Exploring Rome 2

Another fantastic Rome 2 preview, with yet another Battle of the Nile preview towards the end. Obviously very much in a beta state, but still exciting nonetheless.

Obligatory

And now for a year's worth of updating...

Oh, yes. For Rome!

This is the preview you've been looking for...

My Brief Affair with Mobile Gaming, Part 2

Plants vs. Zombies

I don't know if there is a way to adequately describe how endearing this game is. The mechanics are a simple variation on a theme. If you've played any tower defense game before, you'll pick up on gameplay quickly. There are two significant differences between Plants and other tower defense games I've played in the past:

1. There is no twisty windy valley in which the zombies have to progress. Rather, there are six lanes, and the zombies only go straight in those six lanes, and are fully capable of attacking all six lanes at once. 
2. Sun (the resource of the game) isn't gathered at the end of a successfully completed level, like in the majority of tower games I've played, but is rather accrued over time via the sun itself and the assistance of resource producing plants, sunflowers and a particular kind of mushroom. 

These significant departures from the tower defense norm bring a fresh perspective to an often run down genre. The first major consideration is resource production and the real estate it takes up. Considering that your resource producing plants also cost sun and they're taking up valuable space that could be used by one of your other offensive or defensive plants the player is forced rather early on to experiment with build order in order to optimize production and defense on any given level.

For example, early on as a player I was hasty to put down my first pea shooter in anticipation of the forthcoming zombie horde. However, often I would place the pea shooter in one lane as the zombies approached in another. A little trial and error force me to learn that it's often best to build your first two sunflowers in one lane and then wait for the first approaching zombie before you build a pea shooter. This can guarantee you build it in a lane where it will be effective while simultaneously accruing resources to further production/defense.

The second consideration is the six independent lanes in which the zombies approach. Building up and defending one lane doesn't mean diddly squat for the other lanes. While later in the game you do acquire a few plants that defend multiple lanes at once, for the most part each plant defends its home lane and nothing else, meaning that you're essentially balancing six different defense games at once. Late game, the levels can get a bit hectic. 

With increasingly complex mechanics, such as the pool below with adds water zombies and of course water plants, the game stays fresh from beginning to end. Honestly, it's one of the first games in some time I've played from beginning to end essentially without break. It was over the course of a few days, but never because I lost interest - only because I have to rejoin the real world every now and again. 

If you've ever had any interest in tower defense games, I can't recommend Plants vs. Zombies enough. It's a fresh installment in a stale genre, once that will be sure to liven up your phone for an enjoyable time. 

My Brief Affair with Mobile Gaming, Part 1

As I posted recently my gaming laptop is having hard drive issues. This combined with my desktop's longstanding cooling issues forced me to break down and put one in the shop, resulting in a large incoming bill for a replaced liquid cooling system. During this time, I've tried to sate my gaming desires through my smart phone. Having downloaded many an app over the course of the past three weeks, a few really stood out to me and have made an impression on me.

I think the first I'd like to touch on is World of Goo. All this with the caveat that I'm only about halfway through the game.

How to describe World of Goo?

It has character. That much is for certain. 

It was developed by 2D Boy, an Indie game developer if there ever was one. More about them on their own page, here. This indie development shows. Not in a substandard, lack of polish manner. But rather, in the sense that this is not a game that would or even could ever be developed and pushed through a major studio/publisher combo today.

Aesthetic

I think this is probably one of the most striking, if not the single most striking aspect of this game. The world is a dark one. Almost cynical. There is harsh criticism of the industry standards of beauty present. There is heavy industrialization, with great smokestacks and industrial fires. The game says much with its artwork. 

The goo mentioned in the title seems to have some level of sentience in the world. You control the goo to accomplish various tasks given to you. The goo seems to be working towards an unclear purpose, all the while it's being harvested by the industrial machine for various purposes, presumably dark and nefarious. The secrets of the world are what you uncover as the story progress, and I admittedly have progressed little so I won't presume I know any more about the world.

About the dark aesthetic... I can't say I like it. I haven't finished the game, and I'm not sure I will, partially because of the aesthetic. It's almost depressing, and I think intentionally so. But at the same time it has a very real air of mystery about it, which is the one thing that might draw me back into the game. 

I'm torn, because while I don't particularly like the art style from a personal viewpoint, I greatly respect it. It is highly developed, and very clearly made for a purpose. Like Schoenberg's twelve tone works, while I don't enjoy the aesthetic, I do appreciate it intellectually. I simply think I'm not the target audience in this respect. 

