Jagged Alliance, one of the best squad based strategy games out there, able to rub shoulders with games such as the X-Com series, has been sadly ignored for the past 13 years. The previous installment being Jagged Alliance 2, where a mercenary and his hired band of thugs, murderers, and psychopaths aid in the revolution of the fictional country of Alruco. You are able to purchase weapons, pay for insurance policies on your mercs, and even send flowers to the queen of Alruco. If only to watch her bitch-slap her hapless servant.
Fortunately, the Jagged Alliance series has returned with the latest title, Jagged Alliance: Back in Action. This latest title brings back the fun of ordering around a mob of bloodthirsty mercenaries in the attempt to save the people of Alruco. The developers have worked to try to capture the same spirit of the original, and I feel they have succeeded. The mercenaries are varied and you'll have fun reading their background information and dossiers. Many of them have bonuses and penalties based around their psyche, for instance a model turned mercenary has a huge morale boost when fighting naked.
The types of weapons are varied including but not limited to pistols, SMGs, shotguns, rocket launchers, rifles, etc. Each character has his or her own skillset, mechanics can pick locks and repair guns, medics can inject morphine and use medkits, demo men can use C4 to blow open weakened walls to gain entrance. All can generally point a gun at something and pull the trigger until whatever is on the wrong end of it is dead, just tends to miss a lot more than the dedicated soldiers.
The interface is intuitive, the buttons often having a very clear definition of what they do, and if you have a question the game offers tooltips. The mechanics are very well put together, giving you all the information you need in a firefight, such as line of sight and a general idea where your merc will be shooting to help avoid friendly fire. My one complaint is that your mercs can't peek around a corner in order to fire from cover, but you can find the usual waist high barricades to duck behind in a pinch.
The graphics are beautiful, showing great detail that usually would not be needed in a strategy game like this. Gunfire shatters concrete, digs holes in ground, and of course puts holes in your enemies. Each bullet clearly shows an impact with effects depending on the terrain hit, helping you see how close, or how far away the shooter is to their target.
What will probably be the most controversial, especially to people who grew up playing the original Jagged Alliance 2 is the change from pure turn based strategy to a mixture of real time and turn based. The 'Plan and go' system allows you to pause the action, selecting mercs individually to tell them where to go, set way points, and tell them when to fire. You can set options to let it pause automatically, such as when spotting, or being spotted by an enemy. This lets you give orders without having to rely on your reflexes when your team is under fire.
I personally feel its a good thing because when you are simply rehashing the same game over and over again it quickly leads to stagnation. The developers held onto that original feeling and spirit of the Jagged Alliance games, and used new ideas and mechanics to give the players the best control they could give over their team.
I have not yet completed the game, as it only just came out. (I'm not /that/ good.) From what I have seen however, it is very much the remake that the original deserves and so much more.
The ultimate question, is it worth it? Yes, very much so. You can while away the hours with tactical planning, training militia, and selecting your weapons. The destruction and mayhem you can create is amazingly cathartic, and in the end you're leading a band of psychopaths across a country, cutting a bloody swathe through enemy soldiers.
Lock and load; it's time to overthrow a dictatorship.
E-Tank
(Edited by Nathan 'Miles' Davis)
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Skyrim: You Rat Dragon Bastard.
Skyrim!
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The latest entry in Bethesda Studios' award-winning Elder Scrolls series, is a freeform RPG with many of the pros and cons of Bethesda's games. Such as their genuinely beautiful worlds, their mediocre at best writing skills, or their belief that everyone has to be able to become the leader of every guild ever made. You explore, gain skills, adventure, dungeon crawl, do quests, meet interesting people and creatures, and kill them for profit.
The combat system is a major step up from their prior entry, Oblivion, Losing the floatiness and lack of impact from each blow, and gaining the ability to dual wield While you can use axes, swords, daggers, maces, and even spells in this way, you lose the protective ability to block. Additionally, weapon balance is better than ever, each type having slightly different damage and speed to give players an incentive to try new things.
The skills have been streamlined massively. All the weapons have now been condensed into archery, one handed, and two handed. Armorer has been changed into the more nebulous Smithing, and Mysticism as a category has been rolled somewhat into Conjuration.
Some of these perks include:
Get the key to a lock you have picked.
Never break a lock pick.
Able to bribe guards.
Decapitate enemies.
Zoom in and slow down time while aiming a bow.
Do 15x sneak attack damage with a dagger.
And many many more.
