Mario Sports in general

I'm playing Mario Strikers Charged on a friends Wii. At one point my Shy Guy rides a bullet bill into the keeper allowing my Koopa Trooper to score. A few minutes later my captain Donkey Kong scores the winning goal by what appears to be throwing it in with his actual hands after brutally battering everybody out of way and into the electric fence.
I don't know what sport we are playing at this point, but it's no longer football/soccer.

Even though sometimes you haven't a clue what is going on, it is frenetic and fun, which really is all that matters.Mario Tennis is another sports game that has similar strangeness, with things like Boo teleporting about with curve shots that ably defy the laws of physics. Or the minigame on the 3DS where you can play Super Mario Bros. via the medium of hitting a ball at a screen.

Mario Golf is the more sedate line of Mario Sports games but even there the latest 3DS game features large springed matresses that will bounce the ball, coin collecting minigames and boost zones that will propell a rolling ball.
The demo also features Bowser, a character who's golfing style can be best summed up as "can't actually play, was invited to be polite, did not expect him to actually turn up."

Which is fun in its own way too.

Summer Sales Report

Well, it's been a week since the Steam Sales started, and I assume we all know the standard operating procedure. Namely, stay on target, don't loosen up and no impulse buys over £3.

So far I'm doing well, Gaben has only managed to get about 4 quid off me in the form of unEpic and the steam port of FF7.

Despite coming recommended by a friend, unEpic doesn't really work for me, the controls feel responsive but rely on way too many shortcut combinations, and the whole thing from the characters to combat to the graphics lack anything remotely resembling charm.

I'd reveiw FF7 but that game is way too big a piece of my childhood games library for me to review it without nostalgia.

On the subject of the sales, it's somewhat telling to see Murdered: Soul Suspect ALREADY in a sale, not with the biggest of discounts true and the Summer Sale has been known to put big titles up with 33% discounts in the past. But here it feels more telling, as that game came out with next to no fanfare and I've yet to hear a single positive thing about it.

It was also interesting to see the PC version of Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends up for the price it SHOULD have launched with instead of the wildly optimistic price of 40 pounds it actually did so. I've always had a soft spot for the Dynasty Warriors franchise, and I liked how the character creator mode in 8 just abandoned all pretense of historical accuracy and had you fighting people with a Drill Lance or an Umbrella. But asking £40 for a console port is asking way too much.

I have a friend who picked up the port of Naruto on the first day.
Apparently Single Player mode quickly decides that it's going to be an Action-RPG. Multiplayer is a fairly nice looking arena combat game, with what could be a good game layered underneath a control scheme that was devised by the same people who made the scheme for Batman Forever on the Genesis/Megadrive.

Meanwhile the GoG sale continues to chug along, tossing out the occaisional free game to those who are quick enough to snap them up.

Thursday Night Gaming: X-Wing

Tonight at the club I'll be playing X-Wing.

FFG's Star Wars dogfighting game has proven to be one of their most successful products, and our club has been no exception.
Similar to Silent Death in that each player controls a small group of fighters, X-Wing see's each player directing their X-Wings, TIE Fighters and sundry about the playing area using a combination of punched card movement rulers, custom D8 dice for attacks and the usual FFG plethora of counters and cards.
It's a simple game to learn, plays very quickly, and comes with excellent quality models.

This being FFG, everything comes with a great glut of cards to customise your group to great effect. Different named pilots have different levels of skill (which detirmines movement and firing initiative) unique special abilities, and the ships they pilot have upgrade slots with which to improve further. For instance the X-Wing has a slot for an R2 droid and Torpedoes, and certain pilots come with slots for Elite Pilot skills.

Usual points level for games is 100pts aside (about 3 or 4 rebel ships, and usually double that for Imperials) although rules for Epic sized games of 300 or 400 (in two teams of 200) exist. Although really you play at a mutually accepted points level.

A word on list building

 One thing I've noticed about FFG games, is that they often work by linking together synergies together. Like for example, you have a Pilot who gets X at the cost of Y. So you give him a card that allows him to Z when he Y's and you take that pilot who can negate the downsides of Y in the first place.

Let me give you an example:

So Ibisalms basic skill allows her to reroll one of her dodge or attack dice if she's stressed (usually a negative condition that prevents her from taking certain maneouvers, or making actions like Focus, Target Locking or Barrel Rolls.)
Autoblaster is a range 1 attack and its basic hits cannot be dodged through rolling defence dice, but only rolls 3 attack dice (normal attacks at Range 1 roll an extra attack dice, so the B-Wing would be rolling 4 normally.)
However, Opportunist states that if a target has neither an Evade or Focus token (usually gained through making that relevant action) then she may roll an extra attack dice, but at the cost of gaining a stress BEFORE the attack is made.
So on Ibisalm, this combination allows this B-Wing to:
1) Attack with 4 dice against an enemy in Range 1 without Evade or Focus tokens
2) Any hits rolls cannot be dodged
3) Ibisalm can reroll any one dice when she makes her attack.

