Tag Archives: Real Time Strategy

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

R.U.S.E.

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When I first heard about R.U.S.E. I was pretty excited. A game which promised being able to fool the enemy into thinking you were attacking from the left flank, only to hammer it on the right and other similar tactics was something I thought I could really get my teeth into. I was a little apprehensive at playing it on console, as Real Time Strategy games on consoles are always hit and miss. Very few console RTS games have succeeded in being able to bring the ease of selecting and controlling troops as well as base defence and resource collecting as well as their PC counterparts. R.U.S.E. succeeds in this where so many others have failed.

R.U.S.E. is set during WWII. Two generals, USA’s Major Joe Sheridan and Germany’s General Major Erich Von Richter, fight for control over Europe, positioning troops and bases at strategic points across a map and try and take other points, then wipe out the enemy. There’s some silly rivalry and a plot twists to make the campaign seem more than some random maps stitched together, and the cut scenes which stitch up the battles are well done though, being fully animated and voiced, but the story isn’t really going to be that well remembered, and their intrusiveness when things start to get interesting is intolerable.

The main action of the game occurs on a table which represents the battlefield. All over the battlefield are troops, represented as tokens, and you move the tokens about using the controller. Surrounding the table is your base of operations, full of radios and clatter of Morse code machines. However, when you zoom in closer to the table the tokens come alive, no longer represented as coloured chips, but as troops and equipment. You see tanks rolling over fields, infantry moving through woods, planes dog fighting and the flash of artillery. It’s really clever design, made better by the ease of the controls. One of the joys of R.U.S.E is how easy it is to control your troops. Select a unit by clicking on it with the A button, and move it’s “ghost” to where you want it to take up position, and it does it. Select a “stack” by pressing X, and they’ll move in formation to where you direct them. The AI takes care of the rest, and does a pretty good job of getting them from A to B with little micromanagement.

Like most RTS games, the strategy comes from building your base, deploying defences, and building troops to take objectives. R.U.S.E uses a rock/paper/scissors approach to combat, with each kind of unit being strong against one type of unit and weak against another. It’s simple but it works. In addition to this, field of view and terrain up the ante. Infantry are weak against armour (tanks) and moving them into a field near a tank will lead to lots of dead soldiers. However, in woods and swamps infantry can hide and ambush armour. Buildings and woods block line of sight for many units, so placing two artillery units either side of a town allows better opportunities to attack and destroy approaching troops.

The twist on normal RTS comes in the form of the ruses, which is somewhat apparent given the title. Ruses allow you to mislead the opposition into thinking something different is going on than what they see. For example, you have a heap of infantry you’d like to move into a wooded area in order to protect the nearby town from an armour convoy. You use your Spy Ruse to make sure it is armour; you use the Radio Interception Ruse to see where they’re going, and you use the Radio Silence Ruse to move your troops without the enemy knowing.

Later in the game, Ruses can become incredibly complex. You create fake armies and fake blitzes in order to fool the enemy into thinking you’re attacking one location, when you’ve really got your sights on another. You can draw the enemy into attacking your fake base, whilst you mobilise from your real base. You can use the Terror Ruse to make all the enemy flee into a column of tanks you’ve moved behind the enemy force. It is this level of depth that makes the game shine.

Unfortunately, this level of depth takes so long to arrive via the campaign it will probably be best to skip straight into the Battles and Operations. The battles are small skirmishes, reflecting the online component of the game, whilst Operations recreate famous scenarios from WWII, such as Operation Seelöwe (Sea Lion), the German’s ambitious plan of invading the UK.

Although there is a multiplayer component, there is a lack of online games being played. That’s partly due to Halo Reach tying up the Xbox, and Star Craft 2 occupying the minds of RTS gamers. Furthermore, games take a long time to play, and only the most time rich and dedicated R.U.S.E. fans will stick around for the entire game.

Conclusion
R.U.S.E is by no means the greatest game you’ll play. It’s campaign in slow, the battles can take too long, and after a certain point all the games against the AI play out the same. And if you’re simply not into RTS games, then there’s nothing here to change your mind. However, if you are a fan of RTS games, you’ll find one deep, lengthy and engaging game to sink your teeth into. Moreover, it has enough new original gameplay elements to be truly influential in future, especially when it comes to RTS games on a console.

