Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

The October Humble Monthly bundle included the 2018 mech combat game Battletech . I have always loved big stompy robot games and I have very fond memories of playing  Battletech: Mechwarrior games from a quarter of a century ago when they vied with Metaltech: Earthseiege for the mech gaming crown. This latest Battletech game ticks a lot of boxes for me. It has a story based campaign set in the very rich lore of the Battletech  universe . Combat is turn based so no twitch shooting is required. The player controls a squad of mechs which are simulated down to the sub module level giving lots of of variables to play around with and control. All of this is right up my alley. Unfortunately my first couple of hours in the game tarnished this shiny picture some what. The game feels buggy and unoptimised. At times the action is jerky and have I experienced sound dropouts and a crash to desktop during combat. The crash happened as I was attempting the surprisingly challenging first ...

I am about three quarters of the way through a Dark Elf vortex campaign in Total Warhammer 2. Unlike previous campaigns I am deliberately limiting territorial expansion. I hold only three provinces and I am using diplomacy instead to secure borders. This slows down the game but it makes it much easier to defend against the random chaos armies that spawn during vortex rituals. With so few settlements it did take a while to get my economy off the ground but at this point some 150 turns in I am the strongest and richest faction and I have managed to disrupt the plans of my vortex rivals with expeditionary forces, allies and intervention armies.   Dark Elves are a very enjoyable faction to play with no obvious weaknesses and some very strong creatures and magic. The armour piercing crossbows of tier one Dark Shards mean that even early game Dark Elf armies can inflict serious damage. Dark Elves unique faction ability allows them to build black ark ships and use them as mobile...

I have been enjoying this Japanese RPG with turn based tactical combat since picking it up in the Steam sale. The game has an excellent story with well developed characters and plenty of background details all told with very cute anime graphics in a storybook format. The turn based tactical combat feels a bit like XCom but it has several interesting differences. For example rather than each character getting one move each round you get a limited number of action points to spend on whichever characters you chose. Action points are precious so choosing the best characters each round is an great tactical twist. Also surprising is the fact that characters can move after they attack unlike the majority of turn based games that I have played. This means that it is possible for a character like a sniper to pop out of cover take a shot and then pop back into cover. The usefulness of this is somewhat constrained however by the abundance of reaction shots in the game. Most characters get a fre...

I finished a full single player campaign of Warlock 2 the Exiled last week. Overall I enjoyed the game and recommend it but it does have some shortcomings and threatened to become tedious at times. The game play is almost identical to the first Warlock but Warlock 2 has a wider variety of units and spells and a more defined single player campaign. It looks like a fantasy version of Civ V but there is far more emphasis on combat and very little emphasis on things like trade and diplomacy. The large game world is spread across a dozen or more randomly generated shards that are connected via a network of portals.  These shards are beautifully rendered with a lot of variety of scenery and resources. The tactical turn based combat  is very good good with a wide variety of units and abilities. You are a great mage so you can support your units with spells that have powerful effects on just about every aspect of the game.  I imagine it makes for an enjoyable multiplayer game...

Alien Rage: Am old fashioned corridor shooter with up to date graphics and great meaty weapons. What is not to love? Well lots apparently because it got mediocre reviews but I really enjoyed it. There is nothing very original about the game but so what? It is great fun. To the Moon: This is more of an interactive story than a game but it tells a good story and it tells it very well. Be warned it's a love story and a tear jerker at that. The Witcher 2: Finally gotten around to installing this and starting it. Twenty hours played and still enjoying it but I am still in the first settlement. After a very action packed opening with a huge siege battle and and dragon the pace slowed down considerably. I did have one boss fight with a giant Octopus but I found it more annoying than epic. Age of Wonders: An old classic that appears to be one of the inspirations for Kings Bounty. There is plenty of clever tactics required and the game-play quickly distracts you form the ancient graph...