Despite my inability to immerse myself in the general aesthetic, I think it bears mentioning before gameplay because frankly it left a bigger impression on me. World of Goo is many things, but it certainly isn't generic. The developers obviously had a very clear vision of the game they wished to create, pursued, and I think executed it with excellence. Goo has more personality than 90% of the games to come out in recent years, and for that I commend it.

Gameplay

Gameplay is enjoyable. It's a combination puzzle/construction game, where you fight physic and obstacles to invariably collect goo in a giant suction pipe so that you can conquer the next puzzle and collect more goo in a giant suction pipe, etc. I appreciate a game that has a more intellectual bent, where the focus isn't on action and explosions, but rather stretching your mind in new and interesting ways. 

The puzzle progression I think is generally well paced, starting out with one basic goo type in early levels, and over the course of the game introducing more goo types, each with its own attributes, then combining them together in puzzles of ever increasing complexity. 

My one complaint is that, after some time, you start having elements of some puzzles that requiring a good deal of careful timing. I'm not a fan of this. It is, to me, right up there with Escort Quests, Countdown Clocks, and Twitch Gameplay, of which this is a form. World of Goo does, however, allow you to skip levels, which I admittedly did when absolutely precise timing was essential because, frankly, I don't find rote memorization of timing sequences enjoyable. This is something I think I'll explore further in another post, particularly in regards to the most recent Tomb Raider game, but I'll spare you here.

The game did make excellent use of a touch screen, often requiring nimble motions to contruct a shape before physics could tear it down, made easier with the second nature of using your fingers for such a task. I think this would have been made significantly more difficult with the use of a mouse.

However, on the downside, when you have a swarm of forty or fifty goos of various types writhing around on screen, and you need to select a specific variety, it was often an exercise in frustration. Frequently, I found myself needing, for example, a balloon goo, but repeatedly clicking a standard black goo that once placed cannot be moved. Perhaps my screen is too small or my fingers too fat, but several times I found myself restarting a level do to a goo misplacement because of the selection issue. 

I don't know the solution to this, or even if it needs a solution. Perhaps this can be considered just one more challenge of the game, though I don't think that's the right approach. If I were a carpenter and had to repeatedly start over in building a piece of furniture because I reached for one tool and grabbed another, I think I'd quite carpentry pretty fast. This is, something, I think the developer should consider addressing should a sequel ever arise.

Impressions

Overall the gameplay was enjoyable, but it never quite completely pulled me in. I enjoyed it, but I was never totally immersed in it. I never had the 'Blinders' go up, making me oblivious to the outside world. I haven't been able to lay a finger on it, but this game never surpassed "Good Game" to me. The approach was fairly novel, and the personality was singular if not my cup of tea. It was a good diversion, but not quite as enjoyable to me as the next game I spent time with, Plants vs Zombies.

Battle of the Nile

My anticipation is growing. However, I'm just not sure about the physics. That artillery around 5:00 wiped out half a cohort in one well landed shot. More effective than a howitzter in Empire/Napoleon. This, to me is somewhat disconcerting. 

Then again at 5:20 when the scythe chariots clash with the Roman legionaries it's amazing how many of them fly twenty feet straight up in the air. You'd think those horses had scoops or the like up front. I get it. It's a graphical representation of the disruption caused by the chariots, but still... we're at least pretending to be an historical game, right?

I also feel obligated to mention the pacing. The whole battle seems... fast. The ships accelerate fast. The infantry move fast. Troops die by the dozen. And morale breaks fast. It feels like we're in for a much quicker paced tactical game, and I'm not really sure how I feel about that.

I am looking forward to a return to sword and arrow combat. Don't get me wrong, Shogun 2 had that aplenty, but what Shogun 2 lacked was character. All the Japanese clans had an essentially identical unit roster which made faction choice essentially boil down to starting position, with a couple of minor perks you may or may not even utilize. 

Going back to antiquity eliminates gunpowder from the equation an, with such varied cultures, will hopefully at least give the illusion to vastly differentiated armies. 

Overall I'm hesitantly mega excited for this game. I was drawn into the Total War series with the original Rome, and I sincerely hope this game can capture some of the nostalgia I have from that experience. 

Withdrawals

...from blogger? No. From gaming. My desktop has been bricked for some time now (I suspect cooling issues) and I've been forced to rely on my laptop. Well, now the laptop is acting like it has a corrupted hard drive or some other hard drive issue. So, the desktop is in the shop (for two weeks now... I'm growing impatient) and the laptop is collecting dust, all the while I'm dreaming of the new Civ V expansion, which I might add Europe is going to have access to before I do. Europe.

The French will play the game before me.

But hey, it's cool. It's my only three week window of zero responsibility the entire year that I can devote to gaming.

I swear, I'm being taught a lesson for something.