ScampLAN 2

The weekend just passed was ScampLAN 2, with a couple of friends bringing their PCs round to our house for gaming and silliness 🙂

We played a lot of Dungeon Defenders.. which I had a look at last week.  This game has really grown on me over the week..

I’ve now tried out all the characters, but the one I’ve played most has been the Huntress, who specialises in traps and ranged weapons.  I felt she was slow to get off the ground with.. the traps start off with only a few charges and are soon used up.. but after gaining many levels and improving both the traps and the character’s stats, she now feels quite powerful 🙂

When you level up, you can spend your points on stats for the character or for your towers.. I’ve spread my points out between the Huntress and her traps, but another friend has put most of his points into his Monk, making him fantastic in combat but with rather weak auras.  For the characters the three of us developed over the weekend, this worked very well, as it meant the mana could be spent on building and upgrading stronger towers and traps, without getting too close to the defense unit cap.  We got as far as the Servant’s Quarters during the weekend!

Another game we had a turn at was Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.
We tried to play this previously, but thought we might do better if we were in the same room and able to communicate a little better.  However, as in our previous attempts to play, we found barely-visible enemies were able to take us out with ease.. the game is supposed to be about realism and tactics, but if I’m approaching on my belly through trees and bushes, I don’t think it’s realistic to be shot down so quickly by people I can’t even see yet.

I also suffered from a rather random bug, which had my character float up into the air before being thrown back down again.. and of course, taking realistic fall damage.  This happened a few times, but settled down enough to complete the mission.  However, the fun was lacking for most of us, so we didn’t go back for a second mission.

In between the gaming I had a bit more of a poke around with VoxelSniper on Minecraft.
I had a failed attempt to add Zombe’s flying mod.. not quite sure what went wrong, but the game wouldn’t launch.. before I installed VoxelAir, which allows me to jump high into the air and land without damage, or hover above the ground.

You can jump rather a long way up.. and when I came down, I was surprised by the crazy number of mobs which had spawned!

I found an interesting bug with VoxelAir too.. after being killed while hovering, courtesy of a few Skeleton Archers and a lack of care, I respawned still hovering.. floating upwards in fact!  Using the “/give” command simply dropped a new feather at my feet, out of reach.. a friend also tried to give me a feather but it also landed out of reach.  In the end I used “/kill” a number of times and eventually spawned close enough to a feather for it to pick up.

Next up will be forming a nice piece of flat land for a huge project.. more later 🙂

With four people and a reasonably couch to take advantage of, there was also some console gaming.. though we found a distinct lack of co-op games allow four people on one console.  So many games boast “2-4 player co-op”, but don’t specify that this means two people on one console, and two on a second console.. annoying.  We tried Call of Duty: Black Ops.. we wanted the Nazi zombies, but only the arcade mode allowed all four of us to play.  We had a couple of runs on that, with me claiming the top spot for one run!  Red Faction: Armageddon failed us, as did Rainbow Six Vegas.. so we ended up shooting each other in Halo 3 which entertained us for a while!

Hunted: Demon’s Forge was picked up at the start of the weekend too, and we attempted some co-op in pairs.  We all found the game surprisingly hard, though Tim and Jason attempted to play without going through a tutorial first.. masochists!  I think the game would be a lot easier if you were able to carry more than one health vial each.. we also found the game punished deaths by sending us a long way back each time.  I’m looking forward to playing the game by myself at some point soon, too.

Another game which made an appearance over the weekend was Gears of War 3!
I hadn’t yet finished Gears of War 2, but the copy of #3 will be going home with Jason at the end of the week, and Tim wanted to start some co-op, so we’ve been playing through it anyway.. on hard!

So far, I’m loving it.. though noticing a few changes! The world has been destroyed by the Hammer of Dawn, and the enemies now include mutated Lambent creatures.. I’m noticing a huge change from the graphics of the original Gears of War as well, with the character models all being far more refined.  Good changes all round.. and still a great game, as far through as we’ve gotten this far! 🙂

Dungeon Defenders

Dungeon Defenders is a Tower Defense Action-RPG game by Trendy Entertainment.. delayed some months, but finally released yesterday.  There have been a few combination tower defense and action games lately, and like the others, there are two phases per round: the Build phase, where you place barriers and traps, then the Action phase, where the enemies come..