Another change is the removal of the Armorer skill in exchange for the new Smithing skill, which allows you to upgrade and craft new equipment, and even jewelry. The system is surprisingly fun, giving a real feeling of accomplishment for finding a rare ore out in the middle of nowhere.
Also new are the Shouts, an ancient draconic language capable of magical effects. From throwing a burst of force at them, to breathing fire or frost, or even calling down lightning on all who stand against you. You unlock them by killing a dragon and absorbing its soul, usually after a knock down drag out fight. My one complaint with these fights is they are more geared towards heavy armor and weapons users once the dragon is on the ground, while thieves and assassins are left to try and pepper the dragon with arrows while ducking in and out of cover.
Bethesda still hasn't yet gotten this writing thing down, as it is the weakest point of this game. The majority of missions, especially guild missions, are stuck within three potential answers.
"I'm doing this for the guild or my own personal honor."
"I'm doing this because I'm an asshole, or I'm doing it in spite of the fact that I'm an asshole."
"I'm doing this because I want to get paid."
Generally the responses are the same general non-commital "eh", meaning you can basically be nothing but an asshole to everyone in the guild and yet they'll treat you generally the same. Though I must stress, it is much better than Oblivion, where you weren't even the main character, or Fallout 3.
Now, rambling aside. Time to rate how much it is worth, in my opinion.
Currently on steam, you can purchase Skyrim for $60.00
I personally enjoy this game quite a lot, and with the modding community attached to it, it is easily worth sixty dollars. Though if you can't afford it, wait for a sale or the Game of the year edition.
~
E-Tank
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The latest entry in Bethesda Studios' award-winning Elder Scrolls series, is a freeform RPG with many of the pros and cons of Bethesda's games. Such as their genuinely beautiful worlds, their mediocre at best writing skills, or their belief that everyone has to be able to become the leader of every guild ever made. You explore, gain skills, adventure, dungeon crawl, do quests, meet interesting people and creatures, and kill them for profit.
The combat system is a major step up from their prior entry, Oblivion, Losing the floatiness and lack of impact from each blow, and gaining the ability to dual wield While you can use axes, swords, daggers, maces, and even spells in this way, you lose the protective ability to block. Additionally, weapon balance is better than ever, each type having slightly different damage and speed to give players an incentive to try new things.
The skills have been streamlined massively. All the weapons have now been condensed into archery, one handed, and two handed. Armorer has been changed into the more nebulous Smithing, and Mysticism as a category has been rolled somewhat into Conjuration.
Some of these perks include:
Get the key to a lock you have picked.
Never break a lock pick.
Able to bribe guards.
Decapitate enemies.
Zoom in and slow down time while aiming a bow.
Do 15x sneak attack damage with a dagger.
And many many more.
Another change is the removal of the Armorer skill in exchange for the new Smithing skill, which allows you to upgrade and craft new equipment, and even jewelry. The system is surprisingly fun, giving a real feeling of accomplishment for finding a rare ore out in the middle of nowhere.
Also new are the Shouts, an ancient draconic language capable of magical effects. From throwing a burst of force at them, to breathing fire or frost, or even calling down lightning on all who stand against you. You unlock them by killing a dragon and absorbing its soul, usually after a knock down drag out fight. My one complaint with these fights is they are more geared towards heavy armor and weapons users once the dragon is on the ground, while thieves and assassins are left to try and pepper the dragon with arrows while ducking in and out of cover.
"I'm doing this for the guild or my own personal honor."
"I'm doing this because I'm an asshole, or I'm doing it in spite of the fact that I'm an asshole."
"I'm doing this because I want to get paid."
Generally the responses are the same general non-commital "eh", meaning you can basically be nothing but an asshole to everyone in the guild and yet they'll treat you generally the same. Though I must stress, it is much better than Oblivion, where you weren't even the main character, or Fallout 3.
Now, rambling aside. Time to rate how much it is worth, in my opinion.
Currently on steam, you can purchase Skyrim for $60.00
I personally enjoy this game quite a lot, and with the modding community attached to it, it is easily worth sixty dollars. Though if you can't afford it, wait for a sale or the Game of the year edition.
~
E-Tank
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
First review: Terraria!
Released by indie game developer Re-Logic, Terraria as a game took a lot of inspiration from Minecraft, which in turn took its inspiration from Infiniminer. However, it is arguably deeper than Minecraft. Giving you goals to reach beyond simply just throwing you in a sandbox and saying "Build to your heart's content." I will admit, when I first was given it by a friend of mine (Thank you Chocolate Donuts), I expected it to be just that. A Minecraft ripoff in 2D. I was very very wrong.
