Finished: Spec Ops: The Line

Spec Ops: The Line, there isn't actually that much I can say about this game that hasn't already been said by many others, I will give it a shot though.

Spec Ops is a game where the mentality of always pressing forward, making the judgement calls as they come in the field is likely to get you.

It isn't a game where you know you are in the right, even if you make a questionable call every now and then,   but you also aren't playing a deliberate villain, it is about the road to hell paved with good intentions and determination to do what needs to be done.

You won't walk away from this game thrilled, nor pleased with overcoming a significant challenge, the gameplay itself is only competent, not outstanding. It is however a story told very well, using a mix of cut scenes, in engine dialogue and animations, to reflects its shifting atmosphere, progressively getting darker and more vicious as you get closer to the end.

It is not a game I would describe as fun, it is however, a game worth playing.

Finished: Orcs Must Die 2

What motivated me to finish off Orcs Must Die was the incipient release of Orcs Must Die 2. Finally I was motivated to pull open the game and push through the last half a dozen levels.

The biggest change between OMD1 and 2 is the addition of co-operative play. It has been integrated to such an extent that playing solo has been slightly compromised, there are conversations with one side missing and the new levels often have enemies fighting fairly far apart and there are significantly fewer teleporters than in OMD1.

The game does subtly scale the enemies, I actually did not notice until after I finished the game, but the weakest orcs tend to not appear in coop mode. You also do have the twin advantages of getting all of the cash (rather than 50%) and twice the number of slots for weapons, traps and trinkets.

Most of the old traps and enemies return along with a generous helping of new ones. The game itself feels very much to be more of the same. As a bonus, those who own the first game get a good chunk of those levels available for solo and coop play in Orcs Must Die 2. Allowing you to tackle The Finale with two players, vastly improving that level in my opinion.

Robot Entertainment also changed up the skull and upgrade systems. The 5 skull scoring system still stands, but now there are bonus skulls. Even if you manage to leak that one kobold, it is still worth continuing through to the end, because finishing a level will give you at least one bonus skull, if not more, you get bonus skulls for killing lots of orcs, for not using traps, for not using mana, for not taking any damage, for not leaking any enemies. These can really add up, on Nightmare I can fairly reliably get 15 bonus skulls.

This helps with the new upgrade system, rather than the single step upgrade system from OMD1, each trap and weapon in OMD2 has a bunch of upgrades. A main path with 3 levels, a choice of two unique upgrades (than can be freely swapped between outside of levels) and possibly special upgrades. Combined with some traps having an initial unlock cost it can cost upwards of 40 skulls to unlock and fully upgrade a trap or weapon.

This means that whilst you earn a lot of skulls you will be spending them like water, even having gone through the normal campaign, the classic levels on normal, and some of nightmare and skull farming on Chasm I still have plenty of traps, weapons and trinkets to unlock and upgrade.

Trinkets are a new element, they take up a slot and provide a passive and an active benefit. Increasing health and regeneration, or giving enemies a chance to drop coins, decreasing trap reset time. They don't directly kill orcs but I find that I almost always spend 1 to 2 slots on them because the passive effects are so damn useful.

Despite these changes, overall the game just feels like an improved version of the first game, if you don't play coop you aren't really doing anything particularly new, it is more of the same. As the game ramps up you get increasingly long levels and no checkpoints. I honestly don't think I would have finished the game, or continued to come back to it for quick sessions were it not for coop. With coop, the longer maps are just a slightly bigger commitment with friends, but you can divide and conquer levels each able to focus on your own chokepoint, swapping positions to coordinate trap placement and generally having a great time coordinating on creating your orc killing machine.

As a result I easily have 5 times the number of hours in Orcs Must Die 2 compared to the first, the cap of 2 players is both annoying but useful, because I only need to find a single buddy willing to play to get a game going I get games a bit more frequently, it just feels like we are excluding any other friends who go online during the game.

All in all, Orcs Must Die 2 is a great game and I recommend that you get it if anything I have said has interested you. You also should pick up Orcs Must Die 1, but only because that unlocks the classic levels in OMD2. They are currently 75% off on steam, they even have a demo if you just want to check it out.

Games list at time of post: 410 unfinished titles

Changes since previous update: Finished 0 titles, dropped 0, added 0

Finished: Orcs Must Die

Orcs Must Die is a third person shooter/tower defense game by Robot Entertainment.

The premise is pretty straight forward Orcs are attacking the fortresses of the order, trying to make their way through the Rifts they protect to get through to the juice vulnerable lands beyond. Most of the orcs and associated forces are very single minded intent upon reaching their target rift via the shortest path possible.

