Defense Grid: The Awakening

Game: Defense Grid: The Awakening
Platform: PC
Release Year: 2008
Stephen's Rank: 7/10 

Defense Grid is a top down 3D rendered tower defence game.

Basic Plot

The story revolves around the invasion of a planet by an alience race. The planet has a dormant defense grid which the player, along with the help of an AI, re-activates to defend the planet.

The story is set in a futuristic setting on a planet which is ruined and broken.

Gameplay

Defense Grid is a traditional tower defence game within a 3D game engine.

The goal on any level is to defend power cores which are small glowing orbs stored in one or more locations. The aliens enter the map from one or more entrances and try to steal the power cores and take them off the map. Your goal is to build a defensive grid using towers and turrets to kill the aliens before they can escape with the power cores.

The power core mechanic is interesting because if an alien picks up a power core and is killed somewhere else in the map, any alien who is nearby can pick that same core up and continue taking it to the exit (the cores slowly return to their original position rather than teleporting back).

Levels were often open ended and contained many different locations the players could choose to build towers. This was designed so that the player could "maze" using their towers, forcing the aliens to take a longer path to reach the power cores, or a path which brought them into contact with the player's towers for longer. This implies, of course, the aliens cannot pass through the player's towers unless there is no other way to proceed or if the alien is a "flying" alien (in which case they fly above all towers and cannot be "mazed").

The player had a wide variety of towers to choose from which were unlocked slowly through the single player campaign. Each tower started off as a "green" tower but could be upgraded to a "yellow" tower, and finally a  "red" version of the tower. Upgrading provided large increases in the damage, range, and frequency that the tower fired. The towers included:

• Gun Tower: Rapid firing but low damage tower. Good at taking down enemy shields and useful from the beginning of the game right to the end.
• Inferno Tower: Short ranged tower which shoots a stream of fire at enemies. Can damage multiple enemies at once. Can be powerful when combined with mazing and Temporal Towers.
• Meteor Tower: Slow firing but very powerful tower with extremely long range. Also does splash damage, but very expensive to build.
• Cannon Tower: Slow firing and long range tower, good at penetrating enemy shields and armour. My personal favourite.
• Concussion Tower: Low damage but rapid firing tower which excels at area of affect damage. Best at taking out large groups of lightly armoured enemies.
• Missile Tower: Required on any level where there are flying aliens.
• Tesla Tower: My least favourite tower. The tower builds up power over time when it is not being used, and unleashes it on the next enemy who gets close.
• Temporal Tower: Slows enemies in a medium radius (upgrading the tower increases the radius significantly).
• Command Tower: Reveals cloaked enemies and provides extra income to any alien killed within its radius.

Another mechanic was that the player earned "interest" on the balance of money they had. This encouraged the player not to spend all of their money on turrets but instead to save it up until the interest earned began to offset the lack of towers in the beginning.

There were several modes of gameplay including campaign mode, and several "survival" modes which were played out on the campaign maps after completing the original level.

Downloadable content has been released for the game including a cameo by GLaDOS from Valve's Portal and Portal 2 games.

Positives

Well balanced and challenging gameplay. It was refreshing to have the slower pace of the game after playing high stress and paced games such as Starcraft 2.

There was a *hint* of an amazing story in this game which never really fulfilled its potential. This has been an inspiration for me personally, and something I've added into my own game development projects.

Negatives

Sometimes I felt like the campaign levels were a bit short. Just I was getting really powerful, I'd complete the level.

I'm disappointed in the story. It had the potential to be quite amazing.

Memorable Momements

I've stayed up for hours playing the survival game mode of the game where you wade through 100 waves of aliens... I always felt a bit abused after I did that.

Raptor: Call of the Shadows

Game: Raptor: Call of the Shadows
Developer: Cygnus Studios
Platform: PC
Release Year: 1994
Stephen's Rating: 7/10

Basic Plot 

The story is very brief and is an afterthought in comparison to the gameplay. You play a top pilot who takes control of an advanced airship called the Raptor. Your mission is to travel across space to various planets, taking out the heads of various "MegaCorps".

Gameplay 

Raptor is a 2D raster graphics vertical scrolling shoot-em-up. It was one of the closest things I experienced on a PC that matches the traditional "spacies" games you'd find at the video arcade with the exception of Galactix and maybe Megapede.