It has a rather novel way of allowing you to visit other worlds. Each character is its own save, and you are able to enter any world you like with said character. This means you could bring your brand new created character into the world of someone who has been playing a long time. Or you can bring your older character with all his overpowered goodies to your friend's world to give him a helping hand.
After choosing the appearance and color of your hair, shirt, and pants. You are dropped into a randomly generated world of varying size. You can choose small, medium, and large. The smallest worlds are very compact, and while you can grow in strength quickly, you're also forced to confront more enemies and monsters in a shorter amount of time. You also pick your difficulty. Softcore, where you drop half of the money you're carrying at the time. Mediumcore, you drop everything you are carrying at the time. As well as Hardcore, if you die once, you are dead forever. The character is deleted, and s/he drops everything s/he had.
I will do my best to outline generally what you can expect from the game without spoiling anything. If I don't speak on something, assume I'm trying not to spoil.
Your character begins with two tools, a pickax and an ax. As well as one weapon, a short sword. These are more useful than you would imagine. The first few upgrades do little more than increase the speed at which the tool works, and how much damage the weapon does.
There is also an element of chance, as the majority of your crafted equipment will have a title assigned to it. This can run from very bad to very good. The worst being to my knowledge 'broken' and the best being 'legendary' or 'godlike'.
Even though the game is 2D, against Minecraft's 3D approach, the game itself offers a lot more crafting options. Unlike Minecraft however, you are given a guide who helps you learn how to survive, and how to build what you need. By speaking to him and placing ingredients into his hands, he'll tell you what can be made from it, and what else you require in the recipe.
(The guide showing us what we can build with lumber)
Yes, there are other people in this world, and they offer varying skills, including a merchant, nurse, demolitions expert, and more. Attracting them requires two things. First, certain pre-requisites must be met. The merchant for instance requires you to have saved up at least fifty silver coins. After all if you don't have the money to spend, why should he come to you? They also require their own living space. Living spaces comprise of a building with walls, ceiling, and a floor. As well as furniture to liven the place up. You need a chair, table, light source, and door for it to be considered a proper residence. There are some items that do double duty as a table and as chairs, but they are harder to make, due to having rarer ingredients. If you want NPCs early, you're going to have to settle for sticking to generic wooden chairs and tables. At first, at least.
The NPC's have their own personalities which color their occupations. Many of them offer items for sale, and all will buy items from you, at a discount of course. Even if you are the only thing standing between them and a horrific demise, you get No Hero Discount. Oh yes, you have to buy, sell, and hunt down enemies. Fortunately the majority of them have the old RPG staple of somehow carrying money in their stomachs.
The monsters are much more varied than Minecraft. The starting enemies will be the slimes, a valuable source of flammable ooze to make torches, and make several normal objects into sticky variants. Such as sticky bombs and sticky glowsticks to make impromptu lights while deep underground. As night falls, zombies will rise from their graves with a hunger for the living. Floating eyeballs, optic nerves and blood vessels trailing behind them, swarm through the air. What a horrible night to have a curse. There are even boss creatures, that upon their death, drop rare items and ores all over the place. Be cautious however as these creatures are more dangerous than they usually appear.
Multiplayer is just marvelous, better built than Minecraft's. It functions on IPs, and doesn't have a server browser, but considering you generally are only going to play with 2-4 people on one server, this can be excused. There is very little lag, which makes this a wonderful game to play with friends.
It has a rather novel way of allowing you to visit other worlds. Each character is its own save, and you are able to enter any world you like with said character. This means you could bring your brand new created character into the world of someone who has been playing a long time. Or you can bring your older character with all his overpowered goodies to your friend's world to give him a helping hand.
After choosing the appearance and color of your hair, shirt, and pants. You are dropped into a randomly generated world of varying size. You can choose small, medium, and large. The smallest worlds are very compact, and while you can grow in strength quickly, you're also forced to confront more enemies and monsters in a shorter amount of time. You also pick your difficulty. Softcore, where you drop half of the money you're carrying at the time. Mediumcore, you drop everything you are carrying at the time. As well as Hardcore, if you die once, you are dead forever. The character is deleted, and s/he drops everything s/he had.
I will do my best to outline generally what you can expect from the game without spoiling anything. If I don't speak on something, assume I'm trying not to spoil.
