Halloween Releases
Steam’s Halloween Sale has plenty of discounted games.. spooky, creepy, scary and eerie.. perfect for Halloween!
Painkiller: Hell & Damnation was released for the PC last night, including exclusive Halloween DLC consisting of a unique Halloween map, themed enemies, decorations, rewards and even an exclusive achievement.
Plants vs. Zombies 2 Coming in 2013!
EA and PopCap Games have announced that Plants vs. Zombies 2 will be coming in Spring 2013!
Another Plants vs Zombies based creation, the Talking Zombatar is expected later this year. This app will allow you to dress up and train your own Zombie..
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyiHryqEWfo]
Talking Zombatar will be free in the App Store, for iPhone and iPad.
Minecraft 1.3.1
Minecraft has now been updated to 1.3.1, adding new features, new buildings, blocks and items, and as usual, fixing bugs.
New this time is Adventure Mode, where designers will be able to create adventures for others to explore.. rather like the AdventureCraft mod which players have used up till now. Players won’t be able to destroy or place blocks, so will instead need to trade with villagers for goods, using Emeralds, or fight mobs for the gear they drop. A new block is to be added for Adventure Mode designers; this block will run singleplayer commands and is only obtainable through the /give command. (more…)
Minecraft for the Xbox 360
Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, 4J Studio‘s ported version of Minecraft, came out on Wednesday, and apparently broke the Day 1 sales records for the Xbox LIVE arcade and becoming profitable within the first hour! Tim won a copy of the game, so he finally had a go.. watching him encounter zombies and creepers was amusing 🙂
I planned to have just a quick go, to compare it against the PC version which I’ve sunk many, many hours into. As usual, I spent my first night up on a pole.. I’ve never been keen on the hole in the ground method! Once I had some resources gathered, it was on to the crafting..
There have been a few changes to crafting, making it a lot easier to use! The system allows you to navigate through categories and then just click on the item you want to make.. and as long as you have the ingredients to hand, the item will appear in your inventory.
Quantic Dream’s Kara and Other Videos
Quantic Dream have created an amazing demo video, featuring an android called Kara. The video shows off new development tech and some fantastic writing too..
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtbDDqU3dVI] (more…)
Indie Gala 2 – Quick Overview
I grabbed my bundle of shiny new indie games from the Indie Gala 2 yesterday, adding Greed Corp, Roboblitz, Critical Mass, Fortix 2 and Bunch of Heroes to my Steam library, and to my ever-expanding backlog! So on to trying them out, in no particular order..
Fortix 2 is a reverse turret defense game by Nemesys Games, an indie developer from Hungary. The aim of the game is to capture the castle by capturing the land bit by bit, while avoiding the dragons, cannons, and other monsters..
I tried out the Fortix 2 demo a while ago, and found the gameplay rather easy.. maybe too easy. At the time I resisted buying the game in part due to that, but also because of the backlog.. so I was rather glad to see it in the bundle and have a bit more of an excuse to get it 😉
I’m happy to note that the full game includes more difficult enemies, including Blood Bats which travel along the base line, meaning nowhere is safe! Maps start to contain hazards such as bat caves, which when captured release more bats to plague you.. the added challenge was certainly appreciated!
One small niggle, though.. the game takes your name from your Steam profile, with no option for renaming. Ordinarily I wouldn’t care, but with a character limit in place, it trimmed my name to “Sir CoffeeScam”!
Vanguard Games‘ Greed Corp is a turn based strategy, where you need to find the balance between harvesting the land for resources and preserving it. Each hexagon of terrain has a number of layers which collapse as you harvest the land.. these can also be strategically destroyed to throw enemy units and buildings into the abyss!
Combat between walkers is simple.. the larger force on each hexagon wins.. but when it comes to the buildings, you need to look at the layout of the map before doing anything! Harvesters can be built on any land you own, then on each turn they generate resources out of the terrain they are on, as well as those around them. However, this erodes a layer as well..