Our enemies here are goblins, orcs, dark elves and similar, and they head towards the Eternia Crystal in the centre of your castle, while you use your player character’s abilities to help fend them off, as well as repairing and upgrading your defenses as you go..

There are four classes of player characters to choose from: Apprentice, Huntress, Squire and Monk, each with their own abilities and defenses, and apparently more to come later.  The characters all level up and acquire loot through the game too, unlocking more defensive options and stronger abilities.

The game has a singleplayer mode, as well as co-op for up to four players, and a PvP mode.  We had a few problems getting into the game to start with.. being unable to connect to the servers or each other.. we managed to launch the game around an additional update coming out, but after validating the game files and restarting a few times, we were able to get into a co-op game together.

Starting off, you are placed in the host’s Tavern.. this has a number of other features I’ve not yet explored.  From here, you can choose whether you’re doing a Campaign or a Challenge, and choose the level and difficulty.

For our first co-op playthrough, I took the Apprentice, who specialises in elemental towers and magical attacks.  He starts off with a Magic Missile Tower.. but it wasn’t too long before I was also able to use Magic Barricades.  I’m looking forward to the Fireball and Lightening towers, but I’ll need to level up more first!

The enemies will go out of their way to attack your defenses, but you can repair them, and with enough mana, upgrade them too.

Killing enemies awards mana, and at the end of every level you can open chests around the map, which provide mana as well as various pieces of loot.. armour and weapons.  Loot comes with varying stats on it, and some pieces are class-specific, so as it dropped we shared it out accordingly.. my friends were playing as the Squire and the Monk.

After defeating all waves on the first level, we were able to move straight on to the next level, which had enemies coming from three sides.  We were doing well enough until the Kobolds arrived.. but they explode, and cause rather a lot of damage..

If you are killed, you have a short count-down to respawning.. but if the enemies have reached your crystal, that’s time you don’t want to spend laying on the floor 😉

The three of us were unable to beat the second level on this attempt, but as the characters have levelled up and gained some nice loot, I’m sure we’ll do better next time..

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.

Obsession..

There’s something obsessive in me that always wants to get a higher score in Tower Defense games..

Dwarfs!? Base Defense mode has turned out to be something I keep coming back to, and despite so far being unable to really improve on my score, I keep.. on.. trying..

I usually always get up to Armageddon Wave 1 or 2.. but I’ve seen much higher scores than the sub 2 million scores I’ve been getting, which just makes me want to keep trying.. not too healthy..

Dwarfs!? Base Defense

Dwarfs!? has a Tower Defense mode called Base Defense.  This mode starts off with the diggers, who actually dig out the paths the monsters will use, and with a little direction and coin, you can have them create a reasonable maze.

However, you also need to reserve enough money to build towers.. there are eight types to choose from, from the simplest, the Stone Tower, to the powerful but expensive Lightning Tower.  Once the first wave of monsters have been dealt with, a second gate opens, with a second digger.. and the same with the third and fourth gates.

Rather than build a second maze, I made him cut a path to the start of the first, so the monsters pass by the towers I’ve already built.

After all the gates have been opened, the next waves allow for banking up some money.. and you should, as you want the Missile Tower or the Lightning Tower for dealing with the Titan 🙂

Later on there’s a level with many of these swarming in, and as they end up arriving in pairs, my defenses are proving inadequate.. I can take one down, but that leaves the next free to run to the middle and destroy it!  I may have to check out what others have done, as there are some seriously amazing scores on the leaderboard! 🙂

Dwarfs!?

Having a Dwarf-obsessed friend means that a game with a title like this one gets instant attention!  That’s not to say it didn’t deserve it though..

Dwarfs!? is an arcade/strategy game which puts you in the role of Overseer of a Dwarf colony, aiming to make as much gold as possible.  To actually get the gold, you have diggers, who head off randomly in search of loot, but rather like lemmings often end up getting themselves killed in water, lava, or being attacked by various enemies!  For defense, you have warriors, which can be trained up at outposts and fired out of a cannon towards bosses!

I downloaded the demo several weeks ago, but then failed to even launch it, with so many other games to play, and an attention span like that of a goldfish.  However, the game appeared on Steam for just £2, so it ended up in the collection anyway 😉

The tutorial is voiced by one of the Yoggscast guys.. I wasn’t too keen on the rather forced “Dwarf” voice he was putting on, though I’m sure his fans love it, and it is good to see a boost for an indie developer too!  The developer is Power of Two.. a two-man team, assistend and published by Tripwire Interactive 🙂

Dealing with water or lava caves requires a sacrifice in the form of one of your diggers blowing himself up to create a hole.  Fortunately, your base produces more diggers as time goes on, so you don’t run out.. and trapping either cave provides you a bonus.

