Alien Swarm

Game: Alien Swarm
Developer: Valve
Platform: PC
Release Year: 2010
Stephen's Rating: 5/10

Basic Plot

A swarm of aliens has invaded a colonized planet. A task force is sent to the planet to look for survivors but ends up finding none, and is forced to destroy the planet with a thermonuclear bomb.

Gameplay

Alien Swarm is a top down shooter similar in style to the indie game Dead Horde. It is a remake of the Unreal Tournament 2004 mod with the same name, created by the same team. Unusually the game was released as freeware by Valve on their Steam platform.

Players can play single player or up to four player co-operative over the internet. Gameplay and the story is the same regardless.

Each player picks a character class to play as. These include:

• Officer: Has an aura which gives nearby units a bonus to damage output and resistance.
• Special Weapons: Has access to the most powerful weapons, has autoaim, and can hold more ammunition.
• Medic: Can heal allies and themselves with healing becons and a healing gun.
• Tech: Is the fastest and setting up sentry guns and welding doors. Is the only class capable of hacking some control panels.

Each character class has access to class specific weapons which only they can use.

The game involves moving through various compounds, engaging alien enemies and progressing to various checkpoints.

The feel of the game reminds me a lot of the movie Aliens. The combat is in close quarters, the lighting is dark, and the gameplay intense.

Positives

Great that they released this as freeware. Anyone who downloads and installs Steam can play this game. Unusual gameplay, especially considering it used the Half-Life 2 Source engine which was designed for first person shooters.

Negatives

The view angle and controls are confusing and hard to get used to. I can't think of how else they could have done it, but it's painful to start with. The game also gets pretty repetitive but simultaneously over-difficult quite quickly.

Memorable Moments

Had some good 2-4 player games online, never completed it but spent a good few hours testing it out.

Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame

Game: Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame
Developer: Brøderbund
Platform: PC
Release Year: 1993
Stephen's Rating: 5/10

Basic Plot

The story begins 11 days after the plot of the original Prince of Persia. The prince asks for the princesses hand in marriage and the Sultan agrees. As he enters the palace he finds he has been transformed into the visage of a beggar, whilst someone else who has taken on his form (Jaffar) orders him to be thrown out. The prince escapes through a window and boards a merchant ship, and the game begins.

The story takes the Prince to distant lands where he encounters strange and magical creates. He gains the ability to turn into a shadow form, and uses this to defeat Jaffar and rescue the princess.

Gameplay

Prince of Persia 2 is a platform side scrolling game with elements of combat, acrobatics, and puzzle solving.

This game had a greater emphasis on combat than the original.

As with the original game the player had to beat it within a certain real world time limit.

Positives

More detailed and advanced graphics, more diversity in terms of environments. Decent gameplay mechanics.

Negatives

Fairly unmemorable.

Memorable Moments

The plot sounds pretty intricate, yet none of it was obvious when I played the game.

Titan Quest: Immortal Throne

Game: Titan Quest: Immortal Throne
Developer: Iron Lore Entertainment
Platform: PC
Release Year: 2007
Stephen's Rating: 6/10

I never played the original Titan Quest without the expansion so I will only mention the two together.

Basic Plot

The player takes on the role of an adventurer in mythical times who ends up assisting the Order of Prometheus in restoring balance to the world. The scene is set around the time human beings lost contact with the gods.

The player battles through four "acts" including ancient Greece, Egypt, the Orient, and finally the Underworld in the expansion.

Ultimately the player must defeat the titan Typhon and then Hades to complete the story.

Gameplay

Titan Quest is an action role playing game similar to Diablo. The player has a top down isometric view of the game world and their character and the interaction is primarily pointing and clicking on enemies to engage them, and also using keys to select different abilities.

Titan Quest utilises a fully featured 3D physics and graphics engine in contrast to Diablo II which used isometric pseudo-3D graphics.

A lot of the game mechanics are similar to Diablo II but the differences are worth mentioning.

The skill system is quite different. Every character starts the same - without a character class, and at level 0. From memory when you reach level 1 you get to choose your first character class. The options are:

• Defense: A melee warrior build for "tank" characters which focuses on a shield and weapon.
• Dream: A multi-purpose build with auras which can be used for melee or casting. Only available in the Immortal Throne expansion.
• Earth: A caster dps and summoner build.
• Hunting: A ranged or melee weapon build.
• Nature: a summoner/healer build with some magic dps and enhancement capability.
• Rogue: A melee weapon build with utility skills.
• Spirit: A caster dps and summoner build.
• Storm: A caster dps and summoner build.
• Warfare: A melee warrior build focusing on wielding two weapons at once.

