XCOM: Enemy Unknown

It’s fair to say that even if you’re a PC gaming veteran, the titles that inspired the development of the latest XCOM may well have passed you by in your youth. So luckily, Firaxis decided it was time for a revival of these classic games.

XCOM is a turn based strategy game set in the near future. Aliens have just made first contact with Earth, and strange occurrences have been reported around the world. Tasked by a shadowy council of nations, your job is to command an elite squad to tackle and repel the invasion.

Your time is split into two distinct halves. The action takes place commanding your squad through tricky missions, fighting the aliens head on. When your missions are complete, you return to your home base where you manage your resources carefully between a number of high priority projects.

The action on the ground is well designed as the gameplay offers up a number of different strategies for you to choose from. You command up to a squad of six soldiers, each with their own specialist skills and equipment. Each encounter with the aliens starts with your team landing in the corner of the map, leaving you to push out and reveal the pesky aliens lurking in the darkness.

Every member moves in a set turn order. So using the terrain to approach in cover is vital. As soon as the enemy is spotted, it gets a chance to scurry into cover.  Planning your firing positions is a good idea as cover plays a key part. Fire-fights are often short and brutal exchanges of shots. When you have enemies in your sights, the game tells the odds of hitting each target and the chance of doing critical damage. Hitting fire is always a tense moment, watching your soldier line up a shot that can make the difference between victory and defeat.

Each time you score a hit is satisfying as your volleys thud into the target. Every enemy downed bringing you closer to a successful mission. However, that can be quickly turned around by a bit of bad luck. What can appear to be a simple shot can easily end up being a rather embarrassing miss, leaving you crossing your fingers while the enemy return fire.

It is possible to carefully advance across the maps. But the missions mix things up. Sometimes all you need to do is sweep the area of threats. On other occasions the council will task you with saving as many civilians as possible, forcing you to swiftly push out into the map.  Your performance will make all the difference when it comes to your funding.

And you funding is your most important resource. Several nations around the globe are willing to contribute funds to you on the condition you keep them safe. Ignore a country in need for too long and its citizens will reach a state of panic, causing your funding to be cut. Failure to keep global panic levels down will lead to the aliens taking total control as each nation falls prey to them.

Every dollar you earn can be pumped into various projects in your home base. Both research and engineering are vital to understanding your foe and bringing new equipment to the field. However both will take a lot of time unless you fund team expansions. You also have to maintain a fleet of fighter aircraft and satellites around the globe to intercept UFOs. Balancing you budget is a tricky choice, especially on your first play-through.

I never really felt sure where to use my money. I was always worried that I might not advance in technology quickly enough to combat the tougher aliens, or not build enough satellites and lack funding. As it turned out, the game is quite lenient on normal difficulty and I never found myself in tricky situation. Although I did miss out on a few UFO events as I had focused a little too heavily on research.

My main criticisms of the game come from the combat. There’s only a small amount of maps and you will spot some repetition after a while. Also, far too much of the game was set at night. It was only after several hours play that I actually got a mission set in the daytime.

The cover and line of sight mechanics are also a bit wonky. Cover is clearly indicated by shield icons, but with the game having an isometric view of a square grip map; it’s not always clear what directions you’re covered from.  Shots can also happily go through large chunks of scenery as if they weren’t there. Spotting an enemy through solid objects is no problem, and it’s the same vice versa!

I didn’t mind losing a team member when I made a clear tactical error. But every now again the AI would be extremely lucky and pull off an impossible shot, usually getting a critical hit and killing a team member in cover with a single shot. Since the game uses probability to resolve all the combat, there will always be some unfair moments, that’s a given. However it doesn’t stop it from being incredibly frustrating.

Thankfully, as I’m a sane person who played on normal difficulty; a quick save game reload would undo any ridiculousness. If you’re a madman who plays iron-man mode where there’s no such luxury, be prepared to recruit many new team members.

Overall, XCOM is probably the finest example of a turn based game in the modern era of gaming. Completing the game once took a good twenty hours and left me looking forward to upping the difficulty and heading back in. 

