Majesty 2 – Completed!
Well, I’ve completed the campaign at least.. I have the extra missions, and various expansions to go! 😉
I was surprised, but pleased, by how tough some of the missions have been.. The Royal Feat caused me some trouble, though it did teach me to get heroes started on enemy nests as soon as possible, both for levelling and so that they start earning and spending reward money.
The next mission was the Mortal Foibles of Kings, in which I had to capture and defeat King Rat..
Rediscovering Old Games: Diablo II
We were talking about old games during our lan week, and ended up heading for the spare room and the piles of older games stored in boxes up there. There was excitement as we found copies of Rollercoaster Tycoon, Theme Hospital, Homeworld 2 and others.. and more mockery from the guys as it turned out I had a copy of Supreme Commander, after saying no, I didn’t know the game. In my defense, it was in a multipack which I had picked up for Titan Quest and its Immortal Throne expansion, and the Company of Heroes Anthology.. 😉
I also found my copy of Diablo II, plus the Lord of Destruction expansion, which I had thought lost when we moved house! After a bit of messing around.. updates, copying files to allow the game to run without the CD, registration to Battlenet.. I rolled a Sorceress and went out into the world..
Serious Completion
We’ve had a friend round for a holiday this last week, so there was more gaming time than usual.. time to complete some games!
We completed the first in the series again a few weeks back, so went on to Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter.. with new weapons to mess around with: a chainsaw, flamethrower and a sniper rifle. Killing enemies with the flamethrower netted me the Burn, Baby, Burn achievement, and I came close, but didn’t quite make the numbers for Bird Hunter or Space Marine. Next time!
I loved the Medieval episode, with the huge cathedral.. for style as much as the huge open space. While playing, we were noting just how big some of the maps are in this game.. something which has been lost a little as games are developed with more detail.. for performance and production time, I guess.
Crazy games like these are better with friends.. especially when there are so many relentless waves of enemies to be destroyed!
Borderlands Completed!
I’ve had many false starts with Borderlands.. starting way back around Sept 2010, when we picked up a four-pack in a Steam sale, when I felt I was holding friends back and being confused by the guns.. a later attempt with a friend which I think ended in a lost savegame due to a Windows reinstall.. an attempt to play on lunchbreaks at work.. and finally, this one!
Seeing details coming out for Borderlands 2 gave me another nudge to get back to it.. it’s been a few months since we played last. This isn’t to do with the quality of the game.. the game is great.. it’s to do with a variety of distractions, including the arrival of Skyrim 😉
When we played last time, we’d got ourselves killed over and over again in the Circle of Slaughter.
We returned to this after completing another mission or two, with a bit more determination to beat it. We were killed again.. you really do need to use cover.. but went back in and beat it seemingly by glitch: far fewer enemies spawned and it seemed that it had just carried on from the point we’d reached in our last attempt, instead of returning to the start.
There were more ..interesting-looking enemies to fight.. the Rakk Hive in particular. She spawned Rakks as well as poisonous clouds, so we had to move around a little while shooting.. we both had a sniper rifle, so aimed for the eyes to cause most damage!
I was glad my friend had recommended taking the left path on the approach to this fight, because it made aiming easier.. and we’d have been standing underneath it.. the Rakk Hive’s body remained as a solid object when it died, blocking us from getting at the chests! I guess if we’d been fighting from underneath, it might have landed on us and trapped or killed us.
The last big fight of the game was at the Vault.. the contents of the Vault not being weapons or loot, but a huge beast called The Destroyer, which was imprisoned here! Ammo was a bit of a problem, as The Destroyer has quite a lot of health.. and again, co-op wins out as there were a few instances where we needed to revive each other. In single-player, this would have meant starting again, making a much harder fight!
Some of the DLC was on offer a while ago, so I still have that to play through.. but as the main story is done, I’m putting this one down as another game completed! 🙂
TRAUMA
TRAUMA came into my possession as part of the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle. TRAUMA is a photographic experience by designer Krystian Majewski, where you explore the mind of a traumatised woman, through point and click scenes with clues to be found..
The first scene, “The Next Hurdle”, is a night-time scene with a teddybear trapped under a large stone weight..
Moving around the environment is rather easy.. point and click on blurry angled pictures, onto items within the frame, or via painting gestures on the screen.. you learn these from some of the Polaroids hidden in the scene. The photos are rather nice looking, and combined with the easy to operate interface, I find the whole thing more curious and relaxing than a typical puzzle game, which tends towards head-scratching after a while.
The clues are all voiced by the traumatised woman, and while some seem irrelevant to the task of rescuing the teddy, I guessed they would be involved in an alternate ending, or in for one of the other four scenes. There are a set of Polaroids in each scene too.. either for teaching gestures, giving a clue, or telling us a little bit about the woman’s life.
On my first try through the level, I managed to lift the large stone ball from the teddy, and completed the first ending: “Save the Teddybear”. There were three more endings, listed under “Discoveries”, but I wasn’t able to get at them straight away..
The second scene is “Following Role Models”, with a task of capturing the ghost.. a man who has been blurred through most of the scene by long exposure photography. One of the Polaroids had a picture of the storm cloud from the sky in “The Next Hurdle”, linking the centre of the storm to a drain.. and then in “What They Expect”, I was taught a gesture to use on drains.
Using this gesture in “The Next Hurdle” allowed me to find the “Swallow The Skyscraper” ending!
As I’ve achieved an ending for each of the four scenes now, I could consider myself to have completed this game.. however, with so many undiscovered endings, it just doesn’t feel finished yet!
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!
ScampLAN
Instead of going to Multiplay’s messed up i43, we’ve gone for a smaller, friends-only LAN at home.. in our newly decorated lounge 😀
So far we’ve mostly played singleplayer games, with the guys nagging me to complete Crysis 2.. which I’ve now done, though I was shown up by Ali completing both Bulletstorm and Red Faction: Armageddon in two days!
The demo for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine made an appearance too..
Yay for lots of dead Orks! I found the first level harder than the second, with many retries of the last room.. the big Orks were a bit painful. The second level was much easier as the Jump Pack meant that for quite a way, all I needed to do was land on enemies to kill them 🙂
This game is now on the wanted list.. along with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Gears of War 3..
I’ve also tried out DC Universe Online, but I’m not going to rush to buy it. Although what I played was quite fun, I think the appeal may run out after a while.. from what I’ve heard, there isn’t a lot to do at max level, and unless I had friends playing too, I can’t see that I’d want to run around doing the same thing too many times. Maybe if the game turns up cheap..
We’ve also picked up the DLC for Borderlands, as it was cheap on Steam.. though we now have to get on with our game sometime!