Sanctum got Updates!

FPS Tower Defense game Sanctum received some updates recently, adding new maps and towers!

Some of these updates are free, both others are via paid DLC..

Annoyingly, I see a lof of moaning on the Steam forums by ungrateful people who expect to be handed more content and not pay another penny.. despite some of these people only having picked the game up cheap in a Steam sale!  What they’re missing is that if the devs continue to work on the game, they need to continue to pay their bills and have some kind of income.. and optional DLC allows for this. I’m sure the whiners would absolutely love to go to work for nothing.. 😉

We went for a quick game or two to take a look.. it seemed that Sanctum had took a leaf out of BulletStorm’s book as we had the Penetrator and Violator in the mix, along with the rather interesting Holo and Ampfield ‘towers’, which allowed for more damage to be dealt to mobs.

I especially liked the Holo tower, which we paired with Gatlings or Penetrators.. and with the right positioning, players can shoot through the tower for a damage boost too 🙂

There was also a new weapon.. a Shotgun, which could be used for single shots, or by holding down the right mouse button, all shots could be fired at once for a rather powerful blast!  I loved this weapon, but haven’t decided which weapon is best to switch out with.  The Assault gun has the grenade alt-fire, while the Sniper allows you to hurt airborne enemies, and the Freeze gun is useful if a pack of mobs seem to be escaping the kill zone.. I guess it has to come down to balance.

Sanctum

Sanctum is an FPS / Tower Defense hybrid from Coffee Stain Studios.. awesome studio name!

Awesome game too, with a building phase followed by the FPS phase while the enemies come to destroy your “Sanctum”.  After each wave, you can build more towers, upgrade existing towers, or upgrade your own weapons.

After a very quick run through the tutorial, learning about the teleporters which allow you to move around quickly in the FPS phase, I joined a friend for some co-op.  The game allows up to four players, so hopefully this is one we can all play at some point 🙂

We started off with a nice row or three of towers..

Following each round, we had an amount of resources for upgrades, which we alternated between improving towers and our own guns.

After a while we’d upgraded the towers quite a way.. the higher up the level, the more impressive the tower..

The slowfields were useful for keeping the enemies in front of certain towers for longer, although they slowed us too.  I found the Gatling towers created a nice shortcut between rows, allowing me to avoid the slowing effects.. but there was a rather nice touch in that the sound slowed down and changed pitch while on a slowfield, with the effect being stronger on more upgraded spots as you’d expect 😉

Some of the enemies were easier to deal with than others.. the flying enemies are normally the ones I have trouble with in Tower Defense, as they bypass my mazes, but our nicely upgraded towers at the back didn’t seem to have too much trouble.

All the enemies had a weak spot, but these were highlighted in orange so it was easy to know where to shoot.. the only difficulty was with the enemies with weak spots on their bobbling, swaying heads, which I dubbed an unrepeatable name. 😉

We had picked Endless mode, but with a few hours’ play and no sign of being defeated, we decided to leave it and come back another time.. hopefully with four of us 😉

Dead Island Announced

I checked Twitter this morning to see a few comments about an amazing trailer for Dead Island, visually and emotionally stunning, with some suggesting it might be the best trailer of the year..

Dead Island is a game being made by Techland and published by Deep Silver, and is an open-ended survival horror first-person shooter with RPG elements.. and zombies.  Zombies?  Count me interested..

I watched the trailer expecting to see hordes of zombies, some sort of survivors, maybe some guns, definitely some gore.  My initial amazement at the trailer, and the close-up of the dead zombie child, turned towards horror as I realised it was all in reverse chronological order..

(Trailer from IGN).

After watching, I felt really, really bad for the family.. but no less interested in the game!

It seems there’s quite a range of views on the trailer, with some condemning it for portraying a child’s death.. and some going as far as to say this sort of content is ‘wrong’.  I think the trailer does a great job.  You’re meant to feel the despair and horror of all those lives lost.. that little family ripped apart..

