Hitman Goes Hard

I’ve never really took the time to play a game in the Hitman series. I dipped my feet into Hitman: Blood Money but never went far. However, Hitman: Go for iOS and Android has fit the bill so far, and I highly suggest spending your measly $2-5 on a great puzzle game.

So you’re Agent 47 and your new assignment requires you to mundanely move along a grid to reach the goal to complete the level. Each stage—presented like a board game—is divided up into smaller levels which get increasingly more complex in different ways: new objectives pop up, like “Pick up the briefcase” or “Finish the level in 10 steps or fewer”. Completing these side objectives gives you more points, which in turn unlocks new stages.

You can approach each level differently, which is what I like. Agent 47 can choose to kill his opponents or leave them be—all while trying to remain hidden. It’s nice, but not something I haven’t seen. What I do enjoy is the small but important additions like new types of guards or tools. Each addition becomes an asset to help you beat a stage to 100% completion. You learn how certain opponents move or react, and when to use the tools provided. For example, early on you will find a throwable object used to distract guards. Again, it’s not like I haven’t seen this before, but you really have to make the right moves and take advantage of a throwable object at the right time to complete the harder levels at 100%. In general, the replayability is through the roof because you’ll be hitting the reset button many times for not being smart enough.

Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that this game’s a looker. You get a great, minimalist art style. It’s a very clean look that kind of reminds me of the décor seen in Mad Men or the 60s. I wouldn’t say this is the driving force behind the game, but it fits well with the simple gameplay.

If you’re yearning for a challenging puzzle game, this is it. It’s very interesting, far from mundane, and is worth your hard-earned $2-5.

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Travel Back In Time With Conflicks

Being the resident dev on the blog, I might as well share a little bit of what Artifice Studio—The Company I work for—has in store for everyone in the near-ish future.

One of the main goals at our studio is to create games that have unique Universes. This is something you could definitely see with Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves. While the game was grounded in Canadian/Quebec history, the way it blended with our native folktales was distinct and I can confidently say there is no other game quite as Canadian as our own.

Now in comes Conflicks: Revolutionary Space Battles, yet again based in our history—the French Revolution— Instead of just taking this time period for face value, we added a little twist to the history. With our ancestors thrust into the depths of space, waging war amongst each other, who in their right mind wouldn't want to help King Henry the 8th expand his space empire? I know I do! Of course Greater Britain isn't the only faction in Conflicks, have a look at our story trailer for a better idea.

Along with creating unique Universes, we also like to blend game genres and create hybrids. For Sang-Froid we blended action-RPGs with a tower defense style game. We weren't the first to the party with this type of gameplay—Dungeon Defends and Orcs Must Die! both beat us to the punch—but if you go by what they say on the forums, we brought way more strategy to the mix in comparison to the other games in the genre.

With Conflicks, the goal is to blend a top-down real-time strategy with a physics based game. Picture a galactic game of marbles which sees the player flick (get it? Con-FLICKS) his/her units across space to do battle. You colonize planets and slam into other ships like bumper cars while hop-scotching across space shooting lasers everywhere. It's a ton of fun! Unlike in our first endeavor, Conflicks will include a multiplayer component (like every RTS needs to have) on top of what you can expect to be a very entertaining single player.

For more information on Conflicks, you can visit Artifice Studio's website where we've been keeping a dev blog. There you can learn more about the different factions and characters you will see in the game. Also don't forget to follow us on twitter either @artificestudioand while you're at it, show a little love to our own Twitter account @gamerbasement.

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Shadow Hunters: Who Am I?

This week I want to talk about Shadow Hunters. Shadow Hunters is a board game designed by Yasutaka Ikeda that was first published in japan in 2005 and then later released in North America in 2008. The game itself has an anime/manga style that gives the game a really cool look.