The order is unfortunately mostly out of commission, save that is for The Apprentice who is able to take up a trusty magical crossbow and conjure defenses to prevent the orc hordes from pouring through.

For the most part it is a pretty standard tower defense game, though on a closer and more personal scale. You have a budget provided each wave, but you also earn money per kill, earning more money for long killstreaks and combos, which doing multiple damage types to the unfortunate victim before it dies.

The game excels in providing a wide range of traps and weapons. There are only a limited number of slots a player can fill with weapons and traps, so choices are made around level layout, expected enemies and personal preference.

Performance in levels is scored, both with a score based on kills and combos, and a 5-skull rating system. 4 skulls are based on rift points remaining, 1 for beating par time.

These skulls are then spent on upgrades, every trap has an upgrade that will cost a certain number of skulls, this system is final, you cannot ever refund the skulls, and you can earn a maximum of 5 skulls from any given level, which does potentially mean that if you spend them badly it will be very difficult for you to progress late in the game.

I loved the traps in this game, there are floor traps, wall traps, ceiling traps barricades and minions. I particularly liked a combination of barricades (fortunately orcs can't jump or climb), grinders, tar pits and swinging maces where the terrain allowed it. I picked up this game just after it came out and I had a lot of friends also playing through it and having a great time. We all had a great time watching orcs get flung into acid pits, set on fire, shot with arrows, exploded with bomb, sucked into grinding machines and knocked down by gigantic swinging maces.

Unfortunately the late game really starts to drag, the levels get progressively longer and there is no mid level saving or check pointing. This is especially bad when aiming for 5 skulls, a minor mistake can set you back a significant amount of time.

As a result there was a significant gap between when I bought this game and when I finished it, it took Orcs Must Die 2 coming out to convince me to play through the rest of Orcs Must Die 1.

Games list at time of post: 410 unfinished titles

Changes since previous update: Finished 0 titles, dropped 0, added 3

Finished: Alan Wake's American Nightmare

American Nightmare is a gaming equivalent of the bottle episode. While it progresses the Alan Wake story beyond the original campaign and the two DLC episodes, it has been structured such that it can easily justify the reuse of a small number of level, art and character resources.

Personally I think it is a decision that pays off really well. To give a minor spoiler (skip this paragraph if you want to avoid it), the justification used is a time loop, each time you reach the end of the final map you are sent back to the first one. Except that you aren't just doing the same things over and over. Alan is not the only one aware of the time loop  meaning that while assets are reused, you don't just do the same damn things over and over.

It seems pretty clear that the focus of American Nightmare is combat, the horror elements are still there, but they have been pushed into the background, mostly surfacing in the Mr. Scratch videos. Instead the gameplay emphasises faster paced combat with a larger variety of enemies and weapons. The flashlight has been tweaked such that it no longer passively removes the darkness, Alan has to focus (and use battery power) to make enemies vulnerable and even to provide the temporary stun.

They added a bunch of new enemies, some that split when exposed to light, big enemies, ranged enemies (including grenadiers), even non-human enemies, making fights more varied and challenging. Finally rather than pistol/shotgun/rifle there are a range of guns allowing players to trade off between accuracy, rate of fire and firepower. Some guns are clearly better than others, but unlocking those are tied into the page collection mechanic.

The game has a few different modes, but I only played the single player campaign once. I found that the focused story and tweaked combat system really worked well for me and it was great to be able to pick it up at a cheaper price point than the main game. I am curious as to what other developers would do if they were to make a bottle episode in their franchise. Anyone able to name other examples of this kind of approach?

Now exams are over I want to get through this backlog of game posts before I head overseas. The plan is to continue the Note Taking App project as well.

Games list at time of post: 407 unfinished titles

Changes since previous update: Finished 21 titles, dropped 3, added 30
Been a while since I added this at the bottom

Completed: Blackwell Deception

Blackwell Deception is the fourth game in the Blackwell series by Wadjet Eye Games. It is a point and click adventure game that takes two to three hours to complete and continues the story of Rosa Blackwell and her spirit guide Joey. I have posted about the previous three games on this blog.

The gameplay is not much different from the previous Blackwell titles, though Rosa's smartphone purchase tightens things up a bit, it holds her notes, lets her look up information online and even lets her make the occasional phone call! It helps to reduce the tedious revisiting of the apartment that the previous games required when Rosa had to do a bit more research.

Rosa has become more public about her sideline of work and seems to have become more accepting that this Medium thing is her calling and that she can't quite get away from it, she has even started to advertise her services, allowing her to help more unfortunate souls. I am not sure that she really needs it though since she seems to stumble across ghosts around every corner.

