I promised I’d look at a strategy game this year, if only to contrive some level of variety in my output, and not just an endless cycle of old football games and vaguely obscure hover racers.

So far, it’s not going that well. The game I had in mind was Republic: The Revolution, a political strategy title from the mind of Demis Hassabis, who worked at Bullfrog – most notably on Theme Park.

I’d taken some confidence from my earlier revisiting of the Football Manager series, in that it was a game that could seem overwhelming if you tried to work everything out by endlessly rereading the manual before you started, but wasn’t too bad once you actually took the plunge and started playing.

Our glorious (and clueless) leader

Admittedly, I was helped in this regard by countless hours spent with previous iterations of the same game, but I thought I could apply this approach to a strategy game of my choice: rather than being simply petrified of starting, I wouldn’t fear failure, and work it out as I went along. Plus, I have a politics degree, and some level of interest in the subject, so it couldn’t be that hard, right?

I’m not going to review the game by not reviewing it, and my thoughts are based on limited (and nowhere near enough) play time. However, all I can say is that I devoted half a day to Republic, in a relatively open minded and calm mood, seeing as I was off work and not trying to cram the game in on an evening or at a weekend, and emerged none the wiser. I wasn’t cross, or frustrated – just confused. Things were happening, but I didn’t know why, really, although the on-screen advice sort of made sense in isolation, I didn’t really figure out what the game actually involved.

Plenty going on. I think it’s all gone wrong.

There was a cut scene involving some military types going into a house and gunning down some innocents that was quite juddery: I remember at the time there was a lot of Edge-magazine-type bollocks (possibly in Edge magazine) about the fab-whizzo graphics engine and what it could do, but then when the game came out it seemed there was little point in it at all. The main bits I enjoyed were the superficial ones at the start: the quiz where you work out what kind of leader you’ll be, and naming your party.

In short, I gave up. It could have been my fault, or the game’s, or a combination of both. This isn’t a rage piece where I invoke pantomime anger at my own stupidity or the game’s lack of clarity in some areas. But I’m going to have to leave it there. As a result, my confidence in such matters has been knocked slightly although some contemporary reviews suggest I probably shouldn’t be too hard on myself.

Anyway, I need to find an alternative – requests or suggestions are, as always, most welcome.

Hi everyone.

Sometimes I just get the urge to play a really old football game. Most of them are quite bad, really, but there you go.

Today’s review is of Manchester United Europe.

Good evening.

October seems to be a fairly productive month for us at FFG. No, not because it’s Halloween. (You know, that really isn’t such a big deal over here).

Anyway, it’s been a little while, but we’ve got one of our discussion review features for you tonight. The game is Outlaws. Yee-haw! *fires guns into the air* (sincere apologies).

Hi everyone.

I seem to be on a bit of a roll with these futuristic racers. Here’s another one for you: a game called Ballistics, from 2001.

Thank goodness for Stoo and his Duke Nukem retrospective! Next time: something completely different.

Hello everyone. A lot of my retro gaming time lately has been eaten up by a vast, sprawling 90s cRPG (I’ll leave you to speculate on which one), the sort of one that could take months yet to finish. I could cut it short but kinda feel like I want the full, beardy, dicerolling experience.

So I’m trying to fit in a few others along the way, the sort that aren’t such a massive commitment. Today we’re going back to the Apogee lineup, looking at the first couple of installments in the Duke Nukem series, back in the days before he went 3D and started hanging around strip clubs.

Hello.

Another day, another review, another future hover racer thing (but, you know, from the past). It’s Slipstream 5000.

Hi there.

There’s been a lot written about this game recently, probably because the PlayStation is 20 this year (in Europe, at least). I can assure you, though, that the timing of this review is completely coincidental. (Oh! To be able to plan such things so meticulously…)

The PC version, as we shall see, loses a few cool points, and – perhaps – so do I, for refusing to call it WipEout or wipEout or wipE’out”.

Look, I’m not writing the logo. It’s called Wipeout.

I’ve been waiting for this for years – System Shock is finally on gog.com.

This is the game we once called the Thinking Man’s Doom. In those days all shooters tended to be described by reference to Doom – but this one had some rather different DNA. Its direct ancestor from Looking Glass Studios was actually a first-person RPG, Ultima Underworld, and while it’s debatable whether we’d call Shock itself an RPG, there are some clear differences to the Doom template.

It’s a slower, more thoughtful experience. There’s more emphasis on exploring, and interacting with your environment. It’s tense and cautious, particularly in the early stages as you creep around with a few paltry weapons, listening out for the chattering of killer cyborgs. Rather than a set of maps to shoot monsters, its levels make up a cohesive little enclosed world, of offices and engineering decks and hangars that make up Citadel Station, a place of which you gain understanding as you progress. Audio logs, found on the bodies of the crew whose bodies litter the corridors, allow you to slowly piece together the tragic story of what happened here. The insane ruling Artifiical Intelligence, Shodan, regularly taunts you; simultaneously dismissing you as an insect yet fixating on destroying you. With her delusions of godhood, she’s one of the truly memorable villains of gaming. Rather than simply looking for keys shooting your way through her domain you must search for key systems such as mining decks and garden groves, and find ways to disable them, to thwart her murderous plans.

