  Something to do with the latest update and Windows 7 🙁

Another not-quite-game objective was Winter Assault.. survive a 30 minute match on Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II – Retribution, on one of the winter maps.  Four of us joined the game, with one going AFK immediately.. only interested in the achievement itself.. but three of us met in the middle to trade blows until we’d met our time requirement!  I wished for more Great Unclean Ones, but settled for a squad of Chaos Dreadnoughts instead 😀

With the completion of all these objectives, I’m collecting lots of coal along with vouchers which probably won’t get used.. two are for Valve.. I already own all their games, as do all my gaming friends.  Although, if anyone does want them.. 🙂

I did win one game via the giveaway.. Silent Dreams’ Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes, a fantasy role-playing game with strategic combat and a sense of humour.  The games in this giveaway are provided as a token, which can be added to your own inventory or traded.. so if you already own the game you win, you can give it away or trade it for something else.

A friend bought me Space Pirates and Zombies by Minmax Games, which I tried briefly last night.  After stumbling through the first couple of missions, I decided I need to be somewhat alert to play! 🙂

The Steam sales are ongoing, and I also picked up ACE Team‘s rather Monty Python-esque Rock of Ages, mentioned earlier, and Croteam‘s Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter, and Serious Sam 3: BFE, with the first two games below £2 each, and Serious Sam 3 at a reasonable price, considering I wanted a copy for me and a copy for Tim.

Other women spend their money on shoes: I spend my money on games! 🙂

Winning with Anomaly: Warzone Earth

11 Bit Studios‘ action-strategy game Anomaly: Warzone Earth came to me via Day 5 of Splitkick.com’s Holiday Giveaway competitions!

This is a reverse tower defense set in a future Earth where aliens have crash-landed, leaving large energy domes, or Anomalies, in several major cities.  You play as the Commander, leading a platoon of armoured units into the Anomaly to explore, and then re-take the city.

The first level has you enter the anomaly, and serves as the tutorial.. setting a path for the platoon, adjusting this to avoid falling asteroids, and repairing units which took damage..

Adjustments to the path are made in the tactical view, which freezes the action while you plan your new route.. avoid obstacles, or take a second pass of a not-quite-dead tower.  I found a lot of items were dropped after killing a tower, so I aimed for them on most missions 🙂

The commander can place smoke screen and decoys, and repair your armoured units.  I found him surprisingly strong.. able to take some fire from the towers, but regenerating very quickly once out of fire again.  He went down only once, while I was planting a decoy in the middle of a large group of towers.. and even this was only a three second knockdown before he was back on his feet!

Each unit has their own strengths and weaknesses.. tanks are well armoured but less offensive than crawlers, and shield-generators are unable to fire at all.  Setup of the platoon is mostly down to the player, although some units are added as part of the story, such as the shield generator drone and tank.  As you earn money during a mission, you can upgrade units or add more to your platoon too.

This means you can play as you want.. I mostly went with an APV or tank, shield-generator and crawler and upgraded them rather than add to the platoon.

Splitkick.com’s Holiday Giveaway also provided me with a Riot Nassus skin for League of Legends.. another game I want to revisit 🙂

I love tower defense, but I loved destroying towers for a change 🙂

Merry Christmas 2011!

Finally finished with work.. and the Christmas shopping.. time for games!

Well, time for finishing off a Christmas and pony related drawing for a friend, and attempting some of the Great Gift Pile objectives on Steam!  A fairly straightforward objective was to find an Xmas present in any multiplayer level of PAYDAY: The Heist.  In the First World Bank, the presents were waiting in the vault with the money 🙂

We also noticed new “beef” masks had been added to the game.. so here’s a friendly Tyrannosaurus with a gun! 😀

More games..

A friend bought us Renegade Ops, an action game by Avalanche Studios, featuring top-down driving destruction.. there’s 4-player co-op, so I can crash into my friends while I destroy things 😉

I took up an offer a while back for a different Christmas bundle; the Intermediaware Christmas bundle which also came with copies for friends too.  This pack contained eight games from Intermediaware.. shooters: Absolute Blue, Impact and Defense of Yano, puzzle games.. Captain Backwater, Temple of Tangram, Psychoballs and Atom Antics, and turn-based board game Kabama, for one or two players.  This bundle arrived by email as promised, on Christmas Eve!

I also won another game.. 11 Bit Studios‘ action-strategy Anomaly: Warzone Earth, from Day 5 of Splitkick.com’s Holiday Giveaway!

