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Orcs Must Die! And Explode. And Dissolve. And Burn… 2

Posted by :Meroka On : August 2, 2012
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Category: Action/Adventure, Indie Gaming, Reviews, Strategy

Orcs Must Die! by Robot Entertainment was one of the most successful indie games of 2011, receiving the accolade Game of the Year and being one of the most fun games I’ve personally played in a long time. The anecdote you can oft catch me telling is that I picked it up about three days before PAX East this year and ended up resenting having to leave for Boston just because it meant I had to put Orcs Must Die! down.

Scarcely 8 months later we now have Orcs Must Die! 2. Historically, even the benevolent titans Valve have caught flak for such a fast turnaround on a sequel, so is it up to scratch?

To bring everyone up to speed, Orcs Must Die! is an Action Tower Defence game. You are given resources to buy traps and said traps are instrumental in stopping waves of baddies – in this case the titular orcs – from making it down a gauntlet. That flavour of game gets stale after a while and you end up just resting on the fast-forward button until everything stops, so these days the kids want action. Now you get to run around on foot with a selection of interesting weapons mixing it up in the midst of your carefully lain traps.

Orcs Must Die! tasks you, a War Mage, with the role of defending your world from the barbarism of the orcs. They will break through rifts from the savage orc homelands and charge through a mine or castle or whatever locale the narrative presents you with, intent on breaking forth into your world and wreaking destruction upon it. Armed with arrays of spikes, blades and maces ready to spring forth from the walls, ceilings and floors, as well as jets of acid, ice and flame, a variety of guardian allies and a whole periodic table of elemental fury to throw forth, you’ll get to tackle thousands of the brutes. Performing well earns you skulls which function as currency to buy new weapons and traps and upgrade your existing ones.

There’s no depth to the story, just a host of interestingly shaped rooms and gratuitous violence. One might comfortably argue that you don’t need anything else. And I will. I made the comparison last week talking about Shoot Many Robots: The one thing Orcs Must Die! does better than any other game is that it’s so visceral. When a crowd of oblivious orcs stampedes onto your spike trap while axe blades swing from the wall in unison the sense of satisfaction delivered is unparalleled. It’s a difficult thing to convey using mere words. There’s endless fun to be had setting up combinations of traps and watching the savages blunder into the literal meat grinder. And then the ones that do slip the net you can shoot in the face with a crossbow. It’s good enough to stand alone without anything else to the game.

What the sequel brings to the table over its predecessor is sadly not extensive. The game provides only 15 new levels, 4 new weapons and 6 new traps and could comfortably have been marketed as an expansion were it not for the inclusion of a Co-op Mode. Teaming up with a friend, you can each take control of one of the two different War Mages, one the Apprentice of the first game and one the new Sorceress, the Sorceress having access to more primarily magic based attacks and traps than the more physical Apprentice.

Robot are clearly banking on longevity being derived from wanting to play through the story as both characters on both normal and hard mode, and then probably the new endless mode, too, which as the name suggests pits you against ever tougher waves of foes until you inevitably succumb vying for a place on the high score board and extra bonus skulls to spend upgrading your character. While it’s no bad thing, and there’s plenty of lifespan and fun to be had with the game, the original stood well by itself in a single play-through and I fear this sequel may be found lacking.

If of course you haven’t touched the original then disregard the above. It’ll all be fresh, exciting and above all else unequivocally fun. At the end of the day it’s still quite reasonably priced at £12, which is a hard price point to argue with at any time and I’m certain thrifty gamers will be able to pick it up for less with a little patience. It’s excellent entertainment for the entry fee asked and well worth investing in, even if it isn’t revolutionary.

Orcs Must Die 2! is available for PC on Steam, Gamersgate and Impulse.

Free2Play Spotlight: Super Monday Night Combat

Posted by :Meroka On : May 3, 2012
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Category: Free2Play, Indie Gaming, Shooter, Strategy

I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been back and forth on this, debating whether to review Super Monday Night Combat or not. I’m biased. Well, I feel biased. It’s not like I work for Uber Entertainment, or even that they’re paying us for advertising or sponsorship. I’m not even a prominent enough player to be one of the lucky chosen few to go to PAX as one of Uber’s exhibitors. But goddamn do I love me some Monday Night Combat. So take the following with a pinch, nay an entire shaker of salt.