The game takes place in a small town. Players are secretly given roles each belonging to one of three factions: Shadows, which are supernatural creatures pulled from pop culture like werewolves, vampires, ghosts and the like; Hunters, which are humans attempting to take out all the Shadows; and Neutrals, which are as the name describes. Neutral characters, whom are caught up in the mix, each have their own individual win conditions.

Each player does not know the identity or faction of any other player at the table, and has to use cards, process of elimination, and guesswork to figure out who is on their team and who's working against them. The game ends when one or more players have fulfilled their win conditions, which can be as simple as killing off all the members of the enemy faction for the hunters and shadows, or in the case of the neutrals they vary and are usually more complicated. For example some neutrals simply need to survive while others actually want to die first or collect a certain number of items. At the point a player or players have fulfilled their objectives the game ends and the winners are declared, whether they are part of the same faction or even alive they can still claim victory.

Each character, along with a win condition, has a special power on their card—with the exception of one character in particular—they are all linked to that win condition and are pretty powerful on their own. The game also utilizes three decks of cards: a black deck of graveyard cards filled with mostly offensive items and there are cards that are good for shadows; a white deck of church cards with primarily defensive cards and items useful for the hunters; and lastly the green deck of hermit cards which you read then hand to another player face down, he then reads the card and if it applies to him, he does what it says. Each deck has pros and cons and players should be careful when drawing cards from the opposing factions deck...you might not like what's in there.

The game itself is very simple, you draw and play cards on your turn. Depending on where you are on the map, you can hit anyone around you that you consider an enemy. The really interesting and intricate part of the gameplay is figuring who is your ally and who is trying to kill you, which makes the green cards integral and valuable but you can never be 100% certain because you might be giving cards to the unknown.

The unknown is one of the most interesting and tricky characters of the bunch. He is the only person who is allowed to lie about the results of a green card, allowing him to choose who knows his true identity as one of the shadows. This is one of the most useful powers, allowing him to turn teammates against each other or hide from hunters. The best part is character selection is random so he may or may not even be in the game forcing people to second guess there green cards occasionally.

Shadow Hunters is a great party game, it plays up to eight and the games can take as little as fifteen minutes to as long as an hour to finish. There is little to no setup time either, so it's very pick up and play and addictive as hell. Your players will definitely want to play more than one game to try out the various characters and the expansion adds a ton more playable characters and a couple balancing items to change up the game. If you like board games I could not recommend this game more highly, it's a worthy addition to anyone's shelf.

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Building A Better Tomorrow

This past week saw the Steam Summer Sale come and go. Last year was the first full year I was really into PC gaming and that Summer Sale ruined me: I think I bought anywhere between 25-50 games (most of which I have yet to play even). I'm happy to say that my wallet isn't crying this year. I bought a mere handful of games which include Risk of Rain, Stronghold HD, Shadowrun Returns and Banished.

All those games peaked my interest enough to warrant a purchase, but none more so than Banished. I had a hankering for some city building and Banished looks to scratch that itch the new SimCity couldn't.

Castaways

The premise of Banished is that you are a group of nomads that got exorcised from their home town. Tired of wandering aimlessly, they decide everyone at their old town was stupid, and to start their own town...with strippers and blackjack...wait, what!? It's a simple concept that exists solely to set up the game (there are no strippers or blackjack).

There are a handful of tutorials that do well to bring you up to speed with the basics of Banished. When you start a new game, there are a few settings you can modify before it procedurally generates the terrain you will play with. The settings I mentioned are simple things like if you want to have the terrain more mountainous (which is a pain as you lose a lot of building area); how severe you want the weather to be (it gets cold in Winter); the difficulty setting, which determines how many people/structures you start off with. There’s even a setting that allows players to select whether to have disasters on or off. It's a pretty flexible system.

Sim Village

I've always been a fan of SimCity, but the latest one just didn't do it for me. The developers changed it quite a bit—made the maps smaller for the purpose of the added multiplayer—and it didn't instill the same feeling I got while playing SimCity 2000.