Pros:
Amazingly easy to control and play
Great graphical representation of the battlefields and units
Lots of options for types of games

Cons:
Campaign takes too long to get going and has a story too silly to be engaging
Battles take too long to complete
No one playing multiplayer games

74/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Sid Meier’s Civilization: Revolutions

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Sid Meier’s Civilization series is one of the greatest PC series of all time. The deep and complex game takes time, patience and understanding to play and master, and the task of getting Civilizations to a console has proved difficult if not impossible in the past. The idea of taking one of the best, deepest and most popular strategy games and getting it to play well on a console has require a complete rethink and rebuild of the game. Although “built from the ground up for consoles” has almost become a cliché of games reviewing, Civilization: Revolutions is one game that encapsulates this term, and succeeds in living up to its goals of providing a Civilization experience on a console.

But let’s get something out of the way – this is definitely Civilization Lite. Many people may look down their noses at it because of this, but I like to think of it as the difference between driving and automatic and manual car. One is more complex to drive than the other, but unless you’re a really dedicated car fan, it doesn’t really matter because both types of cars are complex feats of engineering, both will get you from A to B, and in both you need to concentrate on the road ahead.

Civ: Rev is like an automatic car. Its complexity has been stripped back making the ride a little more enjoyable and easy for those who want it to be, and making it much easier for learners with less gears and pedals to mess with. Those who have never played a Civ game before will appreciate the controls and take to them as easy as someone takes to controls in any console game.

The game is still turn based and on a grid layout, and playing it there is always that feeling of “just one more turn” that Civ is notorious for. However, because things have been streamlined, a turn doesn’t take as long. For example, you don’t set your workers to build a road – you have to open the city screen and spend gold, and they’re built automatically and in that turn. You can then activate inactive armies and move them from city to city, to defend or attack.

Whilst it may not as intuitive as a mouse and keyboard, the control set up works incredibly well. You move around the world using the left thumb stick, and when you move over a selectable icon, such as troops, it will change and allow you to select them, for example. Simple things like mapping the left bumper to zoom to the city nearest the cursor. Build City for Settlers, Go To City for Caravans and Spies are mapped to the Y button, and for military troops A maps to “Go To” and X to “Defend”. The Back Button calls in your advisors so you can make changes to taxes, technology and government.

These controls are really a stroke of genius, because it quickly becomes second nature to a player and makes the game whip along at a faster pace that traditional Civ games. When you have a bunch on troops in a group, you can select between them with the up and down on a d-pad, and when you have 3 types of the same troops together, you can form an Army with a press of a Y button. Armies in Civ:Rev become tougher to overcome, and are very important in the early game.

Combat is done by simply selecting and moving your troop onto the tile of the opposing troop. In the early stages of the game, most conflict will be against barbarians, who are a little weaker than regular AI troops. You can also capture their cities and units after doing battle, and they’ll often reveal the locations of ancient artefacts which you can capture and significantly boost your civilisation in a number of ways. However, opponent civilisations are often equal if not greater than yours, and attacking them outright can lead to an early demise.

Troops are given an attack and defence rating, and it’s simply a matter of who has the biggest strength. Terrain also gives bonuses and defences to troops, so it pays to know where are the best places to attack and defend. A group of hills will give 50% attacking bonus to them if they’re attacking onto flat land, although a river will subtract 50% if it lies between attacker and defender. This does mean, however, that a tank can effectively be destroyed by an archer, which seems ridiculous but it is a feature of the entire Civ series.

As troops survive battles, they get bonuses to their strength in certain areas. Some bonuses give you the ability to heal, whilst others help you defend your cities better. Others help you see the strength of opponent troops and cities, whilst others give you bonuses to attack cities or when on hills or in forests. Win enough battles, and a military leader will lead your troops, providing a significant boost when attacking. What is great about these bonuses is the units are differentiated by their bonus both in name and appearance. For example, a “Ninja Catapult” is a catapult that has the Infiltration bonus, and will have camouflage on its icon.

Further complexity in the game comes from how you manage your cities. The location of your city as well as the buildings in it will determine how much a near by square will produce. For example, harbours will double food production on sea squares, so that city will produce 2 apples for every fish tile near your city instead of one. City production is simpler– instead of clicking on the map to change the production of a nearby square, you just change your workers from the default to what you want; production, culture, food, science or wealth. Although you can set all your cities to the default – balanced production – as you play the game for longer you realise the complexity of having one city producing more gold and another producing more science to offset a high tax / low technology level so you can, for example, build more roads. You may have an enemy city near by, so you increase the culture so that city becomes part of your empire.