Monday Night Combat started out as a DOTA-style class-based shooter on the Xbox Live Arcade. Somewhat successful, it was ported across to PC on Steam. As predominantly multiplayer games with smaller marketing budgets – and by extension fanbases – than things like Call of Duty tend to do, the game’s community dwindled. It disappeared off the radar for some time until PAX prime last year with the announcement of Super Monday Night Combat. And that’s what we’re here to throw our free2play spotlight on!

Let’s start at the beginning. I wrote about DOTA not so long ago, so I won’t go into the fundamentals again. It’s a class-based third person shooter. Being a free shooter is relatively new territory to begin with, so kudos for pioneering, there. Whereas the original MNC had 6 classes and they all played to greater or lesser extent like TF2 classes, SMNC ups that to 15 at launch and there’s a lot of crazy stuff going on with them. Notable newcomers include Cheston, the tommy gun-toting gorilla thespian who throws barrels like Donkey Kong; Captain Spark, the superhero raised and trained in martial arts by hyperintelligent electric mer-eels; Karl, a reconnaissance cyborg programmed by his upper class creators to believe he is human, with a monocle and moustache to match; and unveiled at PAX East, Leonardo freaking da Vinci, cloned from the DNA extracted from a fingerprint found on a sketch of a badger-powered military tank (to save on war elephants). Enough said, I suspect.

For anyone still in any doubt, the whole game is just as over the top. Set in the not too distant future in a heavily capitalistic state (MNC implied totalitarian too, though there is less allusion to this in SMNC) you’re fighting primarily for the purpose of televised entertainment. Money acts as experience and money will buy you many advantages, from traps to healing and buffs to additional bots (the DOTA creeps). Bullseye, the MNC mascot will appear periodically and shooting him will make him drop money and prizes. Chickey Cantor, a giant cyborg chicken, will appear later on to fight players and defeating him will reward the entire team with a variety of buffs. Oh, and bacon is the most powerful powerup in the game. The whole affair is tied together with commentary from two charismatic hosts, GG Stack and Chip Valvano. Some lamented the loss of Mickey Cantor from MNC. Oh hell, I lamented the loss of Mickey Cantor, but it didn’t take long for these new personalities to grow on me. Clearly the product of the same excellent writing, the voice acting may be different but the dialogue is just as hilarious as their predecessor’s.

The game’s been in beta for about 7 months now, so testing and balancing has been extensive and it’s come out of it well. Sure, some classes will always be strong against others, but that’s just how class-based games tend to work. There are plenty of moves that will undoubtedly be called “cheap”, but nothing you can’t avoid if you know what to look out for. On the whole combat is considerably less lethal than pretty much all other shooters on the market so tactics and teamwork will give you a much-needed advantage and you can stay alive more if you don’t run in alone. Of course, some classes work better that way but you’re still going to struggle to take on a crowd by yourself.

The one critical question, I suppose is “how free is it?”. Quite free. Out of the 15 pros (characters) 6 or 7 will be available to play for free each week. The others can be unlocked permanently for a fee. Most pros are $1.99 and a few of the pros demanding more skill to play are $7.49. After each match, you’ll be awarded with “combat credits” and if you save up enough of these you can buy pros with these without ever having to open your wallet. Really, the only things you’ll find with only a real money price tag on are cosmetic items, ranging from $1.99 for reskins to $14.99 for the really cool stuff. You can sometimes get these after games in a similar fashion to TF2’s random drops, too. Obviously if you have your heart set on the cool demon wings specifically you could be waiting a while, but hey, you wouldn’t be prepared to pay if it were so easy, right? There’s also combat credit and experience boosters to purchase, but as is fortunately becoming the popular trend, they have no actual impact on games themselves, only serving to help you unlock new stuff faster. Personally I’ve bought a few of my favourite pros and a new outfit for my main, the Assassin. About £20 in all, I reckon and half of that was on cosmetics. But I’ve sunk a lot of time into this game and will continue to do so, so I feel like that’s not an unreasonable price tag for the entertainment.

