Atom Zombie Smasher

Atom Zombie Smasher was recommended by the boss a while ago, after appearing in a Steam offer for just a few quid..

This is a top down strategy game in a world overrun with zombies, or Zed, as they’re called in this game.  Your task is to evacuate civilians from cities under attack, while attempting to contain the Zed outbreak for as long as you can.. a battle you can’t actually win.

Cities are randomly generated for each level, with civilians represented as little yellow dots, and Zed as pink dots.  To evacuate civilians you simply send in your Evac helicopter, which loads in as many civilians as it can before taking off..

The tactics come in placing the helicopter where it can safely load people with no Zed, as the helicopter will take off if Zed get near the landing zone.  The Zed enter the city via a few spots during the first day phase, but will start to flood in from all sides once night falls.. if you make it till night 🙂

To assist in the evacuation, you can also deploy military forces.. Infantry, Snipers, Artillery, and later, Barricades, Landmines and Dynamite, with a few more high powered weapons being allowed at other times too.  I found the Infantry and Snipers to be my favourite.. while Barricades were useful to funnel Zed around the city they are rather passive, and Dynamite in particular has to be blown up all in one go, which means it doesn’t always kill enough Zed.

After each Evacuation, points are assigned based on the overall performance, with individual points per squad.  A good performance can allow your squads to level up, allowing faster movement, more accuracy or other perks, which make the next mission a little easier.. though I found myself then hoping to carry on using the squads I’d upgraded, rather than another, less used one.

Points are also assigned to the Victory Track, which tallies up your influence versus the Zed influence.. with more perks unlocking as you go along.  I loved the Elephantbird.. a supercannon which I was given for just one mission, allowing me to pick off all the zombies in a highly-infested zone by simply bombing them through the city!

When the Victory Track fills for either side, they win.  The odds are stacked towards the Zed, as the infected areas spread after every turn, thereby gaining more points per level and eventually reaching a perk which enables larger outbreaks.

You’re maybe not meant to win the game, so much as lose as gracefully as possible 😉

I can also now add Atom Zombie Smasher to my list of completed games!

Space Marine Multiplayer

I completed the singleplayer last weekend, and have since attempted to play multiplayer on the PC with little success, thanks to the only friend with the game installed being unable to join online games.  We tried with a private game, but eventually this crashed, taking out the network here and putting us off trying again..

However, thanks to work I also have a copy on the 360, and this weekend I went for a few sessions of multiplayer with randoms on the 360.  Surprisingly, the random players I met during the weekend were decent, and the only abusive phrases used were as part of banter with each other. 🙂

I discovered that in Space Marine, I much prefer Seige Mode to Annihilation.. capturing points adds a bit more direction to the game, especially when random players aren’t looking to work together as well as friends usually do.  This also gave me another source of XP, and so I was able to unlock the Customiser to make my very own purple Space Marine!

Sadly there are only five maps at this point, so eventually it started to feel a bit repetitive.

An update is due in October, and as this will add co-op, it may see a bit more action.. so long as there is no recurrance of the network problem!

Polaris and Radiator

I’ve had a few more Half Life 2 mods to play recently: The Stanley Parable, which had me in stitches, and Nightmare House 2, which had me running scared for a while.

Next on the list was the Radiator mod, which is a work-in-progress..
The series begins with Polaris, a strange short story of a couple’s strange first date in the woods, with star-gazing tasks..

This required clicking on specific stars as prompted, with a bit of a story including a little mention of Polaris being the god of dreams “who knew every mortal heart’s desire”.. rather a cheesy chat-up line 😉

The final note was of the relationship being fairly forgettable.. so when the second part of the story involves a couple in marriage therapy.. I wonder if it’s meant to be the same couple.

This part of the game was weird.. being stuck in a room full of crates and warning signs, and vague instructions to place the crate somewhere within the rows.  Picking up and destroying a random crate triggered some kind of repressed memory of the couple’s life together, but it all seemed rather depressing, regarding illness, death, break-ups.

I found the first few crates easy to place, but any wrong move resulted in explosions and warnings that I wasn’t taking the therapy seriously.  I started to find it rather frustrating, and having the therapist repeatedly asking the same few questions, with the player’s husband giving the same responses only added to my annoyance.. and I gave up on the mod.

I love trying out mods, and I love that there are so many, but I don’t want to be frustrated by them.

