Cthulhu Saves The World

Cthulhu Saves the World, by Zeboyd, was part of the Really Big Bundle which released a couple of days back.  This one is like a return to the old-style 2d games I played in the past.. but with a dose of tongue-in-cheek humour too 🙂

Having lost his powers at the beginning of the game, Cthulhu has to undertake a quest and become a hero.. saving the world so he can regain his powers.. although once he’s done, he’ll get back to destroying the world!

The first enemies met are two ‘Gooez’, who have kidnapped a girl on the beach.  Heroism requires that we fight them off, of course!  The combat is turn-based, with attacks selected from menus rather like in Final Fantasy.. physical attacks and special attacks such as Insane Strike, which use up magic points and sometimes apply a status debuff to the enemy.

After winning this first battle, Cthulhu levelled up and got a choice of level up bonus.. one affecting Strength and the other affecting Magic.  I went with the Strength boost.. so now every time Cthulhu causes an enemy to go insane, he gets an increase to Strength too.  Umi, the formerly kidnapped girl, also joined the party after the battle.. and falls in love with our tentacle-faced anti-hero 😮

More random-encounter enemies were to be found in the caves.. providing XP and another little joke in the enemy description!

Zeboyd have capped the number of random encounters in each area, which gives you a little nudge when you’re powerful enough to move to the next area, and also means you don’t end up taking just a few paces and being attacked again, over and over until you’re sick of it.

The first real opposition came from a group of adventurers called the Three Heroes of Goodly Justice.. a Thief, a Warrior and a Cleric.  These guys brought some great dialogue too, and once defeated, Cthulhu notes that we’ll probably see them again because they’re heroes, they’ll respawn at the nearest church anyway 😀

After each fight, the party members HP is restored, and some Magic Points.  I don’t think you get enough back, though.. what you’re given back doesn’t even cover the cost of a spell.  I’ve only found health potions so far, which means my only other option is just dealing normal attacks and waiting for my Magic to regenerate.

Cthulhu Saves the World was originally released for the 360, and was only brought to the PC this summer, where it has apparently done rather well for the developers 🙂

This is Magicka!

Magicka is an action-adventure game by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by Paradox Interactive.  The game is set in a fantasy world with magic, goblins and trolls, a quest to help the King, a rogue wizard, and a heavy dose of parody.

In the single-player story mode, you put on your robe and wizard hat and combine elements to fire lasers, throw boulders and shoot lightning at your enemies!

There are eight elements to play with: water, life, shield, cold, lightning, arcane, earth and fire, and each of these can be directed straight at the enemy, applied to yourself, used as an area-of-effect spell, or even applied to your weapon.. doing this means you can use it on the enemies later, or just run around with a sparkly colourful sword 😉

One of my favourite defensive spells is a fire, earth and shield combination, applied as an AOE – this places a circle of fiery mountains around me which knock back and burning enemies.  Or friends, if they’re standing too close..

The game allows up to four-player multiplayer, in which you can play through the story or just blow your friends up.  Friendly fire is most certainly on in this game, and we ended up ignoring the story at the beginning of our session to just try and kill each other.

There is also challenge mode, which is survival mode with waves of increasingly difficult enemies.  On your own, you really don’t last long, but when playing with friends, so long as one person stays alive they can revive you with a quick spell.  I’ve not yet attempted Versus mode.. one for a little later maybe!

I think this would have been a good game without all the jokes, so the fact there are so many is a bonus.  Some of the achievements themselves are also jokes, such as the “This is Magicka!” achievement for pushing a soldier down a hole 😉