Banished on the other hand is just solid city building mixed with a little bit of a survival game. In SimCity, you have a population of thousands upon thousands with a massive city budget and all kinds of utilities to think of. In Banished, you start off with a group of villagers. Everyone has a name and a part to play. You assign jobs to everyone, if there is no work currently for that profession, swap them to something else. There is a lot of micromanagement if you want to delve in.

Villagers move into houses and have babies. They also grow old and die in the same house. People can die for whatever reason too—mostly due to old age mind you—and this is where the survival-game aspect comes into play. There are seasons to worry about...well only one: Winter. You have to keep the fire wood stocked up, and make sure everyone has clothing and a house to live in, or they will start dropping like flies.

Freak accidents do happen as well. So far 2 people have died from randomness: One woman died in labor, and someone else got crushed by a rock in the quarry. You set up cemeteries so that their loved ones aren't too sad when people die.

Keeping track of your villagers' happiness (along with their health) is also a part of the game. For the most part they are pretty simple. As long as they have a balanced diet (don't just have one source of food basically) their health will be fine. If it dips, you can always build a clinic. For happiness, it starts off easy; give them a place to live and something to do. If they start getting restless you can build a tavern and get someone to brew ale.

A large part of the game is resource management. You can set up all kinds of buildings to have a replenishing source of materials: Foresters can be placed to cut down and plant new trees; build a Mine to get iron and coal; Farmers plant seeds and grow crop; Herdsman keep track of live stock; etc.

The most interesting (and probably most annoying) part about the latter 2 professions I mentioned is that you can't just grow whatever, you need to have the appropriate seeds (same goes for the herding, you need to have at least 2 animals to get more). You start the game with no animals and a few seeds and in order to increase your repertoire you need to set up a trading post along the river. Once built, a merchant will boat in and trade with you. This is a really cool feature, but the annoying part is you have no control over what the merchant brings in, so if you want to grow wheat (for the beer!) or raise sheep for wool, you have to wait till someone brings it...which can take a looooooong while. I should mention that if someone does bring seeds, he is therefore a seed merchant and you can place a special order with him if he didn't bring what you wanted/needed, but he charges extra for the service.

Final Thoughts

If you like city builders and were disappointed with the latest SimCity, I would check out Banished. It's definitely on a smaller scale compared to SimCity, but it's done very well.

Overall I'm having a lot of fun with the game. I started a simple game so far (that I've put about 7 hours into) and once it starts getting boring, I'll take my new found knowledge into a new game with different settings and see what my villagers are made of!

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Paging Dr. Lucky

I figured this week I'd talk about another board game and that game is Kill Doctor Lucky. You play as Doctor Lucky's relatives and "friends" and your main goal is to kill Dr Lucky...I mean it's in the name. Think of the game like a reverse clue; instead of figuring out who the murderer was, your goal is to be the first to kill him and not be seen by any of the other house guests.

The doctor, being a doddering old man, spends most of his time pacing the halls of his home. He follows a predetermined path while you and your other murderous cohorts can move around freely. Everyone must try to cut him off in a back room or a secluded hallway, out of the eye sight of the other players, to attempt their heinous act.

Movement, whether it be for doctor Lucky or yourself, uses two different types of cards: movement cards, which allow you to move X amount of spaces or you may also move doctor Lucky; and room cards, which move you directly to the room on the card. You can play any number of cards you want per turn but you can only draw one card per turn and only if you had not played a card previously that turn. It's not always advantageous to drop your hand early on in the game but only when you're sure you can lock up the kill.

I picked up Kill Doctor Lucky while I was working at a board game shop on a whim and it turned out to be a ton of fun. It's a little slow going when you start out and you'll find the first few rounds to be a bit sluggish but once everyone gets a hang of the game, the pace picks up and the games become a lot faster. The wins can come out of nowhere sometimes, which makes the game a lot more strategy based. The game is also a great party game—it supports up to seven players and has three different ways to play, with tons of potential for house ruling and making up your own variations on the game itself.