Need More Time.. Oh Wait!

Over the last week I’ve added yet more to my list of unplayed games.  I would normally say “I need more time”.. but I’ve now finished work, and it’s Christmas!  Though I’ll soon have to start on some projects, it means I do have a lot more free time 🙂

Today was partly spent trying to achieve a Gold Badge in the adrenaline challenge mode of Defense Grid: The Awakening.. trying, but not succeeding.  I completed the map, but didn’t score highly enough to get gold.

Earning a Gold Badge, and thereby getting the Flurry achievement was one of the objectives of Valve’s latest sale and competition: The Great Gift Pile.. collecting coal and winning prizes, with the chance to win everything on Steam via the Epic Holiday Giveaway on the 2nd Jan.  Everything on Steam.. wow.. I really wouldn’t have enough time!

Last week, I acquired Empire Earth: Gold Edition via GOG.com.. Empire Earth and expansion The Art of Conquest were being given away to anyone who came to the Good Old Games site!  Empire Earth is a real-time strategy by Stainless Steel Studios, said to be somewhat like my beloved Age of Empires, but going from the Stone Age all the way to the Space Age.  Looking forward to this one..

I previously noted that I’d won a copy of EA’s Alice: Madness Returns for the 360, through DR Gaming‘s 12 Days of Christmas giveaway on Facebook..  the game arrived this week, and better still, it came with a bonus Xbox LIVE code for the original American McGee’s Alice!  I remember playing the PC version of this game during my first Christmas together with Tim, on his recommendation 😉

Via a GameSpot UK competition, I won a Cyborg RAT 9 gaming mouse and “gaming surface” aka mousemat 😉
I’ve handed my address over and now await the postman!  Great timing too.. my mouse has been failing intermittently for a while now!  I also won a copy of Orcs Must Die! for Tim, through Day 2 of Splitkick.com’s Holiday Giveaway 2011.  Note: I’m not keeping track of the number of competitions I haven’t won 😉

Yet other new games have arrived thanks to the Humble Indie Bundle.. the contents of Bundle #3 have been added as bonus gifts for those who paid over the average!  This bundle contained Crayon Physics Deluxe, which I got from the Humble Introversion Bundle, and Lazy 8 Studios’ Cogs, which a friend gave me earlier in the year, as well as VVVVVV, Hammerfight and And Yet It Moves.

VVVVVV is a 2d platformer by Terry Cavanagh, with an interesting gravity-switching mechanic which you use to travel and avoid hazards.  I’m hopeful that this doesn’t require too much flailing at the keyboard to manage, otherwise I’ll find it more frustrating than fun.  Hammerfight, by Kranx Productions, is an aerial combat game where you control airships outfitted with hammers and swords!

The final game of the list is Broken Rules’ And Yet It Moves.  It isn’t a horror game, as I first thought when I heard the title, but a 2d puzzle where you control the orientation of the game environment as well as the player character.  This is the game I’m looking forward to most out of the three as I expect the puzzles to be quite fun!

Void

Void is a Source-based puzzle game made by students at the DigiPen Institute of Technology, where the player can access the past to alter the present, solve puzzles and escape!  I was told about this one earlier in the week, and was rather excited by the idea 🙂

The player can look into the past using time glasses, allowing you to see objects you might want to use, or an alternate route through the room.

The past looked a lot nicer than this grimy, ruined present!

You can also rip open time and create a bubble of the past in the present.. for example, I used it to climb a staircase which has been destroyed in the present.  Elsewhere, I pulled bubbles of water from the past into my path so I could swim across otherwise impassable routes.

These rips don’t last long, so you want to do your planning and looking around with the glasses, and then use rips to solve puzzles.

While the puzzles for the game progression itself were all rather easy, I was stumped by one of the collectible portraits, hung high in one of the rooms.  I tried using rips to walk along a balcony to get closer, but was blocked by the railing, and when I thought I’d managed to get one of the display cases to appear, I seemed to fall through it rather than land on it.  Maybe this part wasn’t finished..

I loved the design of the game, and though it looked a little rough in places, expecting much more from a mod or student work is hopeful at best.  The only part that really bothered me was the tips from the Books of Knowledge.. the later ones gave me tips after I’d already discovered them, and I think they would have been better placed nearer the start of the game.

