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. 🙂

Minecraft

After watching friends playing at i40, I was tempted to give Minecraft another go.

I wasn’t too keen on buying a game which might only add to the pile of unplayed games here..  however, if I spent a full weekend playing, then it would have covered the fairly low cost.  While I was debating whether to get it or not, Minecraft had become rather popular.. too popular for their servers, which fell over!  In a fairly brilliant move, Notch, creator of the game, decided to give Minecraft a free weekend.

Can’t argue with free.. and if the game was still interesting after playing, then it’d get a sale.

So during the free weekend, I spent rather a lot of time on a multiplayer server with friends.. after lots of messing around with the teleport command, I was exiled from the mainland and so began building my own base out of sand.
Of course, I teleported my friends away when they came to look.. the whole point of exile is that you’re on your own 😉

My base was eventually dubbed “The Kitchen”, with somebody placing a little wooden sign on an outside wall.

Multiplayer, like the rest of the game, is still a work in progress.. for instance, health hasn’t been fully implemented.  This means you can’t die, but also means you can’t kill zombies.
Damn.. just as I figured out how to create weapons too!

The server also became prone to crashes.. I don’t think it’ll be too long before an update fixes this though, as updates are frequent.

As we’ve not been able to get on the multiplayer server, I started another world at work.
Here, health is implemented, and I’ve been blown up by Creepers a good few times but also killed a good few zombies with my wooden sword 🙂

I also made a dodgy sandcastle, right next to my spawn point.  I’m building a bigger, better base, and have linked the buildings up with ‘safe’ fenced off, well-lit areas.  Monsters only spawn where it’s dark 🙂

I’m standing on what will eventually be my main building.

Yes, there are a lot of torches.  I like my light! 🙂

Chaos Rising

5.30am.  Dark and cold.  This is a time of day best slept through, but at the end of February, I found myself getting out of my warm bed and getting ready for a day in London with THQ and Chaos Rising, the first expansion for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II.  After baking in the train – the heating was broken in my carriage and thus on full blast – I was glad of the cold outside 🙂

The event was held in HMV’s Gamerbase in the Trocadero Centre, easy enough to find.  However, the toilets were not so easy to find (none in the Gamerbase or even on the same floor) and then when I did find them.. well.
I figured a £1 charge to be a bit excessive, and ended up sneaking into the McDonalds a few streets down instead!

So, the game..
Chaos Rising adds a new campaign to run through, this time facing the Chaos Space Marines.  These are a corrupted form of the Space Marines you control, with a new set of skills and abilities.  Only the first three missions were available to play at the event, following which the guests tried out the multiplayer side of the game.  Of the new units, the Great Unclean One stood out as a rather interesting, if hideous specimen 🙂

A new corruption mechanic has been added to the expansion, with your squads gaining corruption for questionable actions, such as taking items from Shrines, or ignoring optional side missions to help out civilians.  Gaining corruption leads to different abilities and access to higher level wargear, but will lead to you being unable to use other wargear for which you need to be Pure.

Along with the campaign, there are new units for each of the races, new maps, and extra modes for multiplayer including free-for-all, which probably means I should brace for a beating 😉

My favourite mode, Last Stand, gains two new heroes, the Tyranid Hive Tyrant and the Chaos Space Marine Sorcerer.  Both of these can summon minions too, which makes for an interesting group of allies!

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

I recently started playing this with a couple of friends.

My favourite has to be Last Stand.. maybe because I find it easier, though  🙂

So far I’ve concentrated on playing as the Force Commander, which I’m finding a great way to unwind.. there’s just something really sastisfying about running into a bunch of enemies and sending them flying all around!