So that’s Super Monday Night Combat. If you’re looking for something new to play and you’re strapped for cash you could do far worse than SMNC. I’m not sure you could do much better, either. I don’t know why you’re still reading; I mean, it’s free to go and have a look, isn’t it?

Super Monday Night Combat is totally free on Steam on PC.

GLHF,

~Meroka

Let’s Talk About DOTA

Posted by :Meroka On : April 19, 2012
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Category: Action/Adventure, Rant, Strategy

Defense of the Ancients. DOTA for short. It’s a strange beast. I’ll begin by describing the basic premise because I’ve known plenty of hardcore gamers that didn’t know what it was.

It began life as a mod for the RTS game Warcraft 3. Instead of having a hero unit commanding an army into battle, and permitting the player to command all units from above, DOTA simplified the strategy and made the focus the hero. Your base will continually spawn an army of grunts, usually called creeps, the enemies’ bases will do the same and, taking control of your hero and only your hero, you must help push forward against the opposing army to reach and destroy the enemy base. Each hero is equipped with their own abilities and it often ends up like TF2 on steroids, with over a hundred different characters each with differing abilities, strengths and weaknesses. Balancing all that must be a nightmare. Defeating enemy heroes and creeps earns you exp and you can level up your hero to have a greater impact on the game. As it happens, this concept became a huge success and has become a genre in its own right. One of the problems facing it though is that nobody has any clue what to call it or what it really is, so that’s something I want to explore now.

One of the first games to follow in DOTA’s successful footsteps was Demigod. This was soon followed by the now wildly successful League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth. All these three have a very similar play style. In contrast to DOTA’s top-down RTS perspective, these three had a third-person RPG perspective, but the gameplay was very similar. They play more akin to something like World of Warcraft than an RTS. So can you call it an RTS when it’s essentially the same game? Probably not, and there are a few ideas out there on how we can define it. The simplest one is DOTA-like. As far as naming convention goes, it’s not without precedent, after all we have roguelikes, named for the game Rogue. But even then, the genre has come a long way since its origins and something like, say, Monday Night Combat, whilst the fundamental mechanics are there, doesn’t really bear all that much resemblance to the W3 mod.

League of Legends coined the descriptor MOBA, or Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. That strikes me as a rather broad description. It’s a title that fits equally well to League of Legends, Unreal Tournament, Smash Bros or even Mario Kart. They’re all multiplayer games involving battling other people online, often in an arena of some kind. What else can we call it? Valve, with their upcoming DOTA 2, have pushed the name ARTS or Action-RTS. As for what kind of action-to-strategy balance DOTA 2 brings, I couldn’t say, as it’s still in closed beta and naturally everything’s pretty hush-hush. With the kind of fortune I couldn’t have planned, I’ve landed an invite today so I’ll be able to find out shortly. As I’ve already mentioned, I feel RTS is a bit of a misnomer for the genre now, broadly speaking, but equally there’s exceptions. Having had the privilege of being introduced to Carbon Games‘ AirMech at PAX, I’ve seen that strategy doesn’t need to be completely absent. AirMech combines the usual infinitely spawning creeps with the ability to buy more advanced units and then, because your avatar can morph into a jet plane, pick up the units and ferry them about the battlefield strategically. Crazy 300 actions-per-minute Korean pro-gamers will be restricted by the plane’s movement speed, so strategy elements are held back to a pace that the normal human brain can handle, but without sacrificing them altogether and turning the game into a World of Warcraft battleground or a simple team deathmatch.

Sometimes though, you do just want to chill out and blow stuff up. Uber Entertainment‘s Monday Night Combat and newly launched free-to-play Super Monday Night Combat are great for this. It’s a third-person shooter, really, when you’re playing it. A lot more tactical than your typical shooter fare these days and a lot less lethal in combat, making teamwork and strategy a lot more profitable, but if you’re not a god among gamers you can still dive in and make a dent. The creeps, towers and bases are all there and all work like you’d expect, but it feels so much more like you’re playing TF2 than Warcraft 3.

