Nother week, nother round of releases! Games! -rolls around in the games!-
Side note, new laptop in my ownership. 2014 model Asus g750. 880m geforce, core i7 2.4 clockable to 4.0, 32gigs ram, 1tb hard drive, 512 ssd, blue ray burner and windows 8.1. Now I admit, I've never been a fan of what I've seen of this windows os, but I'll also admit that I've never actually used the damn thing. Took about 10 minutes to be completely comfortable with it. Then another 5 minutes to find the shut own button hah! Now, why's this pertinent to gaming? Windows 8 has its own app store full of games and stuff. I suspect I'll be running around in that playground here shortly...
My first ever iOS game addiction gets a third installment. Dig down, loot the resources, cash in on surface, upgrade, dig deeper. Part 3 is stage based with star ratings, upgrades have timers and the whole game is alot more cartoony than its predecessors. Still, not painful so far.
Sequel to Overkill game series with mafia oldschool theme. Works pretty well actually. You control the gun trigger, shoot the bad guys, don't shoot the innocents. Unlock cash, level up, achieve goals, upgrade weapons and armor, unlock more stages, fun fun. Freemium, gear upgrades have timers.
Now, there were three other games but they really didn't do anything for me. Ahh well, o7
Well, the week release hit and I picked up 8 or so games. And to be honest, I enjoy them all, even the sneaky ones that said gamecenter but don't support any of its features :( It's definitely worth noting that my strategy itch was well scratched and what follows is a brief description of the strategy titles I picked up (along with all the other games i grabbed). Please note, my definition of strategy on the PC is very very precise but on the mobile platforms, it's very very vague. Everything's a hybrid these days heh, so with that in mind lets get this rolling.
Castlestorm feels like royal revolt or army of darkness blended with angry birds and any worms title. Yea, it's the definition of hybrid. The most overall description of most stages is that you have a castle on the left, the enemy is positioned on the right. You both send soldiers across to attack one another and each others castles, this is the army of darkness royal revolt reference. You use spells and can even drop your hero and go in to full sword swinging shield blocking antics, this is also a armoy of darkness royal revolt reference. But this is not where it ends. You see those two castles are completely built of individual pieces much like angry birds pig castles and also like angry birds you need to completely destroy your opponents castle to win. The castles crumble in real time, where you hit them and what you hit them with affects the damage you do.
Now, that's what goes on most of the time but there are also stages where your fending off waves of Npcs, sometimes your killing thieves who are trying to flee from you with your gold, I even had a strike happen in my castle where I had to destroy the entire enemy with my hero heh. All stages have three goals, each worth a star. Certain star counts award you ever increasing new abilities and perks. On top of that your always gaining experience from leveling up every aspect of your kingdom and leveling up also unlocks lots of rewards and whatnot.
There is iap present, but so far all of it has been of the impatient-player-wants-stuff-before-they've-earned-it variety. Play the game through and so far there hasn't been a forced iap wall. The only wall I can imagine could be once you finish the main chapter's 50 stages and want to chase the other four chapters. Those are currently 150gems a piece which equals almost 9 dollars each, but I suspect they may unlock in order for free if you play through the game proper like. Time will tell on this. Oh and I do like that in the iap there is a VIP package that removes adds, doubles exp gain, gives a lump sum of coin and gem plus puts you on a permanent weekly allowance for the two currencies.
Two thumbs up so far, will follow up. Now, next on the list?
Free, iPad only, 78mb download, gamecenter enabled but not used.
Spatials is my type of game and it scratches an itch thats needed scratching since 2003. Back in 2003 a game came out of nowhere right on the heels of the sims 2 i believe, called Space Colony. Space Colony put you in charge of a completely customizable colony on another planet. You placed everything from rooms to halls to beds to plants and back again. You received instructions from 'the corporation' who's mission work steadly guilded you through your entire reason for being on the planet. Harvesting ores, farming space chickens, shooting aliens, competing with rival colonies, it was all there and it was all fun.
