Battle Brothers

Add another game to the ‘Completed’ pile, as Tim and I have now finished our co-op campaign on Dawn of War II! 🙂

The last few missions were a lot tougher, and running on towards the objective sometimes led to being swamped so we had to change tactic and be a bit more cautious.  Fighting off waves of Tyranids was fun, as it constantly felt as if we were going to be overrun, but just managed to scrape through.  I’ve no idea what this would be like on a harder difficulty.. 😀

I’ve still got Chaos Rising to complete before Retribution comes out, though I think this is one that needs to be completed in single-player first because of the corruption mechanic and wanting to play it my own way!

Surviving Survival

I thought WoW was meant to be addictive, but I’m finding Sol Survivor’s survival mode more so..

In singleplayer, I’m obsessively chasing the badges, with the current goal of getting the gold badge for each.. it took ages to get the Cwm map with a load of attempts coming in around 20 to 30 seconds short of the required 20 minutes.

A friend offered to help me get the badges, so there was more co-op multiplayer.

The Undoer’s “Wall of Death” was made of lasers in this game, and aside from being rather nice to look at, are quite effective.

We also tried out the versus mode; the map was split up with coloured sections to show where you could place turrets, and we each had a drop point and base.  The “Wall of Death” was more effective than my tactic of spreading out different types of tower along the path, and I lost. 🙁

We managed another three-player game during the week too.. now how’s this for a light-show? 😀

Sol Survivor

Sol Survivor is a brilliant tower defense game from Cadenza Interactive, where you must protect colonies of innocents against the evil Ascendancy invaders.  I love tower defense, so this one was an instant winner for me 🙂

This game gives you an enormous range of turrets; from old-fashioned type pill boxes and mortars to lasers, radiation and lightening towers.. I quite like the drone turret, which sends drones to circle the enemy and shoot them, as well as the speed boost tower, which allows the towers to shoot at insane speeds.

In addition to the turrets, Sol Survivor gives you orbital support weapons, which you can use to finish off any creeps who get past the turrets.  During the earliest parts of the campaign, I preferred the fire bomb, but once I got into multiplayer and was able to try out the other support options, I found Fear and Drones became my new favourites.

Multiplayer Survival is also a lot of fun, and with the ability to share resources evenly between each member of the team, there’s no issue with one person getting an unfair share of the killing blows, and therefore the money.  I think the best we managed so far was just short of half an hour..

We also tried out multiplayer campaign, but found the earlier levels a bit too easy.  Once you’ve placed your first few turrets, the incoming creeps stand no chance.. especially with four of us vying to laser or firebomb them before they’ve even made it down the first stretch of road. 🙂

Dawn of War II – Co-operation!

I’ve had two attempts at completing the single player in this game.. the first when I originally got the game early last year, and the second very abortive attempt just before the release of Chaos Rising this year.  Tim has completed the game though, and wanted to play co-op..

At first, I found it a little harder to play with Tim as he talks a lot less on mumble than I’m used to these days.

As usual, the defense missions were the easiest, as I’m fairly defensive anyway, though it was strange not having control of all four units.

Eldar are tougher than they look 😉

Idranel was particularly tough.. more so when we encountered her the second time.  During that fight, we needed to revive each other a few times 😉

I’m betting this will be the next game I complete, as I’ve got a little extra push..

Love for the Little Games

The first ‘little’ game of the week was a freebie I spotted on Twitter: Super Crate Box, an indie game from Vlambeer.

This reminded me of the games I used to play on the Spectrum when I was tiny, with simple gameplay, arcade style graphics and music.  I had to kill the music after a little while though, as there was no option to lower the volume and I found it rather headache-inducing..

Dodge enemies, pick up crates, get guns, shoot enemies!

Each crate has a different weapon; dual pistols, shotgun, bazooka, and other weapons which can be unlocked over time like the revolver.. I liked the bazooka best of the weapons I tried, with the explosion able to take out more enemies.