Building Wonders and researching tech before other players will allow Great People to be born. These can be tasked to help your cities either at once or over time, and also aid in the cultural victory. Victory conditions come in 4 flavors – Domination, Cultural, Technological and Economic. Domination is achieved by capturing all enemy capitals. Technological is by learning all the necessary techs to get into space. Economic is amassing 20,000 gold and building the World Bank, and Cultural is done by amassing 20 great people, wonders and culturally flipped cities and building the United Nations.

But be warned – although the game is rather easy on the first few difficulties, it does ramp up, and you will see the AI trying to do the same things as you are, and often at a faster rate. That’s if they’re not outright hostile to you because you’re not giving in to their demands. Like the traditional Civ games, your opponent Civs will pop up and ask you for aid in the form of technology if you’re more advanced than them, or simply threaten you if they think they’re superior, but unlike the tradition versions, they will nearly always become aggressive towards you at some point, and not be as open to negotiation. They will also tend to gang up on you and you can quickly find yourself fighting on 2 or more fronts if you’re not careful.

Online, the game pretty much plays exactly the same. Turns can take slightly longer to play out as you wait for other players, but for all intents and purposes the game is exactly the same. In the few games I played, the players all agreed to destroy the AI first before fighting against each other, and I ended up playing until 2 in the morning! You can rush your armies and try and wipe out the others quickly, but you’ll find yourself at a disadvantage if the opponents decide to gang up on you.

Although the game is less complex and games occur more quickly, there are a few negatives in that. The world map is much smaller, perhaps too small, and can be completely uncovered rather early on in the game. Both your and other civilisation cities appear will be in closer proximity, and you can’t share world maps. There’s no way to customise the maps either, so after a while they do kind of feel all the same. The scenarios, which in the traditional version tried to recreate real world conflicts, are missing that, and are pretty uninspiring. The difficulty, as mentioned before, is quite laughable on the easier difficulties, but King and above is pretty tough.

The music and sound of the original are as great as in Civ IV, and if anything the fight animations are much better on the console. Seeing your knights’ whomp an enemy’s archers is great, as each blow is played out, and it’s hilarious to see a tank get taken down by a phalanx battalion. The models of your advisors are fully 3D and react to one another, as well as opponents who may interrupt your advice sessions. It’s funny to see the barbarians get freaked out by your science advisor. Something I have noticed, however, is all the opponent female leaders are rather busty. Sure, Cleopatra is meant to be one of the most beautiful women to ever live, but Catherine the Great was known as such for her service to Russia, not her impressive rack. Although there is something endearing about her flirtish little wave as she leaves the screen.

Conclusion:
Civ: Rev is a great game, and I think most people will have a great time with this game, both online and offline. For the uninitiated, this is a fantastic introduction to the Civilization series and the concepts therein. Traditional Civ fans may be a little disappointed by the level of depth, but those like me who find they don’t have time for day long sessions will really enjoy the quick turns and fast action. The only people who may be disappointed with this game are a Civ IV fan who likes the depth and complexity involved in that game, but they should probably stick with Civ IV and it’s add ons on the PC anyway.

Pros:
Fantastic, intuitive interface
Great graphics and music
Deep and intelligent gameplay
Translate to online play brilliantly.

Cons:
Maps may be a little small
Scenarios are no where near as exciting as traditional Civ games.
May not be deep enough to those used to the series.
Score: 85/100

inthemix.com.au, Review, Video Games, Writing

Dungeon Siege: Legends or Aranna

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Now, I have to admit right off the bat I didn’t play much of Dungeon Siege when it first cam out. It never worked on my old PC that was pretty old anyway, and since upgrading I lost interest in hack and slash style games. But people always raved about Dungeon Siege, and I felt out of the loop, as it were. So, luckily for me, and anyone else who missed out on the original, Dungeon Siege: Legends or Aranna comes with the complete version of the first game.

I played through the original for a while, and thought, OK, so this is a traditional dungeon hack. The difference in this to other games was the lush graphics, and the intensity of the action, and the expansive locations, and these are added to by the expansion.

The graphics in this game are really good. The levels are very well designed, with trees that obscure the view, and have different elevations that allow you to have a strategic advantage over the masses of enemies. And there are plenty of enemies to deal with, and I was amazed that the game never seems to load the maps, and can have so many enemies on screen at one time.