Spatials follows Space Colony's spirit. This game lets you build your colony as you see fit, rooms, corridors, furniture, all on a randomly generated asteroid. One of my favorite twists is that unlike Space Colony where you moved from planet to planet building from scratch, in this game this colony is home base and planets, solar systems and entire other galaxies are where you will adventure. Whether victorious on your missions or a failure, you will always return to this colony. Here is where you produce food stuff, upgrade equipment, swap equipment on your colonists, etc, etc. Out there, you will be taking specimens, shooting wildlife, shooting space pirates, rescuing lost colonists, encountering people for hire and even buying useful colonist equipment for your people.
There are two types of missions in the game, optional and story progression. Optional means, pick a planet without a ! or a merchant icon, send the away team and run around looting, shooting and doing what ever random requirement the planet assigned you when you arrived. ! means storyline and these scale in difficulty but each one awards you a new colonist and usually new furniture or rooms for the colony back home.
This game has one currency, and for iap there are two coin packs both affordable and a coin doubler. The developers have been social over on toucharcade and have plans for more things to do and more things to build back at the colony. I am enjoying this game emensly and can't wait to see where they go with it.
Two suggestions for the developers. 1, make gamecenter actually useful with achievements. 2, aim for space colony, then go beyond :)
Wild West city builder, release date on itunes suggest it came out a week or so back but I only just noticed it yesterday on pocketgamer so, its new to me. The game is stage based, each stage has goals and is in different locations around california. Build homes, businesses, do trade with neighboring cities for resources you need, meet the needs of the townsfolk, watch them upgrade their homes, its relaxing to say the least. The self upgrading homes thing reminds me of the anno series of pc games (there is an anno coming to the ipad soon!).
Very simple game, relaxing too. Thumbs up. Zero iap
You can tell the quality of a game usually by how long touchgameplay bothers to record when making their youtube videos each week. Lost Inua is almost twice as long as their normal recording length and its for good reason. This here is an action platformer involving a father and son who are on a quest to meet the three good spirits before the fourth bad spirit kills the little boy who's destiny is to bring peace... if you get him where he needs to be.
Visually fantastic, this is one of the first games that has actually managed to slow down my ipad air. Sounds are great, controls spot on, this game does an excellent job absorbing you in to the story.
Straight forward, you are the gunner of a well fitted aircraft and your job is to shoot the aliens while protecting fleeing civilians. This game plays exactly like its predecessor 'gunship' just with aliens instead of zombies. Everything on your weapon boat is upgradable including the aircraft itself. iap coin packages are present but not mandatory for the grind friendly amongst us. Gamecenter, like the last game is enabled but completely un used. I wish apple would put some sort of stop to this, reall annoying when a developer check marks yes for gamecenter just to lure in more sales. Ahh well, at least gunship uses it for leaderboards. Spatials and Warhammer don't even do that. :/
Anyways, good controls, good but potentially repetitative game play, optional iap, leaderboards.
6.99usd, universal, 124mb download, gamecenter yes but unused.
Alot of warhammer games lately have hit the app store, and really their mostly all shallow. This one.. is somewhere in the middle. Run from left to right, kill everything. Meet goals, win, team up with players, do those goals, buy equipment, upgrade equipment, move along. Not a whole lot here, definitely not worth 7 dollars as it currently stands and the gamecenter enabled but completely unused has me tempted to itunes refund request. I feel cheated here. Spatials did the same thing, but at least Spatials held my attention for more than 5 minutes.
Trippy little lemmings like game. You control the lightning, draw it where you want the little people to go and they'll do just that. Draw straight up and they'll form pillars you can knock over to make bridges, the goal is always the same to get to the stage exit.
Lot of colors flying at me in this one... trippy...
And thats the list, one game annoyed me above, the rest I enjoy. o/
Well damn, feels like I just posted last weeks release yesterday. Busy weekend and busy week so far. Heavy car maintenance over the weekend and a whole lot of Blizzard stuff this week, heh. Anyways...
Wednesday Release, very weak for me this week. Only picked up one game, surgeon simulator and that was a let down for me. When I saw the game memories of those surgeon games on the 3ds came flying at me and I honestly got excited, I loveeed those surgeon type games so I bought it immediately.
The controls are fustrating. The tutorial is shallow. Further research in to the pc version of this game revealed that the controls are actually exactly as intended, same as the tutorial and 'half the fun' of the game is apparently working with the controls and figuring out everything yourself.
All this game made me do was download the latest amateur surgeon from adult swim.