It also boasts a rather advanced engine for the day (un fact so did UU). It allows for sloped floors and ceilings, where Doom’s were all made of flat expanses and steps. It let you jump and climb, so no being thwarted by 3-foot walls. you can throw stuff, be it grenades or just random items. These all helped make its world feel that little bit more convincing.

I don’t mean to belittle Doom. Okay I’m sound like a shock fanboy, but believe me I’ve spent hours on Doom too. It’s much faster and smoother while movement in Shock is clunky. It’s more focused on shooting, has more intense and battles against larger numbers of monsters, and it brought us deathmatch. These elements made it a success for pretty good reasons. Still, I reckon Shock deserved a bit more popularity. I idly wonder, if it had sold more, spiritual descendants like Deus Ex would have appeared earlier, or more frequently.

I could blather on longer, but you could also just read my old writeup. It’s one of the greatest games of its sort of the decade, really.

I’ve not yet played GOG’s version, and will report back if there’s anything major to note. They do mention adding proper modern mouselook which would help fix the clunky controls which were one of Shock’s greatest flaws. Widescreen support sounds good also. As does having the game wrapped up and ready to run with Dosbox (or whatever they’ve used to make it compatible with modern PCs). The brilliant, moody sountrack is included too. So this is definitely one of those oldies I’m re-buying even though I already have it on CD.

Anyway, here are a few tips for those of you trying System Shock for the first time.

– Each level has a cyborg conversion unit. Find this, flick a switch to reconfigure it and you will return to it every time you die on that level.
– Destroy cameras and computer nodes to lower the security rating on each level, which opens some locked doors
– Levels 1 to 6 each have a room of computer nodes and a screen showing a cycling numeral. When you destroy the nodes, the screen fixes on a certain digit. Write this down, it’ll save backtracking later.
– Ammo is scarce early on. Save shots from stronger guns. Maybe make note of charging stations then use the sparq (which runs off your batteries).
– The magpulse is death to robots. The flechette is super-useful against the rapidly respawning mutants in the groves. The Laser Rapier is death to anything, if you can get close enough, and especially if you pop a berserk patch.
– Some players find cyberspace annoying. You might want to set it to difficulty level 1 on a first playthrough. (put everything else on 2).

Hello there.

It’s been a little bit quiet around here recently. Sorry about that. But at some point in the summer I did manage to play, and write about, an old game.

So here it is: Screamer 4×4.

Today’s lineup of RPG monsters that have been giving me grief are from Might and Magic 6.

disclaimer: it’s possible that my problem was simply attempting to fight some of these when my party was a bit under-levelled. It’s also possible that I’m bad at RPGs.

Harpy Witches
These ladies manage to be obnoxious in two different ways. First up, they can cast curse on your party. This spell hits all four of your guys at once, and doesn’t appear to need to be aimed. It just instantly applies and so can’t be dodged. Since the harpies are often airborne, you may not even notice they are there until there’s a sudden blippy noise and a blue flash on your character portraits.

Being cursed basically means you hero suddenly becomes woefully incompetent. Their spells fail with a useless fizzling noise. They can’t shoot strait, their arrows firing harmlessly into empty space. They wave their swords around like a kid with a flag at a parade. Trying to direct a team where everyone is cursed is a frustrating shambles.

There’s a remove curse spell, sure. But if you’re up against several harpies at once, they’ll just re-curse you all, several times over. With that ever-irritating BLIP noise telling you it happened again. So decursing is only really viable if you can run away and then adopt hit and run tactics with bows and spells.

Once in melee range, the harpy witches are not particularly hard hitting. However, each attack has a small chance of prematurely aging your characters. I’m not sure exactly what effect that has, but it’s presumably its some sort of stat penalty. I don’t particularly want my guys accelerating towards middle age as they blunder around, and I’ve not yet found any sort of reverse-aging spell.

Fire Archers
A more straightforward problem, these ladies launch exploding arrows. So they they are effectively carrying rocket launchers. That’s fantastic news, apparently we’re playing Doom now.

Melee enemies, even when very tough, can be dealt with by keeping your distance and using turn based mode. Shoot them full of spells and arrow, go to realtime and retreat, go back to turn based and shoot some more.

High end enemies with projectile and spell attacks of their own are more challenging. In turn based mode you are stationary, so you’re extremely vulnerable. So I have to go over to the chaotic mess that is realtime combat, where it’s much harder to co-ordinate your actions. I found myself using the most ridiculous tactic of running in erratic circles, to throw off their target-tracking, whilst stabbing the “attack” button every time my characters were ready to use their own bows and spells.

source: crpaddict.blogspot.co.uk

Evil Eye
Good grief. Welcome to ranged-enemy hell. They bomb the hell out of you with elemental spells that also cause secondary effects like sleep or fear. Also, while you might expect a magic-based floaty head monster to be balanced by physical frailty, the weakest version has as many hitpoints as a heavyweight like a dwarf lord or an ogre chieftain. I’m going to come back and try this dungeon again later.

Now, just so this item isn’t entirely me complaining, here’s an enemy that is awesome!

Lizard Wizard
I like these guys just because they sound like some sort of 70s prog rock band. They’re not especially challenging, most likely because off the vast amounts of LSD they’re taking. Also they’re preoccupied with writing some 19 minute songs for their next concept album.