There were two aspects to the game; the levels themselves which involved flying through and destroying enemies and defeating a boss ship at the end, and in between levels the player was able to sell and buy equipment to upgrade their Raptor ship.

The player started with a bare ship with a basic machine-gun. From the first level the player was able to obtain their first upgrades (air-to-air missiles) which complimented rather than replaced the basic machine-gun.

Every time you kill an enemy you receive credits, which can be spent on upgrades in-between levels. The harder the enemy, the more credits you receive. There was a huge arsenal of weaponry and upgrades, and you could equip your ship with multiple weapons at any one time (usually one primary or "selectable" weapon, and then several smaller accessory "always-equipped" weapons).

The Pulse Cannon.

The weapons included:

• Reaver Twin Machine Guns: the starting weapon which could be removed if the player wanted. Always on.
• Air/Air Missile: a selectable weapon which fired missiles periodically which damaged air targets only.
• Plasma Cannon: A weak weapon which fired a small blue "fireball" in front of the ship. Weak, but always equipped.
• Bomb: Selectable weapon useful for destroying buildings.
• Air/Ground Missile: Selectable green missiles which only damaged ground units. Fires at a fairly low frequency.
• Dumbfire Missiles: Selectable. Fires missiles which damage both air and ground from a slightly random position around the Raptor ship. Useful because it sometimes spat missiles out the side of the craft allowing you to hit ships outside your direct line of sight. Fairly low damage output.
• Micro Missile: An always equipped weapon which fires a stream of small missiles in front of the ship. Very useful.
• Missile Pod: Like the Air/Air Missile but fires faster.
• Auto-track Minigun: Interesting selectable weapon which fires a machinegun at enemies automatically without having to move or aim at all. Very powerful early on but the damage output is too low in the later stages of the game.
• Power Disrupter: Air to air selectable weapon which stops an enemy ship firing. Not very useful.
• Laser Turret: Like the Auto-track Minigun but fires a laser in bursts, and only hits air enemies.
• Pulse Cannon: The most powerful weapon in the shareware version. Fires a stream of energy pulses directly in front of the ship.
• Deathray: A selectable laser weapon which destroys anything in front of the ship in long bursts.
• Twin Laser: Like the Deathray but fires two beams... the ultimate weapon.
• Megabomb: A one-use utility item which destroys everything on the screen.

There were also extra shields you could buy (up to 5 layers of shields before your ship is damaged at all).

Unlike other shoot-um-up games the player did not have "lives". Once you died, you died, and had to re-load to your latest saved game.

 The hangar you visited after each level. Here you could save your game or upgrade your ship.

Positives 

Great game mechanics, fun to play. Polished, good sound effects and nice array of weapons.

Negatives 

It was missing some of the simple fun of the original arcade spacies games. Shallow story.

Memorable Moments

There was an easter egg where if you changed your computer clock to the birthday of one of the developers the intro music as you booted up the game changed into something different.

As a kid I played the shareware version of this game, and it wasn't until I was at university that I played the full version and got to experience all the weaponry.

Worms

Game: Worms
Developer: Team17
Platform: Amiga (but ported to other consoles. I played this on a PlayStation).
Release Year: 1995
Stephen's Rating: 6/10

Worms is a classic turn based artillery game similar to Scorched Earth.

Basic Plot

There was no plot but the scenario involves teams of earth worms fighting against each other in combat using a huge arsenal of weaponry.

Gameplay

Worms is a turned based artillery game where players control a team of earth worms. The objective of each match is to eliminate the worms from all opposing teams.

Turns rotated from each team and each turn a player was given control of a different worm (in rotation also). During a turn the player had a limited amount of time to move their worm and use a weapon of some kind.

Each worm had a certain amount of hit points and when this dropped below 1 the worm died. Additionally the player could fall below the edge of the screen (drop to their death), die in water or other environments, and also fall out either side of the screen and die. A common strategy was to use explosives to knock enemies out of the game arena.

Weapons were broken into three categories; unlimited use weapons (bazooka, grenades, etc), limited use weaponry (cluster bombs, etc), and utility weapons such as blowtorch.