I'd personally recommend this game to anyone; it's not a board game that's only for the die-hard gamers, its pretty family friendly and fun overall. If you can get your hands on a copy, I'd highly recommend picking it up.

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Got Any Wood?

A lot of the time in any sort of competitive event, people often will say, “It's only a game” and “You should just be having fun”, but that's when I tell them that winning is part of the fun. In a lot of games, sitting in first place is actually pretty detrimental to your cause. Unless you're running a race, partaking in some sort of team sport, or a one-on-one, all sitting in first does is give everyone else a target to mess around with. The best wins are the come-from-behind ones; but if you play it right, it only looks like you were behind the whole time.



My original thought for this came from The Settlers of Catan, but in all honesty it works for a lot of games. A few friends and I play this board game from time to time and it's always tons of fun. Catan is a pretty simple game: Everyone starts off with 2 settlements, and you must collect resources and expand your territory. Numerous objects gives a player points—such as building settlements and cities, having the largest army, even building the longest road— and the first player to reach 10 points is the winner.

The board is this sort of hexagonal mass of randomness every game. At the start, you mix up the region tiles and then just start placing them, which is cool because each game you play is different yet always the same. Each region is 1 of 5 types: Forest, Mountain, River bank, Plain, or Field. These are all linked to the resource cards: Wood, Iron, Brick, Sheep, and Wheat respectively. Each region has a number associated with it, and when a player rolls that number with the dice everyone collects that resource.



Now the easiest, and least stressful way, to win this game is by always sitting in second, and trying to get all the other players to target the leader while you sit there like a jerk. The main way you mess with people in Catan is by denying them resources and the way you do this is two-fold: You can refuse to trade with them and/or use the thief to block their regions.

The thief is this little piece on the board that blocks the production of resources for the region he is sitting on. Whenever someone rolls a 7, they are able to move the thief around to wherever they see fit. Everyone tries to cut deals when this happens, and for the most part, whoever has this little guy glued to their area for most of the game is not in a good position to win. Easily the worst part about this game though is having the ability to just hand someone else the game. Usually it happens when you don't want to see this one guy win, and you trade all your cards to another player in hopes that they can build up enough points in one turn to usurp the leader. It's a bush league move and I hate when it happens, but if you aren't a part of it, I will admit it's pretty funny.

Catan is as much about strategy as it is about luck. You can have the best places for your settlements and still lose if you aren't rolling the right numbers to collect resources. Luck is probably the best and worst part about any board game—you just can't control it but then again, you have to be good to be lucky.

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TBT - Dumbfounded Epiphanies

You know that moment when you're playing a game, and you just sort of get it? You've been playing a game for a number of hours and sure you like it, but then it hits you, and you start loving the game.  Maybe that is a bit vague, but I'm sure you have an idea what I'm talking about.

I don't really have those moments anymore. Maybe when I was younger I just didn't think about what I was doing in a game as much, and it took a while for me to come around. Maybe newer games have become too simplified nowadays, never leaving enough to be discovered on your own. In any case, I want to share a couple of Eureka moments I've had.

Everything Is Better With Monster Breeding

I used to play a ton of Monster Rancher 2 on the PS1 and this was partly due to the anime that was on TV at the time. It was a fun show to watch, almost like Pokémon but the creatures in the show actually had personalities in it—unlike Pokémon where they just annoyingly say their name over and over again, only in a different tone. 

The game itself was so unique because in order to get new Monsters, you had to put physical CDs into your Playstation and each disc was different, just like in the show! I remember spending hours looking for any manner of CD I could find in my house to see what it would generate in the game. Once you had the Monster of your choosing you had to train it and enter it into tournaments. The training was okay, little mini game type things, but the fighting was pretty sick. Combat was sort of set up like a fencing match. You would control your creature and move them up and down a straight combat area. Monsters could have up to 4 different abilities each with different attack ranges, which makes the ability to move around the ring actually meaningful. 

