Eye of the Beholder Review

Vanquishing the mighty (and eponymous) Beholder at the end of the game is one of the most satisfying RPG experiences to be had. I have killed the Archdemon of Dragon Age - and survived (!) - I have saved defeated more than one Daedric Prince of Oblivion, and I have even killed the Dragon at the end of this game's sequel. But none of those is an achievement like beating the floating monster.



You might think the satisfaction comes from the variety of ways you can kill the beholder:

a) Fire magic and missiles from afar.
b) Nimbly hack it to bits.
c) Use a magic wand to drive it into a spike trap that gruesomely bursts it open

You might also think the kudos comes from its level of difficulty. As with all good old-RPGs, the beholder has several 'instant-kill' spells (disintegration, cause instant critical wounds, and even just a 'death' spell).

But no. The achievement is managing to endure what used to pass as an RPG experience. For example, earlier in the game (about 30 minutes in), you have to fight your way through giant spiders. One unlucky bite and a party member is poisoned. Of course, cure poison potions are in short supply and, without the ability to create new ones, you can suffer game-breaking deaths of key party members.

I still loved it though. Those party members were created through one of the best character creation screens made at the time. If you wanted, you could forgo the RPGing aspects of the party's attributes, and simply ramp up everything to maximum. God knows, with designs like the spider level, you would either do that, or save every few minutes. And (as anyone with an Amiga background knows) saving onto a floppy disk is something you want to do as little as possible - the disk might break before you do.

What else? The magic system was intuitive, with a real sense of progressing onto more powerful spells. However, I never did appreciate the way that in order to regain the spells (and heal an injured party) you would often need to rest for several days. Watching a clock wind up for several days, open a door, kill a monster, and repeat for a week, didn't feel heroic to me. But you just have to give games like a break.

What this game does have, though, is the puzzle that kept me stuck for six months. It involved me clicking on every pixel-area of every wall (until I decided I needed to map it). Far more difficult than defeating the ultimate baddies on WoW (although I am yet to play that game...), only the greatest of adventurers - the true chosen ones - can hope to overcome the follow piece of game-design history:

Step on the invisible pressure pads in the right order. And they don't make a sound when stepped on. And you don't know you have to do it.

What kept me, and so many others, with the game despite the true monstrosities like the above design? And no, it wasn't the fact that there were no other RPGs at the time. It was the variety unseen of in a game at the time, both in the enemies and in the levels. Trust me, when you have spent six months clicking on every pixel in a grey-stoned wall, to see green-stone walls is akin to gazing upon the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Another anomaly concerns the spell system. When you find a scroll, you can either use it immediately as a one-off, or scribe it so you can use it permanently when you reach a level capable of casting it. Unfortunately, some of the best spells require a level unachievable (in my playthrough) in the game. So that regeneration spell, something that you've waited for ever since half your party was poisoned to death in the spider level near the beginning of the game, turns out to be entirely useless, save as a reminder of how you should have used it when you had the chance.

Should you play this game today? As a piece of gaming history, it is certainly worth watching some Youtube videos at least. Taken for what it is though - an old-school immersive dungeon crawler - it still holds up today. However, there are too many flaws of design to make it an enjoyable experience. It exists now a piece of nostalgia; as something to realise how much more we expect in our RPG games.

Read more »

Supreme Commander 2 Review

Engaging enormous engines of war in battle should be more difficult than this. It certainly was in the original - and much loved - supreme commander. The difficulty, for some, is that while the game looks the same, the economy itself is inherently different.



For starters, unlike the original it is difficult to run short of mass and energy - the two resources needed to power the production of units. This is coupled with the emphasis on upgrading a few core units, rather than producing, and memorising, a plethora of the-same-but-a-bit-different tanks. I still remember now an old friend telling me, during a mutliplayer of medieval total war, that he intended to build his army from as many different, and obscure, troop types as possible, thus as to ensure that I didn't have a clue what I was fighting, or how to counteract it. Such beardiness has been devastated in Supreme Commander 2.

Instead what you have is an engaging game that allows the easy(ier) building of experimentals - skyscraper robots capable of destroying an army single-handed. Their names are as ridiculous as their power - King Kriptor, for one!

Admittedly, if you had dedicated a substantial amount of time to perfecting your build orders to the second, then this game will frustrate you. If you had an inherent knowledge of how the dozens of different basic units counteracted each other, then this game will feel like an imposter. Indeed, the smaller maps (often strangely cramped due to extra scenary) will tone down the epic feeling for those expert at the original.

