Tag Archives: strategy

Games

Space Rangers 2 AAR Part 3

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Lots of combat in my ongoing Space Rangers 2 game from 3307 to 3312. I’d finally managed to join a proper military operation to liberate a system in the game, but while it was success, taught me to pay attention to which system is actually being liberated. You see, these operations start by docking with the military base organizing the expedition. When you agree to join in, you’re placed in suspended animation until the date and time of the attack, and then the entire base warps into the target system held by the Dominators. Then everyone undocks from the station and proceeds to kick Dominator ass.

The battle itself went well enough, as by that point I’d upgraded to a great combat ship with max weapons slots and a special +15 to shields, which means any incoming damage is reduced by a further 15% in addition to the base defense of my shield generator. I did need to redock with the station for repairs once, but overall, destroying all of the Dominators garrisoning the system was fairly easy, and I happily hopped over to one of populated planets to be properly congratulated and feted.

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Games

Space Rangers 2 AAR Part 2

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Just a quick update on my Space Rangers 2 game from the year 3303 to 3306. As I noted in my previous post, I’ve been meaning to get more involved in combat, and this I did. Combat in this game isn’t terribly involved. Each ship has a limited number of weapons slots, from 1 to 6, and basically the more weapons you mount, the more firepower your ship can muster. Your accuracy and mobility skills make a big difference of course, and your defensive options including armour which blocks a fixed amount of damage and shields which block a percentage of all damage, but in actual play, it’s a simple matter of choosing a target and shooting it until either one of you dies or someone runs away.

This process is prolonged by the fact than any combatants can always dock at a friendly planet or base to make repairs. This means that very often, actually destroying an enemy can involve chasing it down, shooting it until it’s smoking at which point it’ll run to get repaired and you’ll need to wait until it takes off again. Repeat until you destroy the enemy or it runs out of money for repairs.

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Games

Space Rangers 2 AAR Part 1

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I’ve been mucking around with the copy of Space Rangers 2 Complete that I bought at the beginning of the year when it went on sale on the Impulse platform for a measly US$3.99. This was a game that I’d briefly tried when it first came out, and though I really wanted to like it and loved the very idea of it, I was put off by its opacity and how unforgiving it can be. The chorus of acclaim for the game on QT3 convinced me that persevering with it would be worth my while, and since I’ve never written a After Action Report (AAR) on any game before, I thought it would be fun to keep a sort of diary as I make my way through the Space Rangers 2 world.

You start off by creating your character, a freelance Ranger tasked with defending the galaxy against the incursion of the robotic aliens known as the Dominators. The game takes place in a galaxy that’s dynamically generated every time you start a new game and you’re free to either take the fight to the Dominators as you’re supposed to, or do your own thing. It’s as open a sandbox as anyone can imagine. For me, since this is my first playthrough, I’ve decided to play my usual goody two-shoes with the intention of building up my character and ship until I’m strong enough to take the fight to the Dominators.

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Games

A Game: Armored Core Formula Front (PSP)

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Since I knew I wouldn’t have access to my gaming PC over the Chinese New Year holidays, I made sure to have something to play on my PSP in the meantime and the game I picked was Armored Core: Formula Front. I’ve had an eye on this game for a while now but couldn’t find an English language version of it and playing such a complex game without being able to understand the on screen text was completely out of the question.

I’m normally not a fan of Japanese games, so I had to look it up to know that Armored Core refers to a fairly well established mecha action game series. This PSP version involves mecha as well, but the twist here that made me interested in this title in the first place is that you’re not really supposed to manually pilot the Armored Cores, as the mecha are known. Instead, you’re supposed to put together your own stable of ACs from a collection of parts, devise a strategy for them and the AI will try to implement your strategy as well as it can in a series of gladiatorial one-on-one fights against ACs from other teams. This makes it more of a strategy game than an action game as success depends on finding the optimal combination of parts to make an AC that’s well suited to carrying out a particular fighting strategy against enemies with specific builds and strategies of their own.

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Games

Defense Grid

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I’m not usually a fan of RTS games, but when I do play them, my favourite maps tend to be the ones in which you have to defend your base against wave after wave of enemy attackers. It’s not too surprising then that I was intrigued when people started making maps and mods specifically for this purpose. As I recall, the first examples appeared as mods for Warcraft 3, but as I didn’t really like that game, I didn’t really check those out thoroughly. It wasn’t until the advent of Flash games that tower defense really took off as a genre. I’ve played quite a few of them on and off, even if I’m not terribly good at them. My favourite is probably Vector TD with its simple vector graphics. I’ve also heard good things about Desktop Tower Defense, but I found the prospect of having to design an entire maze all by myself to be intimidating.