Blood Bowl: Not so Legendary Edition

Many years ago, Games Workshop created Blood Bowl. A fun table top game where the warring races of the Warhammer Fantasy world could settle their differences with a simple football match. Only, it’s a football match where brutally murdering the enemy team is a perfectly valid strategy! Fast forward to 2010, developer Cyanide released the first version of Blood Bowl on Xbox 360 and PC. A faithful recreation of the table top game, however it was missing the expansion set content.

Cyanide has since created the Legendary Edition as a follow-up title. It adds in all of the teams left out of the first edition, a couple of game tweaks and a few extra stadiums to play in. A reasonable amount of expansion content, if only it were priced like one. But no, instead you’re expected to pay full price again for the same game. If you bought the first edition like me, there was a very small discount offered. With the recent Steam winter sale, the game finally reached a reasonable price, so I decided to pick up and see if it was worth it.

Short answer, no. The first Blood Bowl was a good package. A near perfect recreation of the table top experience, although it did have a few problems. Most notable was the poor AI which was only capable of two different tactics, which meant the randomness of the game was your greatest challenge. It also lacks a soundtrack, which is a bit odd. Presumably Cyanide expected the ‘wacky’ commentators to keep you entertained through your matches. If only they had enough dialogue to last more than one match without repetition.

The Legendary Edition was the perfect opportunity to fix all the criticisms levelled at the first game, sadly it added to the list. Some small tweaks have been made to the UI, but it really needs an overhaul. It took me several matches just to work out how I could substitute players. The dice rolls that are the core of the game are still only displayed as text in a chat window, rather than being given a clear and visible display so you can see what is happening.

Thankfully, the gameplay hasn’t been touched. The controls work well allowing you to easily select players and give orders. It’s a reasonably fast paced turn based strategy game. Turns are time limited, then again you’ll easily finish with time to spare as the clock stops each time the dice are rolled and the outcome played out. The animation quality is good, although after a few matches, I found myself wishing for an option to turn off replays as they kept breaking the flow of the action.

And you’ll be forced to watch a lot of replays. Each time a player smashes another into an early grave or manages to complete the very tricky task of throwing and catching the ball; the camera suddenly jumps to a close up replay just so you can pointlessly watch it again! The various camera angles already give you a good view of the pitch, allowing you to keep tabs on what’s happening to every player on a turn.

Only a few extra rules are introduced with the new teams. It takes the total rules in the game to a dizzying amount. If you haven’t played Blood Bowl before, spending some time with the tutorial is definitely advised. You’re unlikely to have a match where a lot of the rules come together in a complex mess, but sometimes a player with an obscure special skill can really catch you off-guard.

The bulk of the single player is coaching a team of your choice through a series of tournaments. As you progress, your players gain experience to put towards new skills, but can also pick up injuries or even worse, be killed. With all the new teams that have been added, there’s plenty of variety in matches. Although, the AI is once again the weakest part of the game. They’re capable of a few new tricks, yet still lacking depth. A veteran player’s biggest worry is still unlucky dice rolls. Multiplayer is also included with a variety of game modes. It’s easy to set up a quick game with pre-set teams or jump into the persistent multiplayer and coach a team to glory.

If you haven’t played Blood Bowl and you’re looking for a turn based game, I would recommend this version. There’s a good ten to twenty hours play to be had with the AI and more with the multiplayer. However, if you’re a veteran that’s put plenty of hours into the first title, there just isn’t enough new content to justify the purchase.

All I Wanted was to Play Games

As every PC gamer knows, there's one real problem; hardware failures. This time it was the turn of the PSU. It had faithfully powered my machine for nearly six years. Now the bastard decided to keel over just after the Christmas holiday, a time when I could have quickly done something about it. Pulling it out of my machine was like doing battle with a copper hydra. The damn thing had so many spare connectors, it was a puzzle just to work out what it was actually connected too.

My desktop icons are full to the brim with great titles I picked up in the Steam winter sale, all ready to go. Now I have to wait patiently for a postman to turn up, probably when I'm not in. No doubt he'll leave a note saying it's been sent back to the depot, so I'll have to begin my quest to Mordor so I can deliver my own post to myself.

I've had to resort to using a MacBook Pro just to type this entry. Not a problem as it's actually quite a nice machine to use. That is until it tries to be 'helpful' by auto-correcting as you type, changing correctly spelt words into other, similar words as if it were secretly working for Pyongyang. Apple's word processor is a bit silly. Still a step up from Chrome though, which is on a mission to remove apostrophes from the English language by underlining every single word using one as a spelling mistake.