Nightmare House 2

Nightmare House 2 is another mod for Half Life 2: Episode 2, by We Create Stuff. The game is based on an original horror map pack called Nightmare House, which is included here as the Prologue level.  In this level, you start off near a building in the woods, apparently having had a car crash.. a creepy setting to begin with, before you even get to the house.

Having found an axe in the shed I felt a little bit safer, until I found my way into the house, which was a mixture of collapsing floors, flickering lights, blood and zombies.. 🙂

As if these weren’t enough, there was also the creepy girl who appeared for a split second here and there.. in one scene hanging, and in another appearing just before the floor gave way!  After a final swathe of zombies, including some horrible fast, jumping ones on the path outside the house, I thought I’d escaped.. only for the game to end when I got back to the truck..

“There is no escape from Nightmare House!”

The main game began after the prologue’s credits.  This time it starting off in a grimy padded cell, as I was now a mental patient of Never Lose Hope Hospital!  I wasn’t alone though, as there was a doctor on the other end of a radio, trying to help me escape.. and out in the corridors there were more zombies..

In another corridor there were black shadows.. which I expected to change into zombies or otherwise attack when I tried the doors, but instead just remained, watching..

One of the creepiest parts of this game was in a series of underground tunnels which warped and changed as I moved from one end to the other, getting shorter with no doors in sight.  Guessing that I would eventually end up in a single small chamber didn’t make it any less creepy when it happened, and I ended up screaming when the girl appeared above me as I turned around.

Falling through a similarly changing section of airvents, I met up with a group of soldiers.. and relief for just a moment, before I realised that they would surely be taken away from me.

After a fight with some zombies, we moved on to find one of the soldiers had gone missing.. and then some hideous, skinny, mouth-creatures came crashing through the windows to attack us!  I was glad of their additional firepower, but expected to lose another soldier as we moved into the next room, and another in the next, and so on.. but instead I fell through a sudden hole in the floor and was separated from them all at once!

What sort of hospital is this with so many creepy underground corridors?
I ended up plunged into darkness in this next one, with something glowing at the far end.. a pyrotechics locker, which turned out to be full of flares!  I’ve never been quite to happy to come across flares 😉

Another scene felt like it had borrowed from Doctor Who’s Angels, as I turned around to see the dressmaker’s dolls had moved to fill the room I’d just passed through.

I really didn’t want to walk past these, but with the door refusing to open, I had no choice.. and the lights went out as I passed the first one!  🙂

In order to be rescued, I had to destroy the computer which was jamming radio transmissions, and call in the helicopters which were circling the building.

My methods here resulted in fire!  This spread so I had to run from it.. that was, until I met a locked door.  Just when I expected another crumbling floor, I was snatched through the doors by the ghost girl..  I followed her off to the morgue where I ended up on the operating table in another quick switch, only to look down at my body and see a skeleton!  How’s that for a nightmare?

I woke up with the soldiers around me, and promise of escape..

With the soldiers alongside, it felt less horror, more normal shooter, despite the horrible mouth-creatures lunging at us from all sides.  The real tension was gone.. I guess it’s hard to maintain.. and jump scares lose their effectiveness after a while too.

Escape?

The rescue helicopter went down in flames, and the remaining soldier fatally injured.  It turns out that the SWAT team were here for Dr Romero, who has been manipulating people’s minds.. causing hallucinations.  Sneaky.  I was told to go and kill him.. then when I got in the lift, Dr Romero spoke over the radio, giving me the choice to escape when the lift stopped at the entrance, or continue on to kill him, if I could..

Two choices?  This had been mentioned by the friend who told me to play the game, so I took a peek at the “escape”.. no escape at all as the ghost girl really doesn’t like you trying to escape your fate 😉

On to the depths of the facility, and the Doctor’s hideout..

To control minds, he was using a device called the Core, which seemed impervious to bullets, and even after I’d managed to turn off two sources of power, the thing was still running.  More creepy mouth creatures were keeping me from exploring too well, and while I was running around dealing with those, he dropped a few funny lines and references to other games.. “look at me, still talking when there’s science to do”.

I eventually spotted the weakness to the structure holding up the Core, and set about destroying it.
The Doctor wasn’t too happy, and sent me away to a few more hallucinations, but the creepy girl ‘saved’ me from them each time..