For me, though, it is perfect. Having stalled on the tutorial for several months, I managed to give the game a morning. In those few hours, I had won skirmishes will all the sides (which feel, and look, genuinely different), unlocked all the experimental units and progressed in the campaign. I have tried some multiplayer, and enjoyed the epicness of it all (something served by an incredible soundtrack.)

For those on PC, this game has also regularly dropped to £2.50, which is a farcical price. You simply must own this game for that amount of money. Very incisive descriptions of why the game feels 'broken' to the experts of the original exist, but suffice to say that if, like me, you play many different genres, this is a wonderful addition that allows you 20-60mins of intensely satisfying RTS at a time.

Read more »

Shogun Total War Review

Shogun Total War is one of those games that allows you dream of how to gloriously command thousands (or, at least, dozens) of screaming samurai. By allowing devious flanking tactics, or encouraging heroic frontal assaults, STW was the first game to depict the frantic action of real time strategy with mainstream success.



Which, when you consider that the game was originally intended as a 2D strategy game, makes this game a definitive milestone of the RTS genre.

The strength of game is its simplified unit interaction: like paper (spears), scissors (cavalry) and stone (archers) every unit counters another unit. Unlike the expansive RTS units of SupComm or SCII, mastery of unit types should be expected in hours rather than weeks. There's no seeking for the 'overbalanced' unit combination or the perfect build-order in this game; only blood and thunder battlefield fighting.

Ten years after first release, the gameplay still holds up surprisingly well. The kill rate of units is low (perhaps too low!) but this places a greater emphasis on the paper-scissor-stone principles by which the game runs. Add into this the significant effect of hills (archers will beat infantry with a height advantage in melee) and flanking (even now tying an enemy head-on with infantry and flanking with cavalry is the RTS staple tactic) and you have warfare that is satisfyingly expansive. By expansive I mean there is a real feeling that a smaller army can defeat much larger numbers with superior tactics.

Such victories exploit the game's excellent morale model. You don't need to kill every soldier to win a battle. Even now I can remember battles a decade imprinted on my memory - the enemy ushered through a valley to attack my weakened archers; the hidden charge from woods; and the routing of one flank that rolls down the rest of the enemy until a fresh force flees from my emergent (and no doubt grinning) general.

The campaign mode itself was pleasingly simplified. I always played as Shimazu (the green ones) not least because they were tucked away in the corner. As always in such strategy games, no-one has yet devised a way to counteract strategic AI. In the end game, I always faced off the Hojo clan who had horded dozens of armies into a few spaces. While something that I accepted at the time, these days such a gameplay facet would (rightly) demand a patch, or simply recognise that the campaign is won when 50% of map is yours.

The expansion pack (part of this game) goes some way to addressing these problems but it still lets slip with the overpowered brutality of the mongol heavy cavalry. Having spent 100s of battles watching body counters drop a man at a time, the shock at seeing multiple people die at once is enough to make the mongol expansion feel like the challenge of countering a truly warmonging race with what are essentially a civilised people.

So should you own and play this game because it defined a genre? The graphics are, admittedly, pixilated with a 680 resolution. The campaign can drag on. Heavy cavalry aren't my first choice when I have infinite money. And the bridge battles are immensely arduous tests of attrition.

But the immersion is still there. The sound is evocative of the Sengoku period and the battlefield principles are still refreshingly straightforward and effective. If you win a battlefield, you really feel a sense of control. Even more so than a ctrl + A then right click on their general. I've owned three copies of this game - you should grace your collection with one.

Read more »

Max Payne Review

Nearly ten years ago the snowy rain fell on Hull like all the angels in heaven had decided to colloquially urinate at the same time. And so opened this innovative action adventure for me: I had a weekend to kill, it was snowing outside, and I had no heating. I didn't want the intellectually intensity of a strategy game, nor did I want to frenetic multitasking of an RTS. With a blanket on my legs, I sat down and completed this game in 10 hours without even a toilet break. And the first thing I did? Began again. After a toilet break.



Max Payne pitches its progressive difficulty perfectly. Action games shouldn't - in my busy world - kill you more than three times at the same point (well, at least not more than three times in a gaming session.) You shouldn't be slugging through a game with a face as pained as Payne's permanently constipated expression. Instead you should be smiling appreciatively at just how awesome it feels to burst horizontally through a door (in slow motion) while expertly twisting through your hips as you innerringly shoot three baddies with your John Woo pistols before time jolts back into the present and all three baddies fall down at the same time. Whump.