Unlimited use weapons could be used at any time and were perfectly capable of destroying an enemy but good aiming was required. When firing some weapons the player had to aim, and then hold down the fire key and release at the desired "power" level. The higher the power, the further and faster the projectile would travel. Other weapons simply required you to aim and fire. Some example weapons;

• The bazooka required you to aim and choose the power of the shot. The bazooka was affected by wind, and would explode on impact.
• The grenade was similar to the bazooka but was set to explode after a short delay. This allowed the player to bounce the grenade into areas that a bazooka otherwise couldn't.
• The uzi fired off bullets in the direction that the player aimed the worm but didn't require you to set the power when firing.
• Mines or dynamite were different again in that the worm would "drop" the mine or dynamite at a desired location and then had a short period of time to run away from the blast zone.
• Air strikes could be dropped from above over a large area of the map and required the player to choose the direction the strike would come down from only.

Limited use weapons traditionally have more power but because of their limited number of uses had to be used sparingly at the right moment.  Dynamite had the largest blast of any weapon but each player only recieved one per game (depending how you set it up).

Utility items and weapons were quite different. Blowtorches allowed the player to dig through the ground and make tunnels. This was an important part of the game and probably where the worms theme comes from. Another item was the "girder" which was a metal beam the player could place anywhere on the map. This could be used to create a protective barrier over one of your own worms, or to create a wall near an enemy worm to bounce a grenade off.

Additional weapons could be obtained during the game by "weapon drops" that occurred randomly and periodically. These included some secret weapons including the banana bomb and the exploding sheep.

The game featured comic voice effects for the worms.

Game modes included AI matches as well as turn based games against your friends.

Positives

Comic and light hearted game which you could compete against your friends. Well executed and fun.

Negatives

Nothing strikes me as a negative although the game hardly stands out as one that changed my life.

Memorable Moments

I really enjoyed girders especially for sealing an opponent worm into an area that they then had to escape from, or creating a funnel to help aim my grenades at them.

As an easter egg two of the weapons the worms could use were the fireball and dragon punch that Ken and Ryu can use in Street Fighter II.

Final Fantasy III (DS)

Game: Final Fantasy III (Nintendo DS port)
Developer: Square Enix
Platform: Nintendo DS
Release Year: 2006
Stephen's Rating: 4/10

I am reviewing the remake of Final Fantasy III which was ported to both Nintendo DS and iOS. The port has some mechanical differences to the original.

Basic Plot

The story revolves around four orphans who are called and given powers by four crystals of light. Each of the crystals empower the four with the ability to learn new "jobs" which are simply character classes.

The four orphans discover that the floating island they live on is only a small speck in a much larger world. The story revolves around the warlock Xande who is trying to manipulate the crystals to cause chaos and destruction. The four orphans overcome the Cloud of Darkness and save the world.

Overworld view, for travelling between locations.

Gameplay

Final Fantasy III is a top down role playing game with turn based combat. The game is similar to others from the Final Fantasy series.

Players take control of a party of four characters. Each character gains levels throughout the game by completing quests and beating enemies. Each character is also able to hold one "job" (character class) at a time. Each job has different abilities which gain in strength over time by increasing the "job level" for this job. This separation of character level and job level is an important part of the game mechanics.

The available jobs in the game include:

• Freelancer
• Warrior
• Monk
• White Mage
• Black Mage
• Red Mage
• Thief
• Ranger
• Knight
• Scholar
• Geomancer
• Viking
• Dragoon
• Dark Knight
• Evoker
• Bard
• Black Belt
• Magus
• Devout
• Summoner
• Sage
• Ninga
• Onion Knight

... an extensive list.

Combat is turn based and is affected by abilities and character stats.

Combat.

Positives

Intricate and long story, decent combat mechanics. Well suited to the Nintendo DS. Great graphics for the platform.

Negatives

I like the idea of the game but the actuality of playing it is unbearable for two main reasons. Firstly, pretty much every place you ever go to in the game except towns and cities has enemies who will randomly spawn and attack you after a random number of steps. This is extremely frustrating as you often just want to get somewhere but instead have to fight the same mob of monsters 40 times before you can get there. It's obviously designed to make the game world and the game seem bigger than it really is, and it does, but it makes it into a grueling experience to say the least. Secondly, there is never a sense of a "home base" which means as a player you never really have a "rock" to centre your playing experience from. Instead you are swiftly rushed from place to place, quest to quest, and there is no breathing space for taking in your previous achievements or perhaps taking a break just to explore. The story progression is relentless to the point which it feels like you're being bullied. Because of these two issues I've rated this game quite low, because in my opinion, it is unplayable. Thank goodness for Final Fantasy Tactics A2 which addresses a lot of my concerns.