The game is rather short, though there is a mention of more to come.. maybe this team of students will get hired to make a full game 🙂

The Oil Blue

The Oil Blue is an indie action sim by chubigans of Vertigo Games, where you drill for oil and sell it on the world market in order to remain profitable, as well as completing missions for your employer, the United Oil of Oceana Company.  I picked this one up in the Indie Royale’s Xmas Bundle, along with a few other games.. they’ve now added greenTech+, an earlier game by Vertigo Games which has you save the world from global warming using a hurricane!

The tutorial shows you how to use your first drilling machines: the Groundwell and the Oil Derrick.  Keeping the Groundwell running seemed easy enough.. strike a balance between speed and power consumption, and keep an eye out for flat batteries.  The Oil Derrick was a bit more complex..

While the drill is working, you get oil signatures coming up on the right hand side.. these are revealed as either pockets of air or oil.  When you see oil, you have to slow the drill down, move it left or right to position it above the oil, pump the oil, then re-start the drill until the next pocket of oil appears.  You also need to watch the Pressure and Stress gauges.  Pressure can be vented at regular intervals, and increases more quickly while the drill is slowed down, while Stress accumulates through use, until it reaches critical levels, where you have to shut down the machine and go for repairs.  Pressure also increases Stress.  Not venting pressure leads to the machine breaking down..

Repairing the machines involves mini-games.  In the tutorial I saw two types, one to keep a laser within a moving red circle, and another to make a set of four target lights come on simultaneously by turning on different adapters and switching between different levels of lights until you hit the correct combination.

Once in the game itself, “Rotary Misfire” came up as my repair mini-game three times; I managed to complete the puzzle by chance on my first two attempts, but I couldn’t get it the third time.  This puzzle requires you to hit the spacebar just before the lights complete a full circle.

I had to actually come back to the tutorial and have this puzzle appear in the set of three to see the instructions.. whether they were obscured by previous messages on the right.. or whether they just don’t appear all the time, I don’t know.

The next two machines, the Pumpjack and Drill Rig, were unlocked as I played, with brief tutorials showing how to use them.  The Pumpjack requires less interaction than the Oil Derrick, with plenty of time during setup or calibration, where you can check on the other machines and the market.  The Drill Rig follows a path you plot for it onscreen, and will gather oil as it travels over it.  To get all the oil from a bubble, the path has to be set to go back and forth over it: two options here, then.. to be efficient with a short path over a bubble to maximise oil collection, but have to watch the machine while it does it, or plot longer paths and be able to flick back over the other machines.  As the Drill Rig is a rare machine, it doesn’t appear on every island.

On the islands I played, my set up was a Groundwell, an Oil Derrick and a Pumpjack.  I started up all the machines, then parked myself over the Oil Derrick because of the pressure release requirement, as well as needing to catch the oil pockets as they were revealed.  This was also the machine I found most likely to blow up, as the pressure led to stress if I wasn’t fast enough in venting it.  In fact, I found the Oil Derrick needed so much prodding that I kept missing the Pumpjack’s window of drilling opportunity!

I can see it getting even harder to adequately manage when there are more machines,.. although they level up with use.  When a machine levels up, parts are added or replaced, improving performance.. an example being the Groundwell’s additional batteries which allows you to go faster.  The improvements are only effective per mission.. you leave the machines behind when you move to the next island.

You do keep your own rank though, which increases as you sell oil and unlocks more machines and different challenges.. You also get some funny titles as you increase too: eg the Rank 40 title: “Useful Bum”! 🙂

The Little Big Bunch

The latest in the line of indie bundles arrived today: the Little Big Bunch, with five indie games on the usual pay what you want scheme, with money being split between developers and Games Aid as you wish.

This one has a minimum price.. something I’m glad of after seeing a guy taunting one of the indie devs on Twitter this afternoon.  He was bragging about only having paid 1 cent for the game.. less than a penny.. which would have been bad enough without the taunting!

I already owned one of the games: Mode 7‘s strategy game Frozen Synapse, so this one is going to Tim, and maybe we’ll get to play together at some point 😉

Also in the bundle are two platformers, one with destruction: Explodemon, by Curve Studios, and one with aliens: Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee.  Finally there’s New Star Soccer 5, a football career sim, by New Star Games.. which isn’t really my type of game.  The one I’m most interested in here is 2d platform shooter Serious Sam Double D, from Mommy’s Best Games, and supported by Croteam through their Serious Sam Indie series.