This is not a serious game, but it is seriously evocative. The weapons, even now, feel powerful. I can remember a scene where a baddie hiding behind an apartment door unfortunately proclaims that he intends to shoot you as you dare to enter. He doesn't expect you to leap towards him while simultaneously opening said door before unleashing a full shotgun blast to his chest that lifts him several feet in the air. You can almost hear Chuck N..., I mean Max, saying, "not today bozo."

These scenes reoccur tirelessly throughout the game. Face an impossible situation. Engage bullet time (copied from the Matrix). Shoot all enemies. Read film noir comics. Laugh. Repeat.

While the game itself is not so serious, what should be a serious consideration is the known (and ongoing) compatibility issues with steam. Unfortunately the download seems to fail to name a weapons file correctly which can result in the game simply crashing on the first load. While I have managed to get it work (on occasion, PM if you have this problem) you cannot expect Steam to help you out on this one. Much better to buy on amazon.

Fortunately the game gleefully leads you on a deeply humorous (if judiciously silly) adventure once you have got the damn thing working. The dialogue between the baddies is priceless. Not to mention the subplot of the Lords and Ladies TV series - "My Lord! My Lady! My Lord!" - which can continue for about twenty minutes if you care to halt your carnage to watch the many analogue TV sets scattered throughout the game.

Take this game for what it is - a romping film-noir - and you'll find an outstandingly crafted adventure that is also a piece of gaming history.

Read more »

Total War

I haven't posted for a long time - almost two months - but I have been playing games. I managed to fill my 1tb hard-drive with games, and in doing so, organised them today. It took a fair portion of the day.

The first time I played total war was with Shogun. I remember getting it over Christmas 2000. The first few battles were tough affairs - 3 units against 4 and fighting on a hill. I remember as a game, I managed to immerse myself in its culture. My dreams were of hundreds of Samurai maneuvering across a field.

But this writing isn't what the game is about. In my imaginative life, to command men to live or die is enthralling. I love it! To hold the strategy of a battle plan, and to enact its tactics is stimulating. Relaxing, at times.

I remember, too, the graphics being superb.

Looking at the game now, I can see that the graphics cannot compete. There is no zoom. The moving is slow.

And so what other Total War games do I play? Currently, Medieval Total War 2. Strangely, though, I am playing most of it seems to be a bit of a slog. Armies are striking me on all sides, and I have lost several outlying cities. But hey. Is this part of the game?

I should also say that I am happily playing through PES 2009 too. I play Master League, win, and then play Become a Legend. Amazingly, I'm in the UEFA cup final. My performance in the league is not as good. A few games a week over a few months have meant that I'm almost at the end of my (second?) third season. I am tempted, as ever, to move to a better team. But as long as I play for England, I am happy for the next few seasons at least. How will my love for Wolves last me?

Read more »

Playing games this week...

Has seen me enjoy the experience of Operation Flashpoint. I am on the last level, and in doing that I am attacking the final base. While I have died several times, I have enjoyed, somehow, playing through this last part.

In addition, I have really got into PES2009. I am enjoying winning the games, and doing well. I do not enjoy winning 2-1 with Porto on the more difficult level.

Read more »

Three times

I have played a good number of games the past few weeks. The focus of this shall be PES 2009.

The become a legend mode has always held some interest. The issue is, of course, that the vertical camera used often does not aid my skills and experience in using the wide camera. As such, I was utterly unable to score, or even play, in the vertical mode.

Interestingly enough, I had a housemate who persevered with this mode for something like three seasons. When you bear in mind this can be 40 games or more, at ten minutes each, this is a substantial amount of time. Add to this the fact that he scored something like 2-3 goals in an entire season, and those goals were always tackling a defend, or hitting in a rebound.

So why play it? Why suffer this frankly atrocious gameplay? Because the idea is good enough. And since the idea is good enough, everything else is secondary.

So what difference has the normal camera made? I have given it a good few hours this week, and feel happy to pick it up every so often. It is quite brilliant. At times frustrating, yes. But the Master League is more frustrating in the sense that my team is too good for the mid level now. And the top level is simply too hard with the rubbish team given at the start. Perhaps starting on the hardest difficulty with Wolves is an apt balance?

In all of this is something that I read in PC gamer: that some games are best played on the easiest difficulty setting. So many games are about that this is, in some ways, the best (only) option for a busy teacher like myself. This time saving option has led to one new consideration: I play until I die three times at the same point. At the moment in Operation Flashpoint (which I do enjoy) I am dying at a similar point whilst assaulting a village in what must be the final mission of the campaign. With this in mind, I play until I die three times.

There are some games, too, that I want to give time to. This Christmas shall see to that...

Read more »