Armageddon Empires

[Dog Pants]

I've been playing the demo of this hex-based turn-based card-based strategy after it got the highest score this month in PCG at a mighty 81%. A poor month then. Still, I'm glad I found this.

It's an odd little strategy number set 300 years after two alien civilisations lay waste to the earth while fighting each other. They move on and leave the remains of humanity to fight for survival with the abandoned remnants of the two warring factions, and some mutants.

Hex based: Yeah, a bit old but I like these things. It's on quite a large scale, and the qhole thing is a big nuclear desert, but there's enough Fallout-style variations to make it interesting. Also, some hexes contain goodies, or bad guys, or zombies, or goodies and zombies, or... well, you get the picture.

Turn based: So you move your armes around on the hexes. They fight, they explore, they gather resources (of which there's four), they find zombies and half buried submarine wrecks. It's not too slow, and there's a nice dice based initiative system that adds a little bit of tactics to your resource generation.

Card based: This is the weird bit - you build units, special characters and buildings by drawing cards like in Magic the Gathering. You then place them on the map and move them and fight like in a traditional TBS. Sounds odd, but it works quite nicely. No tank rushes for you my boy.

Strategy: It's the bastard child of so many different things. It could have inherited all of the bad points of its parents, but we've ended up with one of those pretty multi-nationality types. The units are rather nice, the combat system works well once you understand it. Problem is, there's no tutorial. And it's a bastard to learn because the UI isn't the best. Even without knowing what was going on I was enjoying myself though, looking at my nice units then getting killed by hordes of cannibals.

I'm going to have a look at the tutorial and see how the research and tactics card systems work, but for about $20 I think, and only a 70mb download I'll probably buy this even if it's just for my laptop. No multiplayer unfortunately, but I expect only Joose might be interested out of you lot so no big deal there.

The final thing that sold me was something I saw in a screenshot. A unit that the Machines get. It's a zombie launcher.

A fucking zombie launcher!

It would have probably sold itself on that alone.

Strategy:

[Joose]

Joose might be interested

Correct, sir. I am most interested, and was eyeing up the review in PCG at work today. Dissapointed about the multispazzer, but I'll probably get it anyway

[FatherJack]

Hex-based -
Turn-Based +
Card-based -

If it had anime-style characters, it could have swayed me.

[Dog Pants]

It actually reminds me more of Dune 2 with the deserts and artwork. Not the gameplay though.

[Dog Pants]

Anyone thinking of buying this (just Joose I expect) take note that before you can download the game a 'customer services rep' has to look at your email. So a usually fast method of buying a game is slowed right down by weird admin. Well done

[HereComesPete]

Eh? Why in the hell do they do that? That'll just=less sales.

[Dog Pants]

Not in my case, because they only tell you that in your confirmation email. Apparently it's a security thing. Still seems shit to me, and I reckon it'll have put off a few people who might have otherwise had it recommended to them.

[Dog Pants]

I had another reply by the time I'd come home from a spot of shopping, so it probably only took a few hours. I've also found that the game is far better than the demo, which limits you to 30 turns. The game I played this afternoon didn't even get violent until about turn 70, when I was fighting with companies of infantry, armour and mecha with artillery and air support. Rather good actually. I'm going to read the tutorial now though because I think I'm missing out on some important points.

[buzzmong]

Hmm, long shot, but it sounds like it's an updated version of History Line / Battle Isle 1/2?


If so, it's sounding really interesting for me, and I suspect my brothers would love it as well.

[Dog Pants]

I was thinking Battle Isle too, I used to love that game (despite the computer cheating like fuck). It isn't much though. It is quite enjoyable though, but takes quite some getting into.