Each of these skill classes had a tree of skills that you could advance as you levelled up. Some skills synergised with others. The unique thing about Titan Quest was that at level 9 (from memory) you got to choose (optionally) a second skill class for your character. This meant you could pick skills from two trees and combine them in a way which was complimentary. Each combination of skill trees was a character class and had a unique name. For example, if you choose Warfare and Dream your character class was Harbinger. Using Harbinger as an example of complimentary skills; I had a harbinger who raised Warfare skills to increase his dual-weapon fighting abilities, and then mixed that with the health regeneration aura of dream + some of the flashy finishing moves to become a vanishing/Wolverine-like/spinning ball of death.

Dream skill tree.

Weapons were very similar to Diablo 2 in that there were different colours for different grades. Yellow and green for normal magic items, blue for rare, and purple for epic items. Any colour could be part of a set, and set items gained bonuses if you wore multiple items from the same set.

There were also runes and sockets for enhancing your equipment. Multiplayer was accessible over LAN or the internet.

Positives

Great engine - fun to play in. I like the the skill selection quite a bit although I think they could have thought more about how skills from different skill classes could compliment each other better. Good multiplayer support.

Negatives

As with pretty much every action-RPG that has ever come since Diablo 2 there were some major issues which stopped this game becoming legendary.

1. As with Diablo 2 you could play the game through 3 times on normal, epic, and legendary difficulty. Unfortunately the XP gain drops exponentially once you finish normal difficulty until you get to the point where you can play for hours and not level up once. I felt like it was a much better balance in Diablo 2... it dropped off too much to make me want to keep playing beyond normal difficulty.
2. The item pool was a bit limited and boring. There were only so many epic and legendary items in the game and after a while you start finding the same gear over and over. There were almost never any unique effects, it was always just about raising a stat on your character. In comparison, Diablo 2 had (for instance) a bow that had a "Fires explosive bolts or arrows" effect. This was interesting in that you could compliment it with a Paladin's holy aura for extra fire damage.
3. The enemies were very limited in type and very repetitive to battle.
4. The map wasn't auto-generated which meant replaying the game was even more tedious.

All and all it was a good game but it didn't have enough attention to detail and secrets to keep me playing beyond the normal campaign.

Memorable Moments

One day myself and three friends all sat down and started the campaign together multiplayer. It was very exciting appearing together at the start of the game, wearing nothing but some basic clothes. Mutliplayer was pretty fun, especially sharing items and building up sets and recipes.

There was a glitch in the game and sometimes enemies who died would "stretch" out due to the ragdoll like physics of the game.

Pokémon HeartGold & Pokémon SoulSilver

Game: Pokémon HeartGold and Pokémon SoulSilver
Developer: Gamefreak
Platform: Nintendo DS
Release Year: 2009
Stephen's Rating: 5/10

Pokémon HeartGold and Pokémon SoulSilver (terrible names) were generation 4 remakes of the original Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver released in generation 2.

Basic Plot

The story is the same as any Pokémon game. You play the role of a young person who goes out into the world to explore the world of Pokémon. On the way they help thwart the evil Team Rocket and eventually become Pokémon Master.

Gameplay

In its essence all Pokémon games are role playing games with elements of turn based combat and strategy. Rather than re-hashing the mechanics of the game here go and check out my entry for Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver here.

Differences from the Original

The graphics have been revamped for the Nintendo DS. This platform also provides the game with wifi and wireless multiplayer support including wifi events. There was also interactivity with other generation 4 games so you could trade Pokemon with owners of Pokémon Diamond, Pokémon Pearl and Pokémon Platinum. There was even some interactivity with generation 3 games if you had a Nintendo DS original or DS Lite as you could put the GBA game into the 2nd slot, and it would change the kinds of Pokémon you could find in game.

There were a number of functional and aesthetic differences including the layout of the Pokégear and the Pokédex but essentially the story and experience was designed to be the same but with modern technology.