I really enjoy the story of these games, Dave Gilbert has been continuing a fairly interconnected story since Blackwell Unbound, with each game revealing a little bit more about Rosa, Joey and the Blackwell family. I really liked seeing more about the Countess and the relationship between mediums and their spirit guides. I hope that Dave expands on this further next time, along with the other supernatural entities introduced in this chapter.

According to Dave posting on the Wadjet Eye forums, there are still another two to three games left in this story, it will be interesting to see where it goes.

Completed: Back to the Future: The Game

Back to the Future: The Game is an episodic adventure game series by Telltale Games, one of the few companies to actually do episodic game releases successfully.

The series follows the movies, the initial tutorial scene is set about 7 months after Marty gets back at the end of Back to the Future 3, the bank believes Doc is dead and has started to sell off all of his stuff. By the end of that scene, sure enough there is a reason to get into the Delorean and head back in time, to where a significant portion of the timeline is set, 1931. Prohibition era Hill Valley.

I think Telltale games did really well with the art style, they avoided going for a realistic view, the character models are all recognisable, but have exaggerated features and simplified colours and shading. It means that the game is attractive without the system demands being too high, after all this is a game available not just for the PC, but also for the wii, PS3 and iPad.

The voice cast features actors from the films including Christopher Lloyd (Doc Brown) and Claudia Wells (Jennifer) and even Michael J. Fox, though his voice is used in a cameo role. The VA for Marty McFly, AJ LoCascio, does an admirable job imitating Michael J. Fox's voice from the films. The entire cast did a great job, it has been some time since I have watched the films, but none of their performances jarred with my memories of the films.

The downside of the episodic structure that Telltale uses for these adventure games is that you can see the reuse of mechanical plot and settings. Very few environments are used only once, instead the same locations are used over and over again during the course of the series, with changes to account for time jumps and new people being in charge. Each episode opens with a fairly simple puzzle to get you going then seems to flow into a familiar structure where you have a few different puzzles that can be tackled in parallel before more plot will occur.

Overall though the story fits very well with those of the Back to the Future films, time travel inevitably causing changes not due to intent, but just because being present introduces new elements. Always the goal being trying to fix what went wrong and having the bad guys get their comeuppance. Somehow, after all of the problems Marty faces trying to get back to 1986, the final timeline results in everyone being happier. Oh and of course a Tannen always ends up in manure at some point. It just wouldn't be back to the future without that.

Complete: Quake 4

Quake 4 is a direct sequel to Quake 2, it was made by Raven Software in collaboration with id Software.

It turns out, whilst the main character in Quake 2 won a major success against the Strogg, the war is far from over. Now the Big Gun and the Strogg Emperor have been killed a ground invasion of Stroggos is possible and Earth has attacked trying to do remove the threat of the Strogg once and for all.

It was really interesting playing Quake 4 so close to Quake 2, you can really feel the impact that time and technology has made, the id Tech 4 engine is capable of significantly better interactions and improvements in AI, animation and storage technology means that friendly soldiers not only exist but play an active component in the missions of the game. Admittedly they do restrict the amount of time you spend actively fighting as part of a squad, this is still very much a single man FPS, they justify this by making your character a scout, often being sent on ahead to find and deal with other routes and finding a way to let your squad inside.

What makes Quake 4 so interesting to me is that the enemies you are dealing with haven't significantly changed. Most of the Strogg you fight are recognisably the same or very similar to the Quake 2 enemies, though they have much improved models and more impressive sounds and a few minor new tricks. The crude attempts at horror in Quake 2 where you see the results of Strogg processing humans are painted in entirely new lights. You get a lot more detail in game as to what it entails and how the Strogg control and use their human resources.

Doom 3 and Quake 4 still have the best computer interaction I have seen in first person shooters, the way it smoothly moves between pointing your gun at things and pointing your mouse at interfaces feels a lot more natural than zooming in on the interface and having it fill the entire screen when you press an interaction button. While it results in some laughably simple interfaces, but I feel that the trade off is worthwhile.

Quake 4 also avoids the problems of Doom 3 by spending a lot more time in outdoor environments and areas with nice big windows, it doesn't rely on darkness as much to create tension and lets you see pretty vistas. I really like the approach of using what appears to be concept art as skybox backgrounds, it continues the tradition seen in Quake 2 and it gives you a better idea of Strogg cities and other background elements.

The guns in Quake 4 almost all feel good and filling an identifiable role, you get weapon upgrades at various points through the game, a techie will ask to see your gun, play around with it and suddenly it has a new ability. Unfortunately the Railgun has been significantly nerfed, it has a terrible fire rate and its upgrade (shots go through people) is of such minor utility that it isn't really worth being handed out.

I had a great time with Quake 4, it really helped having only recently played through Quake 2 and having it relatively fresh in my mind to contrast and compare.