Now the Eureka moment I had in this game was when I learned how to give my Monsters better longevity. Prior to figuring this out, my Monsters would sadly only live to the age of about 2 or 3, which is abysmal. See, there were these items you could buy from the shop that sort of boosted the Monsters physique, but they don't really explain it properly anywhere in the game. Anyway, feeding this item to your Monsters on a monthly basis doubled their lifespan, minimum, which was amazing because being able to train a Monster for that much longer was super fun. Higher levels, new abilities, harder training regimens, stronger competitions, it was all good fun.

Into The Abyss 

I have played every single game in the Disgaea series, but none as much as the very first one. I loved it so much, I've also pretty much played every single game that the developers have pumped out. 

Aside from being your typical turned based strategy game, Disgaea has ridiculousness out the Yin-Yang: you can get your characters up to level 9,999; you can do millions upon millions of damage; lift and throw units; even go inside your weapons to make them stronger. At first I was playing this game like any other, going through the motions taking it one chapter at a time.

As I mentioned you can go inside your equipment, this is done through the item world, and that is where my Eureka moment happened. In essence the entire item world is one giant grind, but instead of just walking around a world map getting into random encounters like in a JRPG, this felt like it had a bit more to it. You weren't just grinding levels, you were making your equipment stronger at the same time. Part of the allure to it as well was capturing residents—which were creatures that lived inside the weapons that increased its attributes depending on its type—once captured, you could move them into different pieces of equipment, it was a pretty flexible, if not time consuming, system.

Times Are Changing

So yeah, I don't really have moments like this anymore, but I'm curious if any of you do? What game was it, and what part of it did you just get that made the whole experience that much more enjoyable? Leave a comment at the bottom!

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Cash Of Clans

So for the past few months, I’ve been playing Clash of Clans. In case you haven’t heard about this game, it’s for mobile devices (iOS and Android) and made by developer Supercell. This game is so popular it’s getting ads on TV. Crazy.

The premise of the game is bare, but enjoyable. You build a base and defend it, while attacking other bases. You mine for 3 resources – gold, elixir, and dark elixir – and use them to upgrade and build new buildings. It’s well presented and allows you to create a clan to attack other clans. You get a variety of troops to attack with, so this allows for strategic planning of your attacks.

Please don't attack me

As a freemium game, building takes time – sometimes days – but you can purchase gems with real currency to speed up time. You can get these gems for free as well, by clearing bushes, trees, and rocks that grow on your base, but it’s insanely slow. Makes you wonder how much money Supercell is making off this game. Well, this fairly recent article states that the company has generated almost $900 million in revenues. It’s also valued at roughly twice the amount of Take-Two Interactive.

I myself spent $10 on it so far, but I don’t plan on spending a penny more. The freemium model allows customers to gauge how much they value the game: clearly, I value it at $10, while someone else could value it at $1,000.

Giving consumers this option is a smart idea, but I believe it’s used in the wrong way most of the time. Freemium games tend to put time constraints, almost forcing people who, in this day and age, don’t like to wait days for in-game upgrade to complete. On the other hand, you can literally play these games for countless amounts of hours, due to their simplicity. Sure, there are literally hundreds of these kinds of games out now, but they’re good time-killers.

The truth is: these games don’t have any story. The developers make a simple game, balance the mechanics, and put time constraints to have consumers pay them. They prey on our want to have things done faster. This causes us to value these types of game differently from one another.

All your money are belong to us!

Shareware is fairly similar, but overall more honest to the consumer. Old DOS games used to offer the first chapter or a small part of the game for free to lure gamers into buying the game. Sounds perfectly fine to me. Other developers release demos, which is a similar concept as well. Moreover, you’ll find many programs or apps that are free, but add features for some money. Keywords: add features. Most freemium games don’t add features, they just allow you to play faster.

To me, Clash of Clans is the ultimate example of a freemium game. How is it possible that Supercell, a developer with no track record, is valued more than Take-Two, who has published the Grand Theft Auto and BioShock series? Because everyone has a smartphone, mobile games grow exponentially in popularity but also tend to crash. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the same fate for Supercell, since it’s already happening to Zynga.