On the whole, it’s pretty trivial to take any two of these games, view them side-by-side, say they’re pretty much the same and bundle them all up under a single label. If absolutely pressed to, I’d still go with DOTA-like because that’s where it all started, and anyway there are hundreds of different roguelikes, all uniquely different, they still all get thrown in a big pile together. No, it still doesn’t adequately convey what the hell I’m talking about, but I’m content to explain it over and over again ’til we all know that it’s a genre. A rich, diverse genre that’s still in it’s infancy. I’m certain Eul never anticipated all this when he first sat down to make a fun variant of Warcraft 3, and I’m equally certain developers will continue to surprise us by trying exciting new things with it. It’s something I very much look forward to seeing where it goes.

GLHF

~Meroka

Attack of the Unstoppable Gorg!!!

Posted by :Meroka On : March 30, 2012
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Category: Indie Gaming, Reviews, Strategy, XBLA

At the farthest reaches of the Solar System scientists have discovered a mysterious tenth planet! The legendary Planet X! But unfortunately it turns out to be inhabited by the terrible Gorg, hell bent on eradicating the human race with the aid of flying brain monsters living on Jupiter. Sound like a plot from a cheesy 50’s B-movie? Good, because that’s largely the inspiration behind Unstoppable Gorg from Futuremark Games Studio.

I, for one, welcome our new tinfoil overlords

A lot of narrative is presented to you in the format of old cinema newsreels and robots frequently look like cardboard boxes or toasters with eyeballs. UFOs hang very obviously from fishing wire. Terrible special effects abound. If that sounds like something you’d watch over a takeaway pizza with a few cans of beer, this game might just be for you.

At it’s core, Unstoppable Gorg is a variant of the now (in my humble opinion) slightly stale genre of Tower Defence. A few hundred creeps are on their way to your base and you must build armed towers to eradicate them before too many get there. But wait, there’s a twist! Your ‘towers’ here are orbital satellites around the planet you have been tasked with defending. You’ll get a few different orbital rings at different radii and each has a few pre-set locations to build at. However, the entire ring can be rotated about the planet to reposition your satellites. In most tower defence games, strategy usually consists of forcing the creeps to take the longest path by blocking their routes and countering their individual weaknesses. In Unstoppable Gorg, you’ll find yourself having to deal with continually moving all your units to deal with your enemies constantly changing angles of attack. One creep slipped you by? Move your orbit to chase it down, but at the cost of opening up your defence elsewhere. It makes for a much faster paced game; very rarely is the occasion you’ll find yourself holding down fast-forward to make things happen.

Oh no! They got K9!

Unstoppable Gorg still has a lot of rock-paper-scissors type stuff going on: brains are weak to physical damage and resistant to energy weapons and other enemies have their own strengths and weaknesses so you’ll need a well balanced armament to counter them, especially if they team up on you. Tips learned from Plants vs Zombies seem to be relevant, too. That is to say, generate as many resources as possible because then you can buy the big guns fast. That’s actually pretty difficult early on and it does make some of the early levels a little more challenging than some of the later ones, but with practice, patience and persistence you’ll overcome most of your difficulties in this game.

Visit sunny Mercury!

The soundtrack isn’t extensive, nor is it the kind of thing that’s catchy enough to have you singing it days later. Nonetheless, it fits the cheesy sci-fi bill extremely well and will certainly have you grinning like a loon alongside the flying brains.

If, like me, you love finding the absolute worst films available just for a good laugh, and if you’re also not entirely sick yet of building towers to fend off creeps determined to march along a predetermined path until either they run out of guys or you don’t defend hard enough, then you should probably check out Unstoppable Gorg. If it had been the same old format I might not have enjoyed it quite so much, but the orbital format provides a fresh spin (gettit?) on the genre that stands it out from the crowd.

Unstoppable Gorg is available on Steam for both PC and Mac, iPad, and is coming soon to XBLA.

GLHF,

~Meroka