I dunno what to minireview.. Pick some things from my Xfire gaming history for me.
http://www.xfire.com/profile/lordgrimmie/
Mini Reviews
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mrbobbins
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StarcraftGrimmie wrote:I dunno what to minireview.. Pick some things from my Xfire gaming history for me.
http://www.xfire.com/profile/lordgrimmie/
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Dr. kitteny berk
- Morbo
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Grimmie
- Master of Soviet Propaganda
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Starcraft
I admittedly have nostalgia goggles for this game, it was on of my first beardy RTS games.
Successor to Warcraft II and released in 1998, Starcraft is a 2D isometric strategy game, which neatly laid out the format for which most other games would follow for years and years to come.
It's still praised as one of the best RTS' in terms of storyline, where a single story is played through over three different, unique races; The human Terran, who are in the depths of civil war. The alien Zerg, a supercharged evolutionary race striving for perfection, and the futuristic Protoss, a technologically advanced species struggling to maintain order.
The expansion, Brood War takes the story even further and adds an array of new and interesting units. However, even though Blizzard still routinely patch the game to fix exploits, bugs and balance units out ten years later, it's on an ancient engine, and gets stretched out from 800x600 with no windowed-mode support.
The main attraction however is Multiplayer, from a game where in Korea it is a national sport which creates teenage superstars who make stadium and television appearances. Games are frenetic in pace, and the strategies you can employ are nigh on endless. Use-Map-Settings (UMS) maps allow skilled mapmakers to create all sorts of novel scenarios, from movie-making maps to cat-and-mouse style games.
The original and expansion are often bundled together and sold for £10.
Perimeter
The previews for this game looked absolutely wonderful, a real time strategy with a twist.
You play as one of three races, (guys with lots of explosives, guys with future tech, alien style guys.. See the similarity?) that seem to be striving for something or other, in a galaxy built up in some trippy blue and white dreamworld, and fight over posession of planets and portals.. The story isn't really that important, the game creators were Russian and obviously high on glue at the time of making.
Base building requires you to level off raised and lowered land made of mountains and valleys with little terraforming robot dudes, this leveled land allows you to place power plants which use the flat land to function - and extend your influence over the map. The more land you flatten, the better off you are, but the more your base begins to sprawl. It's this area of influence that gives the game its name, you can activate a perimeter shield at any time which vaporises any enemy horses that attempt to pass through it.
The other fancy gameplay mechanic is the ability to change what units you are using on the fly. You can build three basic units, Soldiers, Engineers and Technicians (I think?). A group of 20 soliders can for example mesh together to create 4 small rocket buggies, or 1 medium buggy. Mix the groups up and your squad of 50 soliders and 20 engineers can be anything from artillery to assault the enemy base, to fighter jets to take out enemy bombers, to underground assault ships all at the click of a button. This makes combat very diverse and fast paced, as you can adapt to whatever situation you find yourself in instantly.
Perimeter sounds like a good game on paper, though it's plagued with problems. The storyline is terrible, and framerate drops substantially when you find yourself in a battle with 200 morphing soliders on screen - plus a warping water-like perimeter shield popping up and down. Games descend into a painfully slow war of attrition as you desperately try and stem the flow of power generators around the map, as flattened land is the main resource.
Good for a game with a friend, but no long-lasting campaign value.
I admittedly have nostalgia goggles for this game, it was on of my first beardy RTS games.
Successor to Warcraft II and released in 1998, Starcraft is a 2D isometric strategy game, which neatly laid out the format for which most other games would follow for years and years to come.
It's still praised as one of the best RTS' in terms of storyline, where a single story is played through over three different, unique races; The human Terran, who are in the depths of civil war. The alien Zerg, a supercharged evolutionary race striving for perfection, and the futuristic Protoss, a technologically advanced species struggling to maintain order.
The expansion, Brood War takes the story even further and adds an array of new and interesting units. However, even though Blizzard still routinely patch the game to fix exploits, bugs and balance units out ten years later, it's on an ancient engine, and gets stretched out from 800x600 with no windowed-mode support.