The camera allows you to zoom right in, and while a little blocky on my machine (which is getting long in the tooth), the models look well made and quite detailed. They change appropriately when changing armour and weapons and so on. The spell effects, especially the larger area ones, look amazing. The sounds also add a lot to the game, and on occasion I’ve jumped as a monster bursts growling from the ground underneath my party’s feet. The ambient sounds are also great, form the jungle noises of the, err, jungle, to the haunted screams from the deep dungeons.

However, after playing both the original and expansion pack, I noticed that I was hardly playing the game, but rather just sitting there and watching as my men and ladies ran about killing things rather intelligently in the general area of where I clicked my mouse. It kind of felt like I was playing a version of the Sims, but with Swords and magic.

On the one hand this is a good thing, as it means there is no scouring the screen to find members of your team who may have got stuck trying to navigate their way through the maps, only to find them standing still whilst being attacked. But on the other hand, it kind of feels mindless. The story, or lack thereof, also adds to the mindless feel, as you never really become engaged in neither the original story, nor the new one.

While Dungeon Siege: Legends or Aranna is a good expansion pack to the game, it, like the original, doesn’t really add anything to the genre as a whole. It’s a good hack and slash, but there’s been countless of these style of games, right back to Gauntlet. The brief foray into the Multiplayer aspect of the game led me to the same conclusion – it’s good, it looks great and is easy to get into, but and without the fancy graphics and so on, it’s nothing but a clone of so many other games. If you’re after a few hours of mindless fun, then this game is for you, but if you’re after a little more depth, the expansion pack is not where you will find it.

inthemix.com.au, Review, Video Games, Writing

Age of Wonders: Shadows of Magic

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PC

Shadow Magic is my first introduction to the “Age of Wonders” series, but if this title is anything to go buy I might have to seek the previous games out. I’m a huge fan of the “Civilisation” series of games, and AoWSM is quite similar in some ways, yet adds a role-playing element that makes it similar to Warcraft 3. Either way, it’s a damn addictive game. The game won’t appeal to those who like their games to be quick, but for those of us who are lucky enough to have a lot of time on our hands, this game will let you while away the hours gathering resources, building cities, and create armies to wipe out the opposition.

The Campaign explains that Merlin, head of the Wizards, is trapped on an alternative plane of existence, and you have to battle what are known as the Shadow Demons to save him and your planet. But not only is there the Demons to contend with, there’s Phobias, the Human Emperor who blames the Wizards, elves, dwarves, and other races for bringing the Shadow Demons into the world. The Single player campaign starts off with a simple 3 part tutorial that introduces you to the game mechanics, and teaches you how to move, construct cities and units, how to capture other cites and so forth. It will all be quite familiar to those who have played other Real Time Strategy games. The main aspect of the game is typical resource gathering – in this case it’s gold for your cities and armies, and mana for your magic.

There are 3 planes of fighting: the Land, Underground and the Shadow World. There are races better suited to fighting in each area, but what is really cool is there can be cities in all three of these planes. This makes the game much more tactical than other RTS games: Is it a matter of taking over one plane, and moving onto the next, or establish bases in each of the planes and attack from each?

The magic part is what makes this game really interesting. In each city, you have the option to make Wizard Towers, which amplify the wizards power and allow you to cast spells over the land. These can range from those that heal your armies, hide your cities, and hinder enemy movement. There are also Heroes, who rise in level and power as the game progresses, and as long as there is one city with a Wizard Tower under your control, you can cast spells whenever your hero goes into battle. When you go into battle, either against a city or against an army in the fields, the screen zooms in, and you get to control your units, directing them to attack and casting spells to devastating effect.

There are a few problems with this game. The graphics freak out where there are too many units moving on screen, particularly those with flapping wings. Whilst there is a zoom mode, the graphics do not scale well, unlike in Warcraft, and look bitty and fuzzy when you zoom in. Battles take far too long, and whilst there is the option of doing a “quick battle”, that often leaves the attacker at the mercy of the AI. Whilst the AI is not totally mindless, it is rather predictable and you can learn it’s patterns and defend yourself better against it.

Those faults do not make the game unplayable though. In fact, I had to drag myself away from the game to write this review. The gameplay is addictive and the story is quite enthralling. I’ve been playing nearly two weeks straight, and am only up to the third campaign, there’s meant to be five, plus there’s a whole host of single scenarios, plus a random map generator. Already there is enough to keep most gamers happy, but add to this the multiplayer aspect, then you have a lasting and fun game that’s well worth the money.