Final Thoughts
Freemium games allow the consumer to price the game however they see fit. Most developers of these games implement the freemium aspect in shady ways to force out as much money from people as possible. The combination of freemium games being made available to every consumer with a smartphone results in the widest audience attainable.

This pricing model has worked magically for one-hit-wonder developers to turn big, quick profits. Casual gamers don’t seem to mind paying for the option to speed up the game—an option that adds no true value to the game. Developers aren’t going to change until consumers tighten their wallets.

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Green Eggs And Ham

I thought it was funny when Brandon brought up Child of Light last week. To answer his question in short, yes I did hear about Child of Light prior to its release. In fact, I've been anticipating its release for the last couple of months. 

There was just something about this game: Child of Light looks and feels like an indie game, but actually has a big studio and budget behind it. Budget aside, Ubisoft did have an indie approach to the development of this game, at least in terms of team size. If you look at games like Assassin's Creed, those games are all made by tiny villages, numbering around 300-600 people. Compare that to Child of Light, which was produced by a team of about 30 people, you can definitely make the case that it feels more indie just by the sheer difference in staff size.

I won't bother going into the overall details about the game as they've already been covered, but I will try to elaborate on a few ideas that Brandon didn’t completely cover.

The combat is pretty fun. There is enough strategy involved just by the addition of Igniculus that makes you actually think about whom to attack, who to slow down and even for how long. It's very reminiscent of the original Grandia on PS1 (a game I will eventually get to on a TBT). The biggest comparison being the time scale at the bottom, and that each individual friend and foe has a unique speed to their character—the latter of which really changes the tempo of combat when you fight different enemies.

One mechanic they added that really pushes the strategy and timing of the combat is the fact that anyone can have their attack interrupted. However, both you and your enemy only have a small window to interrupt one another. You have to slow down enemies with Igniculus just right to take advantage of the mechanic, and be careful to not mess up the timing and end up having the enemies interrupt you. This mechanic isn't huge, but plays a pretty pivotal role in the enjoyment of the combat. Instead of it just being a game of waiting for your turn and hitting X, you can have an active role in effecting some of the flow.

One thing about the game that doesn't really seem up to par is the main character's combat role. As it stands right now, I have two of the side characters—I don't know how many are in the game mind you, but that is beside the point. At the moment, one of the support characters is strong physically, while the other is strong magically. Now that is all fine and dandy, but they are both better at these individual tasks than the main character is at either. 

This wouldn't actually be a problem if the game was designed like Paper Mario, in the sense that you always control Mario in combat, and you have to choose which secondary character to use at any given time. In Child of Light you are actually able to just swap out the "Jack of All Trades" main character for both "Masters" of a single skill. This isn't exactly desirable from a design stand point considering you would want the player to actually use the main character, since most of the time developers spend a lot of time on them. There is also an added bonus doing it this way because now you give the players a decision about which supporting character is best to use at one point over another. It was originally a decision I thought I had to make until I discovered I could just swap Aurora out.

Personally, I have this really silly notion about using the main characters in games; I have to use them all the time even when it might seem detrimental to my cause. I'm compelled to make them the best I possibly can. Maybe I am nitpicking a bit too much; the game does allow you to change your fighters mid-combat, whenever you want, without having to reset their attack timer. Even with this flexibility though, unless my character is on the verge of dying, I have a hard time finding a reason to do so.

Regardless of that last fact, the sheer presentation in Child of Light, from the Dr Seuss type dialogue to the whimsical music, makes me want to play this game every spare moment I get...which I am sad to say is far and few between, at least until the NHL playoffs are over. 

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For All I Know; For All I Care About Final Fantasy Tactics

Last week I finally got around to finishing The Sopranos, an ostensibly flawless television series and pop culture monolith whose towering accomplishment, I believe, continues to eclipse much of what is being created and consumed today within the medium. When I was younger, I felt similarly about the Final Fantasy series, having since moved away from this longstanding interpretation with the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy and with Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII more specifically.