I’ve always known that it was inevitable that someone would make one as a full-fledged standalone game with professional production values and now along comes Defense Grid: The Awakening. When Steam put it on sale at US$14.99 over the holidays, I immediately snapped it up even though I’m still busy with Fallout 3. As expected, there are no great innovations or new ideas here. There’s a campaign that guides you through each map as part of an overarching story, and you’re given more tower types and harder maps as time passes. Completing each map unlocks the next one and allows you to replay the previous one at harder difficulty levels or altering the game settings.

Towers are placed on fixed emplacements on the map. For the easier maps, there are only a very limited number of spots on which you can place them, but later, there are plenty of opportunities to place them in such a way as to block off certain paths to the enemy, which in my opinion is nice way to do some maze-building without making it completely free-form. Still, what really makes this stand out are the great full-screen graphics and the slick interface that lets you easily scroll tower available towers with the mouse-wheel and choose upgrades. There are even multiple zoom levels so you can get a close-up look of the action. Once you’ve played this, you’ll probably have a hard time going back to Flash games.

The question is whether or not it’s worth the full price of US$19.99. For most people probably not, but if you can get it at a discount, you might find it worthwhile for some lighter gaming in between sessions of heavier fare like Fallout 3. I’m certainly happy with my purchase, and as a bonus, it’s one of the very few games that my wife likes to play.

Games, Politics

Sarah Palin wins the U.S. Presidency

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Or she does in my game of The Political Machine 2008 Express anyway. I recently discovered that Stardock had made available a stripped down version of TPM 2008 as a free download when I was moving all of my Stardock-published games from the no longer supported Stardock Central to the shiny new Impulse platform. I’ve never played any version of The Political Machine before, but I’ve heard plenty about them, so I went ahead to download and play this demo version. This version only allows you to play the 2008 campaign lasting 21 weeks long with a choice of only four candidates: John McCain or Sarah Palin for the Republicans or Barack Obama or Joe Biden for the Democrats.

As a contrarian, I picked Palin for my candidate. I’d expected to lose horribly even at beginner difficulty, but surprisingly managed to eke out a win by two electoral votes while losing the popular votes. I immediately restarted at normal difficulty and with a much better understanding of the game now, managed to win a landslide victory against Obama. I next tried playing as Obama, expecting an even easier victory, and promptly got whupped by McCain. I call shenanigans (especially since Brad Wardell of Stardock is fairly well known among gaming circles as a Republican supporter).

As a strategy game, I wasn’t really impressed enough with the demo to be interested in buying the full game. It’s novel for a while, but I’d much rather be playing a more traditional strategy game that’s about killing and conquering your enemies, rather than trying to be more persuasive than them. What’s really interesting about this is how useful it is an educational and visualization tool for understanding the U.S. presidential elections. You’ll understand how winning the election is all about maximizing your electoral votes. It’s far better to have a solid majority in a state worth a whole lot of votes than be moderately popular in a smattering of smaller ones.  Just like real life, winnning means concentrating all your time and money in key states even if it means you’ll be hated in others.

Check the demo out by downloading Impulse for free if you’re interested.

Games

Given up on the Americas

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Okay, I’ve officially given up on finishing the Americas campaign of the Kingdoms expansion for Medieval 2. Mainly because I’ve just discovered that as New Spain, you really have only one option when conquering a native city: exterminate them all. Sure, the game presents you with the additional options of either conquering the city (relatively) peacefully or looting it for all it’s worth, but if you actually choose any of those two options you’ll just end up with a huge city full of enraged native Americans that you’d need a full stack of troops to garrison just to keep the rioting under control.

Normally, having a large population should at least confer advantages in the form of a larger tax base, making a populous city a more valuable source of income. In this campaign, however, I haven’t been able to see any noticeable increase in revenue due to a larger population, which makes exterminating them all the only viable option. Since games are all about having multiple choices and options, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages, a choice that is really no choice at all is a cardinal sin.

In my game, I’ve been mostly looting the cities I’ve captured, which has caused my offensive campaign to be bogged down by the need to allocate the majority of my troops to police duty. I could “cheat” by completely abandoning the cities to the rioters so that they rebel and then move back in with my troops to conquer them all over again, only this time choosing to kill everyone, but just thinking about playing that way just takes the wind out of my sails.

So I’m done with the Americas campaign. I might come back to the other campaigns in the expansion, but after this, it’s likely to be later rather than sooner. In the meantime, I have plenty of other games to play.