You can use these to sabotage your enemy by destroying the land under them; when a hexagon falls, any buildings or units on it fall too!
I only took a quick look at this game, playing through the tutorial to see how it all works.. I’ll be coming back to this one later, and maybe trying out the multiplayer: you can take on up to three other players across a range of maps 🙂
Bunch of Heroes was next: a four-player co-op shooter by NGD Studios. Aliens are invading Earth, and summoning a Zombie army to assist them.. and the Bunch of Heroes are our last line of defense! 🙂
There are four playable characters in the Bunch, each with a different special attack: El Comandante, the Cuban Commander, throws exploding cigars, while Jared Joe, the Quarterback, can make a touchdown for his special move. Captain Smith, the Duke, can call in a bombing run to assist him, and Agent Liu, the spy, can set enemies on fire! To use the special attack, you need to kill enemies and pick up the energy they drop.
There are three modes: Campaign, Survival and Timed Mode, with a few different scenarios. Campaign mode consists of simple missions such as clearing enemies from an area, defending a point for a short time, and rescuing cheerleaders. I found the cheerleader rescue rather funny, as you have to sling her over your shoulder and carry her..
Aside from screaming when you pick her up or put her down, the cheerleader dances at intermittent points while not being carried. At one point I died while carrying her, and found it rather funny when she almost instantly started dancing at my corpse’s feet! 😀
The game is designed for four players, and as there are no AI bots, playing by yourself means being somewhat swamped. After trying the first Campaign, I tried out Survival.. my first attempt was rather brief.. 😉
Roboblitz, by Naked Sky Entertainment, is a puzzle platform shooter featuring a little robot technician who lives aboard a Space Cannon Facility. The Facility comes under attack from pirate robots led by the MegaNOAD, and Blitz has to get all systems up and running in order to fire the Space Cannon while fending off attacks from the various invading pirate robots.
You start off with only your grabby arms and a spin attack, which is fine for dealing with the Pirate Scouts, but ineffective on larger enemies. Blitz can also gather collectible Upgradium, which can be used to purchase new weapons: the first of these is the EMP gun, which stuns enemies for a short time, but other weapons are able to destroy them.
I liked the variety of puzzles, spread across different areas which you can access at will, but I found the controls and movement occasionally quite poor.
Blitz’s item handling wasn’t as accurate as I’d have liked, and in getting close enough to pick some items up, I found myself bumping them away instead. More frustrating was the jumping: in particular, I found jumping into one certain pipe in the Coolant Tower was more miss than hit, with a miss causing Blitz to get stuck on the edge, holding on by the arms. After a few misses in the fan room, and having to go back to try again, this annoyed me enough that I decided to move on to the final game in the bundle..
Critical Mass, a 3d action puzzler by Manic Games Studios! There are four modes: Classic, Survival, Meditation and Rush, but the core gameplay is the same in each.. destroy the mass by creating colour combos of four or more blocks. Simple to understand, but difficult to master! 🙂
I tried Classic first, and quickly realised that this has the makings of an addictive game.. winning a level means proceeding to the next, slightly more difficult level, while defeat means retrying the level. In this mode, the camera zooms in during play until the whole structure shakes and destroys itself.. producing a combo pushes the camera back and gives you just a little more time, while Survival ‘rewards’ a combo by throwing more blocks into the fray. Rush mode times your efforts, with the object to clear the mass as quickly as possible, and Meditation is the calm, thoughtful mode where you can aim for the biggest combos on the board, without distraction.
The bundle came with music as well, and I have to note I don’t really listen to game music outside of the games themselves. However, games without music wouldn’t be the same, so it’s good to see some support for indie music too 🙂
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is the latest installment in the Resident Evil series, under development by Slant Six Games and Capcom.
The campaign places you in the role of an Umbrella Security Services soldier, having been sent in to Raccoon City to destroy all evidence of the T-virus.. including any survivors. Here, you will face US soldiers come to find the source of the outbreak, and Umbrella’s bio-organic ‘weapons’, as well as the usual zombies!