I really hate the pro-censorship types who have been parading their views around the web recently.  There are far worse things shown on the news.. things that are happening to real people.. but this lot would rather try to stamp on the games industry.  Pfft.

Metro 2033

When I first heard of Metro 2033, all I could think of was how similar it sounded to Fallout.. humanity surviving underground following nuclear devestation, scavenging for survival, mutant creatures.   So, as I loved the Fallout series, I wanted this game from fairly early on.

Friday was launch day, and so I got home, installed the game and started there and then.  Another comparison to the Fallout games?  I found myself playing for a good few hours, barely noticing the time go past.  The atmosphere is amazing, especially in the Metro stations where you can hear everything that’s going on all around you.

On going outside in the polluted air, you need a gasmask.. for which you also need to keep topped up with air filters. How do you know when to change your filter?  Check your wristwatch! 🙂

Wearing the mask for extended periods will also lead it to fog up, making it harder to see.  If you’re fighting while wearing it, you’ll also notice it developing cracks, and eventually breaking..

Once there’s a hole in your mask, you need to change it for a new one (there will be a few laying around in places), or you will start to gasp, wheeze, and eventually keel over and die.

The weapons start off quite weak, especially when using hand-made bullets.  You could use the good, shiny bullets, which are much higher-powered, but since they double as currency, using them might mean you can’t upgrade your weapon at the next station.

In some areas, stealth is the way to go, and here I have to confess to enjoying picking the enemies off with throwing knives. 🙂

In others, the way to go is to simply blow stuff up.. and I just love fire! 🙂

Some of the monsters were frustrating, especially when low on ammo – I’m looking at you, Librarian – but it was nice to be challenged.  All in all, I thought there was a great mix of action and stealth, with a few puzzles and surprises thown in there as well.  I also enjoyed the last section, ‘Ethereal’; running away from the Dark One who wanted to kill me, before finally getting a weapon..  After dealing with him, I had my choice of ending: “If it’s hostile, kill it”, or “find the truth”.

Considering my track record of non-completion, and the fact I spent around twelve hours playing Garry’s mod with friends (I’m blaming the friends for the amount of time there).. I’m quite pleased with myself for completing this in the first weekend!

Dreamkiller

Dreamkiller, from Mindware Studios, wasn’t a game I’d even heard of, but a friend told me about the free weekend on Steam.. and well.. always worth a try.  I justabout managed to complete the game over the weekend, though I didn’t get to try out any multiplayer.

The game is this: a first person shooter set within the disturbed minds of people suffering a variety of nightmares.  You’re a psychologist called Alice Drake, and your task is to enter these nightmares and kill the creatures therein, with weapons created by the minds of the patients.

On the first level, this means spiders – in later levels you’re dealing with straightjacketed lunatics with horrible, chomping, metal-toothed contraptions on their heads, or winged demons.  Later levels find you in Alice’s own dreams, of her childhood in a mental asylum with rather creepy lab-coated shrinks coming at her with needles, as well as creatures from all the patients’ dreams so far – and the finale: a giant floating head!

The idea seemed great, but the game was a little repetitive; open door, shoot things, go to next door, and boss fights pretty much being a matter of clearing away some minions, shooting at the boss, running to health pickups, and clearing some more minions before shooting the boss some more.  AI just weren’t that bright..  The beserk mode was also a little offputting – enemies turn red and everything else greys out a little.. in other games this indicates you’re nearly dead, so here it just doesn’t fill you with the sense that you’re doing lots of damage now.

I did like the teleport type feature – sending a representation of yourself running off into the distance and warping to it.  Very useful for dealing with the minions during a boss fight, leaving them at one end of the room and giving you time to fire off a few more rockets.

Overall, it was entertaining in a go-mad-shoot-everything way – reminded me of Serious Sam, though I think that was the better game.  It was also quite fun comparing progress through the levels with a friend, though I only caught up with him right at the end. 🙂