The main attraction however is Multiplayer, from a game where in Korea it is a national sport which creates teenage superstars who make stadium and television appearances. Games are frenetic in pace, and the strategies you can employ are nigh on endless. Use-Map-Settings (UMS) maps allow skilled mapmakers to create all sorts of novel scenarios, from movie-making maps to cat-and-mouse style games.
The original and expansion are often bundled together and sold for £10.
Perimeter
The previews for this game looked absolutely wonderful, a real time strategy with a twist.
You play as one of three races, (guys with lots of explosives, guys with future tech, alien style guys.. See the similarity?) that seem to be striving for something or other, in a galaxy built up in some trippy blue and white dreamworld, and fight over posession of planets and portals.. The story isn't really that important, the game creators were Russian and obviously high on glue at the time of making.
Base building requires you to level off raised and lowered land made of mountains and valleys with little terraforming robot dudes, this leveled land allows you to place power plants which use the flat land to function - and extend your influence over the map. The more land you flatten, the better off you are, but the more your base begins to sprawl. It's this area of influence that gives the game its name, you can activate a perimeter shield at any time which vaporises any enemy horses that attempt to pass through it.
The other fancy gameplay mechanic is the ability to change what units you are using on the fly. You can build three basic units, Soldiers, Engineers and Technicians (I think?). A group of 20 soliders can for example mesh together to create 4 small rocket buggies, or 1 medium buggy. Mix the groups up and your squad of 50 soliders and 20 engineers can be anything from artillery to assault the enemy base, to fighter jets to take out enemy bombers, to underground assault ships all at the click of a button. This makes combat very diverse and fast paced, as you can adapt to whatever situation you find yourself in instantly.
Perimeter sounds like a good game on paper, though it's plagued with problems. The storyline is terrible, and framerate drops substantially when you find yourself in a battle with 200 morphing soliders on screen - plus a warping water-like perimeter shield popping up and down. Games descend into a painfully slow war of attrition as you desperately try and stem the flow of power generators around the map, as flattened land is the main resource.
Good for a game with a friend, but no long-lasting campaign value.
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Grimmie
- Master of Soviet Propaganda
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I LAUGH at your so called "mini" reviews.
Phun
Trippy physics based sandbox game. Think "crayon physics" with more maths and science.
I didn't play for very long, as you may see, mostly because there are too many variables and possibilities for making silly things in this game.
Screen rate drops like a lead brick when you turn something solid into fluid - the game desperately trying to render a thousand seperate, moving 2D water droplets.
Worth playing around with on its free download, but not exactly the most Phun I've ever had infront of a PC.
http://phungame.com/
Phun
Trippy physics based sandbox game. Think "crayon physics" with more maths and science.
I didn't play for very long, as you may see, mostly because there are too many variables and possibilities for making silly things in this game.
Screen rate drops like a lead brick when you turn something solid into fluid - the game desperately trying to render a thousand seperate, moving 2D water droplets.
Worth playing around with on its free download, but not exactly the most Phun I've ever had infront of a PC.
http://phungame.com/
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HereComesPete
- Throbbing Cupcake
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I just grabbed this so I shall give it a go.friznit wrote:Pete, be sure to check out some of the mods for M&B (I think I posted a link in the full review thread). In particular the Native Expansion mod is excellent and doesn't veer too far off the original gameplay.
I got the graphics embeautification thing and it makes the battles lovely. Now all they need to do is not be so randomly hilly so I can start a battle and not watch all my men fall down a cliff.
I also got the battle sizer mod that pushes the battles from 100 up to 1000 on a slider. I've got mine set to 500 and it causes a few stutters when a new wave of enemies arrives in uber fights. but generally it just means that all the enemies spawn at once and you can have epic fights.