That said, I have no qualms in openly stating that Final Fantasy Tactics (FFT), my favourite title in the Final Fantasy series, is one of a small number of video games whose existence should command an equal degree of respect as The Sopranos in terms of the title’s contributions to its medium. Directed by the Yasumi Matsuno (Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy XII, Crimson Shroud), a visionary whose own achievements should not be understated, FFT remains to this day my quintessential video game; an archetypical blueprint for what I look for in video games, and in my experiences with other forms of entertainment, including books and television series.

Fortunate Son

FFT took place within a well-realised world. The game’s setting is a medieval-inspired kingdom known as Ivalice, and the story follows a highborn named Ramza Beoulve as he becomes embroiled within a conflict known as the The Lion War, where two opposing factions are fighting over the throne of the kingdom. The player’s personal narrative in this world is often bittersweet, as each victory in combat is almost always counterbalanced by some sort of grim revelation, often about human institutions such as politics and morality.

Through FFT I became aware of the quiet brilliance in allowing a player to interact freely within a clearly defined world using a predetermined avatar. Ramza’s voice was never mine, but his actions in battle and his struggles through the game’s world were contingent on me playing the game, and were therefore a shared accomplishment that I proudly committed to seeing through.

Amour Fou

Contrary to Lightning Returns, FFT’s mechanics and story are systemically interlinked and entirely interdependent. In order to progress through the game, the player must aid Ramza in amassing an army of generic characters in order to accomplish his ends. These generic characters begin as squires or chemists, but must be trained in order to be developed into other more specific jobs. In this way, the game’s story, which emphasizes Ramza’s early life and future conflict, is mirrored by the idiosyncratic growth of the player’s army, in addition to Ramza’s own job (which can be changed as well).

Stated differently, FFT presented the genre’s underlying mechanics—micro-managing troop growth, occasionally grinding to ensure that the player’s army was sufficiently strong enough to continue through the game’s story, passively consuming the aforementioned story, etc.—as necessary obstacles that felt needed in order for the player to empathically understand Ramza’s personal milestones.

The Happy Wanderer

In short, FFT is a monolithic form within the video game, and one I proudly idolize even today. My memories with this game are almost entirely positive: I feel a longing to escape myself as I am now in order to relive the artistic brilliance of Ivalice for the first time again. I am also of the mind that FFT is nearly peerless within the strategy RPG subgenre, and strongly urge anyone who’s never played this game to do so, immediately.

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No Pain, nOgame

I recently returned to playing this game called Ogame, which is a massively-multiplayer online browser based game—meaning all you need is the internet to play it—and it's all based in space. Being an online game, some people can be really annoying and I'll get into that in a moment. I originally played Ogame 7-8 years ago for about a year or two. I had a fairly substantial grouping of colonized planets all in one star system and my home planet had a pretty hefty defence... Then some jerk-off sent an armada at me, destroyed quite a bit of my base and I lost interest. Fast forward to now and I felt like having a time sink. I will note however that this isn't the first time I've tried to start playing this game again.

Basically everyone starts off with a single planet and you must construct mines and such to build up resources so you can improve your technology. Eventually you can colonize other planets and attack people. Think of many free-to-play cell phone games and you've got the right idea for how Ogame plays.

Game screen, click to enlarge

As I had stated before, online players can be incredibly irritating sometimes. The game is built around everybody living together, so there is bound to be some combat between players. A large portion of players that build up fast tend to farm resources off other players. The more moral of these thieves tend to go after players that are inactive, but since I joined a new server, no one is really inactive yet.