Memorable Moments

I played this on the train on the way to work in 2012 but gave up in preference of Final Fantasy Tactics A2.

Nightmare Creatures

Game: Nightmare Creatures
Developer: Kalisto Entertainment
Platform: PC & PlayStation
Release Year: 1997
Stephen's Rating: 6/10

Basic Plot

The story starts in 1666 and follows a devil worshipping cult called the Brothers of Hecate. The Brothers were trying to take over London, and to do so they created an elixer designed to give them super-human powers. However, the elixer goes awry, and they end up turning their experiments into hideous monsters.

The gameplay starts in 1834 in London. The city is unrest as monsters and evil happenings are sighted on regular basis. The evil scientist Adam Crowley is in cahoots with the Brotherhood. The player takes on the role of both Brother Ignatius Blackward and Nadia Franciscus who seek to destroy the monsters and find Crowley.

Gameplay

Nightmare Creatures is a third person horror/action game.

The game involves traveling through a series of levels and defeating enemies. The player had an array of weapons including their primary weapon, mines, bombs, and spells and their disposal.

One unique mechanic in the game was the "adrenaline bar" which slowly drained over time. The player replenished the bar by defeating enemies. This forced the player to seek out enemies in order to survive.

Positives

Challenging and action packed gameplay experience.

Negatives

Graphics extremely outdated.

Memorable Moments

I played this game in 2005 on an old laptop I had when I first moved to Wellington to study at Toi Whakaari. I remember my best friend and I playing this game a lot for a few weeks while we stayed at his girlfriend's place while we looked for our own flat. I lived in the corner of the living room on a bed that was shut off with a curtain.

Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire

Game: Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire
Developer: Origin Systems
Platform: PC
Release Year: 1990
Stephen's Rating: 4/10

Basic Plot

The Savage Empire is a spin-off game that fits into the Ultima series after the events of Ultima VI: The False Prophet. The player takes on the role of the Avatar, who due to using a cracked moonstone, finds himself in the Valley of Eoden.

The Valley of Eoden is a feral world in which dinosaurs roam and tribes of savage humans battle each other. The tribes of humans have been transported from various periods of human history. The valley is on planet Earth in a place which cannot normally be accessed.

The story revolves around a race of intectoid beings called the Myrmidex who threaten the entire valley. The Avatar's quest is to get the thirteen tribes to join forces against the Myrmidex to save the world. In order to convince the tribes he finds himself having to prove himself in various ways.

Gameplay

The game uses the Ultima VI: The False Prophet game engine, so if you've played that you'll know what to expect. This is also the same game engine used in World of Ultima: Martian Dreams.

It is primarily a role playing adventure game with aspects of character development, a party of companions, dialogue and quests, and combat, very similar to other Ultima games.

Positives

Detailed game world, decent story.

Negatives

For me, the game engine was unplayable because it was too old. I found it disorientating, although I wanted to play the game a lot. Furthermore, whereas in Ultima VI: False Prophet I had some history with the game world which made it *almost* playable (I had a sense of where I was in the game world at any time), this world was completely foreign and I felt lost the entire time.

I think at the time this was developed it was a great game, but once you've experienced Ultima VII: Black Gate it's hard to go back to an older game engine.

Memorable Moments

There were three companions in the game which although are theoretically different characters match up with the Avatar's companions in Britannia. Triolo matches Iolo, Shamuru matches Shamino, and Dokray matches Dupre.

There is currently a re-make of this game being developed for the Ultima 7 emulator Exult. I would be very interested in re-playing this game in the superior Ultima 7 engine.

The Lion King

Game: The Lion King
Developer: Westwood Studios, Virgin Interactive, Dark Technologies
Platform: Sega Genesis/Megadrive, IBM-PC, SNES, Game Boy and other consoles.
Release Year: 1994
Stephen's Rating: 4/10

Basic Plot

The story mirrors that of the original The Lion King movie. You play as Simba and start as a young cub. As the game progresses you become an adult lion, and ultimate face off against your uncle Scar.