The latest video shows off some of the action..
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar-qKACbnkg]
During the campaign, the player will be able to make decisions which may go against the series’ canon, such as causing the death of Leon S. Kennedy or Claire Redfield! The campaign mode can be played alone, or with others in the four player co-op mode.. there’s also a multiplayer mode with USS soldiers versus the Government’s Spec Ops.
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is set for release on 23rd March 2012.
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!
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!
Spiral Knights
Steam added a few free games to the list this week, including Spiral Knights, a co-op RPG published by Sega but created by independant company Three Rings. Three Rings have a rather interesting office, modelled after The Nautilus from Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.. I can’t claim to know the book, but this still counts as an Awesome Office!
The Spiral Knights have been stranded on Cradle, an alien world, and need to work together to explore the Clockworks, the machine in the centre of the world. This houses the dungeons, which are for 1 to 4 players, and contain a variety of enemies, puzzles, and minerals which can be collected to sell or craft better gear..
When you launch the game you’re first prompted to create your own cute little Knight with a choice from a small selection of helmet and body armour styles, which is customised a little by your choice of colour.. purple for me as usual 😉
You’re then sent through the tutorial, learning the basics at the Crash Site and going through to the Rescue Camp, where you first meet other players and learn about Cradle, the world itself, and take the elevator down to the training dungeon, Abandoned Depot.
As my friends were already in the main game, I joined a random group..
I think this is a fantastic inclusion, allowing a look at how dungeons would work in the main game.
Little communication was required.. it was all fairly simple with all players needing to be on the elevator to move between levels, and a variety of enemies dropping coins and ‘heat’, which are automatically shared between party members. After the dungeon was complete, the heat level of my equipped gear went up, though when I compared my sword with the sword of the same name from the merchant, I couldn’t see any improvement on the listed attack power and speed of the item.
In addition to heat, players also have energy.. you have up to 100 energy per day, which is used to enter dungeons, craft and purchase upgrades and to activate various devices. Energy comes in two forms, Mist and Crystal Energy. Mist Energy is replenished over the course of the day, but can also be refilled via rewards such as a Mist Tank, while Crystal energy is available via purchase from other players or with real money.
This means there is a limit to how much you can play without paying, which I think is fair enough.
After the training dungeon, there was one more dungeon, The Final Test, to get through before joining the main game and being able to play with friends. This was still easy enough, with the addition of gates requiring keys or puzzles to be solved, such as placing statues on pressure plates or cogs which needed to be shot to allow the next gate to open.
Completing this dungeon brought me to Haven, the main area of the game with various different areas full of merchants, Strangers (Cradle’s natives), and the Arcade, where gates allow players into the Clockworks.
Here, I finally joined up with a friend, and we entered one of the easier dungeons together. These were larger than the previous dungeons, with extra little rooms with treasure in them.. or hidden mobs! Outside of the tutorial, I was also introduced to mineral gathering, with deposits hidden inside the dungeons. As with the other loot, all minerals gathered are shared between party members, which removes the problem of fighting over it 🙂
After clearing the dungeon, the elevator allows you either to go back up to the Arcade, or down to the next dungeon.. we worked our way down a few levels meeting progressively harder enemies.. the zombies were fairly tough, taking a while to knock down.
The graveyard ended up being a bit too much for us as more and more enemies appeared! 🙂
When a player dies, a party member can revive them, or they can spend energy to revive themselves. On dying, a player loses 30% of the heat they have gathered so far, and if a party member revives them, they gain that 30%. This means that weaker players take longer to level up, while good players who are able to remain alive and revive others will level up more quickly. 🙂
The cost of reviving yourself also goes up with each death.. we had to quit after the cost of reviving ourselves was more than the amount of energy we had left.
As yet, I don’t have enough resources to craft anything, so that will come next time!