It was bound to happen: I was attacked, which I have no inherent problem with. I saw it in time (sensors FTW), and I spent all my resources so when his cargo ships got to my planet, he would pilfer nothing. Among some of the things I built to relieve myself of my resources were some rocket launchers, which are the weakest defences you can build. You would think this would be the end of it; he would see I'm actually playing, not taking his crap and instead of wasting time, he would farm a weaker target. But no I get this message instead:

Wrong move
message saying you were online = we both save time and I'll stop farming you
building missiles and trying to kill my cargos = I'll have to come back with fighters

Have a good game ;)
         
Heremor  

He's trying to steal from me and has the gall to talk to me about etiquette? I don't know, maybe I'm just being pissy, but if he wants to "farm" resources off players, that is a risk he is willing to take. I owe him nothing; if he sends out an attacking fleet, he should be scanning the target constantly to see if anything has changed. At least that's what I do when I attack someone.

Sorry, I'm not sorry. 

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TBT Ring of Red

When I think of rare games, my mind always seems to end up fixate on Japanese titles for some reason; and that's why for the most part, I don't think I will have that sort of collectable feeling towards many ps3 games outside of maybe games like Ni no Kuni. My first game to share on TBT will be Ring of Red. Released in Japan in September 2000 (March 2001 in NA), it was out pretty early into the life cycle of the ps2.

Ring of Red is an interesting strategy game because it has a pseudo action segment mixed in with the turn based strategy. It takes place in an alternate history in the 1960's, which sees Japan turned into a modern day Korean. After World War II, Japan didn't surrender, and the U.S. took over the south side, while Russia took over the North. Boarders were drawn, and you can see where the Korea reference comes in. Now the other part of the alternate history that comes into play is the best part, skirmishes involve giant walking tanks, which is pretty bad ass.

I remember playing this game a good 10 years ago when I found it lying around a game store used. As you will come to learn about me, I love my mech games (I am a huge Gundam fan), so the theme drew me in. Anyway, back then I had a bit of trouble with the game. It ain't easy, and having recently played it again, I can say I didn't approach the game properly the first time. Think about any RPG you've played...  Alright, now who is the strongest character in that game? It's the main character right!? Wrong. Ring of Red is actually quite balanced when it comes to the mechs. There are 4 difference types: short range light-armoured recons, mid-range balanced types, long-range slow guys, and melee units. They all work in a rock-paper-scissors sort of deal, but none of this is really explained to you… but I suppose it's kind of obvious.

So as I've said, I recently replayed it, and I can say it isn't as hard as I remember it being; but man, most missions are long. Once you obtain all your units (which is a total of 8, 2 of each type) you are constantly outnumbered as you are in most turn-based  games, but I don't remember any other game sending so many reinforcements at you. It felt like they sent them every single mission. Missions take anywhere between an hour near the beginning of the game to about 2-3 hours near the end, and this is in large part due to the pseudo action combat.

Pseudo action combat.

The way the combat works is mainly for flair haha--it does look cool though! Each mech has its own ideal range, and in combat you are on a dueling plain where you can move forwards or backwards. Pretty simple: you want to stay inside your optimum range, while avoiding your enemies. Your best bet is to do match ups (long range vs. melee for instance). You sort of move back and forth on the plain until your cannon is loaded, then you go into this sweet looking aimer view, and wait for your hit percentage to go up and then shoot. While the developers went through the trouble of making combat look cool, that is in fact all it is since if you clearly hit X while the reticule is off the enemy mech, you can still hit it because it's only using the percentage... Bummer I know (hence why I’ve coined combat as being “pseudo” action-like). Battles are suppose to be about 90 seconds, but they can last a while longer once everyone starts using special abilities, and when there are like 20-30 enemies you have to fight, it can take a while to complete a mission. At least you're able to save and quit mid mission.

In the end, this game will always be a classic. The setting is interesting, the walking tanks are pretty original and there is just so much they put into the game, I didn't even talk about the soldiers you get to bring with you, adding a layer of customizability to your individual mech strategy. If you're a fan of turn based strategy, I would highly recommend picking it up. It was actually made available on the PSN in 2011 ($9.99 in NA). If you have a ps3, go play it!

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