Gameplay

The Lion King was a side scrolling platform game with an emphasis on acrobatics.

Simba was able to leap, climb, and run through levels avoiding obstacles. He also had age specific abilities including a roar, and slashing and mauling.

In the bonus levels the player was able to play as Timone and Pumba.

This game was originally released on the Windows platform (whilst other PC games were released for MS-DOS at the time). Due to a bug the game caused Compaq computers to crash when the game was run. The game was shipped with over a million PC's and was a major setback for Microsoft because game studios became distrustful of Windows as a gaming platform and preferred to use MS-DOS. The outcome was that Microsoft developed Direct-X which is the standard for modern video games today.

Positives

Good music. Solid visuals.

Negatives

Confusing. I couldn't work out where to go or what to do most of the time, the levels weren't designed in a way which directed the player in the right direction.

Memorable Moments

I died and re-started the game a lot and there was always this voiceover which said "It starts..." which is imprinted into my mind.

Solitaire (Windows)

Game: Solitaire
Developer: Wes Cherry (Microsoft)
Platform: Microsoft Windows 3.0+
Release Year: 1990
Stephen's Rating: 5/10

The classic game of Solitaire that came with every version of Microsoft Windows since 3.0 in 1990.

Gameplay

The game is simply a computerized version of the card game Solitaire (also known as Patience or Klondike). Starting with the Ace cards the player stacks each suit up on top of each other until all 4 suits are sitting in an ordered pile.

Not every game was winnable. There was only an 80-90% chance of recieving a winnable deck and sometimes you simply had to start a new game.

The most poignant part of this game was when you completed it every card "bounced" out from the screen leaving a trail of cards behind it in a strange but hypnotic visual effect.

Positives

Everyone's played it. It's an important part of computer culture and is still played by millions of people every day.

The effect at the end if you completed a game.

Negatives

It's just a card game put onto a computer. It doesn't utilize the medium of the computer much at all except the visual effect at the end.

Memorable Momements

I had an ex-girlfriend who played this pretty solidly for hours on end, and could finish a game very quickly and almost every time. She would do timed games and try and beat her time. Imagine if she'd put that time into Counter-Strike like I was at the time...

Enter the Matrix

Game: Enter the Matrix
Developer: Shiny Entertainment
Platform: PC (plus consoles)
Release Year: 2003
Stephen's Rating: 5/10

Basic Plot

The game was released at the same time as the Matrix: Reloaded and Matrix: Revolutions movies came out in cinemas and the story fits into the same world and time.

At the start of the game the player picks to play as either Niobe or Ghost. Depending on the character you choose the story ends up being slightly different.

The story involves obtaining a message about an impending attack on Zion. The captains of all the human ships are called back to Zion to co-ordinate the defence. A program called the Keymaker gives Niobe and Ghost a key to give to Neo within The Matrix. They enter but the key is stolen and destroyed, and Niobe and Ghost barely escape.

The final chapter in the story involves searching for Morpheus and Neo's ship to rescue them and bring them back to Zion, including entering The Matrix and battling Agent Smith.

Primary game view.

Gameplay

Enter the Matrix is a third person combat/shooting game which utilizes the "bullet time" mechanic seen in Max Payne. This is also an ongoing motif in the films.

Each level primarily involves controlling your character and using weapons and skills to defeat enemies and complete objectives.

There were also vehicle sequences where the player controlled a vehicle in the third or first person.

One mechanic was to face the player up against enemies who were much more powerful than they were (agents). In these parts of the game the objective was simply to escape.

There was a "hacking" system in the game which could be used to enter codes which unlocked weapons, skills, and other secrets.

Bullet time.

Positives

The fight sequences were good overall the combat mechanics were fairly satisfying. It was nice releasing this at the same time as the film with the idea that it would compliment the films rather than re-tell the same parts of the story.

Negatives

The visuals were clunky. The story wasn't very cohesive and felt like it was trying to fit around the film rather than be its own entity.

Memorable Moments

By the far the most memorable moment was a part of the game where you take control of a vehicle (whereas the rest of the game you travel by foot). I don't know about the console versions of the game but in the PC version it was completely glitched. The vehicle lurched ahead at uncontrollable speeds and there was no way not to crash into buildings and walls. The graphics glitched out as well. It was like the developers gave up let a bunch of cats walk over the keyboard for that part of the code.