For the last few weeks I have spent most of my gaming time in Kings Bounty the Legend. I started playing the game back in 2009 and loved it but I managed to burn out fairly quickly. This time I have stuck with it and I have over 70 hours clocked up. I play very slowly so even with this I am only half way through the campaign. The game is wonderful for its art, its humour, its challenging implementation of turn based strategy and for it's ability to keep things varied with a variety of locations, enemies and troops. If you have never tried it I strongly recommend it particularly now that it can be bought for a few euros and is regularly on sale. One feature of the game that has provoked much comment both good and bad from players is the limited availability of troops and the constant need to travel the lands in search of replacements.  I myself have noticed that this one feature has a huge influence on how I play the game and I am not convinced that the benefits outweigh the adv...

I am still working through the bounty of Christmas game sales. Dragon completely enthralled me once again for all of January and well into February. I started with the new to me expansion "Awakenings" but then I went back and did a complete play through of the original game. There is still hours of content left in the DLCs if I ever feel inclined to dip back in. I spent a few days playing with Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon. This is a very clever re-skinning of the original Far Cry 3 which ports the action from tropical island to a Sci Fi dystopia complete with laser shooting dragons. I liked it and I liked the setting but it didn't hold my attention long enough to do a complete playthrough. Sticking with Crytek I played through the single player campaign of Crysis 3. I thought it was very good with all the flexibility and free roaming that Crysis 2 had abandoned. You have a multitude of choices as to how to overcome your enemies ranging from a stealthy bow to all out explo...

The only fair fight in the game Much has been made  of the way FTL: Faster than Light brings old school unfairness back into gameplay. You can find yourself hopelessly outclassed on the very first jump of the game.  You might be surprised then to discover that I have come to the conclusion that the final boss fight, despite being an order of magnitude more difficult than any encounter which precedes it is the only fair fight in the game. It is very difficult without a doubt but it is also brutally fair because it is utterly predictable. I have only managed to overcome the boss four times (twice on easy, twice on normal) but I now know the fight and I know exactly what to expect and how to prepare for it. If I get as far as the boss I now know that failure will be because my ship is not prepared or because I make some error in play and that in my opinion is fair. The real unfairness comes from the random encounters at lower levels that can undermine any promising campaign or...

The developers of the terrific little space ship game FTL:Faster than light  call it "roguelike" and better gaming minds than mine agree with them. Yet as a rule I don't like rogue games but I love FTL. How can this be? My experience with rogue games started with Rogue itself played in glorious ASCII on college computers back in the 1980's. I wasted many hours on it  when I should have been studying but I never came close to finishing a game and ultimately I found it a frustrating experience and got bored.  I have dallied with various descendants of Rogue over the years, the most recent being the highly regarded Dungeons of Dredmor but my experience is always the same. The games suck me in quickly and are quite compelling at first but soon I get tired and frustrated with the repetitive game-play. However cleverly they name things and however challenging the monsters are  I quickly come to feel that I am playing a more challenging version of   Progress Que...

It was the doors that got me in the end. The good (space) ship Dodo only managed 2 miserable jumps before meeting the drone that would be her undoing. The drone may have looked innocuous enough but its first volley took out Dodo's weapons and things began to look bad. A crew member frantically tried to bring  weapons back online but in the mean time the drone was free to pound the ship with missiles. Those missiles passed right through shields and soon fires were burning throughout the ship. The crew tried to put out the conflagrations while the hail of missiles continued. One brave ensign lost his life in the effort and the Captain realised that more desperate steps would be required. Pulling the crew back to a safe area he opened the airlocks in order to vent air from the fiery regions. This drastic method worked and the flames were extinguished so the crew set about repairing the damage. With life support, shields, weapons and engines all damaged no one paid much attent...

Finding myself at a bit of a loose end I trawled through my collection of unplayed games and decided to give Frozen Synapse another go. Frozen synapse is a highly regarded turn based tactical game using the "We-Go" system. You plan the moves of your small team while your opponent (human or AI) plans theirs. Then you press a button called Prime and both sets of moves are simultaneously executed. Frozen Synapse scores over previous "We-Go" games in allowing you to predict your opponents moves and play out the resulting scenarios in full before pressing the Prime. It removes all elements of chance and allows you to accurately predict what will happen if: "Will he get caught in the splash from my rocket if he walks towards that room?"   / "Will I be able to shoot him first if he tries to come around that corner?" and questions like that.  The game is very well made has a good single player campaign and excellent multi-player support. I like puzz...