There's abunch of arcadey type games, afew rpgs and a strategy game on touch arcade's release list. I also linked Surgeon Simulator... which I don't overly recommend and Amateur Surgeon 3 which I do recommend.
I'm still playing Mines of Mars from last week, very good game.
Now, as to the Blizzard stuff. On monday pre-orders for Warlords of Draenor opened up, wifey and I got our deluxe editions ordered immediately. Good thing too, account management servers crashed within 30 minutes from the overload of usage. Spent the afternoon and evening with the wifey and her insta-fresh lvl90 shadow priest, teaching her the ropes. I already have a lvl90 of every class alliance side so I used my insta-fresh lvl90 as a monk horde.
Tuesday, diablo 3 got a patch and hearthstone exited beta. Hearthstone also offers a free mount in WoW to anyone who wins three hearthstone matches against other players. That equaled authentication servers crashing heh. Got my hearthstone mount for WoW tuesday afternoon and got the wifey her hearthstone mount wednesday afternoon. Suspect I'll be getting my mom her mount soon as she much like the wifey just aren't all that good at card games.
Observations
. Definitely has a good spook factor, especially when played in bed in a dark room while partially awake after a full nights work shift heh. First time the ghost found me I jumped. Second time, jumped. Third time, figured out how to hide. Thats scary too. Lights going out, scary. Front door opening, yep scary.
. Tutorial stumped me, mostly because in the house at the beginning you can go up the stairs by the door as well as down. To be honest, they waited far to long in the tutorial to introduce you to zooming in and out on the house. Pinch or spread two fingers to zoom in and out folks. That there will instantly make your experience easier.
. Its very hard to explain what you do in this game because the rules of approach. Most basic? Fixing the lights in the room. Additionally, if the camera focuses on a room that flashes red afew times, thats where the bad guy is, if you can reach it without the ghost finding you, you'll learn abit more about the game. But even that description is hard to get right. Really? You just need to experience this game, inorder to experience it.
Observations
. Endless runner.
. Visually stunning.
. Controls work well.
. This is an endless runner first and foremost. The obstacle for this one is large sections of glass coming at you from random directions. Your tool for avoiding them is to throw metal marbles and break them. You have a limited number of marbles but you replenish your quantity by hitting small glass triangles scattered around.
. Solid game, enjoyable, plenty of achievements to persue and whatnot.
Observations
. Squad Based
. Turn Based
. Very nice game visually and the controls work quite well. There is plenty of depth and things to do along with combat. Upgrading heroes, equipment, etc. IAP comes to play with hero health and upgrading of anything. Hero health dosen't heal instantly after each battle, it takes time out of combat to heal. A trick around this? Have your healer party member heal everyone just before killing the final target in a fight. Upgrading equipment also has timers.
Observations
. Stage based
. Strategy game
. I honestly like this game a whole lot more than the first Block Fortress. The original was very much minecraft like, camera angles, first person perspective. This one is a isometric top down strategy title. Stages involve claming resource nodes, defending them, spawning troops, fending off the enemy and killing their base. Doing so rewards currency that you spend unlocking other units, building blocks, etc. There are multiple worlds, plenty of stages on each, lots of upgrades for everything. Very good game :)
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Uber Racer is a straight forward racing game in a post apocalyptic world. Firefighter Simulator, didn't play too long before wandering off. Demolition Crush, uninstalled after encountering the annoying energy bar. Games like this shouldnt be free to play with energy bars, they should work like angry birds. Premium price, optional quality of life iap. Deleted.
Damn it, too many games, too many distractions. Lets see...
Final Fantasy 4: The afteryears just went on sale and historically square enix always puts their latest final fantasy outting on sale right as the next final fantasy hits the app store. -stares hopefully at japan's release of ff6 afew weeks back-
Eve Online : The single largest battle took place monday morning through tuesday early hours, 18 hour battle. To put this in perspective, this battle lost over 70 titans. The second largest? 10. themittani.com has all the details and outcome reports and even a decent video.
Bardbarian : update hit, all bugs on my screen fixed, woo hoo! This'll probably end up being my game of the month.
I've taken Black Flag from 55% to 84% completion, yarr!
There's alot of really interesting games hitting the app store tonight, I'll definitely update when they arrive.