The backstory isn’t really explained, but bits of dialogue tell us that the girl was Dr Romero’s wife.. and that something he did caused her to die.. which is why she wants revenge, and kills him where you couldn’t.  It also turns out that the house in Nightmare House was theirs.. which you just had the misfortune to crash outside of.. a little bit pieced together, but horror doesn’t have to completely make sense 🙂

The Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Race!

So Relic’s Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine has finally been released, allowing players to take the role of Captain Titus, a genetically modified superhuman clad in several tonnes of power armour..

Despite only really having Dawn of War II as a reference for the whole Warhammer scene, I’ve been looking forward to Space Marine for a while, and when it finally arrived there was no chance it wasn’t going to be played.  Tim and I decided to have a friendly race through the single player game, too 🙂

The story: Orks have invaded an Imperial Forge World, and Captain Titus is sent in with his Ultramarines to hold key locations until reinforcements arrive..

Your starting weapons are a bolter pistol and a combat knife.. and these make short work of the Orks you first encounter 🙂
Combat is a mixture of ranged and melee, but the melee is where the fun was to be had, especially with the combinations of different strikes and stuns sending the Orks flying 🙂

Health is regained by performing an Execute move; this becomes available when you have stunned an enemy.  This meant staying in the fight where you’d normally have to duck out of fire to let health regenerate.. and it transformed the smaller Orks into health pickups!  Stomping through the Orks let me take a very short lead over Tim, too!

It wasn’t long before we met the Imperial Guard, and they were rather happy to see us 🙂
They also had an Ork problem, which I was more than happy to help with!  At the end of the first run through the trenches, I came across my first Nob, who I found difficult compared to the previous carnage.

Repeated attempts on this enemy meant that Tim got ahead in our race.. and he stayed ahead while we were helping the Imperial Guard and their leader, 2nd Lieutenant Mira.. blowing some stuff up, killing some more Orks, and being given some nice new weapons; the Stalker Bolter and the Vengeance Launcher!

As the Orks had captured a gun emplacement, that was one of our targets.. this involved sticking explosives to one of the massive shells and pushing it into the loader, so that it would blow up the gun.  Following the shell up, we found the Orks had spotted and removed it..

Guarding Leandros back while he pushed it back in was a hard task as there were plenty of Squigs hidden in with the Orks, and they blew me up a few times while I was busy meleeing Orks!  Tim had also struggled with the Squigs, which had allowed me to catch up again 😀

After this we met Inquisitor Drogan, who turns out to have some amazing secret weapon.. and we end up carting the power source around for a while, which attracts the Orks.. the Warboss Grimskull wants it too!  He sent some of his boyz to take it, but I killed them off and proceeded to take the power source, which blew up and sent me down to the sewers, where I had to fight my way up to rejoin the Ultramarines.  I also unlocked the Melta Gun and the Lascannon, two fantastically powerful weapons, though the Melta Gun ended up being my favourite gun for up-close fiery death 🙂

We fought our way to the weapon with plans to turn it on the Orks, through hot turretty death thanks to a security system which couldn’t distinguish us from the green-skinned fungus.. but firing the weapon unleashed the forces of Chaos!

Inquisitor Drogan turned out to be a traitor, with the weapon having been designed to open a rift for the Chaos forces to come through!  He was rewarded with death, then the Orks joined the fight.. Grimskull still chasing the power source.  While fighting, Grimskull and Nemeroth fell over the edge, leaving us to fight the Bloodletters, big red demons who warped around and so weren’t good to shoot, but were rather susceptible to melee stuns 🙂

Next up was destroying the Spire and the Chaos Warp.. via the awesome Imperial Titan which we’d seen before.  On the way to it, I met Grimskull again..

Killing the Warboss wasn’t as hard as I would have expected, with the Melta Gun to destroy his pet Squigs and minions.. and when he was dead, the remaining Ork forces scattered, leaving just the Chaos enemies to kill on the way to the Titan.  The fight on the Titan was a little frustrating as the enemies were out of range of my Thunderhammer.. and Tim caught me up again >.<

After the Spire was destroyed, Nemeroth made another appearance, killing Sidonus and claiming the power source.. which he would use to become a Daemon Prince!

There was another session with a jump pack next.. I love that thing.. and I managed to misfire myself through a hole in the ground at one point, but overtook Tim again.. only to lose ground in the next section and end up behind again.