But Range 1 is pretty short, so how do we make sure that any target that close to her will not have an evade or focus token? Well, look up and read Wes Jansons ability, see how that would work?

There are of course other things to keep in mind. It is a matter of FFG tournement record that quantity has a very lethal quality all of it's own, with the infamous imperial TIE Swarm being a very reliable build, but requiring skills to use which are wholly different from say of a Rebel Millenium Falcon + 2X-Wings list. That's not even getting into things like the Epic play capital ships like the Transport and Corellian Corvette recently released, or the impending Wave 4 ships release which will shake the game up even further.

It's not really hard to see why X-Wing has been doing so well, and it's a great game that is easy to play, wont take up your whole evening, and looks really nice.

I'm still waiting for Imperial Gunboats though.

Ultimate General: Gettysburg

I picked this up with birthday money, so let's get to it.

ULTIMATE GENERAL: GETTYSBURG

Currently UGG (which feels like an almost intentional acronym) is still on Steam as early access, and has to be sought out via the search bar. So whilst it's not a truly finished product, it's still very impressive and well on the way.

Powered by the Unity engine UGG is a strategy game putting players in the role of the Union or Confederate Commander during the battle of Gettysburg.

The menu screen is basic but functional, and definitely in need of some prettying up, which is probably on the final to-do list as the game gets closer to a full release.
Starting up a new game you're given the obvious choice between Yankees and Confederates, in my test game last night I'd given the Confederates a go, so this time I opted for the Union. When you start a battle you are given a choice of AI for the enemy commander. Instead of an Easy - Hard slider, you are given much more detailed choices of what sort of personality the enemy will use throughout the campaign. This is very impressive as it shows me not just that an opponent will be "hard" but it will show me how it will be difficult, and also weaknesses in that chosen AI.

I chose Random.

The first scenario for the Union is a tougher one than the Confederate one I played last night. There I started out with a healthy mass of troops to bully the weak Union positions out of the way and take positions, but on the other side of things, the situation is not so simple.
Starting with only a handful of skirmishers and horse mounted vedettes I first had to delay a great mass of rebel troops from punching through McPherson Hill and taking Seminary Ridge before my reinforcements arrive in dribs and drabs from the south.

Graphically the game looks very nice and clear, and is well presented,  even the troops look decent, small sprites that they are. Unit controls are tactile and immediate which is great, and work through a simple combination of selecting a unit and dragging the cursor along the path you want your troops to take or attack orders performed by clicking on enemy units. More complex orders like Hold, Fall Back and Charge are all given from pressing their relevant button. It's a simple system the does what it needs to do without being over complex, and would be ideal if they wished to do a Tablet port of this game.

As the battle continued my reinforcements arrived to stiffen the line at McPherson,  at which point the Confederate reinforcements arrived, not least in the form of General Pettigrew and his final boss styled regiment of 2500+ men. The man would continue to be my nemesis for the next three battles, even as it shrunk to more and more manageable sizes with each of my wins.
Luckily the last of my own reinforcements arrived to relieve a beleaguered Seminal Ridge before 1400 confederates could consolidate after displacing my Artillery corps in the town. These reinforcements then pushed on to envelop Pettigrews formation that had overextended itself.
The AI for this game seemed to be one of the easier ones, as whilst it showed great aggression, it often failed to defend it's flanks and to stop his troops from pursuing troops too far, allowing them to be enveloped, assaulted from multiple sides and taken apart piecemeal. Two of the enemy regiments, not least Pettigrew's fell to this.

Upon winning the battle I was given a choice of what to do next, which of these I chose would lead me to a different scenario with my troop numbers in place from the previous battle. This branching campaign structure is very interesting and gives me options based on my performance, instead of just dumping me into which ever scenario and makes the player feel more involved.

Choosing to retreat from McPherson and reinforce Cemetery and Seminary Ridge, I dug my troops in to defend my key positions.
Using my line units I was able to rush the enemy advancing onto me from my relinquished McPherson ridge and push them back. Heady thoughts of retaking my voluntarily lost gains and finishing off Pettigrew once and for all filled my head as I pursued, at which point the main body of the enemy reinforcements arrived from my now almost undefended north.

Against the giant press of southerners my skirmishers couldn't hold and I was forced to pull back, calling in my reserves from Culp's Hill, ceding Gettysburg to the enemy, hopefully temporarily. Enemy troops lanced in against my fractured lines, seeking to take Seminary Hill from me. Thankfully they pushed too far ahead in taking the position and I was able to sneak a unit of artillery behind them and gave them a full volley of Canister from point blank, breaking them instantly.
At which point the game told me that Cemetery Hill was being contested somehow. But who could possibly be that far sou... PETTIGREW!