Serious Sam Double D is via Steam code, while the rest of the games are available via Get Games‘ download system.  I have to say I much prefer Steam, knowing that I can download the games as many times as I want, and that updates will be applied as they appear.  Get Games’ FAQ says that the number of activations per game vary between publishers.. while I don’t mind if I lose a cheap indie game after a couple of reinstalls, I’d be wary of buying anything I forsee playing over and over again.

The Humble Indie Bundle 4!

The Humble Indie Bundle 4 is now out, with another bunch of games to sit accusingly on my Steam list until I play them 😉

This time we’ve got: Jamestown, a scrolling arcade shooter by Final Form Games, music platformer Bit.Trip Runner by Gaijin Games, Super Meat Boy, the slightly-squicky puzzle by Team Meat, Shank, by Klei Entertainment, and Night Sky by NICALiS, which I already had from a previous bundle.

The bonus games this time were a sci-fi strategy called Gratuitous Space Battles, from Positech Games, and Cave Story+, a 2D platformer by NICALiS, which has been updated slightly from the original for this version.

I’m glad it’s nearly Christmas.. I need more time in the day! 😀

APB Reloaded and Free To Play

I first tried APB during their beta back in early 2010.  Before I invoke any rage in regards to using a beta as a demo, I’ll point out that I do report bugs if they come up, fill out surveys, and so on.. but I also get an idea of whether I’ll want to buy the game at launch too.

While I thought the concept, missions, and free-roam activities were fun, the lag during driving and combat was often painful.. when it hit, I had single figure FPS, and buildings only appearing while passing them.  Some weapons seemed to be overpowered: the Enforcers’ stun gun appeared to only need line of sight to completely incapacitate a Criminal, which meant inevitable arrest if you were playing without a group.  Whether this was due to a combination of lag, player skill or the current settings for the weapon.. it felt overpowered and made me want to avoid the combat without the backup of friends.. though once I did get a friend to play with in the game, we often ended up driving or ram-raiding 🙂

APB didn’t last long once finally launched.. Realtime Worlds went into administration and the game servers were shut down.  However, the game was picked up by GamersFirst, dusted off and given a bit of love, and APB: Reloaded arrived.. and it’s now free to play on Steam!

Like last time, the Criminals appealed more than the Enforcers, and fortunately my friends thought the same.  A life of crime.. robberies, ram-raids and muggings.. and fighting the Enforcers 🙂

Starting off in San Paro requires you to complete a short tutorial, which is a set of five missions within the Tutorial District.. no opposition is sent against you here, so you can concentrate on the job at hand without being crushed by good players!  The clothes you start off in were described to me as ridiculous and a crime against fashion.. so I quickly changed out of those into some very short shorts which I customised so they didn’t quite look so much like underpants 😉

I want to get the rather smart outfit I had back when we played in the beta.. but for now, this will do.

We ran through some missions.. shooting seems a lot better now there isn’t that horrendous lag, though driving is still very hit and miss.. more hit, really.. turning is controlled by your movement keys, with the assistance of a handbrake.  While in any Mission District, you’re open to attack, so we watched each other’s backs during missions, keeping an eye out for any alert that an Enforcer was being dispatched against us.

As before, fights with the Enforcers lead to arrest or death, and subsequent respawn.  As missions have a few minutes to complete them in, there’s often enough time to get back to the objectives at hand, and sometimes still win it.. so it’s not over too quickly!

Later in the evening we were joined by another friend, so there were three of us completing missions.  This meant the nice little two-seater car was no good, and we had to upgrade to a van.. and while driving, it meant two of us able to lean out and shoot.

One of the things we loved last time around was ram-raiding, so we had to finish the evening up with a couple of vans and a tour of the shops!  Smaller items disappeared into our inventory, while larger ones have to be put into the back of the van.

We ended up with three vans at one point, but too much damage resulted in one blowing up in the road.. and my van caught fire as I ‘parked’ it near our contact.  Oops 😀

Stolen goods from ram-raiding or muggings can be taken to your contact or to a fence.  You do receive a payment there and then, but it doesn’t appear in your balance until you’ve also visited the Money Launderer.  I’m saving up for a nice outfit now, but later this money will be spent on nice looking cars with decent performance 😉

Changing clothes, your appearance and any logo design has to be done in the Social district, away from the missions and activity.  I’m not sure how I feel about this split.  It makes sense as you don’t want to be randomly selected as the target for an Enforcer’s mission while concentrating on designing a new outfit or applying decals to your car, but I think it’s rather a bind to load in to a whole new area just to put a new jacket on.

For now, this is how we look! 😀