Tim completed the game just before I got to Nemeroth.. but we were both beaten by another friend who completed it all in one go.. he isn’t human 😉

I enjoyed the last fight despite the use of quicktime.. probably because they were the buttons as I would have been hitting anyway.
As for Captain Titus.. is he corrupted or not?  I guess we’ll have to wait and see if there’s a Space Marine 2 😉

DC Universe Online – A Very Quick Look

When I first heard about DC Universe Online, and especially the option to play as a hero or villain of your own design, I was rather interested.  However, after my experiences with Aion at that game’s launch, and poor customer service by their developer, I was reluctant to splash the cash on this game till it dropped in price, or unless friends got into it and were sticking with it for a while.

A friend bought the game, and played for the first month, but then didn’t carry a subscription on after that.. however, while at ScampLAN he discovered he had been given some free time on the game, and he kindly let me have a bit of a run around 😀

I decided to play a Villain, so here’s Arcady: a crazy dual pistol-wielding loon, with Illusion as her Power and Flying rather than Acrobatics or Super Speed.

The first missions had me escape Braniac’s ship, learning how to move around, interact with objects and fight..  I found the keys a bit odd to start with, and ended up flying around while I was only supposed to be walking 😉

Once in Gotham, I went to help sow disorder and chaos for The Joker.. starting by fighting the cops who attacked me while I was trying to find my way to the first mission.. more fool them 😉

As I had picked Illusion, the first ability I got was Psychic Blades.. which fire three spinning blades to attack enemies in their path.

Combat was rather easy, and I liked the effects.. I did tend to get carried away though, as it was so easy to do, and the cops spawned quickly, often near enough to aggro straight onto me.  Completing most of the quests led straight into others, without the need to go running back to a quest giver or even travel too far, which was great.

I didn’t explore as much as I would have liked.. flying certainly made it feel easy to get around without being interfered with.  However, there were quests to do and more abilities to pick up.. so I failed on the exploration front this time.

Entering the warehouse for one mission, I encountered Catwoman, who I ended up helping in a fight against The Huntress..

I thought this was rather cool 🙂
Letting players fight alongside known powerful characters rather than simply following orders from them makes you feel like you’re actually quite powerful in your own right, which is rather appealing.

Afterwards, I was let inside the Funhouse, which featured huge rolling balls that, contrary to expectation, didn’t crush and kill me!  The Funhouse turned out to be some kind of bonus-level.. there were various presents laying around for me to collect, with either money or costume items inside.. and it did look rather cool although a little disjointed from the rest of the game.  I’m used to bonus levels belonging to arcade games! 🙂

I guess it’s more in keeping with The Joker’s crazy mentality to have you go running around through a building full of bouncing balls and bombs to get your rewards, and more interesting than simply being handed it invisibly during dialogue with an NPC.

After this, I think I may still get DCUO if it ends up in a Steam sale.. I think I could play through enough content during the included month’s game time to be satisfied, though long-term I’d be unlikely to play without friends in the game to go with.

Completing Duke Nukem Forever

We rented Duke Nukem Forever via our LoveFilm subscription a few weeks ago now, and the plan had been to play it through fairly quickly and return it.. however, we’ve been decorating the house, and we had ScampLAN, so it’s taken until this weekend to actually complete it.

As I’ve been playing, I’ve thought back to the demo.. I think it’s possibly the first time I’ve come across a demo which did the game so much harm, spoilers aside at least.  Based on the demo, I just wasn’t going to bother, and if not for the option of renting, it would just have been skipped.  I still think the humour, and Duke’s one-liners, are a mixed bag.. some of the lines are great, but some are repeated so often that they’re just annoying.. I got thoroughly sick of the swine and pork chop lines by the time I was half-way through the game.

The game is actually a decent length though, in this era of short singleplayer campaigns, and there have been some fun, varied sections.  Running around in the burger bar as tiny Duke, using spatulas to bounce around was quite funny, and I rather liked the ‘Gears’ section, though not the fight with the Octababies afterwards, capped with a full-sized Enforcer which I had to kite round boxes.. low on ammo and finding the Freeze gun a bit disappointing.