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FatherJack
- Site Owner
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[img size=320]http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/401/ ... gsquin.jpg[/img]
ArmA 2
If you liked Operation Flashpoint, but hated Armed Assault, you'll like Armed Armed Assault 2. If you're a CoD/BEEF ninja but don't get Raven Shield you'll hate ArmA2. If you ever played Flight Simulators, this is your sort of game. If you stuck to Prince of Persia, this is not for you. I could go on, but in short this is a military 'sim' and not an FPS. It's rough around the edges, buggy in places, AI is confused, it has a steep learning curve and a slightly quirky (mind bogglingly bizarre) control system.
But if you persevere you'll soon learn to approach it slightly slower, more cautiously and making use of proper tactics - no move without suppressing fire, use of cover, combined arms, logistics support etc. And this is exactly where it excels, as ArmA2 faithfully reproduces all aspects of the battlefield, right down to the medic doing CPR on an injured soldier. The 250 Sq KM map is both pretty epic in scope and very nicely done, and the single player campaign is ambitious. Multiplayer lends itself to COOP in particular.
There are already a number of mods out for this highly modable game, largle thanks to BIS making them very easy to port over from ArmA1.
If you liked Operation Flashpoint, but hated Armed Assault, you'll like Armed Armed Assault 2. If you're a CoD/BEEF ninja but don't get Raven Shield you'll hate ArmA2. If you ever played Flight Simulators, this is your sort of game. If you stuck to Prince of Persia, this is not for you. I could go on, but in short this is a military 'sim' and not an FPS. It's rough around the edges, buggy in places, AI is confused, it has a steep learning curve and a slightly quirky (mind bogglingly bizarre) control system.
But if you persevere you'll soon learn to approach it slightly slower, more cautiously and making use of proper tactics - no move without suppressing fire, use of cover, combined arms, logistics support etc. And this is exactly where it excels, as ArmA2 faithfully reproduces all aspects of the battlefield, right down to the medic doing CPR on an injured soldier. The 250 Sq KM map is both pretty epic in scope and very nicely done, and the single player campaign is ambitious. Multiplayer lends itself to COOP in particular.
There are already a number of mods out for this highly modable game, largle thanks to BIS making them very easy to port over from ArmA1.
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Dr. kitteny berk
- Morbo
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what he said.
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Mr. Johnson
- Mr Flibbles
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Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
it could do with a proper review, but I'm not good at that so have this instead.
If you liked the first one, but were disappointed with some aspects of it (by which I mean Billy) you'll love this.
Pretty good story and characters, lots of shooty bits and practically no acrobatics (which is a good thing in this game) it's also very pretty and features a pretty decent multiplayer.
I recommend this to everyone that likes westerns and western games, as it features all the classic elements such as horseriding, Injuns and duelling, and does it really good.
8.5/10 because it's a bit short.
it could do with a proper review, but I'm not good at that so have this instead.
If you liked the first one, but were disappointed with some aspects of it (by which I mean Billy) you'll love this.
Pretty good story and characters, lots of shooty bits and practically no acrobatics (which is a good thing in this game) it's also very pretty and features a pretty decent multiplayer.
I recommend this to everyone that likes westerns and western games, as it features all the classic elements such as horseriding, Injuns and duelling, and does it really good.
8.5/10 because it's a bit short.
Last edited by Mr. Johnson on July 29th, 2009, 21:01, edited 1 time in total.
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Mr. Johnson
- Mr Flibbles
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Mr. Johnson
- Mr Flibbles
- Posts: 4957
- Joined: August 10th, 2006, 10:58
- Location: belgium
Well, I only had a brief go on it, but it seemed pretty balanced. there's a clip (six chamber multiplayer) about the multiplayer mode on their website if that helps you.
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FatherJack
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From the bit I saw my brother-in-law playing it looked based around the American civil war, where I think most westerns are based in the years just after this, though my American history isn't great.spoodie wrote:Is the multiplayer aspect any good? If it is that might tip the balance for me, I'm not really a fan of western stuff.