But the game is not without faults: Aside from the current lack of presentation, I feel that it really needs a minimap, or a final level of Zoom that lets me see the whole battlefield. As battles are often huge and sprawling over a large area with many regiments on each side and it's very difficult to keep a handle over what is going on, and the scale of is sometimes quite intimidating. It also needs a tutorial ingame, as at the moment the closest to guide we get is an online forum entry at the developers website. These are all problems that I would expect to be rectified as the game gets closer to a proper release.

Ultimately, the star of the show for UGG is the AI, it actually feels intelligent and capable. It also, more impressively, feels dumb to tactical mistakes that the AI difficulty selector says it to be. It is able to spot weak points in my defenses and strike at them, it is also unable to recognise when it's advance is going to cut that regiment off from the rest of the army. In other difficulties it is able to be more methodical, grinding down carefully and continuously my forces, but not moving with any initiative, allowing me to juggle my line forces and my reserves, and to strike at his flanks with skirmishers.

All of this isn't entirely surprising given that the game creator is Nick Thomadis, better known to the online modding community as DarthMod. Who prior to this, his first game, made a name for himself creating highly celebrated homemade AI patches for Creative Assemblies well known Total War games. 

 VERDICT
8/10
Excellent quality strategy with the AI as the highlight. Some niggles and missing elements will have to be addressed before full release.

The Sales cometh!

The online Summer Sales seem to be starting up, as GoG began their assault on my wallet yesterday. I spotted Commanders Edition Total Annihilation for $1.50 and snaffled it up.
It's pretty primitive by todays standards really, no zoom function and the lack of decent AI that properly defend themselves if being attacked is what hurts it the most though. Still decent, but if you have Supreme Commander or SpringTA then you needed bother.

I also spotted Nexus the Jupiter Incident up for sale as well, which is still a great looking game, but I freely admit that the point where it clicks with you is very very late in the game. A lot of the time early on you aren't sure if your orders are even being followed. I was tempted by this as well, but since my physical copy is less than two meters away from me right this moment and works fine I decided it'd be pretty thick of me to do so.

As ever Steam playing their cards close to their chest to when their summer sale will begin, the latest I've heard is the 18th of June, but last year it was much later than everyone was expecting.

Ultimate General Gettysburg

So, I just noticed that Ultimate General Gettysburg appeared on Steam as part of early access for a reasonble price.
Unfortunately my car has once again been sucking my finances dry so I can't really impulse purchase it. Well, I shouldn't anyway, that hasn't always stopped me before in the past.

The American Civil war is one of the first modern wars, and I feel like I should probably learn more about it than I currently know, so I've been keeping tabs on this game for a while, and I'm hopeful that it's going to be pretty good.

Thursday is gaming night

Been getting ready for this evening, where with a bit of luck I be running a game of Silent Death for some people.

I picked it up a few weeks back and played a few quick games over at a friends house and was impressed with just how quick it is to sit down and play.

Basically it's a fighter scale starship combat game, and since FFG's X-Wing has been having a lot of traction lately I thought I'd see if anyone was interested in playing down at the local club.

It's a Hex based game that is similar to Battletech and SFB and like that it uses datasheets for individual ships to track damage. Unlike those two, the game actually runs really fast and has a fairly simple turn structure.
One of the things that speeds things up a lot is that the dice used to roll to hit are also used to work out damage.

Say you have a Pulse Laser, to hit you roll 2D8's (this is one of those games where better stuff get's bigger dice, like Force on Force or Tommorows War) plus your Gunnery Skill Dice (the higher it is the bigger the dice you roll) and add them up to see if you beat your targets defence score. If you beat it, then you look at the dice you rolled and since the Pulse Laser has a damage rating of "Lowest" then you find the dice that rolled the lowest and cause that much damage.
If it had the Damage Rating of Highest you'd find the highest number rolled and cause that much damage, if it was Middle then you'd find the number in the middle (or if not applicable the highest).
So in this way, Lasers are accurate, but don't cause a lot of damage, but other weapons which are less accurate but more damaging can be simulated.

Theres also things like Torpedoes that constantly track you across turns, Missile salvoes that need to lock on to attack and Hard Turns, but that's basically it.

Edit: Well, that went quickly. We had a 100pt game using the Metal Express rules pointing system, which allowed him a Pair of Thunderbirds and a Salamander, two very solid choices and what I was going to pick. So I opted for a Nighthawk and a Seraph. He proceeded to blow me away with torpedoes in the second turn, because combat in Silent Death is LETHAL.

I then played X-Wing for the rest of the night. I lost there too, although thats because I was going Imps again, and I'm not really an Imperial player.