Driving around in the truck was fun if not particularly unique.. and forgiving of my usual driving style as the thing can be flipped if crashed 😉

I was also very happy to come across the Holoduke again!  This gadget came in very handy on the rooftop as well as setting off some nice memories of Duke Nukem 3D multiplayer, all those years back.  I’m sure he was stationary back then.. this one moves around 🙂

The Octabrains proved to by my worst enemy through the game, resulting in many deaths in the Forkstop level, as well as on the crane segment of the Generator Room.  On the Forkstop level, I found I had to run around destroying boxes and throwing barrels into the water, all while under fire from the pigcops, so that the Octabrains couldn’t throw them at me.. and when it came to the first encounter with the Octaking, I was annoyed that I needed to hide while my Ego regenerated, thanks to only just surviving the Octabrains before.

The second encounter with the Octaking was better, as I had plenty of pipe bombs to deal with the Octabrains as well as the Devastator to knock the King down quickly 🙂

The second to last chapter had me blowing up Hoover Dam, and a slightly tricky underwater section where I constantly felt at risk of getting lost.  The boss at the end of this level was the Energy Leech.. which was dubbed the Sea Penis, for obvious reasons!  This fight was a little frustrating due to the requirement to keep going back to the airbubbles between firing rockets or gathering ammo.. it ended up feeling too repetitive by the time I’d downed him.

I enjoyed the mad rush through the rest of the level as the water rose, despite having to take a few odd turns.. I was looking for ladders to escape, and finding none, which is rather similar to how Tim found it.. but the trick was to just run!

The last boss fight was the best of the game.  After a cutscene in which I was given back Duke’s golden pistol, the Cycloid Emperor appeared.. in a nice open space, so plenty of room to fight in.  My RPG was ‘donated’ by the first pigcop to appear, and ammo was provided by more pigcops until the third phase of the fight, when a supply crate is dropped.  When the Assault Commanders appeared, I did worry that the game would throw all the different enemies at me in turn.. but thankfully it didn’t, and it kept the focus on the Emperor.

Right at the beginning of the fight, Duke threatens to piss in the Emperor’s eye.. on defeating him, Duke carries out his threat, via quicktime!  So the game starts and ends with pissing.. unless you count the extra little scene after the credits, where Duke mentions running for President.  Insert smutty remark about debauched Presidents here 😉

Adventure Craft and Zelda Adventure

Another Minecraft-related recommendation by a friend.. this time with the requirement for a mod called Adventure Craft.  (more detail).

Zelda Adventure is an adventure map inspired by The Legend of Zelda, which uses Adventure Craft as a base.  After installing Adventure Craft, I saw a rather large number of other maps too, some of which may be worth a look too 🙂

I prefer to avoid reading up on games before playing them as it tends to ruin the surprise, and with mods, you never know if there’s going to be enough direction so you don’t just end up walking around aimlessly.  There were enough directions here though.. on loading in I got a cutscene with Zelda calling for help.. the mission.. and then a second cutscene showing me where to go first..

Into a little cave, where I met an Old Man who had a gift for me 🙂

The Adventure Craft mod means that maps can be created with non-destroyable blocks, which means players have to go down the routes made for them, rather than digging through if they want to cheat.  I wonder how easy it is to learn how to use..

On my way towards the first dungeon, I met my first slime!  I’ve not managed to find a single one on our multiplayer server so far, though since Slimes were added, I’ve not discovered many new caves..

This slime died on the fall down to the path, but in the dungeon, I met more.. one large one which appeared right in front of me, making me scream, and then a large group of them.  As well as monsters, the dungeon contained a few puzzles, including a rather infuriating jumping puzzle which took a while to get right and complete in time..

Eventually I managed to light the torch at the far side, allowing entry into the next area, where there were more slimes and a skeleton to fight.  So far so good..

The first dungeon’s boss was a massive slime.. his main attack involves landing on the player, where he can kill almost instantly.

I think the smaller ones look fine, but the texture is a bit lacking on this massive one.. though when you’re fighting with it it’s not exactly the first thing you’re thinking..

The second dungeon was full of skeletons.. warriors, archers.. and jumping puzzles with the addition of spikes!  This dungeon finished with a Skeleton Boss who was rather hard to kill..

The Skeleton Boss was customised to shoot four arrows at once.. and he doesn’t take damage from the player’s sword..

He had to be enticed over the spikes in the corners to kill him.. but eventually he died, leaving only a mess of arrows behind.

Here’s where I found a little problem.. I didn’t receive any loot.

This meant that I was unable to enter the third dungeon when I eventually discovered it at Lake Hylia.. the door was locked and I should have had the key from here.  I tried going through the dungeon again, but there was still no loot, and I didn’t really want to start the whole game over..