Enemies are fought off by your warriors, with bosses confronted via the awesome Dwarf Cannon, which fires warriors!

Once out of the tutorial, there are a few game modes to try out.. in Arcade, you simply aim to gather as much gold as possible in a set time limit.  The dungeon is randomly generated, so you just have to hope the diggers hit a treasure cave  before a water or lava cave.. and by the end of a 15 minute game there are so many diggers wandering around it’s hard to keep track of them all!

Other game modes include Tower Defense gameplay, Rush Mode, with crazy spawning of diggers, Dark Mode, in which you can only see the tunnels your dwarfs have made.. no guiding them towards loot, then, as well as a series of Challenges.. and Leaderboards to compare with friends.. or if I were a Dwarf, to measure my beard against 😉

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 😉

Steam Summer Camp Sale

After an amazing week away in Madeira, I returned to find Steam has yet another crazy sale going on, with lots of games at very low prices.  Should I fear for my bank balance now?

Friends have bought me a few games: Star Wars – Battlefront II, SpaceChem and my own copy of Oblivion 🙂

I’ve added to this with two tower defense style game: Sanctum and Atom Zombie Smasher, as well as a rather large bundle of Paradox Interactive games.  The Paradox Fantasy Pack got my interest because of Majesty 2, which I tried a long while back.. along with DLC for this plus the original game, it also contains a strategy game called Elven Legacy, plus follow-ups.  As Majesty 2 itself cost £5.35, and the bundle £5.89, this was pretty much a no-brainer!

Along with the Summer Camp Sale, there are a large number of “Camp Activities”, which basically amount to earning specific achievements in a variety of games to earn tickets which allow you entry into the Grand Prize Giveaway, where 100 people will win the top 10 games on their wishlist.  The tickets can also be spent on random in-game content, including map packs, extra characters, missions or vanity gear such as the Sunny Shades for TF2.  I’m only now up to 7 tickets, with a good number of achievements to get.. the HOARD one in particular is eluding me!

As for TF2.. this game has now become free, which has meant a lot more people playing!  We now even have somewhere good to play, as Jason set up his Closed on Sundays TF2 server, complete with silly Roll the Dice mod 😉
So far, the server has filled up quickly whenever we’ve played, which has meant a few good games.  Roll on the weekend!

Portal 2 ARG and Defense Grid: The Awakening

Portal 2 was supposed to be released on the 19th April.. however, an earlier release date was suggested over the last week, as a pile of clues have been discovered by fans dedicated enough to go looking for them.

I am not one of those people; while I love the fact they’ve done it, I don’t have the time or knowledge required to root around with codes, convert random numbers to images and access encrypted files.  Seriously.. even if I had the time I wouldn’t even know where to start, nor whether I was even going in the right direction.  Instead, I’m content to keep an eye on the Valve ARG wiki..

The Potato Sack Pack appeared on Steam last week, and I just took it as an opportunity to grab a few more cheap games, but it was another part of this rather clever play by Valve!  The info gathered so far points to Portal 2 being unlocked when an unspecified amount of play-time has been reached on the various games in the pack.

There is also a potato-collecting mechanic involved, with collectible potatoes hidden in the games and elsewhere: one can be collected simply by joining the ‘nelipot’ Steam group.  The ARG Wiki people have discovered that more potatoes increase the rate that the GLaDOS@Home bars fill up.. so really, the aim of this game is now: collect potatoes and play indie games 🙂

I won’t be idling in any games overnight, though.. while it’s mentioned on the Wiki as a way of adding the the cause, I consider it to be too close to cheating when the ‘aim’ is to play.  I have similar reservations about using the login details posted for collection of potatoes as well..  I’m just going to play the games.

I was gifted Defense Grid: The Awakening on Friday: a tower defense game with a twist.. when the invading aliens reach your base that’s not it.. they steal a power core and attempt to leave the base with it.

Killing the alien results in the core being dropped.. it will try to make its way back to base but can be grabbed by another alien en-route.

The Meteor tower is my current favourite.. long-range, great damage when it hits.. though I like the laser too, especially when upgraded. 🙂

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? 😀