As long as the apocalypse of snow the news keeps harping on about holds off another day. It should be back to schedule next week, with why I think Blood Bowl Legendary Edition was a waste of my money.

Awesome, Awesome, Awesomenauts!

It’s the year 3587. Robot armies are locked in an endless battle over the precious resource, Solar. To break the stalemate; you, an Awesomenaut has been hired as an elite mercenary to destroy the enemy operation. All that stands between you and your goal is several giant machine gun turrets and an opposing team of Awesomenauts. So get going!

Awesomenauts shakes up the traditional formula of multiplayer online battle arenas (MOBAs). Instead of being a top-down view where your character moves in a 3D environment, Awesomenauts is 2D side-scrolling platform game with a lot of vertical movement.

This ties perfectly with the game’s aesthetic. Awesomenauts has a 80s, late 90s Saturday morning cartoon feel. The character design, music, animation and the fantastic intro to the game all come together perfectly. It puts you in the mood to blast bad guys, grab the loot and save the day!

The game distances itself from traditional MOBAs by cutting out a lot of the complexity, whilst retaining the core gameplay idea. Two teams of three face each other on a very limited choice of maps (only three at the time of writing). Each team has a home base where their employer’s Solar drill is based. This is also where you can purchase items and upgrades from a giant vending machine. To protect the home bases, there are giant machine gun turrets which will quickly strip you of all your health if you give them a chance.

The middle ground of the maps is made up of two different routes, one high and one low. There are plenty of platforms and jump pads that help you traverse the levels, as well as neutral enemies that can be killed for health pick-ups to get you back in the fight.

Character design is wonderfully weird and wacky. Each has a standard attack, which for most characters is a short ranged shot aimed with the mouse. On top of that you have two abilities to unleash on your opponents. There are no mana bars or resource mechanics, each use of an ability is only limited by a cool down timer which is clearly displayed at the bottom of the UI. It’s simple, but it lets you focus of the fight and have fun throwing attacks.

Item builds are also kept simple. With standard MOBAs, consulting various fan written guides is usually a necessity to make sure you perform well. Here, your choice is limited. You can choose to stock the vending machine with three out of six upgrade for each of your abilities, basic attack and a couple of utility items such as extra health. Every upgrade clearly explains what bonus it gives, so you can easily tailor your choices to your play style.

It’s not all about simplifications though, as Awesomenauts throws in some great new ideas. The best of these is the way you enter battle and respawn. Each time, you are launched in a drop pod which lands just behind your base. On the way down you can control the pod by moving left and right. This lets you grab some bonus Solar to spend on items and most importantly, gives you something to do while you wait to re-join the fight. Instead of just having to sit and wait.

The gameplay is fast and frantic. Mouse and keyboard controls are very responsive, you can also use a gamepad if you prefer.  The challenge in Awesomnauts doesn’t come from tedious mechanics such as ‘last hitting’ and ‘denying’. Instead it comes from hitting your opponents. It sounds like a very simple task, but characters are very manoeuvrable and fights often become vertical as players leap around the level.

Games are usually finished in twenty minutes or less, which makes it great to pick up and play, as you don’t have to commit forty or so minutes to then be let down by  a team mate disconnecting. Awesomenauts does try to fix the problem of players giving up, however the solution is terrible and my biggest criticism of the game. Any player who leaves the game is replaced by a bot, but they are not nearly as capable as a human player and often do silly suicidal attacks. Opponents will quickly use this to farm kills and gain an upper hand that you’ll struggle to overcome. Other players can join the game and replace the bot; however the damage is usually done by this point. So I’d strongly recommend playing with two friends so you have a full team at all times.

My only other complaint with the game is that you have to unlock characters and items to use in-game. And the end of every match, you gain some experience which advances a bar to the next unlock. You quickly get all the characters and have a good selection of starting items, but the system feels tacked on, considering you pay for the game upfront. The only other things you can purchase are some extra skins for characters.

As a whole, it provides a great alternative to other MOBA games. It’s a lot more accessible to new players, and does this whilst retaining a good level of customisation in character builds. It deserves a wider audience; however the fanbase for MOBAs is very conservative, often preferring titles that stick closely to the origins of the genre.