The game isn’t yet complete, so I might leave it till I can play the whole thing through.  In the meantime there are plenty more mods.. 🙂

The Stanley Parable

The Stanley Parable is another in a long line of experimental mods for Half Life 2, with a narrator guiding the player through the story.. the author of the game recommends that people play before reading about it, so.. go play first, as this post may contain spoilers 😉

Stanley is employee #427, whose job consists of pushing buttons as instructed, when instructed, every day.. until one day, there are no instructions, and no other people.  The narrator provides the direction, and he says that Stanley goes to the employee’s lounge..

After leaving the office, I was presented with two open doors.. the narrator said that Stanley goes through the left one. I disobeyed..

The narrator commented on Stanley having gone the wrong way, and said that he therefore turned left at the next available opportunity.. of course I carried on going the wrong way, which resulted in the narrator talking about how bad Stanley was at following orders.. and that he then decided to punish himself!

The oh-so-calmly delivered commentary about my ruining the story, insults about my ability to follow instructions and the direction to go and punish myself had me crying with laughter 🙂

When the lift arrived, I missed the fact that there was a choice to disobey again, and went up as instructed, to face my punishment.. and mocking from the narrator about being stupid enough to actually get into the trap too 😀

I decided to behave on the second run, but when I came to a set of stairs to go up, I went down.. and then round and round until Stanley went mad, collapsed and died, only to be discovered by a woman who served as a pointed comment about not finding out what the story was about as you didn’t follow instructions!

The third run had my obedience right up until the very end.. I came across the generator room where the player is told about the machine controlling all the employee’s feelings, and causing them to do what they’re doing.. much like how a game controls the players’ feelings and actions 😉

Right up at the top of the room had the option to engage or disable the failing generator.. the blue pill or the red pill.. I made my choice and was rewarded with freedom, or at least entry to an outdoors area 🙂

As it’s still ScampLAN, the guys also tried out the game afterwards, and both disobeyed the initial instruction to go through the left door, though maybe influenced by my comments..

They were more disobedient than me, and went down a floor in the lift, to be faced with the choice of doors again, and with more disobedience being shown an room made of skybox and dev_textures, before being put into an empty Half Life 2 map, with the narrator throwing a few insults about Stanley being fat, ugly and really stupid, bad at his job, and addicted to drugs and hookers:D

When I downloaded the mod, it came with a text file of author commentary, which was preceded by a note saying not to read anything before playing the game itself.  Apparently most people take the left door on their first playthrough.. so I guess we’re a little more delinquent than most!

The author also lists Dear Esther, which I played and loved a while ago, and Robert Yang’s Radiator HL2 mod, which I’d not heard of before but is now in my download queue 🙂

Multiplayer Awesomeness with Bulletstorm

With four of us here at ScampLAN, it proved the perfect opportunity to try out some multiplayer Bulletstorm.

Anarchy Mode basically consists of setting up as many skillshots as possible between members of the team, to kill waves of enemies.  Solo skillshots apply as expected, but if two or more players work together to create the skillshot, it becomes a Team Skillshot, and earns more points.  This requires a little more communication.. or at least having players who care more about setting up skillshots than trying to get the most individually.. therefore, best played with friends 🙂

This was a lot of fun, with new skillshots being discovered during play.. such as Tug-O-War, for Leashing another player’s Leashed enemy.  This skillshot was apparently added at the request of the community, which I think is a good move on the part of the developer 🙂

(Screenshot from Ripten.com)

Some enemies appear with a specific Team Skillshot to achieve.. such as the Meatspin skillshot, which is earned by kicking the enemy into the rotating doors in the corner of the Grand Central map, or the Midnight Express, for kicking an enemy into the path of the train as it flies through the station.  These were harder to do as the enemy often appeared far away from the required location, but still worth going for based on points.

Echoes is the other multiplayer mode.. though this is more of a beat-your-friends’-highscore kind of mode.  Echoes are small sections from the campaign with plenty of enemies and loads of opportunities for skillshots.. the more skillshots, the more points.

As friends have already got decent scores, if I want to get to the top of our boards, every enemy needs to be taken out with a skillshot, and as many unique skillshots as possible, as only the first few uses get a high reward.  They’re all fairly quick to play through, though, so I should be able to fit them in somewhere! 🙂