At the end of the game there were advanced quests and areas which could be explored in order to unlock and obtain a lot of additional legendary Pokémon and items including obtaining all of the starter Pokemon from generation 3 (including the generation 1 remakes).

Positives

Well polished and built game and an accurate representation of the original for a modern audience. Good multiplayer support. I liked the ability to obtain the starter Pokémon prior to generation 4, as anyone with a DSi or DSi XL was unable to transfer them across any other way (because of the lack of a GBA slot).

Negatives

In terms of multiplayer the game only supported WEP authentication over wifi which was frustrating. This was fixed in Pokémon Black and Pokémon White.

Compared to Pokémon Platinum which was the other game I played from generation 4 there were some major flaws in the game which to me made it quite frustrating.

Firstly, there was no easy way to un-do EV's. This meant that the party of Pokémon you took with you through the whole game would more than likely end up with random EV's and therefore be quite weak. If you wanted to EV train this generally meant breeding or catching a fresh Pokémon after completing the game, which took many hours of effort and a lot of dedication and concentration.

Secondly, there was no easy way to re-battle trainers you'd already fought. The Vs. Seeker in Pokémon Platinum was ideal for this situation and greatly helped in gaining experience and EV training. In these games you had to wait for an NPC trainer to call you on your Pokégear, and then travel to them and re-battle them. You had no control over who or when you could re-battle so it became worthless as a method of EV training.

All in all the interface from the original games was clunky and unintuitive compared to the other generation 4 games. I didn't really enjoy playing the game much, it felt like I was fighting against it all the time. It greatly reduced the replayability after becoming champion as well.

Memorable Moments

I pretty much bought HeartGold just so I could get Mew on an wifi event.

F*ck Quest

Game: F*ck Quest
Developer: Richard Eter
Platform: PC
Release Year: 1998
Stephen's Rating: 3/10

Basic Plot

You play the role of Richard, a man whose sole goal is to have sexual intercourse with a woman.

Gameplay

The game played out much like a text based parser or point and click adventure. The style reminded me of Hugo's House of Horrors only the porn edition.

The game culminates with Richard actually having sex. This involves steering a large pixelated penis in and out... you get the picture.

Positives

Mildly humorous.

Negatives

Seedy and poor quality. Meaningless plot. The technology used was about a decade behind the times. 

Memorable Moments

I got this game from the internal file sharing network set up for the university halls. I remember we had house drinks in my room one day and one of my house mates booted up the game (he'd played it before) and insisted on completing it in front of everyone else. When the large penis appeared, everyone left my room. Awkward...

Kingdom Rush

Game: Kingdom Rush
Developer: Ironhide Game Studios
Platform: Browser Based
Release Year: 2012
Stephen's Rating: 7/10

Basic Plot

There isn't much of a plot. You are humans defending your kingdom against hordes of evil.

Gameplay

Kingdom Rush is a classic tower defence game. Some of the features include:

• Upgradeable towers with choices. For example, a barracks can be upgraded to have Holy Knights or Barbarian warriors. Each has its own strength and weakness.
• Many towers are ranged but there are also melee towers (the barracks) which "spawn" melee units. These melee units act on their own to defend, but can be moved using a rally point. This is a fairly uncommon mechanic but is a key component of Ninjatown.
• The player also has two "abilities" which can assist the towers to defend. One spawns a pair of temporary melee warriors, another reigns meteors down on enemies.
• After completing a level you obtain "stars" depending on how many enemies you let slip through. Each star can be spent on a skill tree which enhances your towers and your powers. For example; you can improve the range, damage, and reduce the cost of your archer towers.

One important thing lacking from the game is mazing. There are multiple paths for enemies to approach, but there is no way to block or shape their movement through each map (in contrast to Defence Grid).

Positives

Very well polished. Interesting and varied array of upgrades and towers. Challenging gameplay, and having a long term skill improvement system adds to the replayability of the game.

Negatives

Lack of pathing. Some of the levels were a bit hard in my opinion, in that you really had to try a lot of different combinations before you beat them.

Memorable Moments

Why don't you have your own memorable moment? Play the game yourself for free at http://armorgames.com/play/12141/kingdom-rush

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Game: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Developer: Infinity Ward,
Platform: PC
Release Year: 2007
Stephen's Rating: 6/10

As a general rule, I have a pretty harsh perception of the overdone "war" themed first person shooter, so I'll try and keep my cynicism to a minimum.