The second game of the week is also a free one; Steel Storm Episode 1 by Kot-in-Action.   Well.. episode 1 is free, and also open-source (woop!) with Episode 2 being available to pre-order.  Not a bad way of doing things!

So.. a top-down shooter with power-ups, loads of enemies, and best of all multiple game modes including co-op!

The game is suprisingly challenging, due to massive waves of enemies, including some which spawn around you as you progress, and bosses which hit quite hard.

There is plenty to blow up.. there are structures you need to destroy to bring down forcefields for progression, but there are also other bits of tubing, crates, etc, which can be blown up.  Some of these reveal repair pick-ups, but there are not enough to go kamikaze.. you really need to make use of cover and avoid getting hit.. but I lack patience!

When you die you lose all the weapons you’ve found up till that point; good for your co-op partner who can grab them, but bad for you when you’re then back to your starting weapon.  We only spent one evening playing this, and I think it deserves more time.. I love it 🙂

New things at E3

I’ve been looking at some of the info on the games and tech, and there has been plenty to get my interest.

The Fallout series holds a special place in my heart, so after seeing that Fallout: New Vegas has been dated for October 22nd, I’ve mentally written off the end of October in terms of playing other games.  This is despite the announcement of an October 26th release date for Fable III, another game I’ve been looking forward to – it will have to wait until after Fallout 😉

Pre-E3, there were rumours about what Valve might be revealing, after they said they’d be revealing something big.  It looks like the big secret was the fact that Steam is to come to the PS3 – while that’s good news for console players, I was rather hoping for Episode 3.

Portal 2 is on the way, but this was hardly new for E3, though the trailer was quite nice.  I’m quite excited about the co-op mode, and find the idea of playing as a robot or turret rather amusing 🙂

In addition to the two Warhammer 40,000 games, Dark Millennium Online and Space Marine, which I mentioned in the last post, THQ have also announced Red Faction: Armageddon, follow-up to Red Faction: Guerilla.  There was also a very brief mention of Darksiders 2.  I have yet to complete Red Faction: Guerrilla or Darksiders – again, with the consoles..

Must try harder 😉

Call of Duty: Black Ops is another game in my wanted list, though not as high up as the previous games.  I enjoyed Modern Warfare 2, but beyond single player, I didn’t find myself playing it so much.
I tend to prefer playing with a few friends rather than strangers with their camping, mic-spamming, teabagging ways.  Though sometimes I still get the latter from friends.. ah well.

Kinect, formerly Natal, is being shown at E3 too.  Along with the child-oriented Kinectimals, there are a large number of fitness and sports type games planned to use the system.  While I love the tech, these titles are very close to titles I already have for the Wii and so what’s on offer here isn’t going to make me rush out to buy the system.
PlayStation Move had more games on offer, but again doesn’t really add much on from the Wii.

Old Games are still Good Games

We’ve been playing Gears of War again this last two weeks.  Having started the co-op campaign over a year ago, we ended up with more games, and more games, and just never got round to carrying on till now.

I forgot how much fun GoW is. I love the ugly, scarred face of Marcus, the oversized arms and impossible armour – that stuff would weigh too much to be able to run around all day!
I love the cover system, peeking out and shooting, and just hiding a little bit to recover from damage.

I don’t love running out of ammo, of course – or accidentally throwing away the Lancer for some other weapon.  I guess some of the other weapons may be better to use.. but they just don’t have the chainsaw bayonette!  My only gripe with the game is the split-screen – I just don’t feel like I’m getting enough of a view, especially when throwing grenades and looking for where they’re going to bounce.

We finished the co-op mission we started – Tim as Marcus, me as Dom, and instantly started another on the next difficulty, switching roles again.
Cue us both messing up loads as we kept looking at the wrong bit of the split-screen at crucial moments!

We have a copy of Gears of War 2 – this was bought last year – but so far remains untouched as we were going to finish the first game before starting the second.

Did I mention we have too many games? 🙂