Your character begins with two tools, a pickax and an ax. As well as one weapon, a short sword. These are more useful than you would imagine. The first few upgrades do little more than increase the speed at which the tool works, and how much damage the weapon does.
There is also an element of chance, as the majority of your crafted equipment will have a title assigned to it. This can run from very bad to very good. The worst being to my knowledge 'broken' and the best being 'legendary' or 'godlike'.
Even though the game is 2D, against Minecraft's 3D approach, the game itself offers a lot more crafting options. Unlike Minecraft however, you are given a guide who helps you learn how to survive, and how to build what you need. By speaking to him and placing ingredients into his hands, he'll tell you what can be made from it, and what else you require in the recipe.
Yes, there are other people in this world, and they offer varying skills, including a merchant, nurse, demolitions expert, and more. Attracting them requires two things. First, certain pre-requisites must be met. The merchant for instance requires you to have saved up at least fifty silver coins. After all if you don't have the money to spend, why should he come to you? They also require their own living space. Living spaces comprise of a building with walls, ceiling, and a floor. As well as furniture to liven the place up. You need a chair, table, light source, and door for it to be considered a proper residence. There are some items that do double duty as a table and as chairs, but they are harder to make, due to having rarer ingredients. If you want NPCs early, you're going to have to settle for sticking to generic wooden chairs and tables. At first, at least.
The NPC's have their own personalities which color their occupations. Many of them offer items for sale, and all will buy items from you, at a discount of course. Even if you are the only thing standing between them and a horrific demise, you get No Hero Discount. Oh yes, you have to buy, sell, and hunt down enemies. Fortunately the majority of them have the old RPG staple of somehow carrying money in their stomachs.
The monsters are much more varied than Minecraft. The starting enemies will be the slimes, a valuable source of flammable ooze to make torches, and make several normal objects into sticky variants. Such as sticky bombs and sticky glowsticks to make impromptu lights while deep underground. As night falls, zombies will rise from their graves with a hunger for the living. Floating eyeballs, optic nerves and blood vessels trailing behind them, swarm through the air. What a horrible night to have a curse. There are even boss creatures, that upon their death, drop rare items and ores all over the place. Be cautious however as these creatures are more dangerous than they usually appear.
Multiplayer is just marvelous, better built than Minecraft's. It functions on IPs, and doesn't have a server browser, but considering you generally are only going to play with 2-4 people on one server, this can be excused. There is very little lag, which makes this a wonderful game to play with friends.
For this review, I am going to rate the game based on the price point it is currently retailing at of this writing. The prices are in US($) Dollars.
As of this writing, the game can be purchased and downloaded in roughly 5-10 minutes off of steam, for $9.99. This includes all future patches, as there are no plans to my knowledge of any DLC with a price tag.
Honestly, for what you get, this price is a bit low. Knowing about it, and knowing how much fun I've had with it, I'd gladly pay up to fifteen dollars for this enjoyment. Twenty would be stretching it, but depending on how much you like playing with your friends, it'd easily be worth it.
~
E-Tank
As of this writing, the game can be purchased and downloaded in roughly 5-10 minutes off of steam, for $9.99. This includes all future patches, as there are no plans to my knowledge of any DLC with a price tag.
Honestly, for what you get, this price is a bit low. Knowing about it, and knowing how much fun I've had with it, I'd gladly pay up to fifteen dollars for this enjoyment. Twenty would be stretching it, but depending on how much you like playing with your friends, it'd easily be worth it.
~
E-Tank
What is it worth? What do you pay for it?
Greetings and salutations, internet. I'm E-Tank, a wanna be game reviewer. I'm not particularly that good yet, though I hope to be good enough to perhaps become a runaway success like so many out there. *coughzeropunctuationcough*
I'll try various styles, reviewing old, and new games. My budget is limited however, and I might not be able to review games just as they come out all the time. I'll also try and focus on older games that are not well known, and nigh criminal that they are not considered classics.
I try and play through every game I review, but some of them are a bit large and I might miss a few things, here and there. Remember please, this is opinion based.
Happy Gaming!
I'll try various styles, reviewing old, and new games. My budget is limited however, and I might not be able to review games just as they come out all the time. I'll also try and focus on older games that are not well known, and nigh criminal that they are not considered classics.
I try and play through every game I review, but some of them are a bit large and I might miss a few things, here and there. Remember please, this is opinion based.
Happy Gaming!
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