Basic Plot

There is a single player campaign in which the player takes on multiple different characters who follow parallel story arcs which intercept at various moments. The stories don't happen in the same time period, with one arc going back many decades to explain some of the pre-story that leads up to the events taking place in the game.

Without going into too much detail the story revolves around a Russian extremist group who have access to nuclear weaponry and are hoping to revert Russia back to the communist era. Both the British and American military become involved, and the story also takes the player to the Middle East where the Russian leader Imran Zakhaev has incited a rebellion in order to take the focus away from his own activities.

Gameplay

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a classic first person shooter. The player is able to collect different weapons and items during gameplay and uses them to defeat enemies from a first person perspective.

Players are able to use different stances such as run, walk, crouch, and prone to move through the game. There are also achievements for meeting certain criteria. Unlike earlier first person shooters like Counter-Strike the player doesn't have "health" but instead can take a certain amount of damage within a certain time frame. If he or she survives beyond that, they will effectively return back to "full health". This means the game is focused more around doing enough damage to kill an opponent within a certain time frame. It's good because it allows players to survive longer and participate more in multiplayer games and not have to worry about finding "health kits" in the campaign.

The game uses a HUD (heads up display) to help the player identify objectives or enemies.

The single player campaign uses scripted cut sequences to tell the story and also crosses between different characters.

Positives

I like that they used multiple story arcs. I think for a game, this narrative can work quite well. I think all and all the story was well constructed.

The weapons and the game mechanics were crisp and enjoyable to play in.

Multiplayer was a lot of fun. We played one full-on weekend of deathmatch where four of us pretty much played non-stop. The gameplay provides an exciting and tense atmosphere to play in.

Negatives

In saying that I like the narrative I also found it quite disruptive. I never felt like I had "become" any of the characters which I think at its essence is what a first person shooter is all about. 

Despite mostly liking the story form, the content is something I find a giant "yawn" and a backward step in the grand scheme of stories. The concept of the heroic American or British forces against the backward and evil Russian and Middle Eastern terrorists is overdone and unnecessary. Why couldn't the terrorists have been American? The obvious answer is that the game was marketted primarily at young Western males, but I think as much as a game should be moulded to suit the target audience, the target audience's expectations are moulded by the games available. I think game players can handle a lot more variation and difference than a publishing company might expect. As long as the game mechanics are sound and fun, there's plenty of flexibility in terms of the content of a game's story.

Memorable Moments

I have one but it's too naughty to talk about.

Get The Girl

Game: Get The Girl
Developer: Some terrible person
Platform: PC (Windows 3.1)
Release Year: Early 90's
Stephen's Rating: 0/10

Basic Plot

The scenario is that you are a guy trying to get into a girl's pants. 

Gameplay

The game at its essence was a sort of quiz or text adventure. The only means of interaction you had was to respond to or ask questions which were simple text.  I can't remember much more than that.

Before you started you got to pick from one of a few "characters" to play as. They all looked like dirty old homeless men, potentially sexual predators. The game wasn't off to a good start.

From then on you'll be shown a stock image of a woman in a bikini and a bunch of cliché but grilling questions which never end. If you do succeed in wooing the first lady she tells you to woo her friend which is as much fun as the first time round but the novelty (if there ever was any) has worn off.

Positives

None.

I couldn't find any review or information about the game other than what I had in my memory, plus I found this video which pretty much sums it up.

Negatives

Cheesy, terrible concept, not fun at all, not even a game, badly designed, AWFUL sound effects. The world would be a better place if this game had never been developed.

Memorable Moments

None. I mostly managed to block out the memory of this awful piece of software.

Bomber

Game: Bomber
Developer: Patrick Pich
Platform: PC
Release Year: 1993
Stephen's Rating: 4/10

Basic Plot

None. In-fact you started the game and instantly you were flying a plane without any backstory or even a menu (from memory). It was the anti-plot.

Gameplay

Bomber was a simple top down shoot-em-up flying game. The game involves dodging enemies and their gunfire, and shooting down enemy planes and ground cannons.

Although very simple and early this game has aspects of traditional spacies games but also Raptor.

Positives

Smooth graphics, simple and easy to understand and play.

Negatives

It's very repetitive and doesn't any story or narrative either.

Memorable Moments

My brother chose this game out from an edition of Simply Shareware magazine.